Category: Bible

A reader writes:

Hi, I hope you are doing fine today. I have a question regarding the book of Ruth. [Naomi says to Ruth regarding Boaz:] “But when he lies down, take note of the place where he does so. Then go, uncover a place at his feet, and lie down. He will tell you what to do." What is the meaning of uncovering his feet? Why is that Noemi told Ruth to uncover his feet?

Okay, there are two theories here. The first takes the expression literally and assumes that Naomi was telling Ruth to take the blanket off Boaz’s feet and then snuggle up to his feet and wait there for him to wake up, find her lying at his feet, and then propose marriage to her (to be signified by him spreading his garment over her and symbolically claiming her as his own).

And that’s what the text describes as happening.

Problem is, this is a really weird way to catch a man (not that I’d be opposed to it myself; I’m not criticizing).

Now, it’s possible that this is based on some cultural practice in ancient Israel and that by snuggling up to Boaz’s feet, Ruth was making her intentions clear, but we don’t have any independent evidence of such a cultural practice as far as I’m aware. The text is still just weird. That suggests that there may be something else going on here.

What that something else could be is suggested by a bit of knowlege of the Hebrew language.

Hebrew, like every language, has certain terms that are considered indelicate to use in polite society and so, whenever people needed to use one of these words, they’d say a better sounding word instead. Kind of the way in English we sometimes say that someone has "passed on" when we mean that they died.

Hebrew had euphemisms like this, too, and in biblical Hebrew the word for "foot" (regel) was used as a euphemism for . . . er . . . well . . . uh . . . er . . . (ahem) . . . for a certain piece of the male anatomy, y’see. In order to keep matters delicate, the Old Testament elsewhere uses "foot" when it really means . . . y’know. It also uses the word in the plural–"feet"–when it means the same thing.

And so some interpreters (including some very respectable ones) think that in this passage Naomi is directing Ruth to sneak up on Boaz in the night and uncover his . . . anatomy . . . and then seduce him–which is a well-known method in many cultures of trying to obtain a spouse (though it is immoral and does not usually yield quality results).

If that’s what’s going on in this text then Ruth is behaving very ruthlessly in pursuit of her goals (sorry, couldn’t resist) and the biblical author is reporting what happened (he certainly portrays her as One Determined Woman in the book), but he’s cloaking the story to make the telling more delicate.

He thus speaks (both in the passage you cite and later on) as if Ruth was just snuggling up to Boaz’s feet but expects the Hebrew-speaking audience to recognize his use of euphemism.

From what I can tell, this is a possible interpretation, and it certainly would explain an otherwise weird text.

Notice also that in verses 13 and 14, Boaz first invites Ruth to stay the night but then hustles her off before it gets light enough for people to recognize each other, because he doesn’t want it known that a woman came to the threshing floor. Ruth also waited until everyone was asleep before she came, suggesting secretiveness on both their parts.

A reader writes:

Jehovah Witnesses quote Rev. 20:14 ,"Hell will be cast into the Lake of Fire," to prove Hell is not eternal.  How do you explain that verse?

First, let’s look at the verse in context:

11: Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it;
from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for
them.
12: And I saw the dead, great and small, standing
before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened,
which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written
in the books, by what they had done.
13: And the  sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in  them, and all were judged by what they had done.
14: Then  Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the  second death, the lake of fire;
15: and if any one’s name  was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the  lake of fire.

As you can see from this translation, which is the RSV, the term "hell" is being rendered "hades." This is what the Greek term in the text actually is: hades. This is important because the term hades is not best translated by "hell" in contemporary English.

The way we use the word "hell" today (this was different in earlier English), "hell" refers to the place of the damned.

That’s not what hades meant in Greek. Hades was a more general term referring to the place or abode of the dead. Thus in the Septuagint hades is the standard translation of the term sh’ol, which also refers to the abode of the dead in general.

When the New Testament wants to refer specifically to the place of the damned, it uses a different term, such as "Gehenna" or, as in this passage, "the Lake of Fire."

That gives us the background we need to understand the passage above: It speaks of the resurrection of the dead and the final judgment:

First John sees the stage set for the judgment, then he sees the dead who are to be judged. Their resurrection is depected in verse 13. If we remember that hades is the abode of the dead, the import of the passage is as follows:

And the  sea gave up the dead in it, Death and the Abode of the Dead gave up the dead in  them, and all were judged by what they had done.

That’s the import of the following verse as well, which comes across as follows:

Then  Death and the Abode of the Dead were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the  second death, the lake of fire.

The passage thus refers to the destruction of the reality of death and, consequently, the need for a place for the dead. So it is quite true that hell–in the sense of hades or the place of the dead–will be no more. After the resurrection, everyone will be alive–forever. Some will be alive with God in paradise, but others will be in torment forever. As the book of Revelation earlier says:

And the smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever; and they have
no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and
whoever receives the mark of its name [Rev. 14:11].

A reader writes:

A question about grace and the Jews did they have grace?  As Mary
was full of grace but Paul talks about being in the flesh before his
conversion. I know the Jewish elders were anointed by the Holy Spirit
but why would they need conversion if they already had some grace? I am
sure you can explain this to me. Thank you so much for your time.

The
Jews before the time of Christ clearly had grace. The Old Testament is
filled with declarations of God’s graciousness to his people. This does
not mean that they had all the kinds of grace that Christians do today, however.

We do read about some pre-Christian Jewish individuals
receiving the Holy Spirit, such as the seventy elders or the prophets,
but the Holy Spirit was not given generally to all believers, as is the
case with Christians (John 7:39).

Another grace that was not given at the time–at least in a general
fashion–was the regeneration of the heart that was promised with the
New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:33). This regeneration of the heart,
accomplished in baptism (cf. John 3:3-5), is what makes one a "new
creation" in Paul’s terminology (2 Cor. 5:17), and thus what causes the
Christian to be no longer "in the flesh." Christians are thus given
additional spiritual resources in combatting sin that were not given
generally in the prior age.

This does not mean that there was no general grant of grace to
pre-Christian Jews. There was, as the Old Testament abundantly
demonstrates.

As to why conversion would be needed for one who already had some grace, there are two answers:

1) To obtain the additional graces now being given, and

2) To fulfill God’s requirements. If God gives new public
revelation, men are obligated to accept it. If he thus sends his Son
and reveals him to be the Messiah, men are obligated to accept that
even if they were already right with God. Culpable failure to do so
will result in one losing the grace one has.

The situation is somewhat analogous to what happens if the pope
defines a dogma. Dogmas are not new public revelation, but the
situation is analogous. If a person is a faithful, grace-filled
Catholic prior to the defintion and then the pope defines a dogma,
acceptance of the dogma becomes obligatory, and if one culpably refuses
to accept it then one rejects the virtue of faith and sins mortally.
One thus loses the grace one had.

Bottom line: In order to be in a state of grace, one must be willing
to accept the authoritative teachings of God. If a prophet gives a new
teaching as public revelation, one must accept it to remain aright with
God. If the pope clarifies a teaching through a dogmatic definition,
one must also accept it to remain aright with God. Being right with God
is not a permanent state that nothing can alter. One must be willing to
accept the progressive unfolding or deepinging of God’s teaching to
remain in a state of grace, for otherwise one is rejecting God’s
authority as a teacher and the means by which he has chosen to teach
(be they prophet or pope).

A reader writes:

What does it mean when in Matthew 5:19, it says, those who do away with the least of my commandments and teaches others to do so will be least in the Kingdom of heaven?  I would think they wouldn’t even get into the Kingdom of heaven.

Your perplexity on this point is understandable. Let’s look at the passage:

17: "Think not that I have  come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to  abolish them but to fulfil them.
18:
For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota,
not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
19:
Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches
men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does
them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20:
For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes
and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

This is one of the harder passages in the Sermon on the Mount. At the most general level, Jesus is giving an assurance that he has not simply come to overturn the Law of Moses. If we took verse 17 in isolation, it would sound as if he’s reaffirming the binding authority of the Law of Moses and that’s all there is to it. But then he seems to soften the statement in verse 18, allusing to the idea that the Law (or some of it) may pass away once "all is accomplished." The question is: What needs to be accomplished or fulfilled for this passing away to take place?

One possibility is the whole course of God’s plan of the ages. This would mean that the Law of Moses would be binding on the Jewish people (it was never binding on Gentiles) until the end of the world. While this would be a plausible interpretation of the verse taken by itself, the interpretation runs into difficulties once we hit the book of Acts, where God clearly suspends some of the dietary aspects of the Mosaic Law by abolishing the distinction between clean and unclean animals (see Acts 9). In St. Paul’s epistles, he indicates further that the Law of Moses is no longer binding on Jewish individuals and even says he himself is not under the Law of Moses but the Law of Christ.

This suggests that we are to look for something on a nearer-term time horizon as the fulfillment Jesus spoke of that allows the Law of Moses to be modified. If you look at p. 162 of Good Pope Benedict’s most excellent book

GOD AND THE WORLD

you’ll see him suggest what is the standard interpretation of the passage:

Christ does not comes as a lawbreaker. He does not come in order to declare the Law invalid or meaningless. . . . Christ comes in order to complete it. But that also means, in order to lift the Law up onto a higher level. He fulfills the Law in his suffering, in his life, in his message. And now what happens is that the whole Law finds its meaning in him. Everything that was intended by it, everything it aimed for, is truly realized in his perosn.

That is why we no longer need to fulfill the Law according to the letter, in the way its prescriptions regulate eveything down to the last detail. Our fellowship with Christ means that we are in the sphere where the Law is fulfilled; where it has found its true place; where it is quite literally "lifted up" to a higher level, that is, both preserved and at the same time transformed.

What the pope–then a cardinal–articulated in this passage is not dogmatically defined teaching, but it is the standard way of interpreting what Jesus says: Through his teaching, life, and death and resurrection, Christ provided the fulfillment needed for a modification in the Law of Moses to take place, meaning that even Jewish individuals today are not bound by it.

This provides important background for verses 19 and 20. In verse 19 he gives what is a rather soft-edged statement that makes it sound as if a person could relax the precepts of the Law and still remain "in the kingdom of heaven" (i.e., be saved).

He may indeed mean this. It is possible for people, in innocent ignorance or even with partial culpability, to water down the requirements of God’s law and yet not lose their salvation. In modern terminology, they would sin venially by doing so, but only venially.

In verse 20, though, Jesus makes a harder-edged statement, speaking of the need for our righteousness to exceed that of the Pharisees or we won’t get into the kingdom of heaven at all (i.e., not be saved). This may also be what he means. It may be that being called "least in the kingdom of heaven" means "not saved," but this is not clear and is not the natural interpretation of the phrase.

My suspicion is that Jesus meant the former interpretation, not the latter: That one can relax the lesser commandments of the Law and diminish one’s standing in the kingdom through venial sin. The example of the Pharisees is still salutory, though, because Jesus viewed them as also watering down the commandment of God, only they were watering down very important ones, like the duty of honoring one’s father and mother. He specifically criticized them for this in Matthew 15.

Now, you’ll note that in the last couple of paragraphs, I’ve been speaking in a rather loose manner as if we today would be relaxing commandments of the Law. In reality, the Law he was talking about was still the Law of Moses, and he was addressing the situation of people living in his own day. If they prematurely relaxed what the Law of Moses required then they would suffer the consequences he mentions.

Since nobody today is bound by the Law of Moses, that doesn’t apply to us directly, but the principles involved still do: God still has a law, called the Law of Christ in the New Testament and "the New Law" in theology, and if we water down its precepts in a way that constitutes venial sin then we will have our standing in the kingdom diminished thereby. If we utterly abograte them in a way that constitutes mortal sin, we will not make it into the kingdom any more than the Pharisees Jesus spoke of did.

A reader writes:

I have a question about Ezekiel 16:48-50

    48  As I live, says the Lord GOD, I swear that your sister Sodom, with her daughters, has not done as you and your daughters have done!
49  And look at the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters were proud, sated with food, complacent in their prosperity, and they gave no help to the poor and needy.
50  Rather, they became haughty and committed abominable crimes in my presence; then, as you have seen, I removed them.

It appears from this that guilt of Sodom was a type of moral complacency and indifference towards the less fortunate. How does the Church understand this vis-a-vis the usual description of the sin of Sodom?  Is it that the gluttony and apathy of Ezk 16:49 causes or is merely correlated to the prevalence of sexual sin?  Or could it be that these attributes, along with concupiscence, are emblematic of a narcissistic or solipsistic culture, which is disgraceful in the sight of God? Any commentary would be greatly appreciated.

Although you don’t bring out the point explicitly, I gather that what you are dealing with here is a common argument from homosexual apologists who wish to discount the Sodom narrative as an example of the biblical rejection of homosexuality. The strategy employed is to take passages like this one and use it to argue that the sin of Sodom was some kind of callous inhospitality rather than homosexuality (and homosexual rape in particular).

That argument is total nonsense.

First, let’s look at the structure of the passage in question. Verse 49 starts by listing different things that the Sodomites should have done but failed to do: (a) they were proud, (b) they were gluttonous, (b) they were  complacent in prosperity, and (d) they didn’t give thought to the poor. These are indeed marks of a decaded and self-indulgent lifestyle. But does it follow that one can reduce what is mentioned in the next verse ("they became haughty and committed abominable crimes in my presence") to simply these?

No.

A feature of the text that is not clear in English is that the material in verse 50 simply continues the chain of offenses begun in verse 49. Hebrew is different than English in the way that it handles long strings of conjoined elements. In English, especially in literary English, we don’t keep sticking "and" between elements in a list. Thus we don’t say "I went to the store and bought corn AND peas AND bread AND milk AND meat." What we do–at least in written English–is drop all the "and"s except the last: "I went to the store and bought, corn, peas, break, milk, and meat."

Hebrew doesn’t have that rule, though. It has a much greater tolerance to simply prefixing "and" on the front of each element in the chain. ("And" in Hebrew simply being a prefix you stick on the front of a word.) To give the passage over again, with more attention to preserving the Hebrew word order:

Behold, this is the iniquity of Sodom your sister: arrogancy, fulness of bread, and quiet ease have belonged to her and her daughters, AND the hand of the afflicted and needy she hath not strengthened. AND they are haughty AND they commit abomination before me, AND I take them away as you saw.

The committing of abomination is thus the capping incident in a chain of offenses that led to their being taken away by the Lord. Because of the construction of the passage, the abominations that Sodom committed are not to be  read as simply a restatement of things earlier in the list. If I say, "She committed W and X and Y and Z," the natural understanding of Z is that it is a new and additional item not previously covered in the list. The homosexual activist’s attempt to reduce Sodom’s commission of abominations to just a proud and uncharitable attitude goes against the structure of the text.

The reference to committing abomination in the passage itself, though, is ambiguous. If we just had this passage, we wouldn’t know what the abomination was. Indeed, we wouldn’t even know who Sodom was from this passage. But the text occurs in the broader context of the Hebrew literary tradition, and if we want to understand it, we have to draw upon that tradition.

The tradition makes it clear–following the keystone text concerning Sodom in Genesis–that Sodom was a city known for attempting to committing homosexual rape on travellers, an act which immediately preceded its destruction (also referred to in Ezek. 16:50). The natural understanding of the text is thus that the homosexual rape was the abomination that the text is referring to.

Now, an activist could try a fallback position and argue that it was the rape that was the problem here, not the homosexuality, but this would suppose that the Hebrews put homosexuality and rape in two different categories, the first being non-abomination and the second being abominable. This is simply unsustainable from what else we know about ancient Hebrew mores.

If you look at passages like Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, you’ll see that homosexuality is specifically called "abomination" (the same word as in Ezekiel 16:50). So the idea that the Hebrew ethical tradition viewed homosexuality as a-okay but rape as a no-no is simply wrong. They were both abomination, and combining the two was doubly abominable–the kind of thing that could, y’know, get your city destroyed by God or something.

The natural understanding of Ezekiel 16:49-50 is that Sodom was characterized by a bunch of decadent and self-indulgent sins that eventually led it to commit abomination before God, leading him to destroy it–the abomination in question being understood as homosexual rape in a literary allusion to the Sodom narrative in Genesis, where attempted homosexual rape is presented as confirming the iniquity of the city for the angelic messengers and being the final straw that results in its destruction.

 

A reader writes:

In the Book of Ecclesiastes, one passage says that the "dead know nothing" or the "dead know nothing of the living". How is this reconciled with intercessory prayer to the saints and to apcryphal passages stating the contrary?

There are a number of possibilities here, but let me try to articulate the central problem with opposing something Ecclesiastes says with things elsewhere shown in Scripture: Ecclesiastes is not your typical book of Scripture. It is written in a very distinct genre that is unlike anything else in the Bible. While it may broadly be classed as a piece of wisdom literature, the wisdom in question is of a wholly remarkable sort.

Rather than affirming the commonsense wisdom of ancient Israel (like the book of Proverbs) it calls this wisdom into question and subjects it to cross-examination. The book assumes a what might be termed a perspective of theistic existentialism in which the weight of the human condition is given full voice and allowed to express all the doubt and questioning that a soul in anguish and despair at the apparent absurdity in the world is wont to express.

The questioning process that the book subjects conventional religious piety to is so thorough that many in the ancient world were scandalized by the book and questioned whether it should even be included in Scripture.

It’s not hard to understand why when you look at a book and its opening line is "Vanity of vanities, says the  Preacher,   vanity of vanities! All is vanity" or, in a more modern idiom, ""Meaningless! Meaningless! says the Teacher. Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless" (Eccles. 1:2).

After an opening line like that, you know that you’re in for a wild ride. This is not going to be a book that easily affirms a simple and pious worldview that concludes that meaning in life is easy to find.

Instead, the book’s author assumes a perspective of natural philosophy. Rather than turning to the declarations of the prophets to find meaning and the revelation of God’s will, the author tries to apply human reason to the workings of the world to see what it can determine. He accepts the existence of God, but his methodology prevents him from simply trusting in the words of the prophets and concluding that his task is done.

In a way, the author of Ecclesiastes is like the philosopher Descartes. Descartes was a Christian (and a Catholic) who knew that at the end of his meditations he would affirm the Christian worldview, but he refused to take any shortcuts in arriving at that affirmation. In the same way the author of Ecclesiastes ends up affirming "Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of  man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with  every secret thing, whether good or evil" (Eccles. 12:13-14), but only after travelling a torturous path of philosophical reasonings.

Thus one cannot read Ecclesiastes as if it is a theological treatise of St. Paul. It is more like the book of Job, where different viewpoints are allowed to exist in dialogue and tension with each other. As Eccleiastes progresses, the author tries out various different viewpoints without fully endorsing any of them. One thus cannot lift a specific verse out of Eccleaistes and treat it like one of St. Paul’s theological deliverances. The book is far too paradoxical and tentative for that.

A special characteristic of the book is that it tends to assume a non-revelatory methodology. In other words, it tends not to rely on divine revelation to answer the questions it poses. It instead tries to use human reason. As a result, it finds some questions unanswerable from a human frame of reference. Thus early in the book we read:

Who  knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the  beast goes down to the earth? (Eccles. 3:21).

The implied answer is: No one knows–at least no one assuming the non-revelatory perspective the author is assuming.

The author thus confesses that from the perspective of human reason, one can’t say that the fate of man is any different from the fate of animals. One can’t even say what that fate is beyond the fact that both die (3:19).

It is this non-revelatory perspective that informs the book’s later statements that:

1: But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the
righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God; whether
it is love or hate man does not know. Everything before them is vanity,

2: since one fate comes to all, to the righteous and the
wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him
who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As is the good man, so
is the sinner; and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath.
3:
This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that one fate comes
to all; also the hearts of men are full of evil, and madness is in
their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.
4: But he who is  joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better  than a dead lion.
5:
For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and
they have no more reward; but the memory of them is lost.
6:
Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and
they have no more for ever any share in all that is done under the sun.

7: Go,  eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry  heart; for God has already approved what you do.
8: Let  your garments be always white; let not oil be lacking on your head. 
9:
Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life
which he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in
life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun.
10:
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no
work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are
going.
11: Again I saw that under the sun the race is not
to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor
riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and
chance happen to them all [Ecclesiastes 9].

         

The perspective of this passage (particularly in vv. 7-10) comes close to "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die"–a viewpoint expressly repudiated by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:32. St. Paul, though, was repudiating a more hardened version of this viewpoint than what the author of Ecclesiastes is advocating.

The author is articulating a view based on the human perspective that death seems to end everything, and consequently that life is vain and meaningless. We know that he doesn’t ultimately conclude that if we read through to the end of the book, but that is the viewpoint he is trying out at the moment.

And it is a view with some elements of truth in it: One may as well live life with gusto, or carpe diem, because death is coming and one will no longer be able to act (on earth). (This being a viewpoint that St. Paul could endorse, it being quite close to something Jesus said; see John 9:4).

Because the author is exploring matters from a human perspective, according to which death seems to end everything and makes life meaningless, one cannot seize upon statements like Ecclesiastes 9:5 ("the dead know nothing") or 9:10 ("there is no . . . thought or knowledge or wisdom in sh’ol") and make them doctrinal pronouncements.

They’re not.

They are what a person assuming a non-revelatory human perspective could conclude. If you look at a dead person, he doesn’t seem to know anything anymore or think anything or possess any wisdom. His body is inert. It is as if everything ended for him. Confined to a purely human perspective, that is what you might conclude. You might then conclude that his life was meaningless as it all came to an end.

But you can’t glom onto the "no knowledge" statements without recognizing the context in which they occur. If you want to make them absolutes then you’re going to have to make absolute also the idea that death ends everything and life is meaningless.

That, of course, you shouldn’t conclude. The author of Ecclesiastes doesn’t (see the last two verses of the book), and the other authors of Scripture certainly don’t.

In fact, other books of the Old and the New Testament both indicate that the dead do know things (see Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and the rich man and Revelation’s depictions of the saints in heaven knowing things on earth) and that they do pray for us (see 2 Macc. 15:14; Rev. 5:8).

The passages in Ecclesiastes (and a few other places) that speak of the dead as if they have no consciousness thus must be understood as what they are: Passages written from a this-worldly perspective addressing a point that further divine revelation has clarified.

They do not constitute disproof of what is said elsewhere in Scripture.

Nobody can read the Bible! I mean . . . it’s huge, ain’t it??? Just look at it! It’s a big THICK book! Nobody could be expected to read that? Right?

WRONG!

I’ve read it, and . . . IT AIN’T THAT HARD. F’rinstance: Y’know how long it would take to read the Bible straight through?

3.6 days.

Y’know how I know that? It’s how long it would take me to listen to the complete, unabridged Bible that I just finished downloading from www.audible.com for listening on my iPod.

3.6 days. That’s all.

Okay, okay. There are a couple of caveats:

1. It’s a Protestant Bible, so it only includes the 66 books of the Protestant Bible and not the seven extra books (plus parts of two others) that give us the Catholic Bible. Add those, and the whole might come to 4 days of unconstrained listening.
2. It also presupposes that one doesn’t need to sleep or take a break from listening. It’s four days of unadulterated listening.

Nobody can really do that (except as part of a publicity stunt for a radio station or something), so listening to the Bible takes longer than 4 days.

But still, 4 days of listening taken in little pieces–say, an hour a day for 3 months–that’s quite doable. Many folks have commutes (one way or two ways) that are longer than an hour a day.

Or read only 4 chapters a day, and you’ll have read the whole thing in a year.

Wouldn’t you like to read the whole Bible? To have the Big Picture so you have a feel for the history of God’s program of the ages? Wouldn’t you like to know the context in which the readings at Mass occur?

You really can!

Start!

Now!

A reader writes:

JamesJimmy,

I will be conducting a class in three weeks on the synoptic Gospels. I have found your article from This Rock (Dec. 1997) very helpful in explaining the "problem" of the genealogies presented by Matthew and Luke. However, please elaborate on one point for me.

You stated:

Matthew has Christ descending from David through Solomon, while Luke has him descending from David through Nathan. This is not odd. David had more than one son, and a later individual can be descended from more than one of them.

How can someone be descended from more than one son of David? Is this another example of either adoption or the Leviterate Law?

I plan to give the class your article, but I could really use some help on this point.

No prob!

There could be a case here of levirite marriage or adoption, but it doesn’t have to be.

Suppose that my great-great-grandpappy is named  Buck.

Suppose also that he has two sons, Rufus and Bocephus. They’re brothers and two of my great-grandpappies.

Suppose that Rufus has a son named Luke and Bocephus has a son named Bo. They’re first cousins and my grandpappies.

Suppose that Luke has a son named Lew and Bo has a daughter named Betty Lou. They’re second cousins and my parents.

Lew and Betty Lou get married. They have me.

I am thus born from two different lines diverging from my great-great-grandpappy, Buck.

Now, this ain’t my real family line, but it illustrates how one ancestor can give rise to two lines that later recombine–without adoption or levirite marriage being involved. You can expand the number of generations in the line or (depending on how close you’ll allow relatives to marry) shrink it, but the principle is the same.

Thus Jesus could be descended from Solomon (a thousand years and many generations eaerlier) by more than one of Solomon’s sons.

P.S., For those who haven’t read my treatment of the two genealogies,

GET THE STORY.

A reader writes:

JamesJimmy,

I will be conducting a class in three weeks on the synoptic Gospels. I have found your article from This Rock (Dec. 1997) very helpful in explaining the "problem" of the genealogies presented by Matthew and Luke. However, please elaborate on one point for me.

You stated:

Matthew has Christ descending from David through Solomon, while Luke has him descending from David through Nathan. This is not odd. David had more than one son, and a later individual can be descended from more than one of them.

How can someone be descended from more than one son of David? Is this another example of either adoption or the Leviterate Law?

I plan to give the class your article, but I could really use some help on this point.

No prob!

There could be a case here of levirite marriage or adoption, but it doesn’t have to be.

Suppose that my great-great-grandpappy is named  Buck.

Suppose also that he has two sons, Rufus and Bocephus. They’re brothers and two of my great-grandpappies.

Suppose that Rufus has a son named Luke and Bocephus has a son named Bo. They’re first cousins and my grandpappies.

Suppose that Luke has a son named Lew and Bo has a daughter named Betty Lou. They’re second cousins and my parents.

Lew and Betty Lou get married. They have me.

I am thus born from two different lines diverging from my great-great-grandpappy, Buck.

Now, this ain’t my real family line, but it illustrates how one ancestor can give rise to two lines that later recombine–without adoption or levirite marriage being involved. You can expand the number of generations in the line or (depending on how close you’ll allow relatives to marry) shrink it, but the principle is the same.

Thus Jesus could be descended from Solomon (a thousand years and many generations eaerlier) by more than one of Solomon’s sons.

P.S., For those who haven’t read my treatment of the two genealogies,

GET THE STORY.

666616?

That’s a question some folks are asking themselves right now. Actually, they’ve been asking that question for a while, but they just started asking it more insistently. Lemme ‘splain why:

Y’know those Oxyrhynchus manuscripts they’ve been reading lately? Well,

TURNSOUT ONE OF ‘EM’S A MANUSCRIPT OF REVELATION THAT GIVES THE MARK OF THE BEAST AS 616 INSTEAD OF 666.

Of course, the press is already getting the story wrong. The above link, for example, goes to a story headlined:

Revelation! 666 is not the number of the beast (it’s a devilish 616)

I’m sorry, but we just can’t say this with that kind of certainty.

Y’see . . .

The discovery of a manuscript with the number 616 isn’t exactly news.

Over yonder to the left, for example, is a photo of manuscript P115 (sorry I can’t do the fancy Germanic P)–also found at Oxyrhynchus, incidentally–which also gives the number of the beast as 616–only we’ve had it for a long time.

What’s why if you look in the footnotes for Revelation 13 in your Bible (assuming it’s a modern translation), you’ll see a note saying that the number may be 616 instead of 666.

So all they’ve turned up now is yet another manuscript saying this. But if the evidence we had wasn’t decisive, adding one more manuscript to the pile won’t settle things.

Especially when the new manuscript is reportedly from the late 3rd century.

So it’s still undecided what the number originally was.

A favorite conjecture (though only a conjecture) is that the origin of the discrepancy has to do with the spelling of Nero’s name. The Emperor Nero fits the description of the beast really well, and it happens that his name adds up to 666 in Aramaic if you spell it NRWN QSR, which is one of the ways it was historically spelled. But it was also speled NRW QSR, which adds up to . . . you guessed it! 616. (N = 50 in Aramaic numbering.)

I am intrigued by something the Independent article mentions, though.

Y’see, there’s more than one Roman emperor who fits the description of the beast really well. The other is Gaius Caesar, better known to the world as Caligula.

Caligula did all kinds of beast-like things: He wanted people to worship him as a god, he tried to have a image of him put in the Jewish Temple, he had a "head wound" (blazingly intense headaches coupled with what may have been a nervous breakdown) from which he recovered and came back mad as a hatter, he slaughtered tons of people, etc., etc., etc.

He then was followed by the similarly beast-like Nero (with the milder Claudius in between them).

Many scholars, putting the book of Revelation in the A.D. 90s (which is much too late in my opinion) have looked at the revival of the beast and thought it’s based on the "Nero Revividus" rumors that circulated in the late first century. These were the ancient equivalent of the "Hitler ain’t dead" rumors that were found in the mid 20th century. According to Nero Revividus, Nero really didn’t die but was in hiding, waiting for his chance to come back and persecute everybody all over again.

Since I place Revelation earlier than that, before A.D. 70 (since it speaks as if the Jewish Temple is still standing), I’ve wondered whether the the revival of the beast isn’t something else. Caligula fits the beast so well–in some ways better than Nero–that I’ve wondered whether Revelation means us to understand that Nero is or will become a revived Caligula, or that there is an emperor yet to be elected (Nero, possibly Domitian) who will be a revived Caligula. In any event, I’ve wondered for some time whether Caligula isn’t much more central to the beast than interpreters generally credit.

So here’s the interesting thing that the Independent mentions:

The number 616 was applied to Caligula.

I did some checking, and folks have found a couple of ways that his name might equal 616. In Hebrew (and therefore Aramaic, which uses the same alphabet and numbering system), "Gaius Caligula Caesar" appears to equal 616. Also in Greek "Gaius Caesar" equals 616. Here’s the math:

ARAMAIC:

Gamal = 3
Simkath = 60

Qop = 100
Lamed = 30
Gamal = 3
Simkath = 60

Qop = 100
Simkath = 60
Resh = 200

Total = 616

GREEK:

Gamma = 3
Alpha = 1
Iota = 10
Omicron = 70
Sigma = 200

Kappa = 20
Alpha = 1
Iota = 10
Sigma = 200
Alpha = 1
Rho = 100

Total = 616

Interesting!

(Incidentally, I also thought the comment by satanist guy in the Observer article was also refreshingly honest.)

Oh, one  other thing: Last go-round some folks asked what if the Oxyrhynchus papyri turned up different versions of existing books of Scripture? Would the Church accept them? As manuscript evidence, yes, as the case of P115 illustrates. As definitive replacements, no–the Observer’s attempt to canonize the new manuscript notwithstanding.

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)