The Urban Legends in Our Sermons

I recently watched a YouTube sermon in which the preacher asserted that the name of the prophet Habakkuk could be translated from Hebrew as "to wrestle," making the prophet's name a remarkable reflection of the whole nature of the book, throughout which Habakkuk seems to "wrestle" with God.

That's a cool interpretation for a sermon.

It's also wrong.

The etymology (a fancy term for "the history and origin of a word") of "Habakkuk" is uncertain.  It likely ties to the Hebrew word chabaq ("to embrace," "to hug"), but it may go back even further to the Akkadian (i.e., Babylonian) word ḫambaqūqu (an unidentified plant or garden herb).

I can't blame the YouTube preacher for getting that idea wrong.  The "wrestle" story has been around for over 1,600 years.  Church father Jerome of Stridon creatively decided "embracing" God was a metaphor for struggling and wrestling with God (since hugs and wrestling both involve arms, I imagine).  That spin on a word that probably connects to "embrace" has been sneaking into sermons on Habakkuk ever since.  It's evolved into a pseudo-scholarly claim that Habakkuk's name actually means "to wrestle."

All of that got me thinking: Maybe it was time to dedicate one of my monthly blog posts to what I'll call the "urban legends" sneaking into our modern sermons.  Keep an ear open for these tales, and don't blame the preacher if you hear one in a sermon.  Urban legends are sneaky little things.  They're the original viral memes.

 

1. The One About the Camel

Jesus declares in Matthew 19:24 that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.  Fast forward to our times, and you'll hear preachers sharing the urban legend that Jerusalem had a gate called "the Eye of the Needle" that was too narrow and too low for a camel to pass through while loaded with riches.  The camel had to be unloaded and even had to lower itself to its knees to pass through.

Thus, Jesus' message (the urban legend suggests) wasn't "the rich can't get in."  It was more like, "You can't take it with you."  What a relief!  And not just a relief for millionaires and billionaires; a relief for anyone not part of the roughly 80% of the world living under the US federal "poverty line," anyone who is rich from the perspective of 4 out of 5 fellow humans.

Except … there is zero archaeological or documentary evidence that Jerusalem ever had a gate called "the Eye of the Needle."  Zilch.  None.  Not even hints.

The Bible-softening "Eye of the Needle" gate story is first found more than 800 years after Christ uttered his warning to the rich.  The monk Paschasius Radbertus (doesn't that sound like a Harry Potter character?) wrote that "some have said that the eye of the needle was a postern gate in Jerusalem which was called by that name."  Radbertus sounds as if even he distrusted the claim.  But the urban legend held on.  It wound a path through the medieval theologian Anselm, then Thomas Aquinas, and all the way into the sermons of health-and-wealth preachers of our own times, providing salvific aid and comfort to the well-off.

 

2. The One About Agapē vs. Philia

This may break a few preachers' hearts, but their stock sermons on the differences between God's divine, unconditional love (claimed to be built into the Greek verb agapaō and its companion noun agapē) and human love (purported to be the true meaning of the verb/noun pair phileō/philia) are founded in mere linguistic fable.  That sort of distinction between agapaō and phileō appears neither in Greek philosophy nor in Scripture itself.  Their ranges of meaning overlap substantially, and Scripture sometimes uses them interchangeably to describe the same relationship.

• People agapaō the darkness (John 3:19, which makes the idea of agapē meaning "divine, unconditional love" nonsensical).
• Paul derides Demas for the man's agapaō of the present age (2 Timothy 4:10).
• The Father, who is the very essence of divine love, phileō the Son (John 5:20).
• The Father also phileō the disciples (John 16:27).
• Jesus phileō Lazarus to the point of tears (John 11:3, 36).
• The Father agapaō the Son in John 3:35 and phileō the Son in John 5:20, using both verbs for the same divine relationship.

Sermons on John 21's exchange between Jesus and Peter (the "Do you love Me?" passage) wander far afield of what's really going on if they rely on the urban legend of agapē meaning anything spiritually superior to philia.

Nonetheless, love remains the greatest.

 

3. The One About the Gehenna Garbage Dump

The Valley of the Son of Hinnom (Ge ben Hinnom in Hebrew, which evolved into "Gehenna" in Greek) had a notorious reputation in ancient Judea.  Jesus references it in all three Synoptic Gospels as a symbol of divine punishment.  Three of the New Testament's twelve Gehenna references explicitly associate it with fire.  Centuries earlier, Jeremiah 19:2-6 condemned the child sacrifices performed in the valley and announced divine punishment upon it.  By the time of Jesus, Gehenna already had a solid reputation for being a symbol of divine judgment.

But a garbage dump?  Your preacher may have embellished a sermon by stating that Gehenna was where Jerusalem burned all its trash and carcasses, which resulted in "unending" flames in the valley.  As best as we can tell, the garbage-dump tale traces back to around 1200 CE, when Rabbi David Kimhi made that claim in his commentary on Psalm 27:13.  However, no early Jewish, Greek, or Roman sources make any mention of the valley being a burning garbage pit.  That addition seems to be a medieval invention.

Archaeological excavations at Ketef Hinnom, on the shoulder of the valley, have uncovered an Iron Age necropolis containing burial caves used particularly during the seventh and sixth centuries BCE.  The finds confirm that at least part of the area had a long association with burial and death.  They have not, however, produced evidence of a perpetually burning garbage dump in Jesus’ time.

There's no proof it was ever Jerusalem's junkyard.

 

4. The One About Kinder, Gentler Slavery

You'll see the Greek word doulos (or the feminine doulē) translated in many ways in different Bible versions: servant, bondservant, handmaid, servant-girl, and other terms.  But when it's being used literally, that word has only one modern-English translation: slave.  In ordinary first-century usage, a doulos was a person owned by and subject to a master – nothing more and nothing less.

You'll hear a couple sermonic twists on ancient slavery – that it was less cruel in the ancient Roman and Jewish worlds than in, for example, the antebellum American South, and that slaves could buy their freedom and even handle their masters' finances.

There are glimmers of truth there.  Some enslaved people could use accumulated funds to purchase their freedom – if the master/owner allowed it.  Some enslaved people worked as tutors, physicians, clerks, estate managers, or financial agents.  Those comparatively privileged positions, however, cannot be treated as representative of ancient slavery generally – especially of those condemned to agricultural gangs, mills, mines, or sexual exploitation.

So why do so many Bible versions say "servant" where they should be saying "slave"?  And why do some modern sermons stress a kinder, gentler slavery?  The answer is tradition.  When the 1611 CE King James Version translated doulos as "servant," it was in an age when that English word actually did include both voluntary and involuntary workers.  Over the centuries, however, "servant" came chiefly to suggest a voluntary worker or paid employee, while many Bible versions retained (and still retain) the traditional rendering.  The English Standard Version, for one, is unusually candid about its reasoning.  Its preface says that “slave” now carries associations with the brutal slavery of nineteenth-century America, and it therefore alternates among “slave,” “bondservant,” and “servant.”  Whether intentionally or not, that policy often reduces the sense of ownership and subjection conveyed by doulos.

That leads to the question: Why do some modern preachers (and modern translators of the Scriptures) feel the need to soften the idea of slavery in Bible times?  What is it about declaring oneself "a slave of God" that makes us search for less triggering terms?  Why do we require the urban myth of more agreeable slaveholding in Bible times … and in our spiritual relationship with the Lord?

 

5. The One About “Turn the Other Cheek”

Not all Scriptural urban legends hail from the distant writings of Jerome's Patristic Age or Rabbi Kimhi's Medieval Era.  Some were born within most of our lifetimes, including the recent urban legend that offering your left cheek to be struck was how you claimed social equality with your attacker.  Because this claim is a newcomer to the urban legend category, I'll spend a little extra time examining it.

"But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil.  But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." (Matthew 5:39)

According to biblical scholar Walter Wink, Jesus is really saying this: "Being struck on your right cheek by a right-handed person is a backhand slap, which shows that person is of higher rank than you.  A palm or a fist is reserved for equals.  By offering your left cheek, you force that person to respond with a return punch with the right hand, declaring yourself to be deserving of the full fist or open palm that one of equal station merits."

It's a relatively new idea from the late 1980s, but I've heard it repeatedly in sermons from American preachers and I've read versions of it on multiple Christian websites.  Granted, it sounds like a cool interpretation and a brilliant, face-saving approach to being smacked.  But it also carries a whiff of American individualist pride, dismantling the caste system of authority while boldly standing your ground.  That individualist whiff smells a little off when you realize Jesus came from a collectivist, hierarchical society where authority was still respected.

But let's take a look at Wink's claims, point by point:

"Being struck on your right cheek by a right-handed person is a backhand slap …"

Jesus doesn't specifically say you're being backhanded, but since 90% of the human population is right-handed, I can understand the argument that Jesus was building a right-handed bias into his scenario.  I accept the idea of the backhand.

"… which shows that person is of higher rank than you.  A palm or a fist is reserved for equals."

Here we need to tilt our heads skeptically.  Yes, ancient documents are clear that a backhand is a more insulting form of attack; the Jewish Mishnah Bava Kamma 8:6 even sets the fine for a backhanded slap at twice that for an open-handed slap because of its more demeaning character.  However, there don't seem to be any texts from early eras indicating that rank or authority played any role in the insult.  The truth is, a person who's your equal can demean you just as easily as a superior or an inferior.  As Jesus said, "hostis se rhapizei" – "anyone who shall strike you."

By offering your left cheek, you force that person to respond with a return punch with the right hand …

I confess I stood up and acted this out a few times because I couldn't envision it while sitting.  Backhanding with the right hand doesn't lock the striker into following up with a right-hand punch or smack.  In fact, they've spun slightly to the right on the first hit, so following up with a backhanded left slap at a left cheek is the more natural follow-through.  I know, I know … it seems silly to get to this level of detail on it.  But I'm not the one claiming that a right-handed punch is now the only remaining option for the striker.

(To be fair, Wink anticipates the left-handed backhand.  He claims the left hand was reserved for unclean tasks, noting that the Qumran community imposed penance even for gesturing with it.  But a rule from one unusually strict religious community doesn't prove that every resident of Judea, Roman soldiers included, was socially prohibited from striking with the left hand.  It certainly doesn't make a right-handed punch the striker's “only remaining option.”)

… declaring yourself to be deserving of the full fist or open palm that one of equal station merits.

This closed the deal for me.  I asked myself, "Does Jesus really want me to stand up for my equal station among others, showing them I'm just as good as they are, just as deserving, not subject to their authority?  Is that a message I believe from the one who wants the greatest among believers to be the servant of them all (Mark 10:43-44)?  Who calls on us all to submit to one another (Ephesians 5:21)?  Who did not deem his own equality with God something to be clung to, but instead emptied himself (Philippians 2:6-7)?  Or … is this urban legend simply in service to individualistic pride?

Closing note: In Luke's Gospel, the parallel to this passage (Luke 6:29) omits information on which cheek is being struck.  That might mean that Jesus sometimes tried to be inclusive of backhanding lefties.  Or, it more likely means that the rights and lefts of the teaching aren't quite as important as Walter Wink surmised.

 

6. And All the Other Ones

There are a lot more cases of urban legends popping up on the sermon circuit, too many to cover in detail, like:

• Corinthian prostitutes who shaved their heads and went veilless.  (It doesn’t explain Paul’s call for head coverings, since there’s no evidence that shaved heads and unveiled faces were a recognized custom among first-century Corinthian prostitutes.)
• A rope tied around the high priest's ankle in the Holy of Holies to pull out his body if he died (this legend first appeared in a medieval work associated with thirteenth-century Spain)
• Jesus folding his burial face cloth "like a dinner napkin" to symbolize he would be back (no ancient source records that as a dinner-napkin practice of any age)
• A shepherd deliberately breaking a wandering sheep's leg to teach it not to wander (a cool parable, I suppose, but not founded in any known ancient practice)

Again, don't blame your preacher if you hear these urban legends woven into sermons.  Some of the tales have become so widespread that it's hard to dig back to original sources to falsify them.  But be on the lookout for claims that begin with words like, "In ancient times, everyone knew …" or "The custom in that day was …"  I'm not saying everything following those words is an urban legend.  But they are a cue for you to listen more closely, research later, and ask yourself:

• What's the earliest source of this so-called custom?
• Do I need this information to understand the text?
• Does it soften or even reverse the text's surface meaning?
• Are commentators simply citing one another rather than ancient sources?

Having this sort of discernment makes you more than just a person who heard a sermon.  It makes you an active participant in the learning that the sermon offered.  You're digging in like a Berean.  You're hearing the Word, then doing something with it.

 Until next month,

 YoYo Rez / Cosmic Parx