Bible – Page 17 – Jimmy Akin

Who (or What) Was Lucifer?

Recently I got a query from someone wondering about an anti-Catholic video that claimed “the pope’s deacon” invoked Lucifer during the Easter Vigil liturgy and referred to Jesus as his Son.

Of course, that’s not what happened, but to understand what really did happen, you need to know a few things about “lucifer.”

What does the word lucifer mean?

It’s a Latin word derived from the roots lux (light) and ferre (to carry).

It means “light-bearer” or “light-bringer,” and it was not originally used in connection with the devil.

Instead, it could be used multiple ways. For example, anybody carrying a torch at night was a lucifer (light-bringer).

It was also used as a name for the Morning Star (i.e., the planet Venus), because this is the brightest object in the sky other than the sun and the moon. As a result, Venus is the first star seen in the evening (the Evening Star) and the last star seen in the morning (the Morning Star).

Venus is also known—in English—as the Day Star because it can be seen in the day.

Because its sighting in the morning heralds the light of day, it was referred to by Latin speakers as the “light-bringer” or lucifer.

So there was no connection with the devil?

No. In fact, it was used as an ordinary name. Thus in the 300s, St. Lucifer of Cagliari was a defender of the deity of Christ and of St. Athanasius against the Arians.

Another bishop in the 300s—Lucifer of Siena—also bore this name.

Is the symbol of the Morning Star used in any surprising ways?

Yes. The Bible uses it as a symbol for Jesus Christ. In the book of Revelation, we read:

“I Jesus have sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star” (Rev. 22:16).

(Spoiler alert! This is going to play a key role in what we have to say about the liturgy.)

So we shouldn’t freak out just because we see references to the words “lucifer” or “light-bringer” or “morning star”?

No. They have no intrinsic connection to the devil. In fact, they may be used—as in Scripture itself—as symbols of Jesus Christ.

How did this word get connected with the devil?

It’s based on a passage in the book of Isaiah. Chapter 14 of that book contains a taunt (a kind of ancient insult song or poem—like you might find at a modern rap battle) against one of the oppressors of Israel: the king of Babylon.

It predicts his downfall, but it also depicts his pride, which sets him up for the downfall.

Thus we read:

How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low! (Is. 14:12).

In the Latin Vulgate, that’s:

Quomodo cecidisti de caelo,
lucifer, fili aurorae?
Deiectus es in terram,
qui deiciebas gentes.

The king of Babylon thus fancies himself as something high and mighty—like the Day Star itself—but God brings him low in the end.

In this passage the reference to the Day Star/the Morning Star/lucifer is thus an ironic allusion to the king of Babylon’s prideful self-image.

But surely we’re talking about the human king of Babylon—not the devil. Doesn’t the passage refer to him as a man who dies?

Yes. This passage explicitly refers to the king of Babylon as a man (Heb., ’ish) who conquered kingdoms:

Those who see you will stare at you, and ponder over you:

“Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who did not let his prisoners go home?” (Is. 14:16-17).

It also refers multiple times to his decay after death and how he will not lie in his own tomb!

Your pomp is brought down to Sheol, the sound of your harps;
maggots are the bed beneath you, and worms are your covering” (Is. 14:11).

All the kings of the nations lie in glory, each in his own tomb;
but you are cast out, away from your sepulcher, like a loathed untimely birth (Is. 14:18-19).

So we’re talking about a human king—at least in the literal sense of the text.

How did this passage get connected with the devil?

Some of the early Church Fathers took it that way.

They compared the pride that the king of Babylon displays in the passage (“I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High”; Is. 14:14) with the pride of the devil.

They also compared the fall of the king of Babylon to Jesus statement that he “saw Satan fall like lightning” (Luke 10:18)—though in context that passage refers to the defeat of the devil in the ministry the apostles just engaged in.

It is legitimate to use the spiritual sense of this text as an application to the devil, but many people have lost sight of the literal sense of the text, which applies to the human king of Babylon.

Worse, in the popular mind “Lucifer” has simply become a name for the devil, and that causes problems when people who only know this use encounter other uses of the term—as in the Latin liturgy.

Is thus just a Catholic interpretation?

No. In fact, the Protestant Reformers Luther and Calvin acknowledged it.

Luther wrote:

12. How you are fallen from heaven, Lucifer! This is not said of the angel who once was thrown out of heaven but of the king of Babylon, and it is figurative language. Isaiah becomes a disciple of Calliope and in like manner laughs at the king. Heylel [the Hebrew word used in the text] denotes the morning star, called Lucifer and the son of Dawn. “Heaven” is where we are with our heads, and that is obviously above the ground, just as that most powerful and extremely magnificent king was once above, but now his lamp is extinguished (Luther’s Works 16:140; Preface to the Prophet Isaiah, ch. 14).

Calvin as quite hostile to the application of this passage to the devil, writing:

12. How art thou fallen from heaven! Isaiah proceeds with the discourse which he had formerly begun as personating the dead, and concludes that the tyrant differs in no respect from other men, though his object was to lead men to believe that he was some god. He employs an elegant metaphor, by comparing him to Lucifer, and calls him the Son of the Dawn; and that on account of his splendor and brightness with which he shone above others. The exposition of this passage, which some have given, as if it referred to Satan, has arisen from ignorance; for the context plainly shows that these statements must be understood in reference to the king of the Babylonians. But when passages of Scripture are taken up at random, and no attention is paid to the context, we need not wonder that mistakes of this kind frequently arise. Yet it was an instance of very gross ignorance, to imagine that Lucifer was the king of devils, and that the Prophet gave him this name. But as these inventions have no probability whatever, let us pass by them as useless fables (Commentary on Isaiah at 14:12).

So what have anti-Catholics claimed about the Easter Vigil liturgy?

Some have claimed that “the pope’s deacon” invoked Lucifer and described Jesus as the devil’s Son.

This claim is based on translating part of the Easter Vigil liturgy this way:

Flaming Lucifer who finds mankind;
I say O Lucifer, who will Never be defeated.
Christ is your Son, who came back from Hell;
shed his peaceful light and is alive and reigns in the world without end.

What’s the real story?

The pope does not have a personal deacon, though deacons can sing the part of the Easter Vigil liturgy known as the Exsultet, Easter Proclamation, or Paschal Proclamation. (Exsultet is its first word in Latin: “Let them exult!”)

You can read about it here.

The Exsultet is part of a ceremony involving the Paschal Candle, which symbolizes the light of Christ.

In Latin, the relevant part of the Exsultet reads:

Orámus ergo te, Dómine,
ut céreus iste in honórem tui nóminis consecrátus,
ad noctis huius calíginem destruéndam,
indefíciens persevéret.
Et in odórem suavitátis accéptus,
supérnis lumináribus misceátur.

Flammas eius lúcifer matutínus invéniat:
ille, inquam, lúcifer, qui nescit occásum.
Christus Fílius tuus,
qui, regréssus ab ínferis, humáno géneri serénus illúxit,
et vivit et regnat in sæcula sæculórum.

In good English (as opposed to the incompetent translation given by the anti-Catholic commentator), this means:

Therefore, O Lord,
we pray you that this candle,
hallowed to the honor of your name,
may persevere undimmed,
to overcome the darkness of this night.
Receive it as a pleasing fragrance,
and let it mingle with the lights of heaven.

May this flame be found still burning by the Morning Star:
the one Morning Star who never sets,
Christ your Son,
who, coming back from death’s domain,
has shed his peaceful light on humanity,
and lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Up to the first reference to the Morning Star, this passage of the Exsultet is asking God to let the Paschal Candle continue to give light, so that it still be burning in the morning (“May this flame be found still burning by the Morning Star”).

Then the prayer pivots to re-conceive of the Morning Star not as the literal one in the sky but as Jesus Christ himself, based on the symbol in Revelation 22:16 (“the one Morning Star who never sets, Christ your Son”).

It is a moving, poetic prayer to God—not an invocation of the devil.

The New Testament authors you rarely hear about

Who wrote the New Testament?

Let’s see . . . there was Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul.

Those are the easy ones.

Anybody else?

If you think about it for a moment, you’ll likely come up with James, Peter, and Jude.

Good. Now, who else was there?

Harder Cases

At this point, your mind might flash to the book of Hebrews, which doesn’t list its author. Some have proposed that it was written by Apollos, Barnabas, Luke, or another member of the Pauline circle, but I’m not talking about it’s unnamed author. I’m looking for named authors.

Depending on how much you read the Church Fathers and some modern authors (like Benedict XVI), you might know that there is a question of whether one or two people named John contributed to the New Testament, but I’m not talking about that, either.

There are three additional men who are named in the New Testament as authors.

So who were they?

The answer is Sosthenes, Silvanus, and Timothy.

“Wait,” you may be saying. “What books did they author?”

In the case of Sosthenes (SOSS-thin-EES), it was one book: 1 Corinthians.

In the case of Silvanus, it was two books: 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

In the case of Timothy, it was a whopping six books: 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon.

“Wait! Didn’t Paul author those?”

Yes, he did. Paul was the primary author of each letter, and Sosthenes, Silvanus, and Timothy were his co-authors.

You can tell this by the way each book is addressed. In the ancient world, letters were commonly begun with a variant on the formula “X to Y,” where X was the author and Y was the recipient.

Thus 3 John opens with:

The elder to the beloved Gaius (3 John 1).

This tells us that “the elder” is the author and Gaius is the recipient. It presupposes that Gaius knows who the elder is, but other than that it is a fairly standard opening for a first century Greco-Roman letter.

On the other hand, at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, we read:

Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes,

To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours (1 Cor. 1:1-2).

The formula “X to Y” is somewhat obscured by the literary-theological elaboration it is given here, but it’s still present. Stripped of the elaboration, it reads:

Paul and Sosthenes to the church at Corinth.

This lists both Paul and Sosthenes as authors, and that’s weird.

Co-authors?

It may be common today to find a book written by more than one person (e.g., the sci-fi classic The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle).

Co-authors are common today when it comes to books, but not with letters. Today most letters are authored by only one person.

The same was true in the ancient world, so Paul’s listing of other individuals as co-authors was startling.

It was one of several unusual things about his letters. (For another, see here.)

What does his inclusion of co-authors mean?

The Role of Authors

Today we think of the author of a work as the person who writes it, but this is not a guarantee.

In the modern world, we have “ghost writers,” who write a work on behalf of the person who is listed as its author.

Even apart from such an extreme case (where one person composes all of a work’s words in the name of another), we have intermediary stages involving editors, copy editors, and proof readers, where various other individuals make some contribution to the composition of the words that the author eventually signs his name to.

These kind of intermediate contributors are, in fact, the norm in modern publishing.

Take it from me as someone who works (in multiple roles) in that industry: No professionally published book comes out without being looked over, and contributed to, by individuals such as these.

And yet it is the author who lends his name to the work and takes responsibility for it.

That’s true all the way up to the pope.

Even the Pope?

Popes—whether they be Francis, Benedict, John Paul, or others—give tons of speeches and issue far too many documents for them to be solely responsible for.

They have helpers, editors, and even ghost writers. Yet they ultimately sign their names to documents and take responsibility for them.

That’s the ultimate mark of an author: Regardless of what role he played in the composition of a document’s words, he lends his name to it and takes responsibility for it when it’s published.

The author is the authority behind the letter.

He’s likely to have played a role in the composition or revision of the text (particularly if it’s an important text), but it’s the ultimate acceptance of public responsibility for the document that makes him its author.

Ancient Authors

The same was true in the ancient world. Authors generally proposed that the work be written and played a role in the process of its composition and revision, but what precisely that role was could vary, depending on how much freedom the author gave to those he was working with.

The author may or may not have asked for changes before the final draft was published, but he was the one responsible for how the process as a whole played out.

Ultimately, he authorized the publishing of the work in his name and so became its author.

Or co-author.

In Paul’s case, he included people like Sosthenes, Silvanus, and Timothy, who lent their names to various letters when they were sent. They took responsibility for them, alongside Paul, and so became his co-authors.

The Role of Paul’s Co-Authors

This did not mean that they made large contributions to the text. In all likelihood, they did not.

It is clear, when we read Paul’s letters, that he has the dominant voice. Paul frequently speaks in the singular (“I”) rather than the plural (“we”). And we don’t read things like, “I, Sosthenes, say . . . ” or “I, Timothy, tell you . . . ” That’s one reason why it’s so easy to mistake Paul as the sole author.

But it’s likely that his co-authors did make contributions alongside his.

Some have suggested, for example, that Paul was more brusque than his co-authors, and that may be why 2 Corinthians 10-13 is so harsh in tone compared to the part of the letter that precedes it (i.e., Timothy was not with Paul when he wrote this part and so couldn’t urge him to tone down his brusqueness, though he was listed as a co-author of the letter as a whole).

However Paul’s co-authors may have contributed in the writing of the letters to which they lent their names, they still played a distinct role.

Authors vs. Secretaries

It’s important to recognize that they were not simply Paul’s secretaries or scribes.

Serving as a scribe in the ancient world did not make you an author.

Scribes had many roles, which ranged from copyist to ghost writer, depending on how the author wanted to use them.

What they did not do is lend their name to the document in the opening address and take that kind of responsibility for it.

Thus in Romans, Tertius—the scribe who Paul employed—merely greets the recipients near the end of the letter, saying:

I, Tertius, the writer of this letter, greet you in the Lord (Rom. 16:22).

He does not have his name listed in the “X to Y” address of Romans 1:1-7, alongside Paul as a co-author.

This is not to say that people like Sosthenes, Silvanus, and Timothy couldn’t have simultaneously functioned as scribes—just that their role was not limited to this.

If they played a scribal function in composing these letters (though this is not at all certain), their role went beyond that, and Paul had them include their names in the address, thus authorizing the letter and becoming its co-authors.

This means that, in a real sense, they are authors of the New Testament!

Yet we rarely hear about them in this capacity.

So who were they? What do we know about them?

That’s the subject of another post.

Did Paul Know He Was Writing Scripture?

Some folks have the idea that the authors of the New Testament did not know that they were writing Scripture.

According to this view, they just thought they were writing Christian literature, and the Church gradually—even a century or more later—recognized that it was Scripture.

Some time ago, I wrote about this issue, and I argued that the authors of several books in the New Testament clearly knew that they were writing Scripture, right from the get-go.

These books were Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and Revelation.

That’s everything in the New Testament except the letters.

So what about them?

The Case Against

If any authors of the New Testament weren’t aware or weren’t clear that they were writing Scripture, it would be the authors of the letters.

There are several things you might appeal to if you wanted to argue for this view:

There isn’t a prior precedent for letters as Scripture. None of the books of the Old Testament are letters. Some have historical accounts that contain letters, but none are letters. As a result, the New Testament authors of letters would have been striking out in new conceptual territory to think of their works as Scripture. Letters in their day weren’t thought of as Scripture any more than letters in our day typically are. What’s more, in their day there was no precedent for thinking of letters as Scripture (whereas, at least in our day, we can look back on the letters of the New Testament).
Many of the letters may have been written before the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation. If so, they were written before the Christian works whose authors have clear scriptural intent. Consequently, they may have been written before it was clear that there would be any Christian Scriptures, which would be another conceptual hurdle for the early letter writers to jump.
The letters often contain material that is local and situational—e.g., Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians about how to discipline a particular man (1 Cor. 5:1-5) or his offer to pay Philemon to compensate him for money or goods that Onesimus may have stolen (Philemon 18-19). Such passages are more specific than the more general matters we find discussed in clearly-recognizable books of Scripture.

Still, this doesn’t mean that the authors of the New Testament letters didn’t recognize that they were writing Scripture.

Here I’d like to suggest one reason which supports the idea that Paul, in particular, did recognize it.

First Century Letters

Most of us don’t have any exposure to first century letters other than those found in the New Testament.

As a result, it’s easy for us to have misconceptions about them and how they were written.

For example, the picture above is the product of later artistic imagination. Paul did not write his letters personally, alone, or at a table!

We can also miss how unique Paul’s letters are. They are not typical of the letters in the ancient world.

One way they are different is very simple: their size.

In his excellent book Paul and First-Century Letter Writing: Secretaries, Composition, and Collection, Randolph Richards writes:

The typical papyrus letter consisted of one or two sheets. Paul’s letters were not typical length. We think of Philemon as a very short letter, but in actuality, it was a fairly typical letter in length, perhaps even a trifle long. Imagine the church’s surprise when Paul’s letter to the Romans arrived! (p. 52)

How long, specifically, were ancient letters?

Writing out a dispatched copy of a letter of Paul was complicated by the fact that Paul’s letters were inordinately long. The typical papyrus letter was one papyrus sheet. In the approximately 14,000 private letters from Greco-Roman antiquity, the average length was about 87 words, ranging in length from 18 to 209 words. The letters of the literary masters, like Cicero and Seneca, were considerably longer. Nonetheless, Paul stands apart from them all. (p. 163)

Cicero’s Letters

Let’s take Cicero as an example. He was one of the most famous letter-writers of the ancient world, and his letters have remained in print to this day.

Here’s an example of a letter from Cicero—the kind he (and his audience) thought worth preserving and publishing in his volumes of collected letters. This one was sent to his friend Atticus in Athens in December of 68 B.C.:

All’s well at your mother’s, and I keep an eye on her.

I have undertaken to pay L. Cincius 20,400 sesterces to your credit on the Ides of February.

Pray see that I receive at the earliest possible opportunity what you say in your letters that you have bought and secured for me.

I should also be very much obliged if you would, as you promised, think over the means of securing the library for me.

My hope of getting the one enjoyment which I care for, when I come to retire, depends entirely on your kindness (The Letters of Cicero, vol. 1, III [A 1, 7]).

This letter is only 97 words long in English (minus the greeting, etc., which isn’t included here). That makes it a bit longer than the average ancient letter (87 words).

It’s a bit short for Cicero, though. His average was 295 words in Latin. But that’s Cicero’s average.

Now let’s compare it to Paul’s shortest letter: Philemon.

Paul’s Letters

Philemon is 335 words long in Greek, which means that Paul’s shortest letter is longer than Cicero’s average one.

By contrast, Paul’s average letter is 2,495 words, which is more than 8 times Cicero’s average and almost 30 times the average ancient letter.

Paul’s letters are huge by ancient standards.

They’re epistolary monsters, and Paul’s longest letter—Romans—runs to 7,114 words in Greek.

That makes it 82 times the length of the average ancient letter, so Romans is the city-stomping kaiju of Paul’s literary corpus.

Richards is right: The Romans would have been shocked when Paul’s letter courier showed up with his letter to them!

(In fact, there’s reason to think that they may have gotten something even bigger and more shocking than Romans alone in the mail, but that’s a story for another time.)

How Much This Cost

Writing letters of Pauline length was not cheap. Paper (papyrus or parchment) was hand-made and expensive.

So were the secretaries who prepared the drafts and final copy for mailing (as well as the copy literary figures like Paul tended to retain for their records).

While it’s difficult to make cross-cultural cost comparisons, by one way of estimating it, Romans would have cost Paul $2,275 to produce (Richardson, p. 169).

This would have been no small amount for an itinerant preacher who eked out a living making tents on the side.

In fact, Paul was almost certainly dependent on the donations of wealthy patrons to be able to produce letters like this.

Implications

Between the impressive length and investment that Paul sank in writing his letters, one conclusion is clear: Paul knew he was doing something extraordinary.

The fact that he so dramatically breaks the literary customs of his day and spends large amounts of money doing so indicates how important his letters were to him.

This, coupled with their theological content, indicates that—at a minimum—Paul thought he was producing highly important works of Christian literature.

Important enough to rank as Scripture?

It’s a distinct possibility, and the length and cost of his works aren’t the only reason for thinking so.

We’ll go into additional reasons in another post, but for now it’s worth noting the implications of the sheer size and cost of his letters.

Learning More

If you’re interested in learning more about the subject, I’d recommend Randolph Richards’ book Paul and First-Century Letter Writing: Secretaries, Composition, and Collection.

It covers not only the length and cost issues but also many other aspects of first-century letter writing that most of us have no idea about—as well as the implications for our understanding of Paul.

I was delighted when this book recently came out on the Logos Bible software platform.

Personally, I use the Catholic version of Logos—Verbum—every day as part of my research, and I highly recommend it, too.

If you’re interested in checking it out, you can click here (affiliate link), and I can save you 15% on their base packages if you use the code JIMMY1 at checkout.

Elijah’s journey: 40 days and 40 nights?

Sunday’s readings contain an interesting illustration of the way that the Bible can use numbers.

In the Old Testament reading, Elijah is on the run from the evil queen Jezebel and he goes out into the wilderness and asks God to let him die.

Instead, God sends and angel who makes Elijah eat and drink two times in order to strengthen him for a journey.

Then we read:

He got up, ate, and drank; then strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.

One of the first things that you learn about the geography of the Holy Land is that it’s tiny by American standards. From north to south, the modern state of Israel is only 290 miles long, and its width varies between 9 miles and 85 miles.

With distances like that, a journey of 40 days and 40 nights is remarkable.

Some Basic Math

The fact that the text says Elijah travelled day and night would presumably indicate at least 10-12 hours a day, leaving time for breaks and sleep.

A normal person can walk around 3 miles per hour, so that would be 30-36 miles a day.

After 40 days of that travel, one would have gone 1,200 to 1,440 miles, which would be enough to take one far outside the Holy Land.

Since the number 40 is used in the Bible to indicate significant periods of time, this raises the question of whether the number is being used here simply to indicate a long journey rather than being meant literally.

Fortunately, we can shed some light on the question

Where was Elijah starting from?

Although the verse we need isn’t included in Sunday’s readings, we know where Elijah was starting from. According to 1 Kings 19:3-4:

Elijah was afraid and fled for his life, going to Beer-sheba of Judah. He left his servant there and went a day’s journey into the wilderness, until he came to a solitary broom tree and sat beneath it.

So Elijah fled from Jezebel (queen of the northern kingdom of Israel) down to Be’er-sheva, which was on the southern border of Judah.

Indeed, the phrase “from Dan to Be’er-Sheva” was proverbial in biblical times as a way of referring to the entire Holy Land, from north to south.

So Elijah has fled to a city in the far south and then gone a day’s journey farther into the Negev desert. That’s where he had his angelic encounter at the broom tree.

Where was Elijah going?

The text tells us that he went to “the mountain of God, Horeb.”

In the Old Testament, Horeb appears to be another name for Mt. Sinai, “the mountain of God” where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

Unfortunately, the location of Mt. Sinai/Horeb isn’t entirely clear.

A prominent tradition identifies it with Jabal Mousa, a tall mountain in the south of the Sinai Peninsula, by St. Catherine’s Monastery.

This is not the only proposed location, however. There are other locations—also in the Sinai Peninsula, as well as outside of it.

The plausible ones are either closer to Be’er-Sheva, though, or not much farther away, so we can use the location of the modern Mt. Sinai to get a reasonable approximation of Elijah’s maximum travel distance.

(Note: You could suppose that the author of 1-2 Kings meant a different and otherwise unknown Mount Horeb—one located 1,200-1,440 miles away—but this is not suggested by the text, which appears to refer to the same mount of God on which Moses received the Ten Commandments.)

How far did he go?

According to Google, the distance from Be’er-Sheva to Mt. Sinai is 417 km or 260 miles.

Of course, that’s along the modern road system, but we’re dealing with an approximation, so 260 miles will do.

How long did it take him?

Since Elijah had already gone one day into the Negev when he had the angelic encounter at the broom tree, and since he travelled another 40 days and 40 nights, that would be 41 days total.

What was his travel speed?

Using the numbers above, Elijah’s travel speed would have been 6.3 miles per day (260 / 41 = 6.3).

If that represents 12 hours of walking a day, that would be half a mile per hour.

That’s painfully slow.

A normal walking speed is around 3 miles per hour, so Elijah would have needed to walk only around 2 hours a day in order to cover the distance in 40 days.

This would hardly be day and night travel, and that suggests that the description of it as taking “40 days and 40 nights” is a stock description meant to indicate a long journey and not meant to be taken literally.

It’s rather like when we say, “Thanks a million”—using a stock number to indicate great thanks.

(Note: You could suppose that Elijah encountered extraordinarily difficult travel conditions that slowed his progress to a crawl—like slogging through sheeting rain or mud the whole time—but this is not suggested by the text. The author of 1-2 Kings would be expected to indicate such extraordinary conditions, and he doesn’t. He just says Elijah travelled, without indicating that it was an unbelievably difficult trip.)

Confirmation from Deuteronomy?

If Elijah was able to travel at a normal walking speed for 10-12 hours per day then he would make 30-36 miles per day.

He would thus be able to do 260 miles in between 7 and 9 days.

A less determined person only putting in 8 hours of walking a day, rather than travelling day and night, could make 24 miles in a day and cover the 260 miles in around 11 days.

That’s very significant, because in Deuteronomy 1:2 we read:

It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea.

The precise location of Kadesh-barnea is also debated, but it is clear that it was on the southern border of Israel, placing it near Be’er-Sheva.

Deuteronomy thus gives us a remarkable confirmation of the approximate time it would take to travel from Be’er-Sheva to Mt. Horeb: It’s something like 11 days under normal travel conditions, not 40 days and 40 nights.

Ancient Expectations

This is also significant because the ancient audience would have known that.

Not only would many in the audience (particularly those from Judea) have known the approximate distances and travel times, many would have known Deuteronomy’s statement!

The same applies to the author of 1-2 Kings (they were originally one book), who was clearly literate and who records the finding of “the book of the Law” in the temple in 2 Kings 22:8-10. The author even refers to the mountain as “Horeb” rather than “Sinai”—which is the way that Deuteronomy overwhelmingly refers to it.

Both the author and the audience were thus in a position to recognize the description of Elijah’s journey as taking 40 days and 40 nights as a stock number representing a long journey rather than a literal description.

This illustrates how ancient expectations differ from modern ones regarding the use of number: The ancients were willing to use numbers in a literary or symbolic way in different circumstances than we do.

Modern Expectations

If we fail to recognize this then, compared to the ancients, we can come off as overly pedantic, like Mr. Spock or Mr. Data—insisting on numerical precision while utterly missing the point.

The point of the text is: God strengthened Elijah for a long journey, not how long the journey literally took.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that numbers are always literary or symbolic in ancient texts—the 11 days mentioned in Deuteronomy isn’t.

But it does mean that they can be, and we need to be sensitive to the context to tell us what the ancient author intended.

This applies, particularly, to skeptics wanting to accuse the Bible of being inaccurate.

Sometimes the Bible just uses numbers differently than we do today, and if we fail to recognize this, the fault is ours, not the Bible’s.

Got that?

Thanks a million.

10 things you need to know about Jesus’ Transfiguration

This Thursday commemorates the mysterious event known as the Transfiguration.

This event is hard to understand. Why did it happen? What did it mean?

Here are 10 things you need to know.

1. What does the word “transfiguration” mean?

The word “transfiguration” comes from the Latin roots trans– (“across”) and figura (“form, shape”). It thus signifies a change of form or appearance.

This is what happened to Jesus in the event known as the Transfiguration: His appearance changed and became glorious.

Before looking at the Transfiguration itself, it’s important that we look at what happened immediately before it in Luke’s Gospel.

2. What happened right before the Transfiguration?

In Luke 9:27, at the end of a speech to the twelve apostles, Jesus adds, enigmatically:

“There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”

This has often been taken as a prophecy that the end of the world would occur before the first generation of Christians died out.

The phrase “kingdom of God” can also refer to other things, though, including the Church–the outward expression of God’s invisible kingdom.

The kingdom is embodied in Christ himself and thus might be “seen” if Christ were to manifest it in an unusual way, even in his own earthly life.

3. Did such a manifestation occur?

Yes, and it is the very next thing that Luke relates: the Transfiguration.

Pope Benedict states that it has been . . .

. . . convincingly argued that the placing of this saying immediately before the Transfiguration clearly relates it to this event.

Some—that is to say, the three disciples who accompany Jesus up the mountain—are promised that they will personally witness the coming of the Kingdom of God ‘in power.’

On the mountain the three of them see the glory of God’s Kingdom shining out of Jesus. On the mountain they are overshadowed by God’s holy cloud. On the mountain—in the conversation of the transfigured Jesus with the Law and the Prophets—they realize that the true Feast of Tabernacles has come. On the mountain they learn that Jesus himself is the living Torah, the complete Word of God. On the mountain they see the ‘power’ (dynamis) of the Kingdom that is coming in Christ” (Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 1, p. 317).

We thus may have the key to understanding Jesus’ mysterious statement just before the Transfiguration. He wasn’t talking about the end of the world. He was talking about this.

In fact, Luke notes that the Transfiguration took place “about eight days after these sayings,” thus stressing its proximity to them and suggesting that it was the fulfillment of this saying, concerning the fact that some of them would see the kingdom of God. Mark gives a different number of days, saying it was “after six days” (Mk. 9:2), but these both approximate a week.

4. Who witnessed the Transfiguration?

The three who are privileged to witness the event are Peter, James, and John, the three core disciples. (Andrew was not there or not included.)

The fact that Jesus only allowed three of his disciples to witness the event may have sparked the discussion which swiftly ensued about which of the disciples was the greatest (Luke 9:46).

Click here to watch a video about how Jesus answered this question.

5. Where did the Transfiguration take place?

Luke states that Jesus took the three “on the mountain to pray.”

This mountain is often thought to be Mt. Tabor in Israel, but none of the gospels identify it precisely.

Click here to learn more about Mt. Tabor (though be aware that the gospels do not actually say which mountain it was).

6. Why did the Transfiguration take place?

The Catechism explains it this way:

Christ’s Transfiguration aims at strengthening the apostles’ faith in anticipation of his Passion: the ascent onto the ‘high mountain’ prepares for the ascent to Calvary.

Christ, Head of the Church, manifests what his Body contains and radiates in the sacraments: ‘the hope of glory’ [CCC 568].

7. What does Luke–in particular–tell us about this event?

Luke mentions several details about the event that the other evangelists do not:

He notes that this happened while Jesus was praying.
He mentions that Peter and his companions “were heavy with sleep, and when they wakened they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.”
He mentions that Peter made his suggestion to put up booths as Moses and Elijah were departing.

8. Why do Moses and Elijah appear on the mountain?

Moses and Elijah represent the two principal components of the Old Testament: the Law and the Prophets.

Moses was the giver of the Law, and Elijah was considered the greatest of the prophets.

The fact that these two figures “spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem” illustrates that the Law and the Prophets point forward to the Messiah and his sufferings.

This foreshadows Jesus’ own explanation, on the road to Emmaus, of the Scriptures pointing to himself (cf. Lk. 24:27, 32).

9. Why was Peter’s suggestion misguided?

The fact that Peter’s suggestion occurs when Moses and Elijah are preparing to depart reveals a desire to prolong the experience of glory. This means Peter is focusing on the wrong thing.

The experience of the Transfiguration is meant to point forward to the sufferings Jesus is about to experience. It is meant to strengthen the disciples faith, revealing to them in a powerful way the divine hand that is at work in the events Jesus will undergo. This is why Moses and Elijah have been speaking “about his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem.”

Peter misses the point and wants to stay on the mountain, contrary to the message the two heavenly visitors have been expounding.

As a seeming rebuke of this, a theophany occurs: “A cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!'”

10. What can we learn from this event?

The Transfiguration was a special event in which God allowed certain apostles to have a privileged spiritual experience that was meant to strengthen their faith for the challenges they would later endure. But it was only a temporary event. It was not meant to be permanent.

In the same way, at certain times in this life, God may give certain members of the faithful (not all of the faithful, all the time), special experiences of his grace that strengthen their faith.

We should welcome these experiences for the graces they are, but we should not expect them to continue indefinitely, nor should we be afraid or resentful when they cease.

They may have been meant only as momentary glimpses of the joy of heaven to sustain us as we face the challenges of this life, to help strengthen us on the road that will–ultimately–bring us into the infinite and endless joy of heaven.

Resolving a Bible Difficulty: What Happened at Paul’s Conversion?

The book of Acts records St. Paul’s conversion in the following terms:

Now as he journeyed he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him.

And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

And he said, “Who are you, Lord?”

And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting; but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”

The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.

Saul arose from the ground; and when his eyes were opened, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus [Acts 9:3-8].

There are several interesting things here.

No Horse!

One is that there is no mention of St. Paul riding on a horse. You frequently hear people recounting how Paul was knocked off his horse at the time of his conversion, but this is an image that comes from art—not the Bible.

He isn’t likely to have been riding a horse, for at the time horses were more commonly used in warfare—such as for drawing chariots. They were not commonly ridden.

The passage doesn’t mention Paul riding any animal. He was likely travelling on foot, as suggested when the text simply says that he fell to the ground when the heavenly light flashed around him.

It’s also suggested by Jesus telling him to “rise and enter the city” (no mention of getting back on an animal) and by him being “led by the hand” into Damascus by his companions.

If he’d been riding on a beast (e.g., an ass), they presumably would have put him back on the animal and then led the beast—not taken Paul by the hand to guide him.

A Bible Difficulty?

Many people have commented on a Bible difficulty that arises from this passage when it says:

The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one [Acts 9:7].

This is worthy of comment because, later in the book when Paul is recounting his conversion, he says:

Now those who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me [Acts 22:9].

What did they see? What did they hear?

The difficulty that needs to be solved concerns what the men with Paul saw and heard.

The first is not difficult, for the two passages don’t contain any apparent discrepancy.

The first says that they didn’t see anyone and the second says that they did see light. There is no contradiction because one can easily see light without seeing a person.

What the men heard presents more of a difficulty, because the first passage says they were “hearing the voice” while the second says that they “did not hear the voice.”

That looks like a contradiction.

Is it?

Greek to You and Me

Whenever we encounter something that looks like a contradiction, it’s wise to check the original language, which in this case is Greek.

Examining the two passages, we find that both of them use the same two terms: akouō (hear) and phōnē (voice).

This means that we can’t solve the dilemma by appealing to the fact that the passages are using different terms, because they aren’t. They both use the same verb for hearing and the same noun for what is being heard.

That doesn’t mean we can’t resolve the discrepancy, though, because these terms have more than one meaning in Greek.

Akouō can mean hear, listen, understand, obey, know, and other things.
Phōnē can mean sound, tone, voice, cry, solemn declaration, etc.

Since we have a single author (Luke) writing both passages in a single book (Acts), a logical inference is that Luke probably meant the terms to be taken in different senses.

Are there two different senses in which the terms can be taken that would make sense of the passages?

You bet.

The Likely Solution

The most likely solution is that in the first passage, akouō is to be taken to mean “hear” and phōnē is to be taken to mean “sound,” while in the second passage, akouō is to be taken to mean “understand” and phōnē is to be taken to mean “voice.”

On this reading, Acts 9:7 says that the men were hearing a sound but didn’t see anyone while Acts 22:9 says that they saw light but did not understand the voice.

This would parallel John 12:28-29, where the Father speaks to Jesus from heaven and some in the crowd perceive it as thunder: They heard a noise, but they didn’t perceive it as an intelligible voice—the clearer perception being reserved for those God wanted to have it.

This appears to be the most probable solution. Thus some translations render the two passages like this:

The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone (Acts 9:7, NIV).

My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me (Acts 22:9, NIV).

These translations are perfectly acceptable, as “hear” and “understand” are common meanings for akouō, while “sound” and “voice” are common meanings for phōnē.

Be Cautious Beyond This Point

While we have identified the probable solution, we should be careful not to press it too far.

Some have proposed that there is a feature in the Greek that makes the solution even more certain. According to some older grammars and commentaries, the verb akouō’s meaning changes in a way that is relevant here depending on the grammatical form of the noun that follows it.

In Greek, nouns take different forms, known as “cases,” depending on the role they play in a sentence (the same is true of nouns in Latin, German, Russian, and many other languages).

Two of these cases that Greek uses are known as the genitive and the accusative.

According to some, when akouō is followed by a noun in the genitive case, it stresses the hearing of the sound but not the understanding of it.

By contrast, these individuals hold, if akouō is followed by a noun in the accusative case, it highlights the understanding of the sound.

It so happens that in Acts 9:7 the noun phōnē is in the genitive case, and in 22:9 it is in the accusative.

This is then taken as evidence confirming the solution proposed above: In the first passage the companions are said to hear the sound while in the second they are said not to understand it.

The problem is that these claims are not at all clear from the way the verb is used in New Testament Greek.

Daniel Wallace, one of the foremost contemporary scholars of New Testament Greek, writes:

[I]t is doubtful that this is where the difference lay between the two cases used with akouō in Hellenistic Greek: the NT (including the more literary writers) is filled with examples of akouō + genitive indicating understanding (Matt 2:9; John 5:25; 18:37; Acts 3:23; 11:7; Rev 3:20; 6:3, 5; 8:13; 11:12; 14:13; 16:1, 5, 7; 21:3) as well as instances of akouō + accusative where little or no comprehension takes place (explicitly so in Matt 13:19; Mark 13:7/Matt 24:6/Luke 21:9; Acts 5:24; 1 Cor 11:18; Eph 3:2; Col 1:4; Phlm 5; Jas 5:11; Rev 14:2). The exceptions, in fact, are seemingly more numerous than the rule!

Thus, regardless of how one works through the accounts of Paul’s conversion, an appeal to different cases probably ought not form any part of the solution [Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, 133-134].

We should thus be cautious of case-based arguments concerning the solution to this difficulty.

This does not mean, however, that we haven’t identified the correct solution. The most likely solution remains that the terms are simply being used in different senses in the two passages.

The Logic of Baptism

There is a classic passage in the final chapter of Mark’s Gospel, where we read:

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned” [Mark 16:15-16].

Christians through the ages have seen in this passage a powerful statement of the importance of baptism. Taken at face value, it indicates that baptism is instrumental in salvation.

Or does it?

Some (though by no means all) in the Protestant community argue that this passage doesn’t do that. Let’s look at a few such arguments.

Jesus’ Statements and Logic

The first argument is based on the logical structure of what Jesus says. This will be clearer if we restate it more formally, using a few conventions of propositional logic.

In the example that follows, let us use the following conventions:

F = “John believes/John has faith.”

B = “John is baptized.”

S = “John will be saved.”

With these conventions in place, we can restate the relevant claims from Mark in the following form:

1) If F and B then S

2) If not-F then not-S

The Argument

Although many of our Protestant brethren, including Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, Church of Christ members, and many Presbyterians are prepared to acknowledge that baptism has a role in imparting salvation, others do not. This viewpoint is principally found in groups that are popular in American Evangelicalism, including Baptists and many non-denominational Christians.

When they consider the above statements based on Mark 16:15-16, they might argue this way:

Statement (1) does not prove that baptism has a role in salvation. Logically speaking, it names two conditions (F and B) and says that if these two conditions are fulfilled in the case of a particular person then that person will be saved (S). This does not mean, however, that the two conditions are both necessary.
It might be that one of these conditions is not necessary. In propositional logic, you can name non-necessary conditions without affecting the truth of a statement.
For example, let B represent “John bakes a chocolate cake.” Chocolate cake baking is in no way relevant to salvation, but the statement “If (John has faith) and (John bakes a chocolate cake) then (John will be saved)” is still true. Perhaps baptism is in the same category as chocolate cake baking with respect to salvation.
In fact, statement (2) indicates that having faith (F) is the necessary condition, because Jesus says that not having faith will result in not being saved. He does not say the same thing about baptism. Therefore, baptism is not necessary for salvation.

How Irrelevant Can You Get?

It is true that, in propositional logic, you can name non-necessary and even irrelevant conditions and not affect the truth value of a proposition. In fact, you can name nothing but irrelevant conditions and still have a true statement. For example:

If (it’s Thursday at 2:00 p.m.) and (it’s raining outside) then (2 + 2 = 4).

This proposition is quite true, but the conditions of it being Thursday at 2:00 p.m. and it raining outside have nothing to do with whether 2 + 2 = 4.

What this shows us is that, while propositional logic can be a useful tool, it doesn’t always model human discourse well. That’s one reason that philosophers have explored ideas like relevance logic.

The Relevance Rule

A key aspect of human discourse is the commonly unstated but nearly universal implication that what you are saying is relevant to the topic at hand.

That’s why statements like the one above about 2 + 2 = 4 seem bizarre to us. If someone makes a statement to you that begins by appealing to the day and time and then to the weather, you will expect the conclusion they draw to be relevant to the time and the weather. If they suddenly conclude that 2 + 2 = 4 then you will be jarred, because that’s not the way that human discourse normally works.

You may wonder whether they are joking with you, by breaking the rule about relevance in discourse, or you may wonder whether they have very eccentric notions about mathematics, but either way, you have an in-built expectation that what they are saying will be relevant to the conclusion they draw.

The example of John baking a chocolate cake is similar. It’s the kind of example that one would make in an abstract discussion about propositional logic, but to appeal to this kind of reasoning when looking at normal human discourse would be rightly regarded as logic chopping.

Jesus would not name irrelevant conditions when telling people how to be saved, and especially not in a solemn statement like the Great Commission. In this, of all places, one would expect the implication of relevance to be followed.

In fact, if Mark had recorded Jesus saying, “He who has faith and bakes a chocolate cake will be saved” then that would give us reason to think that chocolate cake baking is relevant to salvation, and Christians down through the ages would have understood accordingly.

No Mention of Baptism in the Second Statement?

What about Jesus’ statement that he who does not believe will be condemned? Does this show that baptism is not relevant to salvation?

Strictly speaking, no. All the statement establishes is that faith is a necessary condition for salvation. It does not mean that baptism is not also a necessary condition.

For example, consider this pair of propositions:

If (you have eggs) and (you break the eggs) then (you can make an omelet).
But if (you don’t have eggs) then (you can’t make an omelet).

Either not having eggs or not breaking the eggs would prevent one from making an omelet. They are both necessary conditions, and the mere fact that only one is mentioned in the second statement does not mean that the other is not also necessary.

Indeed, it is proverbial that you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

Why doesn’t the text say something like “He who does not believe or is not baptized will be condemned?”

Presumably for two reasons: First, the relevance of baptism for salvation has already been stressed in the previous statement. Second, in an evangelistic context, faith is naturally prior to baptism.

In the first century, the apostles and other evangelists were going out and preaching the gospel for the first time, and so the great majority of converts were adults. As a result, they first came to faith and then were baptized on the basis of their faith—the same way adult converts to Judaism first came to faith in the God of Israel and then were circumcised.

Failing to have faith was thus a conversion stopper. If someone didn’t come to faith then they would not go on to be baptized (or be circumcised). It thus wasn’t necessary to go into the second condition if the first was not fulfilled.

The situation is like our omelet example. You must first have eggs in order to break them, and so if you don’t have the eggs, that of itself means you can’t make an omelet. There is no need to mention that not breaking them will also result in the inability of make an omelet, because the importance of breaking them has already been established in the first statement.

Mark 16 and the Logic of Baptism

The passage on baptism in Mark 16 thus supports the idea that baptism is relevant for salvation:

First, given the implication of relevance that is present in normal human discourse, Jesus’ first statement indicates that baptism is relevant to salvation.

Second, given the presence of the first statement and the fact that faith is logically prior to baptism in this context, the fact that only faith is mentioned in Jesus’ statement does not mean that baptism is not relevant.

One could mount additional arguments against this passage, and some Evangelicals do.

The Hard Cases Argument

For example, one might ask about hard cases, where someone has faith but is unable to be baptized (e.g., because there is no one available to do it, as with a person who comes to Christian faith in the midst of a solidly Muslim society). Would these people automatically be damned?

Not according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, which acknowledges that there are exceptional cases.

The same thing would seem to be true about the condition of faith, though. Few if any Evangelicals would be willing to say that all dying infants are damned on the grounds that they don’t have faith in Jesus.

If it is possible for there to be exceptional cases with regard to faith, and yet this does not make faith irrelevant to salvation, then the same thing can be true of baptism.

The Canonical Argument

An argument that some Evangelicals might find appealing would be to point out that our early manuscript evidence suggests that the part of Mark 16 where the statements about baptism are found were not part of the original version of Mark’s Gospel.

The majority of New Testament scholars—Protestant and Catholic, conservative and liberal—hold that Mark 16:9-20 was written later than the rest of the Gospel—either in the late first century or in the second century.

There are good reasons for this view, which is supported by Benedict XVI in Jesus of Nazareth (see vol. 2, pp. 261-262).

If this passage was not in the original edition of Mark then one might argue that it does not belong in the canon and so does not have divine authority as Scripture.

Problems with the Canonical Argument

There are three problems with this view.

First, just because the passage doesn’t appear to have been part of the original version of Mark does not mean that it isn’t canonical. This is true regardless of whether Mark or someone else composed the passage.

Single authors can prepare longer and shorter editions of their own work. This happened, for example, when Jeremiah prepared a second edition of his own work, after an earlier, shorter version was destroyed by King Jehoiakim (Jer. 36:28). Similarly, some canonical books are the product of more than one hand, as illustrated by several of Paul’s epistles, which had input from other members of his circle (cf. 1 Cor. 1:1, 2 Cor. 1:1, Phil. 1:1, Col. 1:1, 1 Thess. 1:1, 2 Thess. 1:1).

From a Catholic perspective, the Magisterium of the Church can settle the canonicity of the longer ending of Mark, but this would not be authoritative for Evangelicals, which brings us to the second problem.

Second, even if one were to grant that the passage is non-canonical (something which I do not grant), it would still be an extraordinarily early testimony to what the early Christians thought about baptism.

On this view it might not be divinely inspired, but it would be a very impressive piece of patristic testimony dating from the first or second century showing that the early Church recognized the importance of baptism for salvation. This, then, would need to be taken into account when interpreting the New Testament teaching on baptism, which brings us to the third problem with the canonical argument.

Third, Mark 16:15-16 is far from the only New Testament text indicating the importance of baptism for salvation. In fact, there are too many to go into here, but let’s conclude by citing just one, which is as explicit as one might wish on the subject:

Baptism . . . now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ [1 Peter 3:21].

Thank You for the Pre-Orders!

I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered my commentary and study guides on the Gospel of Mark from Verbum Bible Software.

Enough pre-orders have been received that the set is now “under development,” as the label by the green status bar shows.

What that means is that they’ve raised enough money in pre-orders to pay for the process of converting the manuscripts into their format, so all of the cool Bible-study functionality will be there when you open the book in Verbum.

They’re doing the conversion now.

The kind folks there called me up as soon as they reached the “under development” stage and let me know the good news.

They were excited about it, as we set a record on this one. Products often linger in the pre-publication phase for months or even years while the needed pre-orders are accumulating.

We did it in four business days, which is the fastest it’s ever happened for Verbum. Yay!

So thank you to everyone who ordered, and congratulations on setting a new record!

Seeing the reaction to this set has been very encouraging for me, and it’s gotten me back to working on the next commentary, which is on next year’s Gospel: Luke. (It’s already about half done.)

By the way, even though they have enough pre-orders to be converting the Mark set, it’s still available at the pre-publication price of $19.99 (which, to my mind, is a steal, since you’re getting almost 500 pages of Bible study materials!). That price will go up in the future, but you can still pre-order it for that price at the moment.

Thanks again, everybody!

Here are the order links:

CLICK HERE TO ORDER THE COMMENTARY ON MARK AND THE TWO STUDY GUIDES FOR $19.99

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT VERBUM AND SAVE 15% WHEN YOU USE THE PROMO CODE “JIMMY1”

My First Biblical Commentary!

One of my long-term goals has been to write a commentary on the New Testament, and I’m very pleased to announce that this is starting to come to fruition.

A while back, the folks at Verbum Bible Software asked me if I would design some courses for one of their online platforms, and so I set to work writing the text for one.

The result is my very first biblical commentary, which is on the Gospel of Mark (selected because that’s the Gospel used in the Sunday readings for 2015).

Things I Learned

It was a fascinating project that I really enjoyed doing, and in the process I learned a lot. Going through a text word-by-word always results in new insights, and there are a bunch of gems hidden in Mark’s text.

Some of the things I learned included:

How Mark parallels the growth of Jesus’ reputation among Jews and Gentiles
How the Feeding of the Four Thousands is unexpectedly significant
How the story of the “widow’s mite” may have a significance that you almost never hear about
How the Transfiguration parallels the Agony in the Garden
How to understand Jesus’ prophecies in detail
How to respond to criticisms of Mark’s Gospel made by skeptics

Study Verse-By-Verse or with the Liturgy

I also produced two extensive study guides to help you get the most out of the Gospel:

One takes you through the Gospel section-by-section, with questions based on the text of the commentary.
The other goes through the liturgy—on Sundays, holy days, and weekdays—and gives you study questions for every day where Mark is used in the readings at Mass.

A One-Time Offer

I thought I’d let you know that right now the set of all three resources—the commentary and the two study guides—is available for pre-order for people who use Verbum or Logos Bible Software.

It’s available for only $19.99, and that’s the least expensive that this set will ever be. As a special reward to those who help in the pre-order period, Verbum/Logos gives a special discount that won’t be available again. It’s a one-time thing.

So if you’re interested, now’s the time to order! (And, at less than $20, I personally think it’s a steal. Between the commentary and the two study guides, you’re getting almost 500 pages of solid, Catholic biblical material!)

For the time being, the commentary and the study guides will only be available on Verbum/Logos. I hope eventually to bring them out in other formats, but I don’t know when that will be.

About Verbum Software

I’m a big fan of Verbum software, and I use it literally every day in my research.

If you’re not presently a Verbum user, you can learn about it here, and I can save you 15% when you order it if you use the promo code JIMMY1 at checkout.

Pre-Ordering the Commentary and Study Guides

If you’d like to pre-order the commentary and the two study-guides for only $19.99, click here.

The more people pre-order them, the sooner they can be converted to the Verbum format and released, so if you have friends who you think might be interested, let them know, too (e.g., by Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.)!

Thanks for doing so, and I hope you like them!

Your pal,

—Jimmy Akin

CLICK HERE TO ORDER THE COMMENTARY ON MARK AND THE TWO STUDY GUIDES FOR $19.99

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT VERBUM AND SAVE 15% WHEN YOU USE THE PROMO CODE “JIMMY1”

Did Mark base his Gospel on Matthew and Luke?

Recently I’ve been writing about the way that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are related to each other.

These three are known as the synoptic Gospels, and how they are related is known as the synoptic problem.

You can read what I’ve been writing here.

Today I would like to talk about the view that Mark based his Gospel on Matthew and Luke.

What This View Is Called

This view goes by a variety of names, but one of the most common is “the Griesbach hypothesis,” after Johann Jakob Griesbach, who proposed it in the late 1700s.

Today, some like to call it the “Two-Gospel hypothesis,” because Mark would have used two other Gospels in composing his own.

This name is problematic because it is not the only possibility: Luke could have used Mark and Matthew and Matthew could have used Mark and Luke. In each of these cases, one Gospel would have been based on the other two.

There is thus no reason why the first of these options should be called the “Two-Gospel” hypothesis, so we’ll call it the Griesbach hypothesis for the sake of clarity.

The View in History

Although Griesbach proposed this view, its advocates often claim that he was not the first to do so.

According to many translations, one early proponent may have been Clement of Alexandria, who wrote around A.D. 200 that the Gospels with the genealogies (Matthew and Luke) were written first, suggesting that Mark wrote later and presumably used them in writing his own.

(However, see here for an argument that this is not what Clement said.)

If Clement did propose the Griesbach hypothesis at this early date, it did not end up becoming the most common view, historically.

Instead, a view proposed by St. Augustine, which holds that the four Gospels were written in their modern canonical order, became the most common view for most of Church history.

I’ve written about that view here.

Today the most common view is the “Two-Source hypothesis,” which holds that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke used both Mark and a second, hypothetical source that scholars have named “Q.”

I’ve written about my own skepticism that there was a “Q” source here.

The Griesbach hypothesis is, however, the second most popular view today.

In fact, the current popularity of the Griesback hypothesis is such that, if you are skeptical of the Two-Source hypothesis, many scholars will assume that you must be an advocate of Griesbach—which is a bit frustrating for those who hold alternative views.

The Griesbach hypothesis attracted a number of advocates in the mid-20th century, including—most notably—William R. Farmer.

William Farmer developed an argument for the Griesbach hypothesis which contains 16 “steps.” You can find a paraphrase of it online here. It is also found as chapter 4 in the book Rethinking the Synoptic Problem, edited by David Alan Black.

I’m not going to respond to Farmer’s argument in a point-by-point manner, because doing so would require too much space, but I would like to do a concise evaluation of the view.

(NOTE: I’ll be doing a separate piece looking at the variant of the Griesbach hypothesis proposed by Bernard Orchard, et al. It’s sufficiently different that it deserves its own treatment.)

A Thank You to the Advocates of Griesbach

Before that, I want to say how much I appreciate the work of Farmer and his colleagues, because prior to their efforts, the Two-Source hypothesis had become so dominant in 20th century New Testament scholarship that it was virtually unquestioned.

Because of their efforts, the world of scholarship was forced to confront the problems with the Two-Source hypothesis, and, even though it is still the most popular view, it is held more tentatively now than it was, and greater respect is shown to alternative views.

Thank you Farmer and colleagues!

Now, let’s look at the evidence concerning Griesbach . . .

The Patristic Evidence

Advocates of the view often point to Clement of Alexandria for support since he appears to say that Matthew and Luke were written before Mark.

This claim is significant not only because Clement wrote very early (c. A.D. 200) but because he was bishop of Alexandria, the see which reportedly had Mark as its first bishop. One would think that Clement would thus be in a good position to know the circumstances in which Mark’s Gospel was written.

However, there are several problems with this claim:

If Clement did make it, then he is very much alone in doing so. I can’t think of any other patristic source that makes the claim.
The most popular view in the later patristic age was the Augustinian hypothesis, which had Mark being written second rather than third. Clement’s contemporary Irenaeus of Lyons, seems to have advocated the Augustinian hypothesis. Clement’s student, Origen, also seems to have held the Augustinian hypothesis.
The earliest reference we have—from John the Presbyter—says that Mark wrote his Gospel based on Peter’s preaching, not based on Matthew and Luke. John the Presbyter may or may not have been John the Apostle, but he appears, in either event, to have been one of the authors of the New Testament, and thus was in an even better position than Clement to know about the composition of the Gospels.
It appears that the claim attributed to Clement may be based on a mistranslation. Stephen Carlson argues that the key Greek verb (progegraphthai) should be rendered “published openly” rather than “written first.” On this view, Clement was claiming that Matthew and Luke were published openly, while Mark was initially written for a group of private individuals, without Peter’s initial knowledge or authorization. This fits the context of what Clement says. See Carlson’s argument, here.

The patristic evidence thus does not provide significant support for the Griesbach hypothesis.

The Argument from Order

One of the major arguments used by advocates of the Griesbach hypothesis is based on the sequence in which the synoptic Gospels present their material.

It is pointed out that Mark’s sequence almost always agrees either with Matthew’s order or Luke’s order. He switches between these two orders in a zig-zag fashion.

Griesbach advocates have argued that this is best explained by the idea that Mark had both Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels before him, and at any given point he had to choose which of their two orders he would follow, since he obviously couldn’t follow them both when they sequenced the same material differently.

The problem with the argument from order is that the proposed explanation is not the only one.

For example, suppose that Mark and Matthew wrote first and that Luke used the two of them. In this case, Luke would choose between the order found in Mark and the one found in Matthew. This would also explain why one of the synoptics seems to zig-zag between the orders found in the other two.

Or suppose that Mark and Luke wrote first and that Matthew used the two of them. In that case, Matthew would choose between the order found in Mark and that found in Luke. Again, this would explain why one of the synoptics seems to zig-zag between the orders found in the other two.

And there are other options, still.

For a detailed look at why the argument from order isn’t sufficient to settle the synoptic problem, see David Neville’s book, Mark’s Gospel–Prior or Posterior?: A Reappraisal of the Phenomenon of Order.

What Is Mark’s Gospel Supposed to Be?

A fundamental question that the Griesbach hypothesis needs to answer is what Mark’s Gospel is supposed to be.

On the Griesbach hypothesis, Mark would have had to draw a significant amount of material from both Mark and Luke. Yet Mark is also shorter than either Matthew or Luke.

Mark would thus appear to be a conflation and epitome of the other two synoptic Gospels.

It’s a conflation (a fusion) since it includes material from both, and it’s an epitome (an abridgment) since it is shorter.

How well does this hypothesis stand up to examination?

Not A Plausible Epitome

I’ve written before about the question of whether Mark is a plausible epitome of Matthew, and the conclusion was that it is not.

The same considerations apply to Mark being an epitome of Matthew and Luke.

A combination of Matthew and Luke would be somewhat longer than Matthew alone. Matthew is around 18,000 words in the Greek New Testament, and an edition of Matthew that had been expanded by the 7,000 or so words in the unique passages of Luke would be around 25,000 words long.

This fused work would have fit on one scroll and could be read in about two and a half hours. It is thus not nearly long enough to require an epitome.

Epitomes were popular in the ancient world because they allowed people to get the gist of long works in a short amount of time. For example, 2 Maccabees is an epitome that condensed a five-scroll history by Jason of Cyrene into a single scroll.

That’s the kind of space savings that ancient readers expected in an epitome, and that’s not what we find in Mark. At a little more than 11,000 words long, it would only be about half the size of a combined Matthew and Luke, and it would only reduce the reading time by a bit more than an hour.

There is also the fact that Mark typically uses more words to tell an individual story than Matthew or Luke, which is the opposite of what ancient epitomists did. They typically told a story in fewer words and thus saved space. This was, in fact, one of the two principle tools used by epitomists.

The fact that Mark uses more words than the other two synoptic evangelists makes it look like Matthew and Luke were epitomizing individual stories from Mark so that they could fit supplement them with material not found in Mark and still keep their Gospels a reasonable length.

Besides telling a story in fewer words, the other major technique used by ancient epitomists was to simply omit material, which in this case would mean whole stories about or sayings of Jesus.

Naturally, epitomists would omit what they considered to be the less important material and retain what they considered to be the more important material. They might even include some new material if they thought it was particularly important.

When we look at Mark through the lens of the editorial choices he would have made in composing his Gospel from Matthew and Luke, we confront a baffling situation. In making an epitome of the two, Mark would have ejected large amounts of very valuable data, including:

The Genealogy of Jesus (Matt. 1:1-17, Luke 3:23-38)
The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold (Luke 1:5-25)
The Birth of Jesus Foretold (Luke 1:26-38)
The Visitation (Luke 1:39-56)
The Birth of John the Baptist (Luke 1:57-80)
The Birth of Jesus (Matt. 1:18-25, Luke 2:1-20)
The Circumcision and Presentation of Jesus (Luke 2:21-40)
The Slaughter of the Innocents (Matt. 2:1-23)
The Finding in the Temple (Luke 2:41-52)
Jesus Preaches the Gospel in Nazareth (Luke 4:16-30)
The Beatitudes (Matt. 4:23-5:12, Luke 6:17-26)
The Value of the Law (Matt. 5:17-20, Luke 16:16-17)
Teaching About Killing and Anger (Matt. 5:21-24)
Make Peace with Your Accuser (Matt. 5:25-26, Luke 12:57-59)
Teaching on Adultery and Lust (Matt. 5:27-30)
Teaching on Divorce and Adultery (Matt. 5:31-32)
Teaching on Swearing (Matt. 5:33-37)
“Love Your Enemies” (Matt. 5:38-48, Luke 6:27-36)
Piety Before Men and Alms (Matt. 6:1-4)
Piety Before Men and Prayer (Matt. 6:5-8)
The Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9-15, Luke 11:1-4)
Piety Before Men and Fasting (Matt. 6:16-18)
“Treasure in Heaven” (Matt. 6:19-21, Luke 12:33-34)
“The Lamp of Your Body” (Matt. 6:22-23, Luke 11:33-36)
“You Cannot Serve God and Mammon” (Matt. 6:24, Luke 16:9-15)
“Do Not Be Anxious About Your Life” (Matt. 6:25-34, Luke 12:22-32)
“Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged” (Matt. 7:1-5, Luke 6:37-42)
Pearls Before Swine (Matt. 7:06)
“Ask, Seek, Knock” (Matt. 7:7-11, Luke 11:9-13)
The Golden Rule (Matt. 7:12)
The Narrow Gate (Matt. 7:13-14, Luke 13:22-30)
“No Good Tree Bears Bad Fruit” (Matt. 7:15-20, Luke 6:43-45)
Putting Jesus’ Teaching into Action (Matt. 7:21-27, Luke 6:46-49)
The Centurion’s Servant (Matt. 8:5-13, Luke 7:1-10)
The Widow of Nain’s Son (Luke 7:11-17)
Jesus’ Travelling Companions (Luke 8:1-3)
Rebuffed in Samaria (Luke 9:51-56)
Excuses for Not Following Jesus (Matt. 8:18-22, Luke 9:57-62)
Healing Two Blind Men (Matt. 9:27-31)
Exorcizing a Mute Demoniac (Matt. 9:32-34)
Sending the Seventy (Luke 10:01)
“The Harvest is Plentiful” (Matt. 9:35-38, Luke 10:02)
Basic Instructions to the Seventy (Luke 10:3-11)
The Seventy Return (Luke 10:17-20)
Fear and Comfort (Matt. 10:26-33, Luke 12:2-12)
Jesus Brings Division (Matt. 10:34-36, Luke 12:49-53)
The Cost of Discipleship (Matt. 10:37-11:1, Luke 14:25-27)
A Question from John the Baptist (Matt. 11:2-19, Luke 7:18-35)
Woe to Unrepentant Cities (Matt. 11:20-24, Luke 10:12-16)
Hidden from the Wise (Matt. 11:25-30, Luke 10:21-24)
The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37)
“Mary has chosen the good portion” (Luke 10:38-42)
“By Your Words You Will be Justified” (Matt. 12:33-37)
The Friend at Midnight (Luke 11:5-8)
“Blessed Is the Womb that Bore You!” (Luke 11:27-28)
“The Sign of Jonah” (Matt. 12:38-42, Luke 11:29-32)
The Unclean Spirit Returns (Matt. 12:43-45, Luke 11:24-26)
The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (Matt. 13:24-30)
The Parable of the Weeds Explained (Matt. 13:34-43)
The Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-21)
Repent or Perish (Luke 13:1-9)
Healing a Crippled Woman (Luke 13:10-17)
The Parable of the Leaven (Matt. 13:33, Luke 13:20-21)
Jesus Warned That Herod Wants to Kill Him (Luke 13:31-33)
Dinner with a Ruler of the Pharisees (Luke 14:1-15)
Counting the Cost (Luke 14:28-33)
The Parable of the Treasure in the Field (Matt. 13:44)
The Parable of the Precious Pearl (Matt. 13:45-46)
The Parable of the Net Thrown into the Sea (Matt. 13:47-52)
Does Jesus Pay the Tax? (Matt. 17:24-27)
The Parable of the Lost Sheep (Matt. 18:12-14, Luke 15:1-7)
The Parable of the Lost Coin (Luke 15:8-10)
The Parable of the Lost Son (Luke 15:11-32)
The Parable of the Shrewd Steward (Luke 16:1-8)
Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19-31)
Forgiving the Brother Who Sins (Matt. 18:15-22, Luke 17:3-4)
“We Are Unworthy Servants” (Luke 17:7-10)
Ten Lepers Cleansed (Luke 17:11-19)
The Coming of the Kingdom (Luke 17:20-37)
The Parable of the Persistent Widow (Luke 18:1-8)
The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14)
The Parable of Unforgiving Debtor (Matt. 18:23-35)
The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matt. 20:1-16)
Jesus in the Temple (Matt. 21:14-17)
The Parable of the Banquet (Matt. 22:1-14, Luke 14:16-24)
Woe to the Scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 23:1-36)
“Your House Is Forsaken” (Matt. 23:37-39, Luke 13:34-35)
“The Son of Man Is Coming at an Unexpected Hour (Matt. 24:42-51, Luke 12:35-48)
The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins (Matt. 25:1-13)
Dinner with Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10)
The Parable of the Talents/Pounds (Matt. 25:14-30, Luke 19:11-27)
The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matt. 25:31-46)
Jesus’ Daily Schedule (Luke 21:37-38)
Who Is the Greatest? (Luke 22:24-32)
Preparations for the Future (Luke 22:35-38)
Jesus Before Herod Antipas (Luke 23:6-12)
Securing the Tomb (Matt. 27:62-66)
Explaining the Empty Tomb (Matt. 28:11-15)

Mark would have had to have judged all of that material not worth including in comparison to the following tiny handful of passages, which are unique to his Gospel and which he therefore chose to include:

Jesus Teaches by the Sea (Mark 2:13)
Jesus’ Family Hears (Mark 3:20-21)
The Kingdom Like Seed (Mark 4:26-29)
Healing a Deaf Man (Mark 7:32-37)
Healing a Blind Man (Mark 8:22-26)

Such an editorial choice seems inexplicable, given the high value of much of the material Mark would have chosen to omit and the low value of the additional passages he would have chosen to include.

Much more explicable would be editorial choices by Matthew and Luke to omit the handful of passages that are unique to Mark, which are of low value and which would allow them to include more of the valuable material that is found in their Gospels and that is not found in Mark.

Not a Plausible Conflation

There are also problems with the idea that Mark is a fusion of Matthew and Luke, and a particularly important one occurs on the level of the individual stories that Mark records about Jesus.

It has long been noted that, if Mark used the other two synoptic Gospels, he didn’t just switch between the two in their overall sequence of material about Jesus. Instead, he switched between the two within the course of a single story.

In other words, if you read through the Greek text of Mark, even within a single story, you’ll run into a short stretch of material that Mark would have taken from Matthew and later a short stretch of material he would have taken from Luke. This material might be a single word, a phrase, etc., but not the whole story.

Mark thus would have assembled his individual accounts of the things that Jesus did by piecing together material from Matthew and Luke like a puzzle.

How easy it is to do that kind of fusion of texts depends on the kind of writing techniques that are in use at the time.

Today, it is easier than it has ever been. Given the availability of word processors, a modern author can have two source documents open before him on his screen, and he can cut and paste fragments of text from the two into a third document that he is composing. When done on the level of words and phrases, the procedure is clunky, but it’s possible.

Before the advent of word processors, the process would have been more difficult. A hundred years ago, an author attempting this feat would likely have had his two source documents open in front of him on his writing desk, and he would have glanced back and forth between them, flipping pages when he needed to move forward in the text, and stitching together the phrases he was encountering to form a new, third document, which he would also have kept on the desk.

This would not have been nearly as easy as cutting and pasting in a word processor, but it would have been possible, and advocates of the Griesbach hypothesis have proposed that this was how Mark worked.

But there are problems with this image.

Working with Scrolls

The first problem is that it is not clear Mark would have been flipping pages. The codex—or modern form of a book that has pages attached to a spine so that they can be flipped—was not common in the ancient world, and it was only beginning to become popular in the first century.

As a result, it is quite likely that Mark would have been working with the form of book which was common in antiquity—the scroll. It is not as easy to advance the text in a scroll, which has to be rolled forward and back to consult different passages.

It’s nowhere near as easy as flipping pages, and the problem would become particularly acute if Mark were trying to fuse phrases from a story that occurs at one point in Matthew’s sequence and at a different point in Luke’s sequence. It would involve lots of manual scrolling to find the right place.

There is also the fact that, if a scroll is opened to a passage near the beginning or the end, it will have a tendency to curl itself up and obscure the text unless you hold it open with your hands or with a paperweight. (This tendency is lessened in the middle of the scroll, since you may have a sizeable roll on both sides, helping to keep the book open and the passage you want visible.)

Also, scrolls can tear in two if they aren’t properly supported—at least if they are made of papyrus, which many were (papyrus was cheaper than parchment, which was made from animal skin). When opened, the weight of one side of the scroll can be such that, if you lose your grip, it can twist the scroll and cause the papyrus to rip.

These problems could be overcome if you had paperweights and a writing desk, but that leads to a second problem . . .

No Writing Desks

Surprising as it may seem, they didn’t use writing desks in the first century, and all those classic paintings of the New Testament authors using them as they composed their works are historically anachronistic.

Instead, as revealed by illustrations from the ancient world—as well as by statements from the period—the ancients wrote without desks, either sitting on a stool or standing, holding the writing material in front of them or placing them on a knee.

This means that any sources they were consulting as they wrote were not within inches of their face as they sat at a desk.

The sources may have been laid on the floor or on another object, but they weren’t as conveniently displayed as they could be on a writing desk, and—given the distance and the tiny size that the hand printing often used (to save money on writing materials)—they would have been harder for an author to read, making him less likely to switch between them on a word-by-word or phrase-by-phrase basis.

Alternately, the sources an author was using could have been read out loud to him, and this method seems to have been used when scribes were making multiple copies of a single work, but it also would have made it very laborious to take individual words or phrases from each source and knit them together.

Ancient Conflation Practices

Because of the limitations of ancient writing methods, people in this period did not combine works in the way Mark is claimed to have done.

Instead, as studies of ancient literature show, the difficulty of borrowing tiny bits from two works and merging them together into a new work prevented this from being a normal practice.

What they would do is base a passage on one source and use its wording and then switch to another source for a new passage.

If the two sources had parallel versions of a single passage they wanted to use, they would stick with the wording used by one of the sources, not attempt to merge the wording of the two in an alternating manner.

(For more on this, and on ancient writing methods in general, see Robert A. Derrenbacker’s Ancient Compositional Practices and the Synoptic Problem, online in pdf here.)

The only notable exception to this is a work composed in the second century known as the Diatesseron. This was a harmony of the Gospels written by a Syrian named Tatian.

He actually did undertake the task of going through the Gospels line by line and trying to merge everything, retaining every small detail that he could.

The result was a work that, in English translation, is 62,440 words long (compared to 86,320 for the four Gospels), meaning that the Diatesseron is 72% as long as the Gospels combined (source).

Tatian’s example shows that it was possible to stich more than one source together in a low-level manner, but it was rare because of how difficult it was.

This raises the question of motive.

Tatian vs. Mark

Tatian was writing in the second century, after the four Gospels had come to be regarded as sufficiently sacred and inviolable that, although he wanted to create a new text by merging them, he also wanted to preserve virtually every detail contained in them. (He omits only 1.8% of their content, or 0.7% if you set the genealogies aside; source.)

As a result, the Diatesseron does not have the literary artistry of any of the Gospels. It is clunky and repetitious, as Tatian tries to jam everything in together.

Mark’s situation is entirely different.

On the Griesbach hypothesis, he clearly does not think that he has to retain all of the details found in Matthew and Luke. Indeed, he would have had to throw out huge chunks of the two Gospels, including many of their most valuable parts!

If that was his attitude toward his source material then it is inexplicable why he would feel so strongly about the phrasing of the two that he would undertake the physically laborious process of regularly merging their individual phrases.

Instead, he would have followed the ancient practice of someone combining two sources and used the wording of whichever source he had before him at the moment.

Conclusion

We thus find that—contrary to the Griesbach hypothesis—Mark’s Gospel does not work either like ancient epitomes or like ancient conflations, making it unlikely that it is a conflation and epitome of Matthew and Luke.

More plausibly, Matthew and Luke abridged material from Mark (both by omitting whole passages and by tightening up the wording of those they retained) and then expanded it with additional material they wished to include.