Connecting laypeople to Biblical scholarship
This entry is adapted from a longer one here.
Consider the following texts:
2 Samuel 24:1 ESV
Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, number Israel and Judah.”
1 Chronicles 21:1 NRSVUE
Satan stood up against Israel and incited David to count the people of Israel.
These texts record the same event. Yet, the first account says it was God who incited David, while the second says it was Satan. Which is it?
I recently learnt that the church did not pay attention to the Gospel of Mark for centuries because it assumed that Mark was merely an abbreviated version of Matthew. This caused my mind to entertain several thoughts. Could it be, for instance, that after over 2000 years, we still may be deficient in our understanding of the faith? Consider the following passage:
Matthew 12:1-8 ESV
[1] At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. [2] But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” [3] He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: [4] how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? [5] Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? [6] I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. [7] And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. [8] For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
At my core—and in my deepest hopes—I am a Charismatic Christian. I long to walk alongside fellow followers of Jesus who wholeheartedly celebrate that God is still present and active in our lives today, still healing and saving. My desire is for a faith that touches both my mind and my heart. One of the gifts of the Word of Faith movement is its encouragement to trust God boldly, to believe that God cares about every aspect of our lives—health, relationships, and even our daily needs. I have witnessed genuine joy and a beautiful simplicity of belief in many of these communities, and it would take an unhealthy dosage of skepticism to maintain that none of the claimed results in these circles is genuine. I cannot dismiss the real and meaningful experiences that so many have shared. With care and respect, however, I feel compelled to thoughtfully examine some of the movement’s core theological beliefs, as I believe they deserve a closer examination and an honest conversation.
Abraham is a significant figure in Judaism, including the form that has evolved into the mutated form we know today as Christianity. The gospel of Jesus was first preached to Abraham as God sovereignly chose to set his redemption plans in motion through Abraham. Generations of Bible readers have also noted the atypical commitment of Abraham to perform what God required of him in the Aqedah story. This story raises many moral questions, as we discussed elsewhere. These points, along with many others, including Abraham’s mention in the “Hall of Faith” chapter of the book of Hebrews, have led many in the church to downplay his not-quite godly episodes. One of such episodes is how he treated Hagar.
Many scholars today believe that the book of Esther was written as a play, not history. There are several reasons why this makes sense, but we will not focus on those here. While the Protestant canon places Esther alongside historical books like Ezra and Nehemiah, the Hebrew Bible Canon places the book alongside Wisdom literature. It is also worth noting that there are several known versions of the Book of Esther, each with notable differences. For instance, preachers have often pointed out that the book of Esther is a book of the Bible that does not mention God at all; God is an invisible hand writing the story. However, in some of the other versions, God is explicitly invoked in the story.
Furthermore, Esther and the Song of Solomon are books that were hotly contested during the process of establishing the Hebrew Bible canon. One apparent reason is that these books are rather sexual, and some of the deciding powers did not think that sex and spirituality walk together. In the case of Esther, there might have been another reason people resisted its canonization: the story is about heroines, not a hero.
That’s right. I think there are two heroines in the book of Esther, though we have often focused on one and maligned the other. The Jewish girl, Esther, certainly deserves the praises that have been accorded her since the book was written. She risked her life by approaching the Persian king unbidded:
Presumably, some people, including irreligious ones, would answer the question in the negative: God is not male. In that case, that form of the question may not be the most helpful. What if we modify the question slightly and ask instead: Are men more like God than women are? I suspect that this formulation might yield more fruitful results. The matter before us subtly influences other beliefs; some are harmful and dangerous.
I first became aware of this matter in an undergraduate Hebrew Bible Writings class. The ethnically Jewish, non-religious professor made a comment that set off the rabbit hole: “The name ‘Yahweh’ in Hebrew is as grammatically masculine as “Richard” is in America.” I had not listened closely enough to realize that grammatical and biological genders are separate. My mind immediately went down a long rabbit hole. It seemed to me that whatever it meant to say God was masculine could not exactly mean how we ordinarily use the term for humans. The reason seemed simple: God is a spirit. To be a spirit is to be unembodied. I had to admit, on the other hand, that God is consistently called a Father and Jesus was a male human for 33 years. I managed to get out of the hole by pushing the issue aside so I could focus on the lecture. Now is the time to carefully unpack this crucial matter.
Language Matters: What Does it Mean to be Male?
Many of us today use the terms “male/man” and “female/woman” synonymously – and this is more or less the practice I’ll uphold in this entry. However, it is beneficial to be aware of and learn from advancements in Psychology and Gender Studies. In the ancient world and many parts of our world today, biology is assumed to determine one’s gender. In the Greco-Roman world, for instance, women were thought to be irrational, unsuitable for ruling, needing male guidance, and emotional. Amy Peeler notes that because women were generally smaller in body, they were also thought to be smaller in mind and spirit (90). In other words, to be female meant manifesting the attributes above. The problem begins when we observe that not all women fit into that box, and some men check some of the boxes. This observation motivated some scholars to separate biology from sociology and sex from gender. Biology determines sex, but social factors determine gender. This move raises an obvious question: what does being male (or female) mean?
Matthew 16:18-19 ESV
[18] And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. [19] I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
One of the key biblical texts used to defend the office of the Bishop of Rome is Matthew 16. I have written fuller exegetical blog entries on this passage elsewhere without referring to the Papacy. I think it is a good time to do so now. Please note that I am tabling this in the service of truth and not to malign or offend. I respect several Catholics and hope they will have much to add to enrich our collective understanding of this matter. In the end, I want to argue that, at best, the office of the Bishop of Rome had to be one of the least concerns of Jesus and Peter in this passage.
The Easter Story Retold: How It All Started
According to the Christian calendar, the Holy Week commemorates the most important week ever in the cosmos’ billion years of existence. It is the week of Easter or, to be more inclusive, the week leading to Resurrection Sunday. The idea that one week can identifiably be more significant than all others may offend a thinking mind at first. After all, we have repeatedly heard the argument that our earth is only a speck in the big picture of things. It is an argument asserting that size matters. Ordinarily, I would agree with the argument, but there are exceptions. People do not usually conclude, for instance, that the butt is more important than the brain due to size. Similarly, a speck of uranium may be considered more important than the mountain of trash standing over it.
For generations, churchgoers have been taught to believe that a Messiah became necessary because of Adam and Eve’s sin, but that is an incomplete story that accounts for only one-third of the data. To be sure, the story arc resulting in the Messiah’s coming began with Adam and Eve, but there is more. Let us begin from the beginning.
So, how did we get here? As far as we can tell, an uncreated creative mind wanted to get to work. Evidently, it was not his first attempt at creating. He had already created a myriad of essentially immaterial beings “eons” prior to the “moment” he decided on another project. Undoubtedly, there were innumerably infinite ways the project could have taken shape. But just as he had to narrow down the options with his other creative projects, he must do the same here. God decided to make a class of beings constructed of molecules for unrevealed reasons – a terrifyingly complicated undertaking.
How do you build a being from molecules? Easy — you start with, well, molecules! The problem is that molecules did not exist yet. So, the ultimate project must wait as God began by creating the Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus, Sulphur, and other isotopes needed to make the molecules from which his end product would be constructed. But how long would the construction project have to wait? It is not very long – only about 30 million years, which apparently equals about a few days in God’s reference scale. Once the material universe was in place with its arrays of stars coming into and out of existence and all the requisite atoms were available, God could initiate the building of functional molecules.
It soon became clear that God did not want wild humans. Hence, though he had caused vegetation to spring up everywhere on the blue globe, he yet proceeded to carve out a garden for the creature he was about to construct. The human was going to be cultured. After arrangements for human flourishing were in place, God finally built his project after waiting a few million years, a dating that excludes moments “before” the cosmos came to be. The human God created was neither male nor female. It was a genderless composite. In time, it became apparent that the human would not optimally flourish in its composite state. It must be split equally into two complementary forms. Hence, God formed the woman from a rib of the human he had made. It is interesting to note that the Hebrew term for “rib” is a construction term often used to describe a side of a temple. Here, then, is how we finally got the gendered male and female humans. She was in no way inferior to the man. Yes, she was a suitable “help” for the man, but “help” often describes how God is a “help” to humans. If “help” suggests any asymmetry, it is probably in the other direction.
I wish they lived happily ever after, but there would not be a worthwhile story if they did. Some of God’s earlier creations were not down with God’s new hairy creatures. It is not immediately clear if it is the hair or something else, but those older immaterial beings were ticked. Soon enough, they figured out how to mess up God’s project. They would corrupt the young creatures before they have exercised their spiritual muscles unto maturity. Obviously, this implies that the hairy creatures were not incorruptible. If they became corrupted, it was because they could be corrupted. They were not perfect, only good. Very good, actually. Sinister forces succeeded and corrupted the humans.
Background
In ancient times, people did not worship idols as if they were, per se, deities. Agbẹ́gilére, the skilled sculptor who creates numerous copies of a deity’s idol in his shop, understands that these idols are not the real divine beings; if he believed they were, there would absurdly be countless Èṣù and Baal as gods. Moreover, on a successful business day, his shop would otherwise be empty of gods—something no one desired! Everyone recognized that an idol was a vital point of contact, a mediator, to connect with a specific deity. Noah Marsh reminds us that “an idol formed the primary locus or medium for the deity to manifest himself or herself in the world.” Each “idol worshipper,” a misnomer, sought to reach her particular deity through the idols and her supplications. Strictly speaking, nobody thought a god was destroyed because his idols were burned. And, of course, a devotee could always get new replacement idols. This is not to deny that devotees sometimes think of their idols as gods, especially after repeated associations. However, idols can be viewed as gods precisely because of their connection with immaterial, external deities. Marsh further notes, “In the ancient Near East, deities needed idols to represent their presence on earth because they lived in the heavenly courts”. Readers may recall that the heavens are the realm of divine beings.
Background
We previously discussed the Household Code passages found in Colossians and Ephesians. These passages outline how Greco-Roman Christian households were expected to behave in a manner that honors Christ. We argued that these texts do not prescribe a uniform way for all Christian homes throughout history to operate. If they did, it might imply that every Christian household must own slaves. Instead, these passages illustrate Paul’s efforts to engage with a Gentile issue that even Jesus did not confront in his Jewish context.
The Greco-Roman family consisted of a husband and father who held legally granted absolute power over everyone who lived under his roof – a wife, children, and slaves. How he handled his home was tied to his public reputation and dignity. Women typically were married off by age 15, generally to much older men. Usually, love had very little to do with the marriage. Indeed, the Greco-Roman man was not required to love his wife. Paul found himself in this cultural context, and the options were few. He could have demonized the practice, as the European missionaries to sub-Sahara Africa did, and required the Christians to do marriages the “Christian way,” whatever that might have meant. But that move would be somewhat naive, impractical, and even foolish. First, cultural norms do not change overnight; expecting otherwise is embracing inevitable failure. Second, Christians were a minority, accounting for less than 10 % of the Roman empire at the time, and were despised for their culture-inverting beliefs and claims. An Emperor would later actively persecute them. So, Paul seemed to have taken a “slowly but surely” path to winning the Greco-Roman family structure for Jesus. He sowed the seeds and trusted God to enable germination.