Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

The Woman Caught in Adultery

The two longest passages in the New Testament that have questionable origins are the longer ending of Mark (16:9-20) and the section on the adulteress in John’s Gospel (7:53-8:11). Interestingly, both passages are twelve verses long.

We’ve already discussed the longer ending of Mark, and here we take up the story of the adulteress.

In scholarly circles, it is known as the Pericope Adulterae (from Greek and Latin roots, meaning “the section on the adulteress”; note that pericope is pronounced per-IH-kuh-PEE).

In the story, a woman caught in the act of adultery is brought before Jesus, and his opponents test him by asking what should be done with her. The Mosaic Law prescribed death for such offenses (Lev. 20:10, Deut. 22:22), but Jesus says, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” The opponents then disperse, and afterward Jesus tells the woman to go and sin no more.

It’s a vivid, memorable story, and many people know it today.

So why would anyone question it? The first reason is that it is not in many of the early manuscripts. The New Testament was written in Greek, but the pericope is not found in any surviving manuscripts before Codex Bezae, which dates to the A.D. 400s. This is significant, because John was one of the most popular Gospels in the early centuries—as evidenced by the surviving number of copies of it—and we would expect the pericope to be in other early copies if it was part of the original. The pericope also is missing from some early Latin, Syriac, and Coptic manuscripts.

The second reason the pericope is questioned is that it floats. That is, when it does appear, it’s found in different places. Sometimes it follows John 7:52, sometimes 7:36, sometimes  7:44, sometimes it’s tacked on at the end of John’s Gospel (after 21:25), and sometimes it’s at the end of Luke 21 (following 21:38). This reflects the behavior of scribes trying to fit it into the Gospels and being unsure where to place it.

The third reason is that none of the Greek commentators mention the passage before Euthymius Zigabenus, around A.D. 1118. Although this is an argument from silence, a silence of more than 1,000 years is striking and could suggest that most of these commentators were unfamiliar with the passage.

The fourth reason is that the style of the pericope differs from John’s Greek style. Experts indicate that it doesn’t sound like him. Instead, it sounds more like Luke’s Greek style. However, arguments from style are not particularly strong, and it’s always possible that an author is closely following an earlier source that had a different style.

For the above reasons, most contemporary scholars hold that the pericope was not originally part of John’s Gospel but was added to it at a later date. Consequently, many contemporary Bible translations put the pericope in brackets and have a footnote discussing the issue of its origin.

However, scholars also acknowledge that there is evidence that the story is ancient. The fact that the style is said to sound like Luke and that it is sometimes placed in Luke’s Gospel has led some to suggest that it may have actually been penned by Luke rather than John.

Further, the early second century writer Papias of Hierapolis—who was gathering his data at the end of the first century—may have mentioned the story. In the 300s, the historian Eusebius stated that Papias “has set forth another story about a woman who was accused before the Lord of many sins, which is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews” (Church History 3:39).

Some have thought that this may be a reference to the Pericope Adulterae, but this is not certain. While it could have appeared both in John (or Luke) and the Gospel of the Hebrews, if it was the same story, we’d expect Eusebius to refer to it as being found in one of the canonical Gospels. Further, the pericope involves a woman accused of one sin—an act of adultery that she was caught during—not a multitude of sins.

Still, it is possible that this is early evidence for the existence of the story, if not its placement in a canonical Gospel.

Of the arguments against the pericope’s originality to one of the canonical Gospels, the strongest is its absence in early Greek manuscripts. What could explain this?

One possibility is that—after John (or Luke) wrote the passage—an early, influential scribe left it out of his copy, and this affected the copies that followed. That would explain why later scribes weren’t sure where to reinsert it, and it would explain why Greek commentators didn’t mention the passage for so long. The only remaining argument is stylistic in nature, and we’ve mentioned that stylistic arguments tend to be inconclusive.

The major question would be why an early, influential scribe would omit the passage. While scribes do occasionally omit part of a sentence or a verse by accident, the omission of 12 full verses looks deliberate. So what would the reason be?

A key proposal is that it has to do with the subject that the pericope involves: the forgiveness of adultery.

Adultery was regarded as a particularly heinous sin, and some early Christians believed that a person could be sacramentally forgiven of it only once after baptism. Others believed that it required a very lengthy period of penance before reconciliation. And some thought that it could not be forgiven at all.

Around A.D. 220, Tertullian of Carthage was of this view. “Such [sins] are incapable of pardon—murder, idolatry, fraud, apostasy, blasphemy; of course, too, adultery and fornication” (On Modesty 19).

Around 251, St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote that “among our predecessors, some of the bishops here in our province thought that peace was not to be granted to adulterers, and wholly closed the gate of repentance against adultery” (Letter 51:21).

Given the early stage of doctrinal development, the Pericope Adulterae—in which Jesus simply says to the adulteress, “Has no one condemned you? . . . Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again”—could seem shocking and in conflict with what they otherwise believed about forgiving adultery.

Consequently, there could be a motive for early, influential scribes to remove the passage—presumably thinking it had been added by an earlier scribe who was lax on the issue of adultery.

The nature of the passage may also have made some commentators reluctant to discuss it for the same reason.

If the Pericope Adulterae was not originally in one of the Gospels, what is its status as part of the Bible?

A footnote in the New American Bible: Revised Edition states, “The Catholic Church accepts this passage as canonical scripture.”

The basis for this statement is that the Council of Trent infallibly defined that the books of the Catholic canon are “sacred and canonical, these same books entire with all their parts” (Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures).

This affirmation is most clearly directed against the views of Protestants who wanted to consider the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel and Esther to be non-inspired.

There was some discussion at the council of the Pericope Adulterae, but the fact that the final decree does not make it clear which “parts” of biblical books it has in mind—beyond those of Daniel and Esther—could be seen as leaving the matter not fully settled.

However, even if the passage was not original to the Gospels, it still may have been written in the apostolic age and could count as inspired scripture.

And even if this were not the case, the passage teaches nothing contrary to the Christian faith. Early authors who were skeptical of forgiveness for adultery were mistaken, and this passage provides a dramatic, memorable illustration of a truth of the faith:

There is no offense, however serious, that the Church cannot forgive. There is no one, however wicked and guilty, who may not confidently hope for forgiveness, provided his repentance is honest. Christ who died for all men desires that in his Church the gates of forgiveness should always be open to anyone who turns away from sin (CCC 982).

Death Dynasty: Who were the Herods, and what do we know about them?

Jesus Christ was the king of the Jews, but he wasn’t the only person of his day to have that title.

In fact, according to the Romans, the legitimate king of the Jews was Herod the Great. This Herod was on the throne when Jesus was born, and he tried to kill Jesus as an infant, but he is not the only Herod in the Bible. We continue to read about Herod’s descendants in the Gospels and in Acts.

Who were these people, and what do we know about them?

This is the story of the Herods—Judaea’s outrageous ruling family.

Family origins

Herod the Great’s ancestors were not Jews. They were from Idumea, or Edom, as it is called in the Old Testament. This is a land south of the Dead Sea, whose inhabitants were reckoned as descendants of Jacob’s brother, Esau (cf. Gen. 25:19-34).

A little before 100 B.C., the Maccabean leader John Hyrcanus conquered Idumea and forced the inhabitants to be circumcised and convert to Judaism if they wanted to stay in their land (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 13:9:1).That included a family that rose to prominence in Jewish society and eventually became the Herodian dynasty.

The Herods were thus Jewish by religion but Edomite by ancestry, a point that bred resentment among their Jewish subjects.

Birth of a dynasty

The man responsible for Herod’s rise was his father, Antipas the Idumean.

Antipas had become a key advisor to the Hasmonean rulers of Israel, whom he played against each other in order to gain influence for himself. He also courted favor with neighboring peoples, and—more significantly—he courted the favor of the Romans.

When Julius Caesar was fighting in nearby Alexandria, Egypt, Antipas took troops there and defended Caesar, who made him a governor. Antipas then used this position to usurp the place of the Hasmonean dynasty, which had ruled Israel since the time of the Maccabees.

Needless to say, Antipas made lots of enemies, and eventually one of them poisoned him.

The rise of Herod the Great

When Herod was a young man, his father appointed him governor of Galilee and his brother, Phasael, governor of Jerusalem.

Herod quickly endeared himself to the Romans by capturing and executing a band of brigands who were preying on his territory. This did not endear him to the Jewish authorities, in part because only the Sanhedrin was allowed to issue death sentences at that time.

The Sanhedrin summoned young Herod before it, but instead of appearing in the customary black clothing, he strode into its chamber wearing purple, with a group of bodyguards ready to defend him, and carrying a letter of protection from the governor of Syria.

Overawed, the council was afraid to do anything against Herod. The president of the tribunal, Shemaiah, warned the others that they would regret their failure to take action against Herod.

And they did.

Herod the king

Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of Roman senators in 44 B.C., leading to a period of civil war. Full stability was not restored until Augustus Caesar became emperor in 27 B.C.

Herod exploited the period of instability to his own advantage, switching allegiance as needed to promote his own interests. At one point, Herod was forced to flee Judaea by the last of the Hasmonean kings, Antigonus, who had been proclaimed king and high priest by the Parthians.

Herod ended up in Rome, where the future Augustus and his rival Mark Antony pleaded Herod’s case before the Senate. The body then proclaimed him king of the Jews.

He returned to Judaea and took possession of his kingdom by conquering it with the help of the Romans. Antigonus, the last king of the Maccabean line, was executed, and the Herodian dynasty began.

Herod the builder

In some respects, Herod proved an able ruler. During his reign, his kingdom prospered economically, which allowed him to raise the money needed to conduct an extensive series of building projects.

Constructing large and important public works was one of the ways ancient rulers made a name and—literally—built a legacy for themselves. Herod outdid many others in this respect, which is one reason he is styled “the great.”

He even conducted building projects in foreign lands, to build his reputation abroad, but of course most of his building was done in Palestine. This included as series of lavish palaces for himself, but he also had built many facilities for public use, including Hellenistic innovations like public baths, gymnasia, and racetracks.

To show his loyalty to his Roman patrons, Herod named many of the things he built after them. This included the Antonia Fortress in Jerusalem (named for Mark Antony), the Samaritan city Sebaste (for Augustus’s Greek name), and the coastal city of Caesarea Maritima (again for Caesar Augustus). The name of Augustus’s long-time colleague, Agrippa, was even inscribed on one of the gates of the Jerusalem temple.

The temple

Herod initiated a massive campaign to expand and beautify the Jerusalem temple, which was to be the most important of all Herod’s building projects.  This project, carried out on Judaism’s holiest site and expected to last for centuries, was meant to ensure Herod’s immortality.

The results were impressive. According to the Babylonian Talmud, there was a popular saying: “He who has not seen the temple of Herod has never seen a beautiful building” (Baba Batra 4a). One of Jesus’ own disciples exclaimed: “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” (Mark 13:1).

But Jesus himself stated: “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (v. 2). Far from becoming an immortal monument to the memory of Herod, the Jerusalem temple was swiftly destroyed.

Herod the paranoid tyrant

As Herod’s reign progressed, he became increasingly paranoid and unstable. There were indeed plots against him, and those around him manipulated his fears to their own advantage, leading him to lash out violently, including against members of his own family.

Herod had a large number of people executed or assassinated, including members of his broader family and even some of his own wives and sons.

One of Herod’s main wives was named Mariamne, and she was of Hasmonean origin. Herod married her, at least in part, to cement ties with the nation’s former ruling family, even as his own family was displacing it.

Herod professed to love Mariamne so much that, on more than one occasion, he gave orders for her to be killed when he himself died, so that he might not be separated from her in death. She, however, became convinced that he did not really love her, and relations between them turned frosty. Eventually, Herod’s sister convinced him that Mariamne was planning to poison him, and she was executed.

Herod’s own sons fared little better. Two of Mariamne’s sons—Alexander and Aristobulus—had fractious relations with their father, who suspected them of plotting against him. Eventually, he brought them up on charges of treason before Augustus Caesar, who allowed Herod to convene a court to try them.

The court found them guilty, and they were put to death by strangulation.

They weren’t the last of Herod’s sons to be killed. Herod’s firstborn son—Antipater, born of Herod’s first wife, Doris—for many years was favored by Herod and heir to his throne. But he, too, was eventually brought up on charges of plotting against his father.

He was executed just five days before Herod’s own death.

In view of such executions, the emperor Augustus reportedly quipped, “It is better to be Herod’s pig than son” (Macrobius, Saturnalia, 2:4:11)—the joke being that, since Herod was a Jew, he didn’t eat pork and his pig would be safe.

Slaughter of the innocents

Against this background, it is easy to understand the account of Herod the Great in the Gospels.

The magi came from the east, seeking the newly born king of the Jews. It was natural to seek such an infant in the court of the current king—Herod—and so they appeared, asking, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” (Matt. 2:2).

Since Herod killed three of his own sons for plotting against him, you can imagine how this would have set off alarm bells for him. The people of Jerusalem, knowing Herod’s fears about usurpers, would have been alarmed as well, and so they were: “When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matt. 2:3).

Herod manipulated the magi into finding the child for him, but when they failed to report back, he flew into a rage: “Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men” (Matt. 2:16).

Sometimes it is objected that we do not have an independent record of this event, but even absent that, the event is entirely in keeping with what we know of Herod’s character and how he responded to perceived threats to his throne.

Herod’s death

Herod survived all the perceived plots against him and died, apparently, of natural causes. What those causes were, however, is not entirely clear. He was felled by a mysterious disease that has proved difficult for modern medical experts to diagnose.

According to Josephus, “There was a gentle fever upon him, and an intolerable itching over all the surface of his body, and continual pains in his colon, and dropsical tumors about his feet and an inflammation of the abdomen—and a putrefaction of his privy member, that produced worms. Besides which he had a difficulty of breathing upon him, and could not breathe but when he sat upright, and had a convulsion of all his members” (War, 1:33:5).

Modern specialists have proposed a wide range of diagnoses for these maladies. One recent suggestion is kidney failure coupled with gangrene in the genitals.

Herod sought various forms of treatment before he died. Needless to say, many of his subjects viewed his death as a judgment from God and rejoiced at Herod’s fall.

The tyrant knew there would be rejoicing at his death, and to prevent that from happening, near his death he had many of the most eminent men in the land locked up in a hippodrome (a stadium for horse races) with orders that they be killed as soon as he died, so that every family would mourn upon his passing.

Fortunately, his orders were not carried out.

The next generation

Although Herod had killed several of his sons, he did not have all of them executed, and the survivors became the next generation of leaders in Judaea. It was not a smooth transition.

Three of Herod’s sons—Archelaus, Antipas, and Philip—ended up inheriting significant portions of his kingdom. Until shortly before his death, Herod’s will named Antipas as his principal successor, but in the end he changed his will in favor of Archelaus.

This set up a dispute among family members, with some favoring Archelaus, others favoring Antipas, and still others favoring the idea of direct Roman rule over Palestine.

The matter was ultimately settled by the Emperor Augustus, when the three brothers traveled to him for his decision. This trip forms part of the background to Jesus’ parable of the talents, in which “a nobleman went into a far country to receive kingly power and then return” (Luke 19:11-27).

Ultimately, Augustus confirmed Archelaus as Herod’s principal successor. The territories of Judaea, Samaria, and the family homeland of Idumea thus went to Archelaus, the territories of Galilee and Perea went to Antipas, and the northeasterly part of Herod’s kingdom (Iturea and Trachonitis) went to Philip.

Collectively, these brothers—like other members of the family—are known as Herodians. Each of the three is also called by the name Herod (Herod Archelaus, Herod Antipas, Herod Philip), and each is mentioned in the New Testament.

Herod Archelaus

We meet Archelaus only briefly, when the Holy Family is returning from their flight to Egypt.

Matthew notes that St. Joseph “took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus reigned over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth” (2:21-23).

Had it not been for Archelaus obtaining Judea, Joseph might have taken the Holy Family back to Bethlehem, at least for a time. He went instead to Galilee, which was ruled by Antipas, perhaps indicating that he thought Antipas was a less dangerous ruler than Archelaus.

Archelaus had a poor reputation as a ruler. Even before Augustus had confirmed his position, Archelaus had 3,000 of his subjects massacred in the temple at Passover (which he then canceled). He made many enemies among his subjects, and eventually the Romans banished him to what is now France and assumed direct rule of his territory.

This is why, when Jesus is crucified, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate is in charge in Judea rather than one of the Herodians.

Herod Antipas

St. Joseph’s judgment that it would be better to live under Herod Antipas than Archelaus may be reflected in the fact that, when Jesus was an adult, Herod Antipas was still ruling Galilee. By comparison to his brother Archelaus, Antipas was a more stable and long-lasting ruler.

Because he ruled Galilee during Jesus’ ministry, Herod Antipas is the family member about whom we hear the most in the Gospels. Often he is referred to simply as “Herod.”

The Gospels portray him as a complex man. For a start, he had an unlawful marriage. At some point, he apparently stole Herodias, the wife of his brother Herod Philip. That put him in opposition to John the Baptist, who opposed the union (Mark 6:18), leading Herod to arrest John (Matt. 14:3).

Although he had John in custody, and although his wife hated John and wanted him dead, Herod Antipas served as John’s protector and had an unusual fascination with the fiery preacher: “Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and kept him safe. When he heard him, he was much perplexed; and yet he heard him gladly” (Mark 6:20).

Eventually, after her daughter, Salome, delighted Antipas with a special dance at his birthday party, Herodias was able to manipulate him into giving the order for John’s death (Mark 6:21-28).

This did not end Antipas’s fascination with John. When he began to hear reports about Jesus, he thought Jesus might be John risen from the dead (Mark 6:14), and he sought to see Jesus for himself (Luke 9:9).

There are also indications he sought to kill Jesus. At one point, some Pharisees seek to help Jesus by telling him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you” (Luke 13:31). In the end, Herod does get to see Jesus: During the Passion narrative, Pontius Pilate sends him to see Herod (Luke 23:6-12), and Herod mocks Jesus and sends him back (Luke 23:11).

Although Antipas lasted longer than his brother, Archelaus, he too ended up being exiled to France by the Romans after being accused of plotting against the Emperor Caligula.

Herod Philip

We know less about Herod Philip than we do his brothers. In fact, there is some confusion in the historical sources about him.

As the ruler of the most northeasterly part of Herod the Great’s territories, Philip does not enter very much into the Gospel accounts, as Jesus’ ministry was not based there.

He was the first husband of Herodias, before she married Herod Antipas (Mark 6:17). It appears that he was the father of her daughter, Salome, who performed the dance that led to John the Baptist’s death (Josephus, Antiquities 18:5:4).

Herod Agrippa I

Eventually, the generation of Herod the Great’s sons began to pass, and a new generation began to take their place.

The key figure in this generation was Herod Agrippa, one of the original Herod’s grandsons. He was named after the Roman statesman and general Marcus Agrippa, who was a friend of Herod the Great and a colleague of Augustus.

Herod Agrippa’s father was Aristobulus, one of the sons his grandfather had executed. Agrippa was educated in Rome and spent much time there. He was friends with the emperors Caligula and Claudius and played a pivotal role in helping stabilize Claudius in office after the dramatic assassination of Caligula by his own guards.

A roguish and flamboyant figure, Herod Agrippa was sometimes down on his luck, but ultimately he rose to prominence, being given the title “king” and also territories that ultimately became larger than those of Herod the Great. He was a popular ruler and, in his own day, was referred to as “Agrippa the Great” (Josephus, Antiquities 17:2:2).

We meet him in Acts 12, where he has James the son of Zebedee put to death (12:1-2) and attempts to have Peter killed as well (12:3-19).

Agrippa met his end when, at a public meeting with a delegation from Tyre and Sidon, he was acclaimed as a god and did not rebuke the flattery. He was immediately struck with a violent illness and died five days later (Acts 12:20-23; Antiquities 19:8:2).

Agrippa II—Last of the Herods

The Herodian dynasty lasted one more generation in Judaea. Its principal figure was the son of Herod Agrippa, who also bore his father’s name.

He is referred to in Acts simply as “Agrippa,” and we meet him when he and his sister, Berenice, pay a welcome visit to the Roman governor Festus, who had St. Paul in custody (25:13 through 26:32).

Agrippa takes an interest in Paul’s case, and when a hearing is held in which Paul speaks to Festus, Agrippa, and Berenice, he takes the opportunity to evangelize, and Agrippa responds: “In a short time you think to make me a Christian!” Paul replies with the comedic line that he wishes all men would become as he is—“except for these chains” (26:28-29).

After Paul was sent to Rome, Agrippa and Berenice went on to play a major role in trying to prevent the Jewish War that broke out in A.D. 66 and led to the destruction of the Herod the Great’s temple in A.D. 70.

Part of Agrippa’s own territories revolted, and he fought alongside the Roman forces to put down the rebellion. Ultimately, they succeeded, and Agrippa was rewarded for his loyalty to Rome.

Little is heard of him after that and he, together with the Herodian dynasty, vanishes into history.

The Resurrection in Mark

You sometimes hear skeptics casting doubt on the Christian message by saying that Mark—the earliest of the Gospels—doesn’t even have the resurrection of Jesus in it.

What are they talking about? Mark 16:9 reads, “Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.” That’s certainly a mention of the Resurrection, isn’t it?

The issue is that most scholars have concluded that the final twelve verses of Mark (16:9-20) were not part of the original Gospel.

The reasons for thinking this include: (a) the evidence for the Longer Ending weakens the farther back you go in the history of manuscripts; (b) the manuscripts actually contain at least five different endings for Mark; (c) the style of the Longer Ending seems different than the rest of Mark; (d) the content of the Longer Ending is made up primarily of references to things we know about from elsewhere in the New Testament, making it seem to be reconstructed from other sources; and (e) since the risen Jesus has not appeared to anyone by v. 8, it is easy to see how later Christians would want this deficit to be supplied and a new, supplemental ending composed that contained post-Resurrection appearances.

I agree that the evidence suggests that the Longer Ending was not in the original, but this doesn’t really do anything to cast doubt on the Resurrection. The earlier, undisputed text of Mark shows Jesus repeatedly predicting his rising from the dead (8:31, 9:30-31, 10:33-34, 14:28).

Further, immediately before the undisputed text breaks off, an angel has told the women, “Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified. He has been raised, he is not here! See the place where they laid him! But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you” (16:6-7).

It is thus clear that Mark firmly believed in the Resurrection of Jesus, so the absence of an explicit resurrection appearance in the undisputed text of Mark does not provide evidence that the Resurrection wasn’t part of the early Christian message.

You don’t have to narrate a resurrection appearance to believe and proclaim the event. Paul’s letter 1 Thessalonians is even earlier than Mark, and in it, Paul clearly preaches Jesus raised from the dead (1:10, 4:14), but he doesn’t narrate a resurrection appearance.

The claim that the Resurrection “isn’t in” Mark thus doesn’t do the work a skeptic would want. The absence of a resurrection appearance in the undisputed text of Mark is more of a historical curiosity than anything else.

But why would this be? There are two basic possibilities: (1) Mark stopped writing at verse 8 (“And [the women] went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid”) and (2) the original ending was lost at a very early stage.

On the first proposal, there is further scholarly division. Some think that Mark deliberately stopped writing there to end his Gospel on an unexpected, challenging note.

Jesus has already predicted his Resurrection many times, and the women have discovered the empty tomb and been told of the Resurrection, but they haven’t seen it. They are therefore faced with the choice of whether or not to believe. Will they overcome their fear and amazement at the idea of the Resurrection and go on to proclaim Jesus to others?

In the same way, Mark knows that his audience has been told of the Resurrection of Jesus, but they haven’t seen it. Will they overcome their trepidation and amazement at the idea and go on to proclaim Jesus to others? We can infer that the women did, and Mark implies that his audience should as well.

On the other hand, some who think that the original version of Mark stopped at v. 8 hold that he did not intend anything so dramatic or avant-garde. He was simply prevented from finishing his planned ending for some reason, and copies of the manuscript got made in its unfinished condition. Advocates of this view may appeal to the fact that Mark’s Gospel seems unpolished (particularly in Greek), as if it were a first draft.

Another possibility is that Mark stopped writing because he never intended his work to be a finished, polished Gospel. Instead, he meant it to be a collection of notes.

The ancients sometimes drew a distinction between two kinds of works. The first was an unpolished collection of material that didn’t have literary pretentions and was meant to serve basic informational needs. In Greek, these works were called collections of hypomnêmata, and in Latin they were called comentarii. Both of these terms meant, roughly, “notes,” “memoranda,” “things to be remembered.”

Sometimes authors would publish books of this nature as reference works or textbooks, as the physician Galen did with some of his medical texts. Other times they would be published in this form for reasons of expediency and timeliness. Thus, Julius Caesar published his Gallic Wars in the form of commentarii.

Authors might prepare works like this as a prelude to more polished literary productions on the same subject. Sometimes one author would prepare hympomnêmata for use by another author. He might even sell it to the second author as the basis for the latter’s literary work. This is similar to how major authors today may use research assistants to prepare the material on which they will base their novels or nonfiction works.

When the time came to produce the literary work, an author would take the initial, unpolished one, put the material in proper literary order, supplement or trim it, and polish its style before publishing it as a new work. This is exactly what Luke and Matthew did, working with Mark as a base text.

On the other hand, scholars who hold the view that the original ending was lost need to explain how this happened. There are two questions here: (1) How, physically, did it happen? (2) When did it happen?

Regarding the first question, if Mark was originally written on a scroll, then the loss of the ending would be unlikely, since the end of a one-sided scroll tended to be the centermost portion of the roll, around which the rest of the roll was wound. It would thus be the part of the scroll most protected from accidental damage.

On the other hand, if it was a double-sided scroll (what was known as an opisthograph) then, if the ending was lost, the beginning should be lost as well, for they likely would have been on opposite sides of the same page. We see this phenomenon with many ancient manuscripts: If the end is lost, the beginning is, too.

If Mark was originally bound as a codex (a book with a spine), it would be easier to see how the last page of the book could be lost, but in Mark’s time codices were not yet common.

Regarding the second question, the destruction of the original ending must have happened very early. There would seem to be three possibilities: It was destroyed (1) at the time between when Mark finished writing and when the first copy was made, (2) after the first copy was made but before others, or (3) when only a few copies were in existence.

Here we encounter a paradox. If the ending was destroyed late—after multiple copies were in existence (i.e., option 3)—then the original one should have survived in the manuscript tradition, but it does not appear to have done so. On the other hand, if the ending was destroyed early—when only a draft or the first new copy existed (i.e., options 1 or 2)—then why didn’t Mark just replicate the original ending?

What is one to say about all this from a Catholic perspective? Is the current, longer ending divinely inspired?

The fact that it appears to have been written by someone other than Mark does not matter. Several books of Scripture have more than one author (e.g., some of Paul’s letters cite additional authors as having input, like Sylvanus and Timothy; see Phil. 1:1, 1 Thess. 1:1, 2 Thess. 1:1)

More of an issue is that the Longer Ending seems to have been composed in the second century, possibly placing it after the end of the apostolic age, when the writing of inspired Scripture ceased.

The Council of Trent infallibly defined that the books of the Catholic canon are “sacred and canonical, these same books entire with all their parts” (Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures). This affirmation is most clearly directed against the views of Protestants who wanted to consider the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel and Esther to be non-inspired.

However, there was apparently some discussion of the Longer Ending of Mark during the council, though it is not mentioned in the final decree.

A footnote on Mark 16:9–20 in the New American Bible: Revised Edition states the Longer Ending “has traditionally been accepted as a canonical part of the gospel and was defined as such by the Council of Trent.”

However, Benedict XVI seems to have had a different perspective, writing that, “The authentic text of the Gospel as it has come down to us ends with the fear and trembling of the women” (Jesus of Nazareth, 2:261).

Regardless of how one answers the question of whether Trent intended to define the Longer Ending as canonical, it is still very early, and it witnesses traditions about Jesus circulating in the early Church. Indeed, it is almost entirely composed of material paralleling traditions found in Matthew, Luke, John, and Acts.

Further, the undisputed text of the Gospel of Mark witnesses belief in the Resurrection multiple times, meaning that the Longer Ending does not give us any reason to doubt the early proclamation of the Resurrection.

Did Early Christians Believe in Dragons?

Today people are fascinated by cryptids—hidden creatures—like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. In the ancient world, the most famous cryptid was the dragon, so did early Christians believe in them?

The term dragon (Greek, drakôn) appears in the Greek Bible, but normally it is in a symbolic context—like when the devil appears in the form of a dragon in the book of Revelation (e.g., Rev. 12). So this doesn’t provide good evidence for belief in literal dragons.

However, the term also appears in other contexts. For example, in Daniel 14, the prophet Daniel kills a large drakôn that the Babylonians worshipped. However, in secular Greek, the term drakôn originally referred to a snake or serpent, and it did not always have monstrous connotations. This is clear in Wisdom 16:10, where the author refers back to the snakes that bit the Israelites in Numbers 21 and describes them as “venomous drakontôn.” The author of Daniel 14 may thus have expected readers to imagine a big snake, and some modern Bible translations like the Common English Bible use “snake” in the passage.

The Bible thus doesn’t provide a good basis for documenting belief in literal dragons. However, we do find some in the early Church who were open to the idea. St. Augustine writes:

As for dragons, which lack feet, they are said to take their rest in caves, and to soar up into the air. While these are not too easy to come across, this kind of animated creature is for all that definitely mentioned not only in our literature but also in that of the Gentiles (Literal Meaning of Genesis 3:9:13).

This passage may not mean what it suggests, however. You’ll note that Augustine says dragons have no feet—which would point to snakes—but that they fly. There were—indeed—references to flying snakes in ancient literature. Isaiah mentions them (14:29, 30:6), and so does the Greek historian Herodotus (Histories 2:75-76, 3:109). So Augustine is likely not referring to what we would think of as a dragon but to flying snakes. (Note: flying—or, technically, gliding—snakes do exist in some parts of Asia.)

The flying snakes that Herodotus referred to were small, but in another passage, Augustine envisions dragons that are very large:

Now dragons favor watery habitats. They emerge from caves and take to the air. They create major atmospheric disturbance, for dragons are very large creatures, the largest of all on earth. This is probably why the psalm began its consideration of earthly creatures with them (Expositions of the Psalms 148:9).

Augustine wasn’t alone in thinking about real, enormous dragons. Other Church Fathers did so also, and so did non-Christian thinkers.

The reason is obvious when you think about it. Although the term paleontology was only coined in 1822, humans have been running across fossils for as long as there have been humans. When they came across the bones of giant, monstrous animals, they correctly concluded that there used to be giant animals in the area.

In her book The First Fossil Hunters, historian Adrienne Mayor insightfully argues that it was the ancient discovery of fossils that formed the basis of the legends of dragons and similar creatures the world over.

St. Augustine himself reports finding a giant tooth on a beach, where the action of the waves presumably uncovered it:

Once, on the beach at Utica, I saw with my own eyes—and there were others to bear me witness—a human molar tooth so big that it could have been cut up, I think, into a hundred pieces each as big as one of our modern teeth. That tooth, however, I can well believe, was the tooth of a giant (City of God 15:9).

I’m not a Young Earth Creationist, but I have to agree with musician Buddy Davis’s fun children’s song D Is For Dinosaur:

When dinosaurs first roamed the earth, many years ago
People called them dragons (and just thought you’d like to know)
So dinosaurs and dragons are both the same thing
The only thing that’s different is we changed the dragon’s name

 

Is Objective Morality Real?

A reader writes:

I have been really hurting due to a question that I can’t seem to find an answer to wherever I look. Wherever I go, I can’t find a Christian that will answer my questions. I am Catholic, but this particular question causes me pain, because morality is the bedrock that my framework is built upon.

My question is, how do I know that Morality is real?

I heard that morality is just a herd mentality to ensure human survival. Like, for example, I don’t kill him, so he doesn’t kill me, a herd mentality. Homosexuality is wrong because it doesn’t ensure human survival. It’s a sort of empathy-like survival mechanism.

This does mean that if you do something wrong, since there would be no Objective Morality, that there is nothing actually wrong about it, and you could technically do whatever, and it would just be atoms moving across space-time, a scary thought indeed.

How do I beat moral nihilism? What are some arguments against it? What if someone is willing to accept it, because facts don’t care about your feelings? How do you show its real? What evidence is there? I still believe, but it hurts to have my framework attacked.

Those attacking the objective reality of morality based on its survival value are making a fundamental mistake, which is pitting objective morality and survival value against each other. They do not need to be seen in opposition and should be seen as in harmony.
According to the standard Christian understanding (and, specifically, the Catholic understanding), morality is rooted in human nature. For example, we need lifelong marriages because our offspring are born helpless and take 2 decades to mature. Therefore, they need care for decades, and thus the parents need to stay together for decades, which amounted to a full human lifespan before modern medicine. Therefore, human nature implies lifelong marital unions.
This would be different if God had designed us to be creatures like fish, which essentially fertilize their eggs and then leave them to their fate. No lifelong marriages would be needed.
We therefore must understand the rules of (human) morality in terms of human nature. They are given to us by God to help us survive and thrive, based on the way our natures work. Therefore, being a moral person has survival/flourishing value.
However, this is exactly what we would expect of a loving God in giving us his laws. They would be based around our nature and be meant to promote our good. They would thus draw upon our nature as human beings and make explicit the best ways for humans to survive and thrive.
God’s law for man thus is not an alien standard imposed on us that has nothing to do with human flourishing. Instead, on the Christian view, it is designed to promote human flourishing, based on our nature.
And this is what Scripture indicates: God gave man laws for man’s own good. The law is designed to help us. Following it is good for us.
This is explicit in various passages in the Bible. It’s also implicit in other passages. One that I find particularly interesting is James 1:22-25, which compares a person who hears God’s law and does not do it to a man who looks at his face in a mirror and then forgets what he looks like. The analogy James uses shows how God’s law reveals our own nature to us. If we forget God’s law, we forget our own nature.
The fact that morality has survival value thus is not contradictory to the biblical view of morality. It is built into the biblical view of morality. The biblical view presupposes that morality has survival value, and the two should not be put in opposition to each other.
When it comes to evidence for the objective existence of morality, we have the testimony of the human heart. Humans have a powerful intuition that some things are Just Right and other things are Just Wrong. Our hearts tell us that morality is objectively real (and they tell us this because God built it into us).
Even those who claim not to believe in objective morality inevitably slip back into assuming that it is real. They invariably fall back into the assumption that some things are just evil–whether it’s racism, sexism, torturing babies for fun, or whatever else it may be. They may be able to momentarily suspend their belief in objective morality, but they inevitably slip back into the view that it is real. So strong is the testimony of the human heart.
Further, belief in objective morality is a human universal. It appears in all world cultures in all periods of history. This only happens with things that are built into human nature, and so belief in morality is part of human nature.
We thus have powerful evidence from the human heart that morality is objectively real.
Furthermore, by believing in morality, we are simply going along with our nature (rather than fighting against it).
Finally, a critic of morality would have absolutely no grounds for trying to guilt us or cause us anxiety for our belief in morality, because if the critic was right then–on the critic’s own principles–we wouldn’t be doing anything wrong by believing in morality, because there would be no objective right or wrong.
And we’d be happier for just going with what human nature tells us–that morality is real.
We’d also reap the survival and flourishing benefits of leading a moral life.
I hope this helps, and God bless you!

Judas Iscariot: Man of Mystery

Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus is perplexing in several ways, and Christian thinkers have sought to make sense of it.

The largest question is: Why did Judas perform the betrayal? What was his motive?

The Gospels give us some clues. One is that Satan was working on Judas (Luke 22:3, John 13:2, 27). However, this explains the action from a superhuman point of view and does not address why—on a human level—Judas would choose to betray Jesus.

A possible human motive may have been greed. John indicates that Judas was greedy and had previously committed theft to obtain money (John 12:5-6), and Matthew portrays Judas as telling the chief priests, “‘What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?’ And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him” (Matt. 26:15-16). Mark and Luke also mention a commitment to pay Judas (Mark 14:11, Luke 22:5).

This suggests at least that Judas wanted to be compensated for the deed, but that doesn’t mean it was his primary motive. Why would someone who had followed Jesus for three years suddenly decide to betray his master? Is the opportunity for some quick cash really a sufficient motive?

Many have thought that it is not, and they have proposed additional reasons. One is the idea that Judas was actually trying to help Jesus fulfill his messianic destiny by bringing him into contact with the Jewish authorities. This view would tend to rehabilitate Judas, as he thought he was doing a good thing.

In favor of such a view, Judas could be seen as not aware of the fact he’s betraying Jesus, for when Jesus predicts at the Last Supper that one of the Twelve will betray him, Judas—along with the others—asks, “Is it I, Master?” (Matt. 26:25; cf. 26:22). Also, “when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood’” (Matt. 27:3-4). So maybe Judas just meant to put Jesus in contact with the chief priests and didn’t realize they would condemn him.

Against this view is the fact that Judas “had given them a sign, saying, ‘The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him and lead him away safely’” (Mark 14:44). The use of a covert sign—as opposed to making a simple introduction—and the instruction to seize Jesus indicates consciousness of betrayal.

However, another messianic motive is possible. No doubt, Judas—like the other disciples—expected Jesus to be a political Messiah who would kick out the Romans and restore national sovereignty to Israel (cf. John 6:15, 11:48-50; Acts 1:6). However, Jesus did not intend to be this type of Messiah. Perhaps Judas disagreed, and by forcing him into a confrontation with the chief priests, Judas was hoping to force him back onto what he regarded as the proper path for the Messiah—only to see Jesus condemned instead.

Another possible motive is anger and resentment. It is clear from various passages in the New Testament that some disciples (Peter, James, John, and Andrew) were closer to Jesus than others, and Judas is always listed last among the Twelve (Matt. 10:1-4, Mark 3:13-19, Luke 6:12-16). Perhaps Judas’s lower status had come to grate on him after three years, and—under the influence of Satanically inspired envy and resentment—he decided to prove that he was a person of importance after all.

What we can say with confidence is that on the superhuman level Satan was involved and on the human level greed was involved, but beyond that, all we can do is speculate.

Whatever Judas’s exact motive, a careful reading of the Gospels reveals that the betrayal involved an intricate, time-sensitive plan.

“It was now two days before the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth, and kill him; for they said, ‘Not during the feast, lest there be a tumult of the people’” (Mark 14:1-2).

Given the Jewish way of reckoning time, and the fact Passover began at sundown on Thursday, “two days before the Passover” points to sometime during the daytime on Wednesday.

The Jewish authorities thus had a window of opportunity to arrest Jesus between Wednesday and Thursday. Beginning Friday morning, the feast of Unleavened Bread would be in full swing, and Jesus could be expected to be with the crowds during the daytime in the week-long festival.

It apparently was on this Wednesday that Judas went to the chief priests and agreed to betray him, so he “sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of the multitude” (Luke 22:6). Since Judas was now serving as their spy, the Wednesday of Holy Week is often called Spy Wednesday.

Jesus being away from the crowds was important. Jesus noted that they could have arrested him any day they wanted as he taught in the temple (Matt. 26:55, Mark 14:49, Luke 22:53). By waiting until he was in a private setting, they could avoid the people rioting.

Judas did not find an opportunity to betray Jesus Wednesday night or Thursday during the daytime when Jesus was with the crowds. The next opportunity would be when he was alone with the disciples on Thursday night at the Passover meal, which would be in private.

However, there was a new complication. Jesus kept the location of the Passover meal secret until the last moment, forcing the disciples to ask, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” (Mark 14:16).

Instead of simply telling them the location, Jesus sent two of the disciples (Luke reveals it was Peter and John; Luke 22:8) to look for a man unusually carrying a water jar, which was normally women’s work. They were then to follow this man back to a house, and there the householder would have a room prepared for them to eat the Passover meal (Mark 14:13-15).

The apparent purpose of this subterfuge was to keep the Twelve—including Judas—from knowing the location of the meal until the last moment. That way, Judas could not bring the authorities there to arrest Jesus, for he greatly desired to eat this Passover with his disciples (Luke 22:15).

At the Last Supper, Jesus announced that one of the Twelve would betray him, prompting the disciples to ask who it would be.

Jesus indicated it would be someone who dipped food in the same dish as him, which would make it obvious to anyone who was in-the-know that Judas would be the betrayer. But John’s Gospel indicates that this was a rather restricted audience. It may have only been Peter and the beloved disciple who knew.

“One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus’ side, so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, ‘Lord, who is it?’ Jesus answered, ‘It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.’ So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’ Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that, because Judas had the moneybag, Jesus was telling him, ‘Buy what we need for the feast,’ or that he should give something to the poor” (John 13:23-29) since giving to the poor was a custom on the first night of Passover.

By this point, Judas had learned what he needed to know to betray Jesus, for he had learned their plans for the remainder of the evening.

Jesus “went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with his disciples” (John 18:1-2).

Judas thus brought a band of soldiers and officers from the Jewish authorities to arrest him.

It was at this point that Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Even though Jesus was a public figure, the guards might not know him by sight.

Also, it was dark, and they would be viewing the scene in the garden by torchlight. Even Judas himself might not recognize Jesus until getting up close to him.

By arranging the kiss, Judas apparently wanted a degree of protection. If he suddenly yelled, “This is Jesus! Grab him!” that would make it obvious to everyone that Judas had betrayed him. A melee might ensue, and Judas might be injured or killed by one of the other disciples.

But by coming up and giving the ordinary greeting gesture of a kiss, it would make the act of betrayal non-obvious. From Judas’s perspective, he might get away scot-free, with nobody realizing what he had done.

However, Jesus knew what Judas was up to. “Jesus said to him, “Judas, would you betray the Son of man with a kiss?” (Luke 22:48).

From Jesus’ perspective—as tragic as it was—everything was proceeding according to plan.

Why Did Jesus Curse the Fig Tree?

A perplexing story about Jesus in the Gospels is the account in which he curses a fig tree. It is found in Mark 11 and in Matthew 21.

The incident occurs when Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem for his final Passover. However, it is related differently in the two Gospels.

Mark 11 presents Jesus first as cursing the fig tree (11:12–14), then clearing the temple (11:15–19), and the next morning the fig tree is seen to have withered (11:20–25).

But in Matthew 21, Jesus first clears the temple (Matt. 21:12–13) and later curses the fig tree (Matt. 21:18–20), after which it immediately withers (Matt. 21:21–22).

What explains this difference in order? Matthew may have presented the material about the fig tree together because it deals with the same subject—the fig tree. This is in keeping with the way Matthew groups material topically.

Mark’s ordering of the events may be chronological. However, Mark also has a special way of ordering material, which scholars call the “Markan sandwich.” A sandwich occurs when Mark interrupts one story with another before returning to the first. This allows Mark to contrast the two stories so that they shed light on each other.

Scholars have proposed that this is what is happening in Mark’s accounts of the cursing and withering of the fig tree with the clearing of the temple interposed. In fact, this is one of the most famous Markan sandwiches. So Mark also may be ordering these events in a non-chronological way.

In the story, Jesus sees a fig tree in the distance. Mark notes that it is “in leaf” and that it is “not the season for figs.” This is consistent with the timing of Passover (late March or April).

Jesus then “went to see if he could find anything on it.” Why does he do that if it is not the season for figs? This seems strange.

“If, however, as Pliny the Elder noted in his Naturalis Historia (16.49), the fig tree stands out as a tree that produces fruit before leaves (cf. Mark 13:28 …), the presence of leaves makes intelligible to Mark’s readers why Jesus went to the tree in search of something to eat” (Craig Evans, Word Biblical Commentary on Mark 11:13).

There are several possibilities for what Jesus may have hoped to find on the tree, including unripe but edible figs; however, he finds nothing.

Jesus says to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” Why does Jesus say this to the tree? At first glance, it seems like an act of gratuitous malice.

Why should Jesus curse a tree—especially when it isn’t even the season for it to be bearing fruit? The Law of Moses even condemned the needless destruction of fruit trees (Deut. 20:19–20).

The fact that Jesus perfectly observed the Law (Matt. 5:17–18, Heb. 4:15) suggests that this does not constitute the needless destruction of a fruit tree. It has a purpose, and what happens next clarifies that purpose.

The party enters Jerusalem and goes to the temple. There, Jesus “began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.”

Note that in this passage and the previous one, we witness a similar phenomenon: apparently unprovoked anger on Jesus’ part. Just as Jesus lashed out at the fig tree, he lashes out at the people doing commerce and changing money in the temple. This connects the two events and provides a clue as to why Jesus cursed the fig tree.

The people Jesus drives out are those who bought and sold items relating to the functioning of the temple itself—specifically, to the animals that were offered there in sacrifice. Mark alludes to this when he speaks of “those who sold pigeons” (pigeons being one of the sacrificial animals).

The “money-changers” served the temple-goers in ancient Jerusalem, who needed to change the Roman currency that had pagan images—including emperors, some of whom were worshipped as gods—for money that could be used at the temple.

Jesus explains his actions by saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”

The statement Jesus quotes is from Isaiah 56:7. Today we think of the Jerusalem temple as an exclusively Jewish institution, and the idea of it being used for prayer by Gentiles (“all the nations”) seems strange. However, Gentiles did pray there. They even had sacrifices offered for them by the Jewish priests. In fact, the stopping of the sacrifices for foreigners, including Caesar, was one of the precipitating events of the Jewish war of the A.D. 60s (Josephus, Jewish War 2:17:2[409–410]).

The outer court, the so-called “court of the Gentiles,” was very large, and it was apparently here that the sellers and money-changers set up shop. This space was meant for the use of the Gentiles to worship God, but instead unscrupulous merchants were using it. Thus Jesus quotes Jeremiah 7:11, asserting that they have made it “a den of robbers.” And “when evening came they went out of the city” and return to Bethany.

In the morning, as they return to the city, they see the fig tree has withered. Peter remembers the curse Jesus put on the tree and says, “Master, look! The fig tree which you cursed has withered.” This was evidently a surprising and impressive event for Peter.

Jesus tells them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.”

By pointing to the power of faith in God, he indicates the means by which the fig tree withered so quickly: Jesus had faith in God that it would happen, and it did.

Many earlier commentators have failed to appreciate the fact that the clearing of the temple occurs between Mark’s two halves of the fig tree narrative, suggesting that they did not see its relevance. However, given Markan sandwiches, we should be alert to elements connecting the two. There are a number to be found.

“The interrelation of the clearing of the temple (vv 15–19), and the cursing (vv 12–14) and withering (vv 20–21) of the fig tree, is established at several points. For one, all the material between Mark 11:1 and 13:37 is oriented around the temple; this is itself a cue that there is a relationship between the fig tree and temple. There is also a clear parallel between ‘his disciples were hearing’ (v 14) and ‘the chief priests and the scribes heard’ (v 18). Above all, the fig tree is often in the Old Testament a symbol for Israel, and more than once Israel is judged under this symbol, ‘There will be no figs on the tree, and their leaves will wither,’ said Jeremiah (8:13). In connection with this is the intriguing statement that ‘it was not the season for figs’ (v 13). This statement surely has less to do with horticulture than theology. The word for ‘season’ (kairos) is used at the opening of the Gospel, ‘ “The time (kairos) has come,” said Jesus, “the kingdom of God is near” ’ (1:14). Kairos means a special, critical moment. There is no fruit on the tree because its time has passed. The leafy fig tree, with all its promise of fruit, is as deceptive as the temple, which, with all its bustling activity, is really an outlaw’s hideout (v 17)” (James R. Edwards, “Markan Sandwiches: The Significance of Interpolations in Markan Narratives,” Novum Testamentum XXXI, 3 (1989), 207).

There is also the fact that, in both narratives, Jesus lashes out, first at the fig tree and then at those in the temple complex. This is perhaps the most direct parallel between the two narratives, and it provides the key to understanding them.

By cursing the fig tree, Jesus is enacting a physical parable of what will happen to the temple. The time when the fig tree produced fruit is passed. In the same way, whatever fruit the temple may have borne in the past, at the time of Jesus it is corrupt and has become a “den of robbers.”

Thus, just as no one will eat fruit from the fig tree in the future, the time of the temple itself is passing. Jesus makes this explicit later by prophesying its physical destruction (13:1–2).

The fact that Jesus uses the fig tree as a parable of the temple sheds light on why he cursed the tree even though it was not the season for figs. Only a tree without fruit is suitable for this physical parable. Thus he seeks to see if it offers anything edible. It does not, and so instead he uses the occasion to enact the parable.

Interested in hearing more about the Gospel of Mark? Check out Jimmy Akin’s full-length commentary on Logos/Verbum Bible software!

Data Is a Toaster

In the spate of recent stories on artificial intelligence (AI), Catholic News Service carries one in which they interview Fr. Phillip Larrey of the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome.

Fr. Larrey says that Silicon Valley technology companies are now consulting with religious leaders on matters related to AI—apparently including the nature of consciousness, humanity, and the purpose of life.

When it comes to defining consciousness, good luck! This is a perennial problem that nobody has a good handle on. Consciousness is something we experience, but defining it in a way that doesn’t use other consciousness-related terms has proved nigh onto impossible, at least thus far.

It’s clear that consciousness involves processing information, but being able to process information doesn’t mean having the awareness that we refer to as consciousness. Mechanical adding machines from the 19th century can process information, but they aren’t conscious.

Neither are computers, robots, or AI. The Next Generation episode “The Measure of a Man” featured a line that bluntly summarized the situation: “Data is a toaster.” He may look and act human, but Mr. Data not only has no emotions, he has no consciousness (though the episode tried to pretend otherwise). He’s just a data-crunching machine.

The same will be true of any silicon-based AIs we have or will come up with in the foreseeable future. They may be programmed to sound human, and—hypothetically—they could one day process information better than a human, but all they will be doing is shuffling symbols around according to rules. They will not have genuine consciousness.

Still, it’s good that tech companies are talking to ethicists and religious leaders about the impact that they will have on human lives. According to the CNS piece:

He [Fr. Larrey] also identified potential adverse effects of AI for everyday users, noting that minors can ask chatbots for advice in committing illicit activities and students can use them to complete their assignments without performing the work of learning.

A major downside of AI, he said, is that “we become dependent on the software, and we become lazy. We no longer think things out for ourselves, we turn to the machine.”

When it comes to minors asking AIs how to commit crimes, I’m sure that tech companies will come up with ways to stop that. (“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t answer that question.”) Legal liability alone will ensure that they do.

However, education will adapt to the student use of AI—at least in some situations. Back before the 1970s, people were concerned that electronic calculators would cause kids to become lazy and not memorize their multiplication tables. But you don’t need to memorize all the stuff you used to need to when you can rely on computers to provide answers. Thus math classes today regularly include calculators.

The same thing will happen with AI in education. It will take time, and there will be some tasks for which the use of AI will be prohibited, but eventually educators will figure out ways it can be incorporated, and Fr. Larrey acknowledges this in the piece.

Perhaps the most chilling part of the story comes when it says:

The pope urged [an audience of tech leaders] to “ensure that the discriminatory use of these instruments does not take root at the expense of the most fragile and excluded” and gave an example of AI making visa decisions for asylum-seekers based on generalized data.

“It is not acceptable that the decision about someone’s life and future be entrusted to an algorithm,” said the pope.

Amen! Part of the reason is that we no longer really know how modern algorithms work. They are judged on their results (e.g., does the YouTube algorithm keep you watching videos?), but we don’t clearly understand the specifics of what’s happening under the hood.

This results in algorithms making mistakes, and companies like Google, Facebook, and YouTube are already bureaucratic black boxes that make secretive decisions to the detriment of their users.

There are thus real dangers to AI. Even assuming you don’t give them autonomous firing control in a wartime situation, nobody wants to hear, “I’m sorry, but the AI has determined that curing you would be iffy and expensive, so your fatal disease will just be allowed to run its course.”

Religious leaders need to be involved in this conversation, so it’s good to hear that tech companies are consulting them.

Data may be a toaster, but he shouldn’t become a creepy, opaque toaster with the power of life and death.

Can a Catholic Reject Transubstantiation?

A recent article by Thomas Reese, S.J. for National Catholic Reporter has attracted attention. There’s a lot to respond to in Fr. Reese’s article, but I have a word limit, so I’ll keep it short.

Under the deliberately provocative title “The Eucharist is about more than the real presence,” Reese discusses what he thinks is wrong in the contemporary Church concerning the Eucharist. And about halfway through, he states:

Since my critics often accuse me of heresy, before I go further, let me affirm that I believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I just don’t believe in transubstantiation because I don’t believe in prime matter, substantial forms and accidents that are part of Aristotelian metaphysics.

Thomas Aquinas used Aristotelianism, the avant-garde philosophy of his time, to explain the Eucharist to his generation. What worked in the 13th century will not work today. If he were alive today, he would not use Aristotelianism because nobody grasps it in the 21st century.

So, first, forget transubstantiation. Better to admit that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is an unexplainable mystery that our little minds cannot comprehend.

Reese is correct that Aristotelianism was an avant-garde philosophy in the time of Aquinas. Except for Aristotle’s work on logic, the rest of his philosophy had been unavailable in the Latin-speaking West for centuries, and it was just before and during Aquinas’s time that translations of most of Aristotle’s works were becoming available.

The major figure in synthesizing Aristotelian and Christian thought was Aquinas’s mentor, Albert the Great (c. 1200-1280), and the new ideas were considered quite daring. In 1210, 1270, and 1277, ecclesiastical authorities in Paris prohibited the teaching of various ideas connected with Aristotle’s thought, and Albert himself found it expedient to state, “I expound, I do not endorse, Aristotle.”

Aquinas’s own synthesis of Christian and Aristotelian thought was viewed with considerable suspicion, and some of the Condemnations of 1277 were directed at Aquinas’s ideas. Particularly suspect were Aristotle’s physics and metaphysics.

But what does any of this have to do with transubstantiation?

From what Reese says, you might suspect that Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) came up with transubstantiation, that the concept is inextricably bound up with Aristotle’s thought, and that it’s purely optional for Catholics. However, none of these things is true.

In the first place, the term transubstantiation had been around for quite some time before Aquinas. Its first recorded use was by Hildebert of Tours, who used it around 1079—two centuries before Aquinas. The term was regarded as an apt one for expressing what people believed, and it quickly spread among theologians.

It appears—and is endorsed—in a letter of Pope Innocent III from 1202 (DH 784), and in 1215, the ecumenical council of Lateran IV taught that Christ’s “body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the appearances of bread and wine, the bread being transubstantiated into the body by the divine power and the wine into the blood” (DH 802).

So transubstantiation was not the brainchild of Thomas Aquinas. What about it being inextricably linked to Aristotle’s thought?

That the term was proposed before the major translation of Aristotle’s writings into Latin and the integration of Aristotelian and Christian thought should be a big clue that there’s no essential connection between the two.

So is the fact that the term had been widely adopted—including by a pope and an ecumenical council!—during the period when Aristotelianism, and especially its physics and metaphysics, were viewed with suspicion.

The term transubstantiation itself is not Aristotelian, and Aristotle did not use it. The word is Latin rather than Greek, and it comes from perfectly common Latin roots: trans, which means across or beyond, and substantia, which means substance. Any Latin speaker of the day would naturally understand it to mean a change of one substance or reality into another, as you can tell from the context in which Lateran IV used it.

Neither do we find distinctly Aristotelian terms like prime matter, substantial form, or even accidents in the Church’s articulation of transubstantiation. When the Council of Trent met, it issued the following definition:

If anyone says that in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of bread and wine remains together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and denies that wonderful and unique change of the whole substance of the bread into his body and of the whole substance of the wine into his blood while only the species of bread and wine remain, a change which the Catholic Church very fittingly calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema (Decree on the Sacrament of the Eucharist, can. 2; DH 1652).

There’s nothing distinctly Aristotelian in that. The Council even avoids the Aristotelian term accidents and uses the term species—which means appearances—instead. The council thus articulated the faith of the Church without endorsing any particular philosophical school of thought.

I don’t know how much catechesis Reese has done in his career, but you don’t have to sit down and give a person a mini-course in Aristotelianism—or any philosophical system—to explain transubstantiation. It’s not a familiar term outside Catholic circles, but all you have to say is, “The bread and wine become Jesus. After the consecration, bread and wine aren’t there anymore. Jesus is present under the appearances of bread and wine.”

This understanding was present in the Church’s faith before the term transubstantiation was coined. Indeed, it’s why the term was coined.

Reese’s comments about transubstantiation, Aquinas, and Aristotle are thus misinformed and misdirected, but he raises the question of whether he can be accused of heresy and professes his faith in the real presence as proof that he is not a heretic. It’s good that he believes in the real presence, but is this sufficient to avoid heresy?

The charge of heresy is a very serious one and should be made only in the gravest circumstances. It is defined as follows:

Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith (CIC 751).

A “truth which is to be believed with divine and Catholic faith” is another way of saying a dogma—that is, a truth that has been infallibly defined by the Magisterium to be divinely revealed. Dogmas are a subset of other infallible teachings, which may or may not be divinely revealed.

It is commonly held that Trent’s canon (above) contains two infallible definitions: first, that the whole substance of bread and wine is changed into Christ’s body and blood so that bread and wine do not remain and, second, that this change is fittingly called transubstantiation.

The term transubstantiation was coined in the 1000s, so it is not part of the deposit of faith and not divinely revealed. Reese would not be a heretic for denying this term.

But in rejecting transubstantiation, Reese said that “Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is an unexplainable mystery.” On its face, that appears to be a doubt of (a refusal to believe) the explanation provided by Trent—that the whole substance of bread and wine are changed into the whole substance of Christ’s body and blood.

Reese thus should clarify whether he actually accepts this change, which is divinely revealed and was made a dogma by Trent.

Doubting this dogma obstinately would make Reese guilty of heresy—and that’s for the competent ecclesial authorities to judge, not me. I thus am not in a position to accuse him of heresy, but based on what he has said, he is dancing on the edge of it.