Category: Bible

Reconstructed Dialogue in the Bible


Some Christians appear to believe that the Bible contains nothing but exact quotations of the people it describes. In other words, everything you see between quotation marks in the Bible is exactly what the person said. There’s not one word of difference.

It’s easy for modern Christians to think this since we live in a world of audio and video recorders and stenographers and transcriptionists. Exact quotations come easy to us.

However, the attitude of ancient audiences was different. They lived before any recording devices had been invented, few people were literate, and of those who were literate, only a very few were trained in stenography and capable of taking down exactly what someone said in real time.

As a result, they did not expect exact quotations the way that we do. Instead, they expected texts to convey the gist or basic meaning of what someone said, but not the exact words.

They also recognized that authors would, at times, need to reconstruct the dialogue or conversations that people had.

 

No Recording Devices

Think about it: Without recorders and transcribers of such conversations, how would anybody remember exactly what had been said on a particular occasion? They might remember the gist of what was said, but likely not the exact words—especially after a long space of time.

Of course, in divinely inspired texts like the books of the Bible, God could reveal the exact words that had been used on a particular occasion. That’s possible. But it’s not what the ancient audience was expecting. They were used to reading books of history that used the convention of reconstructed dialogue, and so that’s what they would have assumed books of Scripture also contained—unless the text said otherwise.

A key principle of good biblical exegesis is reading the text the way the ancient audience would have, and so we also should understand the Bible as using reconstructed dialogue. We should not introduce the added assumption—not shared by the original audience—that God miraculously revealed what was said by minor players in the narrative, like the exact words used by every person who approached Jesus for a miracle.

Nobody would have written down the exact words of a healing request at the time, but the gist would have been remembered (e.g., a blind man asked Jesus for his sight back), and so we would expect the exact words to be reconstructed.

This much we can establish based on a knowledge of how ancient literature worked, but can we find evidence supporting this view in the text itself?

We can! And one way we can do this is by comparing different accounts of the same incident.

 

Synoptic Parallels

Let’s compare Mark’s and Matthew’s account of what the demons said to Jesus in the case of the Gerasene/Gadarene demoniacs.

Mark 5 presents us with Jesus exorcizing a single demoniac, and we read of the following exchange taking place between Jesus and the demons.

And pay particular attention to the words of the demons, because we’re going to compare them.

“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.”

For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!”

And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”

He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.”

And he begged him eagerly not to send them out of the country. Now a great herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside; and they begged him, “Send us to the swine, let us enter them” (Mark 5:7-12).

Now here’s the account of the same event from Matthew 8, where Matthew records that there were two demoniacs that Jesus exorcized:

“What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”

Now a herd of many swine was feeding at some distance from them.

And the demons begged him, “If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of swine” (Matt. 8:29-31).

As you can see, Matthew omits the reference to “Legion,” but the gist is the same in both accounts—the demons ask what Jesus has to do with them, they’re concerned about being tormented, and they ask to go into the herd of pigs.

But the exact words used are different. In Mark the demons say, “What have you to do with me” (singular), because Mark is only mentioning one demoniac, while Matthew has “What have you to do with us” (plural), because Matthew mentions the second demoniac.

In Mark the demons identify Jesus as “Jesus, Son of the Most High God,” while in Matthew they just identify him as “Son of God.”

In Mark the demons make a request about torment—“I adjure you by God, do not torment me”—while in Matthew they ask a question—“Have you come here to torment us before the time?”

Finally, concerning the pigs, Mark’s demons make a simple request—“Send us to the swine, let us enter them”—while in Matthew they make a conditional request—“If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of swine.”

We thus see how the biblical authors Mark and Matthew both wanted to convey the gist of what happened on this occasion, but they don’t feel bound to use the same exact words of dialogue. There is dialogue reconstruction—in the form of paraphrase—happening in these texts.

 

A More Striking Example

An even more striking example of reconstructed dialogue occurs in Luke’s account of the day of Pentecost in Acts.

After the Holy Spirit descends on the disciples and they begin speaking in tongues, we read:

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.

And they were amazed and wondered, saying,

“Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?

“And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?

“Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God” (Acts 2:5-11).

Note carefully what Luke says: “they were amazed and wondered, saying.” This tells us that the words that follow represent what the crowd—a group of people—said.

Now—unless they’re chanting in unison—when a group of people speak, each person says something different. In real life, they would hold a conversation about the amazing event unfolding before them.

But instead of recording a conversation between individual speakers, Luke represents the crowd as if it is speaking in unison: “How is it that we hear, each of us in his native language? . . . We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

Interposed between these is a long list of places that the Jews came from, and there is no way in real life that a group of people speaking in unison—without a script—would name the same places in the same order.

What’s more, the list isn’t random. This may not be obvious to modern readers, who aren’t that familiar with ancient place names, but the list mentions places of Jewish settlement moving from east to west. It starts in the far east with Parthia (in modern Iran) and works its way westward through the Holy Land and North Africa before moving up to the capital of the empire—Rome—with Cretans (an island people) and Arabs (a nomadic people) thrown in at the end.

There is no way a crowd would spontaneously come up with this list. If they wanted to speak in unison, they’d need to first decide on the places to name and then figure out the sequence in which to name them.

 

A Greek Chorus

The way that Luke presents the crowd bursting into a common speech will be familiar to readers of ancient literature. What Luke depicts the crowd doing is functioning as a Greek chorus.

Greek choruses were made up of performers in ancient Greek plays. Choruses consisted of 12 to 50 actors, and they sang, danced, and spoke lines in unison. Their purpose was to represent the common people who were witnessing the events of the play, and they provided commentary on them.

They would say things that the main characters couldn’t (e.g., the chorus might comment on the main character’s faults or hidden fears and motives), they would comment in ways that would bring out the significance of events in the story, and they would underscore elements of the plot to make it easier for the audience to follow.

Here’s an example of a chorus speaking in Sophocles’s play Antigone—about the daughter of Oedipus the king. At this point in the play, Antigone has been sentenced to be buried alive in a tomb by the tyrant King Creon, and she has just compared her fate to a somewhat similar fate experienced by Niobe, the daughter of King Tantalus.

The chorus then speaks up and says:

Yet [Niobe] was a goddess, you know, and born of gods;

we are mortals, and of mortal race.

But ’tis great renown for a woman [you, Antigone] who has perished that she should have shared the doom of the godlike, in her life, and afterward in death.

You see how the chorus speaks in unison—“We are mortals, and of mortal race.” This kind of speaking in unison would not happen in real life unless people were reading from a script, which is exactly what happened in ancient Greek plays. The actors had a script to direct their speech.

The crowd on Pentecost had no script to read from, but Luke knows that his readers will have seen plays and be familiar with the literary device of a chorus, so he reconstructs dialogue-in-unison to reflect the thoughts and nature of the crowd and has them provide commentary on the miracle they have just witnessed.

No doubt, individual people in the crowd on Pentecost did say things like, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?”, “How is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?”, and “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” They probably didn’t use those exact words, but they convey the gist of what people in the crowd said.

Luke then fuses these remarks with a list of the places that the people came from to provide an overall commentary that conveyed to his readers a sense of the multiple languages represented in the miracle and the crowd’s reaction to it.

We thus find a real event being presented with a particularly clear case of reconstructed dialogue.

 

The Words of Jesus

A question that modern readers will want to ask is what all this says about the words of Jesus.

We can say basically two things: First, that the authors of the Gospels were concerned with accurately presenting the gist of Jesus’ teachings and interactions, and second, that they were at liberty to paraphrase and reconstruct dialogue.

This means that we would expect more exact representations of Jesus’ words in certain types of passages. Teachings were the most important things Jesus said (as opposed, for example, to where the group would be having dinner or spending the night), so they should most closely reflect his actual words.

 

Short Sayings

Also, shorter statements are easier to remember than longer ones, so teachings given in shorter form should convey more of the actual words.

Indeed, we have evidence that Jesus himself took these things into account, and many of his teachings are framed in short, vivid, easy-to-remember forms. An example is this statement:

The last will be first, and the first last (Matt. 20:16).

This saying uses a literary device known as a chiasm or chiasmus (in Greek chiasma means “crossing”). Chiasms involve a sequence of elements that reverse in order. If we label the word “last” as A and the word “first” as B, this chiasmus has an A B | B A structure.

Such structures make sayings easier to remember, and it appears Jesus used them to make his teachings more memorable.

 

Parables

Another literary device he used to do this was the parable. Jesus’ parables are short, memorable stories that teach spiritual lessons, and humans are wired for stories, so we remember the gist of them easily.

Some of Jesus’ longer discourses—like the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7)—are essentially collections of short, easily memorable sayings, and if you study the Sermon on the Mount, you can see that it’s organized around different collections of sayings that begin the same way (e.g., “Blessed are the X”, “You have heard X, but I say Y”, “When you do X, do not do Y”).

There is also the fact that—as a teacher—Jesus would have given the same teachings multiple times, to many different audiences, so his disciples would have heard his teachings many times and—as his disciples (i.e., students)—they would have made efforts to memorize them so they could preach them to others.

 

Conversational Dialogue

On the other hand, not everything Jesus said would have been remembered in this way. Things he said only once—like when he was having a conversation with someone—would not be expected to be as close to the original wording, so we would expect more reconstruction in one-off statements.

The same would be true of minor characters—people other than Jesus. Numerous people approached him for miracles of healing or exorcism during his ministry, and their exact words in making the request would not have been memorized. Consequently, we would expect the Evangelists to reconstruct what such people said, basing it on the kind of thing someone with a particular problem would say to Jesus in making a respectful request for relief.

So expect more reconstruction in conversational dialogue.

 

Long, One-Time Speeches?

Similarly, things that Jesus said that went on for a long time—very lengthy statements, especially those made only once—would be harder to memorize, and we would expect more paraphrase and reconstruction.

For example, Jesus gives some long speeches in the Gospel of John. One of them runs for five chapters (John 13-17)! And it was apparently given only once, on Holy Thursday. Even though John was an eyewitness (John 21:24), and even though he had supernatural assistance in remembering what Jesus said (John 14:26), the ancient audience would not have expected John to reproduce a word-for-word transcript of a lengthy speech he heard Jesus give only once.

Instead, they would expect the Holy Spirit to help John remember the gist of what was said, and then John would employ the normal reconstruction and paraphrase that was expected in ancient literature.

What we see is thus that the four Evangelists felt the need to accurately preserve the substance of what Jesus said, but not always the exact wording—as can be seen by comparing the Gospel accounts of the same sayings and noting the variation in the exact words used.

 

No Quotation Marks

Part of the problem modern readers have with the idea that quotations in the Bible may not be exact is because they are encased in quotation marks. When Jesus says something, modern Bibles put quotation marks around it.

However, the original Greek manuscripts of the New Testament (and the Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament) do not contain quotation marks. They are a later invention.

The ancestors of quotation marks were invented in the 2nd century B.C., but they had a different function back then. At the Library of Alexandria, they were used to signal erroneous or disputed portions of text.

Once the Christian age began, authors began using them to signal quotations, but they were a particular type of quotation—one that came from the Bible. Biblical passages would get quotation marks, regardless of whether someone was speaking or not. Thus when the author of Genesis writes “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” it would get quotation marks, and so would Jesus’ statement “The last will be first, and the first last.”

Later, quotation marks came to be used for quotations of the words another person used in saying something, which is their modern function. And they usually indicated exact quotations—the exact words someone said, with no paraphrase or reconstruction.

This is the connotation that they have today, and their use in modern editions of the Bible leads the reader to suppose that they are being given an exact quotation.

But the quotation marks aren’t in the originals. They are added by modern translation committees. There are even disputes—in some cases—about where a particular quotation begins and ends, because there aren’t any marks in the Greek telling you where it ends and where the author’s voice picks up again.

For example, a famous instance occurs in Galatians 2. It’s clear that in Galatians 2:14 Paul begins quoting something he once said to St. Peter, but it isn’t clear where the historic quotation ends and where Paul shifts back to giving his current thoughts rather than what he said to Peter in the past.

 

Direct and Indirect Discourse

The difference in how ancient writers quoted people and how modern, English-speaking ones do is illustrated by the difference between what are known as direct and indirect discourse.

In direct discourse, a modern English-language writer will be giving you what he believes were the exact words a person used—no paraphrasing allowed—as in this statement:

    • John said, “I am hungry”

By contrast, indirect discourse doesn’t present you with a quotation, and so quotation marks are not used, as in the statement:

    • John said that he is hungry.

The way English writing works, you know that in the first statement the author is giving you what he thinks is an exact quotation of what John said, while in the second statement he is giving you a summary of what John said, but not necessarily his exact words (e.g., John might have literally said, “I’m famished!” or “I’m peckish” or “I haven’t eaten today,” but you could summarize all of those with “John said that he is hungry”).

Greek has equivalents of direct and indirect discourse, but they don’t work exactly the same way the English versions do. In particular, since ancient authors generally weren’t expected to give you exact quotations, this wasn’t normally part of what Greek direct discourse implied.

But when you add quotation marks to signal direct discourse in English, it tells the reader that what they have before them is supposed to be an exact quotation. This can mask the greater flexibility ancient authors had in presenting quotations. So when you read the statement:

    • And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go, as you have believed it will be done for you.”

It may actually mean something more like:

    • And Jesus said to the centurion that he should go and that, as he had believed, it would be done for him.

In other words, quotation marks work differently in the Bible than they do in things we write.

When you see quotation marks in the Bible, they only guarantee that the gist of what was said is accurate—not that these were the exact words.

This is not to say that a quotation doesn’t preserve the exact words of Jesus. It may or may not, but it will accurately preserve the gist of what he said.

 

Dei Verbum

So what can we say in light of all this? One of the things that the Second Vatican Council taught was the following:

Since, therefore, all that the inspired authors, or sacred writers, affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture, firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures (Dei Verbum 11).

In other words, everything that the authors of the Bible intended to assert, properly speaking, is also asserted by the Holy Spirit and is thus true.

The authors of the Bible intended to assert the substance of Jesus’ actions and teachings. They didn’t intend to assert the exact words that he and others always used, because that kind of assertion wasn’t a standard part of ancient literature. However, they did intend to assert the gist—the substance—of what he said and did.

Therefore, that substance is guaranteed by the Holy Spirit to be transmitted by the Gospels “firmly, faithfully, and without error.”

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God bless you always!

 

Lost Scriptures: The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch, Nephilim) – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

Some believe the ancient Book of Enoch is a book of Scripture and so Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli continue their discussion of the book, focusing on the first known as the Book of the Watchers, which focuses on angels, fallen angels and demons.

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Lost Scripture: The Book of Enoch – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

Who was Enoch, what is his book, and why is it a “lost scripture”? Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli discuss the mysterious Enoch, the references to him in the New Testament, and what makes his book so fascinating and mysterious.

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Lost Scripture? Jubilees (Missing Book of the Bible?) – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

Throughout history, there have been books some people considered scripture and others didn’t. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli discuss one of those books, Jubilees. What was does it say? Could any of it be true? What should Christians today think of it?

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Do Unicorns Exist? – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

Pop culture imagines unicorns as horses with a single horn in their forehead and associates them with cartoons and rainbows and social movements. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli explore their deep roots in history and long association with the Christian faith and whether there could be real unicorns.

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Those *Other* Forty Days (the Ones After Easter)

We’re all familiar with the idea that Lent is forty days long, and it used to be true that Lent involved forty days excluding Sundays, though this isn’t true now, given revisions to the Church’s liturgical calendar.

The length of Lent is inspired by the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness before he began his public ministry (Matt. 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13).

However, there’s another forty days connected with Jesus, and we read about them at the beginning of Acts:

To them [the apostles] he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3).

Jesus then instructed the apostles to remain in Jerusalem until they received the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-5). This happened on Pentecost, fifty days after his Crucifixion on Passover.

These forty days are interesting in their own right, and many Christians have wondered about them. For example, why did Jesus only stay forty days and not the full fifty? Why leave when he did?

We aren’t told, but a likely explanation is that he was using the forty days as a parallel to his time in the wilderness. Just as he spent forty days in the desert to prepare for his ministry, he now stayed with the apostles for forty days, preparing them for their ministry.

The tradition that he remained with them forty days was not universal in the early Church, however. The second century Church Father Irenaeus of Lyons recorded that the Valentinian Gnostics claimed Jesus remained with the disciples for eighteen months (Against Heresies 1:3:2). The same view was held by another sect known as the Ophites (1:30:14).

Paulist Press’s translation of Irenaeus finds the origin of this counter tradition obscure. An editorial note on 1:30:14 says “How this strange error arose is a mystery,” and a note on 1:3:2 says, “Perhaps it was in some apocryphal work.”

Though the editors of the Paulist translation are unaware of it, this is actually the correct answer. There was an early noncanonical work that contained this tradition. The Ascension of Isaiah, which was written about the year A.D. 67, states:

And when he [Jesus] has plundered the angel of death, he will rise on the third day and will remain in that world for five hundred and forty-five days (Ascension of Isaiah 9:16).

Five hundred and forty-five days works out to just over eighteen months, and this may have been the origin of the Valentinian and Ophite believe that Jesus remained with the disciples for that amount of time.

Still, not all agreed. The third century Gnostic work called Pistis Sophia holds that Jesus remained with the disciples for an astonishing eleven years!

It came to pass, when Jesus had risen from the dead, that he passed eleven years discoursing with his disciples (Pistis Sophia 1:1).

However, the canonical book of Acts is divinely inspired, and Luke was an excellent historian, so we should go with him. Forty days it was.

What was Jesus doing in this time? According to various Gnostic sects, he was imparting their secret Gnostic teachings to the apostles.

According to their idea, Jesus gave two sets of teachings. The first was an exoteric or public set of teachings that the apostles passed down to the bishops to be shared with the faithful in general, and the second was an esoteric or secret set of teachings that were to be shared only with a select few (the Gnostics themselves).

This “two sets of teachings” idea was to justify how the Gnostics could have teachings coming from Jesus that were manifestly different than those preached by the bishops.

Because books were fantastically expensive in the ancient world (with a single copy of Matthew costing the equivalent of more than $2,000), the Gnostics didn’t bother writing Gospels in our sense—that is, documents that told the full story of Jesus.

Instead, they supplemented the canonical Gospels by writing documents that zoomed in on particular moments in Jesus’ life. An example is the second century Gospel of Mary, in which—after the Resurrection—Jesus gave “Mary” (likely Mary Magdalen) secret Gnostic teachings.

However, even secular scholars acknowledge that Gnostic documents are too late to contain accurate information about Jesus’ life and teachings.

We also do not have writings from the Church Fathers that are early enough to provide reliable information about the forty days. Acts 1:3 is barely mentioned in the orthodox Christian writings of the second and third centuries, and when it is mentioned, we aren’t given any new information about the period.

So once again, we’re back to the canonical works if we wish to obtain that.

At the beginning of Acts, Luke tells us that Jesus essentially did three things during the forty days: (1) “he presented himself alive after his passion,” (2) “by many proofs,” and (3) “speaking of the kingdom of God.”

He may well have done other things, too, like spending time with the disciples, sharing table fellowship with them, and even possibly celebrating the Eucharist. But these are the three things Luke tells us he did.

When it comes to presenting himself alive, Luke mentions only two events from this period in Acts. The first is the instruction to remain in Jerusalem until the apostles receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-5), and the second is the Ascension (Acts 1:6-11).

But Luke tells us more in his Gospel, indicating that Jesus appeared to the two disciples (one of whom was Cleopas) on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), that he appeared to Peter (Luke 24:34), that he appeared to the apostles “and those who were with them” (Luke 24:36-49), and that he ascended before them (Luke 24:50-53).

We can expand on these appearances by consulting other canonical texts. Matthew records that Jesus also appeared to the women who discovered the empty tomb (Matt. 28:9-10) and that he appeared to the Eleven in Galilee, where he gave them the Great Commission (Matt. 28:16-20).

John reports that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalen, in particular, on the morning of the Resurrection (John 20:11-17) and that he appeared to the other core disciples (less Thomas) later that day (John 20:19-23). He also appeared to the Twelve including Thomas a week later (John 20:26-29), and he later appeared to a group of seven disciples at the Sea of Galilee (John 21:1-22).

The longer ending of Mark confirms many of these appearances, including the one to Mary Magdalen (Mark 16:9), the one on the road to Emmaus (Mark 16:12), and another to the Eleven (Mark 16:14), as well as the giving of the Great Commission (Mark 16:15-18) and the Ascension (Mark 16:19).

We also have evidence from St. Paul, who records the same appearance to Peter that Luke mentioned (1 Cor. 15:5a) and a subsequent appearance to the Eleven (1 Cor. 15:5b).

Paul strikingly says that “Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:6)—that is, by the time 1 Corinthians was written around A.D. 53.

After this appearance to more than five hundred, Paul says, “Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles” (1 Cor. 15:7)—indicating first an appearance to James “the brother of the Lord” and then another appearance to the Twelve (which would have, by this time, included Judas’s replacement, Matthias; see Acts 1:12-26).

Finally, Paul says, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Cor. 15:8). However, Luke indicates that this occurred long after the Ascension and thus after the forty days were over (Acts 9:1-19).

When it comes to the “many proofs” that Jesus was alive, Luke records two of them in his Gospel. The first is this:

[The Eleven and those who were with them] were startled and frightened and supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this he showed them his hands and his feet (Luke 24:37-40).

The second is:

And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them (Luke 24:41-43).

John appears to record more detailed accounts of these same two proofs, elaborating that the first occurred when Jesus invited Thomas to touch the wounds in his hands and side (John 20:24-28) and when he appeared to seven disciples at the Sea of Galilee and ate charbroiled fish with them (John 21:9-14).

When it comes to “speaking of the kingdom of God,” we are not told specifically what Jesus said.

The Gnostics obviously had their own (completely unreliable) theories. However, a more secure basis is found in the canonical works that we have.

The kingdom of God is a prominent theme in the canonical Gospels, and we are told that the disciples did not understand things that he told them before the Resurrection, including what he meant when he predicted that he would die and rise again (Mark 9:30-32), as well as other matters (John 2:21-22).

However, on the road to Emmaus, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Similarly, when he spoke to the apostles and those with them:

Then he said to them, “These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “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” (Luke 24:44-47).

It is thus likely that in this forty-day period, Jesus reviewed many of his previous teachings about the kingdom of God and helped the disciples understand them more fully.

Did Jesus do other things in this period? It is quite possible. Near the end of his Gospel, John tells us:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book (John 20:30).

Some of those signs may have occurred in the forty-day period he spent with the disciples after his resurrection.

However, whether he did so and what these signs may have been, we are not told. We must therefore leave them as an Easter mystery.

 

Is Judas in Hell?

One of the key events of Holy Week is the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot—something many Christians are convinced caused Judas to go to hell. I used to be one of them.

However, several times recently, Church officials have stated that—even though hell is a real possibility humans can choose—the Church does not teach that any particular person is in hell.

For example, in his 1994 interview book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, John Paul II discussed who will go to hell and wrote:

The Church has never made any pronouncement in this regard. This is a mystery, truly inscrutable, which embraces the holiness of God and the conscience of man. The silence of the Church is, therefore, the only appropriate position for Christian faith. Even when Jesus says of Judas, the traitor, “It would be better for that man if he had never been born” (Matt. 26:24), his words do not allude for certain to eternal damnation (p. 139).

Similarly, in a 2006 audience, Benedict XVI said:

Even though he went to hang himself (cf. Matt. 27:5), it is not up to us to judge his gesture, substituting ourselves for the infinitely merciful and just God (October 18, 2006).

Despite these statements, it has long been commonly held that Judas is, in fact, damned. So how can we understand the traditional opinion in light of the possibility of Judas’s salvation that John Paul II and Benedict XVI hold out?

One approach is to review the evidence we have for Judas being in hell and seeing how conclusive it is.

A first type of evidence is something that many people may not be aware of: Data from exorcism cases.

Christians are familiar with the concept of exorcism being used for possession by demons—that is, fallen angels. However, there are also occasional reports of spirit possession by human souls.

In Judaism, such spirits are referred to as dybbuks. A dybbuk is “a disembodied human spirit that, because of former sins, wanders restlessly until it finds a haven in the body of a living person” (Brittanica.com).

Although dybbuks are more commonly associated with popular Jewish belief, they are also sometimes reported in Christian contexts, and that includes Judas. Exorcists periodically report that—during the course of the rite—one of the possessing spirits will identify itself as a former human, typically a famous sinner such as the emperor Nero or Judas Iscariot.

If a possessing spirit identifies itself as Judas and speaks truthfully, then that would support the idea that Judas is a lost soul.

The difficulty is the “and speaks truthfully” part. Demons—and any human allies they have in the possession racket—are working for “the father of lies” (John 8:44), which means that you can’t trust anything they say.

Consequently, the 1614 rite of exorcism—which is still in use—warns that the exorcist must “be on his guard against the arts and subterfuges which the evil spirits are wont to use in deceiving the exorcist” (n. 5). Further, it specifically warns that “neither ought he to give any credence to the devil if the latter maintains that he is the spirit of . . . a deceased party” (n. 14).

The Church does not have a teaching on whether damned souls can ever possess the living, so this is an open question theologically. However, because of how untruthful possessing spirits are, their identity claims are not a reliable form of evidence, and the Church has warned us not to pay heed to such claims.

I thus don’t think that we can rely on evidence from these cases to prove Judas is in hell.

Another source of evidence is the common opinion itself that Judas is damned, including by many Church Fathers.

The Holy Spirit guides Christian opinion—including the views of the Fathers—on matters of faith, and so this also could count as evidence for Judas’s damnation.

However, for it to be conclusive, two conditions would have to be met: (1) Judas’s damnation would have to be a matter of the Faith, and (2) the relevant parties would have to agree that this is definitively the case, meaning that there is absolutely no possibility of disputing it.

Neither of these seem fulfilled. For an infallible definition to occur, the members of the Magisterium (bishops teaching in union with the pope) must—at some point in time—come to a position where they are “in agreement on one position as definitively to be held” (Lumen Gentium 25).

However, John Paul II and Benedict XVI indicate that they have not done this. When John Paul II says (above) that “the Church has never made any pronouncement” on individuals who are in hell, including Judas, then that means it doesn’t have a teaching on this position, much less a definitive one.

Individuals—including many of the Fathers—may hold the opinion that Judas is in hell, but opinions—no matter how common—are not infallible Church teachings. Consequently, we can’t appeal to this kind of evidence as conclusive of Judas’s damnation.

What about the idea that this might be a matter of the Faith? Here we come to the subject of what Scripture teaches. The reason that many in Catholic history have held Judas is damned is because of what Scripture says, so does this give us conclusive evidence?

John Paul II and Benedict XVI have already responded to the two passages in Scripture that one might appeal to.

John Paul II dealt with the passage where Jesus said, “Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born” (Matt. 26:24; cf. Mark 14:21), and the pope said that Jesus’ words “do not allude for certain to eternal damnation.”

This is true. While the warning is reasonably taken as meaning that Judas will go to hell because of what he has done, it—like biblical warnings in general about the consequences of sin—presupposes one thing: That the person does not repent (Jer. 18:7-10).

So if Judas were to heed the call, “Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19), then his sins would be blotted out.

Now here’s the thing: Matthew’s Gospel—the same one where Jesus warns of Judas’s fate—goes on to say this:

When Judas, his betrayer, saw that he was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood” (Matt. 27:3-4).

Matthew says that Judas repented! He recognized that he sinned and that Jesus was innocent, and he sought to return the money. When the priests refused to take it back, he threw it into the temple (27:5a), so that he would not profit from his sin. That sounds like a sincere repentance!

But what about what Judas did next? He hanged himself (27:5b), and this is the second text one might appeal to for Judas’s damnation. Even if he repented of having betrayed Jesus, wouldn’t he still go to hell because of his suicide?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives (2283).

Suicide does not always result in hell because a person may not be fully responsible for his action due to lack of knowledge, or psychological factors, and because “in ways known to him alone,” God may help the person to repent—even in the act of committing suicide itself.

Judas thus may have been so grieved by his offense that he wasn’t fully responsible for his suicide, or he may have repented of taking his own life while he was still hanging from his neck.

As Pope Benedict said, “Even though he went to hang himself, it is not up to us to judge his gesture, substituting ourselves for the infinitely merciful and just God.”

It thus appears that we don’t have conclusive proof that Judas is in hell, and there is still a ray of hope for him.

This Holy Week, let us thank God for his mercy upon all of us. It is a mercy that—in principle—might extend even to Judas.

 

What’s the Deal with Holy Week? 9 Things to Know and Share

Holy Week is tremendously important in the Christian year. What is it? Where did it come from? And what happens in it?

Here are 9 things to know and share.

 

1) What is Holy Week?

Holy Week is the week preceding Easter Sunday. According to the General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, “The Sixth Sunday [of Lent], on which Holy Week begins, is called, ‘Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord’” (n. 30).

Holy Week thus begins on the Sixth Sunday of Lent, and the period is characterized by a variety of liturgical celebrations. These have changed over time, but the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church states:

The various traditional rites of the week, of which each day has its own, probably began to develop at Jerusalem in the 4th cent., when pilgrimages became easily possible, and Christians could indulge a natural desire to re-enact the last scenes of the life of Christ in liturgical drama.

The Pilgrimage of Egeria, now generally thought to describe a visit in 381–4, gives a detailed account of the contemporary observance of Holy Week in Jerusalem (s.v. “Holy Week”).

Because of Holy Week’s importance, the liturgical celebrations during it take precedence over any other celebrations that would otherwise occur in the period (e.g., saints’ days). The General Norms state, “the weekdays of Holy Week, from Monday up to and including Thursday, take precedence over all other celebrations” (n. 16a).

 

2) What happens on the Sunday of Holy Week?

On this day, the liturgy commemorates both Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem and his Passion.

The Triumphal Entry was an event in which Jesus conspicuously fulfilled the messianic prophecy of Zechariah 9:9—“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt the foal of a donkey.” He thus openly displayed himself as the messianic king of the Jews.

During this event, the crowds waved palm branches to hail his arrival, which is why the day is called Palm Sunday and why we use palm fronds in the liturgy on this day.

We know the event happened on this day because John reports that Jesus was anointed at Bethany “six days before the Passover” (John 12:1)—that is before, Good Friday—and that he made his final entry to Jerusalem “the next day” (John 12:12). Therefore, the entry occurred on the Sunday preceding Passover.

On this day the liturgy also commemorates the Passion of Jesus, and the Gospel reading is devoted to his suffering and crucifixion with which the week climaxes.

 

3) What happens on the Monday of Holy Week?

In the Gospels, Mark 11:12 reports that “on the following day” (Holy Monday), Jesus was returning to Jerusalem from an overnight stay in Bethany when he found a fig tree displaying leaves but no fruit and cursed it.

He then went to Jerusalem where he found the temple polluted by people buying and selling, and he cleared them out.

Jesus also begins teaching in the temple on a daily basis.

In the liturgy, the Gospel reading for this day is from John 12, and it backs up in time to the day before the Triumphal Entry and relates the story of Jesus being anointed at Bethany. He notes that this is in preparation for his burial (v. 7).

Although these events took place the previous Saturday, they are presented here in the liturgy to form a thematic narrative leading up to the Crucifixion.

 

4) What happens on the Tuesday of Holy Week?

In the Gospels, Mark reports that on this day “they passed by in the morning” (Mark 11:20), the saw the fig tree that Jesus had cursed withered.

Jesus continued to teach in the temple on this day.

In the liturgy, the Gospel reading is from John 13, and it records Jesus’ prediction at the Last Supper that one of the Twelve—Judas—will betray him. Judas then leaves the meal, and Jesus predicts that Peter will deny him three times.

These events took place on Holy Thursday, but they are presented here to continue the thematic narrative leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion.

 

5) What happens on the Wednesday of Holy Week?

In the Gospels, Mark 14:1 reports that “it was two days before the Passover” (i.e., Holy Wednesday), and the chief priests and scribes were plotting how to kill Jesus.

Judas Iscariot then went to the chief priests and offered to betray him (Mark 14:10). Judas thus agreed to spy on Jesus, and so Holy Wednesday is sometimes called “Spy Wednesday.”

In the liturgy, the Gospel reading is from Matthew 26, and it covers how Judas agreed to betray Jesus, along with events that occurred the next day, including the beginning of the Last Supper.

 

6) What happens on the Thursday of Holy Week?

In the Gospels, Jesus and his disciples sacrificed the Passover lamb (Mark 14:12) and found the location where Jesus had arranged—ahead of time—to eat the Last Supper. This involved a subterfuge. Instead of just telling the disciples where they would eat the Passover, Jesus sent two of them into the city, where they would find a man carrying a jar of water (an unusual sign, as this was normally women’s work). They were to follow this man home, enter the house, and the homeowner would then show them an already furnished guest room.

The apparent purpose of this subterfuge was to keep Judas from knowing in advance where the meal would be eaten, preventing him from being able to betray Jesus before the Last Supper.

At the event, Jesus washed the disciples’ feet (John 13:1-20), instituted the Eucharist, and predicted his betrayal by Judas and his denial by Peter.

During this supper, Jesus also said, “A new commandment I give to you: that you love one another—just as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:34). The Latin word for commandment is mandatum, and this passed over into English as “maundy.” Consequently, this day is sometimes called Maundy Thursday—the day Jesus gave this commandment.

Afterwards, they went to the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed before Judas arrived with an arresting party. He was taken to the home of the high priest, where Peter denied him three times, and a hearing was conducted before Caiaphas. Some of this likely occurred after midnight, meaning it technically happened early on Good Friday.

In the liturgy, on the morning of Holy Thursday, it is customary for the bishop and the priests of his diocese to celebrate a “chrism Mass,” in which the oils used in the sacraments are consecrated. (However, for logistical reasons this Mass can be celebrated on another day.)

In the evening, the season of Lent ends with the beginning of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. According to the General Norms, Lent runs “from Ash Wednesday up to but excluding the Mass of the Lord’s Supper” (n. 28).

A new liturgical season—the Paschal Triduum—begins at this point. “The Paschal Triduum of the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord begins with the evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper” (n. 19).

The Gospel reading at this Mass is from John 13, where Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, and—optionally—the priest celebrating the Mass may do the same for some of the faithful.

Afterward, the altar is stripped, the Eucharist is processed to a place of repose, and a period of silent Eucharistic adoration is held.

 

7) What happens on the Friday of Holy Week?

In the Gospels, Jesus was brought before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, early in the morning. Apparently, proceedings involving the high priest had lasted all night, as John tells us that the Jewish officials had not yet been able to eat the Passover meal (John 18:28).

At this point, Matthew tells us that Judas repented and insisted on returning the money he had been paid to betray Jesus, after which he hanged himself (Matt. 27:3-10).

A series of legal proceedings followed, including a hearing before Herod Antipas (Luke 23:6-12). However, ultimately Jesus was condemned to be crucified.

During the Crucifixion, “from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour” (Matt. 27:45)—that is, from about noon to about 3 p.m.—at which point Jesus died.

Since the sabbath was about to begin at sundown, a hasty burial was arranged for Jesus in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea—a Christian who was a member of the Jewish council—since this tomb was located near where Jesus was crucified (John 19:38-42).

In the liturgy, the season of Triduum continues. Mass is not celebrated on this day. Instead, a Communion service is held (often at about 3 p.m.). This consists of a liturgy of the word, the veneration of the cross, and the distribution of holy Communion.

 

8) What happens on the Saturday of Holy Week?

In the Gospels, the only report we have of this day is from Luke 23:56: “On the sabbath they [the disciples] rested according to the commandment.”

In the liturgy, the season of Triduum continues. During the daytime hours, Mass is not celebrated, and holy Communion is given only to the dying.

However, after nightfall, a vigil Mass commemorating the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter is celebrated (i.e., Easter Vigil).

This Mass includes a special ceremony in which the faithful hold lighted lamps or candles, reflecting the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Matt. 25:1-13), where the wise virgins await Christ’s return with lighted lamps.

It is also customary for catechumens to be baptized and, in many places, for already baptized candidates to be received into the Church. They are also confirmed and receive their first holy Communion, completing the sacraments of Christian initiation.

At this point, Holy Week itself is over, but there is more to the story . . .

 

9) What happens on Easter Sunday?

In the Gospels, the disciples first learned of the Resurrection after the women went to the tomb and met angels, who revealed that it was empty. This triggered a period of confusion among the disciples, but the confusion was dispelled when Jesus himself appeared to them, initiating the season of Easter joy.

In the liturgy, a single Mass is celebrated in the morning. The Gospel reading is from John 20:1-9, which records the discovery of the empty tomb by Mary Magdalen and how Peter and the beloved disciple ran to the site and found her report was true.

The season of Triduum then concludes. The General Norms state that it “closes with Vespers (Evening Prayer) of the Sunday of the Resurrection” (n. 19).

At that point, the joyous liturgical season of Easter begins.

Being Precise About Church Teaching on Hell

Pope Francis recently sparked a discussion when he told an Italian television program, “What I am going to say is not a dogma of faith but my own personal view: I like to think of hell as empty; I hope it is.”

I was not surprised he would have this view. It is common in some ecclesiastical circles and was proposed by theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar in his book Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved?

Given how Pope Francis’s comments often function as a lightning-rod, I was not surprised by the discussion that followed, and one contribution was a recent article by Ralph Martin.

Although framed as a piece about what the Church teaches on hell, Martin spent much of it arguing for his own view, which is the traditional one, that hell is both a real possibility and an actual reality for many people. He explores this further in his book Will Many Be Saved?

I wish Martin well in arguing his case—and arguing it vigorously. The thought that hell might be a real but unrealized possibility is a comforting one that can be attractive to many today. However, Scripture contains serious warnings about hell that do not sound hypothetical in nature.

As a result, the theological field should not simply be ceded to what we moderns find comfortable and reassuring. If there is to be any reassessment of the traditional view of hell as an actual reality for many, Scripture’s statements need to be taken seriously, and both sides need to be argued vigorously.

(I’d note, in particular, that in his book von Balthasar never even addresses Luke 13:23-24, where in response to the question, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” Jesus responds, “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”)

My sympathies are thus with Martin, but I would refine a few things about his article.

First, in regard to Pope Francis’s statement that what he was about to say was “not a dogma of faith,” Martin offers a definition of dogma that could suggest it is essentially connected with salvation. I would point out, by contrast, that in current theological jargon, a dogma is a truth that the Catholic Church has infallibly defined to be divinely revealed, whether or not it has any direct connection with salvation. (Culpably rejecting a dogma is a mortal sin; but the truth itself doesn’t have to have a direct connection with salvation.)

Second, there is a passage where Martin conveys a misleading impression about the views of Cardinal Avery Dulles. First, he says that “the traditional interpretation . . . . by the Church’s greatest theologians is that it is very likely that many people go [to hell],” then he identifies Dulles as “perhaps the leading American theologian of the 20th century,” and then he cites a 2003 article that Dulles wrote in First Things.

The problem is that Martin quotes a part of the article in which Dulles refers to several passages of Scripture and says, “Taken in their obvious meaning, passages such as these give the impression that there is a hell, and that many go there; more in fact, than are saved.” The impression is thus that Dulles is firmly in the line of “the Church’s greatest theologians” who believe that “many go there; more in fact, than are saved.”

However, this is not Dulles’s view! Dulles noted the obvious interpretation of various Bible passages without asserting that the obvious one is the only possible one. In fact, he concludes:

The search for numbers in the demography of hell is futile. God in His wisdom has seen fit not to disclose any statistics. Several sayings of Jesus in the Gospels give the impression that the majority are lost. Paul, without denying the likelihood that some sinners will die without sufficient repentance, teaches that the grace of Christ is more powerful than sin: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). Passages such as these permit us to hope that very many, if not all, will be saved.

All told, it is good that God has left us without exact information. If we knew that virtually everybody would be damned, we would be tempted to despair. If we knew that all, or nearly all, are saved, we might become presumptuous. If we knew that some fixed percent, say fifty, would be saved, we would be caught in an unholy rivalry. We would rejoice in every sign that others were among the lost, since our own chances of election would thereby be increased. Such a competitive spirit would hardly be compatible with the gospel.

Martin’s article thus conveys a misleading impression of Dulles.

What does the Church actually teach? This is found in the Catechism, which says, in part, “The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell” (CCC 1035).

The Church thus teaches that hell is a real possibility. If you die in mortal sin, you go there. But does the Church leave room for the idea that God might rescue all from mortal sin—even at the last moment?

The Catechism states: “The Church prays that no one should be lost: ‘Lord, let me never be parted from you.’ If it is true that no one can save himself, it is also true that God ‘desires all men to be saved’ (1 Tim 2:4), and that for him ‘all things are possible’ (Mt 19:26)” (CCC 1058).

The Catechism thus seems open to the possibility that God—for whom “all things are possible”—might be able to rescue all from mortal sin and thus hell might be empty.

This view seems to be permitted on other grounds. After von Balthasar proposed it in Dare We Hope, John Paul II named him a cardinal—specifically for his theological contributions—though von Baltazar died before the consistory.

Further, as Dulles notes in his 2003 article, John Paul II seemed to have a change of view on this subject. Dulles notes that in his non-magisterial 1995 interview book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, the pope raised von Balthasar’s view and says, “yet the words of Christ are unequivocal. In Matthew’s Gospel he speaks clearly of those who will go to eternal punishment.”

However, in a magisterial text in 1999, Pope John Paul seemed to have shifted, saying, “Eternal damnation remains a possibility, but we are not granted, without special divine revelation, the knowledge of whether or which human beings are effectively involved in it” (Audience, July 28, 1999).

Based on what he said, the pontiff was open on the question of “whether” human beings actually go to hell, and Dulles concludes that “the Pope may have abandoned his criticism of Balthasar.”

It should be noted that in the version of the audience currently on the Vatican web site, the words “whether or” have been deleted. However, this does not alter what John Paul II apparently said, and we cannot know why the words were deleted or whether John Paul II gave his approval to this edit.

For his part, Benedict XVI also took an optimistic view regarding hell in his 2007 encyclical Spe Salvi. He states:

There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell (n. 45).

He then contrasts these with people who are so pure they go straight to heaven and then concludes:

Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God (n. 46).

This latter category goes to purgatory to be purified. Pope Benedict thus thought that “we may suppose” that few go to hell, few go directly to heaven, and “the great majority of people” go to purgatory before heaven.

We thus see the three most recent popes taking optimistic views of hell, with the later John Paul II seemingly open to the idea it may be empty, Benedict holding that we may suppose those who go there are few, and Francis hoping that it is empty.

I’m firmly convinced of the value for theological discussion of vigorously arguing the traditional view that some and even many go to hell—and hearing what the optimists have to say in response. At the same time, when presenting the teaching of the Church, we should be aware of the flexibility that is being displayed on this matter, including by the recent popes.

The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife (Karen King, Walter Fritz, Forgery, Fraud, Hoax)

The 2012 announcement of a papyrus fragment called the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife caused a huge media sensation over the claim that Jesus did have a wife. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli examine what this fragment is, what it says, and whether it is an authentic, early Christian document.

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Tim Shevlin’s Personal Fitness training for Catholics. Providing spiritual and physical wellness programs and daily accountability check-ins. Strengthen yourself to help further God’s kingdom. Work out for the right reason with the right mindset. Learn more by visiting fitcatholics.com.

The Grady Group, a Catholic company bringing financial clarity to their clients across the United States. Using safe money options to produce reasonable rates of return for their clients. Learn more by visiting GradyGroupInc.com.

Great Lakes Customs Law, helping importers and individuals with seizures, penalties, and compliance with U.S. Customs matters throughout the United States. Visit GreatLakesCustomsLaw.com

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