Paul’s words do appear severe. I cannot explain it with complete confidence, but we can make a guess at what was going on. This command is given in the context of instruction to those who speak in tongues and prophesy. The verses actually appear a bit out of place, hard to fit within the context. What does permitting women to speak have to do with prophesying?

Remember, Paul is writing to Gentiles, in a Gentile land. These women appear to be interrupting the service by asking questions, but why would Gentile women be asking questions during the time of prophesy?

Because that’s what Gentiles did when they went to visit the nearby oracle of Delphi. Prophets were seen as providing a consulting service, so that’s where you went to ask fundamental questions about life: Who should I marry? Will I escape poverty? How long will my daughter be sick?

Maybe these women simply assumed that Christian prophecy worked like Greek prophecy. Paul tells them to shut up and ask those sorts of questions to their husband at home.

//While I’m not a proponent of trying to harmonize scripture, sometimes it’s interested to do so and see where a story leads. Here’s a case where it takes three Gospels to arrive at an explanation for why the stone was rolled away from the tomb.

If, as the Gospel of John asserts, Jesus was able to walk through doors or walls in his resurrection body (see John 20:19), why do you suppose the stone was rolled away? Surely Jesus needed no help escaping, right?

And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. –Matthew 28:2

So the angel(s) who opened the tomb arrived after Jesus had already made his exit. One could conclude that the stone was not rolled away so that Jesus could escape, but so that witnesses could enter and verify his resurrection.

★★★★★

Are you into graphic novels? I’ve never considered them my thing, always picturing such texts as little more than a comic book. So I was surprised to enjoy this one as much as I did.

A graphic novel attempts to communicate on a different level, with penetrating images. The artistic lines and colors, at least in this book, are vibrant, stark, evocative, powerful … this is a visual journey with a serious tone.

Messiah: Origin is the beginning of the gospel story, from the birth of Jesus through the ministry of John the Baptist. I presume it’s the first publication of a series. What sets this “novel” apart is that it contains no words except as translated directly from the Greek of the New Testament. It is a narrative harmony of the four Gospels, translated by Mark Arey, a Greek Orthodox clergyman, arranged in story form by Matt Dorff, and illustrated by Kai Carpenter … an effective partnership.

Definitely recommended as an enjoyable and moving story, though anticlimactic … I do wish I had more of the story of Jesus to read.

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Let’s compare humans to other animals for a moment. Believers in God tend to place humans in a separate category altogether, sort of like a human kingdom above the animal kingdom, often with the explanation that “humans have been given a soul.” Nonbelievers, in contrast, tend toward reductionism and point to the evidence of evolution, claiming that humans are nothing more than primates with the organ in the top of our head gone wild.

Both positions have merit. This oversized brain DOES make humans different from animals, and one area of difference is in the study of altruistic behavior. Here is what evolutionary psychologist Frans de Waal has to say:

“Animals at times do exhibit what appears to be moral behavior, but this behavior does not necessarily rest on deliberations of the kind we engage in. It is hard to believe that animals weigh their own interests against the rights of others, that they develop a vision of the greater good of society, or that they feel lifelong guilt about something they should not have done. To communicate intentions and feelings is one thing; to clarify what is right, and why, and what is wrong, and why, is quite something else. Animals are no moral philosophers.”

Are you able to disagree? I doubt it. Humans are different, in that our brains have evolved to the point of comprehending morals. I wonder: is it fair to say that that moment in evolution was the moment, in today’s verse, where “man became a living soul?”

//While it’s not quite as clear here in Luke as it is in Matthew, today’s verses appear to be saying that God—in the form of the Holy Spirit—will come down and impregnate Mary. Many Christians read this quite literally, interpreting the title “Son of God” to mean the literal offspring of God and Mary—a god impregnating a human. So, let’s carry this further. When did the act occur?

A clue may be hidden a few verses later in what scholars title the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). The story is this:

Told by an angel that Mary will indeed bear a child, and needn’t worry about being a virgin because God himself will impregnate her, she hustles off to see her pregnant cousin Elizabeth near Jerusalem. There, at God’s city, the Spirit comes over Elizabeth, her own baby leaps in her womb, and she exclaims loudly to Mary: “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” Is this not likely the moment the Spirit “overshadows” Mary as well?

Mary confirms this in the midst of her Magnificat, with these words: “From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” Since she is blessed “henceforth,” it seems likely that in Luke’s telling, the conception—as promised by the angel a few verses earlier—occurs at that moment.

//I’m sometimes accused of overstating the effect of the Jerusalem war of 66-70 CE on early Christianity and the writing of Christian scripture. Perhaps I do overstate the war, but I doubt it. Most of the New Testament was written in the shadow of this horrible war, including all four of the Gospels and certainly the book of Revelation. Most Christians of the first century were absolutely convinced that God was intervening in history, and that the end times had arrived.

I suspect the Gospel of Mark was written just before the end of the war. The gospels of Matthew and Luke followed a decade or so after the war. John’s Gospel was perhaps 20-30 years after the war, after the excitement of the first century died down a little, and as a result you won’t find the same emphasis in John’s Gospel about Jesus returning to set things right.

Of these four gospels, the most fascinating argument for dating is in regards to the book of Mark. Was it written just before, during, or just after the war? Most scholars fall into the “just after” category, sometimes pointing to Mark’s description of the Temple destruction. How, they reason, could Mark have possibly guessed it would fall?

My own opinion is that Mark did indeed see destruction coming! Perhaps Jesus did as well, forty years earlier! In today’s verse (quoted from the New Living Translation for its emphasis), Mark inserts a little parenthetical message, “Reader, pay attention!” Why would he do this, if he were not making a plea to Christians to abandon Jerusalem and head for the hills? Jesus said the temple would fall, Mark insists, and scripture tells us what to do about it! Get out of here while you can! Indeed, many Christians seem to have done just that, leaving Jerusalem and heading to Pella to survive the war.

This fulfilled prediction and the rescue of Judean Christians may have secured Mark’s reputation, sealing this gospel as perhaps the most influential book in the Bible for the emergence of Christianity. Later Christians, of course, came to appreciate other gospels more than the bare-bones Mark, but the timing and influence of this one book with its apocalyptic claim should not be underestimated.

Yesterday, I discussed the tradition that a companion of Paul named Luke wrote Luke-Acts, and presented a couple of possibilities from the writings of Paul. These two possible Luke’s are written as Loukion in Greek. But there is another Greek name, Loukan, which may be a better fit. Try these verses on for size:

And so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Loukan, my fellow workers. –Philemon 24

Our dear friend Loukan, the doctor, and Demas send greetings.–Colossians 4:14

The book of Philemon is universally accepted as an authentic Pauline writing, and though Colossians is not, the similarity in Greek spelling and the connection to Demas is compelling. Have we found our man?

In favor of this selection is the “scientific” preface to Luke’s Gospel in 1:1-4, which does indeed sound like a doctor, and the various “we passages” in Acts (see 16:10-17, 20:5-15, 21:1-18, and 27-28) which implies the author was an eyewitness companion of Paul.

In the end, we’ll never know, but it’s easy to see how the early church fathers put the pieces together, concluding that a man named Luke wrote this anonymous work.

But who is this Luke? There are several possibilities in the New Testament. Today’s verse provides one possibility. It would make Luke a Jewish Christian. Another Lucius in the Bible appears in Acts 13:1:

Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Loukion of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. –Acts 13:1

This Luke hails from Cyrene. These two possible Luke’s are written as Loukion in Greek. But there is another Greek name, Loukan, which may be a better fit. We’ll discuss this one tomorrow.