CASTING PARTS FOR THE BIBLE

There are some books that just cry out to be made into movies, especially those in which the authors seem to write in almost cinematic terms. I remember years ago reading Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury and being especially struck by one scene in the book in particular in which the young hero is hiding underneath a drainage grate from a man of supernatural evil who is hunting him down. The villain stands right on top of the grate while the boy attempts to remain perfectly still.

The film version of this novel came out a little later. While it was not wholly faithful to the book, I was gratified to see that at least this particular incident was shot exactly as I had imagined it. And a great deal of the effectiveness of the movie was due to the perfect casting of Jonathan Pryce as the powerful antagonist of the story. The next time I saw that actor appear in a movie was as the poor, hapless hero of Terry Gilliam's wonderful but highly disturbing movie “Brazil.” And more recently, he garnered an Academy Award nomination for playing one of the “Two Popes” opposite Anthony Hopkins. If you should view all three movies some time, I highly doubt you would recognize Pryce as the same actor in each of them. It is a tribute to both Pryce's acting ability and the casting directors who refused to typecast him.

With the above as prelude, I have sometimes read biblical narratives in cinematic terms and thought about what actor would best play the various roles if a movie were made. Of course, this is not a new idea since biblical epics were all the rage in Hollywood when I was growing up almost literally in the shadow of MGM Studios. But with few exceptions, these blockbusters totally failed to capture the spirit of the biblical narratives. The problem with the movie studies was that they were too afraid of antagonizing their potential audience by portraying the characters as the real flesh-and-blood people which are so clearly described in the Bible. And even the minor parts in the Bible manage to bring out nuances in their personality hinted at in the text.

Let's start with a few leading characters such as Moses, Samson, and David. Of course, Charlton Heston would be hard to replace as the leader of the Israelites out of Egypt. But they certainly could do a better job today if “Samson and Delilah” were remade. Victor Mature may have the physical attributes of the seriously flawed judge, but no one would ever accuse him of being an actor. He stumbles through the whole epic with a slightly pained look on his face. By contrast, the biblical original can be seen to possess a great lust for life and a wicked sense of humor. For that reason, I would seriously suggest Dwayne “Rock” Johnson in the starring role of a remake. It is true that he will probably never win an Academy Award nomination, but he has demonstrated his ability to depict men with a self-depreciating sense of humor, which would stand him in good stead in such a movie.

King David is another person who cries out to have a good movie made about his life, but only if the hagiographic tendencies of Hollywood are left behind and his weaknesses are portrayed honestly instead. For that reason I would suggest Liam Neeson in the part. Not only is he excellent in registering pain, regret and power all at the same time, but it would add to the long string of Neeson movies in which someone is always out to kill him. What better person could portray a person who is constantly under threat from either Goliath, Saul, or even his own son.

Moving on to the supporting players, there are numerous bit parts in the biblical narratives. And even in the few verses in the Bible devotes to these people, there are more than enough clues into their personalities for good actors to develop a back story to guide them in their portrayals.

Let's start casting a few female parts first. Queen Jezebel is probably an easy one with which to begin. She certainly demonstrates regal tendencies in every move she makes along with her blatant abuse of power whenever it suits her. And she has a fantastic death scene which any actress would literally die for. She meets her inevitable demise by fixing her make-up and dressing in her finest clothes before daring Jehu to do his worst. In that scene, she certainly comes off better than her bloodthirsty nemesis.

I think that Helen Mirren could handle that role in her sleep.

There is another regal role in the New Testament that needs an experienced actress, that of Herodias. She was born into noble circumstances and proceeded to cement her standing there by first marrying her uncle Herod Philip. But she left him in her climb upward only to marry another uncle instead, Herod Antipas. Even at her age when we first encounter her in Mark 6:17 // Luke 3:19, she must have still retained some of her earlier attractiveness. But that appeal was apparently not enough to convince her husband to kill John the Baptist, who had openly denounced her second marriage as illegal. However, her daughter (who may or may not have been Salome), who had apparently inherited her mother's sex appeal enchanted Herod with her dancing enough that he promised her anything she desired. And that was the end of John the Baptist.

If I were casting the female roles in the story, I believe I would put Nicole Kidman in as Herodias. And since Salome is not a speaking part, practically any of the current attractive young women entertainers would do. How about Taylor Swift for example?

There are even parts for child actresses in the Bible. I think of the little Jewish servant girl who, along with his other servants, cares enough for the welfare of her master Naaman to convince him to come off his high horse and do as Elisha told him in order to cure his leprosy. There must be enough budding future stars in the tradition of Margaret O'Brien, Natalie Wood, and Abigail Breslin who could portray this part with the proper emotions.

Supporting actors are the next category to cast. And people like Dustin Hoffman have certainly demonstrated that a good leading actor can also play supporting parts excellently. As the great acting coach Konstantin Stanislavsky once said, “There are no small parts, only small actors.” Speaking of small actors, I think I can envision Danny DeVito as the wee Zacchaeus of Luke 19:1-10. He certainly meets the physical requirements of the role. And in addition, DeVito has made a living portraying rather sneaky characters always looking for an edge up. That seems to be the backstory of the biblical Zacchaeus, who admits to having swindled others in his hated profession of tax collector.

Finally, there is perhaps one of the most challenging roles in the whole Bible – that of David's long-time right-hand man, Joab. J.D. Douglas says of him,
    “Joab proved himself a skilful general who greatly helped the establishment of the monarchy, but his character was a strange mixture. Apart from his personal deeds of violence and his opportunism, his cruelty can be seen in the way he swiftly comprehended and carried out David's plan to kill Uriah (2 Sa. xi. 6-26). Yet he could be magnanimous also, as when he gave David the credit after the capture of Rabboth-ammon (2 Sa. xii. 26-31). Perhaps most notably and surprisingly, he tried to dissuade David from numbering the people (2 Sa. xxiv. 2-4).”

There are two ways to approach the casting of such a role as David's multi-faceted commander-in-chief. The first is to choose an actor of wide range such as Russell Crowe in his prime. But I would personally opt for Jake Gyllenhall. He demonstrated in “Road House” that he has the physical attributes of a man of action. But on the other hand, he almost always plays characters, whether heroes or villains, whose inward thoughts are impossible to gauge by his facial expressions. He has just that hint of mystery that Joab possesses.

I could go on and on, but for you movie buffs I will mention just a few more meaty parts and let you do your own casting:

    The loyal, but doomed, soldier Uriah the Hittite who placed all his loyalty on a leader who only betrayed him with his wife and with his life (II Samuel 11)

    Elisha's sometimes faithful servant Gehazi who tries to make a little money on the side (II Kings 5)

    The constantly put-upon and frustrated prophet of both hope and gloom, Jeremiah

    The Syro-phoenician woman who engages in a battle of wits with Jesus (Mark 7)

    Pontius Pilate, who is torn between his belief in Jesus' innocence, the demands of his office, fear of causing a riot among the Jews, pressure from his wife, and hatred of the Jewish leaders who have put him into a no-win situation. In the end, he gives in to these leaders, but not without putting in a final dig at them in his wording of the placard over the cross (John 19)

    Simon Magus, the apparent Christian convert who yielded to the temptation of resuming his career as a successful magician, but with renewed supernatural powers (Acts 8)

    John Mark, the missionary who is seen to mature as he appears off and on in the New Testament. He begins as one who flees from danger and hardship, but ends up as one of Paul's most loyal companions.

The list could go on and on since there are so many different people who appear in the pages of Scripture, most of whom are deftly portrayed as three-dimensional personalities in as few as one or two verses. But, of course, that is the advantage of writing history and biography over the task of a novelist – there are real flesh-and-blood people behind the writing.

CONTRASTING BAPTISMS

 

  Scenes in a Life: Panel D (mixed media, 2006)

Two different forms of baptism appear in the New Testament: one taught and practiced by John the Baptist and Christian baptism. There is certainly a continuity between the two, and Jesus even ratified John's baptism by submitting to it himself. But at the same time, there is a marked contrast between the two which is first expressed by John himself and years later continues to be an issue in the early church.

The pertinent NT passages to consider are Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:4-5,8; Luke 3:3,16; John 1:26,31,33; and Acts 1:5; 11:16; 19:1-7. By just looking at these passages we can see how each of the two baptisms are respectively characterized. John's baptism was with water, for repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and accompanied by a revelation of the one who was to come, i.e. Jesus. However, the type of baptism instituted by Jesus was said to be with the Holy Spirit and fire.

But from those contrasting descriptions we would be very wrong in deducing that water and repentance were not part of Christian baptism. Several additional passages the Book of Acts definitely rule that idea out. For example, see Acts 2:38; 8:35-37; and 22:16.

And then in the Epistles, we learn more about the effect of Christian baptism that is not stated for John's baptism. For one thing, immersion in water not only symbolizes a cleansing, but also is a type of Christ's death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-5; Colossians 2:12-13).

It is instructive that two of the passages in Acts contrasting the two baptisms appear in significant locations from a literary and rhetorical perspective: the introductions to Part 1 (1:5) and Part 2 (11:16), respectively.

The Structure of the Acts of the Apostles

Introduction (1:1-26)

First Part: Peter/Jerusalem (2:1-9:31)

1. “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses...” (2:1-2:44)

2. “...in Jerusalem...” (2:45-5:42)

3. “...and in all Judea and Samaria...” (6:1-9:31)

4. Transition (9:32-12:25)

Second Part: Paul/ “...and to the end of the earth.” (13:1-28:31)

5. Paul's First Trip and Jerusalem Council (13:1-16:5)

6. Paul's Second and Third Trips (16:6-19:20)

7. To Rome (19:21-28:31)

Below are some additional comments gleaned from recent commentaries concerning the nature of John's baptism.

Matthew 3:11

“Messianic baptism – unlike that of John – is not a preparation, not even for the Spirit; but itself will give the Spirit. The expectation of a 'baptism' with the Spirit appears at Jl 2.28 ('I will pour out my spirit on all flesh'), and at Ezek. 36.25-7; 39.29...Although it is likely that the text we have was interpreted in the light of the Pentecost understanding of 'spirit' as gracious endowment, there is no strong objection to taking the words as a accurate expression or summary of the Baptist's teaching, for neither 'spirit' nor 'fire' need be the agents of destroying judgment: both may refer to redemptive judgment, to refining, and to cleansing...” (D. Hill)

Mark 1:4-5

Marcus explains, “The object of John's initial proclamation is his baptism. Various kinds of ritual washings were practiced in the ancient world, but the most direct connection of John's rite was with the Old Testament via later Judaism. In the Old Testament period, priests washed themselves before taking part in sacrifices, and ordinary people did likewise if they had contacted some sorts of ritual impurity...This ritual washing was eventually extended to Gentile proselytes to Judaism, who thereby purged themselves of the uncleanness of their pagan life; immersion in a ritual bath therefore became a requirement for conversion...The Dead Sea sect at Qumran laid great stress on ritual bathing, and here, as in John's baptism, the bath was linked with the end-time cleansings and renewal to be accomplished by God's Spirit...His baptism, however, departed from the Qumran pattern by being a onetime rite performed by a second party, not a continually repeated self-immersion.”

Mark 1:8

Lane says, “The reference to the bestowal of the Spirit is appropriate to the wilderness context of John's proclamation. Isaiah describes Israel's trek in the wilderness as a march under the guidance of the Spirit of God (Isa. 63:11); it was the Spirit who gave the people rest in the wilderness (Ch. 63:14). As the first exodus had been going forth into the wilderness under the leadership of God's Spirit; the prophet announces the second exodus as a time when there will be a fresh outpouring of the Spirit (Chs. 32:15; 44:3)...It is this note of anticipation which Mark emphasizes by reducing John's message to two statements, both of which point forward to something to come. They affirm that John is the forerunner of the Messiah (Ch. 1:7) and that his baptism is a preparation for the messianic baptism to come (Ch. 1:8).”

Luke 3:3

“Proselytes had to submit to baptism on entering the Jewish fold, but that true-born Jews should be urged to undergo this initiatory rite implied that hereditary membership of the nation of Israel was in itself useless, or at least insufficient. Which (as verse 9 makes plain) was exactly what John desired to convey.” (Geldenhuys)

Luke 3:16-17

Ellis states, “This is one of several passages in which Luke couples the present and the future manifestations of the kingdom (see...17:20-37). Both are eschatological and both are judgments. The first purges and redeems, the last judgment will destroy.”

John 1:26,31,33

“Water as a means of washing or external cleansing points to the inner cleansing which occurs when one accepts John's witness. But it is a temporary or secondary status by the promise of cleansing by the Spirit. The changing of water to wine in the next chapter symbolizes the fulfillment of John's prophetic announcement,” according to Culpepper.

Acts 1:5

Neil states: “John the Baptist's mission had included baptism by immersion in the Jordan as an outward sign of the inward cleansing power of God's forgiveness for the penitent sinner. Some, at any rate, of the Apostles had been baptized by John (John 1:35), but full rebirth in the Christian sense involved baptism both by water and by the Spirit (John 3:5). This complementary gift of the Spirit could not be given to the Apostles until after Christ's Ascension. The Lord would send from heaven the power they needed to renew their own lives and to launch the Church on its mission.”

Acts 11:16

Stott explains, “He [Peter] remembered what the risen Jesus had said after his resurrection (1:5), namely 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit,' In other words, this was the Gentile Pentecost in Caesarea, corresponding to the Jewish Pentecost in Jerusalem...Water-baptism could not be for forbidden to these Gentile converts, because God could not be forbidden to do what he had done, namely, give them Spirit-baptism.”

Acts 19:1-7

“Paul...inquired about their baptism, and learned that it was the pre-Pentecostal baptism as proclaimed and administered by John the Baptist – a baptism of expectation rather than one of fulfillment, as Christian baptism now was...But now that Jesus had come and accomplished His mission on earth, now that He was raised from the dead and exalted at God's right hand, whence He has sent the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, an anticipatory baptism was inappropriate and inadequate.” (Bruce)

WHAT DOES JOHN 13:3a MEAN?

In describing the Last Supper, John begins by saying, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God...” The question is, “What are all the things God had given him?”

One way to look at it is in terms of Jesus being established as the head of the Kingdom of God. Thus, Green says, “Jesus has not been set over a kingdom by Rome, for example, or put forward as ruler by the Jerusalem leadership. His kingdom is God's kingdom. This phrase means, second, that Jesus' kingdom derives its nature from God, with whose purpose Jesus is aligned.”

Others feel that in view of the context in the shadow of the cross, the “all” must refer to that imminent event. Schnabel expresses it this way: “As Jesus accomplishes the mission for which the Father has sent him, accountable to the Father in terms of both his works and his words, he exercises delegated authority (Jn 5:21-22, 26-27; 13:3; 17:2).”

Clarke also feels that this verse alludes to Jesus' victory on the cross: “One particularly illustrative example of Jesus' identification as one who serves in a menial capacity as a domestic slave (doulos) occurs in John 13, which describes Jesus wishing the feet of his disciples...It anticipates the betrayal by Judas (Jn 13:2), but also an ultimate victory given into the hands of Jesus by God (Jn 13:3). Throughout there is a repeated emphasis on Jesus' complete knowledge (Jn 13:1,3,11,17).”

I feel that Morris does the best job of expressing this aspect of “all” in John 13:3 when he states, “The threshold of Calvary seems an unlikely place for a statement of this sort. But John does not see the cross as the casual observer might see it. It is the place where a great divine work was wrought out and the divine glory shown forth. So he described it in terms of the Father giving of all things to the Son.”

And finally, R.E. Brown brings up another point in passing that is worth considering: “Since this was mentioned also during the ministry..., we cannot think that here it is a special power due to Jesus because he has already been glorified in 'the hour'...in John the handing over of all things to Jesus is not so much a question of universal authority as of salvific mission. The footwashing as an action symbolic of Jesus' death is performed because he knows that he has the power to save others and the power to lay down his own life for this purpose.”

What I would like to zero in on next is the fact, alluded to by Brown, that this is not the only place in the Gospel accounts where a similar statement is made regarding the things that God has delivered into Jesus' hands. Witness the following:

    “All things have been delivered to me by my Father...” (Matthew 11:27a; Luke 10:22a)

    “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hands: (John 3:35)

    “All that the Father gives me will come to me...and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day.” (John 6:36-40)

In other passages, we read that the Father has given the Son (a) authority to execute judgment (John 2:26-27), (b) works for him to complete (John 5:36), and (c) care of his followers (John 10:29; 17:6, 9, 11-12).

But there is another aspect to what the Father has planned for the son in terms of “giving” or “delivering” (all the references are expressed with the Greek word didomai or its derivative paradidomai). In all these cases, it is Jesus who will be given over to or delivered into the hands of sinful men for crucifixion. For those passages, see Matthew 17:22; 20:18-19; 26:45; 27:2,18,16; Mark 9:31; 10:33; 14:41; 15:1,10, 15; Luke 9:44; 18:32; 20:20; 23:25; 24:7,20; John 18:30,35-36; 19:11,16).

And, most interestingly, both contradictory aspects appear together toward the end of John's Gospel:

    “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.” (John 17:22,24)

    “This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken, 'I did not lose a single one of those whom you gave me.'” (John 18:9)

    “Jesus said to Peter, 'Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” (John 18:11)

So paradoxically, Christ's glorification by the Father and deliverance of his followers came at the same time that evil men were delivering him up to die. And the end result is expressed at the conclusion of Matthew's Gospel when the risen Christ uses the verb “give” one more time:

    “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” (Matthew 28:18)

JOHN THE BAPTIST IN THE WILDERNESS (MATTHEW 3:1-10; MARK 1:1-6; LUKE 3:1-14)

 

Scenes in a Life: Panel C (mixed media, 2006)

John's ministry begins in the wilderness, as described in all three Synoptic Gospels. Powell says, “The parallel with events in Joshua, with baptism replacing 'crossing' seems too clear to be coincidental (see, e.g. Josh 1:10-11; 3:5).” Here are a few more selected comments regarding each of the Gospel accounts.

Matthew 3:1-10

“The Judean wilderness...will make Jewish readers think of Moses in the wilderness leading the Israelites into and out of the wilderness (see esp. Numbers). The imminence of the kingdom...may call to mind various texts, from the messianic psalms to Daniel, that look forward to God's kingly reign being more perfectly established in the future. John's attire is intentionally that of a prophet, modeled after Elijah (2 Kings 1:8; cf. Zech. 13:4). His diet was that of a desert ascetic (Exod. 16:3; for locusts as food, see Lev. 11:2)...The metaphor of the axe laid at the root of the tree (3:10) may echo Isa. 10:34.” (Blomberg)

“Now according to our present passage (3:7) Pharisees and Sadducees are approaching John with a request that he baptize them. This may seem strange. Though not all commentators agree, yet in the light of all that has been said about the two groups, their behavior in the present instance can probably best be explained by their selfishness. They did not wish to lose their hold on the multitudes who were flocking to John to be baptized. If this was the place where the action was they wanted to be part of it...” (Hendricksen)

Mark 1:1-6

“Those acquainted with the Old Testament knew the importance of the word 'gospel' (cf. Isa. 40:9; 41:27; 52:7; 61:1-3). 'News' meant that something significant had had happened. When Mark used the word, it had become a technical term signifying Christian preaching about Jesus Christ...Aside from Old Testament quotations by Jesus this is the only place Mark referred to the Old Testament in his Gospel.” (Grassmick)

Watts, in seven pages of closely reasoned analysis, shows that the parallel passage in Mark 1:1-6 was heavily influenced by the Septuagint form of Exodus 23:20; Malachi 3:1; and Isaiah 40:3. He concludes by stating, “Christologically speaking, the striking identification of Jesus (1:1) with Yahweh's coming (1:2-3) can hardly be missed. Key here, especially given present debates concerning the influence of exalted mediatorial angelic or patriarchal figures on NT Christology, is that two of Mark's texts, Mal. 3:1 and Exod. 23:20, explicitly contrast such figures with the very presence of Yahweh himself. Whatever else, for Mark Israel's Lord is, in some mysterious and unparalleled sense, present in Jesus.”

Freedman adds, “In view of the strategic placement of this reference to Isaiah [cf. 1:2] at the beginning of Mark's work..., the conclusion seems justified that Isaian patterns have played a major role in shaping Mark's thinking...But perhaps Mark would respond that even the unforeseen way in which Isaiah's prophecies have been fulfilled shows that the gospel is 'as it has been written in Isaiah the prophet.' The discontinuity of God's new action with precedent and expectation, after all, is an integral part of the Isaian message:

        Do not remember the former things,

        or consider the things of old.

        See, I am doing a new thing;

        now it springs forth, do you not perceive it”

                (Isa 43:18-19)

Regarding v. 6, Swift says, “John's clothing and food indicated frugality and separation from worldly interests...Locusts, though tolerated as food only by the poorest, are said still to be eaten roasted or salted by the bedouin.”

Luke 3:1-14

vv. 1-3 Robertson notes: “Luke follows the custom of ancient historians in dating events by the names of the rulers. As the son of a priest John was probably thirty years old when he came forth.”

“The appearance of 'the word of God' (rhema theou) with a complete synchronism noting the political and religious contexts of the time echoes language of Israel's prophets (cf. Jer. 1:1-3). This explicit appearance of the prophetic word is noteworthy...the intensity of prophetic activities in Luke 1-2 points to the realization that God is acting in history in a new way.” (Pao and Schnabel)

In discussing prior influences on John's practicing baptism, these authors point out, but finally reject, the ritual washings probably practiced at Qumran even though “both carry a moral message and eschatological urgency.” One major difference between the two practices is that the washings at Qumran needed to be repeated. The authors' conclusion is that we should “see the various [Jewish] 'baptisms' as drawing from the symbolism embedded in OT ritual cleansing...while developing separately within their own contexts and communities. John's baptism falls within the prophetic traditions where external acts actualize mental decisions. In the context of John's preaching this baptism is also a preparatory act for the arrival of God's salvation.”

vv. 4-6   Pao and Schnabel point out that whereas Matthew utilizes mainly Exodus and Malachi in the parallel passage, Luke takes more of his cue from the Septuagint form of Isaiah 40:3-5. This can be seen in his extending the quotation so that it “highlights the unique role that it plays in Luke's two-volume work...The themes introduced in the prologue of Isa 490:1-11 contribute to the structure of Luke's theology: restoration of Israel, mission to the Gentiles, power of the word of God, and the frailty of the enemies of God's people...The connection between this quotation and Luke's second volume is further established by the verbal link between the hodos ('way') terminology in Isa. 40:3 and the designation of the early Christian movement as he hodos ('the Way') in Acts 9:2; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:14,22.”

vv. 8-9   “A clear OT parallel can be identified in Isa. 51 [cf. vv. 1-2] where Abraham is compared to the rock from which God's people are hewn.” (Pao and Schnabel) And concerning verse 9, they note, “In the OT Israel is frequently compared to a fruitless vine (Ps. 80:8; Isa. 5:2; Jer. 2:1; Ezek. 15:6; 17:6; 19:10; Hos. 10:1).”

I couldn't help but noting the two anthropomorphic mentions of “rock” in Luke's Gospel:

        “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” (Luke 3:8)

        “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” (Luke 19:40)

There is a similar context to each occurrence – the sayings follow (1) an Old Testament quotation regarding the coming of the Lord or king, (2) the paths are prepared form them, and (3) there is a rejoinder to some of those watching. In addition, they serve as brackets to Jesus' ministry on earth: one at its start and one near its conclusion.

SHUFFLING SCRIPTURE: THE MINOR PROPHETS

 

                                     Zechariah (mixed media, 2004)

It is quite a common practice for translators of modern English versions of the Old Testament to make more or less liberal use of Hebrew texts found at the Dead Sea as well as early translations such as the Greek Septuagint. But scholars generally rely on these other sources only when the standard Hebrew text appears to make little sense and has obviously suffered from poor transmission over the centuries.

However, the emendations that are made to the Hebrew text generally only affect the way individual verses are translated.

But then we come to the Jerusalem Bible, an English translation of an original French version put out by scholars coming from the Roman Catholic tradition. What is disturbing about parts of this translation is that the authors have tampered with the actual order of verses in a number of places and done so in the total absence of any manuscript support. This phenomenon is especially prevalent in the poetic sections of the Minor Prophets.

The list of the “improved” order of verses in the Jerusalem Bible includes:

Amos 5:6-10 = 6, 8, 9,7, 10

Micah 5:5-6 = 5a, 6b, 5b, 6a

6:9-15 = 9, 12, 10,11, 13, 15, 14

7:3-6 = 3, 5, 6, 4

Nahum 3:16-17 = 16a, 17a, 16b, 17b

Habakkuk 2:16-19 = 16, 17, 19, 18

Zechariah 3:3-10 = 3, 4a, 5, 4b, 6, 7, 9a, 8, 9b, 10

4:5-14 = 5, 6a, 10b, 11-14, 6b, 7-9, 10a

6: 8-15 = 8, 15, 9-14

Since the rationales behind these various changes are seldom given anywhere in the extensive notes found in the Jerusalem Bible, for most of them we are left to guess why they were made. There are two logical possibilities. The first is that the translators felt the meaning of the passages flows better with these changes. Or since most of these occur in poetic passages of the Bible, one can possibly detect unwanted corruption in the Hebrew text by looking for ways to improve the known parallelism of thought that generally occurs in adjacent lines of poetry.

But in either case, it seems rather unlikely that a scribe would purposely take an original text that made good sense as is and provided parallel poetic lines of thought and purposely change it into our present Hebrew text. However, that still leaves the possibility that such scribes over the centuries might have accidentally displaced a line or two. Even that accidental error in copying does not fit into any of the known categories well documented by textual scholars. These include accidentally leaving out a line of text or copying the same line twice, but never transposing a line from one place to another in a text.

Thus, let us look at a few of the examples listed above to see if we can possibly discern the reason for the rearrangements and whether we agree with them.

Amos 5:6-10

Before looking specifically at these problem verses, it is best to consider the surrounding context and the way it is organized. Thus, we can consider the symmetrical structure below:

            A. Lamentation (vv. 1-3)

                    B. Seek me and live (vv. 4-5)

                            C. CENTER (vv. 6-10)

                    B'. Seek the good and not evil (vv. 14-15)

            A'. Lamentation (vv. 16-17)

With that in mind, one might expect that the central portion would continue this sort of literary arrangement. And that is just what we find, as seen below:

                            C. Change your ways in view of the evil time (v. 6)

                                    D. Sins against the righteous (v. 7)

                                            E. God's power is coming ( vv. 8-9)

                                            E'. Reaction of the unrighteous (vv. 10-11)

                                    D'. Sins against the righteous (v. 12)

                            C. Change your ways in view of the evil time (v. 13)

Not recognizing that very common way the Bible has of presenting its material, the editors of the Jerusalem Bible attempted to rearrange the text in a more “logical” manner instead by placing v. 7 after v. 9, causing a complete disruption of the carefully constructed symmetrical organization above.

Their justification for doing this is not stated, but it it is obvious from the way they divide up their paragraphs that they felt verse 10 began a brand new section, and therefore should be introduced by the same sort of warnings that begin 5:18 and 6:1 – namely “Woe to...” In verse 7, they felt they had that sort of warning even though it does not actually contain those words. So they simply moved v. 7 right before v. 10 and added the missing required words “Woe to...” to start v. 7.

The scientific world in which I was trained frowned greatly on this sort of practice and described it as “falling so much in love with your own theory that you are willing to alter the actual data so that it supports it.” Even the great chemist and Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling was found guilty of this unforgivable sin when he attempted to become the first one to determine the chemical structure of DNA in order to win a second Nobel Prize.

Nahum 3:15b-17

Below is how the JB rearranges these verses in order to “make more sense:”

        Increase like the locust, increase like the grasshopper (15b)

        Multiply your traders to exceed the stars of heaven (16a)

        Your guards are like grasshoppers, your scribes like a cloud of insects (17a)

        They settle on the walls when day is cold; the sun appears (17b)

        The locust spread their wings; they fly away (16b)

        They are gone, no one knows where. (17c)

The rationale here was to combine all the material relating to the great number of such people together in the first three stanzas and all the presentation of their insubstantial nature in the next three verses. However, to do so required them not only to rearrange the order of lines in the poetry, but also delete one of the two places in the text where the verb “fly” appeared.

By contrast, consider the Hebrew text as received:

        A. Increase like the locust, increase like the grasshopper

        Multiply your traders to exceed the stars of heaven

                        B. The locust spreads its wings and flies away.

        A'. Your guards are like grasshoppers, your scribes like a cloud of insects

        They settle on the walls when day is cold

                        B'. The sun appears; they fly away. No one knows where they are.

Once it is realized that the organization in this case is a parallel one (ABA'B') as shown above, there is no need to resort to shuffling the verses.

Habakkuk 2:16-18

The Jerusalem Bible treats these verses in the order 16, 17, 19, 18. The reasoning for repositioning verse 19 is seemingly a valid one. If you consider how chapter 2 is structured, you can readily see that from verse 6b on, it consists of five woes. The first four begin appropriately with the warning “woe is.” But the last woe, verses 18-19 breaks that established pattern by placing “woe is” at the concluding verse instead of the opening one. Actually, this “mistake” is so obvious that one might ask the logical questions: “Why would one accidentally or purposefully make that error in the first place?” and “Why did no subsequent scribes catch that error and correct it?”

The editors of JB apparently feel that they are sharper than the generations of scribes who transmitted the text to us. But there is a rather obvious reason for that reversal in the final portion of the section. Whereas the other four woe sections begin with “woe,” the last one appropriately breaks the pattern to signal that the woes are over. We see the same thing in the very beginning of the Bible. Each of the first six days of creation concludes with the statement “And there was evening and there was morning, a Xth day.” But on the seventh day (Genesis 2:1-3), that pattern is abandoned entirely to purposefully point to the special nature of that day.

The remainder of Genesis presents us with another illustrative example. There is an almost universal assumption that toledot, usually as the phrase ellah toledot ('These are the generations of'), “clearly and consistently structurally marks the beginning of new sections.” (Wright) But things are not that clear-cut. For example, Wright makes that assertion just after recognizing that the same phrase in Gen. 36:9 does not function in that manner.

Also, the first usage of toledot in Genesis does not actually occur until Gen. 2:4, where there is the question of whether it signals the beginning or conclusion of a passage or as a colophon instead.

Turner also brings up several caveats. He points out, “Additional uses of the formula or equivalent occur, which summarize (Gen. 10:32) or reiterate (Gen. 25:13; 36:9) a toledot already introduced, but these do not have a structuring function.” He also notes that 5:1 departs from the traditional toledot formula by saying “This is the book of the descendants of...” instead.

Perhaps the editors of the JB should take Emerson's statement to heart: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Zechariah 3:3-5

The Jerusalem Bible feels that the logical place for 4a (“Look, I have taken away your iniquities”) is only after Joshua's dirty clothes have been removed and new clothing put on. But the original order is actually more logical since it has the removal of iniquity symbolized by removal of his dirty clothes alone. The putting on of new clothing is a subsequent step.

Zechariah 3:6-10

As it stands in the traditional Hebrew text, this section can be seen to be totally symmetrical:

        A. Promise – “says the LORD of hosts” (vv. 6-7)

                B. “I will bring my servant the Branch” (v. 8)

                        C. stone with seven facets – “says the LORD of hosts” (v. 9a)

                B'. “I will remove the guilt of the land” (9b)

        A'. Promise – “says the LORD of hosts” (v. 10)

Such an arrangement places all the “says the LORD of hosts” in a symmetrical arrangement as well as putting two clear references to the coming of Christ, the Branch, to take away the people's sins in a parallel relationship (see B and B'). The meaning of the central section C has been much discussed, but it appears to be a highly symbolic way of capsulizing the whole passage.

The Jerusalem Bible “improvement” disrupts the above symmetry by transposing sections B and C.

Zechariah 6:8-15

The note in the Jerusalem Bible regarding the end of v. 8 says that v. 15 “must be transposed here” since they deal with the same exiles in the north. That may be the logical place to put v. 15 according to the editors of this translation, but no such need is apparent except to those who do not recognize the ABA nature of the passage. Thus, we have two “Those who” sections (verses 8 and 15) bracketing verses 9-14 which tell us what the word of the LORD to the prophet was. And that center section itself has its own set of brackets as seen below:

        A. Those who go to the north country (v. 8)

                B. The word of the LORD (v. 9)

                        1. Heldai, Tobijah, Jedaiah, Zephaniah and the crown (vv. 10-11)

                                2. “Thus says the LORD of hosts” (vv. 12-13)

                        1'. Heldai, Tobijah, Jedaiah, Zephaniah and the crown (v. 14)

        A'. Those who are far off shall come (v. 15)

Note again the centrality of the phrase “Thus says the LORD of hosts,” as in Zech. 3:9a above.

Thus, you can see that some modern scholars seem determined to force the Bible into the strait-jacket of their own preconceived notions rather than attempting to understand it on its own terms.

As an exercise, I will leave the other proposed rearrangements above for you to look at yourself and decide whether you agree with the translators' improvements.

MISREADING I CORINTHIANS 6:19

My wife has been interested in our family history for some time now. And she came across a note in the flyleaf of the Bible belonging to one of our ancestors. It read: “I Corinthians 6-19 prooves (sic) we have no free moral will.”

That seemed to be a rather strong statement, even coming from a strict Calvinist, so I looked at that verse myself to see if I would reach the same conclusion. Here is how the NRSV renders that passage:

“Or do you not know that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?”

Then, as I do whenever I hear a somewhat dubious interpretation of a given verse, I began to read the surrounding context of those words. And I didn't have to go very far afield in either direction in order to find ample contradiction of that ancestor's explanation of v. 19. In fact, the strongest indications that he was incorrect came from just looking at the previous and subsequent verses.

Thus, verse 19 is prefaced by these words: “Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself.” If we have no free moral will at all, then why did Paul waste his time telling us to avoid certain sinful actions if we had no control over those actions in the first place?

At this point, the only statement in I Corinthians 6:19 which might possibly lead one to say that we had no free will is the final phrase: “you are not your own.” However, the subsequent verse goes on to clarify the meaning of that phrase when it says, “For you were bought with a price.” In other words, a believer is supposed to be no longer free to go ahead doing whatever selfish act he or she wishes since Christ sacrificed on our behalf and we now belong rightly to Him.

If that were not enough to challenge this ancestor's interpretation, verse 20 concludes by urging believers to “glorify God in your body.” This serves as a positive expansion of the negative admonition in verse 18. So together, the two bookend verses to the one in question state that we do have control of our moral will and need to direct it not only away from sinful activities but also toward those actions which will glorify God at the same time.

The only remaining question I ask myself is, “Why did this ancestor go so much out of his way to misconstrue this passage? (It happened to be the only passage in his Bible on which he bothered commenting.) I know from his background that he wasn't necessarily raised in strict Calvinist congregations.

The most probable answer comes from my wife's genealogical research, in which it becomes apparent that this person had made some horrible life choices which negatively impacted a number of people in his family. My educated guess, although I don't want to appear too judgmental of other people since I have enough reason to be ashamed of things I have done, is that this was his way of reconciling himself to his past behavior. It is like Skip Wilson's favorite line: “The Devil made me do it!” It is always a lot easier to blame God or Satan for one's own shortcomings rather than facing up to them and then asking for forgiveness. But then, most of us tend to take the easy way out.

SHUFFLING SCRIPTURE: BOOK OF REVELATION

There is a well established tradition among liberal Bible scholars who are involved in what is called “source criticism” to state that the books in the Pentateuch arose as a combination of at least four separate original sources. But this approach is not as often followed when analyzing the books in the New Testament. Below is one exception to that general rule.

J. Massyngberde Ford, in her entry to the Anchor Bible series of new translations and commentary, posits three separate sources to the Book of Revelation:

    1. “Chs. 4-11 originated with the revelations given to the Baptist before and during the time he recognized Jesus as 'He that cometh.'”

    2. “Because chs. 12-22 actually contain the name of Jesus...they were probably written by a disciple [of John] who knew more than John [but still less than actual followers of Jesus].”

    3. “The present writer believes that 22:16a, 20b, and 21 are later Christian interpolations akin to chs. 1-3.”

Thus, in her commentary, she rearranges the material in Revelation so as to put it into her proposed chronological order of composition with chapters 1-3 coming after chapter 22, followed by the three verses listed in #3 above as later additions. Her reasoning is based mainly on two foundations: (1) Revelation is a book of prophecy and John the Baptist was a prophet and (2) the vocabulary in those “later Christian interpolations” contrasts with the vocabulary found in the rest of Revelation. There are several problems with her thesis:

    1. There is absolutely no early manuscript evidence to back up her proposal of three separate original sources.

    2. Very early evidence from the writings of the Church Fathers states that either John the Apostle or “John the Elder” was the author of the book.

    3. It is well known that the vocabulary utilized by a given author can be quite dependent on the particular subject of the writing. And since much of Revelation 1-3 consists of direct quotes from Christ rather than John, it is not surprising that the vocabulary might differ from the bulk of the book.

    4. Ford's next piece of evidence is that the description of Jesus as “Lamb,” which is common in Revelation, only appears in the Gospels in contexts in which John the Baptist is concerned. This argument can be easily discounted. In the first place, there is only one such context for such a usage in the Gospels, which hardly constitutes a trend, and that is found in John 1:29,36. Secondly, and most importantly, the Greek word used in those two verses is amnos (also applied to Jesus by Luke in Acts 8:32 and Peter in I Peter 1:19), unlike the word for sheep used throughout Revelation, arnion.

    5. In contrast to the four-source theory regarding the Pentateuch, which is still widely accepted among liberal circles, Ford (as far as I am aware) has attracted no scholarly followers to her unusual thesis since its publication back in 1975. That lack speaks volumes regarding the validity of her reasoning.

    6. She treats Revelation 1-3 as the composition of a different author than Chapter 4. However, my analysis of these first four chapters demonstrates that they all belong together as a discrete section (see more details for this and other literary considerations in the post “Book of Revelation: Introduction to the Literary Structure”). It forms the common ABA structure found throughout the Bible:

    A. Vision of Christ (Rev. 1)

            B. Letters to the Churches (Rev. 2-3)

    A. Vision of Heaven (Rev. 4)

And as usual in such a literary arrangement, there are strong affinities that ch. 4 has with the opening passages of the book, especially ch. 1. Both are filled with images taken from Ezekiel 1. Both are theophanies that take place in heaven, unlike the earthly setting of chs. 2-3. Between these two “A” scenes, all the major heavenly characters of the drama are introduced: the Son of Man, seven spirits and seven angels in ch. 1, and Almighty God, 24 elders and four creatures in ch. 4. Beale points out that practically the same grammatical irregularity appears in Rev. 1:10b-11 and 4:1. In addition, specific words and phrases common to chs. 1 and 4 are:

“what is to take place hereafter”

            “like a sound of many waters” / “speaking like a trumpet”

            “I was in the Spirit”

            “what is to (must) take place after this”

            “seven spirits before the throne”

            “seven lamp stands” / “seven torches of fire”

            “for ever and ever, I am alive for evermore” / “who lives for ever and ever”

            “who was, and is, and is to come”

            “glory and dominion” / “glory and honor and power”

            “voice like a trumpet”

These data are almost impossible to reconcile with Ford's statement that chapters 1 and 4 were written by entirely different people.

    7. If the present order of verses is maintained, then the first chapters are intended as the prologue to the book and chapter 22 as the epilogue. Thus, we would expect there to be strong verbal parallels between chapters 1-3 and 22, but only if they were written by the same person, which Ford denies. In such a comparison, we must in all fairness omit the three partial verses that she does feel were written by the author of Rev. 1-3. That still leaves the following numerous parallels:

        revelations coming from God, Christ and angels (1:1; 22:6)

        “Blessed is he who reads this prophecy” (1:3; 22:7b)

        “prophecy” (1:3; 22:7,10,18,19 )

        “the time is near” (1:3; 22:10)

        “the things written” (1:3; 22:18-19)

        “Behold, he is coming (1:7; 22:7a,12)

        “I am the Alpha and Omega” (1:8; 22:13)

        God's only speeches in the book (1:8; 22:1-5)

        “I was in the Spirit, a loud voice said, “Write” (1:9-11) // “I, John heard...the angel...said, do not seal up the words.” (22:8-11)

“The first and the last” (1:17; 22:13)

        “When I saw him (them), I fell at his (the) feet.” (1:17; 22:8)

        “He put...on me” (1:17) // “God will put on him.” (22:18)

        the importance of “deeds” (2:2,5; 22:12)

        “grant to eat of the tree of life” (2:7) // “have the right to the tree of life” (22:14)

        the only occurrences of phileo (“love”) in the book (2:19; 22:15)

        similar descriptions of judgment in 2:23 and 22:12

        “the morning star” only in 2:28 and 22:16

        “people who have not soiled their garments” (3:4) // “those who wash their robes” (22:14)

        both God and Christ are on the throne (3:21; 22:1)

    8. The present text of the final section of the book can be readily analyzed as shown below:

A. “I am coming soon” – Blessing (22:6-7)

B. “I John...heard and saw...keep the words of this book...worship God” (22:8-9)

C. Contrast (22:10-11)

1. evildoers

2. the holy

                                                                            D. “I am coming soon” (22:12)

                                                                            D'. “I am the Alpha and Omega” (22:13)

C'. Contrast (22:14-15)

2. the holy

1. evildoers

B'. “I Jesus...him who hears...take of the water of life” (22:16-17)

A'. “I am coming soon” – Warning and Blessing (22:18-21)

However, this symmetrical arrangement readily falls apart once one omits those verses which Ford feels have been inserted by another author, i.e. 22:16-17a and 20-21.

    9. The strong unity of the present text is confirmed by a myriad of individual words, phrases or similar events which appear throughout Revelation as exact multiples of the symbolic numbers 7 and 12. These statistics are disrupted greatly if one only counts the contribution of any one of the putative multiple authors proposed by Ford.

    10. Finally, the extensive literary analysis of this book summarized in my post referenced above demonstrated that it could viewed alternatively as organized in three completely different ways: as alternating sections dealing with heaven and earth, a mirror-image (or chiastic) structure, or as seven successive sections meeting the definition of progressive recapitulation – a hallmark of apocalyptic literature in the Bible. To edit together such a complex structure from three diverse blocks of source material is almost impossible to imagine. But, of course it is much more believable if written by one single, inspired author under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

ADVICE TO LISTENERS IN BIBLE STUDIES

 

                    Letter to a Dead Church (collage and acrylics, 2011)

I have previously posted three short essays giving my unsolicited comments to Sunday school teachers (see “Advice to Adult Sunday School/Bible Study Teachers: Part 1, “Advice to Sunday School/Bible Study Teachers: Part 2,” and “How to Lead Bible Discussions”). The rationale for this emphasis came from James 3:1: “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.”

However, it is instructive that there is more emphasis in the New Testament on the proper way to listen to what is taught spiritually. For example, Jesus' admonition “He who has an ear (or ears) to hear, let him hear” actually appears no fewer than 16 times in the Bible (Matthew 11:15; 13:9,43; Mark 4:9,23; 7:16; 8:18; Luke 8:8; 14:35; Revelation 2:7,11,17,29; 3:6,13,22; 13:9). In addition, Jesus constantly upbraids both his opponents and followers for not properly listening to his words.

Since I have taken part in both the teaching and listening aspects of Bible studies for more years than most of you have been alive, I should be as aware as most Christians of the failures on both sides of the communication issue – especially since I have been personally guilty of most of the problems I will describe below, given in random order.

Not being alert

It pretty much goes without saying, but I will say it anyway, that you can't get anything out of a teaching if you are physically asleep or constantly trying to fight off sleep during a lesson. As a Bible teacher myself, I have observed my share of nodding heads in the audience as I talked. Sometimes I tried to combat it by raising my voice suddenly, but on other occasions when I knew that someone in the group had had a very busy and trying day, I would lower my voice so as not to wake him.

There was one young man who would faithfully show up for one of my evening classes after he had had a long day at work. He manfully fought off sleep as long as he could, but would always succumb at last. He ended up being a missionary in China, so I guess he didn't suffer much from missing half my lessons.

Of course, we have the striking example of Eutychus in Acts 20:9. Luke lists the contributing factors that went into that poor man's drowsiness: a hot, stuffy room and an overly long sermon by Paul. I find it comforting that Paul rushed downstairs to save him and did not criticize him at all.

My wife and I try to always make sure that we get plenty of sleep the night before a church service. We also purposely avoid the early morning service if we have a choice between it and a later one.

Obviously, being physically awake is only the first step in getting the most out of a teaching. You must be mentally alert as well.

Listening with a critical spirit

I will admit that I have been guilty of this sin for most of my life, especially before I began to teach Bible classes myself and found out how hard it is on the other side of the fence. My solution to this attitude problem was to purposely listen very carefully to the teacher or preacher through his or her whole presentation to see what new spiritual insight I could learn. It is amazing that if you start out with that receptive mindset, you will usually find that even the most dull, uninspiring, untaught speaker will come up with at least one good point to ponder.

Unfortunately, I had a highly critical attitude towards some of the pastors in our church while growing up. I can still recite one after another laughable mistake made by one particular preacher, without ever remembering anything good he had to say. But I am sure there was a lot of useful teaching that I didn't even bothered to notice.

The poster children for this negative attitude were the scribes and the Pharisees who followed Jesus around everywhere and heard his wonderful teachings and saw his miracles but viewed everything through a critical lens. So Jesus' warning to them after they witnessed his restoring a blind man's sight is also pertinent in the context of listening to teachings in church: “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains.” (John 9:41)

Speaking out of ignorance

But not all negative reactions to teachings in a church setting are as blameworthy as the example above since sometimes our comments during Sunday school discussions are made out of sheer ignorance. I have three examples to share in this regard, all in relation to the subject of our views of heaven and the last days.

The first one concerns my own ignorant view of eschatology when I was much younger. I didn't realize it at the time, but the churches I had attended all my life up to that time taught what I later learned was called amillennialism. But I later found myself in a different denominational congregation in which the subject of life in the millennial period was being discussed in our Sunday school class. It turns out that these people believed in what is called historical premillennialism, but I thought that I must have gotten mixed up in some sort of cult by mistake. I tried my best to correct their “errors,” but they had a great deal of trouble trying to understand what in the world I was talking about. I would have been much better served by just keeping my mouth shut and waiting until I could have a private talk with the pastor so that he could enlighten me on the whole subject.

Another pastor I had much later in life shared with me his quite opposite experience when he first entered seminary. He had been only taught dispensational premillennialism up to that time. So when his professor began explaining amillennialism to the class, he felt it was his duty to immediately speak up and correct the prof's obvious errors. Looking back on that experience, my pastor was still quite embarrassed by his lack of knowledge on the subject.

I ran into this identical problem in two other churches where I taught. I was explaining the concept of amillennialism as one of several eschatological views when a visitor to the class stood up and loudly proclaimed, “I don't see how you can possibly call yourself a Christian and believe in that!”

This last example also comes under the category of ad hominem attacks, of which I have witnessed the aggressor sometimes being the teacher and sometimes a person in the class.

One-upmanship

This is a type of problem listener I have rarely run into except in competitive business and academic circles, but I know they are out there in churches throughout the land. These are people in a congregation who go beyond having a mere critical or superior attitude toward the pastors and teachers at their church, and seem to make it their mission to put those church leaders in their place with critical questions or snide comments. Of course, the scribes and Pharisees provide us with appropriate role models here too.

The root problem for these people is often one of jealousy – the fact or suspicion that someone else is getting the attention that they feel they rightly deserve instead. So to build themselves up in their own mind and that of their acquaintances, they have to bring any rival parties for attention down to their own level or lower.

We did have one teacher in our Sunday school teaching team who subtly, and probably unknowingly, practiced this constantly. He was not overtly critical of the others on the team. However, whenever it was his turn to give a lesson, he felt it his duty to first go over all the lessons taught previously by the others in order to present the material according to his own high standards and correct any mistaken impressions we may have made.

Attention Grabbers

This category of behavior is somewhat related to the last one above but is often much more excusable in terms of motive. I remember two especially prominent examples during my time of leading teaching teams. One man in our class would make it a habit of interrupting the teacher and proceeding to ramble on and on somewhat aimlessly about some subject or other that was not really directly related to the subject at hand. It got so bad that everyone would groan whenever he raised his hand or began to talk.

Then there was someone at another church who was apparently from a very strict Calvinist background. And whenever a teacher would get talking about practical applications of the Scripture for the day, he would start in with the same speech about how we were denigrating the role of God by talking about our own actions instead of God's sovereignty.

As leader of those two teaching teams, I came up with a simple way to get rid of the problem, at least temporarily. During the summer sessions, our Sunday school team would often approach someone in our class and ask them if they would like to teach one of the lessons during that semester. That way we got more active participation within the class and could see whether those persons might be good ones to add to our regular teaching team. Both of the gentlemen I described above jumped at the chance. But they both floundered horribly during their attempts to teach a coherent class. They realized that teaching was not nearly as easy as criticizing a teacher. And also, I am convinced that all they really were looking for was a little bit of recognition of their worth in the eyes of others. In any case, both of these men went almost a year after their teaching experiences without interrupting again.

Lack of Discernment

As in many cases, one extreme is often just as unhealthy as the other extreme. Thus, I have run into several cases where those in the congregation had apparently never been encouraged to think for themselves. For those people, their faith was often a second-hand one at best.

As an example, I attended a church where I rotated with others in our Sunday school and mid-week classes as a teacher. After one lesson where I had presented several possible ways to interpret a particular passage of Scripture, I was approached by two women in the class who looked concerned. They explained that I had confused them by giving them more than one option to ponder. They asked that in the future I just tell them which belief was correct.

I hardly knew where to begin in answering them, but I did manage to tell them that the particular issue was not cut-and-dry. It was the sort of thing that they would have to use their own discernment to sort out. Then I said, “What if I tell you one thing this week and another of our teachers tells you something completely different next week?” Their immediate answer, with which they apparently had absolutely no problem, was, “That's OK. We will believe you this week and the other teacher next week.”

The second time I ran in to this same complete refusal of members of the congregation to think for themselves was when I was asked to teach a few classes to some of the slightly older congregants during a special summer session. I first read the Scripture we had been assigned and talked about it for a bit before dividing the people into discussion groups with different questions for each one to talk about. I was dumbfounded when I was met with a room of totally blank stares followed by utter silence from each of the groups until at last I relieved their agony by giving them the answers myself. They had obviously been trained to sit and quietly listen to a more knowledgeable person do their thinking for them.

Some of this problem is generational. At one church, I occasionally filled in to teach our regular Sunday school class. I enjoyed it because the class was always alert and participated actively by adding their own comments. But then I was asked to fill in on times at a class populated by older members. I found that however much I tried, I could only get one or two of them to participate when I would ask them to share comments or questions. One of the members later told me that it was because I intimidated them with my learning. That was in spite of the fact that I had been purposely trying to avoid doing so. Again, this was a group of people who had been trained for years into the habit of looking up to the preacher and teachers as the only knowledgeable ones in the congregation and that their own opinions counted for little or nothing in comparison.

Disconnect Between Knowledge and Practice

Then there was another church I attended for years in which the preachers we had were extremely learned and the Sunday school classes had the reputation of being taught on a high level of competency.

However, in practice, the combined clique of elders, pastors and their children for the most part failed miserably in living out a Christian life of service and love for others. And actually, several of them were out-and-out rude to those who didn't fit into their small club of professionals and businessmen. By contrast, I moved from that church to another one where without a exception there was an obvious servant heart among those in the congregation and staff even though one would have to fairly admit that the intellectual level of teaching was at a fairly elementary level.

As James asks in chapter 2 of his epistle after denouncing the audience for their prejudice against the poor in their midst, “What good is it, my brothers, if you say you have faith but do not have works?”

Itching Ears

This is a term Paul uses in II Timothy 4:3 to describe those Christians who will abandon sound doctrine and surround themselves with leaders who cater to their own desires. This is not a mere hypothetical possibility today since many of the megachurches in America attract their members by promising them material wealth or by pandering to their fears concerning satanic opponents who are coming to take away their religious freedoms. And those congregations who remain faithful to the Bible are at the same time being branded as wishy-washy, naïve, or too demanding in their moral expectations.

Conclusion

I must apologize for this lengthy diatribe, but I just wanted to get across the inescapable fact that we have just as much responsibility to listen to God's word being taught as teachers have in doing the teaching itself. But I can certainly sympathize with Paul when he wrote to one congregation: “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” (Gal. 3:1) or when he pleaded with the Corinthians to stop falling for all the false teachings being circulated in their congregation during his absence.

DOES GOD CHANGE HIS MIND?

This question is posed by a Bible critic who points out the contrast between God's statement in Genesis 6:6 regarding God repenting that He had made mankind and passages such as Numbers 23:19 and I Samuel 15:29 which state that God does not change his mind. In all three cases the operative Hebrew verb is the same: nhm. Let us start with two quotations from the scholarly literature regarding the meaning of that Hebrew root:

“The word is used to express two apparently contrasting sentiments in 1 Sam 15, where God says, 'I am grieved (nhm) that I have made Saul king' (v. 11; cf. v. 35), but where Samuel also announces that 'the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind (nhm), for he is not a man, that he should change his mind (nhm)' (v. 29). The explanation seems to be that God does not capriciously change his intentions or ways of acting. It is the change in Saul's behavior that leads to this expression of regret. The reference is notable as being one of the rare occasions when God is said to repent or change his mind concerning something intended as good (cf. Gen 6:6).” (Butterworth)

Kaiser mentions the above scriptural uses of nhm and others besides and agrees that “many are legitimately startled when they read that the Lord 'was grieved' or 'repented' that he had ever made man and woman upon the earth (Gen 6:6). How can both the immutability and the changeableness of God be taught in the same canon of Scripture?”

Kaiser's answer to such concerns is for us to keep in mind that basically anthropomorphic language (using human emotions and passions to explain the actions of God) is being utilized which can never adequately describe His character.

He goes on to say, “When the Bible says that God repented, the idea is that his feelings toward some person or group of persons changed in response to some change on the part of the objects of his action or some mediator who intervened (often by God's own direction and plan)...In Genesis 6:6 the repentance of God is his proper reaction to continued and unrequited sin and evil in the world. The parallel clause says that sin filled his heart with pain. This denotes no change in his purpose or character. It only demonstrates that God has emotions and passions and that he can and does respond to us for good or ill when we deserve it. The point is that unchangeableness must not be thought of as if it were some type of frozen immobility. God is not some impervious being who cannot respond when circumstances or individuals change...He does not change in his character, person or plan. But he can and does respond to our changes.”

Let us next consider what some commentators say regarding the three specific passages quoted by our critic:

Genesis 6:6

Hamilton, in discussing this verse, explains that nhm is related to the noun nehama, which means “breath.” The verb can have six distinct meanings, including such things as suffering emotional pain, being comforted, executing wrath, retracting punishment or blessing, and retracting a sinful life. So obviously, much depends on the specific context. Hamilton also notes that “only a few passages that speak of God's repentance refer to God repenting over something already done. The vast majority of the instances of Yahweh's nhm have to do with this possible change of will concerning a future plan of action. This is one significant difference between God's repentance and man's. Still, the fact that the OT affirms that God does repent, even over a fait accompli, forces us to make room in our theology for the concepts of both the unchangeability of God and his changeability.”

“'Regret' or 'repent' may suggest a mere change of attitude, but when God 'repents,' he starts to act differently...That God should change his mind might lead to his being accused of capriciousness, which Scripture firmly denies: 'God is not a son of man that he should repent' (Num 23:19; cf. 1 Sam 15:29). Such remarks obviously raise various questions for the doctrine of divine sovereignty and its correlate human responsibility, but theological systemization is hardly the concern of the biblical narrators. For them divine repentance is a response to man's changes of heart, whether for better or worse.” (Wenham)

Numbers 23:19

Ashley also notes the anthropomorphic language in this verse and warns us that it is “only an analogy.” He next reviews some of the Old and New Testament verses expressing the idea that God never changes. Regarding this, he says that “one must be careful to read in these an invariability in purpose rather than a modern, pseudoscientific kind of unapproachable immutability, which in the end denies God any real relationship with his creation. It is important for a biblical doctrine of God's constancy that both these kinds of affirmations be held simultaneously. Although God's larger purposes do not change, as a Being in relationship his ways of dealing with others in that relationship will vary in specific cases. People are unreliable and fickle; Yahweh is neither.”

Carson cites Edersheim as saying that God's repentance is His "unmovedness while others move and change. The divine finger ever points to the same spot but man has moved from it to the opposite pole.”

Numbers 23:19 and I Samuel 15:29

Andersen and Freedman point out the similarity in thought between these two passages and then state:
“The conclusion would be in both cases that God is different from man in that he is faithful and just; he does what he says he will do. He does not say one thing and do another, neither does he change his mind for frivolous reasons or no reason. He is not capricious or arbitrary but is truthful, consistent, and reliable. In that sense he does not repent: he does not change his mind and then change it again without cause...Whether in words or prayers, repentance may be, as it often is, a sham. Divine repentance, on the contrary, has nothing in common with this sort of activity. When Yahweh repents, it is always for cause and is never deceptive or false. The reality is that there is an important difference between divine repentance and the human variety; at the same time, there is a significant similarity, for otherwise the same word would not be used....In the end, it may be truer to affirm both statements and risk contradiction instead of asserting one and explaining away the other, in order to achieve a false or superficial consistency.”

Poetic Parallelism

All three quoted passages are poetic or semi-poetic in nature. Thus, the two lines in each can be used to explain one another since they should express the same basic thought.

Genesis 6:6

    “And the LORD repented that he had made humankind on the earth,

    and it grieved him to his heart.”

This is roughly cast in the form of introverted parallelism in which “repent” in the first line expresses a similar idea to “grieve” in the second one.

Numbers 23:19a and I Samuel 15:29

    Moreover the Glory of Israel will not deceive (or recant) or change his mind,

    for he is                                        not a mortal that he should change his mind.”

In these parallel verses, it becomes obvious that God's actions are to be contrasted to those of mankind, not compared to them. Also, depending on which original text you adopt, this verse defines “changing his mind” as the same as deceiving or recanting.