Apologetics – Page 13

When Was the Gospel of Luke Written?

When were the four Gospels written?

Ultimately, from a faith perspective, the precise dates do not matter. What matters is that they are divinely inspired and thus authoritative for faith.

However, by showing that the Gospels were written in the first century, within a few decades of Jesus’ life, we strengthen their credibility even from a secular perspective.

Today virtually all scholars—whether skeptical or believing—acknowledge that the Gospels are first century documents.

The real question is how early in the first century they were written.

That’s what we’ll examine in this series.

The Importance of Acts

More than a century ago, the liberal German scholar Adolf von Harnack published a work titled The Date of the Acts and the Synoptic Gospels in which he considered this question.

As the title suggests, he considered the date of Acts first, the reason being that it’s easier to establish this date and then determine the dates of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) with respect to it.

Acts is important because it’s the sequel to the Gospel of Luke (Acts 1:1-2), so the date of Acts determines the latest possible date for Luke.

So . . . when was Acts written?

Its Sudden Ending

The first twelve chapters of Acts are concerned principally with St. Peter, and from chapter 13 onward, St. Paul becomes the focus of the narrative.

Beginning in chapter 21, Paul makes a fateful trip to Jerusalem, being prophetically warned along the way that if he goes there, he will be arrested. This indeed happens, and the rest of the book is taken up with the consequences of this event.

Paul spends years in custody, and in chapter 25 a turning point occurs when the new Roman governor, Porcius Festus, arrives. To avoid having the outcome of his trial affected by the hostile Jewish authorities, Paul invokes his Roman citizenship and the right to have his case tried before Caesar (the Caesar in question being Nero at this time). Festus then replies:

You have appealed to Caesar; to Caesar you shall go (Acts 25:12).

The rest of the book is taken up with the events leading up to Paul’s voyage to Rome and what happened on that trip. Acts ends in chapter 28 with Paul under house arrest in Rome, awaiting his trial. Luke simply says:

And he lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly and unhindered (Acts 28:30-31).

That’s it! We get no resolution on what happened when Paul appeared before Nero.

The Significance of the Ending

Many scholars have pointed out that the book’s abrupt ending is highly significant for when it was written.

It makes no sense, if Luke knew the outcome of the trial, for him to cut off the narrative at this point. He has been building toward this climactic event for eight chapters, and yet he doesn’t tell us what happened!

This is all the more striking, because whatever happened to Paul would have suited Luke’s purposes:

If Paul was acquitted at this trial then Luke could portray Paul and the gospel as gloriously vindicated.
If Paul was imprisoned or martyred then Luke could portray Paul as gloriously and heroically suffering for the gospel, as he has done so often in the book.

We learn from later sources that the first is actually what happened, that Paul was released and conducted a further period of ministry, only to be re-arrested and martyred after Nero found it convenient to blame Christians for the Great Fire of Rome in A.D. 64.

Yet Luke gives us neither of these endings. The only reasonable conclusion is that he didn’t do this because he couldn’t: The trial had not yet happened.

Adolf von Harnack comments:

Throughout eight whole chapters St. Luke keeps his readers intensely interested in the progress of the trial of St. Paul, simply that he may in the end completely disappoint them—they learn nothing of the final result of the trial! . . .

The more clearly we see that the trial of St. Paul, and above all his appeal to Caesar, is the chief subject of the last quarter of the Acts, the more hopeless does it appear that we can explain why the narrative breaks off as it does, otherwise than by assuming that the trial had actually not yet reached its close. It is no use to struggle against this conclusion. If St. Luke, in the year 80, 90, or 100, wrote thus he was not simply a blundering but an absolutely incomprehensible historian! (pp. 95, 97).

Harnack also points out that Luke repeatedly records prophecies of future events in Acts, yet he makes no mention of Paul’s ultimate fate:

St. Luke allows Agabus to foretell a famine, to foretell St. Paul’s imprisonment in Jerusalem; he suffers St. Paul himself (on the voyage) to foretell, like a fortune-teller, the fate of the ship and all its passengers; he in many chapters of the book deals in all kinds of “spiritual” utterances and prophecies—but not one word is said concerning the final destiny of St. Paul (and of St. Peter)! Is this natural? There are prophecies concerning events of minor importance, while there is nothing about the greatest event of all! (pp. 97-98, emphasis in original).

This further reinforces the conclusion that Acts was written before the events to which it has been building were concluded.

The Date of Acts

So in what year was Acts written? When does its narrative break off?

This is disputed by scholars. The problem is that we do not know precisely when the governor Festus arrived in Judaea.

This is the key event for determining when Paul’s voyage to Rome began and thus when his two-year period of house arrest began.

Many estimate that Festus arrived in A.D. 59, and so Paul arrived in Rome early in 60, and his house arrest lasted from 60 to 62.

However, I have done a (currently unpublished) study of the issue, and I agree with scholars such as Jack Finegan and Andrew Steinmann that Festus arrived in 57. That would mean that Paul arrived in Rome in early 58, and his house arrest lasted from 58 to 60.

I thus conclude that Acts was written in 60.

The Date of Luke

The Gospel of Luke was written before Acts, but how much before? A careful study of the end of the Gospel suggests it was not long.

This can be seen by comparing its end with the end of one of Luke’s sources—the Gospel of Mark. The original ending of Mark may have been lost, but it concludes in a way that indicates what would have happened. An angel tells the women who have come to Jesus’ tomb:

But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you (Mark 16:7; cf. 14:28).

Mark thus envisions a post-Resurrection appearance of Jesus to the disciples in Galilee. This is also what happens in Matthew (see Matt. 28:7, 10, 16-20).

However, Luke omits this reference and focuses instead on post-Resurrection appearances that occurred in Jerusalem and its vicinity (Luke 24:13-53). He makes no mention of the disciples going to Galilee. Instead, Luke records Jesus telling the disciples:

Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high (Luke 24:46-49).

Notice: Repentance is to be preached to all nations “beginning from Jerusalem” and the disciples are to “stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high.”

Although this difference has led some to see Luke as contradicting Mark and Matthew, in reality there is no conflict. The truth is that Jesus appeared to the disciples both in the vicinity of Jerusalem (John 20:19-31) and in Galilee (John 21:1-23). Luke simply focuses on the first location, while Mark and Matthew focus on the latter.

For our purposes, the question is: Why did Luke choose to end his Gospel as he did?

The obvious answer is that he was already planning what he was going to write in Acts. Thus at the beginning of the latter, he records Jesus telling the disciples:

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8).

This directly echoes the end of Luke’s Gospel:

“You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” refers to the events of Pentecost and corresponds to “stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49).
“You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” is the outline of the book of Acts and corresponds to “repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in [Christ’s] name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:47-48).

Other elements of the end of the Gospel are also recapitulated in Acts, including the Ascension (Luke 24:51// Acts 1:9-11), the disciples return to Jerusalem (Luke 24:52//Acts 1:12), and their regular worship in the temple (Luke 24:53//Acts 2:46, etc.).

The presence of these elements at the end of Luke, and particularly the way he diverges from Mark, indicates that he was already planning what he would write in Acts.

This indicates that no long period of time can have passed between the composition of Luke’s Gospel and its sequel. If years had elapsed then we wouldn’t find the Gospel ending the way it does.

I therefore estimate that Luke was finished immediately before Acts, likely in A.D. 59, and that Luke used the two-year period of Paul’s house arrest in Rome to finish gathering material for and to compose his two masterworks.

In fact, much of the material found in the first twelve chapters of Acts—which focus on Peter—as well as some of the material unique to Luke’s Gospel, likely came from interviews that Luke conducted with Peter in Rome during this period.

We thus find there are good reasons for thinking that Luke and Acts were both composed in Rome, around A.D. 59 and 60, respectively.

What can we say about the other Gospels? That’s what we will turn to next.

Jesus’ Mysterious Prophecy About the Temple

The destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70AD —
a painting by David Roberts (1796-1849).

Skeptical scholar Bart Ehrman argues that the Gospels were written between A.D. 60 and 115.

I’d put the beginning of that range a little earlier and say they were written between 50 and 115, so he and I are in general agreement on the broad time frame in which they were composed.

Where we disagree is on the part of the range in which they were written.

I think they were written toward the first part of the range, between 50 and 70.

However, like many scholars, Ehrman thinks Mark was written around 70, Matthew and Luke around 80-85, and John around 90-95.

Why does he think that?

The Destruction of the Temple

A key event used—one way or another—by virtually all scholars when dating the Gospels is the conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of its temple in A.D. 70.

The reason is that the Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—all report that Jesus repeatedly predicted this event.

Many scholars, including Ehrman, think that this suggests they were written after the event. He writes:

It is frequently noted that the earliest Gospels seem to presuppose the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and of the Jewish temple, as happened in 70 CE.

And so, for example, in Mark’s Gospel Jesus indicates that the nation of Israel will be destroyed (12:9) and that the temple will not be left standing (13:1-2).

Matthew is even more explicit: here Jesus tells a parable in which God is portrayed as burning the city and killing its inhabitants (22:8).

Luke has similar passages (e.g., 21:24).

All these passages seem to presuppose that by the time the books were written, the destruction had happened.

Is Ehrman right about this?

An Objection

Ehrman considers an important objection:

Someone may respond by saying that in these passages Jesus is predicting the destruction of the [sic] Jerusalem, not looking back on it. Fair enough!

Good for Ehrman! He deserves props for acknowledging that not every prediction is made after the fact.

Jerusalem had been invaded an conquered multiple times, and its temple had already been destroyed once (by the Babylonians).

The fear of the nation’s holiest site being destroyed again—this time to the hated Romans—was real. Others worried about it (cf. John 11:48-50), and Jesus wasn’t the only person to predict that it would happen.

In fact, he wasn’t even the only person named Jesus to predict it would happen. The Jewish historian Josephus records that in A.D. 62 a man named Jesus son of Ananus began to prophesy exactly the same thing (Jewish War 6:5:3).

So the mere fact the Gospels record the prediction doesn’t mean they were written after the event.

To show that, you’d need more.

Ehrman’s Response

So how does Ehrman argue his case? He writes:

But when is a Christian author likely to record a prediction of Jesus in order to show that he predicted something accurately?

Obviously, in order to show that Jesus knew what he was talking about, an author would want to write about these predictions only after they had been fulfilled.

Otherwise the reader would be left hanging, not knowing if Jesus was a true prophet or not.

So even if we assume that Jesus did predict such things, the fact that they are written so confidently by later authors suggests that they did so after the events – that is, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 CE.

Ehrman’s argument is seriously flawed.

It is not true that “an author would want to write about these predictions only after they had been fulfilled.”

The authors of the Gospels were all Christians, and they believed Jesus was a true prophet.

The audiences for whom the Gospels were written were also composed of Christians who believed Jesus was a true prophet.

They therefore would want to know what this prophet foretold, and the authors would want to tell them.

Important Prophecies

Space limitations constrained the size of ancient books, so an author might not be able to record everything he knew a prophet said, but he would want to at least report the prophet’s most important predictions—even if they had not yet been fulfilled.

Thus the Evangelists—and other New Testament authors—also report that Jesus is going to come again in the future.

But we’d never accept the argument that the New Testament authors would want to report predictions of the Second Coming “only after they had been fulfilled”!

Like the Second Coming, the conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple were important prophecies—important enough that they are mentioned explicitly and repeatedly in three of the Gospels (and reflected in the fourth).

They are precisely the kind of thing that the Evangelists would want to record to let Christians know what Jesus had said would be happening in the future.

A Pre-70 Evangelist’s Perspective

Suppose that you were a Christian writing a Gospel before the destruction of Jerusalem, for an audience that still has many, many Jewish Christians in it.

And suppose you know that Jesus prophesied the temple would be destroyed “in this generation.”

Do you say to yourself, “Should I record this? Nah! Nobody’s going to care about a national/religious cataclysm like that”?

Do you say, “Hmm. I better wait and see if this prophecy is fulfilled before I write about it”?

Of course not!

You tell your audience about this important, yet-to-be-fulfilled prophecy, just like you tell them about the Second Coming.

Ehrman’s argument is without merit.

On the Other Hand . . .

The fact the Gospels contain the prediction also doesn’t mean that they were written before 70.

They contain many prophecies of Jesus which were already fulfilled when they were written (e.g., “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise”; Mark 9:31).

So, like Ehrman, I also need to offer something more if I want to argue that Jesus’ prophecy about the temple was not yet fulfilled when the Gospels were written.

It so happens I’ve recently been doing a detailed, multi-angle study on just that subject.

Space limitations constrain the size of blog posts, so I can’t share anything like the full results of that study, but let me give you just one argument, in capsule form.

The Second Coming

We’ve already noted that the Gospels contain an important prediction that almost everyone agrees has not yet been fulfilled—the Second Coming of Christ.

What we haven’t previously noted is that the passages in which Jesus most extensively discusses the destruction of the temple (Matt. 24, Mark 13, Luke 21) also contain predictions of an event that looks very much like the Second Coming.

Either the Evangelists recorded prophecies of the Second Coming right next to prophecies of the destruction of the temple or they recorded prophecies of a different kind of coming in conjunction with those about the temple.

Either way, it would have been very easy for the first Gospel readers to think that Jesus predicted that the Second Coming would happen in proximity to the destruction of the temple.

That tells us something about when the Gospels were written, because if they were written after A.D. 70, the Evangelists would not want to give their audience the impression that the prophecy of the Second Coming had failed to occur on schedule, when the temple was destroyed.

Had they been writing after that event, they would have made it clear that the Second Coming was something distinct, that Jesus hadn’t said it would occur with the destruction of the temple.

We thus have good evidence that the Gospels—or at least those that explicitly contain the prophecy of the temple’s destruction (Matthew, Mark, and Luke)—were written before it was fulfilled, not after.

God Under Another Name?

A reader writes:

Old Testament scholars like Knauf and Romer make a case for YHWH being a storm god related to Qos and Edomite religion, based on a linguistic case.

If their theory was plausible and you had to accept it, how would you reconcile that with your faith? Assume that their arguments are very convincing. How would you reconcile that with orthodox theology?

Since most people aren’t very familiar with the Edomites, let me begin my response with some background . . .

Meeting the Edomites

The Edomites were a people who lived in a region to the south of Israel. The Old Testament indicates that they were related to the Israelites. Their patriarch—Edom, also known as Esau—was the brother of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. The two peoples are thus deemed as being related by blood.

Just as Jacob and Esau had a sibling rivalry, so did the peoples that descended from them, and they often found themselves in competition and conflict, though they also had a shared sense of kinship that endured.

Thus one of the criticisms of the Edomites in the book of Obadiah is that they took advantage of Israel’s distress and even raided Jerusalem, despite the fact that they were kinsmen (Obad. 10-14).

This sense of kinship indicates a shared heritage that would likely includes religious elements. Thus we find archaeological evidence of the worship of Yahweh in Edom. Bert Dicou explains:

Evidence for an old connection of YHWH with Edom can also be found in extra-biblical sources. Some inscriptions found in Kuntillet ’Ajrud, mentioning the ‘YHWH of Teman’ besides a ‘YHWH of Samaria’, may even be interpreted as suggesting that in Edom (at least, in Teman) around 800 bce (the time of the inscriptions) YHWH was worshipped, since the expression ‘YHWH of Samaria’ clearly refers to YHWH as present in his cultic centre in Samaria (Edom, Israel’s Brother and Antagonist, 179).

The Deity Qos

The major Edomite deity was named Qos, and scholars have wondered about the relationship between Qos and Yahweh. Unfortunately, the Old Testament gives us virtually no positive information, although some have tried to mount an argument from silence. Dicou explains:

A problem within the religion history of Israel and its neighbours is the puzzling absence of the most important Edomite god, Qos, in the Old Testament. Whereas the gods of the other neighbours are rejected as well as mentioned by their names, neither happens to the Edomite god or gods. . . .

This can possibly be explained by assuming that Edom’s Qos did not differ very much from Israel’s YHWH—which must have made it difficult to reject him. It has been asserted that there are important correspondences between YHWH and Edom’s god Qos (176-177).

Same God, Different Name?

One possibility is thus that Qos and Yahweh are the same God being referred to by different terms.

This would not be surprising, as in the Old Testament itself, Yahweh is referred to by multiple terms: El, Elohim, Adonai, etc.

The same is true of other deities in the Old Testament. Thus the generic term Ba’al (Hebrew, “Master”) is also called Hadad, Chemosh, etc.

We often see how the same deity could be called by different terms across linguistic barriers. Thus the Latin-speaking Romans referred to the same deity by the names of Jupiter and Jove that Greek-speakers referred to as Zeus.

Even today, language barriers result in Christians all over the world using different terms for God:

Spanish-speaking Christians refer to God as Dios
Polish-speaking Christians refer to God as Bog
German-speaking Christians refer to God as Gott
Arabic-speaking Christians refer to God as Allah
Finnish-speaking Christians refer to God as Jumala
Hungarian-speaking Christians refer to God as Isten

You get the point.

Given all this terminological diversity, it’s quite possible that the Israelites and the Edomites, at least at times, simply used different terms for the same deity.

This is all the more plausible since the Edomites didn’t speak exactly the same language as the Israelites, and even in Hebrew, God can be referred to with terms as different as El and Yahweh.

Maybe in Edomite he was Yahweh and Qos.

This would explain why Qos isn’t condemned in the Old Testament the way other foreign deities are.

Yahweh a Storm God?

The reader referred to the idea that Yahweh and Qos may have been storm gods, but we need to be careful here.

In the Old Testament, Yahweh is not presented simply as a storm god. He is the God of everything, and everything includes storms.

Storms are very powerful, and thus they make a good metaphor for divine power. It’s thus no surprise that various Old Testament books use storm imagery in connection with Yahweh.

Despite the use of storm themes in the Old Testament, the biblical writers did not conceive of Yahweh simply as a storm god.

For them, he was the everything God—the Creator of the entire world—and they also use fire themes, harvest themes, healing themes, birth themes, death themes, battle themes, and many others. But that wouldn’t let us reduce Yahweh to simply being a fire god, a harvest god, a healing god, a birth god, a death god, or a war god.

Yahweh vs. Ba’al

There’s also another reason to be careful about thinking of Yahweh as principally a storm god: When the Old Testament uses such imagery in connection with him, it is often part of a deliberate attempt to subvert Ba’al worship.

In the Canaanite pantheon, Ba’al was the storm god. In Canaanite mythology, Ba’al also famously had a conflict with the sea god, Yam, who he conquered.

During much of the Old Testament period, Israelites were tempted to worship Ba’al (and the other Canaanite deities), but the prophets make it very clear that Yahweh and Ba’al are two different deities.

That’s why—if you’ll pardon a storm-related pun—they thunderously denounce Ba’al worship.

We thus find the biblical authors using Ba’al-related imagery to subvert Ba’al worship. By using storm imagery for Yahweh, they are saying, “Ba’al isn’t the true lord of the storm; Yahweh is.”

Similarly, the biblical authors subvert Ba’al worship when they make it clear that it was actually Yahweh who set the boundaries of the sea (Job 38:10-11, Prov. 8:29, Psa. 104:9, Jer. 5:22)—the Hebrew word for which is also yam.

We thus have to be careful that we recognize what the biblical authors are doing with storm imagery and not simply reduce Yahweh to being a storm god.

Revelation, Loss, and Clarification

The Bible depicts God and man as experiencing an original unity. This implies that God revealed himself to us at the dawn of our race.

However, as the Old Testament makes clear, our knowledge of God became disfigured by sin, and the worship of other gods was introduced.

The disfigurement became so bad that, prior to the time of Abraham, the ancestors of the Israelites worshipped the Mesopotamian deities (Josh. 24:2, 14-15).

But God began to rebuild knowledge of himself by calling Abraham and giving him new revelation. This knowledge was further clarified with the revelation given to Moses, and later through the prophets and other biblical writers.

We thus see a process whereby the original knowledge of God was largely lost, but God began to reintroduce knowledge of who he was and thus clarify our understanding of him.

This process was gradual and messy. At first, many of God’s people worshipped other deities in addition to him (Gen. 31:34-35, Lev. 17:7, Josh. 24:14). This continued even after God brought the Israelites into the promised land.

But through the prophets’ repeated calls, God made it clear to the Israelites that this must stop, and by the end of the Babylonian Exile, the practice was definitively ended.

Avoiding Overreach

One of the difficulties that scholars have in piecing together how this process worked is the small amount of information we have about this period in history.

Aside from the Old Testament, we have little literature about Israel and its immediate neighbors (Edom, Moab, Midian, etc.), and the Old Testament does not give us a great deal of information about many of these questions.

As a result, scholars are often left to simply guess at many issues pertaining to these early periods.

For example, one scholar (M. Rose) has proposed that Qos was not the same deity as Yahweh, and his worship was introduced only later. Dicou explains:

Rose maintains that only in later times, namely the eighth or seventh centuries bce, did the god Qos, of Arabian origin, come to be known in Edom. Nothing is known about the god who was worshipped before Qos, but it is not unlikely that it was the same god as the one of the Israelites, namely, ‘YHW’ (178).

In other words, the Edomites may have originally worshipped Yahweh, but later Qos was introduced and became their most popular deity.

How would that transition have happened? We don’t know.

Would it even have been clear to the Edomites from the beginning that Yahweh and Qos were different deities? We don’t know that either.

Scholars of religion have noted that there can sometimes be confusion about the identity or non-identity of deities, and it can go back and forth.

Sometimes—for some worshippers—Deity X will be regarded as the same as Deity Y. But other times—for other worshippers—Deity X and Deity Y will be clearly distinct.

Thus in different streams of Hinduism, the deities are sometimes considered to be separate, but in other streams they are all considered aspects of a single, ultimate God.

Closer to home, the God of the Bible was regarded by the first Christians as one, but heretics like Marcion and the Gnostics came to think of the God of the Old Testament as a fundamentally different being than the God of the New Testament.

A modern example of the same phenomenon can be seen in the fact that many Christians today are willing to acknowledge that God is also worshipped by Jews and Muslims, even if they have an incomplete or partially erroneous understanding of him. But others will vigorously deny that Muslims worship the same God as Christians.

The same phenomenon happened in the ancient world. Not everybody had the same understanding of whether this god was the same as that god.

Therefore, some Edomites may have understood Yahweh and Qos to be the same, but others may have disagreed, and the popularity of the two viewpoints may have gone back and forth over time.

We just don’t know.

This is why we have to be careful to avoid overreach—to avoid going beyond what the evidence allows us to say with confidence.

Scholars may legitimately speculate about how the identification or non-identification of various gods developed over time, precisely how the worship of these gods arose and when, etc., however we must always bear in mind that these are just speculations.

The truth is that we don’t have the evidence we would need to be sure.

“Not Without Witness”

Although the biblical evidence—as well as the archaeological record—makes it clear that man’s knowledge of the Creator was strongly disfigured, the New Testament establishes the principle that he did not leave himself without witness.

In Acts, Paul explains that he did so at least through the creation itself:

In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways;yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness (Acts 14:16-17).

He makes a similar point in Romans:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made (Rom. 1:19-20).

And thus people in various cultures have reasoned their way to the existence of the Creator. This included figures in polytheistic Greece, some of whom Paul quotes:

Yet he is not far from each one of us, for “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your poets have said, “For we are indeed his offspring” (Acts 17:27-28).

If God cared enough to make it possible for us to always learn about him through creation—what is sometimes called “general revelation”—then it is reasonable to suppose that he also always continued to give “special revelation”—that is knowledge about him disclosed through visions, prophecies, etc.

This would apply even in the dark times before Abraham and Moses and even in communities other than Israel.

Thus we find figures like the Jebusite king Melchizedek, who “was priest of God Most High” (Gen. 14:18), the Midianite priest Jethro, who rejoiced at what God did for Israel under Moses (Exod. 18:9-12), and the Mesopotamian prophet Balaam, who prophesied for Yahweh (Num. 22:8-24:25).

We thus see a knowledge and worship of the true God outside of Israel in these early times.

At our remote date, we cannot know the details of this knowledge and worship. It may have—and in fact almost certainly was—partial and at times confused, for that is what we see within Israel itself, as the struggles of the prophets indicate.

However, we can say that God always preserved a knowledge of himself, however dimly he was understood in a particular age, and however hybridized his worship came to be with pagan ideas.

We may be thankful that he did lead the Israelites along the path he did, that he did restore knowledge of himself, that he did clear away pagan confusions, and that he finally gave us the full revelation of himself in Jesus Christ, his Son.

Summary

With the above as background, I would offer a short summary of the response to the reader’s initial query as follows:

The speculations about Yahweh and Qos being storm gods who were related is, in fact, not at all certain.
However, even if it could be proved, there are a number of ways to square this with an orthodox Christian understanding:
- Yahweh and Qos may well have been the same deity being worshipped under two names.
- Yahweh may have been the earlier deity and Qos only introduced later.
- God has always preserved knowledge of himself in the world. Even though it has been partial and overlaid with misunderstandings, God eventually clarified it and gave us his definitive revelation through his Son.

What Every Catholic Should Know About Obadiah

A Short Book

Obadiah is only 21 verses long, which makes it the shortest book of the Old Testament.

Because it’s so short, it doesn’t contain as much data as other books, and that means we have less to work with when answering important questions about it, like who wrote it and when.

As a result, scholars have taken a wide variety of positions on the book, and the debate has been vigorous.

The Author

Obadiah doesn’t tell us anything about its author except his name, and even that is uncertain, because vowels can be added to the Hebrew letters in more than one way, so that it either means “Worshipper of Yahweh” or “Servant of Yahweh.”

Obadiah was a very common name in the Old Testament, and scholars think that the Obadiah who wrote the book is not mentioned elsewhere. We know him only from his own book.

He apparently was a prophet from the southern kingdom of Judah, for reasons we are just about to see.

What Is This Book About?

Obadiah consists of a single, sustained prophecy of God’s coming judgment on the nation of Edom for its wrongs against Judah.

Edom was a kindred nation to Israel. The latter was descended from the patriarch Jacob (akaIsrael), while the former was descended from his brother Esau (aka Edom).

The sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau are reflected in the subsequent history of the nations that sprang from them, and they were often hostile toward each other—a hostility made more bitter by the fact they regarded each other as kindred.

At one point, King David conquered them (2 Sam. 8:14), but they later rebelled (2 Kings 8:22).

The Edomites lived in a mountainous hill country to the south of Israel. But, in the 400s B.C., another people—the Nabateans—invaded their territory and pushed them west (this will be important later).

When Alexander the Great conquered the area, the name Edom was Hellenized to become Idumea.

Relation to Other Books

In the Hebrew Bible, Obadiah is part of the collected edition known as The Twelve (i.e., the 12 minor prophets).

At some point, someone selected these 12 short works and put them together to form a whole.

The number 12 in this case is significant: The compiler likely picked these 12 books out of a larger body of prophetic writings in order to reflect the 12 tribes of Israel, and thus a kind of wholeness.

The Twelve—in a certain way—stand for the whole of the prophetic tradition, or at least the whole of the lesser prophets God sent to his people.

There are also clear links between Obadiah and other books. It contains passages which clearly echo things said in other prophetic books.

This could mean:

Obadiah is quoting from one or more other prophets (making his ministry later than theirs)
Other prophets are quoting from Obadiah (making his ministry earlier than theirs)
The prophets are quoting from a common (lost) prophetic tradition
God revealed the same thing more than once

Each of these is possible, and the parallel passages have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

In doing so, the passages that show the greatest degree of verbal similarity are most likely taken to indicate some form of literary dependence. If the similarities of wording and structure of the parallels are extensive, it suggests option 1 or 2.

The most significant parallel is between Obadiah 1-9 and Jeremiah 49:7-16. The two passages extensively share themes and wording, suggesting that one author is writing with direct knowledge of the other.

But who’s cribbing? Is Obadiah copying Jeremiah or the other way around?

Various factors, which we will cover below, suggest that Jeremiah is the earlier text, and Obadiah is writing in light of it.

Date

The date of the book is highly debated, with some scholars placing it as early as the ninth century B.C. (i.e., the 800s) and as late as the fourth century B.C. (i.e., the 300s).

Both of these extremes are unlikely, and we will look at the date of the book further as we proceed.

The Prophecy Begins (v. 1)

The book begins as follows:

The vision of Obadiah.

Thus says the Lord GOD concerning Edom:

We have heard tidings from the Lord, and a messenger has been sent among the nations: “Rise up! let us rise against her [i.e., Edom] for battle!”

The opening phrase—“the vision of Obadiah”—could mean that Obadiah only had this one vision or that this was the most significant vision of his ministry.

The latter possibility seems more likely since, if Obadiah only had a single vision in his whole career as a prophet, it would be less likely that this vision would become well-known enough to stand out against other revelations of the time and be included in The Twelve.

There were many minor prophets in this historical period—including many mentioned in Scripture whose works were not included in the Bible—and the fact Obadiah achieved such high status suggests that the prophet in question had a more substantial career, even if this was his principal (or only) literary work.

What we have is thus Obadiah’s most important vision, and possibly the only one that was ever committed to writing.

In Obadiah, God announces a coming judgment: A coalition from “among the nations” will rise up to do battle against Edom.

Taking the verse in a straightforward sense, word has already spread that the nations are gathering against Edom (“we have heard . . . a messenger has been sent among the nations”).

This suggests that the book was written after the attack (or preparations for it) were in motion but before its final outcome was accomplished.

The Predicted Outcome (v. 2)

The next verses announces what the outcome of the invasion will be: God will make Edom “small among the nations” with the result that it “shall be utterly despised.”

Smallness can be understood in terms of numerical size (depopulation), loss of influence (economic or political), or both.

In the ancient world, loss of these forms of status resulted in contempt. Numerically large, economically powerful, and politically influential nations despised numerically small, economically weak and politically impotent ones.

Edom’s Self-Deception (vv. 3-4).

God now reveals the arrogant self-deception that accompanies Edom’s fall.

The Edomites have prided themselves on the natural defenses their homeland has: They “live in the clefts of the rock” and their “dwelling is high.”

Having the high ground has always been a military advantage, which is why fortresses are often built on hills and why defensive structures are built with high walls: It is easier to project force down onto an attacker than up onto a target.

Various cities in Edom also could only be reached through narrow, winding passes with stone walls on both sides (i.e., “the clefts of the rock”). (There is also a mocking pun here; the Hebrew word for “rock”—sela‘—sounds like the name of the Edomite capital city, Sela. More puns will follow.)

In view of the inaccessible heights they occupied, the Edomites thus reasoned, “Who will bring me down to the ground?”

The answer is: Yahweh will. In fact, he had done so before, when David conquered the Edomites, so their homeland is not an impregnable fortress.

The prophet thus declares, poetically, “Though you soar aloft like the eagle, though your nest is set among the stars, then I will bring you down, says the Lord” (v. 4).

Edom’s Treasures Lost (vv. 5-6)

Obadiah describes the extent of the economic devastation that Edom will suffer by making two comparisons.

First, he notes that if thieves or plunderers suddenly strike a location, they will only steal what they can carry off with them.

Second, he notes that when grape gatherers harvest a vineyard, they inevitably leave behind some of the fruit.

By contrast, those who attack Edom will defeat it so thoroughly that they have time to make a thorough search for anything valuable. Edom’s treasures will be “sought out” and carted off, leaving the natives destitute.

Betrayed by Allies (v. 7)

In the ancient world, alliances could change suddenly, and this has happened to Edom.

The prophet declares how the nation’s own allies have deceived it and set a trap for it—something which they had not expected and which seemed to make no sense to the Edomites (“there is no understanding of it”).

This surprise reversal of affairs thus brings about a bitter defeat for the Edomites as their former confederates prevail against them.

The Wise and the Mighty Destroyed (vv. 8-9)

God indicates that “on that day” (i.e., when Edom is attacked and defeated), he will “destroy the wise men out of Edom”—a phrase which is poetically paralleled with the statement that he will destroy “understanding out of Mount Esau.”

“Mount Esau” is more wordplay. There was a famous mountain in Edomite territory known as Mount Seir (Gen. 36:8-9, Ezek. 35:2-3), and the prophet has rearranged the first two Hebrew letters of “Seir” (sin and ayin) to make it “Esau,” the patriarch from whom the Edomites descended.

Edomites had a reputation for being wise (cf. Jer. 49:7), and the loss of their wise men would be bitterly ironic.

The fundamental message here is that Edom’s wisemen—i.e., its leaders—will be killed, resulting in its army being “decapitated” in modern terms. As a result of this loss of leadership, its army will be disorganized and its mighty men “shall be dismayed” and will be “cut off by slaughter.” The death of the wise thus leads to the death of the mighty.

This passage invokes “Teman,” who was originally a grandson of Esau (Gen. 36:10-11). However by Obadiah’s time, his name had been given to either a city or a region within Edom (Ezek. 25:13, Amos 1:12).

The Cause Revealed (vv. 10-14)

The prophet now reveals the cause of Edom’s misfortunes: They are being betrayed by their allies because they first betrayed their own kinsmen in Judah. Calamity is coming upon them “for the violence done to your brother Jacob” (v. 10).

Obadiah speaks of an earlier time when strangers carried off Jacob’s wealth and entered Jerusalem’s gates. This is a probable reference to the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. Instead of acting like kinsmen on that day, the Edomites refused to help and acted like foreigners (v. 11).

Worse, they undertook a series of positively hostile actions toward their Judahite kinsmen. In the day of Jacob’s calamity, the Edomites gloated, rejoiced and boasted (v. 12), they entered Jacob’s gates and looted (v. 13), and they stood at the crossroads to “cut off” (intercept? kill?) Judahite fugitives and “deliver up” those who survived the Babylonian assault (v. 14).

Precisely what is meant by the reference to Edomites entering Jacob’s gates and looting is unclear. Edom did not have the power to overcome Jerusalem by itself, which is why their allies (the Babylonians) are presented as the active agents in the siege of Jerusalem.

Consequently, some have proposed (1) that the Edomites assisted the Babylonians with the siege or (2) that they entered and looted after the Babylonians were finished with their own looting or (3) that they attacked and looted other Jewish settlements but not Jerusalem itself.

Judgment on the Nations (vv. 15-16)

Obadiah announces that “the day of the Lord is near upon all the nations.”

In the New Testament, the phrase “the day of the Lord” is associated with the end of the world (cf. 1 Cor. 5:5, 2 Cor. 1:14, 2 Pet. 3:10, etc.). However, in the Old Testament it has a much wider range of usage.

Most fundamentally, “the day of the Lord” refers to a time when Yahweh decisively intervenes in the affairs of men—either to carry out a blessing or a curse.

Notice that the day of the Lord in this case is said to be “near” and “upon all the nations.” In other words: God will soon mete out justice to the nations that have harmed Judah.

Obadiah thus declares to the nations, “As you have done, it shall be done to you, your deeds shall return on your own head.”

He then uses the metaphorical image of drinking both to signify what the nations have done wrong and how judgment shall be brought upon them. He first alludes to how the nations “have drunk upon my holy mountain” (i.e., Mount Zion in Jerusalem) and predicts that they will drink further: “all the nations round about shall drink.”

This continued drinking shall become the means of their own punishment, for “they shall drink, and stagger, and shall be as though they had not been.” The image is of a person who starts drinking and proceeds to get so drunk that he passes out and dies.

What does the image of drinking signify in this passage? It could be violence: The nations indulged in violence on Mount Zion, and they will keep indulging in violence until they are overcome by it. In that case, the thought would essentially mirror Jesus’ warning that those who live by the sword will die by the sword (Matt. 26:52).

However, there is another possibility. Drinking is also used as a metaphor for judgment, and the thought here may be that the nations executed judgment on Judah for its sins, but now they will experience judgment for their own sins.

This may reflect a thought elsewhere in the minor prophets—that God was only a little angry with his people and that the nations he used to punish them went too far and sinned by inflicting too much damage (Zech. 1:15).

Mount Zion Restored (vv. 17)

Although the nations will experience violent destruction, God assures his people that “in Mount Zion there shall be those that escape”—a surviving remnant will be left.

Furthermore Mount Zion “shall be holy”—a prediction of the restoration of the Temple.

And God’s people will reclaim their homeland, for “the house of Jacob shall possess their own possessions.”

Here “the house of Jacob” could be restricted just to the southern kingdom of Judah or it could refer to the entire family of Jacob, including Judah along with the northern kingdom of Israel.

Israel’s Military Might (v. 18)

Here we are told that the house of Jacob will be a fire and the house of Joseph a flame.

Joseph was one of Jacob’s most prominent sons and the patriarch of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, who were dominant in the northern kingdom of Israel. “The house of Joseph” thus refers to the northern kingdom.

In contrast, “the house of Jacob” could be used either to refer to the southern kingdom or to both kingdoms. Regardless of whether “the house of Jacob” is here used in the more restrictive sense, both kingdoms are clearly under discussion.

The fact they are said to be fire and flame indicate that they will have military might and will be used to punish the Edomites for their transgressions, for “they shall burn them and consume them.”

Obadiah then concludes that—in contrasts to the houses of Jacob and Joseph—“there shall be no survivor to the house of Esau.”

This is a case of hyperbole. Edom will not be fully destroyed, for the prophecy began merely by saying that Edom will be made small (v. 2), and it will end by saying that God’s people will end up ruling Mount Esau (v. 21).

Territorial Expansion (vv. 19-20)

Obadiah now covers in more detail the people’s recovery of their land predicted in v. 17. To understand this, we need to grasp several geographical terms:

The Negeb: A desert region in the south of Israel, near Edom.
The Shephelah: A lowland or foothills region bordering the land of the Philistines.
The land of the Philistines: Part of the coast of Israel that had been conquered by the invading sea people, the Philistines.
The land of Ephraim: Specifically, the territory of the tribe of Ephraim, but more generally the whole of the northern kingdom of Israel.
The land of Samaria: Another way of referring to the northern kingdom, which had Samaria as its capital city.
Gilead: A region on the east side of the Jordan river, originally occupied by the Hebrew tribes of Manasseh, Reuben and Gad.
Halah: A region in Assyria where some Israelites had been deported (2 Kings 17:6).
Phoenicia (lit., “Canaan up to Zarephath”): A coastal region to the north of Israel.
Zarephath: A city in the southern part of Phoenician territory, between Tyre and Sidon. This territory was within the ideal limits of the tribe of Asher’s territory (Josh. 19:24-29).
Sepharad: Most likely, a Median city where some Hebrews had been deported, though also possibly Sardis in Asia Minor.

With these terms in mind, we can understand how Obadiah describes God’s people reclaiming their land.

Jews who have been forced to live in the Negeb desert will come to control Edomite territory (“Mount Esau”), while those in the Shephelah lowland will recapture the territory taken by the Philistines, as well as the rest of the territory of the northern kingdom (the land of Ephraim/Samaria).

Scholars have generally thought that the last part of v. 19 contains a textual corruption. Benjamin was a tribe in the southern kingdom of Judah and had no historic claim on Gilead.

Hypothetically, this could indicate an expansion into new territory, but most interpreters have seen it differently and proposed alternate readings. One suggestion is that it refers to the retaking of parts of both Benjamin’s traditional territory and Gilead (Douglas Stuart, Word Biblical Commentary at v. 19). There are also other suggestions.

The beginning of v. 20 is understood in different ways. In the RSV, it speaks of “the exiles in Halah who are of the people of Israel” taking territory that rightfully belonged to Asher (Phoenicia as far as Zarephath).

However, the Hebrew of this verse is notoriously hard to translate, and others render the verse differently. One alternative is “the exiles in this army who are of the people of Israel.”

Either way, the first half of the verse refers to returning exiles from the northern kingdom retaking land that is rightfully theirs. By contrast, the second half of the verse speaks of returning exiles from the southern kingdom doing the same thing.

Thus it says that “the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad” will take the cities in the Negeb.

In this effort, God’s people are retaking land that is properly theirs—and that was once part of their land in David’s time.

The one possible exception is the reference to the inhabitants of the Negeb taking “Mount Esau”—i.e., Mount Seir. The status of Judah’s claim to this territory is unclear.

On the one hand, Deuteronomy 2:4-5 assigns Mount Seir to the Edomites as their rightful territory. On the other hand, Judah’s ideal border is said to extend to Mount Seir (Josh. 15:10).

Balaam also prophesied that Israel would dispossess Seir (Num. 24:17), and the principle of retributive justice is in play here: Edom took Judean territory, so Judah can legitimately take Edomite territory.

It also should be pointed out that the reference to the Judeans “possessing” Mount Esau does not necessarily mean annexing it to their territory. The Hebrew verb (yarash) has a variety of meanings, and it could simply refer to having military victory over it or reducing it to the status of a client state.

The Kingdom Shall Be the Lord’s (v. 21)

The final verse of the book refers to a group of people who “shall go up to Mount Zion.”

In many translations, this group of people are described as “saviors” or “deliverers”—the idea being that they are mighty men through whom God provides deliverance from enemies.

However, other translations describe this group as “those who have been saved.”

Both groups have been mentioned before, with mighty military men being in focus in vv. 18-20 and with surviving exiles mentioned in vv. 17 and 20.

Whichever way the verse should be translated, it says that this group will “go up to Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau”—i.e., the Edomites will become subject to God’s people.

The book concludes with the affirmation that “the kingdom shall be the Lord’s”—that is, God will be in control of all, and his people can look forward to his just and merciful reign.

Dating the Book of Obadiah

Now that we have reviewed the contents of Obadiah, we are in a better position to address the controversial question of its date.

While we can’t be certain on this issue and other dates—both earlier and later are possible—the following seems to be the most reasonable option.

The earliest possible date for the work is the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. Obadiah speaks of there being exiles from both Israel and Jerusalem (v. 20), indicating that it took place after the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 723 B.C. and the Babylonian conquests of Jerusalem in 605 and 597 B.C.

The latter conquests are the only ones in which the Edomites are known to have played a role (see Psa. 137:7, Lam. 4:18-22, Ezek. 25:12-14, 35:5, 15; cf. 1 Esd. 4:45).

The latest possible date for the book would be the betrayal and conquest of Edom by its allies (vv. 1, 7), and in particular by the Babylonians.

This event is not recorded in the Bible but it is found in Babylonian records, which indicate that the last full king of Babylon—Nabonidus—undertook a military expedition against Edom in late 553 B.C (see Paul Raabe, Anchor Yale Bible: Obadiah, 54-55).

The probable date for Obadiah is thus sometime between 597 and 553 B.C.—and probably closer to the latter date since v. 1 seems to indicate that the campaign against Edom is already in preparation.

Obadiah thus seems to be later than the prophecy of Jeremiah, who ceased prophesying shortly after the conquest of Jerusalem in 597 B.C.

The Fulfillment of Obadiah’s Prophecies

Beyond the betrayal of Edom by its former allies, Obadiah also predicts:

the day of the Lord to repay the nations for their misdeeds (v. 15)
that exiles of Israel and Judah will return (v. 20),
that they will reclaim their former territories (vv. 17-19)
that they will defeat and of Edom (v. 18, 21).

The Day of the Lord

The first of these is often taken to be a reference to an eschatological event, where God metes judgment to all the nations all at once, but this is an unnecessary supposition.

Given its context, the passage is most naturally understood to mean that whenever a nation commits wrongs (and in particular, against God’s people), the Lord will soon bring them to justice—a phenomenon we see played out repeatedly in Scripture.

The Return of the Exiles

The exiles of Judah began to return in the 530s B.C., during the reign of Cyrus the Persian (2 Chr. 36:22-23, Ezr. 1:1-11).

The return of exiles from Israel requires more study to document:

We do have indications that many natives of the northern kingdom remained in their land at the time of the Assyrian Captivity (Amos 5:1-3, cf. 2 Chron. 34:1-6). This is to be expected since no deportation is likely to completely depopulate a land, especially in the less-efficient ancient world. Almost certainly, any deportation would involve removing the citizens with higher social status while leaving behind the small and the weak (cf. 2 Kings 24:14).
We also have indications that, later on, God’s people included members who were descended from the northern tribes (Luke 2:36), and that the overall community regarded itself as still having 12 tribes (Acts 26:7, Jas. 1:1).

While the Bible documents that there were Israelites still living in Palestine after the fall of the northern kingdom, it is harder to document a return of some of these exiles.

Nevertheless, the Chronicler speaks of the time when—after “Judah was taken into exile in Babylon because of their unfaithfulness”—the exiles began “to dwell again in their possessions in their cities,” and he remarks that “some of the people of Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh dwelt in Jerusalem” (1 Chron. 9:1-3; cf. Ezra 6:17, 8:35). Ephraim and Manasseh were two of the northern tribes, and they were so prominent among them this passage likely uses them as symbols of the entire northern confederation.

Josephus also mentions a return of northerners. First, he records that members of these northern tribes were living in Media (Jewish Antiquities 9:14:1[278-279]). He later recounts the letter in Cyrus’s successor Xerxes (aka Artaxerxes, Ahasuerus) commissioned the scribe Ezra to take others and return to Jerusalem (Ezra 7). Josephus notes that Ezra had this letter read to his coreligionists in Media and that, although the majority stayed there, “many” rejoiced at the prospect of returning to their homeland and did so, coming first to Babylon to join Ezra’s company of returnees (Jewish Antiquities 11:5:2[132-133]). He thus records a body of Israelites returning with the Judahites at the time of Ezra.

We also know of later travel by Median Israelites to Judah and Jerusalem. Indeed, it was common in the Second Temple period for pilgrims from Media to come to Jerusalem for the festivals (cf. Acts 2:9). Some of these travelers undoubtedly would have decided to resettle in their homeland.

Returns of these kinds may be seen as fulfilling Obadiah’s and the other prophets’ predictions of Israelite exiles returning. (For more on the status of these tribes, see Richard Bauckham, Gospel Women, ch. 4).

Reclaiming the Territories

This occurred over a period of time as exiles came back to the land, and it culminated after the Maccabees began their rebellion, which threw off foreign government and re-established an independent Jewish state.

For example, Gilead was conquered by Judah Maccabee (1 Macc. 5:24-52), and the land of the Philistines was included in the coastal area given to Simon Maccabee to govern (1 Macc. 11:59).

Judgment on Edom

This judgment received at least a partial fulfillment in the time of Judah Maccabee, who defeated “the sons of Esau in Idumea” (1 Macc. 5:3).

There was a complete conquest of the Edomites in 125 B.C. by the Jewish ruler John Hyrcanus, who then required them to convert to Judaism or leave their land. They chose the former (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 13:9:1[257-258]). This is why Herod the Great—an Idumean—could become the king of the Jews in Jesus’ time.

New Testament and Christological Significance

The book of Obadiah is so short that it is not quoted in the New Testament, and the fact its prophecies are so specific to Edom means that their literal fulfillment lies in the past.

However, with regard to the spiritual sense of the text, various interpreters have seen Edom as a symbol of evil and have thus understood the book as containing a typological prophecy of the ultimate defeat of evil.

In particular, the statement in the book’s final verse that “the kingdom shall be the Lord’s” has been taken as a prophecy of the Lord’s ultimate conquest of all evil in the final kingdom of Christ.

Would It Matter If We’re Living in a Simulation?

A reader writes:

My good sir, a baptized Catholic who is away from the Faith asked me at work this week: “How do we know we are not living in a computer simulation? What is wrong with Elon Musk’s simulation hypothesis?” What do I say in reply?

What the Simulation Hypothesis Is

Currently we use computers to run simulations of many different kinds of scenarios. For example, physicists use them to run simulations of how different kinds of subatomic particles interact.

The basic idea of the simulation hypothesis is that as computers get better and better, we will be able to run better and better simulations, and one day we could arrive at a stage where computers would allow us to run detailed simulations of the natural world as we experience it.

We might then choose to run simulations about the past and learn about what our ancestors did. Or we might run simulations just for fun, like a supercomplex, universe-sized Tamagotchi toy.

We might, in fact, run many, many simulations. Or if we don’t, aliens on other planets might.

If a very large number of simulations exists, each of which is indistinguishable from the natural world as we experience it, then how do we know we aren’t living in such a simulation?

This idea—as far out as it may sound—is being seriously entertained by some philosophers and scientists.

It’s essentially a modern variant of an ancient question: How do we know that the world we experience is as it seems? Could reality actually be very different?

Bostrom’s Trilemma

As Wikipedia explains, in 2003 the philosopher Nick Bostrom published a paper in which he argued that one of three propositions is very likely to be true:

“The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (that is, one capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero,” or
“The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero,” or
“The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.”

Bostrom himself does not consider any of these three to be especially more likely than the others, but some have definite preferences.

Option 3 is favored by industrialist Elon Musk, who has said that the thinks the odds are billions to one in favor of us living in a simulation, while astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson has put the odds of us living in a simulation around 50/50 (source).

Others have put the odds vastly lower.

Some Objections

Option 1 has been favored by those who have argued that there are insurmountable physical limits to the kinds of computers that can be built even by an advanced civilization, and these would prevent the kind of detailed simulations needed.

One might support Option 2 by arguing that any advanced civilization capable of creating such simulations would have progressed past the point of needing them—either for research or entertainment purposes (an electric wire connected directly to the pleasure center of the brain would be vastly more entertaining, just like Tamagotchi toys proved to be much less entertaining than other options we have).

Some have also challenged the whole trilemma—for example, by noting that we experience consciousness, but patterns of information in a computer do not. The fact of our consciousness means that we are not living in a simulation.

In other words, “the faction of all people with our kind of experiences”—i.e., consciousness—would be exactly zero (Option 3 is false), and computers cannot simulate experiences of our kind (making the kind of ancestor-simulations envisioned in Options 1 and 2 impossible).

And there are other objections, yet.

The simulation hypothesis is thus far from established. However, let’s consider what the implications for the Christian Faith would be if it were true.

The Christian Worldview

The Christian worldview contains three essential elements that are relevant to our discussion, and they are encapsulated in the Creed, when we profess our faith in “God . . . maker of heaven and earth”:

God, the infinitely perfect Creator of everything is obviously essential to the Christian worldview.
“Heaven”—i.e., the spiritual world which includes our souls, is also essential.
“Earth”—i.e., the natural world as we experience it, is the final component.

What would we conclude about these three if the simulation hypothesis were true?

The Existence of God

Philosophical arguments prove that there is an infinitely perfect Creator outside of all Creation. Therefore, God exists.

The simulation hypothesis does not affect the existence of God. Even if we’re living in a computer simulation, that simulation exists within a computer somewhere in a higher universe.

That universe might itself be a simulation, so you could posit any number of worlds within worlds that you might like.

It doesn’t matter, for eventually there would be some final, created world (or set of worlds in the case of a multiverse) containing the computer(s) that run all the simulations.

That final world (or worlds) still needs an explanation, and that explanation is God.

The Physical World

People have wondered for a long time about the nature of the physical world that we live in.

According to the classical element theory, the natural world was made of four (or five) elements: air, earth, fire, and water (and maybe ether).

According to the modern atomic theory of matter, the natural world is made of patterns of subatomic particles that form atoms.

According to the simulation theory, the natural world is made of patterns of information that exist in some unknown computer medium that form simulations of atoms.

Either way, the natural world we live in exists. It’s just a question of what its fundamental components are—whether subatomic particles or patterns of information.

The fundamental nature of our world is an interesting subject, but it doesn’t change anything from a religious perspective. The natural world still exists. Whether it’s made of four/five elements, subatomic particles, or patterns of information, it’s still real.

So, the only thing the simulation theory would do is add at least one additional layer to creation—i.e., the layer containing the computer in which our natural world exists.

The Spiritual World

That leaves us with the question of the human soul and the larger spiritual world.

A key point of evidence for this is our subjective experience of consciousness. Although one can assert that consciousness is explained by subatomic particles (as materialists would) or by patterns of information in a computer medium (as simulationists would), one cannot prove this.

In fact, we have no scientific hypothesis at all explaining how consciousness could arise from these things. That is, nobody has produced a testable hypothesis that would account for how non-living things like subatomic particles or information could give rise to consciousness.

This is known in scientific and philosophical circles as “the hard problem of consciousness.”

Yet our consciousness remains as a brute fact that is unexplainable in scientific terms.

One is therefore entitled to set aside assertions that consciousness arises from physical phenomena and propose what our experience indicates—that there is something non-physical (a soul) that, however closely it interacts with our bodies, is responsible for consciousness.

The simulation hypothesis can’t explain this any better than the atomic theory of matter does. Therefore, the simulation hypothesis changes nothing with respect to the third component of the Christian worldview—the soul.

If the atomic theory is true, then our souls interact with the patterns of subatomic particles that form the base layer of the natural world.

If the simulation hypothesis is true, then our souls interact with the patterns of information simulating our bodies in the computer system that resides in the base layer of reality.

If one finds it implausible that souls would interact with such data patterns, that would give you reason to reject the idea that we’re living in a simulation, but it wouldn’t give you reason to reject either the existence of the soul or the existence of a natural world.

The End of the World

The Christian Faith holds that, at some point, the physical world in which we live will be renovated and replaced by a “New Earth,” where we will have a place for all eternity.

The simulation hypothesis would not prevent this. If our present physical world is a simulation, God might put us in a new, similar world—or he might put us in a base level reality and have our souls interact with that. Ultimately, that’s up to him.

Either way, whether the present world we experience is a simulation or a base reality doesn’t matter. The Creator who exists outside the entire created world—however many levels it may contain—has made contact with us, here, and told us that one day we will live in a new world.

The nature of that world is in his hands, as it has always been.

Conclusion

I thus don’t see how the simulation theory changes anything from a faith perspective. We still have the same three elements—God, the spiritual world, and the natural world—and all three interact.

The natural world used to be explained by the classical element theory, it is presently explained by the atomic theory, and if we ever get actual, robust scientific evidence that we’re living in a simulation then it would be explained by the simulation theory.

But all these theories do is shed varying degrees of light on the nature of the physical world as we experience it. They don’t change anything from a religious perspective.

Learning that the physical world as we experience it is contained in a larger, meta-world would be interesting, but it doesn’t alter the need for us to have a right relationship with the Creator, who is responsible for both the spiritual and the natural world—whatever the specific components or structure of the latter turns out to be.

Neither does the simulation hypothesis stop us from needing to live our lives in the world as we find it.

I’d note that it certainly hasn’t stopped Elon Musk from living his life as an entrepreneur and industrialist and undertaking all kinds of projects.

It hasn’t caused him an existential crisis, and neither should it us.

Did God Punish Jesus on the Cross?

Penal substitution is a theory of the atonement that says God literally punished Jesus on the Cross.

This theory is problematic because one cannot justly punish an innocent person, and Jesus was innocent. Therefore, for God to literally punish him would be unjust.

In a previous post, I discussed how this view relates to other theories of the atonement. In this post, we’ll take a look at a proposed basis in Scripture for penal substitution.

A Scriptural Basis?

Advocates of penal substitution frequently appeal to the Suffering Servant described in Isaiah 52 and 53.

The Suffering Servant passage is one of a number of places in Isaiah that describes a significant servant of God, and it seems this passage offers the best chance of providing a basis for penal substitution.

From the beginning, Christians have understood this passage as a messianic prophecy, and the New Testament authors apply various parts of it to Jesus (cf. Matt. 8:17, Luke 22:37, John 12:38, Acts 8:32-33, Rom. 8:36, 10:16, 1 Pet. 2:24-25).

This makes it clear that the Suffering Servant passage is a messianic prophecy, but it doesn’t mean that it applies only to Christ.

The Original Suffering servant

As I discuss in another post, the literal sense of many Old Testament prophecies applies to something during or near the lifetime of the original prophet, and they then have a further fulfillment in Christ as part of the spiritual sense.

We therefore need to examine the Suffering Servant passage in its original context first, before proceeding to apply it to Christ, and this we did in a post on the original Suffering Servant.

There we explored several possibilities about who the original Suffering Servant may have been. Proposals have included the prophet himself, one of the Gentile leaders who supported the return of the Jewish people to their land, and the Jewish governor Zerubbabel, who oversaw efforts to rebuild the temple.

However, at least eight passages in Isaiah (41:8-9, 44:1-2, 21 [2 references], 45:4, 48:20, and 49:3) identify the whole nation of Israel as God’s servant, and so we focused primarily on the idea that Israel was the original Suffering Servant.

Jesus would then recapitulate and go beyond what happened to Israel the same way in the Suffering Servant passage that he did the prophetic statement found in Hosea 11:1, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (cf. Matt. 2:14-15).

The Issue of Language

In our post on theories of the atonement, I noted that it’s possible to use penal substitution language for what happened on the Cross—i.e., language that makes it sound as if God punished Jesus—as long as this language isn’t meant in a fully literal sense.

The latter would require God to commit the unjust act of punishing an innocent.

But if the language is being used in a non-literal or accommodated sense—one that doesn’t require punishment in the full, ordinary sense—then it can be used.

We even saw how Scripture sometimes uses punishment language in such senses.

This means that, in looking at Isaiah 52-53, we need to be sensitive to how the passage uses language. So let’s consider that issue . . .

How Does the Suffering Servant Passage Use Language?

It is clear that there is a great deal of non-literal language present in the text:

If the corporate interpretation of the Servant as Israel is correct then we have a metaphor where a whole nation is depicted as a single individual.
We have inanimate things (e.g., the hill Zion, the “waste places of Jerusalem”) and composite things (e.g., Jerusalem) urged to do things they would not be literally capable of doing (Isa. 52:1-2, 9).
The watchmen are said to “see the return of the Lord to Zion”—a literally invisible and metaphorical event (Isa. 52:8).
The Lord’s invisible and metaphorical arm has been shown to the Gentiles (Isa. 52:10, 53:1).
The ends of the earth are said to “see” the Lord’s salvation (Isa. 52:10).
The Lord is said to “go before” the captives and to “be your rear guard” (Isa. 52:12).
The Servant is said to be “exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high” (Isa. 52:13).
The Servant’s appearance (if it’s Israel) is said to be extremely disfigured (Isa. 52:14, 53:2).
The Servant is compared to “a young plant” and “a root out of dry ground” (Isa. 53:2).
The Servant is said to have carried griefs, sorrows, iniquities, and sin as if they were physical objects (Isa. 53:4, 11, 12).
God is imagined to have physically hit (“stricken, smitten,” “bruised”) the Servant (Isa. 53:4, 8, 10).
The Servant is said to have been physically wounded, bruised, and lashed (Isa. 53:5), which would be a non-literal description of Israel’s sufferings if the Servant is a collective entity.
The human speakers are compared to wandering sheep (Isa. 53:6).
God is said to have laid iniquity on the Servant, as if it were a physical object (Isa. 53:6).
The Servant is compared to a lamb and a sheep (Isa. 53:7).
The Servant—whether it is Israel or a literal individual—experiences a metaphorical death and burial (Isa. 53:8-9).
The Servant is depicted as an offering for sin—i.e., as a sacrificial animal (Isa. 53:10).
The will of the Lord is said to prosper in the Servant’s “hand” (Isa. 53:10).
The Servant is said to “see” the “travail of his soul” (Isa. 53:11).
The Servant is said to divide “a portion with the great” and “divide the spoil with the strong” (Isa. 53:12).
The Servant is said to have “poured out his soul to death,” as if the soul were a liquid and death were a container or location (Isa. 53:12).

As with many passages in the prophets, this one is filled with non-literal language.

Underlying all of this language is the concept that God has allowed the Servant to suffer, and from this he has brought about good for Israel, in its restoration to the land, and for the speakers, who have received spiritual benefits through the Servant and, in particular, the Servant’s knowledge of the Lord.

Applying the Text to Jesus

In Matthew’s Gospel, we see the application of Hosea 11:1 (“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son”) applied to Jesus, who recapitulates Israel’s journey to and return from Egypt (Matt. 2:14-15).

If the Servant of Isaiah 52-53 is meant to be Israel in the literal sense of the text then the New Testament use of these chapters for Jesus involves the same kind of application, whereby Jesus recapitulates something Israel initially experienced.

On the other hand, if the Servant was originally meant to be a single, historical individual, this also fits with the way the New Testament applies Old Testament precedents to Jesus, for he is also depicted as the new Moses and the new David.

Either way, being aware of the amount of non-literal language in Isaiah 52-53 means that we must be careful in how literally we take this language in making the application to Jesus.

Some elements will apply to Jesus in a more literal way than they did to the original Servant:

Jesus is a sin offering in a more literal way than the original Servant was.
Jesus died in a fully literal way, unlike the Servant.

However, other elements will be less literal:

Jesus did not literally have offspring (children), and so the statement that the Servant “shall see his offspring” (Isa. 53:10) must be taken in a less literal, spiritual sense (e.g., as applying to Christians).
Jesus did not “divide the spoil with the strong” (Isa. 53:12) in the same sense as the Servant. Ordinarily, this would refer to the spoils of a battle or, at least, to material prosperity, but Jesus was poor and remained poor.

Other elements of the text will remain equally non-literal, even if they apply to Jesus in a different way:

Jesus does not literally carry griefs, sorrows, iniquities, and sin as if they were physical objects (Isa. 53:4, 11, 12).
God does not literally lay iniquity on Jesus, as if it were a physical object (Isa. 53:6).

We therefore must pay close attention to the way in which we understand the text and how it applies to Jesus.

Penal Substitution?

If there is to be a basis for penal substitution in this text, it will be found in the way the passage describes God’s interaction with the Servant: What does the text say God does to the Servant?

The first passage we need to look at is Isaiah 53:4-5, which reads:

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed.

We have already dealt with the non-literal nature of the language about Jesus bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows.

The next line says that the speakers “esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” Read in the natural way, this means that they thought God had done these things to the Servant, on account of the Servant’s sins (that’s why God normally strikes someone in Old Testament thought), but the reality was different, as revealed in the next line.

Instead, the Servant “was wounded for our transgressions” and “bruised for our iniquities.” The use of the passive voice here could mean that God wounded and bruised the Servant, but if so, it isn’t meant literally.

God did not physically harm Jesus. His wounds and bruises were caused by the Romans. God allowed this to happen as part of his plan, but he himself didn’t do these things. We thus don’t have a basis for saying that God literally punished Jesus.

That idea is further undermined by the fact that the text explicitly states it was on account of our sins—not the Servant’s—that these things happened.

If God allows something bad to happened to one person despite his innocence, that’s an indicator that the innocent person was not being punished in any literal sense of the word.

What about the “chastisement” the Servant receives? The Hebrew word used here, musar, means “discipline,” “chastening,” or “correction,” but the context again indicates a non-literal use. The fact Jesus was innocent meant he wasn’t being disciplined, chastened, or corrected in any literal sense.

Moving forward in the text, verse 6 says that God “laid on him the iniquity of us all.” This is more of the same non-literal language depicting Jesus as carrying our sins as if they were physical objects.

Verse 7 says “he was oppressed, and he was afflicted,” but—again—it was the Romans that literally did these things. God only allowed them as part of his plan.

Verse 8 says he was “cut off out of the land of the living” and “stricken”—things that were again literally accomplished by the Romans—with the prophet noting the reason God allowed them was as part of his plan for dealing with “the transgression of my people.”

Finally, verses 9 and 10 note the ironic contrast:

Although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise him; he has put him to grief.

The second part of this might be more literally translated that it was God’s will to “crush” him and that he has “made him sick.” If the latter translation is correct (and there is doubt about this), then it would not apply to Jesus in a literal way, because we have no indication he was sick.

However that may be, any literal bruising/crushing that was done to Jesus was performed by the Romans, with God only allowing it as part of his plan.

And significantly, we again have an affirmation of the Servant’s innocence paired with a statement about what God “did” to the Servant. Taking these statements together, the idea of punishment in the literal sense is thereby undermined.

I therefore conclude that the Suffering Servant passage does not give us a basis for saying that God literally punished Jesus on the Cross.

It may use language that—taken out of its historical and literary context—could suggest this, but the only literal injuries that were done to Jesus were performed by the Romans, not God, and the text goes out of its way to stress the innocence of the Servant and, by extension, Jesus.

We thus don’t have in this passage a solid basis for the idea of penal substitution—as opposed to other substitutionary theories of the atonement.

What Does “Atonement” Mean—And How Did Jesus Do It?

Most basic theological terms come from Greek or Latin, but one sprang from English: atonement.

Here, the –ment suffix is used to refer to the result of something, like amazement is the result of something that amazes. Atonement, therefore, is the result of an action that atones.

So where does “atone” come from? It’s a contraction of the phrase “at one.” By making atonement for mankind, Jesus made it so that God and man are no longer separated. They are now “at one”—or reconciled with each other.

If we were to pick a contemporary word that expresses the same idea as atonement, the word reconciliation would be a good choice.

How Did Jesus Atone for Us?

Scripture uses a number of images to explain what Jesus did for us. This is not surprising. Given the infinite richness of the divine mystery, it would be surprising if a single image could fully convey what he did on our behalf.

For example, one image that Jesus himself uses is that of a ransom. He states that he came “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

However, the primary image that the New Testament uses is sacrifice: Jesus’ death on the Cross served as a sacrifice to reconcile us with God.

Thus Paul states that “Christ, our paschal Lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7), and Hebrew says that “when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God” (Heb. 10:12).

Biblically, the primary theory of the atonement is one of sacrifice.

However, precisely because Christ’s death on the Cross did not need to be repeated, Christians discontinued the practice of animal sacrifices, which were otherwise practiced everywhere among Jews and pagans.

A consequence of this was that Christians began to lose an intuitive understanding of animal sacrifices, and so they began to seek other ways of explaining what Jesus did for us.

Over the centuries, many alternative “theories of the atonement” have been proposed, and many of them contain elements of truth. Just as the New Testament uses different images to convey what Jesus did, different theories of the atonement can often be understood in harmony with each other.

Christ Our Substitute

Some theories of the atonement involve the concept of substitution. It is the idea that, by dying on the Cross, Jesus in some sense substituted for us: He did something we otherwise would have had to do for ourselves (and were incapable of doing).

Sometimes, the substitution idea is referred to using the term vicarious, which means the same thing. A vicar (Latin, vicarius) is a substitute.

The question is in what way did Jesus substitute for us?

One theory, proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury, is that he satisfied God’s justice by restoring the honor of God, which man has offended by sin.

Since on this view Christ satisfied God on our behalf (i.e., vicariously), theories of this nature are sometimes called vicarious satisfaction theories.

A Problem Case?

Not all theories of the atonement are free from problems. One theory that has recently come in for criticism is known as penal substitution. This idea was proposed by John Calvin, and the theory has been common in Calvinist circles.

Penal substitution can be conceived of as one type of vicarious satisfaction theory, but it needs to be distinguished from the others.

What makes it distinct is that it sees Christ as satisfying God by being punished on our behalf.

At least if we take the idea of punishment literally, penal substitution seems to propose an injustice on God’s part.

One cannot justly punish an innocent person, and since Jesus was an innocent—for “he committed no sin; no guile was found on his lips” (1 Peter 2:22)—God could not justly punish him.

I don’t have a document of the Church’s Magisterium that weighs in on this idea one way or another, but along with many others I find the argument against penal substitution—understood literally—to be convincing.

Non-Literal Language

Although I don’t see how God could literally punish Jesus on the Cross, this doesn’t mean one could never use punishment language in connection with the atonement.

There’s a great deal of flexibility in language, and metaphor abounds when we are dealing with spiritual realities, including the atonement.

Thus when Jesus describes what he did for us as a “ransom” (Greek, lutron = “price of release,” “ransom payment”), he didn’t mean that he literally was going to offer a sum of money on our behalf. He’s using a metaphor, as is evident from the fact that he says he will “give his life as a ransom for many.”

Since Christ suffered on our behalf, and punishment involves suffering, I think it is possible to use punishment language in connection with the Cross—as long as one does not literally understand God to be committing the unjust act of punishing the all-innocent Jesus.

In that case, the punishment language would have to be understood in a non-literal or accommodated way.

Thus Aquinas acknowledges that one can speak of a person voluntarily taking on the “punishment” of another, as when one voluntarily pays a fine on someone’s behalf, but this is only punishment in a qualified sense.

It isn’t punishment in the full, normal sense because the person who pays the fine is innocent, and so paying the fine voluntarily doesn’t have a penal character:

If we speak of that satisfactory punishment, which one takes upon oneself voluntarily, one may bear another’s punishment, in so far as they are, in some way, one, as stated above (Article 7). If, however, we speak of punishment inflicted on account of sin, inasmuch as it is penal, then each one is punished for his own sin only, because the sinful act is something personal (ST I-II:87:8).

Non-Literal Punishment Language in the Bible

It is important to note that punishment language is sometimes used in non-literal or accommodated ways, because Scripture sometimes does so. Consider this passage:

The Lord is slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of fathers upon children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation (Num. 14:18; cf. Exod. 20:5, 34:6-7, Deut. 5:9; Jer. 32:18).

Taken without any qualification, this could be understood to mean that God punishes the descendants of sinners down to the third and fourth generation, even if they are innocents.

That would be unjust, and Ezekiel has an extended discussion in which he points out that God will not punish children for what their fathers have done (Ezek. 18:1-30), saying:

The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself (Ezek. 18:20).

Passages that seem to suggest otherwise must therefore be understood in a different sense.

A clue to that sense is found in Exodus 20:5 and Deuteronomy 5:9, which state that God will visit “the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me”—i.e., the children will be punished if they follow in the footsteps of their fathers in opposing God, but otherwise they will not.

Any negative consequences children experience because of the actions of their parents will thus not have the character of punishment—unless the children reaffirm and repeat the sins of their ancestors.

Thus the Israelites whose sin of idolatry led to the Babylonian Exile experienced the Exile as a punishment in the proper sense. However, the righteous of Israel who were taken into Exile, as well as innocent children born in Exile, were not being punished for the sins of others, though they did experience negative consequences as a result of others’ actions.

What can we learn about divine punishment and the atonement Jesus made for us? That will be the subject of our next post.

The Original Suffering Servant

Isaiah 52 and 53 famously describe a mysterious figure that scholars have dubbed the “Suffering Servant.”

The parallels between the Servant and Jesus are striking, and the New Testament authors see Jesus as fulfilling the role of the Suffering Servant—as have Christians ever since.

The Suffering Servant passage is a case of genuine messianic prophecy. However, prophecy often works on more than one level.

As we covered in a previous post, various prophecies have a fulfillment in the Old Testament itself, and then a second, additional fulfillment in Jesus.

Often the first fulfillment is found in the original, literal sense of the text, and the fulfillment in Christ belongs to its greater, spiritual sense.

This raises a question: Did the Suffering Servant passage have a fulfillment in the Old Testament era? Was there an original Suffering Servant who foreshadowed Jesus? If so, who was this Servant?

Let’s take a look at Isaiah 52 and 53 and see what they might reveal . . .

The Suffering Servant in Context

Much of the book of Isaiah deals with the Babylonian Exile, and Isaiah 52 begins with a word of encouragement for the Jewish captives who are experiencing the Exile.

This word is initially addressed to Jerusalem itself, which is captive and filled with the uncircumcised and the unclean. God indicates that this situation will end (Isa. 52:1-2). He will turn again to his people and deliver them (Isa. 52:6).

We then read the famous statement, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings” (Isa. 52:7). In its original context, this statement has to do with the end of the Babylonian Exile.

The Lord is thus returning to Zion, and “the waste places of Jerusalem” are to rejoice “for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations” that have oppressed them (Isa. 52:7-10).

Consequently, the Jewish captives in Babylon are told, “Depart, depart, go out from there, touch no unclean thing; go out from the midst of her, purify yourselves, you who bear the vessels of the Lord. . . . for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard” (Isa. 52:11-12).

“Behold, My Servant”

At this point the Servant enters the narrative, and we are told, “Behold, my servant shall prosper, he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high” (Isa. 52:13).

In our previous post, we looked at the different “servants” of the Lord identified in Isaiah.

In the present context, at the end of the Babylonian Exile, who is the Servant?

Various proposals have been made, including individuals such as:

Isaiah himself, or the author of this section of Isaiah (sometimes called Deutero-Isaiah)—note that Isaiah is called God’s servant in Isaiah 20:2.
One of the rulers who supported the rebuilding of Jerusalem and its temple (Cyrus, Darius, or Artaxerxes)—note that Cyrus is called God’s “shepherd” in Isaiah 44:28 and his “anointed” or “messiah” in Isaiah 45:1.
The post-Exilic Jewish governor Zerubbabel
Another significant individual from this period

These interpretations are possible, but a view that deserves special consideration is that the entire nation of Israel may be the Servant here:

Isaiah explicitly identifies Israel as God’s servant at least eight times. A typical example is in Isaiah 41:8, which speaks of “you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen.”
Isaiah has identified Israel as God’s servant quite recently, throughout chapters 41-49 (cf. 41:8-9, 44:1-2, 21 [2 references], 45:4, 48:20, and 49:3).
The subject under discussion in chapter 52 is the return of Israel to its land.
It is common in the Old Testament for an entire nation to be spoken of as if it is a single man, based on the way patriarchs represented an entire people.

This is also a common interpretation of the Servant in Jewish circles.

Therefore, let’s explore the text on the theory that its literal sense originally envisioned the Servant as Israel and then see what we can make of it.

God Testifies to the Suffering Servant

Isaiah 52:13-15, God himself speaks concerning the Servant. In v. 13, he states that the servant “shall prosper” and “be exalted and lifted up” and “shall be very high.” This would correspond to the much improved state of God’s people as he joyously restores them to their land to rebuild Jerusalem and its temple.

In verse 14, we have a description of the way in which the Servant formerly appeared: “many were astonished at him—his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the sons of men.” This would correspond to the disfigured state of God’s people in exile, after being conquered by their enemies.

But now in verse 15 the nation’s miraculous restoration will provoke a different kind of amazement, so the Servant shall “startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him.” The nations have not have had the benefit of Isaiah’s prophecies, so “that which has not been told them they shall see, and that which they have not heard they shall understand” as God’s people are brought back to their land.

Others Begin to Speak

In Isaiah 53:1, the speaker shifts from God to a group of people, who are clearly here on earth. They are likely to be identified either as (a) God’s people, who have heard the prophecies of Isaiah, or (b) the nations, who are only just now learning of them as the nation is restored. They ask:

Who has believed what we have heard?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? (v. 1)

Isaiah 52:10 said that the arm of the Lord had been revealed “before the eyes of all the nations,” suggesting that they are the same group that “has believed what we have heard”—in other words, the Gentiles, who have been astonished by the miraculous fall and restoration of God’s people, though they have learned about God’s plan only now (Isa. 52: 15).

The Speakers Amazed at the Suffering Servant

The resulting astonishment focuses on the figure of the Servant. The background for the astonishment is provided in verses 2 and 3.

As a minor nation among the great powers of the Ancient Near East, Israel would have seen to have grown up before God “like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground,” and from their perspective, Israel would have had “no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isa. 53:2).

Consequently, Israel “was despised and rejected” by its neighbors. Israel was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isa. 53:3).

But now, beginning in verse 4, comes the astonishing part. In the humiliation of his people’s defeat and Exile, God has done something extraordinary: He has treated Israel as a sin offering, for “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” Yet that is not how it initially appeared to the Gentiles, for “we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Isa. 53:4).

The reality, however, was different: Israel “was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:5).

The Gentiles then acknowledge their guilt, for “all we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way,” but the Lord has made atonement for them using his people as a sin offering, for “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6).

As a minor power in the Ancient Near East, God’s people were no match for the greater nations they faced. Their powerlessness before them is compared to the powerlessness of a sheep: “like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb,” Israel “opened not his mouth” (Isa. 53:7).

Consequently, by the “oppression and judgment” of the Gentiles, Israel “was taken away” from his land, resulting in a metaphorical death as a people, for in the Exile, Israel “was cut off out of the land of the living” where God had planted them.

In this experience Israel was “stricken for the transgressions of my people” (Isa. 53:8). Although the phrase “my people” is often used by God, the speaker here is a chorus of Gentiles, and so it would mean that Israel suffered—in keeping with its role as a sin offering—for the sins of the Gentiles.

Having been taken from the Promised Land—the land of the living—Israel is buried in Exile, among the Gentiles, so that “they made his grave with the wicked,” and because of the Gentiles’ rich, opulent rulers, Israel was “with a rich man in his death.”

This experience occurred despite the fact that to the Gentiles Israel “had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth” toward them (Isa. 53:9). They were the aggressors toward God’s people, not the reverse.

All this happened because “it was the will of the Lord to bruise him” and “he has put him to grief” so that he becomes “an offering for sin.”

Yet now that the time of Israel’s restoration has come, “he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand” (Isa. 53:10). God’s people can thus look forward to new generations being born that will have long and prosperous days.

God Has the Final Word

The Lord begins speaking again by verse 11. As a result of his restoration, Israel “shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied” (Isa. 53:11a)

Further, Israel’s knowledge of the Lord and his righteous ways will now benefit the Gentiles with whom they have come in contact, for “by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous.”

As Isaiah elsewhere notes, the return from Exile would bring many Gentiles who would come to worship the Lord and be “his servants” (Isa. 56:6).

Thus by the experience of Exile and the consequent enlightening of the Gentiles, Israel would “bear their iniquities” (Isa. 53:11b). Consequently, God declares that in restoring Israel:

I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors (Isa. 53:12).

Evaluating This Interpretation

How well does this interpretation of Isaiah 52 and 53 hold up?

It’s striking that the passage would speak of Israel and its sufferings as involving a sin offering on behalf of the nations. This type of language is not used elsewhere in the Old Testament, either for Israel or others, which is one of the things that makes it such a striking case of messianic prophecy.

However, the passage also contains points that in their literal sense do not point directly to Jesus. The reference to the Servant seeing “his offspring” fits the restored Israel well, for there would be new generations born in the land. However, Jesus did not literally have offspring (children), and so this element must be spiritualized when the passage is applied to him.

If we focus on the sin offering aspect of the text, it is clear that God did not use Israel as a sin offering the fashion he did Jesus, who dealt with sin in the full and final way. However, we can see how God used Israel and its sufferings to bring spiritual benefits to the Gentiles with whom the Exile brought it into contact.

This is seen in the reference to the Servant’s knowledge of the Lord and his will, so that “by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous.”

The result of this is then seen in Isaiah’s references to Gentiles coming to worship the God of Israel, keeping his sabbath, etc. (Isa. 56:6)—a phenomenon we know happened in the pre-Christian period. This is why Isaiah understands the restored temple as “a house of prayer for all the nations” (Isa. 56:7), and it is why the temple had an outer court—known as the Court of the Gentiles—that was specifically designated as a place for Gentiles to pray.

We also see the pattern in the Bible of God treating some individuals more kindly than he otherwise would because of a person who pleased him. Thus God treats Solomon more kindly than Solomon’s sins deserved because David had pleased him (1 Kings 11:31-32). Similarly, in the New Testament, St. Paul states that even Jews who opposed the gospel and became “enemies of God” are nevertheless beloved on account of the patriarchs, who had pleased God (Rom. 11:28).

We thus may understand that God would treat Gentiles more gently than their sins otherwise deserved for the sake of Israel, or at least the righteous of Israel, thus allowing them to be depicted metaphorically as a sin offering.

This metaphor may ultimately rest in the promise given to Abraham that he would become a blessing to all nations (Gen. 12:3; cf. Gal. 3:8).

These same themes would then be fulfilled in an even greater way through Jesus.

Individualistic Interpretations?

We have just explored Isaiah 52 and 53 in light of the idea that the literal sense of the text envisioned Israel as the original Servant of the Lord. We thus looked at a corporate interpretation, with the whole nation pictured as a single Servant, as in other passages of Isaiah.

However, individualistic interpretations are also possible. In other words, the literal sense of the text might have envisioned a single person—such as the prophet himself, one of the Gentile rulers, or the Jewish governor Zerubbabel—as the Servant.

In that case, the relevant passages would deal not with the travails of the whole nation but of the individual in question and the role his sufferings played in the restoration of God’s people to their land (the subject introduced in chapter 52).

Some of the details of the interpretation would change: Instead of it being Gentile speakers throughout the amazement section, the speakers might include Jews, and it might be their sins that the Servant metaphorically bore.

However, the fundamental message would remain the same: God used the sufferings of the Servant to bring about benefits, including spiritual benefits, for others, and the sufferings of the Servant were so extreme that he experienced a metaphorical death.

However, eventually he would be restored by the Lord so he could “see his offspring” and “prolong his days” (Isa. 53:10), so he could “see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied” (Isa. 53:11), and so he could receive “a portion with the great” and “divide the spoil with the strong” (Isa. 53:12).

In coming posts, we will look at how the Suffering Servant passage relates more specifically to Christ and the atonement he performed on the Cross.

The Servant(s) of God in Isaiah

The New Testament quotes three Old Testament books more than any others: Deuteronomy, the Psalms, and Isaiah.

The latter is quoted, in particular, because it contains messianic prophecies that point to Jesus, and the New Testament authors record how he fulfilled them.

As Christians, we are so familiar with these passages and how the New Testament uses them that we assume they are only about Jesus:

“Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel” (Isa. 7:14)? That’s Jesus.
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called ‘Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace’” (Isa. 9:6)? Definitely Jesus.
“He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:5). Jesus again.

All of these are messianic prophecies, and Jesus did fulfill them.

But the biblical concept of fulfillment is richer than we sometimes imagine.

Prophecy in the Bible

The biblical authors recognized Scripture as operating on multiple levels. For example, Matthew interprets the Holy Family’s flight to and return from Egypt as a fulfillment of the prophetic statement, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

But in its original context, it is obvious the “son” of God being discussed is Israel, for the full verse reads: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt, I called my son” (Hos. 11:1).

Matthew understood this. He had read the first half of the verse and knew that, on the primary, literal level, the statement applied to the nation of Israel. But he recognized that on another level it applied to Christ as the divine Son who recapitulates and fulfills the aspirations of Israel.

In the same way, it is obvious in Isaiah that on the primary, literal level the prophecy of Immanuel applied to the time of King Ahaz (732-716 B.C.). At this point, Syria had forged a military alliance with the northern kingdom of Israel that threatened to conquer Jerusalem (Isa. 7:1-2). God sent Isaiah to reassure Ahaz the alliance would not succeed (Isa. 7:3-9) and told him to name a sign that God would give him as proof (Isa. 7:10-11).

Ahaz refused to name a sign (Isa. 7:12), so God declared one: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. . . . For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted” (Isa. 7:14-16).

For this sign to be meaningful to Ahaz, it would have to be fulfilled in his own day—indeed, very quickly. It therefore points, on the primary, literal level, to a child conceived at that time (perhaps Ahaz’s son, the future King Hezekiah).

Like the other New Testament authors, Matthew recognized the biblical text as having multiple dimensions, so the prophecy was not only fulfilled in Ahaz’s day but also pointed to Christ as “Immanuel” (Hebrew, “God with us”).

The Literal and Spiritual Senses of the Text

In the Christian age, a way of classifying the different levels on which Scripture works was developed. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:

According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church (CCC 115).

It goes on to explain the literal sense:

The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal” (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I:1:10 ad 1) (CCC 116).

Because the literal sense is the foundation of all the other senses, we need to establish it before looking at additional meanings found within the spiritual sense of the text.

The rules of exegesis (interpretation) require us to establish the literal sense by asking what a text meant in its original context—what the biblical author was trying to communicate to his audience.

Thus we discover that, in Hosea 11:1, the son of God in the literal sense of the passage was Israel, but the spiritual sense of the text includes Jesus as the ultimate Son of God.

Similarly, we discover that in Isaiah 7:14, the son to be named Immanuel was, in the literal sense of the text, a child born in Ahaz’s day, but the spiritual sense includes a reference to Jesus as the greater Immanuel or “God with us.”

Isaiah 53

A number of New Testament passages focus on Isaiah 53, which describes a figure known as the Servant of the Lord (or, in some scholarly publications, the Servant of Yahweh).

The identity of this figure is not immediately obvious from reading the text of Isaiah 53, as the encounter that Philip had with the Ethiopian eunuch makes clear:

Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.Now the passage of the scripture which he was reading was this:

“As a sheep led to the slaughter or a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he opens not his mouth.

“In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken up from the earth” [cf. Isa. 53:7-8].

And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, pray, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?”

Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this scripture he told him the good news of Jesus (Acts 8:29-35).

Philip thus correctly identified this text points to Jesus, at least in its spiritual sense. But for a complete understanding of it, we still need to ask what its literal sense was and whether it may have pointed to someone or something in addition to Jesus.

Servants in Isaiah

The Hebrew word for “servant” used in the key passages of Isaiah is ‘ebed. This word appears 40 times in the book, in 36 verses.

In some cases, it refers to the servants of human beings:

Isa. 14:2 refers to unnamed foreigners who will become the servants of Israel.
Isa. 24:2 refers to the slaves of human masters.
Isa. 36:9 and 37:24 refer to servants/subjects of the king of Assyria
Isa. 36:11 has several figures referring to themselves politely as “your servants” when talking with an Assyrian official
Isa. 37:5 refers to the servants/subjects of King Hezekiah of Judah
Isa. 49:7 refers to an unnamed, despised figure who is “the servant of rulers”—i.e., a subject of foreign leaders

This last servant is also likely one of the figures described as a “servant” of the Lord, which brings us to the category we are primarily interested in: those who serve God.

Many of the uses of ‘ebed in Isaiah are in the plural and refer to God’s servants collectively. This theme emerges in chapter 54 and is especially prominent in the final four chapters of the book:

In such passages, the servants of God seem to refer to the righteous of Israel (Isa. 54:17, 65:8, 13-15, 66:14).
They are expressly identified with “the tribes of your heritage” in Isa. 63:17, and with descendants of Jacob and Judah inIsa. 65:9.
However, Isa. 56:6 makes it clear that they also can include foreigners who come to worship God and thus become “his servants.”

We thus see that in Isaiah God actually has many servants.

Individual Servants

Not all uses of ‘ebed are in the plural, and there remain 22 uses which speak of individual servants of the Lord. Four of them are named:

The first to be named is Isaiah himself. Isa. 20:3 refers to “my servant Isaiah.”
The second is Eliakim son of Hilkiah (Isa. 22:20), who was a man that God called to be the chief steward of the house of David.
The third is David himself (Isa. 37:35).
And the fourth is the corporate figure of the nation of Israel/Jacob, who is named as God’s servant in multiple passages. A typical example is Isa. 41:8, which speaks of “you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen” (cf. Isa. 41:9, 44:1-2, 21 [2 references], 45:4, 48:20, and 49:3).

That leaves us still to explain 10 uses of ‘ebed. We won’t here propose definitite identifications for these passages, but we can say something about how their literal sense can be plausibly understood.

The Priority of Israel

Jewish interpreters tend to see the Servant of the Lord as Israel, and there are two reasons that suggest this should be our starting point in seeking to establish the literal sense of the text:

Three of the four named servants are only given a single, explicit mention each, whereas Israel is named as servant multiple times.
The three named servants other than Israel are all mentioned in the first part of the book, while Israel’s mentions are in the latter part, which is the location of the passages that remain to be explained (Isa. 42:1, 19 [2 references], 43:10, 44:26, 49:5-6, 50:10, 52:13, 53:11).

The logical procedure is thus to examine the remaining uses to see whether they could plausibly describe Israel or whether they more likely refer to something or someone else.

Servants Beside Israel?

It appears that at least some of the passages refer to a servant other than Israel. With one exception, all of the Hebrew manuscripts of Isaiah 49:3 identify Israel as the servant of that verse, but just a few verses later we seem to be reading about a different servant:

And now the Lord says, who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him,
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength—

he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isa. 49:5-6).

If the identification of Israel as the servant of verse 3 was in the original Hebrew text (something some scholars have disputed), then it seems that we are reading about a different servant in verses 5 and 6, since this servant has a mission to Jacob/Israel.

Who might this be? A plausible answer is Isaiah himself. He has already been named as a servant of the Lord in 20:3, and he has the prophet’s mission of calling God’s people “back to him” that they may be “gathered to him” so that God might “raise up” his people and “restore the preserved of Israel.”

If this understanding is correct, then the Ethiopian eunuch’s guess that the prophet was speaking of himself in Isaiah 53 might be correct—in the literal sense of the text, though a reference to Jesus is clearly to be found in its spiritual sense.

Isaiah, however, is not the only other possibility for an individual servant in the remaining passages. One that is sometimes proposed is Cyrus the Persian, who is described in Isa. 45:1 not with the term “servant” (‘ebed) but using the parallel term “anointed” (mashiakh or “messiah”).

Anyone anointed by the Lord is functioning as his servant toward the purpose for which he was anointed, and Cyrus was given a mission of restoring Israel and bringing them back both to their land and their God by allowing them to return and rebuild the Jerusalem temple.

God also describes Cyrus in Isaiah 44:28 as “my shepherd,” again indicating he is serving God.

Other figures—such as Cyrus’s successor Darius or the returning Jewish governor Zerubbabel—have also been proposed as God’s servant in various passages. However, these rest on more speculative reconstructions of historical circumstances, since these figures are not named in the book.

Conclusion

From what we have seen, there are multiple servants of the Lord described in the literal sense of the book of Isaiah—some of whom are identified by name.

In light of this, we need to approach the servant texts and ask the standard question for determining the literal sense of a passage: What would this have meant in its original context? How would the author and his audience have understood it?

After determining this to the best of our ability, we will be in a better position to explore the spiritual sense of the text, including the applications it may have to Jesus.

Book Technology and the Synoptic Problem

Codex – book with leaves of parchment. Christians among first to use the codex widely, by end of 1st century. Scrolls and books were very valuable.

In the ancient world there were two forms of books: the scroll and the codex.

As everyone knows, scrolls were long rolls that you had to roll and unroll to read. They had the pages attached side by side to make a long, continuous strip.
Codices, by contrast, were like modern books. They had the pages attached at a spine, allowing you to flip from one passage to another.

These two types of books amounted to different forms of “book technology.” They worked in different ways, as the ways of accessing the material (rolling vs. flipping) indicates.

Before the rise of Christianity, scrolls were by far the most popular format for books. We have almost no references to pre-Christian books being sold in codex form, and pagans and Jews used scrolls almost exclusively when they had scribes copy books for them.

By contrast, Christians were enthusiastic users of codices. This is clear from the surviving second and third century Christian manuscripts, the large majority of which are in codex form. (See Larry Hurtado’s catalogue of early Christian manuscripts.)

Scholars have debated why the codex became so popular among Christians, and they have proposed many possible reasons. However, we don’t know for sure. Codices have some advantages, but they aren’t decisive. (See Larry Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts, and Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church).

The primary reason was likely cultural: Somebody in the Christian community started producing books in codex form—perhaps a very influential edition of a major Christian text (likely something that’s now part of the Bible)—and this became the expected form for books among Christians.

However that happened, the trend must have started in the first century, because it was clearly in place by the second century.

We can’t be certain, because there are other possibilities, but my guess would be that the influential codex that started the trend was one of four things:

The first collection of Paul’s letters, which would have included Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and Galatians (see David Trobisch, Paul’s Letter Collection)
The Gospel of Mark (the first Gospel to be written)
The Gospel of Matthew (the most popular of the four Gospels in the early centuries)
A bound edition of two, three, or four of the Gospels (something too long to fit in a single scroll)

Is there any way we can shed light on this question?

Book Technology and the Synoptic Problem

British scholar Alan Garrow has done a lot of work on the Synoptic Problem—the question of how Matthew, Mark, and Luke are related to each other.

He advocates the “Matthew Conflator Hypothesis” (sometimes called the Wilke Hypothesis), which holds that Mark wrote first, Luke used Mark, and then Matthew conflated Mark and Luke (as well as other sources).

This has been my preferred view for a long time, though I’m open to arguments for other positions.

You can watch Garrow’s videos arguing for this view here.

In his third video, he makes an argument that involves the scroll vs. codex issue. He points out, as have others, that when people were copying from a scroll, they tended to do so in a different way than if they were using a codex. This was because of the physical nature of the book, the ease of maintaining eye contact with the text being copied, and the ability to easily move between passages.

Scroll-users have a greater tendency than codex-users to:

Paraphrase rather than copy word-for-word
Keep the material they are copying in the same order
Switch between sources less often

By contrast, codex-users have a greater tendency than scroll-users to:

Copy word-for-word
Change the order of the material they are copying
Switch between sources

In light of this, what can we say about the Synoptic Problem?

What If . . . ?

See Garrow’s third video for the details, but we can say the following:

Luke seems to have been using a scroll of Mark
Matthew seems to have been using a codex of Mark
If Luke used Matthew, then he seems to have been using a codex of Matthew
If Matthew used Luke, then he seems to have been using a codex of Luke

Garrow argues that these (and other) considerations give us reason to prefer the Matthew Conflator Hypothesis because it allows Matthew to behave consistently: He operates like a codex-user when dealing with both Mark and Luke.

However, if the situation were reversed (a view known as the Farrer Hypothesis) then Luke would be inconsistent: He would operate like a scroll-user with Mark but a codex-user with Matthew.

These facts are certainly consistent with the Matthew Conflator Hypothesis, but I don’t think they provide a particularly strong reason to favor it. This seems to be the weakest part of Garrow’s case, and the arguments he advances in the other videos are much stronger. (There are also arguments that he doesn’t go into in the videos.)

Why Not?

So why don’t the above facts give us strong reason to favor the Matthew Conflator Hypothesis?

The reason has to do with the availability of books in scroll and codex forms. Scribes were overwhelmingly used to producing scrolls, and it is unlikely that the codex trend began with the very first Christian books and then instantly dominated the Christian book world. Indeed, Hurtado’s list shows that Christians were still using scrolls for centuries, even after the codex form became dominant.

It is thus likely that the first Gospel to be written—Mark—was originally published as a scroll, something supported by the fact that Luke seems to have used a scroll of Mark.

Further, books in this period were fantastically expensive due to the costs of materials and the hand copying that was involved. This means that, if you were an Evangelist, you would be incentivized to use whatever copy of a prior Evangelist’s Gospel you had—whether it was a scroll or a codex.

You wouldn’t be likely to undertake the expense of having the earlier Evangelist(s) re-copied into your preferred format. And even if you had a rich patron, he might not be inclined to go along with what he would see as a frivolous expense.

Nor would you be likely to slice up a scroll and convert it into a codex. That would produce a very damaged copy as you would be slicing through the joins where the individual sheets were attached, it would be hard to effectively bind them to a single spine, and the book would be extra thick since scrolls were usually written only on one side of the page.

The probability is that you would use the prior Evangelist(s) in whatever format you had.

If Luke was the last of the Synoptic Evangelists to write, the reason for his inconsistency in how he treated Mark and how he treated Matthew thus might simply be due to the fact that he had a scroll of Mark but a codex of Matthew—and he didn’t bother having Matthew recopied as a scroll before he set to work.

I’m not saying that this possibility deprives Garrow’s argument of all force. There is still some value in a scenario that allows the final Synoptic Evangelist to use his sources in a consistent manner. However, I do think the possibility substantially weakens this particular argument for the Matthew Conflator Hypothesis.

What Was the Influential Codex?

Can we learn anything from this about what the influential book may have been that kicked of the Christian codex trend?

It seems that we can.

Earlier I proposed four possibilities for what this book may have been:

The first collection of Paul’s letters
The Gospel of Mark
The Gospel of Matthew
A collection of more than one Gospel

Since it would have taken time for the codex trend to become established in Christian circles, it is likely that Mark—the first Gospel written—would have initially appeared as a scroll. This is supported by the fact—as Garrow points out—that Luke seems to have used a scroll of Mark. So option 2 is less likely than the others.

The facts we’ve seen also lend some extra probability to the idea that Matthew may have been the influential codex:

If Luke used Matthew then he apparently did so in codex form, indicating that the most popular of the four Gospels was already circulating as a codex.
If Matthew used codices of Mark and Luke then he may have been such a codex fan that he did have copies of them made in this form—or he may have had scrolls of them sliced up and re-bound. Either way, he would have been such a codex superfan that he likely then published his own Gospel as a codex.

Further, if Matthew was using codices of Mark and Luke, then—unless he were the kind of codex superfan we’ve just described—copies of Gospels in codex form were already in circulation, and they were probably separate copies—i.e., not bound together as a single volume. This would remove a degree of probability from option 4.

Of the four options, then, Garrow’s analysis causes both Mark and a multi-Gospel collection to lose probability as the influential codex—and Matthew to gain it.

However, Paul’s initial letter collection (Rom.-Gal.) is still a strong possibility.

And there are other options. We are not locked into these four. It could be that Mark was initially a scroll but—by Matthew’s time—it was available as a codex. Or that it was initially a codex but some people made scrolls of it because these were the more familiar book form. The same possibilities are true of Luke.

Either of these thus could have been the book that kicked off the codex trend—and there are other possibilities yet. The key work even could have been an influential work from the Old Testament (a copy of the Pentateuch?) or even an unknown work, though these possibilities are less likely.

Unless dramatic new evidence emerges, this matter will retain its mystery.