//While the Messianic Secret is a theme from all three of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it is most prominent in the first of the three to be written–Mark’s Gospel. Jesus states very plainly that he does not want anybody to know he is the Christ.  “Christ” merely means “Messiah,” and Jesus doesn’t want to be known as the Messiah. That revelation would have to wait until after his death. Matthew, who loves to quote scripture, explains this by referring back to Isaiah’s Messianic prophecy: “He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets.”

It may be, however, that both traditions share the truth. In John, Jesus is just as clear as in the Synoptics that he doesn’t want to be made into a king, or thought of as a warrior who will save his people by might. Jesus may therefore have objected to the traditional image of Christ/Messiah, but embraced John’s more gentle, nonmilitary version.

//Ever wonder who these depraved fellows are in the book of Timothy? Tradition names them as the magicians who competed with Moses, performing tricks for Pharoah, as in the following verses:

So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. –Exodus 7:10-12

Several Jewish writings after the time of Christ, including Targums and Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, make reference to Jannes and Jambres. Origin, one of the early Church Fathers, refers in his writing Against Celsus to an apocryphal book titled The Book of Jannes and Jambres about the exploits of these two magicians. Origin says that the epistle of 2 Timothy is quoting from that book (Origin assumes authorship of Timothy by Paul). 

The Book of Jannes and Jambres has never been found, and many commentators, defending Sola Scriptura, insist instead that Paul learned their names by divine inspiration.

//To prove his power, one day God killed all the firstborn of Egypt. Every firstborn son died, except those among the Israelites, because they had sprinkled the blood of a lamb on their doorposts. But God didn’t merely spare Israel’s firstborn; he consecrated them to himself. The firstborn were to belong to God. 

Later, God accepts the Levites in place of the firstborn … see today’s verse. Numbers 3:46 explains that, because there lived more firstborn sons in Israel than there were Levites, God collected “redemption money” of five shekels for each of the 273 extra firstborn, and gave the money to Aaron.

//Do you suppose the Proverbs were written by men or by women? Here’s another clue:

A quarrelsome wife is as annoying as constant dripping on a rainy day. Stopping her complaints is like trying to stop the wind or trying to hold something with greased hands. –Psalm 27:15-16

Guys, you can take heart. Apparently, there will be no women in heaven. The following verse provides the proof:

When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. –Revelation 8:1

God made two great lights–the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. (Genesis 1:16-18)

//Yesterday, I posed the question “How can there be day and night before there is a sun?” Several verses before the sun is made, God creates light and darkness, and separates them into day and night.

This question has puzzled readers for centuries, but it misreads the text. The sun and moon, the “lives in the sky,” are not there just to give light. Light existed before they did. Rather, God created the sun and moon with another purpose: To tend to the skies, keeping everything working the way God planned, much like the way God created a man to tend the land.

In other words, we cannot assume that the source of light is the sun and moon and stars. (What foolishness to think that! Light is everywhere!) Nor can we assume that day and night are defined by whether the sun is in the sky. Although the “great lights” do give off some of the light, their job, twice repeated in the creation story, is to govern.

Now you understand how there was day and night before there was a sun. Do not imagine that the sun creates the light for us. Rather, the sun keeps watch over the light, and turns in for the night when the light goes away.

//Readers of the first chapter in our Bible have long noted that the six days of creation seem to repeat:

So the fundamentals are complete. Now God fills in the details with life (imagine the lights in the sky as alive, for so they were understood by many):

What’s most confusing is this business of dividing light from darkness. On the very first day, the “Spirit of God” is hovering over the waters, and he decides to create light. This, before there are sun and moon and stars! God separates the light from the dark and names them:

God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning–the first day.

So God makes day and night, before the sun ever exists. How can this be? More tomorrow…

//Here is a verse dear to all strands of Christianity. Regardless of how you imagine God to be love, Christians agree that He is love.

It turns out that this manner of picturing God is common to many religions. The following quotes are taken from J. C. Tefft’s new book, The Christ is Not a Person:

Buddhism: He that loveth not, knoweth not God. For God is love.

Confucius: Love belongs to the highest Heaven and is the quiet home where man should dwell.

Hinduism: The entire universe is in the glory of God … the God of love.

Jewish: Love is the beginning and the end of the Torah.

Sufism: For God is the God of Love, and Love calls from all these, each one His home.

John tells how this white horseman was given a crown, and how he rode out as a conqueror. David Aune, author of three scholarly tomes on Revelation, suggests that a more accurate interpretation of today’s verse may be “the conquering one left to conquer even more.” As history buffs already know, Vespasian did just that. Bolstered by Josephus’ vision of him as Messiah, Vespasian broke off the attack on Jerusalem (handing it over to his son, Titus) and returned to Rome, to claim by force an even greater place. He was crowned king over the entire Empire.

More about Vespasian’s role in Revelation can be found in my book, Revelation: The Way It Happened.

And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

//Many times I’ve mentioned, always a bit tongue-in-cheek, that I miss the God who used to play hide-and-seek with his humans in his garden. But what do you really picture as you read this verse? Although I’ve never polled anyone, I suspect every Christian has a little different image in their head when they think of “the sound of God walking.”

Martin Luther, for example, thought it ridiculous to imagine that God actually walked around on feet. Something else must be meant. Adam and Eve heard the sound of wind and animals, which before had seemed benign, but now, because of their fallen state, had become something to be afraid of.

Has Luther gone too far in de-personifying God? Are we still taking the Bible seriously when we don’t take it literally? More on this topic tomorrow.

//Urim and Thummim were objects used as an ancient Israelite means of divination. Ever wonder what these objects looked like? We have no idea. They trace back to at least the 8th century BC, referenced in the book of Hosea. Their use seems to have disappeared prior to Babylonian captivity. The Talmud explains that they were lost when Jerusalem was sacked by Babylon.

1 Samuel chapter 14 finds God giving Saul the silent treatment, and Saul finally decides God must be miffed about a sin committed by Israel. He gathers the leaders of his army and stands them together, while he and his son Jonathan stand apart. Then he inquires of God “by lot” to determine the innocent party. He and Jonathan are selected. He inquires again between he and Jonathan, and finds his son to be guilty. (Jonathan was supposed to be fasting, and snuck a taste of honey).

We assume this “casting of lots” referred again to Urim and Thummim. They appear to have been small objects belonging to the high priest, worn on the breastplate, or perhaps in a pouch or pocket inside the breastplate. Some picture them to have been tiny tablets of bone or wood. Textual scholars believe the name Thummim derives from the root word meaning innocent, while Urim derives from a root meaning cursed. Most likely, the high priest put his hand into the pocket, swirled it around a bit, and randomly chose one of the two, determining the party’s innocence or guilt. To determine a sinner from a group of people, the priest could divide the crowd in two, use his U&T to determine the side with the guilty party, and repeat the process until God had singled out one person.

//I saw a beggar in Las Vegas a while back holding an open hat and a sign that read, “Why lie? I need a beer.” Honesty intrigues me, so I stopped and asked him if he was perishing. He said yep, if he didn’t get a beer he’d die, and I said alrighty, you qualify. I’ll see what I can do.

As I entered the casino I was met by drunken laughter. Someone at the 3-card poker table had hit it big, and was dancing around with three kings in his hand.

It is not for kings, O Lemuel—not for kings to drink wine, not for rulers to crave beer, lest they drink and forget what the law decrees, and deprive all the oppressed of their rights.  –verses 4-5

… so I stole his beer while he was celebrating and took it out to the beggar where it belongs.

(editor’s note: This doesn’t quite sound like Lee … I suspect this didn’t really happen!)

//According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, immediately after his baptism by John, Jesus heads off into the desert to be “tempted by the devil” for forty days. This contradicts the Gospel of John, which reports that Jesus came back to the Jordan River the very next day, but let’s not get bogged down in details.

What I find interesting is not whether Jesus fasted for one day or forty, but why he decided to fast at all. Apparently, according to Matthew, Satan wouldn’t or couldn’t show up until Jesus is delirious in his hunger. But once Jesus is properly prepared, Satan makes his entrance and tempts Jesus, first suggesting Jesus change some rocks into food. Then Satan tempts Jesus with fame and kingship over the earth, which Jesus refuses (so much for the book of Revelation). 

Luke flavors his story a little differently, suggesting that Satan tempted Jesus throughout the forty days. Only Matthew and Luke tell how Jesus was tempted (Mark simply reports without elaboration that Jesus was tempted by Satan), but somehow, their stories of the temptation are similar.

Did this desert experience really happen? Was it a fast-induced hallucination? Or a series of temptations Jesus struggled with throughout his ministry, such as the time the people wanted to raise him as their king, and which Gospel writers creatively turned into one temptation experience?

//Korah was a troublemaking rich Israelite who insisted everybody was equal. Especially him. He had as much right to be a priest as Aaron, God’s appointed. So Moses said okay, let Korah and his 250 followers bring their fire pans before God, with the incense burning. We shall see whether God accepts them.

God doesn’t. He opens up the mouth of the earth and swallows all 250 of them into Sheol, the Jewish underworld. Sheol was a place under the earth of shadowy subsistence where souls descended after they died. In early Jewish thought, the soul gradually wasted away there, but in the second century B.C., some Jews began to imagine the soul would return to the body in a physical resurrection (see the book of Daniel, written about 165 B.C.)

Koran, however, doesn’t die! He and his followers fall alive into the realm of the dead. The first mention of Sheol, and the first living dead. It makes me wonder … with our Gothic fascination with the underworld, why have there been no movies written about this event?