Sunday, July 02, 2017
Bring back the church militant?
In the Middle Ages, strong young Christian men responded to the call of the Pope to push back the Muslims and regain control of the Holy Land by force. They threw out the Muslim invaders and brought the Holy land back into Christian hands, where it had been for around a thousand years. And they held their gains for around 200 years. So they were a major demonstration of the church militant
Why is there no church militant today? Mainly because of bad theology -- under the influence of Christ's words in Matthew 5 where he counselled not hitting back at oppressors:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
Clear enough one might think. But what are we to think of Matthew 10: 34
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword"
or Luke 22:
36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.
38 And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough
So we gather from the second and third scriptures above that Jesus at a minimum believed in his followers defending themselves. So was Jesus being inconsistent? Are Christians under different commands? If we believe the Bible to be the word of God, that is surely ruled out. So what is going on?
Clearly, Christ was giving different advice for different occasions. And the advice in Matthew 5 runs against all nature. No-one naturally behaves that way. It is anti-instinctual. So it must have been designed for a very special occasion. And it was.
Part of his foresight was that his disciples would be persecuted after his death -- so it was important that he give them ways of surviving that. He had to tell them to behave in a way that would protect them. He had to give them what modern-day psychologists call "de-escalation techniques". Above all else they had to avoid getting killed by hostile others, so that they could pass on his message.
And in Matthew 5:38ff he taught exactly how. He taught his disciples to be unthreatening and even likable when confronted with hostility. He was giving them lessons in survival against great threat -- things to do immediately after his death, not rules for all times and all situations. And when modern-day psychologists look at his rules they will see that his de-escalation techniques were pretty good. You can turn down hostility if you go about it the right way.
So Matthew 5:38ff was the practical aspect of his teachings. What at first sight seems totally impractical was in fact superbly practical. The survival of Christianity attests to that.
But, as the other scriptures show, that advice was not for all occasions, all situations and all times. Jesus did not preach pacifism. So it is unsurprising that few Christians today are pacifists. Only some small sects preach it: Seventh Day Adventists, traditional Quakers, Christadelphians and Jehovah's Witnesses. The U.S. army, for instance, is still largely a Christian army despite various attempts to suppress that.
So the conventional response to Matthew 5 is broadly right. It does not stand in the way of both individual self-defence or defence of one's own society.
But when it comes to oppression from forces within one's own society, many Christians suddenly decide that Matthew 5 is applicable. There is no reason to. Matthew 5 was an instruction designed to protect a small and threatened minority. Christians are certainly threatened in minor ways today but they are not small and their collective survival is not at stake.
There is for instance no reason why they should be passive when confronted by Muslim aggression. If Muslims hold aggressive demonstrations, Christians should be out holding aggressive counter-demonstrations. If Muslims carry around placards extolling Mohammed, they would be perfectly justified in carrying around placards saying that Islam is a false religion and that the Koran is the ravings of an insane pedophile.
If masked Leftists attack them during a demonstration, they should shoot.
That does not mean Christians should abandon Matthew 5 in their personal lives. Christian forgiveness still is a wise response to many conflict situations in 1 to 1 relationships -- JR
Sunday, June 04, 2017
Note to Margaret Court: the Bible isn't meant to be read that literally
Robyn J Whitaker, a female lecturer at a "modern" theology college, attempts below to rebut the points about homosexuality made by Australian tennis great, Margaret Court. Much of what she says below is "ad hominem", attacking Ms Court personally, and she endeavours to make points about homosexuality by generalizing from heterosexual marriage.
But the point about homosexuality is that it is NOT heterosexual marriage and the Bible consistently distinguishes between the two. Homosexuality is a separate issue in the Bible and there is no indication that it should be seen as part of the "patriarchy" as Ms Whitaker extravagantly claims.
She claims that the Bible condones homosexuality but cannot produce a single text to that effect. The OT is unrelentingly and savagely hostile to homosexuality and the Apostle Paul continues that hostility in Romans chapter 1 of the NT. The big break in the NT is not any form of condoning homosexuality but rather a lifting of the duty to stone homosexuals to death. Paul says it can be left to God to condemn and punish them.
For anyone who takes the Bible seriously as the word of God, there can be no doubt that homosexuals are in the outer darkness and not among those who will be saved. 1 Corinthians 6:9 says as much. The Bible does NOT teach universal salvation. It teaches that those wishing salvation must heed God's commands.
Ms Whitaker seems to think it important that Jesus did not explicitly condemn homosexuality. He did not need to. For him, as a devout Jew in a Jewish society, that was understood. So we see in Matthew 19 that, for him, marriage was clearly between a man and a woman and it was only they who could become "one flesh". And the authority he gave for that was what was found in the Jewish scriptures. So there is no doubt whatever about his view of sexual relationships. Only male/female marriage was on his horizons.
But Ms Whitaker says that the Bible is just a very old book from which we can pick and choose what we like. She is not a Christian. At best she is a post-Christian, not unlike the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus' day -- whom Jesus condemned in Mathew 23:3. And note the three things that Jesus there said the Pharisees neglected: "justice and mercy and faithfulness". Ms Whitaker likes the mercy teaching but seems to have no interest in justice and faithfulness. Jesus said you need all three
Margaret Court is wrong to claim marriage is "a union between a man and a woman as stated in the Bible", as she did in her open letter to Qantas, or that a "biblical view" of marriage is between one man and one woman, as she did on Channel Ten's The Project last week.
She is even more wrong to suggest she is being persecuted for her views. Here is why.
Reading the Bible to determine the shape of contemporary marriage is not an easy task. It is an ancient collection of 66 books, written in three different languages (Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic), and spanning over 1,000 years of human history.
Much of the Bible was written 2,500 years ago, when family life was very different.
In the Hebrew scriptures, Abraham fathered children with his concubine as well as his wife, and Moses likely had two wives (one of whom is presented as problematic because she was a foreigner).
Famous biblical kings, like David and Solomon, had entire palaces full of often dubiously acquired wives and concubines that served as symbols of their power and status.
The reality is families in the Bible reflect the patriarchal structures of their period. Women were considered commodities to be married off for political alliances, economic reasons, or to keep families connected. They had no autonomy to choose their partners.
Polygamy was common, as was the use of slaves as sexual concubines.
I don't hear anyone advocating a "biblical view" of marriage suggesting we return to those particular scenarios.
In the New Testament, Jesus said nothing about homosexual relationships or marriage, except that people should not divorce. This teaching is widely ignored by many Christian denominations today.
Most likely, Jesus's concern in speaking against divorce was for the vulnerable place in which it left women, given they could not usually earn their own money or inherit.
Marriage was allowed in the New Testament, but the most prolific writer, Paul, thinks celibacy is preferable for a Christian.
When Paul writes "there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28), he presents an ideology profoundly disruptive of patriarchal family structures, gender roles and hierarchy.
This kind of Christian teaching led, if anything, to a breakdown of traditional marriage structures (in ancient terms).
For example, the option to remain celibate and live in community (such as a nunnery or monastery) was a radical, attractive and liberating alternative to arranged marriage for women in earliest Christianity.
Jesus' own mother, who is an example of faith in the church's tradition, appears to have left her husband and other children at home to follow her itinerant son.
The nuclear family and the Bible
Not all opinions are of equal weight. While Margaret Court remains one of the most phenomenal sportswomen in Australian history, this does not qualify her as a spokesperson for Christianity on marriage equality.
Nor does being a self-appointed leader of a church she created.
Indeed, if Ms Court applied the literalism with which she reads Genesis to the whole of the Bible, she'd find herself in hot water, since 1 Timothy 2:12 explicitly forbids women teaching or having any authority over men.
This kind of culturally bound ideology is precisely why biblical scholars and mainstream Christian churches do not adhere to a literal interpretation of this ancient and diverse text.
To criticise and expect a higher level of discourse from a public figure is not bullying nor persecution.
Ms Court willingly put herself into the public space by writing an open letter to Qantas. She could have lodged her complaint privately with the company if she wished to remain free of public comment.
There is nothing inherently Christian about the so-called traditional arrangement of the nuclear family.
You can find that model in the Bible if you look for it, but it is not the dominant view. Nor does the Bible condemn what we understand to be loving, mutual LGBTQI relationships today.
There is nothing like the contemporary concept of sexual orientation in the biblical text.
Where the Bible does appear to condemn homosexual acts it condemns same-sex acts that are rape, adulterous or represent imbalanced power dynamics, such as an elite male with a youth.
[Rubbish! In 1 Timothy 1: 8-10 and elsewhere homosexuality is simply listed among all the foul sins that are contrary to the law of God]
Interestingly, these same power dynamics are not critiqued when an elite male takes a young woman as a sexual concubine; a sobering reminder of the patriarchal worldview that lies behind the text and ancient fears about penetration and masculinity.
Concepts of family and marriage have evolved and changed throughout human history, including within the church.
Modern Christian families can be made up of gay couples, straight couples, single people in community, childless adults, foster parents, step-parents, grandparents and biological parents. It is their faith that makes them Christian, not their family structure nor sexuality.
Many Christians are not represented by the views we've recently heard from Margaret Court, nor those espoused by the so-called Australian Christian Lobby.
In fact, quite the opposite. Christian values of love, justice and inclusion found throughout the Bible are why so many Christians support marriage equality.
SOURCE
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
The puzzle of Matt. 5:38-41
In Matthew’s report of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,’ but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.”
Mainstream Christians essentially ignore this pretty clear instruction. They go to war, they fight back, they sue etc. It is only some of the smaller denominations who take it seriously: Traditional Quakers, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses etc. I respected my Bible from an early age so, at around age 14, I became a pacifist in obedience to that scripture. Not long after I became an atheist, I joined the army.
But the reason why the scripture is mostly ignored is that it runs against all nature. No-one naturally behaves that way. It is anti-instinctual. But despite my defection from Christianity, I have always wondered if I was missing something in that teaching. And I now think I was.
As any serious Bible student will tell you, context can be enormously important in studying scripture. The "proof-text" approach to exegesis can easily get it wrong. You have to study what went before and after a passage as well as the passage itself.
So what context do we need to understand Matthew 5:38ff? Is it the commandment to love others as ourselves? That would certainly fit as equally unrealistic. But "I came not to bring peace but a sword" (Matthew 10:34) would seem an outright contradiction.
I think the context we need is in fact the whole of the Gospels. We have to look at the whole message of the Gospels. And that message is that Jesus knew from the beginning he was a new and different teacher and that his difference would get him killed. And he saw great meaning in his life and death. And the time he spent teaching his disciples tells us that he did not see his death as the end of his message. He wanted his teachings to survive and be passed on. And exactly that happened, of course.
But part of his foresight was that his disciples would be persecuted -- so it was important that he give them ways of surviving that. He had to tell them to behave in a way that would protect them. He had to give them what modern-day psychologists call "de-escalation techniques". Above all else they had to avoid getting killed by hostile others. And in Matthew 5:38ff he taught exactly how. He taught his disciples to be unthreatening and even likable when confronted with hostility. He was giving them lessons in survival against great threat -- things to do right from that point onwards, not rules for all times and all situations. And when modern-day psychologists look at his rules they will see that his de-escalation techniques were pretty good. You can turn down hostility if you go about it the right way.
So Matthew 5:38ff was the practical aspect of his teachings. What at first sight seems totally impractical was in fact superbly practical. The survival of Christianity attests to that. -- JR
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Are the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20 an interpolation?
There are three versions of the 10 Commandments in the Torah -- found in Exodus 20, Exodus 34 and Deuteronomy 5.
The version that people seem to use most is that in Exodus 20, though the version in Deuteronomy is very similar. Exodus 34 is only roughly similar. One of the commandments in Exodus 34 is: "Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk”, which has got just about everyone puzzled.
But let us leave Exodus 34 aside for a moment. It is only in Deuteronomy that we read: "And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments". There is no mention of stone tablets or 10 commandments in Exodus 20.
Most importantly, however, the Exodus 20 commandments are not embedded in the Mount Sainai story at all. They just somehow appear in the middle of the narrative without explanation. The narrative before and after the 10 commandments just carries on as if there were no 10 commandments.
So why was a list of 10 commandments jammed into the middle of another story? We don't know for sure. It is as mysterious as not cooking a kid in its mother's milk. But I have a suggestion that flows from my critique of the creation story in Genesis 1. In my comments about that I noted that it was only in Exodus 20 that the Sabbath was tied to creation. The Sabbath is not justified in that way in the other two versions of the commandments.
So in my previous comments I suggested that the mention of the creation in Exodus 20 was an interpolation -- something added in long after the original text was written. Looking at the strange disconnection of Exodus 20 from its surrounding narrtive, however, I am inclined to go further. I think that the whole ten commandments list in Exodus 20 is an interpolation. There was no such list there originally.
So how and why? I think it goes back to what is clearly another interpolation into the orginal Torah: The Genesis 1 creation story. The priestly authors of Genesis 1 needed to give it some authority in the original Torah so took the original Ten Commandments story recorded in Deuteronomy, added in the bit about creation, and positioned it fairly early in Exodus. It's like a shag on a rock there but as long as it is something that occurs in roughly the right place, it should pass muster.
The Deuteronomy version occurs fully in context and is presumably fairly true to the original stone tablets.
So what about Exodus 34, which has LOTS of commandments? It speaks of 10 commandments but I actually find 12. And a lot of the commandments that are there do not correspond to anything in Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5. For example:
“Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year.[b]
Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord, the God of Israel. 24 I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the Lord your God.
So the only list which explicitly describes itself as the Ten Commandments is quite different from what we call the Ten Commandments. How come?
I think we can see what has happened if we look back at Exodus 19 and 20. In 19:7 we read that the Israelits had ALREADY agreed to abide by the commands of YHVH. But that was not enough. YHVH went on to do a further thunder and lightning display. And after the interpolation we read in 20:18 that the people were terrified by that.
And from that point we get chapter after chapter of laws and regulations that YHVH laid down. It was a fairly complete code of community behaviour. Neither Exodus 34 nor Deuteronomy are like that
One thing that seems clear is that obedience to YHVH's commends was required as part of the covenant between YHVH and the Israelites. And we read in chapter 18 that Moses was already administering a set of such laws, BEFORE the arrival at Sinai. In 19:5 we read that obedience to the law of YHVH was essential to the covenant.
So the fact that Exodus 34 lists various different commandments would seem to suggest that it has simply made a different selection out of a whole body of laws that YHVH commanded. The 10 commandments were given under very impressive circumstances so the giving of them would be well remembered.. What was actually in the commandments, however, had fallen out of memory so a a guess at which laws were in the Commandments was made.
To use a modern analogy, the Ten Commandments were like an executive summary or a journal abstract. They were the foundation of divine law but far from the whole of it. And there are different ways of writing an executive summary or a journal abstract.
So my summary is that the Exodus writer was concerned about the whole body of the law and only picked out ten of them as special in an offhand sort of way. The Deuteronomy author, however, may have had a fair cvopy of the original commandments on stone and reproduced that.
And subsequent priestly scholars -- perhaps the ones who also wrote Genesis 1 -- saw the Deuteronomy record as superior so used it as the basis for an interpolation into Exodus. It follows that Deuteronomy is the "official" or original record of the 10 commandments and that the Exodus 20 version should be disregarded.
The three sets of Commandments are below:
Exodus 20
And God spoke all these words:
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before[a] me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
13 “You shall not murder.
14 “You shall not commit adultery.
15 “You shall not steal.
16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Exodus 34
34 The Lord said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. 2 Be ready in the morning, and then come up on Mount Sinai. Present yourself to me there on top of the mountain. 3 No one is to come with you or be seen anywhere on the mountain; not even the flocks and herds may graze in front of the mountain.”
4 So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the Lord had commanded him; and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands.
10 Then the Lord said: “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the Lord, will do for you. 11 Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.
12 Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. 13 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles.[a]
14 Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
15 “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. 16 And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.
17 “Do not make any idols.
18 “Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread. For seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Aviv, for in that month you came out of Egypt.
19 “The first offspring of every womb belongs to me, including all the firstborn males of your livestock, whether from herd or flock. 20 Redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem all your firstborn sons.
“No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
21 “Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.
22 “Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year.[b]
23 Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord, the God of Israel. 24 I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the Lord your God.
25 “Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Festival remain until morning.
26 “Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.
“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
27 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28 Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.
Deuteronomy 5
6 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
7 “You shall have no other gods before[b] me.
8 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 10 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
11 “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
12 “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. 15 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.
16 “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
17 “You shall not murder.
18 “You shall not commit adultery.
19 “You shall not steal.
20 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
21 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor’s house or land, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
22 These are the commandments the Lord proclaimed in a loud voice to your whole assembly there on the mountain from out of the fire, the cloud and the deep darkness; and he added nothing more. Then he wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me.
Saturday, March 25, 2017
The puzzle of Genesis 1:6-9
In my recent comments on Genesis chapter 1, I suggested that chapter 1 was not an original part of the Torah and should be recognized as deuterocanonical (apocryphal). I did however add the rider that what Genesis 1 had to relate was probably based on something relatively ancient, such as a myth or oral tradition.
And I think Genesis 1:6-9 fairly reliably identifies part of what that source was. It goes right back to the theology of ancient Sumer -- the first known human civilization, situated in what is now Southern Iraq.
Here is what 1:6-9 says in the New International Version:
"And God said, "Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning--the second day. And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so."
Wha? Was the Genesis writer saying that there was a body of water ABOVE the sky as well as on the surface of the earth? That is an extraordinary idea by modern scientific standards but it is precisely what the Sumerians believed. The rains came down from above, didn't they? So there must be another body of water way up above that the rains came from. It was a fairly reasonable deduction given their complete ignorance of modern science.
There is nothing else in Genesis 1 that is starkly contrary to what we know today -- though it's a bit odd that birds were created before land animals. It is more or less common sense and could have been made up by anyone. But 6-9 is very distinctive and clearly of Sumerian and later of Babylonian origin. The Babylonians borrowed a lot from Sumer, including the 7-day week.
The Sumerians and other early civilizations also had their own creation myths but there is absolutely no similarity to Genesis 1 in any of them. It would seem, therefore, that the 7 day account of creation is mainly of ancient Israelite origin with Sumerian "wisdom" added in to give it authority.
Genesis 1 does read in a very orderly way so I surmise that it was in fact the work of one man. When it was originally written is completely unknown. But its allusion to Sumerian/Babylonian thought could make it quite ancient. Textual criticism does however enable us to trace the version that appears in the Bible to about the third century BC --JR.
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
John 1:1 -- one more foray
I suppose I am a bit obsessed with the meaning of the first verse of the gospel of John. I have written enough on it (e.g. here and here). But it bugs me that a simplistic bit of translation has totally distorted the meaning of the passage.
In English Bibles, John 1:1 is normally translated as: "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God".
But that's nuts. How can you both BE god and be WITH god? It's logically self-contradictory. By saying you are WITH someone you imply that you are NOT that someone. So what gives? Was the holy apostle John talking nonsense? He was not. What he wrote in the original Greek of the New Testament was quite different from what we read in most English Bibles.
But I can't altogether blame the translators. Translating it literally does make for ponderous English. So why not do it the simple way?
To show you what I mean, here is the closest I can get to an exact translation: "In a beginning was the word and the word was with the god and the word was of god-substance." You see what I mean. It sounds a bit weird. Note "THE god".
As I mentioned recently, it all goes back to the way holy Jews long ago stopped referring to the name of their god -- which was YHWH ("Jehovah" in English). So they referred to him by generic terms such as "Gods" or "Lord" ("elohim" or "adonay" in Hebrew).
YHWH tells us most emphatically that he is very proud of his name, wants it used reverently and wants it known worldwide that he is supreme. See the Ten Commandments and Psalm 83:18. He is so emphatic about it in Psalm 83:18 that even the King James Bible renders the name as "Jehovah" rather than with their usual practice of substituting "the LORD" for YHWH. So it is a huge irony that the worshippers of YHWH do exactly the opposite of what he clearly commands.
And that confusion carried on into New Testament times. Because the Jewish god had no name, the New Testament writers couldn't identify their god very clearly either. They referred to him as "the God" ("ho theos") -- which is how Greeks referred to the local god, whoever he may be. In the ancient world there were lots of gods and it depended on where you were to find out which god you most likely worshipped. So right from the beginning, John 1:1 was going to have some ambiguity
A non-Jewish speaker of Greek would have taken the text to be very vague indeed, amounting to a claim that a mysterious someone was with the local god of the writer at some beginning and that the mysterious someone was made out of the same stuff as the local god was. And that is EXACTLY what it means. We see more in it than that because we know its religious context
Most Christians go in for vagueness there too. They see it as justification for their theological "Trinity" doctrine -- and that's as vague as it gets -- saying that Jesus and God are the same yet different -- which is also logically self-contradictory.
I note that even the latest Zondervan Study Bible (using the latest version of the NIV) concedes in its notes that the meaning of "with god" is, "The word is distinct from God the father and enjoys a personal relationship with him". That is pretty right -- but how you get a Holy Trinity out of it is the mysterious part.
I am not going to start mentioning anarthrous predicates and the fine points of the Greek grammar involved. I have done that on several previous occasions. Suffice it to say that my rendering of what the passage actually means now seems to be mainstream among textual scholars. See e.g. here.
And nor is it a modern translation. Another Bible translation is the old Geneva Bible, a translation even older than the KJV. It was the translation that the Pilgrim Fathers mainly used. And in their footnotes they interpret the passage to mean that the Word was of "the selfsame essence or nature" as the creator, which is pretty fair.
Note: I might in passing recommend the latest Zondervan study Bible. It is a massive tome with huge amounts of information. It is a worthy successor to the old Companion Bible. They are going for $33.99 at the moment from Christian Book.
Sunday, March 12, 2017
The origin of Genesis chapter 1
I have the greatest respect for Christians and I certainly don't like upsetting Christians but I am after all an atheist so sometimes I feel that I should treat the Bible in a purely scholarly way rather than as a source of religious truth. It is an immensely important document so deserves all the scholarly examination it can get. And Genesis chapter 1 is one area where scholars find something very different from what Christians believe. So I recommend at this point that Christians read no further what I have to say here.
The need for Genesis chapter 1 arose from the fact that the ancient Israelites always used the Babylonian calendar, which divided the week into 7 days. That calendar was so widespread from about 4,000 years ago that it would have been disruptive to use anything else.
So how did the Babylonian calendar arise? It arose because the Babylonians were pretty keen astronomers, who closely observed the night sky. And the big discovery they made was that most of the stars were fixed relative to one-another but five of them were not. There were five "wandering" stars that kept moving around. We know them as Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Mercury and Venus.
We know that they are planets but the Babylonians had no inkling of that. It seemed to them that entities that moved among the stars must be gods and you had better respect them accordingly. But there were also two other bodies that moved about the sky: The sun and the moon.
So some very holy Babylonian had the bright idea that each of these seven gods should be regularly worshipped in a seven day cycle, so that you kept all the Gods onside. This was seen as a brilliant proposal in the ancient world and so we came to have a 7 day week. Each god got a bit of respect every 7 days. And the sun was obviously the big chief so his day was especially holy. And it still is. Most people still go to church on Sun-day.
But the Israelites were a rather rebellious and cantankerous people (as their own prophets often said) so they refused to have their main religious observations on Sunday. They chose Saturday instead -- to differentiate themselves from all the sun-worshippers around them. The pagans made Sun-day the first day of the week so the Israelites worshipped on the 7th day of the week. That was also Saturn's day but too bad about that. And Jews still worship on Saturday
The apostle Paul however didn't want to keep his followers separate from the heathens all about them. He wanted to attract heathens into his version of religious truth. So having your ceremonies on a different day from everybody else was an embarrassment to recent converts to Christianity. So Paul told the early Christians that what they did was more important than when they did it so you can have your celebrations on any day you like. So Christians gratefully went back to Sunday as their holiest day. It meant that they did not stick out so much from the pagans all around them. So Christians have gone back to a form of Sun worship.
But the Jews never did. But that left them with a problem. They vigorously rejected Sun worship so how come they used the 7 day pagan calendar that the sun worshippers did? They had to find some way of explaining their use of the 7 day calendar that did not go back to the Babylonian gods.
And Genesis chapter one was the answer. There was already a perfectly good creation story in Genesis. In our Bibles it starts from Genesis 2:4. And we know it is the original start of the Bible because it uses the divine name YHVH ("Yod He Vau He" in Hebrew) all the time, as does the rest of the Old Testament. Hebrew originally had no vowels so the original pronunciation of YHVH is a matter of debate but "Yahveh" with the "H" pronounced as in the German "Ach Laut" or the "ch" in the Scottish "loch") is most probable. Englishmen can't say that, however. Modern English has lost all its gutturals. So in English we say "Jehovah".
But tacked on in front of the original brief creation story we now have a much more elaborate creation story that tells us that the creation unfolded in 7 "days" or time periods. Voila! We now have a Jewish explanation for the use of a 7 day calendar! It was the creator himself who divided the days into a 7 day cycle. It was now nothing to do with Babylonian sun worship. Problem solved. The Babylonian explanation for a 7 days calendar had never been challenged before, though. Everybody thought it was obvious. But now there was an exception. The pesky Jews had another story.
So how do we know that Genesis chapter 1 was written as a late bit of Israelite propaganda? Easy. Genesis chapter 1 does NOT use the divine name. One would expect the creation story to be full of the name of the Hebrew god but it is in fact not to be found there. Instead of YHVH we find "elohim", which is just the name for gods generally. It is however the plural form of "god" so could naively be translated as "gods" (the singular is "Eloah", which is where Arabs get "Allah from). But it is common to use plurals as respectful forms of a word or name. The Queen of England, for instance, always refers to herself on formal occasions as "we". So the chapter 1 authors substituted a respectful form of "god" instead of the divine name.
So why is that significant? Because avoidance of the divine name is a bit of Jewish pietism that arose some time around the 3rd century B.C. In order not to use the divine name in vain, Pharisees and their like thought it safest not to use the name at all. So they didn't. And that usage was well ingrained by the time of Christ. So the New Testament does not mention YHVH. It uses "ho theos" (the god) instead, which is how the ancient Greeks referred to the local god being worshipped.
So chapter 1 clearly was written after use of YHVH became impious. It is later than the rest of the Bible, which routinely uses YHVH. And to this day, most Bible translations do not use YHVH where it occurs. The King James Bible uses "the LORD" (in all caps) where YHVH occurs in the original.
So if they were textual scholars, Christians could well argue that Genesis 1 is not really a part of the Bible. It is just a bit of Jewish propaganda. Since the creation story of Genesis 1 is often an embarrassment, that could be useful.
It is probable that the 7 day creation story was not entirely original when it was tacked on to the front of the Bible long after the rest of the Bible had been written. Tacking something new on like that would have been resisted by the priestly guardians of the text. That there was careful guardianship of the text is suggested by the similarity of the text of Isaiah found in the Dead Sea scrolls and the more modern Masoretic text (from about 800 AD).
So the 7 day creation story was likely a respected legend or oral tradition long before it was elaborated and written down for what we now know as Genesis chapter 1.
In support of that view is that we find the 7 day creation story stressed in the Exodus 20 version of the ten Commandments. Exodus is undoubtedly canonical and uses YHVH quite a lot. But could the mention in Exodus be an interpolation? Could it too have been added in later?
Alas! That is all too probable. The version of the 10 Commandments in Deuteronomy 5 does NOT contain mention of a 7 day creation. It commands a 7th day Sabbath only. That is also true of the "expanded" version of the Commandments in Exodus 34 (See verse 21).
So there is no doubt that the 7 day creation story was added on long after the rest of the Old Testament was written -- JR.
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