Lady Freedom & the Riot

 

     My absentee ballot for the US elections will be arriving soon, which of course means my thoughts are drifting once more to my homeland, the proverbial “land of the free.”

     But what is freedom?  More important, what is freedom from the perspective of a follower of Jesus, who proclaimed “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36)?

     With both major political parties in the U.S. laying claim to the term “freedom,” this seems like the right month for a word study: eleutheria, the Greek word used in the New Testament for “freedom” or “liberty.”

 

EPHESUS BEFORE JESUS

     In pagan Greece, one deity laid claim to the title of “freedom”: Artemis Eleutheria, goddess of the hunt and of liberty.  From my point of view as an ex-pat American, Eleutheria is interesting because she was the goddess on whom the Statue of Liberty was modeled.  Her Latin name, when she’s broken off from Artemis as a standalone goddess, was Libertas.  From my viewpoint as a Christian, my ears perk up at the Artemis side of her identity.  That’s because of Acts chapter 19.

     Stroll along with me as I give you a little more backstory.

     The goddess Artemis was a favorite throughout the cities of the Greek world, believed to be the sister of the god Apollo and mistress of the hunt.  In the city of Myra (in what is modern-day Turkey), she was worshipped exclusively under the name of Artemis Eleutheria, adding freedom to her many epithets.  However, several hours up the Asia Minor coast in the city of Ephesus … you know this ancient city thanks to the epistle that Paul wrote to the church there … Artemis had been raised to an even more exalted status.  There, she was also a fertility goddess, the divine being who granted women pregnancy.  The Ephesian temple built in her honor was on the grounds where, it was said, her image had “fallen from heaven” (Acts 19:35).  That temple, destroyed and rebuilt several times over the centuries, is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

     When your city's principal pagan goddess is all about childbirth, those who have children rise in status.  And if you can’t have babies (since there’s no IVF technology for another two thousand years), what better way to up your chances of status than by using magic … specifically, small silver statues of the goddess to increase your odds of getting pregnant?  A little home shrine, some incense burning, a small sacrifice or two … it was all worth it to gain the status of having children in Ephesus.  It meant Artemis Eleutheria was on your side.

     But then this guy named Paul shows up and starts talking about eleutheria, freedom, through a new deity you hadn’t heard of before.  He starts pushing ideas about a second birth, ideas that can make you, yourself, into a child of his God, and maybe even bring along your whole family for the eternal ride.

     If you’re a common citizen of Ephesus, you’re intrigued and might wish to learn more.  But if you’re a rich idol-builder who makes bank off those silver statues of Artemis, you’re not one bit happy.  This new religion threatens your income.  You need to do something.  You need to address the crowds and stir up their anger by making them feel that their way of life is being threatened.  You need to get them to storm the center of the city in an enraged, anti-Paul riot.

     The rich guy whipping up this civic insurrection was named Demetrius, and his story in Acts 19 makes clear that he cared far more about his wealth than he did about families having children.  Neither the pagan goddess Artemis nor this newcomer God called Jesus defined his eleutheria.  His freedom was built on his profiteering, and it was worth inciting a riot at the heart of his city-state to keep his pockets lined.  He staged that riot in the Great Theater of Ephesus, right up the street from the palace, the Ephesian center of government.

 

EPHESUS WITH JESUS

     Paul escaped the uprising.  He’d wanted to address the rioting mob, but his own companions and friendly local officials talked him down.  Over the years, the church took root in Ephesus, that land dedicated to Artemis.  And it came to pass that Paul saw fit to address an epistle to the young church there.

     Wait.  There’s an issue: How hard does Paul push the “become children of God” idea to former worshippers of a pregnancy-enabling goddess?  And how intensely does he drive the eleutheria concept of “freedom by salvation” to erstwhile devotees of Artemis Eleutheria?  His audience is mostly believers, of course, but some old ideas can linger just below the surface, waiting to reemerge.

     Paul decides that he has to conquer those pre-existing biases.  He’ll do it via a method he mentioned to believers in Corinth: “Take every thought captive for Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5, which many Bible scholars feel was written in Ephesus itself).  Paul decides to take ownership of the child-bearing concept in the very first sentences of his greeting to the Ephesians (1:5).  He declares himself and them to be huiothesia, the adopted sons and daughters of God.

     But doesn’t adoption imply lower status than children by natural childbirth?  Not at all.  It turns out Paul has decided to use a legal term here.  Huiothesia , according to distinct research papers by scholars G.F. Hawthorne, P. Miller, and J. Smith, is a Greek word tied to Roman law.  It indicates the designation of a non-related person as family, child, and rightful heir to all properties of the adopting party.  It’s a higher status than a second son, higher than a second daughter.  Legally, officially, it’s equal status to the firstborn and head of household.  Roma locuta, causa finita, one might say.

     Here’s the rhetorical punch Paul is throwing: “Sure, Artemis gave you social status through your childbearing; but Christ offers you status as the stepchild, the adopted child, the firstborn of a real God, and of the only real God, at that.  Human children are great, but nothing’s superior to being step-familied in through legal huiothesia.  Those are the true children of heaven.”

     Immediately, Paul continues his “capturing thoughts for Christ” by hinting at the concept of freedom.  He doesn’t use the word eleutheria yet.  He uses variations of the Greek charitos throughout verses 6 and 7.  That word contains the idea of gifts and free grace, with Paul praising God for the “gift He has gifted us” or “the grace with which He's graced us.”  He’s dangling the freedom idea without mentioning it directly.  After all, how much does a recipient pay for gifts he gets?  How much work did a graced believer trade for the grace he received?  Nothing and none.  It’s without cost and priceless, all at once.  It’s hints of eleutheria without the Artemis baggage.

     Paul’s not done yet with his subtle undermining of the Acts 19 riot and its rich, greedy perpetrators.  He reminds his Ephesian readers that they are sealed with the Holy Spirit as a pledge against the day of their full inheritance in God (v. 14).  Paul here opts to refer to the Holy Spirit as an arrabon.  That Greek word is usually translated as “a guarantee” or “a pledge” in English Bible versions, but arrabon is a technical term found throughout the ancient Greek world in financial and business documents.  It is a “downpayment.”  That’s not a modernization of the term; Greeks and Romans had literal downpayment systems much like our own.  It wouldn’t be far off, in fact, to translate a portion of this verse as, “the promised Spirit, our layaway plan.”

     The next idea Paul takes captive for Christ is the concept of riches.  In the second chapter of Ephesians, he celebrates (v. 4-8) how amazingly rich believers are because God Himself is rich (in mercy), providing incomparable riches (of grace) and handing out the best free gift (charitos, again) of eternal life to those children born a second time through faith. So, chew on that, you silver-crafting, money-lusting instigators of riots in Ephesus’s own capital neighborhood.

     Paul spends the entirety of his letter celebrating freedom in Christ without actually using the term eleutheria (wait for it, though).  He shares the wisdom of the Gospel, a mystery revealed first to the Apostles and then to the Ephesians.  It’s no coincidence that Athena, the sister of Artemis, was worshipped in so-called “mystery cults” as the goddess of wisdom.  Paul knows this, and claims more ground for Christ by capturing mystery and wisdom as well.  In verse 12 of chapter 3, Paul wields the Greek term for using “free speech” when approaching God: parresian, usually translated “boldness” but literally meaning “all-speech,” that is, speaking freely.

     Then, likely recalling the civic riots his first preaching mission preceded, Paul urges believers to put away “rage, anger, brawling, and slander” (4:31), embracing compassion toward their neighbors as the Christian way.  Peace, calm, and gentleness are the tools of the believer; shouts, demands, and verbal assaults are the weapons of unbelievers, whom Ephesians should treat with a mind and manner like Christ’s.  They’re safe from unbelievers’ assaults, after all.  They have the armor of God.

 

AND THEN THERE’S SLAVERY

     Finally, in the closing portion of the letter, Paul hits the Ephesian church with that loaded term, the Greek word that was part of the name of their former goddess of freedom, eleutheria.

     He’s been subtle about it up to now.  But Paul jolts his readers into appreciating eleutheria fully by countering it with the Greek term for its very opposite: doulos.

     Paul never shied from the term doulos, “slave,” in any of his writings, using it liberally in his letters to the Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, Colossians, and more.  But here, in an epistle to the land of Lady Liberty herself, Artemis Eleutheria, he saves it until the end.  Early in the letter he even steps away from his common self-designation as a "slave" of Christ by calling himself a diakonos, a deacon-servant of Christ.  It’s as if he’s holding back, saving the doulos for impact.

     By the way, doulos really does mean “slave.”  Any translation or minister who claims the meaning of the word is “servant” is being misleading.  When Mary prays, as some translations put it, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1:38), she is actually saying, “Look here at God’s slave girl [doula].”  When Paul says in Romans 6:20 that we were once douloi of sin, he means we were sin’s very slaves, not simply servants bringing it refreshments at poolside when summoned.  The douloi were human beings owned by their human masters, not low-ranking employees going home at the end of the day.  Therefore, beware when your English-language Bible says “servant,” because you don’t know whether its original word was diakonos, an actual servant employee, or doulos, a human being owned by another.

     One more “by-the-way”: Don’t fall for it when a preacher tells you slavery was different in those days and slaves were treated better than they were during the world’s colonial era.  Some orators claim this is true and support it by pointing at ancient rules, biblical and nonbiblical, about how slaves needed to be treated well.  Rules are not reality, and rules are put in place because there’s a need for them, not because everyone’s already complying with unwritten versions of them.  Otherwise, one could point at any country and claim there are no murders there because they have a rule against murders.  Not likely, my friends.

     Okay, back to Paul and Ephesians:

     In closing, Paul starts giving out marching orders.  Kids, he says, obey your parents.  And you parents, don’t exasperate your kids.  And hey, you slaves?  (“Wait, what?  Slaves, here in freedom land?”)  Yeah, you slaves, here’s some direction – obey your flesh masters, not just with eyeball-slavery when they’re looking, but as if you were Christ’s slaves …. because you are.  You’re to do goodwill slaving for God, not as if you were doing it for humans.

     Paul hits them here with every form of the word “slave” he can fit in.  And yes, Greek has a word for eyeball-slaving: ophthalmodoulian (say that ten times fast), requiring most translations of verse 6:6 to stretch out the English into some version of “not just pleasing them when they’re looking.”

     I can imagine early readers or listeners of the epistle wondering why they’re suddenly being barraged with the “slave” word in every clause when it hadn’t been used at all until now.  Then it hits them – Paul says, “You know you’ll be rewarded by the Lord for every good deed, even if you are a slave.  Or even if you’re … free.”  It’s Paul’s one and only use of the most common word for “free” in his epistle to the land of Artemis.  He reminds them, one and all, slave and owner, that they’re no longer the property of a goddess of fertility, freedom, and the hunt.  They are children born of God, His adopted stepkids, given legal family status and true eleutheria in the kingdom of God.

 

ELEUTHERIA

     Ancient Greek has a number of words tied to freedom.  Some can be found in scripture, like parrema (freedom of speech, plain speaking) and eremia (freedom from loneliness, interestingly used in scripture only as a geographic term, the desert).

     Other Greek words tied to freedom never make it into the New Testament, like adeia (freedom from pain) and autexousios (free will).

     By far, though, the New Testament’s preferred word for freedom is eleutheria in its various forms.  When you see the word “free” in your Bible, it’s very likely a translation of that.

     Allow me to turn a little sociological for a moment.  As an American, I’ve been culturally trained to see “freedom” from one angle: “freedom TO.”  I have freedom to use speech, freedom to assemble, freedom to bear arms, freedom to petition the government when I think they’re wrong about something.  True, I have freedoms FROM some things like unreasonable searches, but my Constitution even phrases that as a freedom TO – “the right of the people to be secure in their persons.”  I point this out because the more I study the word eleutheria, the less it seems to be about my individual freedom to do things.  I think scripture uses it more as a freedom FROM idea.

     It’s less a matter of “I am free,” more a matter of “I am freed.”  To me, that seems the more Christian approach to the word.  It’s not that I have liberty; it’s that I’ve been liberated.

     As examples:

• In 1 Corinthians 10:29, I’m told I’m freed from the dietary restrictions of the old Law … but I shouldn’t scandalize others with my freedom, since I’m not seeking my own good, but the good of others.
  
  
• In Galatians 2, I learn that Titus has been freed from expectations that he be circumcised, and he’s spared the demands of those who snuck into Paul’s group to spy on their eleutherian in Christ in order to re-doulos them.
  
  
• Galatians 5, perhaps the most powerful part of scripture dealing with freedom in Christ, declares me freed from the flesh … but then invited to make myself, through love, a doula to my fellow believers.
  
  
• 1 Peter 2:16 charges me not to use my eleutheria as an excuse to sin, but to do good as an example and to show myself as a doula of God … freed to get into the right kind of “slavery,” total ownership by the Lord.
  
  
• 2 Corinthians 3:17 declares me freed from all the Law, even claiming that the eleutheria I live in is God shining through me, something the Law could never do.
  
  
• James 2:12 declares me freed from being judged and from judging others, since the perfect law that gives me eleutheria functions on mercy, not judgment.
  
  
• Romans 8:21 caps off my reflections by assuring me that the whole physical world will, in the end, share in the eleutheria of the children of God, freed from its doulos status of decay.  Talk about reversing entropy!

      There’s one final twist.  Eleutheria isn’t for me, the individual.  That is to say, it isn’t focused on upholding my individual liberty.  Through etymology, the history of how words evolve from other words, we can trace the term eleutheria back to its proto-Hellenic (that means “earliest Greek”) form, and even to its root in Proto-Indo-European.  The term is h₁lewdʰ (yeah, I can’t pronounce that either).  That word, the great-grandaddy of eleutheria, means “belonging to the tribe.”

     In other words, the root of freedom as used in biblical Greek is not the idea of individual rights, but of belonging.  I’m not a slave, I’m one of the freed citizens.  I’m not on my own; I’m in the body.  I’m not a hermit; I’m a freewoman in the Collective of Christ.  Sure, I have individual rights, but I have to think of the others who might be affected by my behaviors, my actions, my freedoms.  That’s what this word means, and it’s what Paul spells out for the Ephesians.  It’s what Paul spells out for you and me.

     When I fill in my absentee ballot to vote this year, that’s the kind of freedom I’ll be considering when I make my choices.

Maran Atha,

YoYo Rez / Cosmic Parx

I Am Submissive

This month is my 11th-year wedding anniversary, so I thought I'd give myself (and you) a blast from my past by posting the blog I composed before my wedding.  I'm happy to report that I still buy into the ideas of younger me.  I'm also happy to report that none of the "dark side" considerations ever came to pass -- but it never hurts to be mentally prepared!  ~ Yolanda Ramírez, 08/2024

The Parable I Thought I Knew

“The very rich are different from you and me.”  ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Yes.  They have more money.”  ~ Ernest Hemingway

     I was giving myself a break this month.  School was ending.  Paperwork was piled high.  Another class was graduating.  Some teaching staff were shifting.  So, hey, why not give myself an easy blog-writing task this time around?  Why not reflect prayerfully on a single parable, “The Rich Man and Lazarus,” and jot some basic thoughts about how it edifies me?

     A sound plan.  But, man … who knew this was a controversial parable?  Who’d have guessed it has depths to it that Jesus’ audience could grasp but which require deeper study on the part of a modern reader?  And who knew it would awaken that still, small voice within me that sometimes stirs and whispers: “With your whole mind.  You’re to love Me with your whole mind, so no treading water”?

     God knew.  Easy month?  He’s smiling at me as I dive in.  It’s for my own good.

 

I’VE GOT ISSUES

     The story of the Rich Man and Lazarus is found only in the Gospel of Luke.  It’s positioned within a stretch of a half-dozen parables in a setting that starts with chapter 15 and ends a little way into 17.  The parables are interspersed with direct teachings Jesus addresses to a diverse crowd.  Sometimes He’s talking to the tax collectors and sinners gathered.  Other times He’s addressing the Pharisees in attendance.  Still others, Luke records, He’s talking directly to His own inner circle of disciples.

     You know the tale in chapter 16: A rich guy (who’s sometimes called Dives, although that’s simply the Latin for “rich man” and not a name) relaxes and feasts every day while a beggar named Lazarus sits outside his gate, longing for table scraps.  After they both die, Lazarus is escorted by angels to the “bosom of Abraham” while the rich man winds up in a fiery Hades.  The rich man begs Abraham to let Lazarus pass along the merest drop of water but gets turned down.  Then he begs that Lazarus be sent back to Earth to warn the rich man’s brothers about the afterlife.  That request is also denied.

     It seemed a simple enough story to me.  Issues arose, though, when I turned to Bible commentators for deeper study.  (I always turn to commentators, ancient and modern, since there is wisdom in many counselors [Prov. 11:14] and since no scripture is of personal interpretation [2 Pet. 1:20]).  John Calvin’s commentaries reveal that he didn’t consider the story to be a parable at all, but instead saw it “to be the narrative of an actual fact.”  Martin Luther, who does see the tale as a parable, doesn’t consider “the bosom of Abraham” as an actual state of the afterlife, but instead as a metaphor for the Word of God; the hades of the rich man he sees as a symbol of a judged conscience.  More than a millennium before these two gentlemen were born, the prominent Christian theologian Hippolytus saw the bosom of Abraham as an actual place for souls – not heaven, as I’ve always assumed in my amateur readings, but a segment of the Jewish sheol holding the souls of the righteous.

     That’s a lot of input to juggle over just one aspect of the account Jesus shared.  It turns out many more issues abound.  I limited myself to pondering just seven.  Follow me as I tiptoe through a few of them.  There’s no finesse or subtle point to the sequence in which I consider the issues here.  I’ll just follow the order the Lord brought them to mind as I read and studied.  Spoiler alert: I won’t get through all seven. 

 

Issue 1: Is this parable even a parable?

     John Calvin’s dismissal of this story’s status as a parable and his acceptance of it as a history rest on a single point: It’s the only parable with a named character, Lazarus.  Truthfully, it was that very point that first caught my attention, too.  But Calvin gives no further rationale for reaching his conclusion about the tale being real history, and he even abandons his insistence on its historicity once the narrative moves to the afterlife.  That part, he says in agreement with Luther, is all metaphor.

     The use of a name is, indeed, a one-off quirk among the parables of Jesus.  Yet in the parables, one-off quirks abound.  There’s only one mention amid the parables of goats, only one parable mentioning a widow, only one starring an enemy weed sower, only one about ten virgins (and not, as the NRSV mistranslates, “bridesmaids”).  No one questions the parable status of those stories.

       John Wesley agrees with Calvin, asking in his “Sermon 112” why Jesus would say “there was a certain rich man” and “there was a certain beggar” if there were not, in fact, such “certain” men historically.  His misstep is surprising here, especially for a man who knew all three Biblical languages and another five besides.  Anthropos tis, “a certain man” in biblical Greek, is also used in the parable of the “certain man” who had a prodigal son, the parable of the “certain man” who planted a fig tree, and the parable right before this one in Luke about a “certain man” who was a dishonest manager of his master’s money.  Certain men pop up throughout the parables.  Calling a character “a certain man” in Greek does not seem to bring that character to life historically in any other parable.

     Calvin and Wesley would need a little more evidence than “one off-ism” and “certain-man spottings” to convince me that this story – placed, remember, in the midst of a string of recognized parables – was somehow Jesus veering off into sharing a meaningful newsflash from real-life events.  That style of history-sharing seems outside the regular approach of the Man who always taught with parables (Matt. 13:34).

     Epilogue to this issue: I’m kind of irked at Wesley for claiming in “Sermon 112” that this story is “not a mere parable.”  Mere?  There is no such thing as a mere parable of Christ’s.  But Wesley and I will work this point out in the future when we’re chilling together in the Kingdom.

 

Issue 2: Is the afterlife the tale’s main point?

     There’s an interesting twist, however, to the “parable/not parable” discussion when we enter the world of modern commentary.  I encountered any number of sources insisting the tale is not a parable based on the fact that it shows the reality of hellfire as part of the rich man’s punishment.  Those trying to cast the story as a parable, say the not-a-parable crowd, are trying to erase the doctrine of eternal flames for the unsaved.  Therefore, the story is an historical event.  That, along with Calvin’s idea about the use of names, clinches it.

     That point of view isn’t off-base.  When I researched viewpoints of modern commentators, I found the most detailed, passionate arguments in favor of parable status for “the Rich Man and Lazarus” coming from those who had a doctrinal stake in the rich man not literally suffering in hellfire.  Those included:

• Sects teaching mortalism, a Reformation-inspired belief that our souls sleep after death, awaiting reawakening at the last trump, only after which there will be hellfire for the unsaved;
  
  
• Sects teaching annihilationism, the idea that the dead in Christ are “away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8), but that the unsaved are truly dead and gone from creation, annihilated;
  
  
• Sects teaching purgatory, a post-death promotion system that lets you gain back heaven if you missed out on it at first swing;
  
  
• Sects teaching universalism, the idea that nobody is eternally damned, and that all are saved through the sacrifice of Christ.

 

     For those holding the above beliefs, the story is required to be a parable.  In fact, to steal Wesley’s terminology, it needs to be a mere parable, so that its imagery of the afterlife can be dismissed as symbolic window dressing in support of a more real, but more metaphoric message Jesus is getting across.

     Those arguing against this viewpoint (I know!  Commentators arguing?  So hard to believe.) push back by clinging to the Calvinist name-claim and the Wesleyan tis (“certain.”)  There’s also some discussion of how the story being told in the past tense proves it's a history, but a few minutes of Scripture searching reveal that that, too, is common to numerous parables.  After past-tensing, tis-claiming, and name-dropping, the must-be-history commentators wax prosaic on the importance of literal hellfire and literal separation for eternity.

     Therein lies a new issue, the burden of literalism when superimposed on a parable.  If the hellfire and the eternal separation of the story are literal, historical facts, then there are other elements of the account that need to be accepted as literal:

• That angels, like psychopomps, escort the souls of the dead in a very Hermes (Greek) and Anubis (Egyptian) way
  
• That disembodied spirits in the afterlife have eyes to lift up and tongues to be cooled
  
• That those tongues could be touched with literal water in the spiritual realm
  
• That the inhabitants of Abraham’s bosom can watch the suffering of those in Hades
  
• That conversations can be held across the great chasm separating the two realms
  
• That any of the damned, as in this story, can initiate conversations with the saved at will

 

     In a parable, we don’t expect every detail to be literal.  But if the account being shared by Jesus is an historical event, we can expect all the details above to be realities.  And that might shake up some parts of our teleology and eschatology, the Kingdom come and coming.

     Darrell L. Bock makes a sound point about interpreting scripture in the Fall 1997 edition of the Southwestern Journal of Theology: “… as a matter of method, one should determine genre and then doctrine” (emphasis mine).  In other words, knowing what type of writing you’re reading in the scriptures will help you better understand, interpret, and apply that scripture in your life.

     I’ll explain that in a little more depth.  Consider the Bible verse, “Blessed is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”  Atheists like to quote that line in an effort to show the Bible as an immoral text.  The verse occurs in Psalm 137 – a poem, maybe a song, written from a viewpoint of utter despair during the Hebrew enslavement in Babylon after the destruction of their temple.  Without doubt, it’s from a time of the darkest night of the Hebrew soul.  A sense of betrayal, injustice, fury, revenge … so, genre: lamentation poetry.  When seen in its historical context and proper genre, it’s obvious that that single verse isn’t intended as a guideline for crafting moral doctrines about interacting with enemies, Hamas and Netanyahu’s behaviors notwithstanding.

     It’s from that perspective that Darrell Bock recommends Christians accept the story of the rich man and Lazarus as the parable it is.  His commentary reminds readers that parables are filled with actual facts and elements from real life.  To call an account a “parable” is not to call it “an unbelievable fairy tale, false in every way.”  The setting may be partially make-believe, but the characters are people just like us.  Their situations may be fictional, but the message Jesus gives us through them is all too real.  The message is what’s real.  The setting may not be.

     “Imaginary gardens with real toads in them.”  That’s a line borrowed from the poet Marianne Moore by one preeminent scholar of parables, John Dominic Crossan.  For Crossan, that’s the essence of the parable genre.  We’re the real toads represented in Jesus’ parables.  The setting Jesus creates, whether a road to Jericho or a bosom of Abraham, that’s the imaginary garden, and it isn’t nearly as important as the message the characters bring to life for our edification.  So, crafting doctrines of the afterlife from setting elements of a parable may not be our wisest approach to rightly dividing the word of truth.  There are plenty of other scripture passages giving us solid information on the nature of heaven and Gehenna.  Parables have a different kind of power, the kind that really makes them more than “mere” parables.

     Yeah.  I’m still looking at you, John Wesley.

 

Issue 3: Did Jesus use local folk tales to craft this parable?

     Once upon a time, or so the tale goes, an Egyptian was miraculously reborn to an infertile couple as Si-Osiris.  One day, his new father told him the story of a rich man who died and was given a wondrous funeral, while a poor man nearby was simply buried in the ground.  Hearing how sad the event made his father, Si-Osiris magically whisked him off to see Amnte, the Egyptian land of the dead.  There they saw the rich man, living in torment.  There as well was the poor man, living in luxury.  The poor man’s good deeds had far outweighed his bad, while the opposite was true of the rich man.

     Once upon another time, or so the tale evolved after it had traveled from Alexandria in Egypt up to Jerusalem, there was a poor scholar, never named, and a rich tax collector named Bar Ma’jan.  Because of one good deed he’d done, Bar Ma’jan was given a lavish funeral.  The unnamed scholar had a simple burial.  However, one of the scholar’s friends soon after had a dream: the poor scholar was in the afterlife, living in an opulent garden with refreshing, flowing streams.  Bar Ma’jan was trapped out of reach of the stream, unable to get even a single drop of water.

     The second of those tales was popular throughout Palestina in the time of Christ.  I. Howard Marshall, in his thorough COMMENTARY ON LUKE, records that there are at least seven attested versions of this story in Jewish lore during the first century.  It appears that Jesus used the story, improved it, and put a whole new Kingdom of God spin on it.

     It isn’t unthinkable that Jesus might use nonbiblical sources for His teachings.  In various epistles, Paul cited non-religious insights of the Greek writers Meander, Epimenides, and Aretus, while Matthew, Luke, Jude, and the writer of Hebrews all borrow lines or full tales from nonbiblical religious apocrypha.  You may recall that Paul even usurped an altar “to an unknown god” (Acts 17:23) in Athens, using it as a launching point to share the Gospel with the citizens, saying (truthfully) he’d come to proclaim the God unknown to them.  So, seeing Jesus do something similar seems to be in line with the teaching styles of the era.

     Using the familiar to introduce the new is good teaching technique.  Where I come from, it’s called “employing an anticipatory set to scaffold new learning.”  And knowing where the story came from … knowing that the people knew several versions of it as part of their daily folklore … clears up a few issues for modern readers and reveals some awesome Jesus-only twists:

• The poor beggar seems to have made no confession of faith or compliance with the Law to make him worthy of an afterlife of paradise.  However, because the folklore showed all versions of the poor man as a kind person, a doer of good, and humble, the crowd listening to Jesus didn’t need those extra details.  They knew a reversal was coming.
  
  
• The rich man, Bar Ma’jan in popular lore, doesn’t seem to have done anything evil, at least not directly.  Is he being damned just for being rich?  For being a little lazy?  True, he lounges in  porphyra, the purple robes of royalty and bossos, an Egyptian loan word for underwear made of expensive flax-based material that’s satiny and luxurious.  But porphyra and bossos alone can’t be inherently sinful.  The good wife of Proverbs 31 also wore those two elegant garments (v. 22).  Thanks to street lore known by the crowd, though, the rich man’s backstory of greed and selfishness were already built into the tale Jesus borrowed.
  
  
• More evidence of the rich man’s guilt: In the common folklore versions of the tale, the rich man never seemed to know the poor man in his own story.  Not true in Jesus’ telling.  Twice in the afterlife, the rich man refers to Lazarus by name.  That's clear evidence he knew who it was suffering outside his gates.  This isn’t just a reversal-of-fortune tale; the rich man is paying for his sin of conscious neglect.  In addition, we now see a very good plot reason Jesus chose to use a name in this specific parable.
  
  
• But Jesus pulls reversals even before the big one in the afterlife, adding more depth to the tale.  His parable takes away the name of the rich man and grants one to the beggar, the opposite of the common lore.  The rich man loses his identity; the beggar becomes real, becomes named.  “Lazarus” means “God helps him.”  Lazarus’s very name suggests the fuller message of the Gospel.  No, Lazarus did nothing to “earn” paradise.  It is God who helps him, God the one who makes the moves, God whose unearned grace is gift.
  
  
• Capping off the twists, common lore always gave the rich man a luxurious funeral.  The poor men of the folklore versions were always simply buried.  Now it is Lazarus who is carted off in honor, escorted by ministering spirits (a nod to the Egyptian origin of the lore) while the rich man is the one who is "just buried."  Lazarus was never poor, Jesus shows, in any way that really counts within the context of eternity.

 

     You’ve been patient watching me juggle only three of my seven “issues.”  Four remain, but I’ll keep them in my heart since I’ve reached my acceptable word count for one blog post.  Had I added more, I might have named this post “Rich Beggars Need Bread-Crust Napkins.”  Study the parable on your own to learn why.

     I’m sure the Lord is still smiling at my thinking I’d shrug this off as my easy month.  I smile back at Him with all the heart He touched, with all the soul He saved, with all the feeble weakness that I call my strength.

     And, I pray, with all my mind.

 

Marana Tha,

 YoYo Rez / Cosmic Parx

WRESTLING with GOD: Ecclesiastes

     Welcome, new believer!  Now that you’ve come to Christ, your first step as a newcomer should be to read the book of Ecclesiastes!

                                                            ~ Said no preacher ever.

      Martin Luther considered Ecclesiastes to be one of Scripture’s most difficult books, “one which no one has ever completely mastered.”  If you’ve ever spent time in it, you probably agree with Luther.  It’s depressing.  It’s swaddled in despair over the futility of all human action.  It’s downright nihilistic to a depth no atheist has ever been able to plumb.

     Worse still: It’s not the words of an atheist. Its speaker, Qoheleth, is without doubt a believer in the God of Israel.

     As my boxed quip above says, it’s probably not the first place in scripture I’d send a new believer.  Here’s why.

 

CULTURE OF THE QUOTABLES

     We live in a world where context-free quotations are given a special place of honor as being wise and informative.  Got a great, witty saying?  Post it as your Facebook status.  A profound zinger?  Tweet that sucker!  A poignant bon mot?  Put it in italics and box it at the start of your next blog post!

     I suppose micro-wisdom is nothing new.  In fact, Qoheleth assures us there’s not really anything new under the sun (1:9).  Before there were digital venues, there were bumper stickers, and before that there were probably horseless carriage stickers and chariot graffiti.  As believers, even we … and to personalize, I, me, myself … really love brief, power-packing quotes that capture so much wisdom in so few words:

If God be for us, who can be against? (Rom. 8:31)

The joy of the Lord is your strength. (Neh. 8:10)

He will wipe away every tear. (Rev. 21:4)

 

     Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with finding inspiration in one-liners from scripture; the Gospel and epistle writers do it throughout the New Testament.  However, as Peter warns in his second letter, some writings are difficult to understand and easy to misuse.  Imagine applying a “culture of the quotables” mentality to Ecclesiastes:

The fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same. (3:19)

A stillborn is better off than [the father of a hundred]. (6:3)

The dead know nothing; they have no more reward. (9:5)

      Yes, we all love Bible quotes.  But I’m pretty sure those aren’t the kinds of quotes you’ll see as memes set in a flowery field awash in sunshine, posted prominently on your Aunt Lucinda’s home page.  They just lack a certain something.

 

BEYOND THE QUOTABLES

      Back in my teens and early twenties, the old show West Wing had a great episode in which White House aide Josh Lyman laments the anti-intellectualism of some presidential candidates.  When his own president faces complex crises, says Lyman, “I don’t know if he’s thinking about Immanuel Kant or not.  I doubt it.  But if he does, I am comforted at least in my certainty that he is doing his best to reach for all of it and not just the McNuggets.”

       Scripture’s take on that same idea is to tell us there are times we need to move beyond the milk of faith (1 Cor. 3:2) to take in solid food, since “solid food is for the mature” (Heb. 5:14).  There are places in Scripture where we're going to have to go for a full-course meal, chewing thoughtfully.

     Milk and McNuggets metaphors aside, my point is that Ecclesiastes strikes me as far more of a book for the mature Christian than for those new to the faith.  I wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading any part of scripture, but when it comes to some books, I’d certainly recommend taking a friend along, preferably an older one who can provide the fuller context of the faith.  Otherwise, what should be stepping stones may become stumbling blocks.  In Ecclesiastes, we’ll encounter twists and turns, contradictions and challenges galore, like discovering:

• Despite all health and wealth granted by God, we’ll never be satisfied (1:8)
• Giving our best effort amounts to nothing (2:11)
• Wisdom is better than folly (2:13), but wisdom only gives us sorrow (1:18)
• We should hate life since, no matter what we achieve, we can’t take it with us (2:18)
• What we eat and drink and enjoy working at is from God’s hand (2:24), but it’s meaningless anyway (1:26)

 

THERE’S CONTEXT, AND THEN THERE’S CONTEXT

     We’re told early in our faith journey that Bible verses are best understood in context.  Sometimes that’s at an elementary level.  Sure, the Bible says, “There is no God,” but the full context of that verse is, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”  Going beyond the rudimentary to the context of the entire Psalm 14 where that line's found, we see that not only atheism but also oppression of the poor (v. 6) and oppression of God’s people (v. 4) are traits of evil fools.  Most disturbing of all is that the foolish evildoers are each and every one of us (v. 3), not some distant enemy.  We’ve all gone astray, and we can only hope for deliverance (v. 7) at some future date, in some still-unknown way.

     Context continues to gets bigger, though.  This song is in a collection of Psalms, written in early Israel from the time of King David up through a time of Israel’s exile to the foreign land of Babylon.  Those Psalms tell a story of vast, disparate emotions ranging from despair resulting from the need for God’s deliverance, to rejoicing in the realization that the hope of that deliverance always remains.  This is a national collection of longing for God that is today read by peoples of all nations, those still in anguish but still reaching out in hope toward something bigger and seemingly unknowable.

     And one step up from that, we find the still-larger context in which it’s best to appreciate the Book of Ecclesiastes: the fullness of salvation history, from the creation of the world through the ascension of the resurrected Christ and beyond.  Ecclesiastes is a slice of life – the mental life of the wisest of men who is trapped in the idea that there must be something more to life, more to God, than eating, drinking, making merry, and dying.  There must be something else.  But there isn’t.  Nothing lasting.  There’s nothing new.

 

QUESTING UNDER THE SUN

     “Vanity” is the word Qoheleth uses dozens of times throughout Ecclesiastes, literally from the text's first word to its last.  The word's early-English meaning isn’t what we think of today as vanity – egoism, excessive pride, and self-admiration.  In fact, the Hebrew word being translated here, habel, doesn’t mean “vanity” in any literal sense, old or modern English.  It means “vapor” or “breath,” a puff of smoke that really gets the message across about how meaningless vanity is.  Ancient Hebrew’s more common word for breath, ruach, is much more positive and can also mean “spirit,” either as a human spirit or the very Spirit of God.  Habel, on the other hand, trends negative, a fleeting breath not much more meaningful than a scoff.  In fact, in some passages of scripture, the word is also translated “idol,” a false, meaningless spirit.

     Qoheleth’s writing – or, his speaking, actually, since the book is in a framed format introduced and then concluded by a scribe presenting Qoheleth’s words – is a despondent struggle with the fallen state of man, life “under the sun.”  What’s under the sun is, of course, the world, and Qoheleth tackles every angle imaginable to find something more than scoffing breaths, vapor, vanity.  Old Testament scholar Christopher J. H. Wright sees the book as a “quest,” a perspective I very much like.  Qoheleth’s struggle with the meaning of anything in this world is a futile quest not unlike the legends of Arthur’s knights hunting fruitlessly for the Holy Grail.  The quest is impossible as long as one keeps searching “under the sun.”

     But I also like Bible teacher Mike Mazzalongo’s perspective of Ecclesiastes as Qoheleth’s “journal,” an in-process diary of Qoheleth’s struggles to understand why life has so little meaning for one who has belief in God, one who, in fact, rules over the very people of God.  “Journal,” for me, captures more of the feeling of how the text presents itself.  It can jump quickly from topic to topic, abruptly changing its tone as if Qoheleth had set aside the scroll for a day and then returned to it later in a different state of mind.

     I don’t have to decide between Mazzalongo and Wright, of course.  “Qoheleth’s Journal of His Quest” works fine for me and helps navigate the ups, downs, twists, and turns of the writing.  Qoheleth is depressed, then suddenly hopeful, then resigned.  And that’s okay.  I’m sure my own journals read like that when I’m being an honest journaler.  Qoheleth bemoans all his failed efforts; then he suddenly gives advice on how to serve God well in the temple; then he gripes about a few other quests; and then for no reason he gives advice on how to behave in front of a king.  None of that is a problem to read when you understand you’re peeking into the diary of a man whose quest for meaning is frustrating him no end.

 

WHAT DO YOU GIVE THE MAN WHO …?

     Qoheleth has everything.  Riches?  Check.  Wisdom and knowledge?  Indubitably.  Fulfilling work?  Roger that.  Food aplenty?  Bon appétit.  Slaves and concubines for sensual pleasures?  Um, yeah, that, too.

     For this reason, I like to think of Qoheleth as the anti-Job.  A few books away in the Old Testament, Job loses everything.  He loses his health, his wealth, his family, his confidence in the God he serves, and he struggles to find meaning in all that suffering.  At first glance, Qoheleth is the stark opposite: all privileges attained, smartest guy in any room, more concubines than he can shake a scepter at, yet still a broken man, miserable, suffering just as much as Job.  Job’s suffering was external, true; Qoheleth’s was entirely internal.  Anyone who’s struggled with depression knows, though, that suffering is suffering, whether inside or out.  In situations a full spectrum apart, Job and Qoheleth still both suffer.

     From our standpoint as believers, we can see a difficulty shared by the biblical texts of Job and Ecclesiastes – namely, that we modern folks can't just pull out many one-liners for awesome quotation, especially not from Job's friends.  The two books are examples of what Bible scholars in dimly lit offices call “dikē Scripture” (pronounced DEE-KAY), a genre of Bible writing in which the author struggles to understand the justice of God.  When we read dikē passages in the Bible, we get to glimpse the inspired writer’s mental efforts to reconcile what’s going on in daily life with what should be going on, given God’s just nature.  To go back to an earlier metaphor: dikē passages are solid food for us to chew on, not milk meant to nourish us with a quick swallow.

     Both Job and Qoheleth keep their eyes on God.  Neither loses faith that God is just.  But what they don’t have access to is the full context.  By that I mean the big context: the fullness of salvation history, something completely unavailable to them because of where they’re locked in time.

 

BREATHING RIGHT

     Qoheleth and Job sought evidence of God’s justice and love.  They stayed true to their faith in God, but to my mind, they were looking for the wrong evidence.  Recall those two words that mean “breath” in Hebrew, ruach and habel, true breath vs. a vapor, spirit vs. idols.  Both men, Qoheleth especially, were looking for evidence of God’s justice in the fleeting things of this world, the habel.  In their situations, the external trappings of the world were all they could appreciate as proof God loved them.  They needed their evidence to be “under the sun.”

     As Christians, we see the rest of the story.  The justice and love of God come from what’s far beyond a mere sun.  We can never reach it, not through the riches or pleasures or knowledge or wisdom or works of this world.  And since we couldn’t reach it, it reached us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  In that moment of salvation history, justice and mercy kissed, and what was impossible for us became possible by God.  We couldn’t earn the eternal, because we couldn’t pay the price of entry.  Job and Qoheleth were judging eternity from their pre-Jesus vantage point; in fairness, they could only judge according to what their limited, world-weary knowledge could offer.

     “Sorrow is knowledge,” wrote Lord Byron, echoing Qoheleth and then adding a hint to the answer Qoheleth sought: “Those who know the most must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, the Tree of Knowledge is not the Tree of Life.”

     To hazard quoting once again from a nonbiblical source (Paul and others did it, so I feel secure in superior company), I find Ecclesiastes-resolving wisdom in a 16^th century poem by Teresa de Jesús, Sólo Dios Basta (my translation):

    Let nothing stir you, nor make you frightened

    Everything passes; God never changes.

    Only your patience shall overcome this

    One who has God is lacking in nothing.

    God alone matters.

     Teresa lived in an age when the history of salvation had finally revealed heaven's remedy to Qoheleth’s many frustrations.  Christ was her answer.  Born to a wealthy family, she didn’t seek riches like Qoheleth; she sought God through salvation in Jesus.  Her wealth and health didn’t leave her in some Job-like manner; rather, she surrendered them.  She embraced the spirit of the ruach wind, and it blew the habel vapors right out of her life.

 

THE MEAT OF ECCLESIASTES

     We’re Christians.  We know the fuller version of the salvation story.  So why do we … why do I, since I want to be vulnerable here with the hope that some reader, somewhere, needs to see it as an example … why do I find myself slipping back into judging God’s love for me according to the habel rather than according to the ruach, that holiest of Spirits sent to comfort me?

Why, when I had three miscarriages in a row early in my marriage, did I fall into the darkest of despairs, convinced I was abandoned by the God I’d accepted and loved since my teens?

Why, when I left behind my U.S. birth family to relocate with my husband’s family to Switzerland (the least Mexican-American country on Earth 😊) did I believe God was punishing me for some reason I didn’t yet understand and which I fretted over for months?

     Why, when I saw my young son go off to elementary school to be taught German, not my native Spanish, did I feel so angry … when in truth, Spanish is habel, German is habel, and eternity will have me and all mine speaking other tongues, even the tongues of angels?

     Answer: It’s because I’m living in the Age of Christ, but I’m still tricked by the Age of Qoheleth.  Paul would call that the flesh bidding him to do what he does not want to do.

     Ecclesiastes is far more to the Christian than a chronicle of the Bad Ol’ Days before the salvation of the cross.  It’s an active, living word from God.  It’s a reminder that I, like Qoheleth, like Job, live in a set point in the full history of salvation.  Even in my salvation, the flesh will keep trying to trick me.  Internal insecurities will keep coming back to fool me.  External circumstances will conjure specters of doubt.  Qoheleth's despondency still looms.

     But here’s my lifeboat in the tempest of a world that is not yet part of a New Heaven and a New Earth: the ruach of God moves over my waters, active in Me-The-New-Creation, just as it moved over the waters of the first creation.  And it continuously whispers to me with an assurance: Sólo Dios basta.  Sólo Dios basta.  Sólo Dios basta.

     "God alone suffices."

 

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx / YoYo Rez