Luke 23:44, Jesus in Agony

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

//Scholars continue to argue about the Gnostic bent of John’s Gospel. Is John a Gnostic text or not? John’s Gospel was embraced by Gnostic strands before it ever made headway into traditional Christianity.

But even with the other Gospels, the dividing line between Gnostic and Catholic (traditional) Christianity is not so clear. Luke insists, for example, that the Kingdom of Heaven has already arrived. It is “within you.” This better jibes with Gnostic thinking than futuristic Christianity. Another feature of the Gnostic Christ is the inability to feel pain, and Luke, throughout the entire ordeal of Jesus’ death, gives no hint that Jesus is ever in agony—save today’s verse, where sweat falls to the ground like drops of blood.

Problem is, this verse is not in all variants of Luke. And worse, we don’t know which is more original: the version of Luke with agony, or the version without agony. Its addition, or subtraction, radically alters the picture of Jesus between Gnostic (where Jesus is non-corporeal, sent from heaven) and traditional (Jesus is of the flesh, able to feel pain). Which is the original flavor of Luke’s Gospel? We don’t know.

Book review: 101 Myths of the Bible

Monday, March 21, 2011 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by Gary Greenberg

★★★★★

This book wasn’t quite what I expected when I bought it, but I nevertheless enjoyed reading it. In my opinion, you won’t read conclusive evidence that the stories are myths; what you’ll read are possible explanations for 101 of the Bible’s legends, for scholarship has hardly settled upon many of the conclusions Greenberg draws. But he does make you think, and that’s the purpose of my writing as well. An occasional idea for my daily blog post originates from this book; yesterday’s post combines two such ideas from Greenberg.

Greenberg’s specialty may be Egyptian mythology, because in many of the Bible’s stories, he finds Egyptian roots. This is not a new line of thought; others have proposed that Christianity, at its core, derives from even more ancient Egyptian beliefs. Perhaps this can be explained by Israel being a breakaway nation from Egypt—Moses led the children of Israel out of slavery there. Some examples may be helpful.

The Myth: God planted a tree of life and a tree of knowledge. The Reality: These two special trees symbolically represent the Egyptian deities Shu and Tefnut.

The Myth: God formed Adam from the dust of the earth. The Reality: The biblical editors confused the birth of Atum in Egyptian mythology with the birth of the first human.

The Myth: Jacob wrestled with a stranger. The Reality: The wrestling story reflects the daily struggle between Egyptian figures Horus and Set.

For each of the 101 “myths,” Greenberg provides two or three pages of explanation. The result is a fascinating peek below the surface of the Bible’s stories, making them even more interesting than you had imagined!

Genesis 35:10, Jacob becomes Israel

Sunday, March 20, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

God said to him, “Your name is Jacob, but you will no longer be called Jacob; your name will be Israel.” So he named him Israel.

//There are two stories in the Bible of how Jacob’s name is changed to Israel. In the first, mentioned in a post a while back, Jacob wrestles with “God”, and holds tight to Him until blessed. Genesis: 33:10 That blessing occurred at Penuel, just before Jacob’s reunion with Esau.

Sometime after this reunion, God directed Jacob to Bethel, the place where he dreamed of a ladder. There, God blesses Jacob again, and again names him Israel. Today’s verse is this second blessing.

Why two different stories, in two different places and two different times? I can present two theories:

There may be some competitiveness between the two stories. Bethel sits at the southern border of Israel, Penuel at the northern border. King Jeroboam built a governmental center and city at Penuel, but the Shiloh priesthood remained centered in the south and associated with Bethel. Jeroboam initially had the support of the Shiloh priesthood, but ruined the relationship when he began proclaiming that a formal priesthood was unnecessary. Jeroboam felt anyone could become a priest.

Thus, Jeroboam and Penuel claimed Israel’s name and blessing for the north, and the priesthood and Bethel claimed Israel’s name and blessing for the south.

A second explanation may be that the two stories complement each other. If the stranger that Jacob wrestles with is not God, but his brother Esau, then the first blessing comes not from the mouth of God but from his brother. Esau’s blessing is, therefore, is only a prophecy of God’s blessing to come.

Book review: The Year of Living Biblically

Saturday, March 19, 2011 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by A. J. Jacobs

★★★★

Read any A. J. Jacobs before? This is more of the same serious humor he’s known for, this time on a topic dear to me: my Bible.

Jacobs was raised in a secular family, but decided one day to dive into the world of the Bible. What better spiritual journey could one imagine? Determined to obey every dictate of the Bible for an entire year, he vowed to follow not only the Ten Commandments, but even the less publicized rules. Love your neighbor. Be fruitful and multiply. But not both at the same time.

Some rules are easier than others. The Law says to tithe ten percent of your fruit, but nobody on the street wanted to take two slices of his orange. Nor was it easy to stone adulterers as the law commanded. Jacobs carried pebbles in his pocket for this very purpose, and one day the unthinkable happened: he met an adulterer. Problem was, the guy didn’t take kindly to being beaned with a pebble. It was a stoning that Jacobs nearly didn’t survive.

What do you wear when clothes made of mixed fibers are disallowed?  What do you eat when only unleavened bread is kosher? How do you read the newspaper without bringing graven images into your home?

This was a year Jacobs was happy to see come to an end. Both funny and enlightening, you’ll learn more about your Bible from this book than in a year of Sunday school classes.

Luke 24:27, Moses wrote the Torah

Friday, March 18, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 2 comments

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

//Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible. The Documentary Hypothesis in one form or another is nearly undisputable, as I described a few days ago in a book review: The Bible With Sources Revealed. Moses died three hundred years before the first verse of the Torah was written. These five books reflect multiple strands of material that were put together over a period of at least five hundred years. One of these books even contains the account of Moses’ death and burial; a remarkable thing for Moses to write about!

Yet, Jesus himself makes the traditional claim for Mosaic authorship of the Torah in several places. Here are two, each found in multiple Gospels:

Mark 1:44, “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”

Matthew 19:7-8, “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.

What can we conclude? That Jesus didn’t really say these things? That Jesus was wrong about the Torah’s authorship? That Jesus knew better but found no reason to contradict popular belief? Or could current scholarship be wrong, and Moses did write the Torah?

Book review: The Sins of Scripture

Thursday, March 17, 2011 in Book Reviews | 3 comments

by John Shelby Spong

★★★★★

The subtitle of this book is Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love. I read this book a few years back, and the reason it came to mind today is because I am feeling overwhelmed by the aggressiveness of anti-Bible crusaders. Unquestionably, there are many passages in the Bible that are not only questionable theology, but downright appalling. Unquestionably, there are “Christians” today who pounce on these texts in order to promote discrimination or oppression. But the majority of Christians do not; the majority of Christians worship a God of love, and either spiritualize or completely discard those scriptures that reveal, not God’s will, but human weakness.

Can we really worship a God who murdered all the firstborn males in every Egyptian household? How about a God who stops the sun in the sky, providing more daylight so that Joshua can slaughter more of his enemies? Would the God you worship instruct Samuel to “Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass”?

Is it ok to possess slaves, or sell your daughter into slavery? Should cursing or violating the Sabbath be cause for death? Is it right to stone disobedient children? Of course not, neither today or 2,500 years ago, and we know this.

How about the treatment of women as chattel? Encouragement of homophobia? Anti-Semitism? Spong guides us into a more liberal understanding of the Bible, pointing out the texts that exhibit human thinking, human fear, and comparing them to texts where the love of God shows through, and briefly touching on his vision of the Kingdom of God. It’s true that this book is one of the more negative of Spong’s works, but it sets us up for books yet to come.

1 John 5:7-8, the Comma Johanneum

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

//This is one of the most intriguing passages in the Bible, and the source of some very heated arguments. It’s called the Comma Johanneum, and it doesn’t exist.

The above quotation comes from the King James Version. Problem is, it exists in none of the earliest manuscripts of the Bible, nor was it mentioned by any of the early church fathers when they quoted this portion of scripture. (No, Cyprian of Carthage did not quote the verse with the inserted Comma in the year 250!) The center of the passage appears to have added to the Latin text of the New Testament sometime during the middle ages. Commentators are virtually unanimous that it was added to the Bible in light of Trinitarian debates. The original wording is:

For there are three that bear record, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

Inserted in the middle is an explicit reference to the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Had the passage been original, there appears to be no good reason for it to have later disappeared. Many current translations, such as the NIV and the NSRV, now omit it, and the Vatican appears to approve. In 1927, Pope Pius XI decreed that the Comma was open to dispute, and the updated New Vulgate, published in 1979 following the Second Vatican Council, does not include the Comma.

Yet a number of recent fundamentalist movements advocate the superiority of the King James Version, and refuse to consider the possibility that the verse is inauthentic. For many, rejecting the Comma is tantamount to claiming that God did not have a hand in the translation of the KJV.

The argument continues. Ain’t religion fun?

Book review: How the Bible Came to Be

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by John Barton

★★★★

John Barton spent 15 years studying the making of the Bible. This brief booklet (less than 100 pages) presents his findings. He first gives a short synopsis of each of the 66 books of the Bible, and then dives into probable authorship and dating. From there, he discusses how the books were selected and collected into scripture, including an interesting discussion of what was considered “scripture.” Finally, he explains how the two canons (Old Testament and New) were derived.

Barton is not going to tell you Paul wrote Hebrews or that Moses wrote the Torah. His purpose is not to present traditional, conservative teachings, but to bring you up to date on current Bible scholarship, and he writes in a manner that non-technical readers can comprehend. There is no unified understanding between scholars, and some of Barton’s views are his own, yet all in all I think he does a great job of introducing the formation of the Bible.

In my opinion, the book’s greatest value is for conservative Christians! If you don’t want to spend weeks learning about biblical scholarship, but need to be aware of the thinking and conclusions of critical scholarship, this is a perfect overview. Two hours will give you the basics.

Ezekiel 28:12-13, the location of Eden

Monday, March 14, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones.

//In these verses, God reminds the Son of Man that he once walked in Eden. This Eden, says God, was on his “holy mount.” Ezekiel is not alone in this: the  myths of several early civilizations located an ancient paradise atop a great mountain to the north. But nowhere else in scripture is Eden located on any mountain, and this doesn’t seem to square with Genesis 2, where Eden is situated among four rivers: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates.

So where does Genesis place Eden? The Tigris and Euphrates are located in Mesopotamia. Gihon, says Genesis, flows “around the whole land of Cush,” which is Ethiopia, so perhaps Gihon is the Nile. Pishon is unknown, but strong tradition makes it the Ganges, in India. Huh?? We’re not exactly zeroing in.

What’s often missed in the Genesis story, though, is that Eden is not cradled within these four rivers but is the source of the rivers. They apparently flow from Eden over distances of thousands of miles. One might say their purpose is to water the entire known earth. In other words, everywhere is downhill from Eden!

Before splitting into four streams and tumbling down the mountain of God, the river feeds a garden. There, God walks. There, paradise waits for a better time, when God himself will again dwell with his people. There, we can imagine high above the plains, heaven and earth meet.

Book review: Carta’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem

Sunday, March 13, 2011 in Book Reviews | 1 comment

by Israel Ariel and Chaim Richman

★★★★★

Rabbis Ariel and Richman represent the Temple Institute, founded in 1988 to “rekindle the flame of the Holy Temple in the hearts of mankind.” It houses a team of researchers of Temple-related subjects. This oversized book is a product of the Institute.

This is a reverent and stunningly beautiful coffee-table book, containing hundreds of pictures, richly annotated. I bought this while in Jerusalem, and I absolutely love it; no other book I’ve seen so evinces such a feeling of the Temple’s original splendor and atmosphere.

The subject is, of course, Herod’s Temple, the Temple visited by Jesus. Christians seem to have mixed feelings about the Temple and its rituals, but if you want to view its place in history from a Jewish viewpoint—including the sacred stories that preceded its building upon holy land—this book is a treasure. You’ll learn about Temple services, the sacred artifacts, the roles of both men and women, and the special ceremonies of the feast days of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kipper, Sukkot, the Passover, and Shavuot. (For the uninitiated, these are the festivals of the New Year, the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Booths/Tabernacles, the Passover, and the Feast of Weeks.)