This is a post linking to pieces that are part of an ongoing series I’m working on about the “dark passages” of Scripture–passages that tend to take modern readers aback (for example, because of the violence contained in them).
I’m also including passages that some find difficult even if they aren’t “dark.”
Here I’ll link to the individual posts in the series at their current locations. That will make it easier for me to link each one of those posts individually back to this one to provide a continually-updated post to help people find what they’re looking for.
Matthew 2:23 says that Jesus was raised in Nazareth “that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.'”
But this statement does not appear in anywhere in the Old Testament.
Does this mean that Matthew just invented the prophecy?
Recently a Muslim author responded to me by claiming just this.
Let’s look into the matter . . .
The Background
Recently I made a video posing the question “Did the New Testament Authors Feel Free to Make Stuff Up?” (click here to watch it).
I looked at several lines of evidence showing that they did not feel free to simply invent material about Jesus, unlike the authors of the Gnostic gospels that were written in the second and third centuries.
The British blogger and convert to Islam Paul Williams posted a response on his blog, Exploring Life, the Universe, and Everything (he’s also apparently a Douglas Adams fan, which I can appreciate), where he wrote:
Yes Jimmy, there is evidence they did [make stuff up] from time to time. Consider Matthew 2 for example:
“There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean.’”
There is no such prophecy anywhere in the Bible [emphasis in original].
Lost Prophecies?
I became aware of Matthew 2:23 when I read through the New Testament at age 20. The Bible I was reading had footnotes revealing where various quotations from the Old Testament could be found, and I was surprised to see that there was no Old Testament reference for the prophecy given here.
What did this mean?
What was Matthew quoting?
Was it a source that had been lost?
We know that there were many prophets in ancient Israel who genuinely spoke for God, even though their prophecies are not recorded in the Old Testament. 1 Kings even indicates that there were as many as a hundred prophets at once!
And Ahab called Obadi’ah, who was over the household. (Now Obadi’ah revered the LORD greatly; and when Jez’ebel cut off the prophets of the LORD, Obadi’ah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifties in a cave, and fed them with bread and water) [1 Kings 18:3-4].
Could it be that some of this material was passed down in the form of oral tradition, and this is what Matthew was referring to?
Did the gospel writers feel free to make stuff up?
Some people hold the view that the writers of the four gospels felt free to basically make stuff up, to freely shape the narratives they were writing about Jesus’ life by either manufacturing stories about his deeds or making up teachings and putting them on his lips.
The idea is that they used the figure of Jesus as a vehicle for their own ideas, and they made up material to serve the perceived needs of their local Christian communities.
It’s easy to show that by the second century there were a lot of people identifying themselves as Christians who did exactly this. That’s why there were so many Gnostic gospels dating from the second to the fourth century.
But what about the first century, canonical gospels?
Let’s take a look . . .
What We’re Talking About
I should say a word about what I mean and what I don’t mean.
I’m talking about making stuff up out of whole cloth–the kind of things that the authors of the Gnostic gospels did, telling stories and making up sayings that have absolutely no relation to the historical Jesus and what he said and did.
I’m not talking about paraphrasing what Jesus said–using different words to express the same thing. Or simplifying a story by choosing not to record certain details about what happened. Or telling a story from a certain point of view or bringing out an implication, nuance, or meaning that others might not have brought out. Or using a bit of literary artistry or reorganization in how the material is presented.
The gospel authors did all of those things, as is easy to show. John did a bit more of them than the other three.
What I’m talking about is fundamentally different. I’m talking about making stuff up.
While the Gnostics may have been into that kind of thing, there are very good reasons to think that the authors of the canonical gospels weren’t.
The number of the beast is 666, but what is the number of Jesus?
We’ve all heard that, in the book of Revelation, the number of the Beast is 666.
Whatever does this mean?
And if the Beast has a number, do others?
Does the name of Jesus have a number?
Does the name of God have a number?
Here’s the story. . . .
Modern Numbers
Today we are used to having a different set of characters to represent letters and numbers.
Our alphabet of letters runs from A to Z, and our system of numbers–or basic numbers–runs from 0 to 9.
But in the ancient world they didn’t have two sets of characters for these. Instead, the letters of their alphabets doubled as characters representing numbers.
Latin Numbers
That’s why, for example, Roman numerals are composed of letters.
In Latin, some of the letters did double duty as numbers, so I meant 1, V meant 5, X meant 10, L meant 50, C meant 100, D meant 500, and M meant 1,000.
To get other numbers you had to combine these in various ways, like using II for 2, III for 3, and IV for 4.
What about the number of the Beast and the number of Jesus?
You sometimes encounter the charge that the Catholic Church wrongly “changed the sabbath” from Saturday to Sunday. This claim is often made by Seventh-Day Adventists, for example. But even if one isn’t accusing the Church of wrongdoing, the question can still arise: Why do Catholics worship on Sunday rather than Saturday? Here’s the story . . .
What Day the Sabbath Is
First, let’s clear away a potential source of confusion. While it’s true that people sometimes speak of Sunday as “the Christian sabbath,” this is a loose way of speaking. Strictly speaking, the sabbath is the day it always was–Saturday–though it should be noted that traditionally Jewish people have celebrated the sabbath from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. Sunday is a distinct day, which follows the sabbath. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:
2175 Sunday is expressly distinguished from the sabbath which it follows chronologically every week; for Christians its ceremonial observance replaces that of the sabbath. In Christ’s Passover, Sunday fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish sabbath and announces man’s eternal rest in God. For worship under the Law prepared for the mystery of Christ, and what was done there prefigured some aspects of Christ.
Why We Celebrate Sunday
That same paragraph explains why we celebrate on Sunday. For Christians the ceremonial observance of Sunday replaces that of the sabbath. Properly speaking, we’re not celebrating the sabbath on Sunday. We’re celebrating something else, but it’s something that the sabbath points toward. As the Catechism says, the Jewish sabbath announces man’s eternal rest in God and prefigures some aspects of Christ. Sunday thus fulfills what the sabbath pointed toward.
There are many gems in the writings of the Church Fathers. Some are valuable because of their insight into faith, others are valuable because they fill in things not mentioned in the Bible, and some are valuable because of their spiritual beauty.
Here is one about the Apostle John, who is sometimes called the Apostle of Love. This story alone would earn him that nickname.
It records an incident late in his life, and it is found in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, who wrote only a hundred years afterward and who obtained it from earlier sources.
It may well be true, but whatever degree of historical reliability it has, it touches on powerful human emotions, and it is undeniably beautiful.
The Revelation of John contains many mysteries, like: Who were the Nicolaitans?
The book of Revelation contains a lot of things that are mysterious. Some are mysterious because of the symbolism John uses, but others are mysterious because what he is referring to is simply unfamiliar to us.
For example, he refers to a mysterious group of heretics known as the “Nicolaitans.”
Who were they?
Fortunately, this is a mystery it’s possible to shed some light on . . .
What Revelation Says
The book of Revelation first refers to the Nicolaitans in the message to the church of Ephesus, where we read:
Yet this you have, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate [2:6].
That doesn’t give us a lot to work with. There is apparently a group of people known as the Nicolaitans who do things (works) that are rightly hated by the Ephesians.
Revelation’s second reference to them is more informative, however. In the message to the church of Pergamum we read:
But I have a few things against you: You have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice immorality. So you also have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans [2:14-15].
Here the teachings of the Nicolaitans are linked to the teaching of Balaam. (The word here translated “so” is houtos, which carries the idea of explanation: “thus.”)
There may even be a play on words here: As we will see, the Fathers link the Nicholaitans to a man named Nicholaus, which can be understood in Greek to mean “conqueror of the people,” and “Balaam” can be understood in Hebrew as meaning “he conquers/destroys the people” (though it can be understood other ways also).
The Teaching of Balaam
We meet the figure of Balaam in Numbers 22-24, where we learn that he is a seer who was hired by the king Balak to put a curse on the people of Israel as they were threatening to move into the Holy Land.
Balaam, however, was unable to do so. (God wouldn’t let him!)
If you read only Numbers 22-24, Balaam can come off as a good guy. It seems, though, that he went bad.
Later in Numbers, Moses is criticizing the actions of the Israeliets with regard to the women of Midian, and he says:
Behold, these caused the people of Israel, by the counsel of Balaam, to act treacherously against the LORD in the matter of Pe’or, and so the plague came among the congregation of the LORD [Num. 31:16].
What precisely the Midianite women did that caused the sons of Israel to betray the Lord is not spelled out here.
It is, however, discussed in some extra-biblical writings.
Did Jesus really feed more than 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish?
The multiplication of loaves is the most prominent miracle of Jesus’ earthly ministry. It is the only miracle–other than his Resurrection–mentioned in all four gospels.
This even ranks the raising of Lazarus.
But despite this, we’re subjected to countless homilies in which the priest seems bent on explaining away this grand miracle, in which Jesus fed 5,000 men (plus women and children) with just five loaves and two fish. Instead, we’re told, it was just a “miracle of sharing” whereby Jesus encouraged people to share the food they had in secret selfish stashes.
That’s certainly the impression you would get from some discussing a recent decree issued by the German bishops’ conference.
It’s being characterized as a “pay to pray” policy, whereby the Church will deny you the sacraments if you don’t give it money.
One news source headlined the story “German Bishops To Catholics: Pay Up Or Die Without Absolution.”
That seems to be about as misleading a headline as you could want, because the decree in question expressly refers to the possibility of people receiving the final sacraments.
Did the authors of the New Testament know they were writing Scripture or did they think they were writing something else?
You’d think that the answer would be an easy, “yes,” but a startling number of people–including New Testament scholars–say “no.”
I’m always taken aback when I’m reading along and suddenly encounter a statement like, “Of course, the authors of the New Testament didn’t know that they were writing Scripture. Their writings only came to have this status later.”
Huh?
How do you know that?
Let’s take a look at the issue . . .
What Scripture Is
Today we often think of a particular book as Scripture based on whether it is in the Bible. If it is in the Bible, it’s Scripture. If it’s not in the Bible, it’s not Scripture.
This may be a practical test for us today, but it’s not the way the New Testament authors thought of Scripture. Back when they lived, there was no book called “the Bible.” Instead, there were a collection of books, which were originally written on scrolls, that they thought of as Scripture.
Only the invention of new forms of publishing technology allowed these to be put together as the single volume that we now call “the Bible.”
Also back in the day–their day–the canon of Scripture was not yet completed, which means that it was still open. There was no closed canon, and so they also couldn’t use the test “Is it one of the books of the (closed) canon?”
If you can’t define what Scripture is by relating it to “what’s in the Bible?” or “what’s in the canon?” how can you define it?
The answer that the first Christians would have given if they had been asked “What is Scripture?” would probably have involved these concepts:
A book of Scripture is a sacred book.
A book of Scripture is an divinely authoritative book.
A book of Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit.
These provide important clues to whether the authors of the New Testament thought they were writing Scripture. Before we apply them, though, we should look at another way of approaching the issue . . .
What Scriptures Did the New Testament Authors Recognize?
When the New Testament authors quote from the Old Testament, they overwhelmingly (around 80-90% of the time) quote from a particular version of it: the Septuagint. This was a Greek translation of the Old Testament that was used internationally by the Jewish community.
When we look at the particular books that belonged to the Septuagint, we find that there are a number of different types, including:
Foundational books: These tell about the founding of the Hebrew community (Genesis-Deuteronomy).
Historical books: These tell the ongoing story of Israel’s history under God’s providence (Joshua-2 Chronicles, plus 1-2 Maccabees).
Prophetic books: These contain oracles and visions given through the prophets (Isaiah-Malachi).
Wisdom books: These contain divine wisdom on a variety of topics, written in several different forms including poetry (Job), songs (Psalms, Song of Songs), short sayings (Proverbs), meditations (Ecclesiastes, Wisdom), etc.
It’s not unreasonable to think that if we find the New Testament authors writing books of these types then they would have seen themselves as writing Scripture.
So if we apply that test, what results do we find?
The Book of Revelation
This one is so obvious that it’s blinding. The book of Revelation present itself as a prophetic revelation like the prophetic books of the Old Testament, whose imagery and language it frequently uses.
How could John not think he was writing Scripture?
The only ways I could see a person writing a book of this sort and not think he was writing Scripture would be if he was a fraud who was writing to deceive people into thinking he was writing Scripture–or if he was some kind of fiction author who thought he was writing fiction in the form of a prophecy.
There is no evidence that John was doing either one of these things.
He comes across as straightforward and sincere–even ardent.
So Revelation is an easy “gimmie.” Its author thought he was writing Scripture.
The Gospels
Also easy are the Gospels. They belong to the class of foundational books, just like the Pentateuch (Genesis-Deuteronomy) does in the Old Testament. They tell the story of how the New Israel (the Church) was born through the ministry of Christ, just like the Pentateuch tells the story of how the Original Israel was born through the ministry of Moses.
In fact, the Gospel authors directly parallel Jesus with Moses (Matthew does this in particular) and the Twelve Apostles with the Twelve Patriarchs of Israel.
Furthermore, the Gospel authors portray Jesus as greater than Moses. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ was regarded as the greatest event in God’s plan of the ages–ever.
So anyone writing a Gospel to be read in the churches had to have the idea that he was writing Scripture.
As John Paul II said on one occasion:
Another “consolation” of the Holy Spirit for the Church was the spread of the Gospel as the text of the new covenant. If the books of the Old Testament, inspired by the Holy Spirit, were already a source of consolation and comfort for the Church, as St. Paul says to the Romans (Rom 15:4), how much more so were the books which related “all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning” (Acts 1:1). Of these we can even more truly say that they were written “for our instruction, that by endurance and by the consolation of the scriptures we might have hope” (Rom 15:4) [General Audience, March 13, 1991].
We also have evidence in the epistles that the Gospels were regarded as Scripture.
The Brother Whose Praise Is “In the Gospel”
In 2 Corinthians 8:18-19, St. Paul writes:
18 And we have sent with [Titus also] the brother, whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches;
19 And not that only, but who was also chosen of the churches to travel with us with this grace, which is administered by us to the glory of the same Lord, and declaration of your ready mind [KJV].
I’ve quoted this from the King James Version because most modern translations render what verse 18 says dynamically rather than literally.
What Paul literally says is a brother “whose praise is in the gospel” and who, as revealed in verse 19, was a travelling companion of Paul.
Do we know any travelling companions of Paul who wrote a Gospel?
Sure! Luke!
And perhaps that’s what he’s referring to here. He’s sending Luke along with Titus to visit the Corinthians.
Or maybe not.
The verse is ambiguous, and it could mean something else. It could mean, in keeping with modern, dynamic translations, “the brother whose praise is in the service of the gospel” or “in preaching the gospel.”
Whether you think it means this kind of thing or whether you think it is a reference to Luke will depend on when you think Luke’s Gospel was written.
Note that St. Paul speaks of “the brother” (singular), as if there is only one of his companions whose praise is “in the gospel.” That would fit Luke well if we are talking about a written gospel, but it would be hard to see who he’s talking about if we’re not. Lots of Paul’s companions (e.g., Timothy, Titus), could be said to have their praise in thepreaching of the gospel, and all of them could have their praise in the service of the gospel.
(Note that Mark was also a companion of Paul who wrote a Gospel, but he is better known as a companion of Peter, and at one point Paul and Mark had a falling out, so Luke is the more likely choice.)
“The Worker Is Worth His Wages”
Less ambiguous is 1 Timothy 5:17-19, where we read:
[17] Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching;
[18] for the scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”
The command about not muzzling an ox comes from Deuteronomy 25:4, but the statement that the worker deserves his wages is Luke 10:7–the only other place in the Bible this statement appears.
So here we have a direct New Testament reference to Luke as Scripture.
We thus have a consciousness being displayed, in the New Testament age, that Luke–and, by extension, the other Gospels–were Scripture.
Acts of the Apostles
If Luke thought he was writing Scripture when he wrote his Gospel then he would have thought the same thing when he was writing Acts.
Acts is the direct sequel to the Gospel of Luke, it picks up where the Gospel left off, and it fits the same mold as the Old Testament historical books, which continued the story of Israel from where the Pentateuch left off.
Acts is the New Testament equivalent of the Old Testament historical books, filling in the history of the New Israel down to his own day (c. A.D. 62) from the point where the foundational document (the Gospel) stopped.
So we have good evidence that the authors of Revelation, the Gospels, and Acts knew they were writing Scripture. That leaves us with the epistles, which we will look at soon.
