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 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:
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:
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:
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,
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.
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)
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:
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 16th
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
Imagine you got
to launch your own church and – clever marketer that you are – you realized you
needed to differentiate your new denomination by basing a prominent doctrine on
a single Bible verse. Which verse would
you choose?
Don’t scoff. We all know it happens. Plenty of denominations both within and at
the fringes of Christianity have whipped up doctrines based on less. If you’re a sect-watcher like me, you’re
probably already thinking about the Latter-Day-Saint practice of baptism for the
dead, a ritual based on one small, enigmatic declaration in 1 Corinthians 15:29.
Those silly Mormons, someone may think, basing so much on so little. But the Mormons aren’t alone. This month I’m stepping back from my usual linguistics deep dives to make a quick survey of some one-shot dogmas, practices, and beliefs that have sprung from single verses of scripture. It’ll get a little episodic, but it’s a quick read.
ONE
VERSE: BAPTISM IN THE NAME OF THE TRINITY
Nearly every
Christian denomination, large or small, baptizes believers “in the name of the
Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
This practice is mentioned only once in the entirety of Scripture, a
single verse (Matthew 28:19) out of the nearly eight thousand verses in our New
Testament. Elsewhere (Acts 2:38), believers
aren’t told to baptize in the name of the full Trinity. The apostle Peter teaches that believers are
to be baptized “in the name of Jesus,” and two Bible chapters later it’s
declared that there is “no other name under heaven” by which we can be saved. That latter combination of verses is recognized
by the Oneness Movement as having more weight than the Matthew 28 declaration
of baptism in the names of the Trinity.
To my mind, the
two directives aren’t mutually exclusive.
To baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit does, in fact, include
baptizing in the name of Jesus. The fact
remains, however, that the formula for our most common approach to baptism
appears once, and only once, in all of the New Testament. It is, in short, a doctrinal practice based
on a single verse.
ONE
VERSE: TATTOOS
On a less weighty
note: On the back of my left shoulder, I have a tiny tattoo of a koi fish. Honest, I got it long before I ever read the
book of Leviticus, in which a single verse prohibits the marking of one’s body
with tattoos:
“Do not cut your bodies
for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves.” (Lev. 19:28)
While it’s tough
to find a single denomination that bans tattooing outright, it’s pretty easy to
bounce around the Web enjoying essays by individual Christians who condemn
tattoos based on (1) this verse and (2) their sense of personal outrage. On the other hand, it’s just as common to
find rationales from Christians who justify tattoos by explaining the
cultural context of that prohibition in Leviticus. Least common was one little image gem I found
online: Gorgeously rendered script on skin, elegantly announcing the citation “Leviticus
19:28” as a tattoo. Inky irony in
action.
Whatever you
conclude about the literal reading or the cultural considerations behind that
verse, it’s probably good to keep in mind that the same chapter of Leviticus
also bans:
ONE
VERSE: THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
I should probably
point out that the term “Immaculate Conception” is often confused with the idea
of Jesus’ virgin birth. This dogma isn’t
about Jesus’ conception. It’s the idea
that Mary His mother was conceived without the stain of original sin. It’s a fully Roman Catholic dogma based on a
vague one-liner in scripture.
The Catholic
justification for this belief is a single word in the angel Gabriel’s greeting
to Mary in Luke 1:24. The angel calls her kecharitōmenē, “one filled with charis,
grace.” Because she was already filled
with grace, the Catholic reasoning goes, then she herself must have been
created by a special act of God without the burden of original sin, thereby
becoming a worthy vessel to bear the messiah.
It’s not a
particularly compelling rationale, especially considering Mary herself immediately
rejoices and calls God her savior (saved from what, if she were already created
sinless?) Historically, Catholics weren’t
universally keen on it, either. Thomas Aquinas,
most prominent of all Catholic theologians, found the idea unworthy of the
faith. Dominican priests accepted it
wholeheartedly, but Franciscans fought against the idea. (Franciscans were pretty peaceful, so I’m using
the word “fought” loosely here. They probably
just arched their eyebrows and tsk-ed audibly.)
The matter was
settled for Catholics in 1854 when Pope Pius IX declared the matter to be a
dogma of the church.
ONE
VERSE: THE 144,000
Revelation is one
of the most symbolic books of the Bible.
That doesn’t stop people from taking parts of it literally when it suits
their doctrines or eschatology. Thus, the
one hundred and forty-four thousand “sealed servants of God” in chapter 7 of
the Revelation became a favorite of new catastrophist sects of Christianity.
Contemporary
evangelicals don’t do much better with their literal interpretation of this single
verse. Those with a Futurist bent toward
interpreting John’s Revelation tend to see it as a literal number of actual
Jews being saved during the horrors of an end-times tribulation, this belief thanks
to the influence of the Gospel According to Left Behind. Their focus on the Jewish ethnicity of the “sealed” believers
is slightly more literal than that of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. However, the literalism falls apart when you
realize that Revelation 7 calculates the sealed as literally having 12,000 representatives
from each of the twelves tribes of Israel … ten of which no longer even existed
when the Revelation was written.
Should we maybe
start appreciating a symbolic book as being, you know, symbolic?
ONE
VERSE: SMOKING
“Do you not know that
your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, that is from God? You are not your own.”
You can certainly
argue that this verse applies to avoiding smoking as a way of shunning the “immorality”
mentioned in the previous verse (18) so that you can “glorify God with your
body” as pointed out in the verse that follows (20). But if the verse applies to avoiding smoking,
wouldn’t it equally apply to avoiding saturated fats? Wouldn’t we also need to have doctrinal
prohibitions against processed sugars in our sodas? Shouldn’t our church doctrines also require
believers to use seatbelts at all times?
Shouldn’t our credos include statements about honoring our bodies as
temples by requiring followers to get all recommended vaccines, especially
during pandemics? If smoking is unholy
treatment of our bodily temples, aren’t all those other areas as well?
ONE
VERSE: GAMBLING
There was a United
Methodist Church up the road from my childhood home that had dozens of pamphlets
in its foyer explaining why gambling was the worst of sins since humans ate
fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Okay,
I exaggerate. One thing I noticed,
though, was the recurrence of a single verse justifying United Methodist loathing of
games of chance:
“For the love of money
is the root of all evils, and some people in their desire for it have strayed
from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.” (1 Timothy 6:10)
The United
Methodist Book of Resolutions devotes numerous
paragraphs to the evils of gambling, calling it a “menace to personal and
social morality” and citing the verse above as the main, direct scriptural
condemnation of all iterations of gambling and profit by chance.
I won’t pick on
Methodists. Some of my best friends are
Methodists. But I do wonder how they
feel about risk-sensitive investments in 401(k) and 403(b) retirement accounts. And aren’t hedge fund investments a form of
gambling, betting a company will fail for one’s own profit? In fact, I wonder how they feel about all
capital gains under the aegis of capitalism – profit accrued when money earns
money, rather than income being earned by actual work. How do they feel about how low taxes are on
capital gains versus how high they are for income earned through real work? And how do they
feel about any fellow Methodists who work at banks and for credit card companies,
where profits are earned through forbidden interest rates, aka “usury”
(Leviticus 25:36-37)?
Sometimes a
single Bible verse can lead you down a long, long path.
ONE
VERSE: THE CLOSING OF THE CANON
This one might arch
your eyebrows as high as the Franciscans arched theirs over Mary’s immaculate
conception. Modern Christians tend to
cite one verse repeatedly to indicate nothing else can be added to the Bible:
“I warn everyone who
hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will
add to that person the plagues described in this book. If anyone takes away from the words of the
book of this prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of
life” (Revelation 22:18-19)
Church after
church and Christian after Christian have wielded this verse as evidence that
the Bible is now closed and no new information can be added to the revealed canon
of scripture. This interpretation might
have more weight if the verses above weren’t a reiteration of Deuteronomy 4:2,
likewise prohibiting further adding to or subtracting from the writings and
thus (according to the Sadducees of Jesus’ day) closing the canon some three
thousand years earlier.
When read
closely, the words in the verse above are clearly referring to the book John of
Patmos is writing, what we now call the Revelation. It isn’t referring to the whole Bible. In
John’s day, there was no “whole Bible” compilation and there wouldn’t be for
several more centuries.
That leaves us
(by which I mean Protestants who embrace the Bible rather than human traditions
as the source of our beliefs) with a ponderous issue: If the Bible doesn’t
declare a closing of the canon prohibiting any more additions, then on what do
we base our faith that the canon is closed?
Is our faith in the traditions of men … in this case, specifically in
the traditions of Catholic Councils in the 300s? Is it founded on the authority of the
Catholic named St. Augustine of Hippo, who oversaw those councils that decreed
the canon?
Is the closing of
the canon an extrabiblical tradition?
IN CONCLUSION
I purposely included
in these examples some single-verse beliefs that I do accept and others that I
don’t. It was a useful exercise for
me. It made me ask, “Why do I so quickly
condemn some ideas, yet so quickly accept other ideas when the evidence is just
as scripturally scant?”
I can’t answer that
question. I can just share that I ask it,
ponder it, and pray.
But on a lighter
note, I will answer the question I asked at the top of this blog
post! If I were going to forge a new
doctrine for a new denomination based on a single Bible verse, I’ve decided I’ll
go with Deuteronomy 23:13, which commands that each of us always carry a
shovel, so that if we have to relieve ourselves out in the wild, we can dig a
hole to cover it up.
That won’t make my
congregation any holier. But carrying around those shovels will
certainly teach us that basing high-impact doctrines on single Bible verses
might lead to some pretty strange places.
Maranatha,
YoYo Rez / Cosmic Parx
The word “wife”
appears nowhere in the text of the Bible.
Neither does the word “husband.”
You may disagree,
and that’s understandable. Our English
translations of the scriptures are filled with occurrences of the words “wife”
and “husband.” You can’t get past
Genesis chapter 2 without every major English translation referring to Adam and
his “wife,” a term applied to her even before she receives the formal name “Eve.” The English of Genesis chapter 3 follows up
by introducing the word “husband.”
What our translations
conceal, however, is that there is no Hebrew word for “wife.” Neither is there one for “husband.” Hebrew has a single word, ishshah and
its various forms, which simply means “woman” but in English passages is
sometimes presented as “wife.” The same
is done with ish, a Hebrew word for “man” that is often rendered “husband”
in Bible texts.
For those who are
already a step ahead of me, the same is true for the Greek New Testament. Gyné is translated sometimes as “woman,”
sometimes as “wife,” and andrós pops up as both man and husband,
depending on which way the translation team decided to go.
More news: When
you read “the brothers” in Scripture, it may include sisters.
When you read “the
sons,” it may mean sons and daughters.
And sometimes, when
you read the word “man,” there’s actually no word at all, male or female, in
the original text.
What gives?
INCLUSIVE BIBLE TRANSLATIONS
Let me state
upfront that I’m not a fan of gender-inclusive versions of the Bible that artificially
impose gender-neutral pronouns on my God or my fellow humans. I see it as destruction of the original text.
My position on that isn’t theological. It’s linguistic and literary. I’m just as put off by modern printings of Huckleberry
Finn that omit the N-word from the very name of one of its main characters …
an ironic adaptation in what’s arguably the most anti-racist book of its era. The text of the Bible assigns God a male
identity throughout, just as it assigns God female attributes in other places
(see Isaiah 49:15 for God breastfeeding; Psalm 22:9-10 for God being a midwife;
Deuteronomy 32:11 & 18 for God being a protective mother and giving birth;
and Hosea 11:3-4 for God fulfilling a whole host of child-raising Mom roles).
I’m grown up
enough to know that God has no chromosomes, X or Y. God has no genitalia, male or female. God is spirit (John 4:24), and I don’t want
the original versions of scripture neutered to adapt to anyone’s cultural
agenda. I want to know what it says,
literally. I’ll do my theology on the
other side of my text analysis.
That said … it
isn’t just liberal-leaning translators of Scripture I take issue with.
EXCLUSIVE BIBLE TRANSLATIONS
New Testament Greek
has two distinct words we translate as “man” – andrós, mentioned above, which
specifically means “a male human,” and anthrópos, “a human being.” There’s a tradition among translators to
render both as “man,” but anthrópos has a limited male slant to it. Indeed, it can be used in the singular to
refer to a single male, as it is in Matthew 19:5 & 10 and 1 Cor. 7:1. However, the Greek writers Isocrates,
Aristotle, and Antiphon all occasionally used it in reference to groups of
women, as did the Septuagint (the Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures used
by Jesus and the Apostles) in Numbers 13:35.
So, anthrópos isn’t strictly gender-neutral, but it also doesn’t
have a purely masculine meaning. Anthrópos
is flexible, and is usually best translated as “people” or “humans.”
One interesting
note: In Greek Scripture, the term “the Son of Man” is always written with a
form of anthrópos. Jesus is the
Son of Humanity, a satisfying moniker for one born of a virgin with minmal male
involvement.
Back to
English. Sometimes when you’re reading “man”
or “men” in Scripture, it’s referring to males.
Other times, it’s referring to people in general. How are you supposed to know the difference
if you don’t read ancient Greek?
[From this point on, I’ll limit myself to
commenting on the Greek parts of Scripture.
Kione Greek I can juggle, thanks to formal training; I’ve had no academic
education in ancient Hebrew, so I’m no better with that than any other amateur
flipping through a Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance.)
One answer to
solving the translation hurdle without taking five years of ancient Greek
classes is to read multiple translations of the same passages.
Matthew 6:14
Comparing these,
I not only learn to appreciate the fuller meaning of the word “trespasses,” but
I also get a sweeping view of how translators have dealt with the word for “men”
in this passage. Men, people,
those who, and others make it clear to me that there’s a
troublesome, gender-flexible word in there – and, in fact, it’s one we’ve
already seen, anthrópois. Therefore,
I don’t get my heavenly Father’s forgiveness just by pardoning my husband, his
brothers, and his male friends. I have
to forgive everybody.
Still, I just
annoyed some people. Progressives who
insist on inclusion in all cases are irritated at the first two examples I
gave, the 1611 King James and the 1977 New American Standard Bible. Both of those target the gender in the verse as
male, a mortal sin in the progressive realm.
On the flipside, there are those of a more conservative bent who are furious
that anyone would need to see the word "men" changed in early translations;
shouldn’t we stop kowtowing to the feminists out there who are spoiling
everything?
Both sides have a
political agenda. Neither side sways me
much. My bias is a linguist’s bias: I’d
like to see translations that are inclusive when the original language is
inclusive, gendered when the original language is gendered, and vague when the
original is vague about what sex is being addressed.
NOT AS EASY AS I THINK, THOUGH
Let’s start with
the easy stuff.
As I mentioned
above, Greek has no terms for the English words “husband” and “wife.” When you see
those words in your Bible, you’re definitely seeing translations of the Greek words
“male” (andrós) and “female (gyné).” The way Bible translators know to render
those words as the English terms "husband" and "wife" is context. Most often, that context is what’s called the
genitive case of a declined noun – or, for those not schooled in grammar, the “of”
form of a word. Greek has no word for “of,”
so it builds that meaning into the end of a noun, adjusting “man” to mean “the
man [of her],” which is to say, “her man,” her husband. “The woman [of him]” becomes “wife.”
But sometimes a translation
runs into issues beyond the simple words.
We have cultural biases built into our way of thinking, and that affects
our ways of reading (and our translators’ ways of translating). Thus, there’s a built-in conservative assumption about verses
like 1 Timothy 5:8: That it’s about a father’s requirement to be the
breadwinner for his family. Let’s read
it in the English Standard Version, a version whose translators claim is gender-neutral when such language will "render literally what is in the original":
“But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially
for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an
unbeliever.”
Here’s our issue with the literalism-claiming ESV:
Despite there being three decidedly male pronouns in that translation – his,
his, and he – the Greek text written by Paul doesn’t have a single gendered
pronoun in it. All the verbs refer back
to the Greek tis, the word “anyone,” an indefinite pronoun. The Timothy
sentence refers, literally in the text, to anyone’s household. We recall that “households” in the New
Testament sometimes belonged to women (Acts 16:14; 1 Cor. 1:11). Frankly, though, I’m not the one willing to
tell conservative preachers that the Bible isn’t talking here about dads being
breadwinners. I’ll leave that to braver
souls.
THE BRETHREN AND, UM, SISTREN?
The Greek word adelphoí
is the plural of the word “brother.” It
seems it would be an easy translation.
One is a brother, more than one are a bunch of male brothers.
But it’s
language, so you know there’s a twist.
Let me tell you about my family.
When my mother
informed me that mis tíos were coming over for dinner, I at no point
thought that all my uncles were the ones on their way to my house. Tíos meant my aunt and uncle. Yes, it’s a masculine word, and yes, it could
have meant only my male uncles, but the context made it pretty clear I was
seeing my Aunt Sofia and Tío Berto. One
Spanish word became three English words, tíos turning into "aunt and uncle"
when migrated across the language border.
The same held
true for my mother’s hijos. We were her son and daughter, not two sons.
The count got higher with my abuelos, my two grandmothers and two grandfathers.
Make a masculine human into a plural form in Spanish, in French, in numerous Romance languages that evolved from Latin, and you often have a mixed group of males and females. Or maybe all males (remember, context counts). And it turns out non-Latin languages like ancient Greek have the same bundling property for plural males.
So, should the
word adelphoí be translated as “brothers and sisters” in most New
Testament occurrences? Some argue that
doing so is ridiculous, since Greek already has the word adelphé, which
means sister. If sister isn’t in the
text, why put it in?
Remember the
bundling, though. I’d actually be misinforming
you if I translated my arriving tíos as “my uncles.” I have to add words by saying “my aunt and
uncle.” An accurate translation will
sometimes have to add words. For
example, the first verse of the Gospel of Matthew has 16 words in the King
James Version. This is translated from 8
original Greek words. Adding to the word
count is not adding to the word of God – here, the KJV translation is 100% accurate.
So, to my mind, translating adelphoí as “brothers and sisters” isn’t just allowable, it’s often the responsible thing to do … when the context allows. I repeat: when the context allows. One example: In Acts 16, when Paul and Silas address the "brothers" in the church meeting at the house of the merchantwoman Lydia, the term probably includes women since, you know, Lydia is standing right there being addressed in her own church. But is that situation in Scripture common?
Commentator Michael D.
Marlowe sees these occurrences as exceptions to the majority of times the term “brethren”
is used in Scripture. However, the minister
Dr. Jerry Jones gives example
after example after example of Scriptures that prove Marlowe’s opinion just
can’t be correct, providing citations where women are clearly mixed in with groups referred to as adelphoí. I’ll conclude this name dropping with a reference
to the opinions of the co-pastors called the Bayly brothers, who
seem to argue that “brothers and sisters” should never be used in Bible
translations because we all already know that “brothers” means “brothers and
sisters,” just like it did in Greek. We
all just know it.
That makes as
much sense to me as my pointing at Aunt Sofia and Tío Berto while saying, “Have you met my uncles?”
THE VISIBLE MAN IN INVISIBLE GREEK
I thought I’d end
these reflections with a tip for those who use Strong’s
Exhaustive Concordance, a book
that, although dated and containing some textual errors, is still truly a blessing for those who are beginning to study scripture. If you don’t own one, they’re pretty
reasonably priced at the link above, although you’ll want to buy a magnifying
glass at the same time for its tiny print.
(I don’t get a kickback from that link, FYI. I include it because my studies as a young
Christian were immensely enriched by both Strong’s and the text Gospel
Parallels, a book chronologically laying out the synoptic gospels
side-by-side on the same pages for instant story comparisons.)
But book
purchases weren’t my tip. If you have Strong’s,
you know that it’s laid out word-by-word, capturing every term in the
Authorized and Revised English versions of the Bible. To the right of the verses that use each word
is a number referencing either the Hebrew or the Greek dictionary term the original Bible texts use.
Should you have
one, open it to the entry for MAN. Scan
the numbers to the right. And now, start
noticing the blank spaces, the times “man” is used in English without any word
correlating with it in Hebrew or Greek.
Each of those is a judgment call on the part of the translator, a
decision to insert the word “man” when it doesn’t appear in the original
text. Sometimes that works well, as when
1 Cor. 7:2 advises each [man] to have his own wife. The context makes it pretty clear that “man”
works better there than other options like “squid” or “microwave oven.”
But some of those
blanks, some of the insertions of “man” into the text where no man had gone
before, reveal a clear gender bias in the translators. And sometimes, that inclusion makes the text
pointedly exclusionary:
“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man
will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” ~ Matthew
16:24, KJV
Any man. Let him.
Himself. His cross. And yet the Greek has no “man” in it, not in
the nouns or the pronouns. It’s another
case of the indeterminate pronoun tis, meaning “anyone” or “whoever.”
As a woman, I can’t
help but feel that I’ve been robbed of the true spirit of that verse by some
long-dead translator. I’m not "any man," as the KJV requires, but I am an "anyone," whom the Lord Himself invited. And I confess it makes me soften to those who
would like to have some inclusivity in the translation. I can handle that, as long as it’s in service
to the original text.
Yes, yes, I can
hear the Bayly brothers protesting, “’Man’ means men and women, we all know
that! We don’t have to add a ‘whoever’
to this verse! Everybody knows it mean everybody.’”
To which I offer
one reply:
“Have you met my
uncles?”
Marana Tha,
Cosmic Parx, aka YoYo Rez.
