Personal Religion: should one just "take it all on Faith"?

I am usually given a non-answer when I ask a question that rubs-up uncomfortably against someone’s religious beliefs. For example, I may say “how can the Bible be the Word of God when it contains errors?” God is perfect, right? Then comes back the perturbed answer, “I just take it all on faith,” as though that answered the question.

Here is one of those questions: Was Mark (or God?) in error when he wrote that Abiathar was priest on the occasion that David entered the Temple and ate the bread from the altar (Mark 2:24-26)? Actually, Ahimelech (2^nd Sam 8:17) was priest at the time that David ate the holy bread from the altar (1 Sam 21:1-6; cf. 2^nd Sam 15:35).¹ The discrepancy is not really a problem, however, unless you have the mistaken idea that the Bible sprang immediately from the mind of God, and was wholly and perfectly received through inspiration into the minds of its writers (something like osmosis). Bringing the Bible into print in the language of readers is a much sweatier, human process.²

            Taking matters on faith is not something that people do in virtually any other area of life. For example, in buying a house or a car, people count-up the cost, carefully read the contract, have the house checked that all is in stated condition and in working order, and have the car checked by a mechanic, if it is a used car. The rule in life for virtually all is “trust but verify.” People trust but verify because they believe the old adage caveat emptor (“buyer beware”). Particularly in everyday activities people are led by that adage. They diligently make shopping lists, and follow them, so that they will not give-in to urges and purchase things they do not need, cannot afford, or pay-for. They shop the sales offers and compare the costs of the same item in several different stores in order to pay less for an item. People as a general rule “take with a grain, or two, of salt” political promises made during an election year, and they check the politician’s background, reputation, and public record before casting their vote.

            So, why would anyone take personal religion on faith, without critically examining the beliefs? Surely, one’s religion is as important as buying a house? What happened to the old adage caveat emptor where religion is concerned? Why should religious faith take less critical thought than hanging pictures on a wall?

            Socrates, according to his student Plato, spent his life examining his own life and the lives of others (he was something of a gadfly on the citizens of Athens). Socrates once said (just before he was condemned to death on the charges of impiety and corrupting the youth of the city by means of his persistent questions) that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”³ If one is going to shape one’s life by religious beliefs, those beliefs should be critically examined and probed. How, for example, can anyone claim that the Bible is the Word of God, when text critics decide its content, and translators bring the Bible into your language in their words? Questions about one’s personal religious faith deserve a more thoughtful answer than—I just take it all on faith.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Matt 12:4 and Luke 6:4 eliminate the name of the priest; one possible reason for their omission of the priest’s name is that they recognized Mark’s error.

²Hedrick, “Inspired Writings”: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=inspired+writings

Hedrick, “The Bible’s Story: A Brief Summary”: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2023/10/the-bibles-story-brief-summary.html

³Plato, The Apology, 38a.

A Passing Thought about Heaven and Hell

A fleeting thought passed through my mind a few days ago: why do religious folk have such a longing for an afterlife (if such there be)? In my case, since I have persistently, for good or ill, continued to associate myself with those Bible-thumping Baptists, it would be the blessed afterlife of the Christian Heaven. The only options one is given in Baptist theology for the afterlife is Heaven or Hell—and I have no interest in spending eternity in a Baptist Hell (if such there be). It turns out, however, descriptions of Hell in the New Testament are quite minimal. In general, Hell is described as a “place” of torment in fire¹ and the absence of God (Matt 25:31-46). If one was not all that religious throughout one’s earthly life, the absence of God might not be a bother, and a burning of one’s spirit/soul (if such there be) in a (nonphysical) fire might not seem that fearsome, since it is not a burning of one’s physical flesh and bones.² Hence, Hell may be a place of suffering, but not physical suffering. How much can a nonphysical fire hurt a gathering of (nonphysical) spirit “molecules,” one wonders.

Spending eternity in the Christian Heaven, on the other hand, might not be that satisfying either. The New Testament only speaks obliquely or metaphorically³ about Heaven. Compare, for example, the description of Heaven as a physically buffed-up version of a new Jerusalem, although the Christian Heaven is obviously a nonexistent spirit “space” (Rev 21). What takes place in Heaven is, hopefully, also expressed in images. Denizens of Heaven will forever (I Thess 4:16-18) spend their time praising God (Rev 5:11-13; 19:4-8), serving/worshiping God (Rev 7:13-17; 22:3), and extolling God in song (Rev 14:1-3). It sounds roughly like a morning worship service in a post-reformation church of any variety. Doing that all day,⁴ day in and day out, forever, could become a bit tedious, perhaps, and lead one, like the ancient Israelites, to think fondly of what was left behind—the “fleshpots” of life on earth (Exod 16:3), so to speak. Even divinely-prepared activities, like diets (Exod 16:8, 12, 13-16, 31) for example, would tend to become a little old over time (Exod 16:35).

            The creation was once the apple of God’s eye (Gen 1:31), but the primordial couple outraged God, and he cursed the created order as well (Gen 3:16-19)—so goes the biblical narrative. On the other hand, most of us have found that our proverbial three score and ten (Ps 90:9-10), or so, has also brought physical, mental, and emotional pleasure and offered us the opportunity to grow and develop in mind, body, and spirit; to enjoy creation’s diversity; to delight in those sensual pleasures innate to the flesh, and join to become one with another for the journey of life (Gen 2:23-24). Life, even in a fallen universe with its many downsides (viz. cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other terminal diseases for which there is yet no known cure) is still a great ride.  The major disappointments have been life’s brevity and the inevitable goodbyes.

            Of course, there may be more diversity to Heaven and less torment to Hell (if such there be) than the biblical writers were aware-of. In both afterlife scenarios, we are only dealing with ideas expressed in one religious tradition. There were other views in antiquity. In the faith of the ancient Israelites, for example, the dead went to Sheol, a common collective afterlife for the departed dead, much like the ancient Greek belief in Hades,⁵ initially a place for all the departed.⁶ Modern ecclesiastical beliefs about Heaven are usually much rosier than we find in the Bible, and contemporary views of Hell are likely to have been influenced to some degree by Dante’s Inferno.⁷

            I called it a passing thought, and so it was, but, after reflecting on it, my reflections led me to this longer essay. I suppose you, reader, have thoughts on the subject?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Mark 9:43; Matt 13:49-50; Matt 25:41; Rev 14:9-11, 20:12-15, 21:8; Jude 6-7.

²Who knows what a burning of a spirit/soul means, except it is not physical torture.

³A metaphor is an image describing one thing in terms appropriate to another.

⁴Of course, there would be no “days” in the sense of 24 hours, which is tied to the rotation of the earth around the sun, besides there is no night in Heaven (Rev 21:25; 22:5).

⁵Hedrick, Wry Thoughts about Religion, “The Land of Forgetfulness”: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=sheol

⁶See Alan Segal, “Afterlife,” New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Abingdon, 1989), 1.65-68; Richard Bauckham, “Hades, Hell,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (Doubleday, 1992), 3.14-15.

⁷Dante Alighieri, the Divine Comedy, part one is the Inferno. https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/langdon-the-divine-comedy-vol-1-inferno-english-trans

Aphorisms of Jesus

Here are three examples of an aphorism:

But many that are first will be last and the last first (Mark 10:31).

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God (Mark 10:25).

Let the dead bury their own dead (Matt 8:22).¹

An aphorism is spoken by Jesus before a group in the Roman Province of Judea and later is recalled (or not) by unnumbered minds. The saying is repeated (or not) by still fewer mouths and pens with both performance and interpretive variations. In an oral world generally “one speaks or writes an aphoristic saying, but one remembers an aphoristic core”² on the basis of its sense and structure. One does not necessarily remember exact words. The core of the saying is subject to compression or expansion and changes when repeated. For example, compare the aphorism on First and Last: Mark 10:31, Matt 20:16, Luke 13:30, Gos. Thom. 4b.

            Aphorisms in the Jesus tradition at their literary stage appear in writing alone, as single sayings, and are gathered in pairs that lead to interpretative interaction and verbal and thematic seepage between them. They are also gathered into clusters (more than two) with similar results. They can also be appended as conclusions to other linguistic forms, such as miracles, prayers, parables, dialogues, and stories. The individual aphoristic saying is later gathered into aphoristic dialogues (for example, Matt 16:1-3; Luke 12:54-56; Gos. Thom. Saying 91) and aphoristic stories (for example, Mark 6:1-6a; Luke 4:16-30).

            There is a curious exclusion from the list of numbered aphorisms that Crossan finds in Q and Mark, and their parallels in Matthew and Luke. The aphoristic saying, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you go and proclaim the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60/Matt 8:22) is lacking an aphorism number, like other aphorisms discussed in the book. Its absence jumps-out at readers between numbered aphorisms 53 and 54 on pages 343 and 370 (In Fragments), and in his discussion of the aphoristic dialogues in Matt 8:19-22 and Luke 57-62.³ In these dialogues Matthew has two aphorisms (Foxes Have Holes and Let the Dead) and Luke has three (Foxes Have Holes, Let the Dead, and Looking Back). Crossan never notes why the saying Let the Dead (Luke 9:60/Matt 8:22) does not receive a number as an aphorism in the book. He regards Luke 9:59-60 as dialectical dialogue rather than aphoristic dialogue, and agrees with Rudolf Bultmann, whom it struck as “improbable” (nicht wahrscheinlich) that the saying ever circulated as a solitary saying.⁴ Nevertheless, both in form and content the individual saying in Luke 9:60/Matt 8:22 clearly fits the aphoristic criteria Crossan himself developed (see note 1). Granted, it is a Q tradition and only singularly attested, but that does not affect the aphoristic character of the saying Let the Dead, even if it is integrated into a dialectical dialogue.⁵

Crossan’s book, In Fragments. The Aphorisms of Jesus, is a landmark study of the transmission of the aphorisms of Jesus that establishes the aphorism, alongside the parable, as a classic oral form used by Jesus and later preserved at the earliest literary stage of the tradition.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Aphorisms are “concise, pointed, pithy sayings of never more than a few sentences.” “Thus, the aphoristic form conveys universal truths in a distinctive compressed format.” Both quotations are from the front cover. They are generally unclear on their surface, prompting an auditor to ponder because aphorisms frequently trade in overstatement and exaggeration, hyperbole, and paradox, and even understatement. J. D. Crossan, In Fragments. The Aphorisms of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), 27.

²Crossan, In Fragments, 67.

³Crossan, In Fragments, 237-244.

⁴Crossan, In Fragments, 243; Rudolf Bultmann, Die Geschichte der Synoptischen Tradition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1957), 29. Nevertheless, Crossan includes Matt 8:21-22/Luke 9:59-60 with the dialogues (#330) in his Sayings Parallels. A Workbook for the Jesus Tradition (Foundations and Facets; Philadelphia: Fortress, Press, 1986).

⁵The Jesus Seminar voted the aphorism in Matt 8:22 pink (a saying to be included in the data base for Jesus’ sayings) at Toronto in 1989, but voted Luke 9:60 gray (I would not include the saying in the database but might make some use of its contents) at Sonoma in 1988. Nevertheless, both sayings were printed pink in Robert W. Funk and Roy W. Hoover, The Five Gospels. The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 160, 316. Foundation and Facets Forum 6.3/4 (September/December 1990), 260, 276.

Losing a World

And learning to cope with the new one is an experience of several groups of people in our society. At one time they had "places" in society but lost them due to advanced old age, serious disability problems, or by immigrating (there are likely other groups). Every person in each of these groups may yet find a place in the new world, depending on their particular situation, physical and mental abilities, interest, and adaptability. I am focusing on one of these groups in this mini essay—those lucky (?) enough to have reached the advanced old age of 90 and above.¹ Currently that number is reported at 4.7% percent of the US population.² It is expected to grow.

            The world in which 90-year-olds reached adulthood (in my case, 1934-1954) and with which they coped during much of their working years (1954-2005) has passed away.³ One of my earliest childhood memories is the family ice box (the refrigerator came later) and milk delivered to the front porch twice weekly. I became aware of the passing of an old world in 1983, when I skidded from the typewriter to word processing and rather quickly into the personal computer. Telephone booths and landline phones, once common are now things of a former world, since most of us carry personal smartphones, by which we can have instant visual contact with someone half a world away (assuming the phone is not smarter than we). This new world features the presence of artificial intelligence writing television ads and responding to online searches (just give it a google!); online shopping has become a major industry, and television has any number of movies, news shows, and TV serials just a click away. A big change is the advent of GPS and the loss of paper maps! Coping with the numerous changes that a new world brings challenges those at the very far end of things (alas, some far-enders simply give-up coping with technological advances altogether).

            Challenges are not simply technological. Many of us entering the nonagenarian stage of life have lost our life partners, and find the adjustment to solitary living difficult. For example, grocery shopping for one requires a skill that must be learned over time. Intimate hugging and touching are things of the past (paternal and formal social hugs are permitted, and some do find intimacy at the far-end). A thick silence fills the house, broken only by the TV and the startling sound of one's own voice. Retirement from the demands of salaried occupations has brought with it an enforced isolation from colleagues, friends, and other workplace associations. If one has relocated the family residence to a distant city, then close friends of many years are no longer in the picture. Such circumstances contribute to the loss of a familiar world.

            It is not easy for an active person to adjust to the increasing frailty of aging. There is a noticeable decline in one's abilities: balance, hearing, sight, dexterity, stamina, agility, and mental acuity. Eventually the trajectory will result in loss of independence (John 21:18), which is a last stage of living at the far end of things. Far-Enders know that obsolescence is the way of the natural world and eventually come to accept the inevitability of the outcome.

            The Christian synthesis of the 4^th century common era, distilled in many ways from the failed philosophies and religions of the ancient Hellenistic world,⁴ held out hope for a new world, set free from its bondage to decay (Rom 8:18‒17), and hope for personal resurrection in a "spiritual body" (1 Cor 15:35‒57). Such an expectation seems to deny our life experience known through obsolescing (birth, youth, adulthood, the far-end), and prompts the question: does living in this physically changing world mean anything or have any enduring value? The poet appears to have a similar question.

Children picking up our bones

Will never know that these were once

As quick as foxes on a hill.⁵

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Much of this essay relies on self-observation.

²https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/aging_population/cb11-194.html#:~:text=Because%20of%20increases%20in%20life,likely%20to%20reach%2010%20percent.

³In antiquity culture and society changed very slowly. In the modern Western world change is rapid.

⁴The Hellenistic period was the blending of Greek with indigenous cultures in the ancient world from Alexander, the Great (323 BC) to the end of the Roman Empire (410 AD).

⁵Wallace Stevens, "A Postcard from the Volcano" in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Knopf, 1961), 158.

Jesus Remembered: A Gadfly on Israelite Religion

There is a rhetorical question, often asked: Why would anyone want to kill someone who wandered around the community telling charming stories, reminding neighbors to love one another, healing the sick, exorcizing evil spirits, and even supporting the Roman tax paid to Caesar (Mark 12:17)? The answer may lie simply in the fact that Jesus was remembered by the tradition, in part, as a critic of the religion in which he was reared, before he became, in the faith of the later Jesus gatherings, the savior of the world and much later, the second person in a divine trinity.

In the pronouncement stories Jesus is often quoted being critical of aspects of his own religious tradition.¹ A pronouncement story in the gospels is a brief narrative told for the purpose of housing a saying attributed to Jesus. For example, in Mark 2:23-27, Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees because his disciples “harvested” grain and ate it on the sabbath day, violating sabbath restrictions (Exod 20:8-11). Jesus replies that even David broke a taboo by eating consecrated bread (1 Sam 21:1-6), lawful only for priests to eat. The Sabbath was meant to serve humankind rather than being an ornery chore.

In another pronouncement story (Mark 3:1-6) Jesus attends a synagogue and met there a man with a withered hand. People watched him to see what he would do. He asked them, is one allowed to do good on the Sabbath? And he healed the man. His critics then conspired to destroy him. Both of these stories put Jesus in the position of challenging a basic aspect of the institutional religious tradition of his day, sabbath observance.

            Mark 11:15-19² is a story of Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple creating a disturbance by chasing-out the vendors and shoppers and saying that the religious philosophy allowing such practices has turned God’s house from a house of prayer into a hangout for crooks (Isa 56:6-8). It resulted in the chief priests and scribes planning on getting rid of him for challenging the institutional religion.

            I am inclined to call the settings of such narratives about institutional religion housing an antithetical saying attributed to Jesus, stories about the criticism of institutional religion that portray Jesus attacking, gadfly-like, Israelite religion.³ Such stories are traditional. That designation means they were products of oral recall, at some point between the public career of Jesus (around 30 C.E.) and the composition of the Gospel of Mark (around 70 C.E.). Mark found the stories in the stream of oral tradition, having been remembered, and passed around orally for about 40-50 years, and eventually repeated to him. Mark edited them to his tastes, and perhaps invented others. The historical character of the settings of the three stories discussed above is mixed. The Jesus Seminar/Westar book on the Acts of Jesus judges the setting of Mark 2:23-28 as likely to be historical (printed in the book in pink); Mark 3:1-6 was printed gray (likely not historical). The incident in the Temple (Mark 11:15-19) is multi-colored, although all seem to agree that an incident in the Temple took place at which time when Jesus rousted vendors and shoppers from the temple; the incident is likely historical (pink) other aspects of the story are gray and black, historically questionable.⁴

I am arguing that the settings of these traditional stories about institutional religion have historical value in themselves for informing the reader about how the life situation of Jesus was remembered. The memory that produced the setting is historical whether or not the settings reproduce a particular occasion in the life of Jesus or the sayings they house are considered to have originated with Jesus. The settings are not husks to be discarded; they describe social contexts in which Jesus was remembered. Bultmann describes the value of the traditional settings for the stories in this way:

The individual controversy dialogues may not be historical reports of particular incidents in the life of Jesus, but the general character of his life is rightly portrayed in them, on the basis of historical recollection.⁵

In other words, in such stories Jesus harped about the religion of the Israelites.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Vincent Taylor, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition (London: Macmillan, 1960), 63-87.

²Taylor refers to this narrative as a “story about Jesus,” 151, 179.

³R. Bultmann described the three stories I discussed above as controversy/scholastic dialogues. The History of the Synoptic Tradition (trans. John Marsh; Oxford, Blackwell, 1963), 11-69.

⁴The Jesus Seminar of the Westar Institute made a study of the stories about Jesus, evaluating whether the settings might be claimed to contain authentic memory of the time of Jesus: R. Funk, The Acts of Jesus. The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 1998).

⁵Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, 50.

Early “Christian” Prophets in Pauline Gatherings

There is no end of people today willing to tell you God's opinion on whatever issue is on the table. Few, if any, of them would claim to be officially recognized as prophets by a religious organization. In the ancient world, however, there were many who were called prophets and believed to speak God's words. This was also true among the early followers of Jesus.

The early Christian prophet was an immediately-inspired spokesperson for God, the risen Jesus, or the spirit who received intelligible oracles that he or she felt impelled to deliver to the Christian community or, representing the community, to the general public.¹

The earliest reference in Christian literature to early Christian prophets in the assemblies of the Jesus-gatherings is found in 1 Thess 5:19-20. Here Paul speaks approvingly of the utterances of such figures—meaning that he apparently regarded them as divinely inspired by God's spirit; there were many such figures in the religions of the ancient world.² Paul, however, had reservations about such figures even in his own tradition:

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good. (NRSV)

In other words, listen carefully, for not everything the prophet says may be helpful. So, discriminate in and among the prophetic utterances and hold onto what is profitable. I detect a healthy skepticism in Paul's statement about the utterances of early Christian prophets.

Prophets, who were believed to be channels for the words of a God, were endemic to his social and religious worlds (Israelite, and Greco-Roman traditions). The matrix and stimulus for such prophets and prophetic utterances in Jesus-gatherings likely came from both reading the Bible and pagan traditions. Prophetism was in the Greco-Roman air, as it were. In such a social environment, it was simply the way Gods were reckoned verbally to communicate.³

In the gathering at Corinth Paul acknowledged that God had given the gift of prophecy to certain people in the fellowship (1 Cor 12:10; Rom 12:3-8) and appointed them prophets (1 Cor 12:28-29). What the prophets were believed to bring was a direct revelation from God (1 Cor 14:29-32) for the encouragement, consolation, and benefit of the community (1 Cor 14:1-6). He did, however, continue to have reservations.

            The prophets in the community apparently could not control themselves and, like Jeremiah (20:9), the Word of the Lord was a "burning fire shut up in their bones," and they could not restrain it. So, they all prophesied at the same time (1 Cor 14:26-31), creating general confusion. Paul insisted that "the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets" (1 Cor 14:32). So, they should all prophecy but only one at a time (1 Cor 14:30-31).

            Nevertheless, he still had reservations about the utterances of the prophets (1 Cor 14:29). Whatever they said must be carefully evaluated or judged (diakrinetōsan). Why is that? Because different spirits inspire prophets (1 Cor 12:3). And that is the reason why some in the assembly had the spiritual gift of discerning between spirits (1 Cor 12:10).

            It is interesting that in the Deutero-Pauline epistles (Colossians, Ephesians) and the Pastorals epistles (1, 2 Timothy, Titus) prophets are no longer a vital force in the Jesus-gatherings.⁴ Itinerant prophets are, however, found to be a problem in the Didache (11:3-12).⁵ Among other things, the writer says "do not test or examine any prophet who is speaking in a spirit" (11:7), but recognizes that not everyone speaking in a spirit is a "true" prophet. The true prophet can be distinguished from the false prophet by his behavior (11:8-12). So, the writer of the Didache also had reservations about the prophets.

            When someone claims to know the mind of God and assumes to tell you what God requires of you—prophet or not, exercise a healthy dose of Pauline skepticism. Be an adult in your thinking (1 Cor 14:20). Evaluate and judge carefully what you are told, for who really knows the mind of God (Rom 11:33)?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹M. Eugene Boring, "Prophecy (Early Christian)" in D. N. Freedman, et al., The Anchor Bible Dictionary New York: Doubleday, 1992), 5. 495-502; the quotation is on 496.

²See Boring, "Prophecy."

³David S. Potter, "Prophecies," and Robert C. T. Parker, "Prophētēs" in Hornblower and Spawforth, Oxford Classical Dictionary (3^rd ed.), 1259.

⁴Boring, "Prophecy," 500.

⁵Kirsopp Lake, The Apostolic Fathers (2 vols.; Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, 1965), 325-27. The date of the Didache is not settled, but a consensus seems to be gravitating toward the end of the first century or beginning of the second. See Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache. A Commentary (Hermeneia; trans. L. M. Malony; ed., H.W. Attridge; Minneapolis, MN, 1998), 52-53.

Why is the New Testament a Postscript in the Christian Bible?

My beginning question is: why are the Christian Holy Writings attached footnote-like to the end of the Jewish Bible? I suppose one could reasonably argue that the two collections are gathered into the Bible in the historical sequence of their dates of authorship. That is a reasonable thought, for the dates of the Hebrew Bible texts predate those of the New Testament (NT). But why doesn’t the same rationale apply for the order of the books within each collection? For example, the NT texts are not printed in historical order. If that were so, First Thessalonians would be the first text in the NT, followed by the rest of the undisputed Pauline letters, and the next few would be in this order: Mark, Matthew, Luke, Hebrews,¹ John…and second Peter would be the last text in the NT.

A more basic question now occurs to me: why do Christians use Jewish Holy Scriptures as Word of God and put the Jewish Scriptures first in the Bible? The answer seems to be they were “grandfathered” in, as they were the first canon of Christian Holy Writings. Here is the reason: The earliest followers of Jesus were Israelites, people of the Covenant God (Gen 12:1-3; Gen 17:1-14), whose holy writings were Israelite religious texts.² When the Jesus movement later moved out into the Gentile world, capturing the imagination of Greeks and Romans, these later Gentile followers of Jesus continued to use the Bible of the Israelites (in its Greek translation), because the Israelites and these later followers of Jesus believed it to be “God breathed or inspired” (2 Tim 2:15-16).³

Those who wrote the NT searched their religious texts and found therein “prophecies” that supported their belief that Jesus was the Anointed One, who would come (Micah 5:2, for example), and applied the prophecies to Jesus. These prophecies, and the fact that they believed the Israelite writings to be Word of God, locked-in the Israelite writings as Holy Scriptures for Orthodox Christianity and secured their first-place position in the Christian Bible.

One notable exception to this “mixed” collection of Israelite and Christian texts was the biblical canon of Marcion that appeared around the middle of the second century. Nothing is preserved of his writings except refutations written by his Orthodox opponents. Marcion rejected The Israelite writings and published an abbreviated NT containing a shortened gospel (Luke) and ten letters of Paul (minus the Pastoral Letters and Hebrews). Marcion rejected the Israelite writings and their God, whom he regarded as a God of Justice (“an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”). The God of Jesus, on the other hand, was the God of Mercy. Marcion’s NT was the first attempt to form a distinctive collection of “Christian” writings.

The biblical canon of the Christian communities of the first 400 years in the evolution of Christianity retained the old covenant books (which they came to know as the Old Testament [OT]) and added to them the new covenant/testament books (now known as the NT).⁴ Both collections are named for covenants God is believed to have made with humankind. The covenants are briefly alluded-to in Heb 8:6-12, where the author of Hebrews quotes Jeremiah (31:31-34; Heb 8:8-12), who anticipated a “new covenant” with God. The author of Hebrews adds the following statement to the end of Jeremiah’s quotation:

In speaking of a new covenant, he [Jeremiah] treats the first as obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away (Heb 8:13).

This “prediction” (toward the end of the first century), making the old covenant obsolete or useless, never happened. Christians are still using Israelite writings, and these old “obsolete” writings continue to hold first position in the Christian canon. The connection with the old covenant, although “obsolete,” will likely never “disappear.” For example, when the two different collections are discussed in dictionaries of the Bible under the entry “Canon,” the editors reverse their usual alphabetical listing of entries by listing Old Testament before New Testament. Their alphabetical order would have been NT before OT.

            The tradition of individual churches decided the order of the contents in papyrus NT manuscripts, which was largely determined on the basis of interest and what could be gotten into a papyrus codex (i.e., book). The surviving papyrus fragments of NT texts do not include OT books. In the papyrus manuscripts of the second through fourth centuries, which are mostly fragmentary, there are few differences with the order of today’s NT, which is also traditional.

            The large parchment uncial Bible manuscripts (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus), surviving from the fourth century CE, however, contain both OT and NT with NT texts tagged on at the end of the OT texts. Why is that do you suppose? Two reasons occur to me: The OT was considered Word of God long before Christians began writing what eventually became NT texts, and it took around 200 years, or so, for these “postscripts” to achieve Word of God status. Hence, the OT/NT order is simply traditional.

            Isn’t it time that some enterprising ecclesiastical scholar reconsidered that arrangement and recommended putting the NT books first? It just seems rather odd to begin the Christian Bible with the Jewish Scriptures!

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Kummel, Introduction to the New Testament, 246. John was written in the last decade of the first century (90-99). Hebrews is earlier “probably written between 80-90” (p. 403).

²There was not at the time of the public career of Jesus (around 30 CE) a collection of religious texts that all members of the Israelite religious community agreed upon. The Hebrew Bible, as we know it today, is thought to have been formed by the surviving group, the Pharisees, after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE by the Romans.

³The comment in Second Timothy does not refer to the Christian Bible but rather it refers to what are today the Jewish Holy Scriptures.

⁴Covenant in Greek is diatheke; in Latin it is testamentum. The words mean the same thing.

⁵See note one above. The critical date for the writing of Hebrews is earlier than the writing of John.

The Amalgamated Jesus

The image of Jesus that functions in the institutional church is a composite drawn from the four canonical gospels that is undergirded by a theological statement of the church. Children are taught the theological statement from the earliest possible age and when the child reaches maturity, s/he fills out the image choosing material indiscriminately from the four canonical gospels as taught in the church’s educational program.

            In the popular ecclesiastical mind, the narratives of all four gospels are regarded as reliable historical documents. The truth is, however, that they are written a generation and more after the death of Jesus. The narratives are based on brief anonymous oral reports of the sayings and doings of Jesus. The descriptions of Jesus, his activities, and his words are the products of impressions on the minds of those nameless persons who transmitted the oral reports, and the impressions the reports made on the minds of the evangelists, who then produced the gospels. The information from the oral reports has been filtered through the faith of each evangelist, which s/he had been taught in the church.¹ We have nothing directly from the mouth of Jesus. It is doubtful that anything survived the rigors of the oral period intact.

            Hence the gospels are a collage comprised of historical data, ecclesiastical theory and dogma, quotations and misquotations, and invented plots or story-lines. Critical readers of the New Testament have been aware of many of these problems since the late 1700s. The writing, The Age of Reason, by the American Statesman, Thomas Paine, anticipates “many of the insights of contemporary critical biblical scholarship.”²

            Each of the canonical gospels presents to the reader unique portraits of the man.³ A portrait is a unique painting by the artist recording how a particular painter sees the subject, and that is also true of the literary portraits by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There are always similarities and differences. At times the differences in their portraits are glaring, at other times subtle. The primary reason Matthew, Mark, and Luke (they are called the “synoptic gospels”) are so similar is because Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source, and they also shared another hypothetical sayings’ source, which accounts for similarities in literary structure and in the sayings of Jesus. Matthew and Luke make changes to Mark’s text according both to their own theological proclivities and literary styles. The Gospel of John has little in common with the other three. The images of Jesus in the canonical gospels are not historical photographs but novelistic portraits.

            Here is one glaring example of their contradictory differences. In Mark 4:10, the author we call Mark puts on the lips of his literary character, Jesus, the reason why Mark thinks the historical figure, Jesus, told such difficult-to-understand stories (that is, parables):

So that they may indeed see, but not perceive, and may indeed hear, but not understand; lest they should turn again and be forgiven.

Matthew (13:13) and Luke (8:10b) completely eliminate the offensive phrase, “lest they should turn again, and be forgiven.” Matthew and Luke reject the idea that Jesus told parables to prevent people from understanding, lest they turn and be forgiven by God. John, on the other hand, does not even use the word parable and does not portray his literary character, Jesus, telling any of the classic parables known from the synoptic gospels.⁴

            These kinds of differences in the portraits of Jesus in the canonical gospels are lost in the pious ecclesiastical amalgamations of Jesus.

It’s just common sense, folks.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Hedrick, When History and Faith Collide.

²Hedrick, “Thomas Paine and the Bible,” The Fourth R (September-October 2022), 4.

³Hedrick, When History and Faith Collide. Studying Jesus (Hendrickson, 1999; reprint, 2013) 30-47.

⁴See the description of each portraiture of Jesus in Hedrick, When History and Faith Collide, 32-46 and “Is John a Revisionist Gospel?” pp. 151-54 in Unmasking Biblical Faiths (Cascade, 2019).

Is the Earth still Cursed?

In Gen 3:17 God tells Adam:

cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread…(RSV)

The "curse" on the ground is because of Adam's sin (his disobedience in eating the fruit of a particular tree in God's special Garden, Gen 2:17). The land is cursed and will bring forth "thorns and thistles," specifically for Adam and because of what he did. He must, as a consequence, laboriously work the land for its produce. In the Garden apparently the land did not require work; it simply produced (Gen 1:29-30; 3:23). There is a similar curse in Gen 4:11-12, as well: the land will not produce for Cain because he killed Abel. Apparently, God's curse of the ground for Adam was not a general curse for all humankind, since another curse was needed to register God's displeasure at Cain's egregious act. But this seems refuted by Gen 5:29, where Lamech claims that the birth of Noah "will bring us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands," which suggests that the cursing of the earth did apply to all flesh.

            Through a great flood God determines to destroy all flesh along with the earth, "for the earth is filled with violence through them" (Gen 6:11-13). Apparently, the earth is to be destroyed because it is corrupted by its association with all flesh (Gen 6:12). God is so delighted with Noah's sacrifice when the flood waters subsided, however, that he vowed never again to "curse the ground because of man" (Gen 8:21), but there is nothing said about the earlier curses being lifted, whether general or specific (Gen 8:20-22).

            The prophet Isaiah seems to share the idea that the earth is generally cursed (Isa 24:3-6). "Therefore, a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt" (Isa 24:6). Why should the earth/ground/land suffer because of its association with "all flesh"? The reason seems to be that God formed Adam/humanity "from the ground" (Gen 2:7):

In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust and to dust you shall return." (Gen 3:19; cf. Job 34:15; Ps 103:14).

In biblical mythology Adam and the ground are the same kind of "stuff." The answer to my question seems to be that it is on the basis of the same principle (although in reverse) from which Paul argues in 1 Cor 15:21-22 (i.e., the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, Deut 5:9-10).¹ God appears to be holding the earth responsible for the sins of its progeny, for people are descended from "earth." In this case, the sins of the children are visited upon the father (earth).

            Is the cursing of the earth in Genesis the background for understanding Paul's "restoration" (Rom 8:21) of creation (ē ktsis) in Rom 8:19-22? Possibly. I know of one scholar (there are no doubt many others) who thought that to be the case: James Denny finds the need for the "restoration" of creation in Romans 8:19-22 to be the cursing of Adam in Gen 3:17, "where the ground is cursed for man's sake; he [Paul] conceives all creation as involved in the fortunes of humanity."² Paul never clearly says that in so many words, so far as I know. Only in the rather obscure phrase at the beginning of Romans 8:20 is it possible to infer it when he writes, "the creation is subjected to futility (mataitēti, i.e., meaning its lack of value, or usefulness), which is the condition to which God's curse rendered it for Adam, requiring it to be laboriously worked.

            Colossians 1:19-20 seems to include "all creation" in its "all things on earth or in heaven" (note: Col 1:16, ta panta is everything). If this expression can be said to include all creation, then a Pauline disciple (the author of Colossians) includes even the insentient "stuff" of the universe of God's created works in the economy of redemption.

            The difficulty, however, is that the Bible doesn't speak generally of the restoration of an original creation. By far the more dramatic image in the Bible is the dissolution of the old creation, and the birthing of a new heavens and earth (Isa 65:17, 66:22; 2 Pet 3:7-13; Rev 21:1). Will there eventually be an old creation restored, as Paul seems to think, or the destruction of the original creation and the birth of a new heavens and earth, as "Peter" believes will happen? Who is right Peter or Paul?

How do you see it?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹For the Idea of blaming the children for their father's sins, see also Exod 20:5-6; 34:6-7. For a rejection of this idea, see Jer 31:29-30; Ezek 18:2-4.

²James Denny, "St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans" in W. R. Nicoll, The Expositor's Greek Testament (5 vols.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 2.649.

Ancient Paganism and Modern Paganism

The words pagan (paganus) and paganism are derived from the Latin and had a number of secular usages in ancient Roman society.¹ In early ecclesiastical Latin, however, the terms are used pejoratively by Christians to designate those who do not share Christian faith; hence they are heathens or pagans. The word pagan is used in much the same way that the Greek word ethnos (the nations; usually translated “gentile”) served those of the Jewish faith (and later Christians) to designate those who did not profess faith in the God of Israel. This same word (ethnos) is also used by Paul to designate the prior polytheistic status of the Corinthian members of the Pauline gathering (1 Cor 5:1; 12:2, see also 10:20) where it is translated by the word pagan.² In the fourth century paganism is broadly conceived as the “religion of the peasantry,” what was practiced in the countryside.³ A pagus was a person who lived in the country out of the city and practiced the old polytheistic ways of the Greco-Roman religions.

            Modern paganism seems to be something different from ancient paganism in the early Christian period. From what little I know about modern paganism it does not worship the ancient Greco-Roman Gods. My limited knowledge comes from a book I ran across in a modern book cemetery (Good Will). I rescued it and brought it home to read.⁴ The book is by two practicing pagans and appears to be a primer for persons considering a pagan faith and lifestyle (pagan wannabes). The sub-title to the book (see notes) characterizes the basic tenet of modern paganism. According to the authors, modern paganism originates in a particular attitude to the universe of which our earth is representative. The author briefly discusses only what he regards as the two major faith groups (Wiccan and Asatru; he alludes to others). I came to think of the groups, simplistically, as “denominations” in Earth-Centered Religions, similar to the various faith groups in Christianity.

            The authors of Paganism find a set of core principles (pp. 39-41) to Earth-Centered Religions, with which they think most pagans would agree. Three of these they emphasize as integrating “a variety of mystical and scientific perspectives” (pp. 133-34).

“Principle #4: Everything contains the spark of intelligence. Many pagans believe that everything from the smallest subatomic particle to the largest planetary system contains a spark of intelligence, or has some type of consciousness” (p.133). Hence, the universe is alive, has an interconnected sentience, is supportive, and is trustworthy. It operates “not only at levels that are physically grounded in time and space, but also at levels outside of time and space (p.199).

“Principle #5: Everything is sacred” (p.133). Hence the universe has a “sacred nature” and pagans “frequently feel a sense of kinship and connection with the universe”; they “may also believe that Deity permeates the universe and therefore see the universe as holy and blessed” (p. 134).

“Principle #6: Each part of the universe can communicate with each other part and these parts often cooperate for specific ends.” “Herin lies the heart of magick.⁵ Magick is a natural, not supernatural process, which in its simplest form, is the communication of many consciousnesses” (p. 134). Hence the pagan can engage the universe by the “process of stepping into the universal flow and choosing to participate with it in a deliberative fashion” (p.163) in much the same way that other religions think of prayer, meditation, inspiration, bliss, visions, revelation, miracles, etc. (p. 163).

            Although it may be dismissed as only figurative, Paul also appears to use sentient language of the creation in Romans 8:19-23: the creation waits with eager longing…subjected to futility not of its own will…creation will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God…creation has been groaning in labor pains…Eager longing (i.e., desire), having its own will (i.e., intent); sharing liberty (i.e., participating in redemption); groaning in labor pains (i.e. consciousness of pain and discomfort).

            Some interpreters of Romans seem to take Paul’s sentient language seriously: There is “a mysterious sympathy between the world and man…Creation is not inert utterly unspiritual, alien to our life and its hopes. It is the natural ally of our souls…[Creation] is the world and all that it contains, animate and inanimate…”⁶

            Does Paul express an attitude similar to that of modern paganism with his description of a sentient universe (κτσις)? Or, put another way, is Paul only using anthropomorphic language poetically and one should not, therefore, take it literally? So, how do you know?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹P. Rousseau, “pagan, paganism” in S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, Oxford Classical Dictionary (3^rd ed.; Oxford), 1091.

²C. T. Lewis and C. Short, A Latin Dictionary (London: Oxford, 1922), 1290.

³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism#:~:text=Paganism%20(from%20classical%20Latin%20p%C4%81g%C4%81nus,ethnic%20religions%20other%20than%20Judaism.

⁴Joyce and River Higginbotham, Paganism. An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2002).

⁵Pagans use this spelling to distinguish magick from magic, slight-of-hand, and parlor tricks (Paganism, 163).

⁶W. R. Nicoll, The Expositor’s Greek Testament (5 vols.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), vol. 2. 649.

Superstitious Survivals from the Ancient Past

What is superstition, anyway? According to one dictionary it is “any belief, based on fear or ignorance, that is inconsistent with the known laws of science or with what is generally considered in the particular society as true and rational; esp. such a belief in charms, omens, and the supernatural, etc.”¹ Hence superstitions are beliefs or actions that violate rational thought as conceived in a particular society—which makes superstition relative to what passes as critical thinking in a given community.

Since the rise of human reason in the 18^th century many of the superstitious survivals of antiquity have generally lost their influence in our scientific based Western culture—particularly with the rise of modern Western secular education. Yet many superstitions still survive in a kind of underground way in the modern Western world—similar to the survival of paganism in the ancient Roman world. Paganism was edged-out by Christian ascendancy around the fifth century. After 440 CE no pagans are listed among the elite of the City of Rome.² Yet the ancient religions and superstitions of the Greek and Roman worlds survived in the countryside away from the population centers of the cities, where Christianity had established itself.

            I was reminded of the fact that ancient superstitions still survive in modern society upon reading a sentence from Homer’s Iliad. In a speech Achilles made before the assembled Achaean warriors on the occasion of a pandemic caused by the God Phoebus Apollo over a slight by Agamemnon to Apollo’s priest, Chryses. The Achaeans were pondering why Apollo had sent his arrows of pestilence among them. Achilles suggested that they “should consult some seer (mantis), or priest (iereus), or interpreter of dreams (oneriopolos) to discover the cause.³

A seer in the ancient world (and in the Bible) is one who divines the future and answers other questions from various means, such as observing the flights of birds, for example.⁴ A priest in the ancient world (and in the Bible) is one who was authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as an agent of mediation between people and God.”⁵ Oneiromancy, the interpretation of dreams, was prevalent throughout the ancient world (and in the Bible). Gods of the ancient world were thought to communicate with people through dreams (Matt 1:20-21; 2:13).

There was a prohibition of such practices in ancient Israel: there should not be found among you “anyone who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer” (Deut 18:10-12 RSV), but such figures were consulted anyway (1 Sam 9:9-12, 18-19).

These three supernatural practices still survive in modern Western society in various forms.  A psychic is a spiritual medium who answers questions dealing with matters beyond the physical world (check their availability on the internet). Priests are in the employ of certain modern religions. They are believed to have the power to mediate between God and people, particularly in the more ritualistic religious traditions (ascribing the divine presence to the elements of the Mass/Eucharist, for example). Dream interpretations are offered by psychics or mediums, who are believed to have the power to interface with the spirit world. Dream interpretation, however, has now also gone mainstream, and is a technique used by medically trained psychotherapists (hopefully not through the powers of spirits).⁶

Is Christianity’s Holy Spirit, perhaps, only another ancient superstition from the ancient past? It would seem, on the surface, that there is little difference between the ancient pagan belief that certain people communicated with and through spirit (not Holy Spirit) and Christianity’s belief that modern Christians communicate with God through Holy Spirit. Both groups access their Gods through the medium of spirit, what they both channel is a spiritual “reality,” and they are both pre-critical survivals from the ancient past.⁷ In what way is Christianity’s belief in Holy Spirit not also a survival from the ancient past? Why is it not also superstition, if pagan beliefs in spirit are superstition? If there can be one spirit (Holy Spirit), why can there not be more (pagan spirits)? Luke seemed to think so, when he described Paul as exorcising a spirit of the Pythia (Acts 16:16-18).

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4^th edition, 2002), s. v. “superstition.”

²Charles Hedrick, Jr., History and Silence. Purge and Rehabilitation of Memory in Late Antiquity (Austin: University of Texas, 2000), 57.

³Homer, The Iliad, Book 1, lines 62-63.

⁴See Charles W. Hedrick, “Prophecy, Divination and Fate,” The Fourth R 36.2 (March-April 2023), 15-18, 10. For other appearances of a seer in the Bible see 2 Sam 24:11; 2 kgs 17:13; 1 Chron 25:5; 2 Chron 9:29; Isa 29:10; Amos 7:12; Mic 3:7.

⁵Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1990), s. v. “priest.”

⁶National Library of Medicine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3330585/

See also Charles W. Hedrick, “Does God Communicate in Dreams,” Blog: Wry Thoughts about Religion, May 16, 2013: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2013/05/does-god-communicate-in-dreams.html?showComment=1368794635348

⁷Hedrick, “Laying on Hands, to Pass on the Holy Spirit,” Blog: Wry Thoughts about Religion, July 8, 2021: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=the+holy+spirit

The Privative Life of God

Can it be true that God has a private life? Folks at my church seem to assume that God is always on duty, 24/7—particularly to receive all prayers. People seem to think God is even available to make spiritual house calls and hospital visits on a moment’s notice. Imagine; going to God in prayer and sensing a message glimmering in your mind: “call back in a week; on vacation!” Yet there are hints in the Bible that God does have something like a private life—moments when he is away from being hands-on (so to speak) running the world. The ancient Graeco-Roman Gods, on the other hand, are regularly depicted as having private lives.¹ I grant you that Yahweh’s free moments are all depicted in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible (OT). The New Testament (NT) writers are not much-given to reflecting on God anthropomorphically (i.e., depicting God as being human).² Nevertheless these hints are there in OT.

            One indisputable attestation of God’s private life is revealed at the creation when God “finished his work and rested on the seventh day from all his work” and immediately “hallowed the seventh day” of the week (Gen 2:2-3), presumably as a day of rest (Exodus 20:8-11). What do you do when you are resting? The answer is, anything but work!³

The depiction of God as “walking in the garden [of Eden] in the cool of the day” (Gen 3:8) and making innocuous chit-chat (before the conversation got serious, Gen 3:9-13) with Adam and Eve sounds as if God’s refreshing pause in the heat of the day was spoiled by the coming of age of Adam and Eve.

            For some reason, God attempts to kill Moses as Moses is on his way to Egypt. God meets Moses at a lodging place on the way and tries to kill him (Exodus 4:24). It does not appear that God is acting in the performance of his official duties, however. Apparently, this act is “off the books” (not an official act) but a clandestine act, if you will, for God fails to kill him—Is this kind of thing something God does in his spare time, do you suppose? Perhaps! God’s all too casual “back-room bargain” with Satan (Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6) to allow a testing of Job’s piety appears similar to the incident with Moses. No wonder Jesus followers prayed that they not be put to the test (Matt 6:13=Luke 11:4). God’s bargain with Satan to prove Job’s piety to Satan appears pointless and hence a waste of God’s time.

            There is one kind of thing that God is represented as doing quite frequently in the Bible. One finds repeated references to God “changing his mind,” or “repenting” about things he has done or things he intended to do.⁴ For example, God “was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen 6:6-7). He later changed his mind again, even about his previous change of mind to destroy everything he had created, because Noah subsequently found favor in his eyes (Gen 6:8). God must have spent a great deal of time mulling over his deeds and pondering what his next course of action should be in the circumstances. One mulls and ponders in the spare moments that one has available—not in the busy moments of life. The frequency with which God ponders certain of his actions suggests that he spent a lot of time reflecting, pondering, and being inactive while in self-recriminating thought.

            There is also “evidence” from sherds, pottery, and the Bible that God may have had a wife (or significant other) at some point in the dim past. It has been suggested by an Oxford scholar, who now teaches at Exeter, that at one time the goddess Asherah (Deut 16:21; I Kgs 14:23) was considered a consort (wife, significant other) of the Hebrew God, Yahweh.

Asherah's connection to Yahweh, according to [Francesca] Stavrakopoulou, is spelled out in both the Bible and an 8th-century B.C. inscription on pottery found in the Sinai desert at a site called Kuntillet Ajrud.

"The inscription is a petition for a blessing," she shares. "Crucially, the inscription asks for a blessing from 'Yahweh and his Asherah.' Here was evidence that presented Yahweh and Asherah as a divine pair. And now a handful of similar inscriptions have since been found, all of which help to strengthen the case that the God of the Bible once had a wife."⁵

This is an interesting development that, if true, certainly support the idea that God at one time was thought to have a private life.

            I think, however, I can hear someone thinking quietly: “But you haven’t proven God has a private life. All you have shown is that an ancient semitic tribe at one time suspected the God they worshipped had odd moments when he might have been doing something other than ‘God-like’ things.” And that someone would be correct! When talk of God commences, we are always at the mercy of human imagination. For all God-talk has little to do with factuality. All words about God, like grass in its season, pass with each generation that coined them, like the dissonance between old and new covenants (Heb 8:1-13). Unless members of the tribe get together and canonize their words about God as an iconic object.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹See, for example, Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (2 vols.; George Braziller, 1959), vol. 1. 53-55. This section describes Zeus’ philandering ways, and his home life with Hera, his wife.

²This gap between the OT and NT in God-thought happens between the more primitive anthropomorphic thinking of the OT authors and the slightly-more “philosophically” oriented NT authors. Even one ancient Hebrew prophet recognized the wrong headedness of thinking of God in human terms (1 Sam 15:29).

³Some of the kinds of things God did in his “creation work” are reflected in God’s answer to Job (38-41). Today, God is generally thought-of as doing “religious” work, like answering prayer (or not), rewarding the faithful, and punishing the wicked.

⁴Repent, means to change one’s mind; sometimes translated as “relented”: Exod 32:14; I Sam 15:11, 35; 2 Sam 24:15-16; 1 Chron 21:15; Jer 8:8; 15:6; 18:10; 26:3, 13, 19; 42:10; Amos 7:3, 6; Jonah 3:9-10.

⁵Jennifer Viegas, NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42154769