All posts by Daniel Wee

The Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:9-13)

The Lord’s Prayer holds a special place for many Christians throughout the history of the church. It was, after all, the prayer that the Lord himself taught his disciples to pray, but what exactly made this prayer special? Some Christians have felt that the use of “our father” to address God made this prayer more personal and intimate than usual, but this suggestion, popularised by Dr. Joachim Jeremias in 1962, was actually unfounded. Jews frequently addressed God as “father” and even “my father” (we have many examples from prayers of that period), so while the language may endear the prayer to some Christians, it certainly was not the reason this prayer was different from other prayers.

Yet others point to the precedence of God’s kingdom before personal needs, or the selection of items included in the prayer, but none of these explanations seem particularly compelling given that these items were certainly not unique amongst Jewish prayers of the day. One such prayer that dates back to possibly as far as 150BCE is known as the Eighteen Benedictions. In the extant versions of this prayer (excerpted below), we find that it contains much of what is also found in the Lord’s Prayer.

P3 – You are holy and revered is your name …
B14 – Upon Jerusalem your city, return in compassion and build her soon in our days …
P16 – May it be your will, Lord our God, to dwell in ZIon …
P9 – Bless to us, Lord our God, this year to our benefit with all kinds of produce …
P6 – Forgive us our Father for we have sinned against you …
P8 – Heal us, our God, from heaviness of our heart and grief and remove sighing from us …

(Pxx refers to the Palestinian Geniza. Bxx refers to the Babylonian version.)

It is not difficult to see the common themes shared with the Lord’s Prayer and if so, they were certainly not unique to the Lord’s Prayer in any way. So what was the point of the Lord’s Prayer if not the presumed intimacy with God, nor the specific contents of the prayer? Perhaps the answer is a lot more mundane than many of us imagine, and more obvious.

Unlike the Eighteen Benedictions, which was a pretty wordy and lengthy prayer punctuated by many liturgical blessings, the Lord’s Prayer was incredibly brief and simple by comparison – occupying a scant four-verses in Matthew’s version and three in Luke’s. In fact, it was so short that it sounded unimpressive – and that, perhaps, was what made it unique – it’s brevity. This brevity, one would argue, was intentional, given Jesus’ preface to the prayer (Matt 6:5-8):-

And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.

Jesus’ points for the prayer that followed was:-

  • not to emulate the flowery prayers of the religious establishment
  • not to pray to impress
  • not to pray in public
  • not to be repetitive
  • not to over-elaborate for God already knows our needs
  • that these things have no traction with God

In Luke’s preface, we see a similar context where Jesus’ disciples wanted a distinctive prayer that would set them aside as his disciples (Luke 11:1):-

Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.”

It wasn’t as if Jesus had not been praying with his disciples. He had. What triggered the request was the desire to have a distinctive prayer that would identify them – a prayer that served a public identification purpose. Luke follows the Lord’s Prayer with Jesus teaching on how much more willing God, who was unlike ordinary people, was to answer His children’s prayers (Luke 11:13):-

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

Interestingly, the scope of the request is narrowed down to the Holy Spirit here.

It is unsurprising, then, that the Lord’s Prayer took the form it did. It wasn’t novel, nor impressive with flowery language. It was brief, to the point and devoid of liturgical repetitiveness. It also reflected an attitude of complete dependence on God to answer the prayer, as opposed to reliance on the human element of prayer. I must say that growing up as a Christian, it was very rare to hear anyone teach that our prayers should be brief, private, and to the point. Rather, we have lionised “prayer warriors” who specialised in praying a lot. The quantity of prayer, whether it be measured in the length of time or the number of people involved, is assumed to have great impact on the efficacy of the prayer, at least around the parts where I come from. At the very least, they seem very impressive to Christians.

This stands in stark contrast to the ostensible purpose of the Lord’s Prayer. More than that, we place the “power of prayer” in the hands of the supplicant (the person praying). It is almost as if the supplicant could move the hand of God by his/her sheer will and determination, and is perhaps what gives rise to sayings such as “there is power in prayer.” With the Lord’s Prayer, the power rests squarely on God and not in the supplicant. There is no power, as such, in prayer. I can totally understand the appeal of the “power” thinking since it gives us an illusion of control in what is otherwise total surrender to the will of God.

At this point, there will, no doubt, be those who will cite Luke 18 with the parable of the unjust judge. My answer is that most people seem to fail to recognize irony in the narrative. Much like Luke 11:13, the point of the parable is that God is NOT like the unjust judge who would need such harassing. He is NOT like that sleepy neighbour who was reluctant to get out of bed, and as a consequence, He does NOT need us to attempt to wear Him down with lengthy prayers. Rather, He is a God who sees our desperation and responds accordingly, to His will.

I think this points to some hermeneutical mistakes that are commonly made when treating the subject of prayer in the gospels. Contemporary Christian culture seems to value long, repetitive prayers, preferably made by a lot of Christians in impressive manners. Our practice of prayer seems more engineered to inspire a sense of confidence in the supplicants rather than to follow the biblical model. Success with a certain form of prayer (eg. overnight prayer meetings, prayer mountains, etc.) invariably generates a following of those who are convinced of using that form. Form, rather than essence, appears to be our fixation when it comes to prayer.

We also seem to view God as a reluctant or sleepy neighbour who needs to be roused from bed by our incessant petitions. Lastly, our theology of prayer places the “power” in our hands – in our ability to move this reluctant God, thus making heroes out of “prayer warriors”. This stands in contrast to what Jesus taught about prayer – that God was attentive to our needs, and is far more willing than any earthly counterpart to hear our prayers. For that reason, we need to keep our verbal prayers brief, and to the point. God is unimpressed with our liturgical prowess, or how long we can organise a prayer chain. If anything, God responds to our heart, and perhaps to the kind of relationship we have with Him.

Praying without ceasing (1Thess 5:17) has a lot more to do with an attitude of trusting God always, than with methods and rites.

Creating God in our own image

A Lenten reflection on the narcissism in contemporary worship

No sooner than Moses had instructed the children of Israel did they craft for themselves a golden calf to call their god. The idea itself seems preposterous as it flies against everything they had witnessed and experienced, but it reveals a prevailing problem with human nature – our desire to deify and worship our needs. The Israelites had some real needs as they faced an uncertain future and innumerable threats from both Egypt behind them, Canaan before them, and the harsh desert they found themselves in. In the midst of such dire circumstances, they had to choose between faith in a god they had not seen (except for smoke and clouds), or the fear that stands at the door of their hearts.

Understandably, their fear got the better of them and they decided that they had to have something more tangible and visceral to invest their hopes in – enter the golden calf. This was more than a particular pagan deity, it was an attempt to make God fit their expectations shaped by their pressing needs. Their need, however legitimate, was the dominant force in their religion. God was that great vending machine in the sky to which they would willingly insert whatever coins was required to ensure that their needs were met.

This same attitude seems to plague the modern church as our religious life continues to revolve around God as the meeter of our needs – be it of health or wealth, emotional or material. Like the children of Israel, our God is infinitely  malleable – shaped to meet whatever your crying need might be. If you are poor, He is the key to wealth and security. If you are lonely, He is your best friend and lover. If you are fearful, He is the perpetual affirmer of your value as a person. If you are rejected, He is the one who will always welcome you with open arms. If you are sick, He is your personal physician par excellence. God is anything and everything you need, or to be more precise, God will serve your every need.

Now, don’t get me wrong – we all have needs and God surely knows that. But a faith that revolves around a God whose primary value to us is a meeter of our needs is little more than a golden calf of sorts. It has been my observation that the church has focused greatly on God as the meeter of our needs, rather than God as the great I AM. When John Newton first penned the lyrics for “Amazing Grace”, the primary theme of the song was God’s grace in the face of our unworthiness and wretchedness. In the contemporary re-write of the song by Chris Tomlin (#14 on CCLI Top 40 of 2017), he added several verses that gave a very different take on the song. Instead of our unworthiness, the focus now became:-

MY chains are gone
I have been set free
the Lord has promised good TO ME
He will MY SHIELD AND PORTION be
God will be forever MINE

This is but an example of the narcissism that has swept through contemporary worship – a reflection of the church’s preoccupation with the meeting of our needs. Worship has shifted away from a pure focus on God as God, to a notion of God as a means for the meeting of my needs. We love God because of what He did, does, and will do for us. This is not to deny the fact that God has in fact saved us in doing for us what we could never do for ourselves on Calvary. It is to point out that we need to consider the question of how our relationship with God would be if He never did another thing for us.

Another Chris Tomlin song that’s been really popular is “Good Good Father” (#3 on CCLI Top 40 of 2017). I think that as a song, it touches many hearts because it speaks to a generation that seems starved of paternal approval and offers God as the answer to our need for fatherly acceptance. If we step back from that need, however, and look at what the song actually conveys, it’s about:-

tender whispers of love in the dead of night
You tell me you’re pleased (with me)
that I’m never alone
I’m loved by you – it’s who I am, who I am, who I am
Cause you know just what we need

Number 1 on the CCLI Top 40 charts for 2017 is currently “What A Beautiful Name” by Hillsongs. The song is ostensibly about the name of Jesus but right in the middle of the song, we find the verse that goes:-

You didn’t want heaven without us
So Jesus, You brought heaven down
My sin was great, Your love was greater
What could separate us now

That seems to suggest that God needed us and that was what prompted God’s salvific work. I really don’t want to get into what “brought heaven down” possibly means or try to answer “What could separate us now?” (clue: a lot). This, once again, tips the hat to the attitude that what is most important about God is what He does for us. It seems to elevate ourselves to a place of undue importance in the eyes of God, quite a different perspective from that of the Psalmist in Psa 22:6:-

But I am a worm, and no man;
A reproach of men, and despised by the people

I guess the question is, within this culture of elevated self-importance, are we as worshippers of God prepared to die to our needs and lay those aspirations at God’s discretion? Are we prepared to not be driven by our needs, and let God be God – the great I AM? Are we able to say “not my will, but yours be done”? Can we simply worship God because He is God and not because of some benefit that could result from it? In short, can we make worship not revolve around us, our needs or our feelings, and become more about God and who He is, about His glory?

Lent is the season that reminds us of self-denial, something contrary to the idea of self-fulfillment that under-girds the narcissism of much of contemporary worship (by which I don’t just mean songs of worship.) During this season, we are challenged to die to our own needs and desires and to turn our eyes onto Jesus who set the example of preferring the Father’s will over His own. This is the season to take a break from pandering to our need for emotional affirmation and sense of security, and to simply abandon our fate into the hands of God. True worship happens when we say to God, “I have this need, but You are so important that I am prepared to give up the fulfillment of my need.”

May Lent be a season of breaking free from the chains of self-fulfillment and need.

The Prince of Peace (Isa 9:6)

As Advent rolls around the corner, we will no doubt hear the many familiar verses and passages that have become associated with the season. One of the most prominent of these verses is Isa 9:6 which reads as follows:-

For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

This is pretty much the same translation we get with the NKJV, NASB, NIV and the ESV, with minor stylistic differences. The NET, NRSV and JPS, however, presents a slightly different translation. In this article I would like to look at what is behind these differences and you may be surprised to find that there is a lot more going on here, and the final translation of the verse may be something rather unexpected.

Let us begin where I tend to begin in this series, with the original Hebrew. The Hebrew bible has different versification and in this case, the equivalent verse is actually Isa 9:5, and here is the text.

כִּי־יֶ֣לֶד יֻלַּד־לָ֗נוּ בֵּ֚ן נִתַּן־לָ֔נוּ וַתְּהִ֥י הַמִּשְׂרָ֖ה עַל־שִׁכְמ֑וֹ וַיִּקְרָ֨א שְׁמ֜וֹ פֶּ֠לֶא יוֹעֵץ֙ אֵ֣ל גִּבּ֔וֹר אֲבִיעַ֖ד שַׂר־שָׁלֽוֹם

The translation and transliteration is as follows:-

ki_yeled       yulad_l’anu                        ben      nitan_l’anu
For_a-child has-been-born_to’you a-son has-been-given_to’you

v’tehi                  ha’misrah        al_shikhemo
and’it-will-be the’dominion on_his-shoulder

v’yiqra         shemo      pele yoetz                  el gibor
And’called his-name wonderful advisor mighty god

avi’ad                                     sar_shalom
my-father’everlasting  prince_of-peace

If we were to smooth out this translation, the first part would read something like this:-

For a child has been born to you, a son has been given to you, and the dominion will be on his shoulder.

The thing to notice here is that the words “yulad” (has been born) and “nitan” (has been given) in the Hebrew are in the perfect (completed) tense [or more familiarly, past-tense]. The common English translations (NKJV, NASB, NIV, ESV) obfuscates this with “is born” and “is given”, whereas the NET, NRSV and JPS actually translates this more accurately as “has been born” and “has been given”. This also means that the plain reading of this verse would present Isaiah as referring to something that has already happened, as opposed to a future referent. Who could he be referring to then, if not a future messiah?

The second part of the verse gets even more complicated because not only is “yiqra” (called) in the perfect tense (ie. completed and past) but it is what is known as a qal-verb (simple unaugmented form) which means that it is an active verb. Active verbs typically require a subject (the acting agent) and usually has an object (that which is acted upon). Since “yiqra” is an active verb in the perfect tense meaning “called”, then there must be a subject, and an object. Someone called someone else something. Okay, so now we look back at our sentence and we have to ask ourself who the subject of this sentence is? Who is doing the calling here? The object we know from the suffix of “shemo” (meaning: his-name) so we know that someone called his-name something. The “his” here refers to the “child” from the first part of the sentence. When a noun ends with an “o”, that’s usually a third person masculine singular referrent – “him” or “his” – and since “shem” means “name”, “shemo” means “his name”.

The mystery here is in the identity of the subject or agent – who is doing the calling? Before we get into that, it is worth pointing out that the English translations completely alters the original meaning and translates “yiqra” passively into “he will be called”. What was originally a perfect active verb became an imperfect passive verb. Once again, NET, NRSV and the JPS gets this more right than the NKJV, NASB, NIV and ESV. The JPS Isa 9:6 reads:-

He has been named “The Mighty God is planning grace, The Eternal Father, a peaceable ruler”

At least they got the tense correct but even here, it translates the verb passively and avoids the problem of requiring a subject or agent for the verb. One clue to how to resolve this mystery comes from the Targum, the Jewish oral tradition and commentary of the bible. In it, it gives the translation of Isa 9:5b as:-

And his name has been called from before the One Who Causes Wonderful Counsel, God the Warrior, the Eternally Existing One, “The Messiah who will increase peace upon us in his days.”

Here you see that they have made the first three of the four titles the subject or agent, and the last title the name. In other words:-

And the wonderful Counsellor and mighty God, our(my) everlasting Father, has called him the Prince of Peace.

This construction and translation is legitimate because, for example, we find a similarly structured verse in Gen 3:20a:-

וַיִּקְרָ֧א הָֽאָדָ֛ם שֵׁ֥ם אִשְׁתּ֖וֹ חַוָּ֑ה

Transliterated and translated this is:-

v’yiqra        ha’adam shem         ishto       chawah
and’called  the’man name (of) his-wife Eve

Here we see both the subject and object follows the active verb “yiqra” with the name being the last in the sentence. If this is true, then the child does not have four titles as we have been taught, but one title – “Prince of Peace” – and the one declaring this is the wise and mighty God himself, our everlasting Father. This child was, literally, a “son” of God the Father.

The conventional (but erroneous) translation is popular because it lends itself to trinitarian arguments which identifies the child with the father, the messiah with God himself. Unfortunately this is not borne out by the actual Hebrew text. The text still has strong messianic overtones, especially in the following verse where it says (Isa 9:7):-

Of the increase of His government and peace
There will be no end,
Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom,
To order it and establish it with judgment and justice
From that time forward, even forever.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

This verse falls within the first 12-chapters of Isaiah, the oracles against Judah, and comes on the heels of the vision Isaiah had in Isa 6:1. Isaiah served under four of the Israeli kings – Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah. Uzziah was considered one of the good kings but he had just died. His son, Jotham, was already a co-regent for 11-years by that time, and would go on to rule another 5-years as a good king after Uzziah died. After Jotham, Ahaz (a bad king) reigned for 16-years before Hezekiah took to the throne at the age of 25. Hezekiah would have been born by this time* and it is quite possible that at the time Uzziah died or soon thereafter Isaiah was thinking about Hezekiah and prophesying about him when he said those words in Isa 9:6.

*The calculation of years is complicated by the unknown years of co-regency between kings.

Now, it is not uncommon for biblical prophecies to have multiple fulfillments and even if it was Hezekiah that Isaiah was originally thinking about, it could also refer to a future messiah. However, if this was referring to Hezekiah in the first place, there is no way that Isaiah would have conferred him the titles “mighty God” and “everlasting Father”. That would force the translation to follow the lines of the Targum, meaning that these titles were a reference to God, the agent, who was declaring the name of the messianic child to be the Prince of Peace.

This child is spoken of again in Rev 11:15:-

Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!”

As we approach the season of Advent in these chaotic times, may we keep our eye on the one Prince of Peace whose kingdom will have no end.

More LXX translational issues: Isa 28:16

It has been interesting looking at the quality of the LXX translation of the OT and comparing it with the MT (Masoretic Text: Hebrew) to try to understand how some of these issues came about. This will probably be my last post on this subject since there are other things I would like to write on after this. For now, let us turn our attention to Isa 28:16 (NKJV):-

Therefore thus says the Lord GOD:
“Behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation,
A tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation;
Whoever believes will not act hastily.”

The context of this particular verse is God encouraging the faithful remnant (Isa 28:15) who live among those who put their trust elsewhere. The phrase there “will not act hastily” comes from the Hebrew לֹ֥א יָחִֽישׁ which literally means “will not (have to) haste/flee”. The various English translations have attempted to translate the sense of this to elucidate the phrase better, for example:-

NASB – … will not be disturbed.
NIV – … will never be stricken with panic.
NRSV, NET – … will not panic.
JPS – … need not fear.

As you can see, the translators were trying to make better sense out of the word here because there is some awkwardness in the original “haste” within the context of the rest of the verse. I think the general sense of the verse is something along the lines of “God will protect Zion and those who trust in God (who live in Zion) will not have to flee because Zion will be kept safe.” The preceding verses talk about those who place their trust in evil and “death”, so either you trust in God or you trust in death, to keep you safe (Isa 28:15) – the issue in question being the source of their safety.

Now, when I looked at Rom 9:33 which quotes Isa 28:16, I was surprised to find there a different version of the verse, which looks like this (NKJV):-

As it is written:
“Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense,
And whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.

Okay, I think to myself – this looks interesting. First of all, Paul introduces this “a stumbling stone and rock of offense” which isn’t in Isaiah – maybe he is paraphrasing the text to draw a parallel between the “stone for a foundation, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation” to a Christological reference (Psa 118:22). Then there’s the change of “will not act hastily” to “will not be put to shame”. While I can appreciate that Paul might have been playing loose with the idea of “As it is written”, it should be quite clear that these two changes alter the meaning of the text significantly. In Rom 9:33, the general sense is something like “God has appointed his stone that many will reject, but those who do not reject him and believe in him will be vindicated (not be put to shame).” I do agree, however, that at the most practical level, this probably isn’t a deal-breaker. From an academic point of view, however, this was very interesting and was worth investigating more.

I figured, this had to be the LXX again, judging from the pattern that had been emerging in my studies, so I went straight to the LXX and sure enough, we see part of the problem there. In the LXX, Isa 28:16 (LXX Brenton) reads:-

Therefore thus saith the Lord, even the Lord.
“Behold, I lay for the foundations of Sion a costly stone,
a choice, a corner-stone, a precious stone, for its foundations;
and he that believes on him shall by no means be ashamed.

Here we see how Paul got the “will not be put to shame” bit but there is no “stumbling stone and rock of offense” in the LXX, which I think we can just attribute to his paraphrasing (I really don’t want to get into a speculative debate about Paul’s motives and sources here.) My interest here is to discover why the LXX translators made the change from “will not hasten” to “shall by no means be ashamed”.

Initially I wondered if the LXX translators might be doing what our English translators were doing, trying to make the sense of Isa 28:16 clearer and using a more dynamic translation instead of a literal one. The problem is that “ashamed” makes the issue one of vindication rather than security/safety that the original “hasten” implies. If it was a dynamic translation, it’s a pretty bad one contextually speaking. Then I started to look at the Hebrew text again. The Hebrew word translated “hasten” is יחישׁ (Hebrew:yachish) and one of the Hebrew words that is translated “ashamed” (Isa 29:22) is יבושׁ֙ (Hebrew:yevosh). When I saw this I thought, “Wow, those two words sure look the same!” – the main difference being only in one alphabet, the ח (chet) and the ב (bet) because the difference between the י (yud) and ו (vav) can easily be mistaken in handwriting.

At this point, I realised that a number of scenarios could have happened that gave rise to this discrepancy in the text:-

  1. The LXX translator misread the word while translating
  2. The LXX translator had access to a better copy and our existing OT has the wrong word
  3. The LXX translator had the right copy but decided to interpret and did a bad job
  4. The LXX translator relied on a manuscript that contained a copyist error

I thought it might be interesting as an academic exercise to try to figure out which was the correct text. We know that the LXX translators did their work around the 3rd century BC. Our OT text is based off the Aleppo Codex, a Masoretic copy produced in the 10th century AD. Although much “younger”, it is considered the most reliable and accurate copy of the OT Hebrew text in existence (even more accurate than the DSS) for reasons that I can’t go into in such a short post. In any case, I felt I needed an older witness besides the Aleppo Codex to verify who got it right. As it happens, among the Dead Sea Scrolls are various fragments of Isaiah (4Q60 etc.) and a complete scroll of Isaiah (1QIsa). This scroll is kept in the Shrine of the Book in Israel and the actual manuscripts have been photographed and put on line, which was great news for me! While the DSS were written around the 2nd century BC, the sources would have dated even further back and so we have a source that is over a thousand years older than the Aleppo Codex. So what does the Great Isaiah Scroll say in Isa 28:16? It says “hasten”.

This means that it is unlikely that the LXX translators had a copy that was correct and everyone else got it wrong. More likely, the translator made a mistake in reading the text, or that the copy he was working off had a copyist error. This is what the DSS Great Isaiah Scroll for Isa 28:16 looks like. The red box highlights the word “yachish” (hasten).

isa2816dss

This is Isa 29:22 from the same scroll where I have highlighted the word “yevosh” (ashamed).

isa2922dss

It is easy to see how a mistake might have happened, and why reliance on the LXX poses particular problems when these errors are inherited by the NT writers.

How was Paul’s Hebrew?: Gal 3:16

In some of the discussions following my previous posts, the point was made that Paul was fluent in both Hebrew and Greek as a serious student of Scripture and a man of “great learning” (Acts 26:24). While I do not doubt that Paul probably used both Greek and Hebrew/Aramaic, my reading of Paul is increasingly leading me to the conclusion that he was predominantly a Greek speaking Jew. For starters, in just about all of his citations of the OT, he drew upon the LXX. This could be explained by the fact that he was addressing a primarily Greek speaking audience in a Hellenised world.

While there is much we could speculate about his background as Saul of Tarsus (in modern day Turkey) and his educational background, that would serve little useful purpose. What I would like to look at is how this “Hebrew of Hebrews” (Phil 3:5) handled the Hebrew texts. Specifically, let us look at Gal 3:16 (NKJV):-

Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,” who is Christ.

The context of this verse is Paul making the case that the promises made to Abraham prefigured Christ. He builds his argument around the fact that the word “seed” was used in the OT promises, as opposed to the plural “seeds”. So, for example, Gen 26:4 (NKJV) says:-

And I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven; I will give to your descendants all these lands; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.

On the surface of it, this seems to be a plausible, if a little novel, line of reasoning that Paul is employing here. If the promises were made to a single “seed”, who would that have refered to? For Paul, Christ was the best candidate. Had it been “seeds”, then Israel might have fit in better. Where we find a problem is with how this argument was constructed – it was predicated upon the Greek distinction between the singular σπέρματί (Greek:spermati – seed) and the plural σπέρμασιν (Greek:spermasin – seeds). When we look at the LXX translation of Gen 26:4, it reads:-

καὶ πληθυνῶ τὸ σπέρμα σου ὡς τοὺς ἀστέρας τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ δώσω τῷ σπέρματί σου πᾶσαν τὴν γῆν ταύτην, καὶ ἐνευλογηθήσονται ἐν τῷ σπέρματί σου πάντα τὰ ἔθνη τῆς γῆς

The underlined bit translates to the seed (singular) of you (singular)” and this is exactly in line with Paul’s argument. The Hebrew text, however, presents a slightly different story.

וְהִרְבֵּיתִ֤י אֶֽת־זַרְעֲךָ֙ כְּכוֹכְבֵ֣י הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וְנָתַתִּ֣י לְזַרְעֲךָ֔ אֵ֥ת כָּל־הָאֲרָצֹ֖ת הָאֵ֑ל וְהִתְבָּרֲכ֣וּ בְזַרְעֲךָ֔ כֹּ֖ל גּוֹיֵ֥י הָאָֽרֶץ

Here, the relevant phrase “in your seed” is found in one Hebrew word – בְזַרְעֲךָ֔ – that transliterates to “b’zerakha”. This breaks down into three components:-

“b” meaning “in”
“zer” (or “zera”) meaning “seed”
“akha” meaning “your” in reference to Abraham

The thing about “zer” or “zera”, though, is that this word in the Hebrew does not distinguish between the singular or the plural. It’s a bit like the word “sheep” in English where both the singular and plural are the same word “sheep”. “Zera” is just like that in Hebrew – there are no words to distinguish between the singular or the plural of “seed”. For example, in Gen 47:19 (NKJV) we have:-

Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants of Pharaoh; give us seed, that we may live and not die, that the land may not be desolate.

The word “seed” used here is obviously plural from the context – they were not asking Pharaoh for one seed but many seeds. The Hebrew word for “seed” here is “zera”, the same case as in Gen 26:4. Likewise, in Lev 27:16 (NKJV) we have:-

“If a man dedicates to the LORD part of a field of his possession, then your valuation shall be according to the seed for it. A homer of barley seed shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver.”

The “seed” here is again clearly plural from the context and in the Hebrew it is the same “zera” as used in Gen 26:4. You simply cannot argue that “zera” is singular or plural based on the word itself just as you cannot do that with the word “sheep” in English. In practice, you would have to rely on the context to determine if the singular or the plural noun was intended. In the context of Gen 26:4 (NKJV), it appears that “in your seed” sounds like a reference to the multiplied descendants, and is therefore plural in meaning. Even if you choose another passage such as Gen 22:17-18 (NKJV), you see the same sort of plural context:-

Blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.

Notice that the referents here are the many descendants that Abraham will have. The pattern “… your descendants … your descendants … your seed …” should strongly make it clear that “seed” here is plural because the Hebrew for “descendants” is in fact “zera”. This means that the verse could just as well have been translated:-

Blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.

Just in case you still need convincing, look at Gen 13:15-16 (NKJV) to see how “seed” was understood within the Abrahamic promise:-

… for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever. And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants also could be numbered.

Here it is even clearer that “zera” (translated “descendants” here) is plural. It just doesn’t get any clearer. I should mention that in all these cases, where our English translations read “descendants” or “seed”, the LXX renders it as the singular σπέρμα (meaning “seed” in the singular). The NKJV and most English translations used the plural word “descendants”, showing that the translators understood that the context suggested a plural “zera”. What this means is that contextually speaking, “zera” should be plural even though the Hebrew word itself does not differentiate between the plural or the singular. That said, Paul wasn’t making his argument based on the context but on the morphology of the word.

Now, if we assume that God spoke to Abraham in Hebrew rather than Greek, Paul’s argument should center about the Hebrew usage of the word “zera” and the entire argument he used in Gal 3:16 would fail. Had he even considered the Hebrew word “zera”, he would have known that the distinction he relied upon did not appear in the Hebrew and his entire line of reasoning would fall apart. Even if we should take the context of Gen 26:4 into account, you would still not arrive at a reading that yields a singular “seed”. How then could this expert of the Torah and master of the Hebrew language overlook such an obvious (in the Hebrew at least) mistake? That’s what I’d like to know.

Just so we are clear – I do not disagree with the substance of Paul’s argument. What I find problematic is his “exegesis” of Gen 26:4 and his making a distinction that isn’t there in the Hebrew and using that false distinction as the basis of proof-texting to a Greek speaking audience who most likely wouldn’t know any better. So what options do we have here concerning Gal 3:16? They are (MCQ):-

  • He really didn’t know what the Hebrew text of Gen 26:4 (and similar verses) said and was relying on the LXX.
  • His mastery of Hebrew wasn’t good enough to realise the problem with the word “zera”.
  • He knew the OT and was good in Hebrew but decided to make up a non-existent distinction.
  • He forgot what the Hebrew rendition was or made a blunder?

I’m open to other options you might come up with to help rescue Paul from this conundrum.

For the sake of completeness, there is an argument that Gen 22:17 might allow for a singular “zera” because of the genitive suffix for the word “enemies”. Gen 22:17 (NKJV):-

… and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.

The Hebrew for this bit goes:-

וְיִרַ֣שׁ זַרְעֲךָ֔ אֵ֖ת שַׁ֥עַר אֹיְבָֽיו

transliterated and literally translated we get:-

v’yirash            zarakha             et shaar  oyevav
and’possess  seed-of-yours     gate     enemies-of-his

Specifically, because of the “v” suffix in “oyevav” which makes it “enemies of his” (as opposed to “oyevahem” which would become “enemies-of-theirs”), it has been suggested that this would indicate that the preceding (antecedent) “seed” must be seen as singular. This seems like a plausible save for Paul. Then again, when we look at how this exact same phraseology is used in the subsequent Gen 24:60 (NKJV):-

And they blessed Rebekah and said to her: “Our sister, may you become the mother of thousands of ten thousands; And may your descendants possess the gates of those who hate them.

Here you have the exact same phrase in Hebrew with “soneav” (meaning “haters-of-his”) at the end instead of “oyevav” in Gen 22:17. Once again, you have the “v” suffix but here it is obvious that it is plural because the number “thousands of tens of thousands” is given, taking away the ambiguity in “zera”. What this means is that the “v” suffix does not automatically imply a singular antecedent as can be shown from its usage in Gen 24:60. Note that in both Gen 22:17 and Gen 24:60, the English translators unanimously rendered the words with a plural genitive, ie. “their enemies” and “of those who hate them” rather than “his enemies” and “of him who hates them”.

Ahhh… another over-lengthy over-technical post. I best end this here!

Inspired eisegesis: Eph 4:8

In my previous post, we looked at where Paul had possibly arrived at an unorthodox position as a result of reliance on the LXX. Fortunately, it was not a real deal breaker – in the end, one was still to be kind to our enemies whatever the motivations might be. From a pragmatic point of view, it got the job done even though the supposed “biblical justification” failed. To be sure, this wasn’t the only instance where Paul went off the rails when citing the OT in his arguments. Of course, in all fairness, he probably didn’t have the tools and references that we have today. Nevertheless, it still remains a rather interesting curiosity that challenges us on how we see the writings of the NT. In this post, we will look at another one (or two) such instances, beginning with Eph 4:7-11 (NKJV):-

But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore He says:

“When He ascended on high,
He led captivity captive,
And gave gifts to men.”

And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers …

I have left out verses 9 and 10 for brevity but let us look at the above verses. These should be pretty familiar verses because of the important place they occupy in the teaching of the so-called “five-fold ministry” of the church. Paul was making the point that Christ, having been resurrected from the dead and ascended into heaven, gave gifts to men – in particular the five-fold ministries. In order to back-up his argument, Paul partially cites Psalm 68:18 (NKJV) to make that connection between Christ’s ascension and the giving of gifts. The problem, though, is that he misquoted the verse. Psa 68:18 (NKJV):-

You have ascended on high,
You have led captivity captive;
You have received gifts among men,
Even from the rebellious,
That the LORD God might dwell there.

Even without going into the Hebrew (or the LXX in this case), it is clear to see that Paul had mis-remembered Psalm 68:18 where it says that the Lord, in his ascended state, received gifts among men rather than gave gifts to men. It is obvious from the context of Ephesians 4 that Paul totally understood it as the Lord giving gifts (and thus not due to copyist error) – completely opposite from what the Psalmist wrote. The Hebrew word לָקַ֣חְתָּ (laqachta) is explicit in the direction of the gifts and leaves no room for misunderstanding or confusion of the meaning.

So here we have an example where Paul based his argument upon a mis-remembered OT verse. There is no squirming out of this one easily. Fortunately, it is not of great significance because the OT citation isn’t needed to make the point that Christ gave us gifts – a point that can be made in other more legitimate ways. It does show, however, that Paul does get his OT wrong at times. He got the broad strokes right, but sometimes gets the details (and exegesis) wrong.

Just in case this wasn’t explicit enough, here’s a bonus example from Hebrews 8:7-9 (NKJV):-

For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. 8 Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah — not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the LORD.

The following verses continue in the citation of Jer 31 which you can verify for yourself. The underlined words are where the discrepancy lies. Jer 31:31-32 (NKJV) reads:-

Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah — not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD.

So how did the author get the idea that God disregarded faithless Israel? You guessed it – bad LXX translation. This is what the passage reads in the LXX, Jer 31:31-32 (LXX Brenton-English):-

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day when I took hold of their hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; for they abode not in my covenant, and I disregarded them, saith the Lord.

In this case, the writer of Hebrews actually correctly cited the LXX but the LXX contained a mistranslation of the original Hebrew. Once again, this isn’t really that significant as long as we’re looking at the broad strokes.

In addition to misquotations, Paul also quotes the OT out of context at times. Take Rom 10:5-8 (NKJV) for instance:-

For Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law, “The man who does those things shall live by them.” But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, “ ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach)

Here Paul is trying to contrast a righteousness that is through the law, and that which is through faith. He argues that the righteousness that is through faith “speaks this way” and then cites Deut 30:14 (NKJV) which goes:-

But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.

This seems alright on the surface until you read the rest of Deut 30:11-14 (NKJV) and discover that it has a completely different context. Deut 30:14 is talking about the LAW being something that can be performed, that isn’t too difficult to achieve or to attain. In other words, Deut 30:11-14 was in fact making the opposite case than Paul was making. God was saying that the people should obey his commandments (Law) and that these commandments aren’t hidden in heaven that one needed to ascend into it, nor unreachable beyond the sea. Rather, “the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.” Paul, however, makes a completely different case and turns it into a verse about the “word of faith”. If anyone were to make such a case today, they would be shot down for using the bible out of context, and they would be right.

And yes, there are still other instances where Paul does this. In many of the cases, he mangles the original OT meanings and gives it a different or even opposite meaning. One might ask – why does Paul do this and why didn’t anyone point it out? Well, for one, Paul was writing mostly to Gentiles and they were pretty ignorant of the OT texts. In fact, most of the uneducated Jews may not even know the OT well enough to catch these errors, especially when they heard it in a reading. Secondly, Paul’s heavy reliance on the LXX means that he inherited the translational errors inherent to the LXX. These sometimes got incorporated into his own pastoral and doctrinal teachings. Thirdly, Paul was a Pharisee and he might have been used to “Midrashic interpretation” which, in summary, allows a Rabbi to pretty much say anything he wants without regard to the meaning of the OT text being cited. Here is how it is explained by David Stern in this essay (pg.1865):-

The scholar Michael Fishbane, who has exhaustively studied these and similar cases in the Bible, has described them as part of a larger phenomenon which he calls inner-biblical exegesis … Although most of these examples are not, strictly speaking, exegeses … These include the tendencies to harmonize conflicting or discordant verses; to reemploy and reapply biblical paradigms and imagery to new cases; to reinvest “old” historical references with “new” historical contexts …

That’s just a very scholarly way of saying that “Midrashic interpretation” basically makes up stuff that isn’t there. This is (still) a feature of Rabbinic Pharisaism and Paul might have been used to it. That, of course, doesn’t make it right but it might explain this penchant of his. What it does not do is legitimise the practice. This shouldn’t surprise us, though, because Paul was, after all, human like us and prone to eisegesis as we are.

All in “Al”, to heap or not to heap coals: Prov 25:22

Another public holiday, another linguistic write-up.

In his exhortation to the Roman church, Paul advises them to be peaceable and not to seek revenge. The reason he gives is through the citation of two separate OT verses, Deut 32:35 and Prov 25:21-22, suggesting that God will eventually exact vengeance upon the unjust and their kind acts towards the “enemies” will only compound the injustice and thus multiply the eventual judgement upon them. In other words, be nice to your enemies because in so doing, you’re making it worse for them. Rom 12:19-20 (NASB) says:-

Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Now, off the bat, this should come across as a little strange considering all that Jesus had taught – the forgiveness of our enemies from the heart – as opposed to the hope for their eventual punishment (although this was certainly a popular thought in the Jewish mind for their enemies.) Are we really to be kind towards our enemies for the sake of their eventual punishment? The citation Paul used came from Proverbs 25:21-22 (NKJV) which goes:-

If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; For so you will heap coals of fire on his head, And the LORD will reward you.

This seems to justify what Paul had intended in “leaving room for the wrath of God” but for a little problem in the text. Specifically, the word translated “heap” in our English translations is the word חֹתֶ֣ה (Hebrew:choteh) which actually means “take” or “snatch”. The relevant part of the verse reads (R-to-L):-

כִּ֤י גֶֽחָלִ֗ים אַ֭תָּה חֹתֶ֣ה עַל־רֹאשׁ֑וֹ

Transliteration and direct translation:-

ki    gecholim atah choteh al_rosho
for coals          you   snatch  on_his-head

As you might already see, we have a problem here with the agreement between the verb “snatch” and the preposition “on” (Hebrew:al). Normally a preposition “from” (Hebrew:me) would be used together with a verb like “snatch”. The LXX (from which Paul most likely quoted) translates the Hebrew “choteh” as the Greek σωρεύσεις :“heap” (or “pile up”) as well. Everywhere else this lexeme appears in the OT, however, it is translated as “take” or “snatch” or “pluck”.

Isa 30:14 (NKJV) – … a shard to take fire from the hearth …
Psa 52:5 (NKJV) – … and pluck you out of your dwelling place …
Prov 6:27 (NKJV) – Can a man take fire to this bosom …

The only reason why “heap” is used over against its normal meaning is because of this verb-preposition disagreement and preference was given to the prepositional direction. Here is where it might be useful to look into the history of the Hebrew language. Hebrew and its more ancient form – Paleo-Hebrew – belong to a Semitic language group that, while similar to, is distinct from the Akkadian cuneiform family. It does, however, share considerable similarity with the Ugaritic cuneiform (Northwest Semitic group) writing and there are suggestions that the Ugaritic cuneiform is a pre-cursor to Hebrew. In Ugaritic, the preposition “al” can mean both “on, upon, onto, over” as well as “from on”, meaning that Prov 25:22 can be translated (literally) as:-

For coals you snatch from-on_his-head, and Yahovah (will) complete/pay [shalem] you.

The meaning of this translation goes from one of adding to the wrath to one of defusing the wrath – the removal of angry coals from someone and runs along the lines of Prov 15:1 (NKJV):-

A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Now, this, to me, sounds a lot more consistent with what Jesus taught and, more intuitively, something that God would reward. The motivation for doing good to our enemies takes a 180-degree turn along with the change in the handling of the preposition “al”. This also flows much better with the tenor of the rest of Proverbs, that of peacemaking rather than just tongue-biting while a vengeful fire burns within. Contextually, why would you want to heap coals of fire on someone who is (Prov 25:21) hungry and thirsty anyway? Wouldn’t it be far more prudent to take the opportunity to win them over by offering them hospitality here? Would not extending kindness to a needy “enemy” defuse the fiery coals of enmity? Prov 24:17 (NKJV) tells us not to rejoice or be glad in our hearts when our enemies stumble or fall.

It seems to me, then, that not only is this translation more viable linguistically by taking into consideration the normal meaning of “choteh”, it is also more sensible contextually and consistent theologically. Unfortunately, it raises another problem for us because Paul had cited it from the LXX which had lost this nuance and he had used the text in a way opposite from how the author of Proverbs most likely intended it to be. I think Paul got it wrong in so far as making room for God’s wrath.

In summary, here is what Jesus himself taught concerning our enemies in Luke 6:35 (NKJV):-

But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil.

Go read the rest of it in Luke 6:27-36 (NKJV) on your holiday.

The nature of inspired truth: Deut 30:12-14

I’m making a note to myself to keep these posts short but I must admit that I do get carried away by the topic in question because it is so fundamentally important to our faith. We’ve been working towards a more sophisticated yet robust view of inspiration, one that takes divinity and humanity together in a sensible yet effective manner. If you haven’t done so, I recommend reading the previous post(s). Now that we have an idea of what a doctrine of inspiration can be, what would the truths and revelations contained in the bible look like? What are the implications of such a view of inspiration?

Well, first of all – these truths would be simple and easy to understand. It’s not going to be “rocket-science” or anything with levels of detail that would demand more rigorous modes of transmission. Biblical truths should be broad-stroked rather than fine-grained. The bible is not going to spell out fine details about what we should or should not do, or how we should or should not do it, in general. The nature of inspired truth is going to be more like broad principles and guides. Anything else will require us to postulate outlandish theories of God directly intervening in every step of the transmission, including translations, and the sum of evidence that we have does not support this theory. One should likewise be wary when someone purports to bring a specially derived “revelation” from the bible, usually involving convoluted reasoning – this is probably not inspired truth.

Secondly, it should not be obscure or esoteric. You won’t need a secret key to unlock the bible as such – the bible is designed to make truth known to us, rather than to conceal it from us. While it was true that Jesus used parables to confound his skeptics (and cynics), he ultimately revealed the truth to seekers and that revelation is often captured for us in the writings of his disciples. There is no “bible-code”, unfortunately for conspiracy theorists or neo-gnostics. Deu 30:12-14 (NKJV) tells us:-

It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.

The point of scripture is to make this easy to understand broad principles of God known to man. While the bible contains many details, we are to make an abstraction from those details to arrive at the underlying truths, as opposed to being caught up in the details. So if Jesus made mud out of his saliva and healed the blind – the point is that Jesus healed the blind. Some Christians get hung up on the details of the methods or even try to duplicate them, as if the secret rested therein. A case in point is the longer ending of the gospel of Mark. If you have a half-decent study bible, you will notice that Mark 16:9-20 comes with a footnote that tells you that this section is absent from all the earliest and most reliable Greek manuscripts (including the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus). How it appears in the most reliable manuscripts is as follows (the alternative Mk 16:9):-

They reported briefly to those around Peter all that they had been commanded. After these things Jesus himself sent out through them, from the east to the west, the holy and imperishable preaching of eternal salvation. Amen.

This is known as the “shorter ending” of Mark and is considered the more reliable one. Scholars believe that the longer ending (the one in most of our bibles) verses were scribal additions not present in the original autograph. Without going into the actual debate, one could say that while the details of the longer and shorter endings differ, the spirit – the broad strokes – remain the same, namely that Jesus sent the disciples into the world to preach the gospel. With the longer, and more unreliable, ending however, you get a whole bunch of details, including v.18 which says that disciples who thus go out (Mk 16:18):-

“… will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

I think most of us would not presume to test out the veracity of this “promise” any time soon. Christians taking a literal and plenary view of inspiration, however, are faced with two options – to either explain away the verse, or explain why they ignore what they consider God’s direct word, or if they have enough integrity (and insanity) to actually do it. As it turns out, there are a small number of Pentecostal (holiness movement) churches in the US who espouse exactly this. The idea being to take verbal plenary inspiration to the extreme and as a result, they actually have snake handling as part of their worship services to prove that God is keeping His promises, much in the same way that some Charismatics use miracles and healing to prove a point. Recently, there was a bit of unfortunate news in one of these churches in Kentucky whose pastor was bitten by a viper and refused medical treatment, and died. My point is that the most reliable revelations rest in the non-obscure truths of the bible.

The third feature of biblical revelation is that it must be presented in a redundant manner. In other words, you won’t find a crucial revelation that only appears in one single verse or a single word. Can you imagine what the ramifications might be for God and for us if a worm happened to eat through the papyrus in that particular spot? God is smarter than that and His truth is spread out in a redundant (meaning that there are many backups) fashion throughout the text. If it appears in only one place – it should be suspect in so far as being made into dogma or doctrine. So if you find a rare verse such as Ecc 10:19 (NKJV) that says:-

A feast is made for laughter,
And wine makes merry;
But money answers everything.

you just have to ask yourself if this is the consistent message of the bible or just an oddity. To assume that every single word, even in context, is God’s direct word could be theologically disastrous. I don’t personally understand why this isn’t admitted by more theologians and teachers – especially those insisting on plenary inerrancy. They usually will jump through all kinds of hoops to try and squirm their way out of such issues mainly because their view of inspiration is flawed from the start. It’s their view that is flawed, not the text of the bible per se.

00-edvard-munch-the-scream-1893

When you enter an art gallery and look upon a painting, “The Scream” by Edvard Munch, for example, and start commenting: “Oh this is a terrible painting. Look how the eyes lack eye brows and is so disproportionate. The face is also missing a ear and who has ever seen a sky that looks like that. This is a terrible representation of truth,” you’d be missing the point of the painting. The problem isn’t the painting. It’s your expectation of a photograph when the artist never intended to give you a photograph. Correct interpretation of the painting will require a correct understanding of the nature of the piece of art, and in this case it is an abstract style known as “expressionism”. Many Christians make exactly this mistake – going to the bible expecting a “photograph” because that’s the easiest thing for them to interpret when the bible isn’t a “photograph.”

I think with this post, I will conclude the discussion on inspiration – this inspiration of authorial intent is a pragmatic and practical view that takes reality into account. It does take some of the mysticism out of the bible and for those who cherished that mysticism, what can I say but “sorry”. The saving power of the bible, however, lies not in its mystical nature but in the truth that it contains. So there you go – stop making the bible say what we want it to say, or say what it never intended to say, and start listening to what it is trying to tell us.

The human hand in the text: Matt 2:6

Previously we looked at how the NT canon came to be formed. The closed canon was created by necessity for the purpose of safe-guarding the church from error. It does not mean that God’s truth cannot be found in any of the other writings but that these are the officially accepted ones. They were thus endorsed because the church discerned that these writings correctly reflect the Christian message. Writings outside the canon did not receive the same official stamp of approval but could very well still prove useful and beneficial. Scriptural status was gained through the wide-spread usage of the texts within the liturgy of the church and is more an indication of the function of the texts rather than the “inspiredness” of it.

In thinking about the nature of scriptural inspiration, we must also consider the human intermediary – the writers of the texts. Only then can we really ask ourselves what exactly it is that is inspired within the text of scriptures. Let us begin with Matthew 2:6 where Matthew quotes from Micah 5:2 as proof that Jesus fulfilled biblical prophecy. Matt 2:6 (NKJV):-

“But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
Are not the least among the rulers of Judah;
For out of you shall come a Ruler
Who will shepherd My people Israel.’ ”

The idea here is that Bethlehem though small is NOT insignificant (“not the least”) because of the fact that the messiah will come forth from her folds. This is all fine until we look at Micah 5:2 (JPS):-

“And you, O Bethlehem of Ephrath
Least among the clans of Judah
From you one shall come forth To rule Israel for Me
One whose origin is from of old, From ancient times.”

You will notice that Bethlehem here is said to be the “least” in Judah, contrary to Matt 2:6. Some English translations have tried to soften this contradiction by introducing words like “though you are little” (NKJV) but the problem remains. This doesn’t change the purpose of the citation, it still shows Jesus fulfilling Micah 5:2 but we see that the writers were humans. Let us consider another example. Luke 2:4 tells us:-

Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David.

From this we understand that Joseph’s city of origin was Nazareth before he travelled to Bethlehem. Matthew 2, however, offers us a different sequence of events. In Matt 2:1 we are told that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and fled to Egypt soon after that. Upon return from Egypt after Herod died, they returned to Israel and eventually found their way to Nazareth and settled there. Matt 2:22-23:-

But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he turned aside into the region of Galilee. And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

It appears that we have two conflicting accounts of the movement of Joseph and his family in Luke and Matthew. What do we make of this? What about when Matthew quotes Jeremiah in Matt 27:9-10:-

Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the value of Him who was priced, whom they of the children of Israel priced, and gave them for the potter’s field, as the LORD directed me.

Unfortunately there is no such verse in Jeremiah, although we do have the verse in Zechariah 11:12-13:-

Then I said to them, “If it is agreeable to you, give me my wages; and if not, refrain.” So they weighed out for my wages thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—that princely price they set on me. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD for the potter.

More famously, the synoptic gospels has Jesus celebrating the last-supper on Passover day. Mark 14:12:-

Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, His disciples said to Him, “Where do You want us to go and prepare, that You may eat the Passover?”

John, however, has other ideas about this because Jesus was crucified on the day before the Passover, the preparation day. John 19:14:-

Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, “Behold your King!”

Surely they can’t both be correct – that is Jesus celebrating the Passover after he had been crucified? The purpose of these examples (and there are many more) is to make us ask concerning the nature of scriptural inspiration. Do we mean that every single word (including those errors above) were divinely given by God? In which case, God must have made some mistakes. Or do we argue that the text was somehow corrupted in transmission and has become unreliable? It is in thinking about such textual issues that I find the verbal plenary views of inspiration to be untenable and unhelpful because they do not explain our text. Article VI of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, for example, states that:-

WE AFFIRM  that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration.

If we were to take this position in the light of the above examples, it must mean that either God made mistakes, or that He was deliberating misleading us, or that our texts are corrupt. None of these are helpful conclusions – and that is why I think we are in need of a less pious but more historically sound idea of inspiration.

I am inviting you to consider a more sophisticated view of scriptural inspiration – one of inspired truth delivered to men who relied on their human abilities to convey it. This truth that is couched in those earthen vessels is a simple and robust core, expressed in a variety of ways through our NT writings, and is so obvious that it shines clearly through in spite of the imperfections of the vessels.

In this view, the authors had received truth and revelation from God through various means – through the Lord’s teachings himself, or through apostolic traditions handed down. The first thing we believe in this idea of “inspiration” is that they received the revelation correctly and sufficiently for its intended purpose(s). So for example, when Jesus says in Mark 4:31 (NKJV) that the mustard seed “is smaller than all the seeds on earth” – I will hold that the statement concerning the absolute size of the seed in relation to other seeds, this scientific statement, is not part of the intended purpose of Mark 4:31. The intended purpose was to make a parabolic point to serve within the larger illustration. The inspiration is limited to the truths that the writings were intended to convey. I call this the inspiration of “authorial intent”. In the same way, the bible writers were not generally intending to make scientific or absolute historical comment and the absolute factual content of those (scientific or historical) comments, when they appear in the bible, are incidental rather than essential and are therefore not regarded as “inspired”.

In the same way, when Matthew misquotes Micah, that was the human artefact in his writing. His intent was to show that Jesus fulfilled OT prophecy – this is the inspired intent. What this means is that we have to read the bible for intent (and intended message) rather than becoming obsessed with the particularities of a text. While it is important to study the text because this allows us to understand what the author meant to say, it is also true that the authorial intent is not generally obscure. They are relatively easy to understand once you get past the basic language issues. Where textual studies are important is to ascertain what was actually written. Historical and contextual studies help us to understand what was meant. Theological studies help us piece it all together to get a big picture of the biblical truth.

Theology, history and language inform each other to help us arrive at a better understanding of the author’s intent. To some extent our distance from the cultural and linguistic context of the original writers of the bible means that more work needs to be done to regain the correct understanding and this sometimes requires specialist skills in language and history to help in uncovering those original messages and meanings. It is an unfortunate reality that there is this added layer of obscurity that was not originally present but inevitably so given the passage of time.

There are some implications to this view of inspiration – namely that if we take verses out of the intended purpose of the authors, it can no longer be considered “inspired”. In this view, inspiration does not necessarily reside in a particular noun, verb, adjective, conjunction, article, or even sentences, but in the meaning contained by the collective words and sentences as intended by the authors. It is a view of divine revelation wrapped up within the author’s understanding, wrapped up within the limits of the cultural context, wrapped up within text, wrapped up in transmission and finally wrapped up in translation. This multiple layers of wrapping still works because the inspired intent of the authors – the divine revelation – is robust, simple and redundantly communicated through many aspects in the bible as a whole.

Let me just close this post with this illustration. You want to convey the appearance of your face to your friend in another country but you can’t fly there yourself. So you start by taking a photograph of yourself with a digital camera on your phone, for example. The moment you do this, your image is broken up into millions of little dots called pixels. If you zoom all the way in, you will only see what appears to be a mosaic of pixels and nothing like your face. But this works because you have many pixels and your face is pretty big. This digital image is now compressed when you send it through e-mail to your friend, a process that throws away a whole bunch of pixels that the computer deems unnecessary (ie. that you won’t notice) in order to make the image smaller and easier to send. When your friend receives the file and opens it, he views it on his old monitor which has a few hundred faulty pixels (out of a few million) and faded colours. Not only that, his monitor has less pixels than your original photograph. By this time, you could say that the original file has undergone considerable “corruption” but when he looks at the picture on the screen, he will recognise you right away. He might not be able to count the hairs on your eyebrows or see the little mole on your cheek, but it is sufficient to get the intended picture. This is pretty much why this view of inspiration works – it focuses on the essential message, one that is robust enough to withstand the vagaries of time. In short – biblical truth is robust in nature.

I’ll probably discuss this a little more in another post as this one seems to be getting rather long. Hope this is helping.

Formation of the NT: John 20:31

When we step back and look at the big picture, we can see that the “system” must have worked because we do understand the gospel and we call Jesus our Lord. In spite of all the potential problems with textual selection, transmission, and translation – we got the message. 2,000-years is an awfully long time to keep the message passed along. This has been possible because the core message of the NT is a simple one. When we look at the purpose of the early church, functionally, they simply wanted to ensure that the message would be passed on to future generations and that they might believe. John 20:30-31 explains exactly why he wrote his gospel:-

And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

From this point of view, if people would read the gospel of John, and believe in Jesus, he would have succeeded, and succeed he did. At that point in time, no one was asking if a particular sentence or word that John used was “inspired” or divinely selected or not. They were focused on the substance of his message, rather than its particular form or expression.

As the apostles grew older or neared their death (Peter died ca. 65AD), it became more important for them to write down what they had learned from Jesus. Peter, for example, felt compelled to write the encyclical that is 2Peter because he knew his time was short. 2Pet 1:13-15 (NKJV) tells us:-

Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease.

In time to come, these letters and gospels gained wider circulation among the fledgling churches. According to Eusebius (260-339AD), Bishop of Caesarea and church historian, that period saw all kinds of documents in circulation, including letters, sermons, theological treatises, commentaries and histories. There was a lot of writing going on after the initial decades and this was a serious effort. Letter writing was costly and involved – you usually required the services of a writer (sometimes called an “amanuensis”) such as Tertius (Rom 16:22) and Silvanus (a.k.a. Silas) (1Pet 5:12). These writers helped in the crafting of the letters and going over the drafts before the final copies were sent out, so it’s not like Paul or Peter himself sat down to write, except where they wanted to leave a mark of authenticity (2Thess 3:17, Col 4:18, Gal 6:11, 1Cor 16:21),

These and other letters were read aloud in church meetings, and usually copied for further circulation. With the proliferation of letters, however, you can imagine that there would increasingly be the problem of ascertaining which letters were orthodox and which were not. The idea was that these letters were supposed to be, in the words of Paul (2Tim 3:16-17), “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” and the general equipping of the church. As an example, Bishop Dionysius of Corinth (ca.168AD) wrote to Bishop Soter of Rome the following message:-

We read your letter today, the Lord’s Day, and shall continue to read it frequently for our admonition, as we do with the earlier letter Clement wrote on your [i.e. the church at Rome’s] behalf.

The problem was that there also pseudo-epigraphs (letters falsely claiming to be from another author) as well as letters from disputed individuals espousing questionable or heretic teaching. Bishop Serapion of Antioch (ca. 200AD) found out that a certain “Gospel of Peter” was being read among the churches in Antioch and after some investigation, stopped them on the basis that the theology was questionable (it was docetic.) Increasingly the need for some kind of checking became important to ensure that churches were not being misled by unorthodox writings. This was further compounded by the fact that an influential church leader, Marcion (ca. 144AD), was rejecting some letters ascribed to Paul, and all of the OT scriptures, and had come up with his own list of approved books and letters:-

Luke
Galatians
1 & 2 Corinthians
Romans
1 & 2 Thessalonians
Ephesians
Colossians
Philemon
Phillippians

while rejecting the gospels of Matthew and John.

These developments provided the impetus for the early church to put in some measures to ensure orthodoxy in the midst of a theologically volatile context where heresy was rife. The response was not as organised as we would like to think, with different parties coming up with their own measures and criteria. In 170AD, for example, another list was put up, likely in response to disputed lists such as Marcion’s. This list, known as the Muratorian Canon, contained 22 out of the 27 books of our NT, leaving out:-

Hebrews
1 & 2 Peter
James
3 John

but included the Wisdom of Solomon and the Apocalypse of Peter (which later proved to be a pseudo-epigraph.) The selection of the books of the canon was a process of evolving consensus among the churches as to which books were deemed authentic, orthodox, and widely accepted. It certainly wasn’t a clear cut process, especially for some of the books which were not included until much later. The notion that these books were “inspired”, the way we understand it, probably hadn’t entered their mind as yet but the function of the letters as being standards of teaching in the church would slowly grant them the status of “scripture.” Scripture, in this sense, would be akin to official religious texts employed in churches.

It should be mentioned that there were also other widely accepted texts that were in use in the churches, such as the letters of 1 & 2 Clement, Epistle of Barnabas, Shepherd of Hermas, Didache, Jubilees, Paul’s letter to the Laodiceans, Apocalypse of Peter, Preaching of Peter, Gospel of the Egyptians, Gospel of the Hebrews. Some of these books bore outlandish teachings and accounts while others were fairly sound. Over time, these were rejected as official standards for a variety of reasons, including questionable content or authorship, late date of writing and unorthodox theology. Some segments of the church (usually different geographic regions) continued to accept these books as standard until much later.

The purpose of the history here is to demonstrate that the process of arriving at a canon (a standard set) for NT books was by no means a clear and simple process. It evolved over time with some books being added or rejected before the church eventually arrived at a greater consensus. It was a process driven by pragmatic need and a desire to ensure orthodoxy. The criteria used were commonsensical criteria but were not necessarily universally understood, agreed upon or applied in the same ways – it wasn’t so much an organised application of criteria as it was the collective discernment of the early church. We should also keep in mind that theology itself was being clarified through this period, over against heresies and gnosticism.

When we read authors like F. F. Bruce (in his book “The Canon of Scripture”) and see the criteria set forth as “Apostolicity, Antiquity, Orthodoxy and Catholicity”, it is tempting to think that these were universally agreed upon and that some group sat down to ascertain the qualifications of the various books. That was not the case. While these were indeed the commonsensical considerations, it was a more diffused and organic application over time. This process took a few centuries and, even then, still contained variations to our bible. The first list that matches our NT comes from Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria (367AD). By then the idea of limiting (or closing) the official canon books was a common idea and these writings had acquired the status of “scripture”. In his 39th Festal Epistle he writes:-

These are the fountains of salvation, that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these alone the teaching of godliness is proclaimed. Let no one add to these; let nothing be taken away from them. For concerning these the Lord put to shame the Sadducees, and said, Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures. And he reproved the Jews, saying, Search the Scriptures, for these are they that testify of me.

The 3rd Council of Carthage later in 397AD issued an official notice on the canon of the NT as follows:-

It was also determined that besides the Canonical Scriptures nothing be read in the Church under the title of divine Scriptures. The Canonical Scriptures are these: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua the son of Nun, Judges, Ruth, four books of Kings, two books of Chronicles, Job, the Psalter, five books of Solomon, the books of the twelve prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Tobit, Judith, Esther, two books of Esdras, two books of the Maccabees. Of the New Testament: four books of the Gospels, one book of the Acts of the Apostles, thirteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul, one epistle of the same [writer] to the Hebrews, two Epistles of the Apostle Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude, one book of the Apocalypse of John. Let this be made known also to our brother and fellow-priest Boniface, or to other bishops of those parts, for the purpose of confirming that Canon. Because we have received from our fathers that those books must be read in the Church. Let it also be allowed that the Passions of Martyrs be read when their festivals are kept.

This contained all of the 27-books of our NT but also included some apocryphal books (in bold text).

As we conclude this long historical post, I will note that the idea of “inspiration” as we know it has not been needed thus far. What we needed to know was that these NT books that we have, were the same ones the early church used to learn about the faith – faith that led them to Jesus as Lord. Even without broaching the issue of inspiration, the pragmatic view is that these books were sufficient for their intended purpose – that of making us disciples as they were.  If it was beneficial and profitable enough for them, it is good enough for us. We will look at “inspiration” in upcoming posts but I will have to stop here for now.