Were Jesus' Disciples "Illiterate Peasants"?

Many argue that the Gospels could not have been composed by Jesus' disciples on the grounds that those disciples were illiterate, Aramaic-sspeaking, low-class Jewish peasants from Galilee, while the Gospels are written in good enough Greek.
Bart Ehrman gives a telling presentation of this viewpoint:


"These authors [the Gospel writers] were not lower-class, illiterate, Aramaic-speaking peasants from Galilee.  but isn't it possible that, say, John wrote the Gospel as an old man? That as a young man he was an illiterate, Aramaic-speaking day laborer--a fisherman from the time he was old enough to help haul in a net--but that as an old man he wrote a Gospel?...I suppose it is possible.  It would mean that after Jesus' resurrection John decided to go to school and become literate..." [Ehrman, Bart.2009. Jesus Interrupted. Harper One, pp. 106-107]

In short, men like Peter and John couldn't have written anything--especially in Greek--because Aramaic-speaking Jewish peasants from Galilee couldn't have been literate; nor could Matthew or Mark, because they were associated with Peter and John, and hence low-class, monolingual illiterates, too. In fairness, Ehrman notes from Jesus' reading of the Torah in the synagogue that Jesus himself must have been literate (disagreeing with Dominic Crossan, another media star in Gospel research). However, the general assumption is that pre-modern, non-urban, non-elite folk "had to be" illiterate and monolingual.

What a monoculturalist, time-bound assumption this is!  In fact, there are a number of historical, cultural, religious, and sociological reasons that tell against this reconstruction of Jesus and his disciples.

First of all, monolingualism is a condition of peoples who live in very large, geographically extensive, and politically powerful linguistic communities and who belong to highly immobile or insular cultures. A peasant from Henan can be monolingual in Northern Chinese; an American farmer in western Pennsylvania can be monolingual in English.  Speakers of Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Panjabi, Malay, or Turkish might also be able to afford monoglossia.  However, much of humanity, regardless of formal education, must learn second--or even third or fourth languages--due to minority status, residence in a linguistically diverse region, or a position in a border area.  It is worth noting that the Galilean Jews of the first century A.D. fit all of these criteria. As such, they were in a position not too different from many Central Europeans from medieval times to the interwar era, or Hill Tribes in northern Southeast Asia today--who were often polyglot regardless of formal education.

'First century 'Eretz Yisroel seems to have been ideally situated as a home for a people for whom polyglossy would be desirable and monolingualism a handicap. To begin with, while we can safely assume that most inhabitants of first century 'Eretz Yisroel probably spoke forms of Western Aramaic on a day-to-day basis, it is known that the Greek-speaking and Gentile cities of Sepphoris and Tiberia were planted squarely in the midst of Galilee.  Caesarea, the port-city, was a primarily Hellenophone enclave; while to the east there must have been contacts with the Decapolis, a federation of ten Greek-speaking cities dating back to some time after Alexander's conquest of the area .  The Jews themselves were not uniformly Semitic-speakers.  The existence of a large, Greek-speaking diaspora that sometimes resettled in 'Eretz Yisroel is amply attested to in the Book of Acts, in which conflict between linguistic communities appears early (Ac. 7), and from the archaeological record.  For much of Western Diaspora Jewry, Greek rather than Hebrew was even the language of the Bible and religion. Hence, the opportunity to learn and use Greek was not rare and certainly far from implausible.Some Hellenophone Jews moved back to 'Eretz Yisroel itself, forming their own synagogues and existing as a distinct subculture.  The New Testament itself witnesses to a linguistic divide in the primitive Jerusalem church (Acts 6:1), while ossuaries and other epigraphic remains provide archaeological testimony to the use of Greek as well as the Semitic languages.

It is doubtful that Jesus' first followers were invariably poor and socially marginal.  The Gospels mention that when John and James joined Jesus, they left their father Zebedee with the hired men (Mark 1:20).  While fishing may not be a prestige profession, it did not, apparently, condemn its practitioners to mere subsistence. We read also of wealthy women supporting Jesus and his disciples, plus such sympathizers as Joseph of Arimathea or Nicodemus who were members of the Sanhedrin.  In this, Jesus may well have been part of patterns attested to later in Talmudic Jewish history of a rabbi and his disciples supported by family and wealthy friends; and of men from ordinary walks of life who were nonetheless literate, and hence able to move into the ranks of the learned.

Perhaps it might be useful to see Peter and Andrew, James and John, and even Jesus himself not just as primary producers or workingmen, but as businessmen as well.  Fish can be salted and dried, then transported to places distant from the waters in which it was caught.  A skilled craftsman such as a carpenter might well work an itinerary that might take him away from his home village.  In both situations, the need to keep accounts would provide an incentive towards literacy.


When first encountered, Jesus' first disciples are not only fishermen,, but also spiritual seekers.  Andrew and Simon Peter were apparently initially drawn to John the Baptist (John 1:35-42)who also preached the approach of the Messianic age.  This suggests that the sons of Jonah had some familiarity with biblical prophecy and the leisure to ponder its possible implications. These spiritual aspirations in a culture that eschewed images as foci of worship (although first century 'Eretz Yisroel apparently had few objections to art for the purposes of decoration or illustration) would have been yet another incentive for literacy. 


Jesus himself may well have known Greek from an early age.  The Gospel of Matthew notes that the Holy Family spent some time in Egypt fleeing Herod's attempts to kill the infant Jesus.  We know that they returned to 'Eretz Yisroel some time after Herod's death--quite possibly after the lapse of some years. In Egypt, the Holy Family probably would have gravitated towards Alexandria, that vast, polyglot,albeit mostly Hellenophone, which was the center of the Mediterranean world's Jewish diaspora and the place where the Bible itself was first put into Greek two centuries before Jesus' birth. It was home as well to a vibrant Hellenophone Jewish culture attested to by the works of the Jewish philosopher Philo and the writings of Gentile historians and critics.In intertestamental times, the Apocryphal book of Jesus son of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), while evidently first composed in Hebrew, was early translated into Greek and preserved in that language.  The additions to Daniel (Susannah and Bel and the Dragon) also seem to have originally been Greek compositions rather than Hebrew or Aramaic. Even a later son of 'Eretz Yisroel, Josephus, writes an elegant Greek, and defends the Jews against the calumnies of the Egyptian priest Manetho in an interchange that clearly was conducted in Greek. So pervasive is the Greek influence among the Jews that even in 'Eretz Yisroel itself, one of the sages in the times shortly before Jesus' own, Antigonos of Socho, bears a Greek name, as do some of the Jewish protagonists of the First Book of Maccabees.

It is also important to note that while Matthew Two is often taken as a birth narrative (and used as such every Christmas), it is more accurately a narrative of Jesus' childhood, a synopsis of Jesus' earliest years whose chief purpose is to show how the life of the Messiah recapitulates the life of the Israelite nation, the star echoing the prophecy of Balaam in Numbers; the adoration of the Magi reflecting the status of Israel under David and Solomon; the flight into and return from Egypt reflecting the origins of the nation.  Thus, the likelihood is that the Magi from the East found a toddler rather than a newborn; that toddler going on to find his early speech shaped not only by the presumed Aramaic of his earthly parents, but also by the Greek of his likely Egyptian home.


By the time of Jesus, Jewish culture had already become an "exegetical culture".  Its cult had no images, and stressed a sacred text that long had been known and used, even to the point of being translated for the Greek-speaking diaspora community.  While the climate and soils of most of 'Eretz Yisroel are not conducive to the preservation of ordinary scraps of inscribed papyrus and leather (save in the very dry regions close to the Dead Sea and the Negev), it is known from Hellenistic Roman Egypt that large numbers of common people often wrote letters, accounting documents, contracts, and the like (thanks to Egypt's uniquely dry climate, these were preserved); while ostraca probably inscribed by ordinary Jews in 'Eretz Yisroel have also been found.

The image of Jesus and his disciples as illiterate, monolingual peasants must thus be discarded.  Some, doubtlessly, were from very ordinary or even poor backgrounds.  But even in such instances,their Galilaean homeland was well-situated to foster multilingualism, including knowledge of Greek; and the already dispersed condition of their Jewish people would have given them opportunity to encounter and interact with Greek-speakers, even if they may have had few contacts with Gentiles.  Their Jewish culture was literate, possessed a strong historical sense, and even possessed writing for purposes far removed from the religious ones best represented in ancient Jewish Hebrew,Aramaic, and Greek texts.

While a fairly wide literacy among Jewish common people must be conceded to be a possibility (albeit a strong one) rather than a demonstrated certainty, it would be by no means unique among pre-modern peoples.  In Korea during the 15th century A.D., King Sejong promoted the development of the Hangul alphabet in order to foster literacy among Korean commoners, for whom the traditional Classical Chinese traditionally used was inaccessible (and hard enough to learn by young males whose families could afford to educate them, for Korean and Chinese are not linguistically close).  This was a fairly successful project.  Further, Hangul itself seems to have been inspired bythe Phagpa script commissioned by Khubilai Khan to provide a common alphabet for Chinese, Mongolian, and Tibetan. A few monuments in this writing exist, including, interestingly enough, a Christian grave monument from Fujian memorializing an individual with a clearly Han Chinese name.  While the Phagpa script did not take except among users of Tibetan, its imperial sponsorship is yet another example of a ruler seeking to foster literacy among the common people he ruled.

A further consideration is that speakers of Hebrew and Aramaic used alphabets designed for the phonemes of those languages.  The Greeks, while adopting the Semitic alphabet, heavily modified it to suit their own phonemes.  In this, users of all three languages were in a position somewhat different from that of an English speaker, who must find ways to twist an alphabet designed for a language with only five vowels (Latin) to serve his own vowel-rich spoken language.  Perhaps, then, the storm and stress accompanying an Anglophone child's introduction to spelling and decoding may not have been as severe for a child of first-century 'Eretz Yisroel or Alexandira being put to the task of learning to read.

Finally, as recognized leaders in the primitive Christian community, the apostles would have had access to bilingual secretaries and amanuenses.John Mark, identified in Acts as close to the wealthy Cypriot Jew Barnabas, was probably one who was skilled both in the native Semitic of 'Eretz Yisroel and Greek. While it is clear that Paul was a literate and bilingual former student of Gamaliel the Elder, the presence of Apollos of Alexandria in the pages of the New Testament suggests he was not the only lettered and cultured convert gained by the primitive church.  Papias' account that he worked as Peter's interpreter and that his Gospel represents the memories of Peter is thus entirely credible.  His being mentioned at the end of First Peter along with Silvanus makes it highly possible that he and Sylvanus took dictation from Peter, putting his less-fluent Greek into the relatively polished form found in the Epistle as they worked.  Eusebius also identifies Papias of Heliopolis as John's assistant; so it may be that the elegant if simple Greek of the Fourth Gospel hints both at Johanine authorship, as evidenced by the accurate knowledge of pre-70 A.D. 'Eretz Yisroel, and Papaias' editorial help; while the rugged, near-Pidgin of the Book of Revelation may offer John's own, unaided Greek.

Nor should too much weight be placed on the observation of that Peter and John were "unlettered men"  (Acts 4:13).  This merely indicates that they, like their master, were not trained in the Scribal and Pharisaic Academies.  While history is full of academies or systems that gained much prestige in the cultures that nurtured them, education has never been successfully monopolized; even by philosophic schools, churches, and states that actively sought to do so. A Bible-reading, theologically-minded 17th century England could produce an uncommon author in John Bunyan,the tinker of Bedford; a first century 'Eretz Yisroel with its Jewish exegetical culture teeming with Messianic speculation and aspiration could also have produced similar "uncommon common men".

Thus, questions of literacy and skills in second- or third languages should not be seen as insurmountable obstacles for Jesus' first disciples. True, they were not born into the linguistically dominant ctulure; but if the experience of other peripheral peoples offers any guidance, this would provide an incentive to learn Greek as a second language.The environment in which the apostles lived, the needs of their livelihoods, and their religious background all provided incentives to both literacy and second language acquisition (if that second language was Greek). The status they  gained in the early church also gave them access to a number of human resources, if not further educational ones.  Hence,Ehrman's dismissal of the possibility that John may have been a writer ignores much.  Even if the apostles had help from their friends (and Peter's mention of Mark and Silvanus, along with Luke's admitted dependence on earlier witnesses, suggests that these were by no means unrecognized), their position as authors as well as witnesses is no longer so far-fetched.

The Resurrection of fo Jesus Christ

Paul says it best:

Moreover brethren, I declare unto you the godpel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preafhed unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures;
And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:
After that, he was see of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present [ca. some time in the latte 50's or early 60's A.D.--Uncle Cephas], but some are fallen asleep.
After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

(I Corinthians 15:1-8)

Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen:
And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be it that the dead rise not...
If in thie life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.

(I Corinthians 15:12-19)

Uncle Cephas urges his readers to go to the Scriptures and read the whole of the Pauline letters.  They're worth it.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is therefore fundamental to the Christian faith.  Without it, Paul says, we might as well go home.  Indeed, the naturalism of 19th and 20th century liberal theology caused many to join that group which Paul rebuked in Corinth so long ago. The result was the weakening of the churches, the near-suicide of Protestantism, and its replacement by a host of violent "isms" which spilled more blood in the 20th century alone over the right interpretation of Marx than was spilled over wrong theology in the 15 centuries between the conversion of Constantine and the shutting down of the Spanish Inquisition in 1804.

The resurrection of Christ also signals a new beginning for our human race, that there is indeed salvation.  So sure were the first apostles of their message that most of them died martyrs proclaiming it. It also tells us that Jesus Christ is indeed the holder of all authority in heaven and on earth, for even death and Hell are subject to him who conquered them--and now witnesses that he is able to save those who trust him from those final horrors.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ also explains the use of Sunday as the day of rest and worship for Christians.  Just as the original Sabbath proclaimed the original creation, so the day of resurrection proclaims the new creation (Acts 20:7ff.). 

May this, and all other Sundays, be blessed and joyous to you.

A Genuine Epistle of Barnabas? Part II

(III) The Theme of Hebrews

In addition to presenting Jesus Christ as fully divine and fully human, the Bible also presents him in terms of his threefold office of prophet, priest, and king.  The Epistle to the Hebrews focuses chiefly on Jesus' priestly ministry.

The Epistle describes Jesus as our "great high priest" who ministers not in an earthly temple or sanctuary, but in Heaven (Heb. 4:14). This is perhaps one of the most radical teachings of the New Testament.  The letter to the Hebrews seems to have been written to a congregation of Messianic Jews, possible living in 'Eretz Yisrael, who are reminded that the believers in Jesus the Messiah have a share in an altar to which their contemporary levitical priests have no share (Heb. 13:10), who need to be encouraged by the examples of the Patriarchs and Moses who were uprooted from the places where they had been born (Heb. 11:8-19), and who seem to be about to be sent "without the camp" (13:13).  Given that the Epistle gives no hint that the Second Temple had been destroyed, it is likely that its addressees were had been accustomed to access to the Temple but were now being cut off from that former fellowship.  Hence, a congregation of Jewish Christians in or near Jerusalem during the 60's of the first century seems the most likely audience.

Today, it is easy for us to lose sight of what a wrenching experience this would have been for a group of first century Jews.  The function of a modern Jewish rabbi (who is generally not of priestly descent) is radically different from that of the Kohen of biblical times. Whereas modern and Rabbinical Judaism stresses ethical action, that of Moses laid great stress on sacrificial rituals of atonement. This is the burden of much of Exodus and Leviticus.  The needs of this cult called forth the building of the original Israelite sanctuary at Shiloh, and then, under Solomon, the building of the first temple. The Second Temple, rebuilt after the Babylonian exile and greatly expanded under Herod the Great, was the spiritual center of the Jewish world.  It remained the place of atonement, and the focus of pilgrimage by Jews from all over the world. To be denied a share in its cult would thus have been tantamount to being cut off from the Jewish people.

Hence, the writer to the Hebrews seeks to re-assure his hearers that they are gathered about the Messiah himself; and that this Messiah is a priest.

But how can one who is of the kingly lineage of Judah serve as a priest?  Is not the priesthood given to Aaron, the brother of Moses, and descendant of Levi?  The writer to the Hebrews thus goes to some length to note how Jesus could be a priest, even though he was of the kingly tribe of Judah rather than that of Levi, by comparing him to the mysterious Melchizedek of Genesis, to whom Abraham offered a tithe long before either Levi or Judah had been born. He then goes on to remind the readers of how the Levitical rituals were performed, and of the design of the Temple. 

But where is the sacrifice Jesus offers?  He offered himself once and for all, and then sat down at the right hand of God the Father (Heb. 1:3, 10:12).  This is spoken of as the purging of our sins, and a sacrifice for our sins in language reminiscent of the book of Leviticus.Hebrews 9 speaks of how the priests of old sprinkled the sacrificial blood of bulls and goats for the purifying of men and things; then noting "How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" (9:14).

Jesus' sacrifice of himself on the cross is likened to the High Priest's annual entry into the Holy of Holies, which occurred on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. However, whereas the High Priest needed to continually offer sacrifices, Jesus' sacrifice was a unique, one-time event, and complete.  This sacrifice of Jesus is the very thing on which the believer may stake his soul.

Hence, for those who follow Jesus and enjoy the fruits of his atoning work, being sent "without the camp" can be borne.  The believers may have been cut off from their older fellowship, but they are now pilgrims, as were Abraham and the patriarchs, en route to the City of God (Heb. 11:10).  As for the sacrifice of Jesus in which they have trusted, it is complete, final, and in no need of repetition. Hence,while on earth, these exiles and wanderers outside the camp are
in fact worshiping in the heavenly Jerusalem above.

This theme is not alien to the rest of the New Testament. Paul often speaks of the reconciliation of sinners with God through Jesus' death on the cross.  Peter speaks most clearly of substitutionary atonement when he notes that Jesus' death is that of the just for the unjust to bring us to God (I Pt. 3:18), and in bearing our sins in his own body on the tree (I Pet. 2:24).  Jesus himself speaks of how he has come to give his life as a ransom for many (Mk. 10:45).  Perhaps the uniqueness of Hebrews, though, lies in it comparison between Jesus and the High Priest.

(IV) Barnabas the Levite

Perhaps, then, the priestly theme in Hebrews suggests that the author was either a priest or Levite himself.  Clearly, the author was familiar with the Old Testament, especially its sacrificial ritual.  This ritual informs the bulk of his work.

Acts mentions that a number of priests became believers (6:7).  Yet little more is said of this group of men.  Certainly no name from among them stands out; although it would not be surprising if some went on to proclaim Jesus following the persecution following the stoning of Stephen.

Yet one man of the tribe of Levi, of which the kohanim were a subgroup, does stand out.  This is Joses Barnabas (Joseph Bar Naba), a Levite of Cyprus (Ac.4:36).  Apparently, he had settled in Jerusalem, where he joined the church.
Luke tells us in the Acts that the apostles themselves named Joses Barnabas, meaning "son of consolation" or "son of encouragement" (Bar Naba).  The name is also connected to the Hebrew and Aramaic word for prophecy. Barnabas is also identified as the maternal uncle to Mark (Col. 4:10), who in turn was so close to Simon Peter to be called the latter's "son" (I Pt. 5:13).

Barnabas became one whom the apostles sent out to proclaim the Gospel and to visit new churches established in Cyprus, Phonecia, and Antioch (Ac. 11:19-26).  He is there when the believers in Jesus were first called "Christians", and introduces the newly converted Saul of Tarsus, later to be known as Paul, to the original apostles. 


(V) Similarities Between the Author to the Hebrews and Barnabas

Barnabas' Levitical background and closeness to the apostles makes him a good candidate for the authorship of Hebrews. But, more importantly, his rare position as a "second generation" Christian and closeness to both the Jerusalem apostles and to Paul make him a good candidate for authorship of a book or written sermon that while not strictly apostolic, nonetheless was accepted as New Testament Scripture.

Contrary to popular belief, the formation of the New Testament canon was not a late, once-for-all act of the Council of Nicaea or other ecclesiastical council of the early Christian centuries. The canonization of the New Testament (the Old had been received complete from Judaism) was an obscure process that begins with the apostles themselves, and was more a matter of exclusion than inclusion.  The chief canon for acceptance of a New Testament book was its apostolic authorship was, apart from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, apostolicity, or coming from an apostle. None among either the early church fathers or their heretical and semi-heretical opponents expressed any doubt about the genuineness of the Four Gospels, Acts, thirteen letters of Paul, James, First Peter, or First John.  Questions were raised about several shorter epistles, and, most notably, Hebrews and Revelation.  There was also some discussion about The Shepherd of Hermas; and the letters of Clement were accepted in some circles as canonical down to the fourth century (1).  The Epistle of Barnabas that appears in collections of post-New Testament Christian writings appears to have gained currency in some circles during the second century; the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, of which much is made by the Jesus Seminar and its mass media shills, also appears to be of second century provenance,and remained lost until the dry Egyptian climate allowed it to be rediscovered by modern archaeologists (2).

Perhaps someone might raise the question of why Luke-Acts and Mark were included, since their authors were not apostles. The reason is that Mark was known to be closely associated with Peter, while Luke was closely associated with Paul.  This close association with one or more apostles may hold the key to the question of why the letter to the Hebrews could be treated like Scripture as early as the late 60's of the first century by Clement of Rome, whose First Letter is perhaps the oldest Christian writing from outside the New Testament.

In Hebrews 2:3-4, the author of Hebrews describes himself as hearing the Gospel from those who heard it from the Lord, and notes that those first hearers received divine attestation through the signs and wonders they wrought--the "signs of an apostle" which Paul mentions in Second Corinthians 12:12. This position of "second generation" believer who witnessed apostolic signs and wonders by no means excludes people like Luke or Apollos, yet it would certainly include someone like Barnabas. 

A further indication that Barnabas may have been the author of Hebrews lies in its language.  The Greek of Hebrews is elegant and polished, which was one of the arguments raised since ancient times against its Pauline authorship.  Like that of Luke-Acts, it approximates the educated standards of Hellenistic and Roman times.  This is one reason why Luke, in collaboration with Paul, has also been put forward as a possible author for Hebrews.

Some have questioned whether a priest or Levite would write in educated Greek.  Yet the history of the Jews in the last three centuries before Christ and the evidence of the New Testament itself answers this objection, showing that a Jewish education in the Greek language was entirely within the range of possibilities for many people in the first century.

Since the conquest of the Middle East by Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C., Greek had become the lingua franca of all lands around the Mediterranean, and was known as far afield as the Punjab and the Pamirs by persons of many ethnicities. The city of Alexandria in Egypt was the center of a widespread Greek-speaking Jewish diaspora.  The book of Acts speaks of synagogues of Alexandrians, Cyrenians, and Cilicians in Jerusalem, doubtlessly founded by Greek-speaking Jews who had moved to Jerusalem from primarily Greek-speaking lands. Even persons born in Judaea and Galilee often bore Greek names, as those of the apostles Andrew and Philip attest, as well as that of the Rabbinical sage Antigonus of Socho, whose pupil Tzadok is seen in Rabbinical literature as the founder of the Sadducaean sect.

The Jews of the Mediterranean world--including, apparently, some in 'Eretz Yisrael itself--took to the Greek language to the point where the Scriptures had to be translated into that language.  The Septuagint, so-named because it was traditionally ascribed to seventy scholars assembled by King Ptolemy Philadelphos at Alexandria in 200 B.C., while uneven in quality as a translation, has many parts that reveal both a high degree of skill and a sensitivity to the Hebrew from which it was translated.  This indicates that by the time it was produced, there were sufficient numbers of Jews who both required its production and who possessed the necessary linguistic and exegetical skills to produce it.  This work both instructed synagogues and informed inquiring Gentiles for several centuries. Throughout the New Testament, when the Old is cited, it is usually in the Septuagint version.  In Hebrews, virtually all Scriptural citations are from that version. The Septuagint became the official Bible of Mediterranean Christians early, and its use by this community caused non-Christian Jews to abandon the Septuagint in favor of later versions by Theodotion and Symmachus.


If Barnabas was indeed the author of Hebrews, he would not have been the only Jewish author to fluently master the Greek language.  Apart from the other authors of the New Testament, other Jewish writers who used Greek included the philosopher Philo of Alexandria, the historian Flavius Josephus, Jason of Cyrene who chronicled the history of the Maccabbees, and Ezekiel the Tragedian. His birth and upbringing in Cyprus would have increased the likelihood that he had a greater familiarity with Greek than with either Aramaic or Hebrew, and would increase the likelihood that his biblical education featured the Septuagint.

The author of Hebrews must have had a close association with the Apostle Paul; and, once again, Barnabas fits.  The ascription of Hebrews to Paul stems from the clear affinities between its teachings and that of Paul, noted even by ancient writers who challenged its Pauline authorship. The argument against Pauline authorship stresses that the author of Hebrews admits he received the Gospel from those who had heard Christ rather than through revelation (Heb. 2:3-4, comp. Gal. 1:11-12), and notes signs and wonders as attestation to that earlier group of the Lord's hearers, rather than claiming such works for himself, a clear contrast to Paul's claim of having exhibited the miraculous "signs of an apostle" (II Cor. 12:12).  The evidence of another of Paul's associates, Clement of Rome, has been cited above.

This admittedly does not rule out Apollos, the Alexandrian Jew instructed by Paul at Ephesus, whom Martin Luther put forth as a possible author for Hebrews.  Adolf von Harnack's suggestion that Priscilla was the author cannot be completely ruled out either, although the linguistic usages of the book more strongly suggest a male author. Barnabas is more likely chiefly because of the book's use of Temple ritual to illustrate the atoning work of Christ.

But, there is perhaps one other witness to possible authorship by Barnabas, and that is the second century work that bears his name--and has also been recognized as pseudepigrapha from ancient times.

Hebrews compares the finished work of Jesus Christ to the Temple rituals followed prior to Jesus' coming.  The later so-called "Barnabas" stresses "two ways", that contrast Christianity and Judaism, stressing the superiority of the former, for a time when the two faiths had become increasingly distinct. Perhaps this self-conscious making explicit some themes that are implicit in Hebrews and then ascribing them to the first century associate of Paul could reflect and earlier tradition that Hebrews is Barnabas' work--which was explicitly stated by the African church father Tertullian shortly after the pseudepigraphal Barnabas appeared.

(VI) Conclusion

Granted, the identification of Barnabas as author of Hebrews is at best a possible conjecture based on the epistle's use of levitical ritual as a tpe of Christ's work, knowledge of Scripture, mastery of Greek, and likely association with Paul--all of which suggest the Hellenistic Levite Joses Barnabas of Cyprus.   Admittedly, it answers a question that cannot be answered save by God Himself, as many others have noted.  Yet the possibility that Barnabas wrote Hebrews is a defensible position, and should be kept open for all who value the New Testament.  




















NOTES:

(1)  The possibility that some regarded Clement as canonical is chiefly attested to its inclusion in certain ancient codices of the Bible.  Yet some caution should be exercised here. Other medieval codices, dating from times when the canon was set and unquestioned, may also hold other non-biblical material. What will later archaeologists think of English-speaking Christians' canon when they find tattered copies of the Authorized Version bearing the Epistle Dedicatory to King James?  Will they argue that the question of canon was not settled by the 17th century?  I have seen Korean believers with their Bibles and hymnals bound as a single volume.  Will our hypothetical future archaeologists wonder if a certain collection of Korean hymns was also a latter-day inspired Psalter?

(2) While some make much of "lost books of the Bible" and charge church leaders of times past with "suppressing" these works, the fact is that such "lost books" were never truly "lost"; and many were respected as orthodox rather than condemned. Some, such as the letters of Clement, were known, read, and preserved by literate Christians from the time they were first penned.  Some, like the writings of Papias, and associate of John the apostle, seem to have been lost by accident, save for fragments preserved by later authors. Many of these books were always valued highly by orthodox believers, yet never granted the same regard as the apostolic writings that became the New Testament. Hence, something like the Shepherd of Hermas was probably originally seen as an edifying novel, much as highly biblicist heirs of the Puritans honor Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.  A work like the letters of Clement, Polycarp, or Papias would be honored the way modern Christians might respect the theological or ethical works of modern authors.  Some, like various apocryphal and pseudepigraphical Gospels, Acts, and epistles of the second and third centuries were always recognized for what they were, and, in the words of F.F. Bruce "excluded themselves".

A Genuine Epistle of Barnabas? Part I

(I) Introduction

Students of early Christian literature know of an Epistle of Barnabas written, most likely, some time in the early second century A.D. Its date makes it highly unlikely that it was written by the Joseph Barnabas, the "son of encouragement", mentioned in Acts 4:36-37. A so-called "Gospel of Barnabas" has gained currency in Islamic circles, but it is clearly a medieval forgery, most likely produced by an educated apostate Latin Christian who was utterly unfamiliar with the geography of 'Eretz Yisrael.

However, it is possible that Barnabas has left us a genuine literary monument in the Epistle to the Hebrews.  This work is in the form of a sermon rather than a letter, and does not identify its author save that he is associated with Timothy and certain persons from Italy.  Its author is rightly said to be known only to God, but scholars ancient and modern have suggested a number of authors, especially Paul.  This essay, however, seeks to make a case that Barnabas may have been the author of Hebrews. 

Virtually all we know of the Barnabas to whom these works are attributed is found in the Book of Acts and Epistles of Paul in the New Testament. His introduction in Acts 4: 36-37 reads:

And Joseph, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas (which is, being interpreted, Con of exhortation), a Levite, a man of Cyprus by race, having a field, sold it, and laid it at the apostles' feet (ASV).

Later, he appears as he brings the newly converted Saul of Tarsus (Paul), the former persecutor of the church, into the circle of the disciples at Jerusalem. When Paul is sent out to preach the Gospel to the nations--the true meaning of "Gentiles"--Barnabas accompanies him from Antioch to Cyprus and southern Asia Minor before returning to their base at Antioch.  However, Paul and Barnabas fall out with each other over Barnabas' wanting to take his nephew Mark on the next missionary journey; for Paul apparently decided that Mark's having earlier left them in Pamphylia meant that he was unreliable. 

Barnabas also gets some mention in Paul's letters of First Corinthians, Galatians, and Colossians.  The last-mentioned is perhaps the most significant, for there Mark is described as Barnabas' nephew, and, apparently, reconciled to Paul prior to Paul's imprisonment.

(II) The Problem of the Authorship of Hebrews

Readers of the King James Bible are familiar with the superscription to the epistle, which identifies it as having been written by Paul.  Further, numerous others have supported its Pauline authorship.  But writing in the fourth century, but dependent on a wide range of earlier sources, Eusebius of Caesarea states:

...And the fourteen letters of Paul re obvious and plain, yet it is not right to ignore that some dispute the Epistle to the Hebrews, saying that it was rejected by the church of Rome, as not being by Paul, and I will expound at the proper time what was said about it by our predecessors (1).

Clearly, Eusebius accepted the Pauline authorship of Hebrews, but nonetheless noted the doubts which placed it among the Antilegomena, those books of the New Testament whose apsotolicity was questioned. Of Origen's (184/85-253/54 A.D.) opinion, he writes:


...he discusses the Epistle to the Hebrews in his Homilies upon it: "That the character of the diction  of the epistle entitled To the Hebrews has not the apostle's [Paul's] rudeness in speech, who confessed himself rude in speech, that is, in style, but that the epistle is better Greek in the framing of its diction, will be admitted by everyone who is able to discern differences in style.  but again, on the other hand, that the thoughts of the epistle are admirable, and not inferior to the acknowledged writings of the apostle, to this everyone will cocnsent as true who has given attention to the reading of the apostle...But as for myself, if I were to state my opinion, I should say that the thoughts are the apostle's, but that the style and composition belong to one who called to mind the apostles teaching..."(2)

Questions about the authorship of Hebrews, then, have been around for about as long as it has been read.

During the Reformation,Calvin writes:

As to its author, we need not be greatly worried.  Some think that the author was Paul, others Like, others Barnabas, and others Clement, as Jerome says...I can adduce no reason to show that Paul was its author; for those who say that he designedly suppressed his name because it was haateful to the Jews, make no relevant case (3).

Calvin wrote as a careful student of New Testament Greek and the early church fathers. In his opinion, he follows Desiderius Erasmus, Cardinal Cajetan, and Martin Luther, other 16th century writers representing respectively Renaissance humanism, Roman Catholicism, and the Reformation in reviving ancient doubts about Paul's authorship of Hebrews. Luther went so far as to suggest Apollos, a learned Jewish Christian of Alexandrian associated with Paul, as the author.

However, a point that stands out among all the doubts cast on the Pauline authorship of the letter is that its thought is close to that of Paul and the other apostles as expressed elsewhere in the New Testament. While such other antilegomena (as opposed to the notha, or spurious works) such as the Shepherd of Hermas and Epistle of Barnabas were excluded from the canon, Hebrews came to occupy an important place.  Edgar Goodspeed notes that it is listed as second of the Pauline epistles in a recently discovered canon dated to roughly 200 B.C.  But, more importantly, the First Letter of Clement, probably the earliest Christian writing outside those that make up the New Testament, echoes its thought and language in its thirty-sixth chapter.  This work includes numerous echoes of other works of the Old and New Testaments, although its direct citations from the New Testament are few.  Clement's echoing of Hebrews suggests that by the end of the first century (or, perhaps, even before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.),Hebrews was held in high esteem, and probably recognized as coming from someone within the apostolic circle.

Tertullian (160-225 A.D.), the North African Latin lawyer who was among the first important Christian authors to use Latin, was an early witness to Barnabas' being the author of Hebrews (On Sexual Modesty/Pudicity), albeit only in passing, mentioning that Paul and Barnabas were examples of sexual abstinence. 

However, the information about Barnabas himself and the character of the Epistle to the Hebrews are perhaps the most important hints that Barnabas may have been the author. These include his Cypriot origins, levitical background, and the attention which Hebrews pays to the Temple cult.

(to be continued)


 








NOTES:

(1) Eusebius,1975.  Ecclesiastical History. ed. and trans. Kirsopp Lake. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, vol. I, 193.

(2) ibid., II,77.

(3) Calvin, Jean. 1974. The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews. trans. William B. Johnston.  Grand Rapids, MI, Wm. B. Eerdmans. 1.

Are Paul and Jesus Antithetical? Introduction

Albert Schweitzer once said that Paul told us virtually nothing about Jesus. Walter Kaufmann once called fundamentalism the triumph of Paul over Christ. These are only two of myriad modern voices that see a fundamental antagonism between the religion of Jesus and the religion of Paul. Perhaps, to Americans, Thomas Jefferson, with his truncated "Bible" made up of various ethical maxims of Jesus, is the most famous of the "Paul against Jesus" school.

Are Paul and Jesus in fact antithetical? Certainly the major media (Peter Jennings' recent broadcast and the editors of major news magazines come to mind)leave the impression that the Jesus whom Christians have worshiped and studied for two millennia is a falsehood unmasked by our knowing, "scientific" age. Yet, could it not be that such a view is credible only to an era which has lost a basic familiarity with the New Testament?

To return to Albert Schweitzer, he also commented that the various 18th, 19th, and early 20th century scholars who sought to create a "historical" Jesus stripped of miraculous and theological trappings only looked down the well shaft of 20 centuries to see their own faces reflected in the bottom. Schweitzer, in his _Quest for the Historical Jesus_ challenged the humanitarian and humane Jesus of his theologically liberal colleagues by seeing in Jesus a frustrated apocalyptic prophet of doom, thereby focusing on an aspect of Jesus' life and teaching ignored by the academic biblical scholarship of his day, and shocking his academic colleagues. The current essay sees in Schweitzer's caveat concerning the scholarly consensus at the beginning of the 20th century an important warning which has too often gone unheeded.

Yet despite Schweitzer's putting a period on the "old quest for the historical Jesus", newer "quests" emerged. Academic German theology of the interwar period found in Jesus an "Aryan" rebel against Judaism, and while extolling Luther's _On the Jews and their Lies_, blamed Rabbi Paul for "Judaizing" the original Gospel promulgated by an "Aryan" Galilaean; despite the same Paul being the fountainhead of so much of the historical Luther's theology. Nor did this so-called Positive Christianity die with the Third Reich, the execution of Vidkun Quisling (one of its prominent advocates), and the chastised admission of guilt for the Holocaust offered by the German Protestant churches in the postwar era. Instead, it took on a new life with the New Left of the 1960's and '70's, which sought to portray Jesus as a fellow "revolutionary", a Jewish guerrilla fighter against the Romans, an impulse that continued down through the late Yasser Arafat's assertion that Jesus was the first "Palestinian freedom fighter" (and Arafat's amnesia about Jesus being a Jew).

The attempt to find a "merely" human Jesus continues today in the media embrace of Jesus as the tortured neurotic displayed in Scorcese's _Last Temptation of Christ_ (based on Nikos Kazantzakis' novel of the same title) and the Jesus Seminar, in which nothing challenging to the mix of worldly-wise cynicism and New Age credulity of the post-modern era is allowed to stand as "authentic".

In all of these efforts there to divorce the "Jesus of history" from the "Christ of faith", there seems to be a common attempt to divorce Jesus from Paul. Jesus, it is argued, presented a "simple" and "practical" faith of love and good works, the definitions of which are invariably compatible with our own era's notions of right and wrong, while Paul somehow turned Jesus' "simple" teachings into something spooky, priestly, and other-worldly. And, it is argued, the Christianity of following ages following ages opted for Paul over its nominal savior. Paul (plus the much later Augustine of Hippo) is blamed for everything from medieval persecutions to modern fundamentalism's stubborn unwillingness to "get with" the sexual revolution.

These originally Christian crises of faith have further been taken over by Islamic polemicists, who gleefully report that "Christian" experts have come around to the Islamic position that Jesus was only a human prophet; and perhaps hope that a generation of confused Christians will buy into such medieval forgeries as the supposed "Gospel of Barnabas" (apparently the work of a 12th century Italian or Spanish convert to Islam) and become Muslims.

But is this "simple human Jesus" at all credible? The standpoint of this series is that such a creature is only the creation of modern prejudice, ignorance, and credulity. Indeed, the older quest for the historical Jesus was cowed by the insistence of the 19th century Treitschkes and Bauers that nothing supernatural could be "historical". The more recent quest seems animated by a nagging doubt that liberal religion receives no aid or comfort from anything in the canonical New Testament; hent the Jesus' Seminar's frantic clutching at straws like the historically late Coptic Gospel of Thomas, and finding in it teachings sympathetic to modern feminism, despite its position that Mary must become male to enter the Kingdom!

The time has come to admit that Jesus is known to us chiefly from the New Testament as a whole; that other sources, whether Gnostic, Rabbinic, or pagan Graeco-Roman, are at best secondary. Hence, a new look at the connections between Jesus and Paul (such as that undertaken by F.F. Bruce in the 1970's) rather than their antitheses is in order. For those who accept the Gospels as creations of the late first century, Paul is actually the earliest witness to the person and work of Jesus the Messiah. While there are weighty and compelling reasons for dating the Gospels far earlier than the 70's-90's of the first century, this by no means reduces Paul's status as an important witness to who Jesus was and is.

To understand the connections between Paul and the Jesus he worshiped, several important New Testament themes will be explored:

1. Jesus as Messiah of Israel

2. Apocalypse in both Jesus and Paul

3. The Divinity of Jesus

4.Jesus as savior of the elect

5. Emphases of the Gospels and of Paul

6. Structure of the Gospel narratives

7. Ethical emphases of Paul

8. How credible are late "Gospels"?

It should be noticed that several topics involve matters disturbing to the modern reader. This, however, is done to remind both believing and unbelieving readers that Jesus was not a man of the 20th or 21st century (nor of the 18th or 19th, for that matter), but one born in the days of Caesar Augustus of Rome and Herod the Great of Judaea. While Paul's seeing that time as "the fulness of time" (Gal. 4:4) may make the unbelieving reader feel insulted while making the believing reader feel humbled, no understanding of Jesus and the community whose members saw him as important is possible unless the time and place, with its hopes and fears, is taken into consideration.

Reading Revelation

Our adult Sunday School class is working its way through the book of Revelation. Last week, we read the fifth chapter.

I came away from the study thinking that John's purpose is showing the Lord Jesus Christ as the proper focus for worship. The angels, living creatures, and elders before Christ's throne fall before him crying, "Worthy is the Lamb!" This is an echo of the doxology sung to the Father in Chapter 4. Jesus Christ, slain for our sins as the Lamb of God, risen and glorified, shares worship with the father, his seven horns (symbols of power) and eyes sending for the Spirit. Few other passages of Scripture underscore that Jesus Christ is God.

Jesus in Glory is not only the Son of Man figure from Daniel 7, whom we see again in Revelation 1. He is also the sacrifice for our sins. John's description of Jesus as the Lamb of God in both John 1 and Revelation 5 cannot have confused his earliest readers, who, as Jews living when the ministry of the Jerusalem Temple was still a living memory, would have known of its animal sacrifices, especially the ritual killing of the Passover lambs. The adored one who is worthy is the one whose shed blood covers the sins of his people and renders them worthy to approach and worship.

Jesus is also the one worthy to open the book with seven seals. What is this book? I take it as a symbol of the whole Scripture. This is because no other book of Scripture is as rich with reference to other portions of the Bible than Revelation. I remember Mormon missionaries during my youth who argued passionately that John's warnings in Revelation 22:18-19 referred only to John's own work. Yet this cannot possibly be true when Revelation shows a heavenly figure measuring the temple and those worshiping therein as in revelation; Jesus describing himself as beginning and end as YHWH does in Isaiah; the reminder of the covenanted community's status as kings and priests as mentioned in Exodus; worship scenes reminiscent of the building of Solomon's Temple and the Book of Psalms; strange beasts as in Daniel; and mention of the death and resurrection of Jesus as in the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament. John knew what he was doing: he was putting the capstone on Scripture, and reading the whole through his knowledge of Jesus slain for our sins and triumphant over sin and death.

Perhaps the reason why our witness today lacks power is that our exposition of apocalyptic ignores the Gospel of Christ's finished work. Heaven sings in triumph before Jesus who shed his blood for sinners and conquered death for them. We on earth tremble and quake, as if we have no hope to share with those around us. May God forgive us.

The image reproduced above is the Ghent Altarpiece, by Jan van Eyck.

What is the Gospel?

I have recently been reading up on Islam--what kind of thinking American hasn't in the wake of 9/11?--and actually have come to recognize a few commonalities between that religion and the kind of liberalized Christianity prevalent in the America of my childhood and youth.

One of the chief commonalities is a misconception that the "original Gospel" was a set of humanly accessible rules given by a uniquely good man named Jesus or Nazareth/ Jesus Son of Mary/ Jesus the Carpenter, etc.

But, later, I discovered the much-maligned Evangelicalism. This is the belief that salvation is applied to us by receiving the Word of God rather than the practice of a certain set of ceremonies under the direction of a specially ordained set of men (sacerdotalism), or our following a prescribed set of ethical rules which, it seems, nobody knows for sure (theological liberalism). The word "Evangelical" means "of the Gospel". Hence, it is the view that the Gospel saves.

But what is the Gospel, really?

Here is the New Testament's own answer to that question:

"Moreover brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
And that he was seen of Cephas [not me; the original one--UC], then of the twelve:
After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto the present, but some are fallen asleep.
After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.
And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time."
(I Corinthians 15:1-8)

Paul here tells us that the Gospel is not a code, but an announcement. It is the story of the saving acts of God in Jesus Christ.

First of all, note the stress on the death of Jesus Christ for our sins. This is truly crucial (pun intended). The Gospel is not about people "cleaning up their act" by performing a checklist of do's and don't's, but of the atonement for our sins by Jesus' satisfaction of divine justice in bearing the death and curse due to all those who violate the divine law. And it is also about his triumph over death, which assures us that not only is our penalty paid; but that the sins and condemnation which he bore for us remain buried, while Jesus himself, our substitute and representative, rose body and soul from the dead. As God and man in one person, Jesus is the lens through which God now looks at us; seeing our sins paid for and accepting us as righteous in Jesus.

The words "according to the Scriptures" cast us back to the Old Testament; especially the system of sacrifices for kipporeth (atonement) described in Leviticus and passages such as Psalm 22, Hosea 6:2,and Isaiah 53. Jesus' saving work is not something that hangs in a vacuum, or stands as an abstraction, but stands in the flow of a specific history of divine acts that are recorded for us. This Gospel does not nullify the need for the previous revelation, but appeals to it, and calls us to make use of it in our worship, worldview, and ethics. How different is the Christian church from Islam, in that the first freely uses what it sees as prior revelation while the latter discourages such use!

And the Gospel is something to which God left witnesses. First there were the living apostles and five hundred to whom Paul points his original first century readers. Since then, there remain the New Testament writings.

If the Gospel were merely a set of rules about meat and drink, the proper posture for prayer, and how to wipe out which sins by the practice of certain good works of our own doing, it truly deserves to perish. But this is not what the Spirit of God has proclaimed. Rather, the Gospel is the announcement of God's saving work in Christ. May many, many more embrace this glorious news that in Jesus Christ, God has truly visited and redeemed his people.

A Christmas Meditation

Matthew 1:1-21

I don't really make that much about Christmas. It was not commanded in Holy Scripture, so its observance cannot be imposed on the conscience. However, I have nothing afainst people who choose certain times to focus on the great events of Jesus Christ's life among us; and Christmas is a time when many are open to hearing something about the Savior, so here goes with a meditation.

I love the Gospel stories about the birth of Christ--Matthew 2 and Luke 2. I love the prologue to John, the Gospel that reminds us up front how Jesus isn't just man, but God Incarnate and "pitching his tent" among us.

But, believe it or not, I really love Matthew One, with all of its boring "begats".

Why, Uncle Cephas? Are you just a dull old man?

The Genealogy of Jesus reminds us of several things, not least of which is how God the Son chose to identify with real, flesh-and-blood people, despite all of our fallenness and misery.

Jesus, like all the rest of us, has a history. His genealogy in Matthew One shows us that this history is the long, long history of ancient Israel. His line begins with Abraham, passes through Kings David and Solomon, the greatest of Israel's kings, and moves on down to that point which the Apostle Paul calls "the fullness of time", when world-empire belonged to Rome and Herod the Great sat on the throne of Judaea. Jesus identified with a people and its story.

This, perhaps, is why Matthew plays with the idea of fourteen major generations from Abraham to the Babylonian Exile, then fourteen from the Exile to the Messiah (which is just the Anglicization for M'shiach, or "Anoiinted One", which in Greek is "Christos"). Seven is the number of perfection, fourteen is perfection doubled. Matthew's point isn't that he's playing a game of "Catch me if you Can in my Knowledge of Biblical genealogy"--one, by the way, that he loses, since many a Bible student has found gaps in his genealogy--but that the flow of Hebrew history isn't random, but follows a divine plan that meets its fulfillment in the Redeemer of the world.

As an American, I know this doesn't particularly flatter me; nor does it flatter my dear spouse who was born Chinese. But it is a reminder that God has his own purposes in history, and they are not necessarily purposes there to aggrandize me and mine. But it should be enough for us that God was concerned enough with us as historical persons that when he chose to become one of us, that he did not ignore history with all its lumps, warts, and imperfections. And, perhaps, in choosing a relatively small nation for his own, he reminds us that our notions of power, greatness, and national glory are not necessarily his.

Apart from God's guiding hand in human history, Jesus' genealogy reminds us that God chose to identify with sinners.

Many have the idea that the Savior of mankind had to come from the great and good. As a descendant of kings and Persian satraps from David to Zorobabel (Zerubbabel in the Old Testament), Jesus does descend from the great. But a reading of the Old Testament reminds us that Jesus does not necessarily descend from the good. The incarnation of God the son is not about congratulating mankind on a job well done, but about the redemption of sinners.

Judah and Tamar (Judas and Thamar in verse 4, following the Greek spellings) show us a sordid tale of deception, anger, and violation, in which a man lies with his daughter-in-law when she is disguised as a prostitute (Genesis 38). We see as well Rachad (Rahab) the harlot, who with her house was the only survivor of the city of Jericho following its capture by Joshua. And from which of David's numerous marriages did the Savior come? From David's adultery with Bathsheba and and the murder of Uriah the Hittite (Urias in the Greek spelling)--the very crime for which, as Nathan the prophet announced, the blood would not depart from David's house (II Samuel 11).

Following these unedifying tales come the kings of Judah. What a contrast the books of Samuel and Kings offer to the boasting chronicles of virtually every other ancient nation! Yes, wise Solomon, and the pious kings Asa, Hezekiah, and Josiah are mentioned. But Solomon, for all his wisdom, was the one who multiplied wives and horses, contrary to the mitzvot of Deuteronomy 17, and whose foreign wives--the staple of ancient Middle Eastern diplomacy--distanced him from the God he originally served. And Solomon's glorious, extensive kingdom, stretching from the wadis of the Sinai peninsula (the Brook of Egypt) to the Euphrates River, came into the hands of his son Rehoboam (Roboam), who ignored the counsel of the older, wiser men and took that of his contemporaries, that he might oppress the people of Israel, showing a "little finger thicker than [his] father's waist" and putting aside the whips with which Solomon chastised men to chastise them with scorpions. And to this, the ten northern tribes answered with secession under Jeroboam.

Most of the other kings are not remembered as good men. Throughout the books of the kings sound the gloomy refrains "he did evil in the sight of the LORD" or "He walked in the way of Jeroboam, who taught Israel to sin". They culminate in Manasseh, who, the Old Testament tells us, walked in all the Canaanite abominations, for which Israel was commanded to cleanse the land. It was for the sins of Mannaseh that Judah herself was condemned to destruction and exile.

And here is a reflection of how Jesus puts the importance of family in persepctive--especially since Christmas is a time of family gatherings and remembrances. Many of us wish to think of ourselves as good people, who descend from good people, and whose families are exemplars of what is right rather than of what is wrong. Hence the ancestral cult found in many cultures across the globe. Hence the importance to many of "good family". But Jesus' genealogy reminds us that we worship a transcendent and holy God rather than dead men; and that we need not walk in the sins and follies of our fathers.

The genealogy ends with the naming of Jesus. He is the namesake of Joshua, who led Israel into the promised land, bearing a name that means "YHWH saves", for Jesus' mission is to save his elect people from all nations, kindreds, people, and tongues from their sins (Mt.1:21; Rev. 7:9). This he accomplished in his life of obedience to divine law in the place of our law-breaking, his sacrificial death on the cross in which he bore our sins, and his resurrection--body AND soul--from the dead.

Reading this genealogy, I am floored by how the sinless Son of God identifies with sinful men. If any had the right to disown his family, it was Jesus Christ. Yet he did not; and through his apostle, shows us his identification with sinners for the sake of their salvation. I pray that from meditation on this passage, I and other Christians would put aside the "holier than thou" facade that comes too easily. It is not the case that we were wiser and better than others that brings us to salvation, but rather that our salvation comes from God's grace shown in Christ. I pray that this witness would be effectual to the salvation of many more.

Matthew One is the great testimony to the humanity of Jesus Christ (even if Matthew confesses Jesus' divinity in recording the apostles' awestruck "who is this, that even winds and waves obey him?"), just as John One is the great testimony to his divinity (even if John also records Jesus' humanity in his weeping over the death of Lazarus). As the Epistle to the Hebrews says, it reminds us that despite our sin and shame, the Lord is not ashamed to call us brethren, and partakes of our nature for the sake of bringing us salvation (Hebrews 2:12 ff.). It is my prayer that many will hear this message in this time of year, and that Christmas of 2010 may be the start of spiritual renewal and salvation for many.

Theology for Dummies--Four

This is short one to explain why Christians do not say "Peace be Upon Him" when speaking of Jesus.

God the Word took on human flesh and dwelt among us for this reason:

"Inasmuch as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject o bondage...Therefore, in all things he had to be made like His brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted." (Hebrews 2:14-18).

The obedience Jesus showed to the Father when He was on earth, His death on the cross as atonement for our sins, and his resurrection from the dead save us. Therefore, it behooves us to call for His peace on us; not to pretend that we can give our peace to Him.

Theology for Dummies--Three

Jesus Christ

Christians believe that Jesus is both God and man. The Gospel of John describes how he existed as the eternal Word of God prior to creation, and then became flesh, dwelling among us. It is why he is spoken of as God the Son, the second person of the Trinity. To his critics, Jesus said:

Before Abraham was, I AM (John 8:58).

The grammar is as shocking in Greek as it is in English--but it is completely intentional. Jesus is claiming an identity with the one who revealed his name as "I AM" in the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). The letter to the Hebrews begins with a series of quotations from the Old Testament to describe the Son, including quotes from a Psalm that is addressed to YHWH (see Heb. 1:8,10-12; Ps. 102:25-27).

As for the humanity of Jesus, there is very little dispute over this. The second chapter of Hebrews, following on the heels of the confession of Jesus' divinity in chapter one, is an exposition of Jesus' humanity and identification with the people he came to save. The first chapter of Matthew, identifying Jesus as the heir of Abraham and David, further shows God's concern with real, historic humanity in sending the savior. Hence, Christians confess that Jesus possesses a complete divine nature and a complete human nature in one person.

Of course the humanity of Jesus includes as well his identity as the Messiah of Israel promised in texts as diverse as Isaiah 53, Psalm 2, Psalm 110, and others.

Jesus' work is also described in terms of the covenantal offices of prophet, priest, and king. As prophet, he delivers the word of God. As priest, he offers sacrifice on behalf of his people, and as a king he saves and defends his people.

These, however, shall be treated individually later.