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

Sidelined at the Far End

Many at the far end of things¹ likely feel much like Moses must have felt looking over into Canaan and knowing that he would not be part of the conquest of the “promised land” (Gen 32:48-52). God had effectively sidelined him from the next great adventure of his people. In our case, time has caught-up with us in the form of aging’s numerous aches and pains, or serious illnesses and, in any case, retirement many years ago from our former positions of active engagement in the world has made us no longer players but turned us into observers of the world and the momentous events of recent days (wars in the Mideast and Ukraine and Mr. Trump’s positive numbers in the recent polls), and local crises, too many to chronicle in a two-page blog.

            To the credit of the cable news networks they have enlisted as “consultants” a few of our number who are recently retired political, governmental, military, and academic figures whose opinions they consider still current in order to cast light on the events of the day. These once influential figures from the recent past are once again players in our national drama. Too many current occupants of influential positions in government and academia are reluctant to speak candidly about events that eventually affect all of us.

            Most of those who observe the passing of days from the far end are sidelined and feel powerless to influence the course of few things in their individual lives, much less matters of the state and international affairs. What is left to us is volunteering our services locally, if physically able, contributing financially what we can to causes we believe in, and responsibly voting our conscience. Many are like the proverbial figure in John 21:18, dependent on the help of care-givers. Once we ran gazelle-like through life, shared wisdom as we knew it, loved and were loved in return, wept through the years at too many funerals, and saw our homes depleted as children assumed their own places and activities in life. Some of us observe and ponder our reduced worlds from the far end, while others suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia are no longer capable of such introspective reflection, and still others because of physical anomalies and other handicaps look on from beds and wheelchairs. If you run into one of the far-end tribe, recognize that once they were movers and community shakers; and many in spite of their advanced age and infirmities still have much to contribute, which they will willingly and candidly share. At the far end duplicity is not valued.

            The Judeo-Christian tradition has left us a few cogent appreciative comments about our aged brothers and sisters.

Job 12:12: Wisdom is with the aged and understanding in length of days.

Psalm 92:14: [The righteous] still bring forth fruit in old age, they are ever full of sap and green.

Sirach 8:9: Do not disregard the discourse of the aged, for they themselves learned from their fathers; because from them you will gain understanding.

Sirach 25:4: What an attractive thing is judgment in grey-haired men, and for the aged to possess good counsel.

Sirach 25:6: Rich experience is the crown of the aged, and their boast is the fear of the Lord.

Lev 19:32: You shall rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of an old man.

Of course, the biblical tradition does not give blanket approval to the aged just because they are old. Yet these comments show the tendency of the tradition to appreciate the experience of those at the far end.

Alas, there are also other observations as well:

Job 32:9: It is not the old that are wise, nor the aged that understand what is right.

Eccl 4:13: Better is a poor and wise youth, than an old and foolish king, who will no longer take advice.

On balance, it seems that the biblical tradition is realistic. Not all those at the far end have gained wisdom through their experience, but some have, and deserve to be recognized for what they still have to offer.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹The “far end of things” is my expression for what I consider advanced old age. Gerontologists disagree as to when advanced old age begins. For some it is 85+, in my thinking it is 90+. Currently this percentage of the population is estimated by the Census Bureau at 4.7 percent of the U.S. population aged 65 and older. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_age#:~:text=One%20study%20distinguishes%20the%20young,old%2Dold%20(85%2B).

Separate Yourselves from Unclean things

The title of this essay is drawn from 2 Cor 6:17, where Paul encourages the Corinthian gathering to separate themselves from the “unclean things” of the world (2 Cor 6:14-18). The statement is from a quote from the Greek translation of Isaiah (52:11). One also runs across a similar idea of separation from the world in the Gospel of John attributed to Jesus. In John 17, Jesus prays to the Father:

They¹ do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world (John 17:14, 16, NRSV).

Earlier (John 8:23) in a debate with “the Judahites,” contrasting himself with them, Jesus asserts: “you are of this world; I am not of this world.”²

Paul’s statement effectively calls his followers out of the world and sets them apart from “the world.” The idea that Jesus and his followers do not belong to the world, i.e., that they are separate from the world leads them into a kind of world denial, found in ancient Cynicism³ Such an attitude has encouraged many sorts of separations from the “world” through history, from religious hermits⁴ to asceticism.⁵ It has also encouraged other forms of religious withdrawal from the world that some choose as a vocation in the modern world, such as coenobitic monasticism.⁶

            The truth of the matter, however, is that Paul, Jesus, and their disciples do belong to the world. They were “made” for the world, as all human beings are: they breathed oxygen, and their bodies required sustenance for energy and life. Their hearts circulated blood and their bodies were comprised of the same star-stuff of which our species is made (dust thou art and to dust you shall return, Gen 3:19). They voided like the other animals of the planet. They had the ability to sense objects tactically and visually. They used their brains and experienced emotions, as we all do. They even participated in the “world” to a point: attended social functions (like weddings, dinner parties, feasts, synagogues, the Judean Temple, etc.), enjoyed libations, engaged religious leaders in debate, aided the suffering, etc. Thus, to say that they were not “of the world” did not mean there was no involvement in society; it rather suggests an attitude they held about themselves and everyone else, although there is no denying the mystical implications of the statement attributed to Jesus about himself.

            The author of John uses the term “world” in different ways. For example, world can refer to the physical creation (John 1:10; 17:24; 21:25; compare 3:31). World can refer to other people who are a part of the world order (3:16), while in John 17:14, 16 world appears to comprise an oppositional spiritual realm that has a ruler (14:30; 12:31), referred to as “the evil one” (17:15). This evil empire is alien to Jesus who came “from above” (6:38; 8:23) in order to pass judgment on the ruler and his empire (9:39; 12:31) and to cast out its ruler, the prince of this world (12:31; 14:30; 16:11). In the world Jesus’ disciples are exposed to evil (17:15), but Jesus prays that they may be made holy (17:16-19).

            This kind of mythical complex seems quite different from the potentially ethical lapses that many contemporary Christians associate with negative aspects of living in the world: gambling, bar hopping, “houses of ill repute,” etc. For example, in my teen age years I was reared in the church, where I was encouraged to be “in the world,” but not to be “of the world.” What this meant practically was that I should avoid certain kinds of activities that were deemed religiously unacceptable for Christian folk, like smoking, drinking alcoholic beverages, dancing, and watching movies, etc. There are sound health reasons for avoiding some of these activities and no good reason for avoiding others. The neighborhood of the average teenager is much more dangerous today.

            The bottom line of this essay is that if one is to be a positive influence in the world, one must be part of the world. Religious people in my view should not separate themselves for religious reasons from aspects of the world to which they object. I know a man, for example, who practiced what he called a “bar ministry.” Although he himself was not a drinker of alcoholic beverages, he was there in the bar to provide a positive influence within a setting generally frowned upon by the church. According to Mark, Jesus also attended dinner parties, and was accused of being a heavy drinker.⁷

If one thinks of oneself as a follower of Jesus, one must ask oneself should there be parts of the world that are left devoid of the comforting ministry of presence in the form of followers of Jesus. Military chaplains of all faiths, for example, join the army to render spiritual comfort to soldiers in garrison, and to wounded and dying soldiers on the battlefield. To do that they must be part of the soldiers’ world.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹That is to say: those the Father gave Jesus “from the world,” i.e., his disciples (John 17:6, 12).

²John is highly suspect as a historical source; see Hedrick, Unmasking Biblical Faiths, 151-63. Thus, this statement attributed to Jesus may simply be a case of the author of John’s Gospel overriding history with his own brand of religious faith.

³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_(philosophy)

⁴https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermit

⁵https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asceticism

⁶https://www.britannica.com/summary/monasticism

⁷One finds the accusation that Jesus was a glutton and a drunkard in the early hypothetical source Q, Luke 7:33-34 = Matt11:18-19. And there is also to consider the infamous incident in John, where the host at a wedding ran out of wine and Jesus turned water into wine for the guests, whom the chief steward accused of being drunk (John 2:1-11).

Is God Immutable?

Immutability means never changing. I recently heard a minister declare during the Sunday morning preaching hour: “Our God will never change!” Is that true, do you suppose? As is the case with all things religious: it depends on whom you ask. The minister declared what he (and his congregation?) believed about God. Others, of course, may not share that view. The question, however, is interesting and it may yet be a question that will remain open in spite of the heat of opinion on both sides of the answers.

With respect to the Greek Gods who frequently changed their shapes to encounter human beings and hence appeared frequently in disguise, Plato argued the following:

God is altogether sincere and true in deed and word, and neither changes himself nor deceives others by visions or words or the sending of signs in waking or in dreams.¹

His rationale is that God is perfect and has no need to change. Therefore “any change must be for the worse. For God’s Goodness is perfect.”²

In his Republic, Plato dismisses the idea found in Greek myth and poetry that the gods can change in any way. Rather, Plato argues, God is perfect and cannot and does not change. For if a god is already the best possible in these respects, a god cannot change for the better. But being perfect includes being immune to change for the worse — too powerful to have it imposed without permission and too good to permit it. Thus, a god cannot improve or deteriorate, making any change within God impossible. Following Plato, the idea that God is perfect and cannot change became widely accepted among philosophers. Aristotle also accepted the idea that God was perfect and unchanging and it became a central point of his philosophy, which would influence philosophers and theologians throughout the Middle Ages.³

The view that God (the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible) will never change is still popular today. There are a number of passages in the Bible that are usually cited as confirming the idea that God does not change. For example, Malachi, the prophet, quotes God (translated into KJV language) as saying: “For I the Lord do not change” (3:6).⁴

            As happens, however, so often, between texts written over hundreds of years apart, if one looks long enough one will find contradictory ideas. Here are a number of biblical texts that (surprisingly) depict God as changing.⁵

When God saw what they did how they turned from their evil way, God repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them; and he did not do it. (RSV Jonah 3:10)

The Lord God repented concerning this; “It shall not be, “said the Lord. (RSV Amos 7:3)

The Lord repented concerning this; “This also shall not be,” said the Lord God. (Amos 7:6)

And if it [a nation] does evil in my sight not listening to my voice, then I will repent of the good which I had intended to do to it. (Jer 18:10)

And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people. (Exod 32:14)

The word of the Lord came to Samuel: I repent that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me, and has not performed my commandments. (1 Sam 15:11, 35)⁶

Where should these passages leave us? Do we change our minds about God? Do we change our minds about the Bible, or do we try to explain them away in some way? For they clearly describe God as changing.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Plato, The Republic (P. Shorey, trans.; 2 vols; New York: Putnam, 1930), 1.2.382-83 (p. 197). My translation, in part. For another translation, see H. D. P. Lee, trans., Plato, The Republic (Penguin, 1955), p. 121.

²Shorey, p. 191; Lee, p. 119.

³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immutability_(theology)

⁴Here are a few other passages cited in support of the idea that God does not change: Num 23:19, 1 Sam 15:29, Ps 33:4, Ps 90:2, Ps 102:25-27, Ps 119:89-90, Isa 40:8, Isa 40:28, 2 Tim 2:13, Heb 13:8, Jas 1:17.

⁵F. Brown, S. R Driver, C. A. Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1968), p. 637. The Hebrew word used in these passages carries the English concept of “be sorry, rue, suffer grief, repent, of one’s own doings,” in other words to change.

⁶Here are a few more passages reflecting the idea that God can and does change: Gen: 6:6-7; 2 Sam 24:16; Ps 106:40-46; Jer 18:8; Jer 26:3, 13, 19; Jer 42:10; Joel 2:13-14; Jonah 4:2; Zech 8:14.

Does God know Everything?

The big word describing God’s knowledge is omniscient, all knowing—so the Christian theologians tell us. God must be all knowing because s/he is God. Of course, there is no way to verify that to be the case because we have no access to God except through the human mind. In the human mind God is whatever everyone thinks God is. Another practical way to address the question is to ask if the Bible ever depicts God as not knowing something, or being surprised. The Bible, I was taught, is the basic grammar for Christian living and belief. In my religious tradition the Bible is the “go-to” book for information about God. Hence, the question: does the Bible depict God as unknowing; that is, as lacking knowledge of minutiae of the past and details of the future?

We are fortunate, for many have read through the Bible and gathered together passages that depict God as not knowing things. Here is one of the many collections of God’s lack of knowledge in the Bible.¹ The passages noted by the collector are as follows:

Gen 3:9-13: God does not know where Adam is, does not know who told Adam he was naked, does not know that he ate of the tree with forbidden fruit, and does not know why Eve did what she did.

Gen 11:5-7: The Lord had to come down in order to see the Tower of Babel to know what was happening.

Gen 18:20-21: The Lord had to go and see what was going-on at Sodom and Gomorrah.

Gen 22:12: The Lord did not know that Abraham truly feared the Lord until Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac.

Isa 5:4: God does not know why his garden yielded wild grapes.

Jer 31:34: God promises to forget the sin of the Israelites.

Jer 32:35: God confesses that he did not know that the Judahites would sacrifice people to Molech.

About these passages the collector, Mr. Stewart, says that they “seem to be passages that teach the limitation of God’s knowledge.” Although he states that he believes in the “inerrancy of Scripture,” Mr. Stewart carefully explains away the plain meaning of the words of the text to bring these passages in line with current conservative theology. In other words, for Mr. Stewart the text does not mean what it plainly says. Here are a few more depictions of God’s lack of knowledge of past and future events:

Gen 6:5-6: God had forgotten the covenant that he had with Israel.

Exod 4:24: God could not find a way to kill Moses.

Exod 33:5: God did not know what to do with the Israelites.

Jer 3:6-7: God did not know that the Israelites would not return to him as an obedient people.

Jer 26:1-3: God did not know whether the Judahites would listen to him or not.

Jonah: 3:1-5, 10: God did not know if the people of Nineveh would repent and had to break his own word and stay the destruction of the city of Nineveh (3:4).

            In all of these passages the writers depict God anthropomorphically; that is, as having the characteristics of a human being. Generally, God is believed to be stronger than us, wiser than us, more gracious than us, etc., yet God is still described in the Bible as limited in knowledge, as are we. The descriptions are not as crass as the depictions of the ancient Gods of Greece and Rome, but the Judeo-Christian God is still described as not knowing certain things. The inevitable conclusion is that the frequently ungodlike descriptions of God in the Bible disqualifies the Bible as the standard for determining the character of God (if God there be).² The Bible claims that the Judeo-Christian God created human kind in his image (Gen 1:25-27). In reality human beings through time have created their Gods in whatever ways seemed good to them. The character of the Christian God at its worse is based on how he is described in the Bible, and at its finest on the idealistic ideations of the Christian mind.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Blue Letter Bible Ministry: https://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/don_stewart_362.cfm

²Here are two more essays about the ungodly descriptions of God in the Bible: Hedrick, “Could God have a Character Flaw?” Unmasking Biblical Faiths (Cascade, 2019), 182-83; Hedrick, “Hérem: God’s Holy War,” Unmasking Biblical Faiths, 192-94.

"God Cannot Lie"-So claimed the Minister

One Sunday morning, during his sermon I heard the minister say: “God cannot Lie.” The purpose of the statement went right over my head and I was stuck, startled, by the statement “God cannot lie.” What about lying for good reasons—little “white lies”? Ministers are encouragers, admonishers, and defenders of the faith. They say what will help motivate the believer’s faith and what is needed to keep the believer walking in the way of faith. They are not critics or thinkers outside the box of faith. In this case, I might have said “God does not lie,” but, now as I think about it, not even that statement quite rings true.

               On the other hand, it is true that there are numerous passages in the Bible depicting God as hating lying and falsehoods. For example, in the Decalogue: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exod 20:16; Deut 5:20) and on numerous other occasions throughout the Bible (for example, Lev 19:11; Num 23:19; Prov 12:22; Prov 19:5, 9; Rev 22:15). The writer of the Apocalypse even asserts that liars have no right to the tree of life for they are outside the holy city New Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev 21:2, 10). Liars, on the other hand, are “outside the gates of the city” along with “the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolators and everyone who loves and practices falsehood” (Rev 22:15).

               In the Bible the only passage I can recall where God is depicted as deliberately lying is 2 Thess 2:11: “Therefore, God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false.” There are also two other biblical writers who portray God as commissioning lies: 1 Kgs 22:5-23 and 2 Chron 18:4-22.

Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, “I will entice him.” And the Lord said to him, “by what means?” And he said, “I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.” And he said, “You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go forth and do so.” Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has spoken evil concerning you (1 Kgs 22:21-23).

In the light of these three statements, the minister’s assertion that God does not lie demands modification in some way, or at least the clash with what is generally believed about God’s behavior demands explanation, for in the view of three biblical (inspired?) writers God can lie and apparently has indeed done so. Hence, it seems that those who “trust” the Bible to serve as their principal guide to truth and a guide for living must change their views about the Bible and/or change their view about God’s character.

               The truth is God does what s/he wants. God (if God there be) is neither male nor female but is sui generis; that is, of its own kind—in other words God is unique, and hence unlike human beings. It is also true that God is a grand idea and our ideas of God derive from what we read, from what others tell us, and from the personal testimonies of those who claim to have “experienced” God. The “experiences” people claim to have of God, however, occur only in their minds and from interpretations of their own life experiences. God is not palpable or tangible. God cannot be touched, felt, or handled. Some claim to have “sensed” God, but it is not like sensing the palpable presence of another living creature in a dark room. The “sensing” in the case of God is mental, not physical; it occurs in the mind. In my experience God cannot be seen, although some may claim to have “visions” of God. Such visions do not register on the retina of the eye; they are brought about by mental imagining.

               In regards to God’s visibility an interesting disagreement exists in the Bible as to God’s accessibility by vision. In Exodus 33, the writer vacillates between views as to God’s visibility: in Exod 33:11 The Lord is accustomed to speaking face to face with Moses, as a man speaks with his friend; in Exod 33:20 Moses is told that he cannot see God’s face and live; in Exod 33:23, Moses is only permitted to see God’s back. In the New Testament it is claimed that no one has ever seen God (John 1:18, 6:46; 1 John 4:12).

               In short, God exists in our minds as mental image and God is, as each of us thinks God is.*

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

*Hedrick, Wry Thoughts about Religion Blog: “God does not exist,” May 17, 2016: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2016/05/god-does-not-exist.html Or in later in revised form: Unmasking Biblical Faiths. The Marginal Relevance of the Bible for Contemporary Religious Faith (Cascade, 2019), 168-70.

Exaggerations in the Gospel of Mark

Do little deceptions in the interest of furthering the kingdom of God matter?

To Exaggerate: “To magnify beyond the limits of the truth; to represent something as greater than it really is.”¹ What difference does it make if the author of the Gospel of Mark occasionally overstates the truth? Mark’s exaggerations are most noticeable when Mark uses the Greek words olos (whole, entire, complete), or pas (all). Not all uses of these words are exaggerations, however, but when Mark uses them in connection with incidents or things he could not possibly have known even if he were present, then the statement becomes a clear exaggeration.

            What I consider Mark’s classic instance of exaggeration is Mark 1:5, regarding the popularity of John the Baptizer:

And there came forth to him all (πας) the Judean countryside and all (πας) the inhabitants of Jerusalem and they were baptized by him in the Jordan river.

My response to this statement is: “Now just a minute Mark; are you saying that at that moment even those on their deathbeds or the mother giving birth, or those incapacitated by disease went down to the river to be baptized by John? Did your all include Roman soldiers and the entire priestly cadre of the Jerusalem temple, even the high priest himself?” Even though the Greek verb εξεπορευετο (“were going out” to him) indicates continuing action in past time (meaning that it is not a single event but events happening over time), it is not enough to render Mark’s statement credible.

Here is another example of Mark’s tendency to exaggerate:

Truly, I say to you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole (ολος) world, what she has been done will be told in memory of her (Mark 14:9).

This is not a description of something that has occurred but is an exaggerating prediction that the woman’s actions in the narrative (Mark 14:3-8) will be remembered throughout the entire world. That Mark’s prediction will, at some point in the future, come to pass is not something that Mark can know for certain. Mark believes that it will, and that makes it a faith supposition on Mark’s part.

            Other passages that I would describe as exaggerations are the following: ολος (entire): 1:33; 15:16; 15:33. Πας (all): 1:37; 4:32; 5:20; 6:30; 7:3; 9:3; 11:18; 12:44. Other uses of πας and ολος for comparison to Mark’s exaggerating statements are πας (all): 2:13; 5:33; 6:56; 9:15; 11:32; ολος (whole, entire, complete): 1:28; 1:33; 1:39; 6:55; 8:36; 12:30.

            If the reader is convinced that Mark has in some instances exaggerated, that suggests several things.

1. An exaggerated history is unreliable.
2. An evangelist that exaggerates is untrustworthy.
3. On the theory that God has in some way inspired the evangelist (Mark) raises the following conundrum: is God responsible for the exaggerations, or is God simply forced to work through a flawed writer in this case?
4. Exaggerations in Mark raise serious questions as to what we think is most reliable in Mark. For example, Did John, the baptizer, baptize Jesus? Even critical scholarship affirms the datum that Jesus was baptized by John.²

These observations prompt the question: Why would Mark exaggerate? Handbooks of literary form say that the “bold overstatement [hyperbole] or extravagant exaggeration of fact or possibility [exaggeration]” “may be used either for serious or ironic or comic effect.”³ Mark is very serious, using exaggerated statements to increase the appeal and effectiveness of his story with the reading public, at the cost of candidness.

Should deceptions in support of the kingdom be considered permissible? What do you think?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Oxford English Dictionary, definition #3.

²Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: What did Jesus really do? (Harper, 1998), 54. Mark 1:9 is printed in a dramatic red. For an opposite view see C. W. Hedrick, “Is the Baptism of Jesus by John Historically Certain,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 44.3 (Fall 2017), 311-22.

³M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (6^th ed.; Harcourt Brace, 1993), 85.

Thoughts on Advanced Old Age and the Bible

Once I was as quick as foxes on a hill, but in recent days rising is more difficult and walking sluggish and slower. Through the years the weight of gravity seems to have increased. The distance between think and speak is longer and words are sometimes lost or misstated. Memory comes back more slowly. There is always a brief nap after lunch in order to still my brain and restore my balance. Hearing once keen and clear, in recent days is muted and garbled by static. Sight has dimmed and must be aided by mechanical devices. Dizziness and imbalance put me always on the cusp of falling. Stepladders, I once mounted with alacrity and intrepidity, I now completely avoid. Pains persist in almost every joint. A dwindling stamina affects what I can plan for each day. Not anything in my body works as well as once it did, and some things do not work at all. Age is not just a number. It is the body’s acquiescence to one law of the universe—obsolescence.

My enforced isolation because of advanced age, health circumstances, and especially the pandemic has introduced into my life a kind of near-bearable monotony, even though the range of different things to be managed these days brings with them a kind of diversity. I find that I do not miss extensive engagement with the world; it distracts me from other things more compelling. Truth be told, the world is too much with us. I do miss, however, intelligent communication with colleagues on subjects of common interest. A little of what I need I meet through my blogging essays. But what I really want to do is to go back in time and do it all over again and this time to do it well. Alas, however, there are no do-overs in life!

William Wordsworth has a poem entitled, “The World is Too Much with Us.” As I read the poet, human beings have surrendered their engagement with the natural order of things for the machinations of a modern industrial world; the present age, one might say. We are so preoccupied with the necessities of surviving in such a world that we seldom pause to see the beauty and wonders of the natural world. The poet imagines renouncing faith and returning to an ancient Pagan world where human life was more in tune with the natural order of things and imagination added a certain spice to existence. There is a kind of world-weariness to the poem and a sense of loss that makes him “forlorn.” But sitting here today, January 1, 2022, I understand the poet’s frustration and loss caused by a necessary world-engagement. So might I, in some sheltered carrel, retreat into my mind from world engagement to imagine other worlds aborning.

Can a person of faith, no matter how eroded, find any consolation and solace in advanced old age from the ancient writings of the Judeo-Christian faiths? The answer is “perhaps.”

            To everything there is a season, as one biblical writer puts it (Eccl 3:1-8) and as the musical group, the Birds, have suggested most recently (in “Turn, Turn, Turn”), no doubt drawing on Ecclesiastes. The nostalgic mementos that we gather through life mark our inevitable “turns” into the other seasons of our lives. No matter how much we may wish to remain at one stage, the turns are inevitable. The early Christian writer, Paul, left behind two pearls of wisdom for those of us who have arrived at the season of advanced old age: on one occasion he opined: “I have learned, in whatever state I am to be content” (Phil 4:11-13 RSV). Sounds like cogent advice for those of us finding ourselves in that most difficult and inevitable season of life, if we are lucky enough to reach it. Nevertheless, he might have been led to that view because he thought the world was going to end in his lifetime (1 Cor 7:25-31). Hence, his advice to all those in the Jesus gatherings was remain as you are (1 Cor 7:17-24). In other words, learn to live with your situation; it will be for only a short period.

            The astute reader of 1 Cor 7:17-24 should by now have discovered his second pearl of wisdom: “were you a slave when called [into faith]? Never mind. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise, he who was free when called is a slave of Christ” (1 Cor 7:21-22). Where slavery is concerned, Paul willingly violates his own rule of “remain as you are” (1 Cor 7:17, 20, 24). The principle involved in both statements appears to be the following: learn to live with your situation, unless you can change it (italics mine). This principle applied to those of us caught in the final season of life is this: “Cope with it, unless you can change the situation to your benefit in some way.”

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

*My thanks to Wallace Stevens and William Wordsworth for a few of their poetic phrases I have adapted for this essay.

Truth is an Idea

Truth in the abstract I will define as “a transcendent metaphysical or spiritual reality.” That there is such an overarching “principle,” however, is specifically denied by the poet Wallace Stevens. He put it this way: “There is no such thing as the truth.”¹ Nevertheless, contrary to Stevens we persist in thinking that there is an ideal truth of which our mundane truths (if true) are an integral part. But once again Stevens challenges our thinking; to quote Stevens once more: “There are many truths,/ But they are not parts of a truth.”²

Truth, as we are familiar with it, is an idea rather than an abstract transcendent principle; yet it is not merely an idea. Truth is more than a mental image or mental formulation of something seen or known, or imagined. The Truth is a mental formulation driven by the force or conviction that a particular ideation of truth is right in all circumstances.

Truth is not exclusively singular (i.e., the Truth) but manifold (i.e., independent truths), for many hold in mind ideas they claim are true, yet they often contradict the “true” ideas of others. For example, part of Baptist truth is that the act of baptism is merely a symbol (Rom 6:1-4) and not essential for salvation. Catholic truth, however, holds that baptism is a sacrament, one of the seven means of conferring the grace of God,³ and hence is essential for salvation. In other words these two contradictory truths (Baptist and Catholic) are not part of a single metaphysical truth. There are only contradictory mundane truths that are held as ideations in different minds. In this competition between two contemporary giants of religion, we are left with the disturbing question: “What is the truth about baptism?”

Some of these mundane truths we hold in mind are deceitful or downright lies, like the ideal political truth “that all men are created equal.”⁴ This statement in the U. S. Constitution is sexist (“all men”) and a religious confession to boot (i.e., “created” implies a creator), but, most important, it is simply untrue; for people (much less all men) are not born equal either in native abilities, social status, or physical prowess. Some truths that people live by can qualify as being “evil,” like the truth of racial superiority and its handmaid anti-Semitism.⁵ Racial superiority was the driving force of the Nazi party (National Socialism) in Germany in the 1930s, a truth that produced extermination camps across Europe in World War II.⁶

            If, on the other hand, there is an abstract transcendent or spiritual reality called Truth, it is not what people live by. We live by our mundane ideas about what we think is the transcendent or spiritual principle (if such there be), since we are always once removed from apprehending the transcendent principle. If there were an abstract transcendent Truth, it would still enter our minds only as an idea about some particular mundane truth. For example, lying is bad (but soldiers lie to deceive the enemy and receive medals for doing so); being kind to one another is good (but kindness in time of war is chargeable as giving aid and comfort to the enemy). Usually we learn ideas about what is true from others and we invest those inherited ideas with authority over our lives.

            The author of John portrays Jesus as describing what I take to be an example of transcendent truth, called “the spirit of truth” (John 14:16-17; 15:26; 16:13; 18:37; see also 1 John 4:6; 5:7) of which Jesus’ claim to be “the truth” (John 14:6; 1:17) is one part. But the evangelist leaves his readers with this issue unresolved. During the exchange between Jesus and Pilate (John 18:33-38), Jesus claims to have come into the world to bear witness to the truth (18:37). The evangelist, however, allows Pilate the final unanswered word in the dialogue. “What is truth?” (18:38), Pilate asks. Jesus has no answer. Pilate’s probative question continues to echo in readers’ minds to the end of the Gospel—it turns out to be the final word about “truth” in the gospel.⁷ Is this a deliberate literary strategy of the author? Is there a transcendent or metaphysical Truth of which all our mundane “truths” are a part, or is truth, like beauty, only what one thinks it is? How does it seem to you?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹“On the Road Home” in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Knopf, 1961), 203.

²Stevens, Collected Poems, 203.

³Catholics see baptism in this way: “Through baptism we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God”: https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a1.htm

⁴From a “Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress Assembled July 4, 1776” of the U. S. Constitution.

⁵https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism#20th_century; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_policy_of_Nazi_Germany

⁶https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp

⁷John 19:35 and 21:24-25 use the adjective “true” and in literary form are narrative asides that may belong to a later editing of John. See Charles W. Hedrick, “Authorial Presence and Narrator in John: Commentary and Story” in Goehring, Hedrick, Sanders, and Betts, Gospel Origins and Christian Beginnings (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1990), 74-93.

Hanging Chads in Politics and the Bible in Religious Faith

Hanging chads evoke the presidential election of 2000 (Bush v. Gore). A hanging chad is a partially punched election ballot still connected to the main ballot by a thread (so to speak). The election moved along smoothly until someone had the bright idea of checking for partially punched ballots and then election officials argued over several thousand ballots that would decide the election in Florida. It was the first time (so far as I know) that non-punched ballots decided an election—or were they deliberately punched?—ay, there’s the rub.¹

            In the history of religions there are no hanging chads. In the Bible, however, there are loose “threads.” If one picks at them often enough with one’s mind, they may shake confidence in the Bible and in one’s faith. For example, on the Greek Island of Karpathos late one evening after the dishes had been cleared from the table the conversation turned to “what I did.” It was a family gathering of Greeks plus two Americans. Two of the family members were physicians from Athens. As an example of what I did as an Academic, I gave an impromptu summary of the contradictions between the gospels. One of the physicians, a pediatrician, became visibly upset at my comments. She explained that she would not concern herself with such things. Her faith was a settled matter, and such questions were off the table for her.

It has been my experience that the vast majority of folk by middle age are quite comfortable with their religious beliefs. They tend to put them on the shelf and pull them off only in times of crisis trusting that their religious beliefs can be relied on to carry them through the difficulties they face. Occasionally, however, the Bible itself becomes a threat to one’s religious beliefs when one runs across a passage that seems to undermine what they have been taught and believed for so many years.

Here is one threatening “fly” in the ointment (so to speak) of Baptist theology: Baptists believe that salvation comes “by faith in Christ.” In Baptist faith one only needs to believe that Jesus died for one’s sins—nothing else is necessary. Certain other Christian denominations,² however, believe as a tenant of their faith that Christian baptism is necessary for one’s salvation. In short, they believe in “baptismal regeneration.” Here are certain biblical verses that some denominations believe point to this teaching. In Baptist thinking, however, they are simply “loose threads” that are easily explained: Mark 16:16,³ John 3:5, Acts 2:38, Romans 6:3, Gal 3:27, Ephesians 5:25-27, Titus 3:5, 1 Peter 3:18-21.

Mark 16:16: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.” (New King James translation)

Acts 2:38: “Repent, and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (RSV)

Romans 6:3-4: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (RSV)

The Bible itself can become part of what tends to undermine the faith that one believes the Bible proclaims; particularly if one starts pulling at its loose threads.⁴ What loose threads have you noticed in the Bible?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹From a line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “To die—to sleep. To sleep—perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub.” “Rub” carries the meaning of difficulty, obstacle, or objection.

²For example, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Methodism (infant baptism). 

³Another one of those niggling threads! Modern text critics insist that Mark 16:9-20 was not part of the original Gospel of Mark but was added later. Modern translations do not include the passage Mark 16:9-20. Is it part of the Bible or not?

⁴See for example Hedrick, Wry Guy Blog: “Can all Bible Translations be Trusted,” September 10, 2018. http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=loose+threads

Can All Bible Translations be Trusted?

Perhaps; it depends on what goes on in the translation process before the translation is published. Let's take one example.

One Sunday morning in Baptist Bible study our study group encountered a problem with the translation of 2nd Samuel 22:27. When the instructor read the passage in the NIV translation, it was:

To the pure you [i.e., the LORD] show yourself pure, but to the crooked you show yourself shrewd.

I objected that my translation, in the RSV, read differently:

With the pure thou dost show thyself pure and with the crooked thou dost show thyself perverse.

Surely there is some mistake here! Shrewd and perverse are about as far apart in content as words can be. There are several dictionary meanings of shrewd, but the one we generally think of is the following: shrewd is "marked by clever discerning awareness and hard-headed acumen." Perverse carries the idea of the following: "obstinate in opposing what is right, reasonable, or accepted." So why are the two translations so different and opposed to one another?

In the Hebrew text of the passage the first italicized word in the translations of 1 Sam 22:27 above is 'qsh and the root of the second italicized word is thought to be a corrupted verbal form of ptl. What actually appears in the Hebrew text for this second word, however, is described by the Hebrew Lexicon¹ as an impossible Hebrew verbal form, and the lexicon adopts the parallel reading in Psalm 18:27 to replace the corrupted verbal form in 1 Sam 22:27, whose root is ptl.²

For the first word crooked (an adjective) the Hebrew lexicon provides a translation of "twisted or perverted." Oddly the Kittel edition of the Hebrew Bible leaves the corrupted form of the second word (a verb) in the text rather than emending it, and in a footnote gives the supposed correct reading (a form of ptl) taken from Psalm 18:27.³ The Hebrew Lexicon translates ptl as "to twist" and offers this translation for 2nd Sam 22:27: "with the twisted thou dost deal tortuously." Proverbs 8:8 uses both words: "All the words of my mouth [says the LORD] are righteous; there is nothing twisted (ptl ) or crooked ('qsh) in them."

The earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, translates the verse this way: "and with the crooked you are perverse" (strebloũ/ streblōthēsē).

Here are a few of some other modern translations to demonstrate how differently the two words have been translated into English:

Translation                          1st word 'qsh            2nd word ptl

New American Bible:          1. crooked         2. you are astute

An American Translation:  1. crooked         2. you act craftily

Moffatt:                                  1. treacherous  2. you prove treacherous

New World Translation:     1. crooked        2. you act silly

New English Bible:              1. perverse       2. you show self tortuous

KJV:                                        1. froward       2. you show self unsavory
                                                 (perverse)  

Douay:                                   1. perverse      2. you will be perverted

Masoretic Text:                     1. crooked       2. you show self subtle

Living Bible:⁴                        1. evil               2. you destroy the evil

New Living Translation:⁵   1. wicked        2. you show self hostile

American Standard:            1. perverse      2. you show self froward
                                                                                      (perverse)

Today's English Version:   1. wicked         2. you are hostile

            The problem of corrupted verbal forms in biblical texts is one of those niggling difficulties in the Bible of which most people are unaware. It is an annoying little thread that if pulled at persistently enough, along with the Bible's many other loose threads, tends to unravel any personal authority that the Bible may have once held. The particular little thread of 2nd Sam 22:27 is one of those things that may reasonably be described as one of the aspects of the Bible's "infrastructure."⁶ Infrastructure issues deal with such things as the ancient languages in which the biblical texts were originally written, the theory and practice of translation, early fragmentary papyrus and vellum manuscripts on which biblical texts were first written, scribal practices and proclivities of a particular scribal hand, the linguistic instability of ancient texts in transmission, textual criticism issues surrounding the identification of the earliest reliable form of a text and how that text might relate to the original author's copy. It is little wonder that most readers are not familiar with such issues, since they require specialized knowledge. The resolution of infrastructure problems is one of the things that must be resolved before Bible translations are published. The personal cost of being able to work competently with infrastructure issues is high indeed, in terms of numbers of years of study required and experience.

Translators of the Bible are only human. The quality of their product is defined and/or limited by their years of training, technical knowledge, and practiced skill. Throughout the process, however, the translation is subtly influenced by the intensity of a translator's personal religious allegiances and the objectivity with which they work. Can we trust Bible translators? Perhaps; but if you do you should always verify—that is, if you cannot read Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, always read the biblical text in several different translations. That practice may cast light on the reliability of your preferred translation.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹Brown, Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon (reprint with corrections, 1968), 786, 836.

²Second Samuel 22:2-51 is also preserved in Psalm 18.

³R. Kittel, Biblia Hebraica, 495.

⁴The Living Bible is not a translation but a paraphrase that was made from the American Standard Version of 1901 by Kenneth N. Taylor, an American publisher and author.

⁵This translation began as a revision of the Living Bible but became instead another translation from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

⁶That is to say "the underlying foundation or basic framework" of the Bible.