Parenthetical Statements in Mark

The ancient Greeks did not punctuate their literature by using two curved half-circle marks known from the sixteenth century as parentheses, although they did write what we today call parenthetical statements that jump off the page screaming “additions to the sentence” for the careful reader.¹ Here is an example of a parenthetical statement in Mark 3:30, for which the translators do not provide parenthesis: “because they said he has an unclean spirit.” The phrase explains why Jesus said what he did in 3:28–29. One translation (NRSV) set the phrase off from verse 30 by a dash; another translation (REB) turned the phrase into a complete sentence (adding words not present in the Greek): “He said this because they had declared he was possessed by an unclean spirit.”

            In other cases, translators use parentheses to set off the parenthetical phrase/sentence. The word parenthesis is Greek (parenthesis), which translated means “putting in beside”; that is, adding something additional to the sentence. The “something additional” is extraneous and always subordinate to the main statement.² In the Gospel of Mark, however, they also have the character of an explanation. In Mark 3:30 the parenthetical statement explains why Jesus said what he did: his interlocuters had accused him of being spirit possessed, and that is what prompted his response in Mark 3:28-29.³

            There are several other instances of parenthetical statements in Mark, or at least some translators think so: 2:10–11; 5:42; 7:3–4; 7:11; 7:19; 13:14; 15:22; 15:34. Modern translators⁴ use parentheses or dashes to designate the statement as parenthetical. In some cases, however, they do not even acknowledge its parenthetical character (for example, Mark 15:34, which is exactly like Mark 15:22). And in some cases, they seem to skip over parenthetical statements (for example, Mark 16:4: which reads: “for it was very large”).

            Readers will remember that ancient scribes in ancient Greek manuscripts did not separate words from one another. Here is how my last statement would have appeared in an ancient Greek manuscript: greekmanuscriptsdidnotseparatewordsfromoneanother

They did not use punctuation marks, except in rare cases. All of that is supplied by the modern text critics, translators, and editors.⁵

            Given the propensity of ancient scribes to introduce new readings into ancient Greek manuscripts,⁶ one wonders if some of these parenthetical statements in Mark might be marginal notes made by ancient scribes that eventually made their way into the body of the text during the first and second centuries, a period for which we have virtually no ancient manuscripts preserved.⁷

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Britannica, *“Parenthesis, grammar,” https://britannica.com/topic/parenthesis

²J. A. Cuddon, Literary Terms and Literary Theory (3^rd ed.; Penguin, 1998), 639.

³There are a great number of such statements in John. See C. W. Hedrick, “Authorial Presence and Narrator in John. Commentary and Story,” in Gospel Origins and Christian Beginnings, 74–93 (edited by James Goehring, et al.; Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1990).

⁴The two translations I am using for this essay are NRSV, New Revised Standard Version and REB, Revised English Bible.

⁵C. W, Hedrick, Wry Guy Blog. ”The Lowly Punctuation Mark in the New Testament.”

http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=lowly+punctuation+mark

⁶For example, Mark 9:44 and 46 are added to the text of Mark. These two verses repeat Mark 9:48 and do not appear in early manuscripts of Mark. Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2^nd ed.; United Bible Societies,1994), 86–87.

⁷See the dates given in the back (pages 792–819) of the 28^th revised edition of the Nestle, Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece (Greek-English New Testament).

Ancient Scribes and Modern Translators - and the Bible

What one reads in one’s New Testament (NT) is largely determined by these two groups, ancient scribes and modern translators. An ancient scribe is a literate person who makes a living by copying manuscripts. They, of course, were, at one time, living, breathing people with opinions and prone to errors. A modern translator is a person linguistically skilled in the ancient form of the Greek language called koine (the common dialect of the Hellenistic and Roman periods) and in the target language of the translation—in this case English. They too are living, breathing people with opinions and prone to errors. And both groups in their time contribute to what a NT text says.

            The original author of a text produces an “autograph,” which is an author’s original, first-copy of a text. When completed, the autograph determined what the text originally said. Alas, at that point the author loses control of the written text. Scribes will make copies of the autograph and in so doing will introduce errors and make other deliberate changes in the copies they produce. And still other scribes will make further copies of the text from the first copies and introduce further errors and changes.

At this point a third group becomes involved in a text’s transition from koine Greek into English: the textual critic. There are over 5000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Alas, the original autographs no longer survive and existing copies differ from one another.¹ Textual critics aim to restore the readings of the original autograph, and periodically publish a koine Greek edition of the NT, showing in an apparatus at the bottom of pages the numbers of significant differences existing among the manuscripts of the Greek NT. Text critics decide the most probable readings, which are published in the text above the apparatus. The 28^th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek NT is the current edition from which translators work.

The judgments of text critics as to the readings of the original author’s copy of a NT text are not always accepted by translators of the text, resulting in different readings between translations. In other words, each translated version of the NT differs in some degree. Here is one example. One finds in Mark 1:41 different readings between the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and The Revised English Bible (REB). The NRSV follows the text critical judgment that Mark’s autograph originally read in Mark 1:41 “moved with pity” (splagxnistheis), while the REB follows a lesser supported reading “moved to anger” (orgistheis). Text critics selected the reading “pity” as the original reading because they could easily understand why an ancient scribe would change anger to pity but could not so easy understand why a scribe would change pity to anger. In the end the committee was more impressed with the superior support of manuscripts that read pity rather than the less impressive manuscript support for anger.²

I noted fourteen other instances where scribal changes contributed to different readings in the translation of the Gospel of Mark between the NRSV and REB.³ While these changes are not particularly significant, they are enough to make the point that the NT read in the church today is as much a human book as a divine book. The autographs were written by imperfect human beings, prone to error, and, in any case, the autographs no longer exist. Virtually all the over five thousand manuscripts of the Greek NT come from the third century and later. Scribes have introduced innumerable new readings into their copies, both deliberate and accidental. And translators decide what readings they will translate. Hence, it is misleading to refer to the NT as the “Word of God.” If the texts were initially divinely inspired, their words, both Greek and English, were, and still are, decided by human beings.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (3^rd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University, 1992), v.

²Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2^nd ed., 3^rd printing; Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1998), 65. Note that one other reading in Mark attributes anger to Jesus but without a scribal change to pity: Mark 3:5.

³Here are the other fourteen instances in Mark: 3:14, 32; 6:22, 41, 47; 7:4, 35; 9:42; 10:2; 11:19; 12:23; 14:39, 68; 15:10.

An Early Christian Slogan?

There is a pithy statement in 1 Tim 2:5-6, written in terse prose omitting certain verbal forms that would help with the clarity of the piece, were they present. It is a concise statement of a slogan-like character.¹ Line 4 has the character of a “tag line,” possibly functioning as a title. Likely for these reasons and the fact that the unit appears formulaic, the editors of the Nestle-Aland critical Greek text of the New Testament (NT) chose to print it in a structured format, a printing not generally followed by English translators of the NT:²

For one God

and one mediator of God and humanity

a human being, Lord Anointed Jesus

the one giving himself a ransom for all

the testimony at the right time

There are six other narrative units in the pastoral letters³ published by the Nestle-Aland Greek text in the same stylized manner.⁴ English Bible translators print some of these in a formulaic manner.

            The narrative unit 1 Tim 2:5-6 is a traditional piece, likely liturgical. It is tied loosely to the surrounding context and hence was likely not composed by the author of First Timothy. It was inserted at this point to support the author’s statement that God “desires all people to be saved.”⁵

Line 1: taking the word “one” (εις) as the predicate, the translation should be rendered as “God is one” (Rom 3:30; 1 Cor 8:6; Eph 4:5-6), rather than “there is one God,” as modern translators generally render it.⁶

Lines 2-3: These two lines comprise one thought. A mediator is one who mediates or arbitrates between two parties. That is to say the mediator brings about at-one-ment between two parties. There is no description given as to how the mediation occurs. The appellation “Christ” signals not divinity necessarily but rather that Jesus is “the Anointed of God.” (χριστος=Christ/Messiah=Anointed). The slogan uses the general term for human beings, or people (ανθρωπος). The appellation “lord” is a term used in ancient texts of a person who commands respect or exercises authority. In Hebrew Bible it is used as a substitute for the personal name of God, Yahweh. As applied to Jesus, it is not necessarily a term of divinity. “Giving himself” (stated again in Titus 2:14) is not the same thing as “giving his life” (as it appears in Mark 10:45 and Matt 20:28); compare 2 Cor 8:5 where it is said of the Corinthians that “they first gave their own selves” (see similar statements at 2 Tim 2:15; Rom 6:13). The lack of specificity as to how he gave himself is surprising. The word “ransom” (αντιλυτρον) immediately brings to mind the crucifixion (it is λυτρον in Mark 10:45 and Matt 20:28), but that is not the only way in the NT Jesus is said to have offered himself. In Heb 2:10 Jesus was the pioneer of a certain kind of faith. By being perfected through his own suffering, his own faith (Gal 2:16) established the way of faith for others to follow. The “price of their release” (ransom) was his suffering for his own perfecting; that is, it was not “in our behalf.”⁷ “Ransom” in Heb 2:10 (αντιλυτρον) in the NT appears only in 1 Tim 2:6, and is a word otherwise only attested in the post NT period.⁸

Line 4: It is unclear whether the “tag line” was composed by the author of First Timothy or if it is part of the liturgical quotation. “At the proper time” (also in Tit 1:3) in 1 Clem 20:4 refers to the processes of nature.

Evaluation: This liturgical statement is interesting for its lack of detail in the language describing Christ’s role in redemption; compare 2 Tim 1:9-10; Titus 3:4-7; Phil 2:6-11; 1 Pet 2:21-25. The stripped-down statement in 1 Tim 2:5-6 fails to mention his suffering and death in our behalf on the cross and his resurrection. The oneness of God and Jesus performing the work of redemption as a human being reads today like an anti-trinitarian formula. Compare, for example, the detail in Paul’s statement in 1 Cor 15:3-4: I have delivered to you what I also received:

That Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures;

And that he was buried;

And that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures;

And that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.

To consider 1 Tim 2:5-6 “Christian orthodoxy,” one must make a lot of assumptions.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan#:~:text=A%20slogan%20is%20a%20memorable,a%20more%20defined%20target%20group

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendiatris

²Out of the fourteen English translations of the New Testament on my shelf, only the following render 1 Tim 2:5-6 in a formulaic manner: Holman, New American, New Revised Standard, and Ehrman. All fourteen, however, with the exception of the King James, render 1 Tim 3:16b in a formulaic way.

³The Pastoral Epistles are 1, 2 Timothy, and Titus.

⁴1 Tim 3:16b, 6:11-12, 6:15b-16; 2 Tim 1:9-10, 2:11b-13; Titus 3:4-7.

⁵Martin Dibelius, The Pastoral Epistles (Hans Conzelmann, ed. of the German edition; Philip Buttolph and Adela Yarbo, trans.; Helmut Koester, ed. of English edition. Hermeneia: Fortress: Philadelphia), 41-43.

⁶Dibelius, Pastoral Epistles, 41, note 38. For an adjectival predicate: H. W. Smyth, Greek Grammar, §910b, 944-48; Blass, Debrunner, Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament, §270 (1); 127-28. Dibelius (p. 35) renders the expression “God is one.” Dibelius, Die Pastoral Briefe (Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 13; 2^nd.rev. ed.; Tϋbingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 26.

⁷See Hedrick, “On Calling Jesus my Brother,” March 4, 2021 and “How is Jesus the Son of God,” March 22, 2021: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2021/03/

⁸F. Bϋchsel, “λυτρον,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 4.349.

The Lowly Punctuation Mark in the New Testament

Something to which we pay little attention when we read the New Testament are the punctuation marks in the text. In a sense, we take them for granted. The truth is that in the earliest extant Greek manuscripts of New Testament, texts only received a few marks by their first inscribers. Originally punctuation appeared in a text “as an aid in reading, especially in reading aloud, by marking the various resting-places for the voice.”¹ Texts in antiquity were read audibly and not silently.  The words of the sentences were not separated, but sentences were written in a continuous string of letters. The result of this lack of standardization in Greek texts of the New Testament is that “modern editors are compelled to provide their own punctuation and hence often their own interpretation. The latter is very definitely the case, e.g. when a mark of interrogation occurs (found in [manuscripts of the ninth century] AD at the earliest).”²

            What this means in a practical sense is that punctuation in translations of the Bible is due to the interpretation of modern editors of a text. Editing a Greek text for use by readers or translators means separating the string of letters of a line of text into specific words, correcting the ancient scribes’ errors, and deciding how the text should be punctuated. These procedures constitute an initial interpretation of a text. Translators of a text into modern languages usually work from such a “critical Greek text” that has already undergone these interpretative procedures.

            It is not uncommon that editors and translators of a text will themselves make errors in their interpretation of the text, or at the very least disagree in what should appear in critical editions of Greek texts and their translations. Editors are, after all, human and prone to error, and that is why we have different editions of critical texts and translations.³

            Here are two examples showing that what has been construed as interrogative sentences in the Gospel of John make good sense in the context as statements. My two examples demonstrate that editors of a text can come to different conclusions about a question mark. In John 14:2 a sentence that is construed as a question by one translation is construed in another as a statement:

If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? (New Revised Standard Version).

If it were not so, I should have told you; for I am going to prepare a place for you. (The Revised English Bible).

The Nestle-Aland 28^th edition of the critical Greek text punctuates the sentence with a question mark.

            Here is the second example. In John 20:29 a sentence that is construed by one translation as a question is construed in another as a statement:

Have you believed because you have seen me? (New Revised Standard Version).

Because you have seen me, you have found faith. (The Revised English Bible).

The Nestle-Aland 28^th edition of the critical Greek text punctuates the sentence with a question mark.

            What is the difference between a statement and a question? Basically, a statement is the expression of an idea. A question is the expression of uncertainty and/or request for information. Hence in John 20:29 the paper character of Jesus affirms that the basis for Thomas’ faith is seeing the resurrected Christ (REB). In the NRSV, on the other hand, the character Jesus is unsure why Thomas believes. In the REB version of John 14:2 the character Jesus appears to admit an error on his part; that is, he should have told them he was going to prepare a place for them, but failed to do so. In the NRSV, on the other hand, Thomas finds faith precisely because he has seen the risen Jesus, which Jesus notes is not true of everyone.

One finds this same disagreement between construing the text as a question and a statement between the translators of the REB and the NRSV in John 6:42. I have also found a number of other places in John’s text where it appears to me that the sentence arguably works just as well as a question or as an affirmative statement: John 7:26, 9:40; 11:8, 16:19, 19:10.

            I do not know how familiar readers of the New Testament are with the above information. The information, however, should make a difference to them. What is the significance of this ambiguity in the Greek text of the gospel of John of which the translators of the Revised English Bible and the New Revised Standard Version were surely aware? In the first place the problem of ambiguity lies with the extant Greek texts. They are ambiguous enough that they can reasonably be read at some points in two different ways by readers of ancient Greek. In the second place it is a virtual certainty that the original Greek text of the gospel of John would not have been any different because scribal practices were similar. That is to say, the author’s original hand-written copy is likewise flawed. Readers of the author’s copy would have faced the same ambiguity.

            The Bible is extolled as divinely inspired by Christian believers, but many of its passages (like Psalm 23 and 1 Corinthians 13) are also regarded as inspired and inspiring as is all exceptional literature. In the end the biblical text that reaches the hands of the reading public is due as much to human inspiration, ability, skill, and flaws as all literature is.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹George B. Winer, A Grammar of the Idiom of the New Testament (7^th ed. Enlarged and improved by Gottlieb Lϋnemann; Draper, 1892), 55-56.

²Blass, Debrunner, Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (University of Chicago, 1961), 10. E. M. Thompson, An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912), 60; both of these authors say that the question mark appears in the 8^th or 9^th century, common era.

³The current critical Greek text in use by Western scholars is the so-called Nestle-Aland Critical text: “Novum Testamentum Graece.” Based on the work of Eberhard and Erwin Nestle. Edited by Barbara and Kurt Aland, et al. We are currently in the 28^th Revised Edition of the Novum Testamentum Graece.

Does Ancient Greek have Dangling Prepositions?

A dangling preposition is also called a hanging preposition or a stranded preposition. That is, it is a word that appears to have no function in a sentence. It is dangling because prepositions in English and Greek are words that appear in prepositional phrases in which the preposition takes an object. Here is an example: I went into the house. Into is the preposition and house its object. Occasionally, however, we use prepositions without an object in conversational English and in that case the preposition is said to dangle, having no real function in the sentence, since it no longer functions as a preposition. Here is an example: I wish I had a friend to travel with. With, in this sentence, is a preposition; it has no object. On the other hand, one might construe the verb to be "travel-with," which is not really a word, except, perhaps, in casual colloquial English. Here is another: I bought some new music to listen to. To is a dangling preposition since it has no object; although in colloquial English it might be "thought-of" as a part of the non-existent verb "listen-to." Here is another: Under these circumstances crucial actions are called for. For is the dangling preposition unless you construe it to be part of the nonexistent verb "called-for."

            A similar situation with prepositions also appears in ancient Greek but is nevertheless considered proper Greek by grammarians. I "looked-up" in the Gospel of Mark all the uses of the Greek verb eiserchomai (εισερχομαι). This word is a compound comprised of a Greek preposition eis (into) + the Greek verb erchomai (to come). It has the resulting translation (in the Danker-Bauer Greek Lexicon) of "to enter" or "to come into." In other words, the word has the force of something moving into something. If such a translation is correct, then why does Mark use another eis (into) with eiserchomai, which already has a preposition built into the verb eiserchomai? As best as I can tell the word appears some seventeen times in the Gospel of Mark. Fourteen times it appears using what I construe as the unnecessary preposition eis (because eis is already compounded in the verb). Once it appears using the preposition pros (to, unto, 15:43).¹ And twice it appears without a redundant preposition (5:39; 13:15). In Mark 15:43 eis (into) would clearly be incorrect (one doesn't move into another person). Hence Mark uses pros (to): Joseph enters to Pilate. Mark drops the unnecessary eis in 5:39 and 13:15 since no location being entered into is stated. The general grammatical rule for Mark seems to be that eis is required to complete the verb eiserchomai, if a location being entered into is stated.² If the location is stated, then eis or another preposition is required.

            Ancient Greeks construed eiserchomai as a deponent verb (passive in form but active in meaning); it is also construed as intransitive (meaning that it does not take a direct object) even though it is active in meaning. Hence, they would not usually complete the verb with a direct object. With certain prepositions, however, ancient Greeks can attach a complement in the accusative case directly to the verb without an extra redundant preposition. Mark, for example, renders proerchomai as transitive in Mark 6:33 and gives it a complement in the accusative (autous): "came before them" (proēlthon autous).³ The question becomes why should not the implicit preposition built into the prefix of the compound verb eiserchomai also obviate the need for another preposition after the verb? Or to put the issue differently: Why exclude eiserchomai from the list of verbs that can be used without the redundant preposition? What is different about the preposition eis? Surprisingly according to Liddell and Scott, Homer and the Greek poets use eiserchomai with the accusative and without a redundant preposition, but among prose writers eiserchomai is used mostly with the extra preposition and a complement in the accusative. Here is an example of eiserchomai with the accusative from Homer, The Iliad 3.184: και Φρυγιην εισηλυθον ("I went into Phrygia").⁴ In such instances, one wonders, would the Greek writer construe the accusative as the object of the preposition or the direct object.⁵

            An enterprising Greek linguist might regard Mark's duplication of the unnecessary preposition as an instance of a pleonasm (the use of more words than are necessary in order to convey meaning, which is either a fault of style or done for emphasis⁶). Blass/Debrunner/Funk report that "it is a common feature of the [Greek] language that a preposition compounded with a verb in its literal, local sense is repeated with the complement."⁷ Perhaps it is a pleonasm, but the use of eis with eiserxomai seems to me more a fault of style than something used for emphasis. An emphatic pleonasm would have been amen, amen (John 1:51; compare a single amen in Matt 5:18). In other words, Mark has presented the reader with a redundancy of linguistic expression by using eis after the compound verb eiserchomai; eis appears to be completely unnecessary or useless, since it is already built into the verb.

            From a historical perspective the ancient Greeks appear conflicted about what to do with eiserchomai. Should an extra preposition be added to the deponent verb compounded with eis? Homer and the poets say no; prose writers say yes. For Homer and the poets eiserchomai with the added complement was construed as sufficient; no extra redundant preposition was needed.

What is the significance of my observation? Perhaps it is nothing more than a pedantic exercise. On the other hand, however, perhaps it might suggest that Holy Scripture is not a "perfect treasure"⁸ (although some do regard it as precious⁹) since the Greek language in which it is written is not a perfect medium, and for that matter neither is English, one language into which Holy Scripture is translated. Language is no more perfect than the people who speak and write it.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Oddly, Mark uses pros with eiserchomai in this case rather than change the verb to proserxomai.

²Winer reports that compound verbs using eis "uniformly repeat εις." G. B. Winer, A Grammar of the Idiom of the New Testament (7^th ed. revised, enlarged and improved by G. Lünemann; Draper, 1892), 427.

³F. Blass and A. Debrunner, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (trans. and rev. by Robert W. Funk; Chicago, 1961), 83-84 (para. 150). Here are two other examples of erchomai compounded with a preposition followed by the complement in the accusative: Luke 22:47; 19:1. There is probably another instance in manuscript P⁴⁵at Mark 6:48. Other examples will be found in paragraph #150.

⁴Henry Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Clarendon: Oxford, 1996).

⁵See H. W. Smyth, Greek Grammar (revised by G. M Messing; Cambridge: Harvard, 1956), para. 1553.

⁶ https://www.dictionary.com/browse/pleonasm

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/redundancy

⁷Blass, Debrunner, Funk, Greek Grammar, 256 (para. 484). F. Blass, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch (revised by Albert Debrunner; Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht: Göttingen, 1949), p. 224.

⁸Baptist Faith and Message Statement, 2000: "The Holy Bible is a perfect treasure of divine instruction." https://bfm.sbc.net/bfm2000/#i-the-scriptures

⁹From the hymn, "Holy Bible, Book Divine," whose first line reads: "Holy Bible, Book divine, precious treasure, thou art mine," words by John Burton, Sr. in 1803.

The Greek New Testament is a Virtual Text

The word “virtual” means that a thing “is so in essence or effect, although not formally or actually.”¹ Thus, the Greek New Testament (GNT) that a scholar pulls off the shelf is a modern construct comprised of readings derived from over 5000 ancient manuscripts, which have been critically compared to each other and evaluated in order to determine what the original author’s copy (the autograph) of an ancient manuscript might have read, according to the scholars who made the GNT. Our modern GNT never existed as such in antiquity in any one gathering of ancient manuscripts. It exists only virtually in that its readings are from different ancient manuscripts. There can be any number of GNT since different groups of scholars evaluate the data differently.

Frequently translations of the GNT used by translators differ from the critical text they are translating. Luke 22:42-45, the prayer of Jesus on the Mount of Olives, is one such example: Verses 43-44, however, are omitted by the Revised Standard Version and an American Translation, both of which read:

“Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will but thine, be done.” And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping from sorrow. (RSV, Luke 22:42, 45)

The following translations, however, include verses 42-43 in their translations: New International Version, James Moffat translation, New American Bible, The Berkeley Version, the New Living Translation:

“Father if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.” An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. (NIV, Luke 22:42-45)

            The Nestle/Aland text (28th revised edition of the GNT) includes Luke 22:42-43 in the text in double square brackets. Double square brackets indicate that the enclosed words are thought not to be a part of the original text, but they are rather very early insertions into the text. The rationale of the Editorial Committee that established the Nestle/Aland GNT was as follows: The absence of these verses in ancient and widely diversified manuscripts, as well as their being marked with asterisks and obeli (signifying spuriousness) by scribes in other manuscripts, and their having been transferred to Matthew’s Gospel (after 26:39) in a few manuscripts strongly suggests that they were not part of the original text of Luke. The presence of Luke 22:43-44 in many manuscripts, some ancient, and as well as their citation by Justin, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Eusebius, and many other Fathers of the church is proof of their antiquity. The Committee did not think it probable that the two verses were deleted by scribes who felt that the account of Jesus being overwhelmed with human weakness was incompatible with their belief that he shared the divine omnipotence of the Father. The Committee thought it more probable that they were added to Luke from an early source, oral or written, of extra canonical traditions. In view of the evident antiquity of the two verses and their importance to the textual tradition a majority of the committee decided to retain the words in the text but to enclose them in double square brackets.²

            Specifically, how is the GNT a virtual text? The readings of the original author’s copy, the autograph, may exist somewhere among some 5000 Greek manuscripts dating 3rd century³ and later, but the best that scholars can do is make an intelligent guess at what the autograph might be, based on reason and logic. As this instance shows, however, even logic and reason are sometimes unable to achieve a definitive solution. One cannot look at the apparatus⁴ of the GNT without recognizing the relative value of the scholarly reconstructions and the challenge they present to the popular epithet of the New Testament, that it is the Word of God.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Oxford English Dictionary, Compact Edition, s.v., virtual (4th definition).

²This description is adapted from Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (4th ed. rev.; United Bible Societies, 2000), 151.

³There are a few manuscripts dated 2^nd century: P⁵² (John 18:31-33. 37-38); P⁹⁰ (John 18:36-19:1; 19:2-7); P⁷⁷ (Matt 23:30-39); P^98(?) (Rev 1:13-21); P¹⁰⁴ (Matt 21:34-37; 21-43-45 [?]); *0189 (Acts 5:3-21). Two of these are dated 2^nd/3^rd century: P⁷⁷; *0189.

⁴The apparatus of the GNT is the data listed at the bottom of the page noting the significant differences in readings between the ancient manuscripts.

A Father’s Two Children

According to the Synoptic Gospels the voiceprint of Jesus was characterized by the aphorism and the short narrative. The synoptic evangelists dubbed these short narratives "parables" because they found them enigmatic; that is to say they could not easily get a religious meaning out of them by reading them as the fictional stories they were. Hence they assumed that the stories were, for the most part, figurative¹ and that enabled the evangelists to get a religious meaning from them that suited their own idiosyncratic theology. There is a residue of only 43 short narratives preserved in early Christian literature attributed to Jesus.²

One of the shortest and least studied of these brief narratives, titled by its first line, is "A Father's Two Children."  A synopsis of the story is as follows: the narrative depicts the different responses of two children to their father's instructions to go and work in the family vineyard (Matt 21:28b-30). The general subject of the story is obedience/respect, as Matthew rightly understood (21:31). It is an enigmatic story and two versions of it exist among the various manuscripts of Matthew's Gospel.

Here are translations of the two versions of the story excluding the literary context (21:31-32), which in my view constitutes the evangelist's interpretive strategy. Version one:

A man had two children [tekna,³ not uios], and coming to the first he said "child, go today; work in the vineyard." But answering s/he said, "I don't want to." Later, however, having second thoughts, s/he went. And coming to the other, he said the same. Answering s/he said "I am [going],⁴ Sir; yet s/he did not go.

Version Two:

A man had two children [tekna,³ not uios], and coming to the first he said, "child, go today; work in the vineyard." Answering s/he said "I am [going], Sir; yet s/he did not go. And coming to the other, he said the same. But answering s/he said, "I don't want to." Later, however, having second thoughts, s/he went.

The answers of the children are reversed in version one and version two.

            Basically the story compares and contrasts the responses of the children and by that contrast invites the reader's judgment on their responses, particularly in view of the fact that the story has no conclusion. The lack of a conclusion seems to be the design of Jesus' stories⁵ and makes Matthew's introduction to the narrative ("What do you think, 21:28?") plausible as an introduction to the story.

Matthew's interpretation (21:30-32) describes the conflict between the chief priests and elders of the people (Matt 21:23), the antecedents of "they" in Matt 21:31. Their response to Jesus' question in Matt 21:31 ("the first") only works with the first version of the story, where the youth later did as instructed; in the manuscripts several answers are given by Jesus' interlocutors—the last, the second, the latter, depending on the sequence of the children's answer and actions. These answers do not work with the version chosen by text critics to whom we owe the credit for the version that generally appears in your translation.⁶

Would you attach a religious meaning to the story? If you would, why would you do so?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹Some stories they read as examples such as An Injured Man on the Jericho Road (Luke 10:30-35).

²Hedrick, Wisdom of Jesus, 121. That is not to say that Jesus originated all of the stories. See Meier, Probing the Authenticity of the Parables (Yale: 2016).

³Teknon is a Greek neuter noun which is translated by the English "Child" with no emphasis on gender. Uios is a masculine noun and is translated "son." In Luke (2:48, 15:31), however, uses the term child as an affectionate parental title for a son. Interestingly the only way that the reader knows that the parent is male is by the use of the Greek kurie, "Sir," which is vocative of address for the masculine noun kurios.

⁴A later manuscript adds after "I am" (egō) the Greek upagō (going). For the use of the Greek egō alone to mean "I am going" see Judges 13:11 LXX.

⁵See for example the analysis of The Unjust Judge and The Pharisee and Toll Collector in Hedrick, Parables as Poetic Fictions (Hendrickson, 1994), 187-235.

⁶See Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (UBS, 4th ed., 2000), 44-46.

Is Man the Measure of All Things?

In fourth century Greece, Socrates as a young man met and dialogued with Protagoras, who was then an older man (Plato, Protagoras). Protagoras spent some 40 years as a wandering teacher for hire (a sophist), who would have been able to take either side of an argument in a debate. Socrates, however, treated him as a serious philosopher. In another of Plato’s dialogues he depicts Socrates in dialogue with Theaetetus discussing “what knowledge is.” Theaetetus replies “Knowledge is nothing else than perception.” Socrates replies “good response” and adds that this is the same answer that Protagoras also used to give although he said it a little differently:

For he says somewhere that man is “the measure of all things, of the existence of the things that are and the non-existence of the things that are not.” (Plato, Theaetetus 152a; also Cratylus 386c and Laws 716c)

Socrates explains this saying of Protagoras, in this way:

Individual things are for me such as they appear to me and for you in turn such as they appear to you. (Plato, Theaetetus 152a)

               My question is whether or not this saying of Protagoras, as Socrates understood it, is an accurate description of the human situation in life? Socrates disagreed with Protagoras and says, “In our eyes God will be ‘the measure of all things.’” (Laws 716c). Most church folk would no doubt agree with Socrates and declare God the measure of all things (Job 38-39), and particularly of humankind (Ps 39:4-5). From my perspective, however, man is the measure of the Gods, of those that are and those that are not. That is to say, human beings invent their Gods, and each of us gets to decide which we will worship and which we will not. Even in the Bible God is depicted in various ways that cannot logically be harmonized.¹

               Human beings are even the measure of what texts got into the Bible and have even determined what Scripture itself says. In the earliest days there was no Bible; there existed only individual manuscripts and later small collections of texts initially inscribed by human authors on disassociated papyrus and vellum manuscripts. These individual authors working in isolation recorded their religious experiences and personal faith. Their texts were part of the stream of western civilization. Later, others copied and recopied them and translators translated them into different languages. Small collections of these texts emerged. In the case of the Jewish Bible some of those smaller collections were gatherings related to law, or prophets, or gatherings of “Writings.” In the case of the New Testament, there exist among the papyri collections of gospels and epistles. These individual texts eventually became the religious collections of two faith communities, Israelite and Christian, and the collections are the “inventions”² of those faith communities. Christian bibles today consist of three different collections: Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic.

               Since the enlightenment of the 17-18th Centuries modern critical scholars have gone back to the some 5000 or so original papyrus and vellum fragmentary manuscripts of the New Testament; they compared the different readings of each manuscript—for no two of these manuscripts agree alike in all particulars. The scholars decided by voting (not by praying) what the original autographs of each New Testament text should have read.³ Translators working from the critical text provided by scholars of textual criticism render the Bible into modern languages, and those translations are the modern literary equivalents of the Bible’s ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. This process, just described, establishes human beings as the “measure” of the Bible, even to the extent of deciding what the original authors wrote in their texts.⁴ In this way human beings have provided the raw data from which modern Christian believers develop their individual concepts of God.

The belief that God “divinely inspired” (i.e., influenced, moved, or guided) the authors of the Bible (from outside their minds) should be mindful of the fact that it was human ingenuity and creativeness that made the Bible possible throughout this centuries long process.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹See Wry Thoughts about Religion: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2016/05/god-does-not-exist.html

²By “invention” I mean to say that the human members of each faith community decided what texts belonged to their collection of Holy Books.

³See Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2nd ed.; 1994), 10*-16*.

⁴Is Mark 16:9-20 an original part of the Gospel of Mark? Ancient Christian tradition says that it is, and it is still part of the New King James Bible. Modern critical scholarship, on the other hand, has decided it is a later addition to the end of Mark and hence it was not a part of the autograph and is excluded from modern translations. See Metzger, Textual Commentary, 102-106.

Historical Levels in the Gospels

Most people who read the canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) assume that they reflect a single level of historical activity; that is, the average reader generally assumes the gospels reflect eyewitness reports about the sayings and doings of Jesus. Hence they pay close attention to what Jesus said and did in the particular gospel they are reading. Nevertheless a simple comparison of the differences between these three gospels reveals that they are scarcely synonymous reports. Their conflicts cannot reasonably be resolved by searching the narrated events about Jesus to achieve an explanation that allows all the reports to be “correct.” For example, one cannot convincingly argue that their differences can be explained on the basis that no two eye witnesses see or hear exactly the same thing. The differences and contradictions range from minor to dramatic disagreements in extensive detail (compare, for example, the disagreements in their accounts of the first Easter morning, Mark 16:1-8; Matt 28:1-8; Luke 24:1-12).

There are actually multi-historical levels at play in the gospels. Level one consists of narratives about the sayings and doings of Jesus. Theoretically these took place during the career of Jesus around 26-36 CE. Level two is the later historical level of the individual gospel writer and that writer’s distinctive narrative and theological views about the events surrounding the career of Jesus. Around 70 CE Mark (the earliest gospel writer) in constructing his* narrative relied on oral reports about Jesus’ activities. Mark decided the precise wording of his narrative, what stories to use among those that came his way, the sequence of events in the narrative, and the form and content of the sayings of Jesus. Hence, the gospel represents Mark’s distinctive view of what Jesus said and did some forty years or so earlier. Mark’s account is colored by his personal theology and theological prejudices. He knew no historical outline of the public career of Jesus but imposed his own plan on the disassociated reports of which he was informed. Level three is located in the later time periods of Matthew and Luke (twenty to thirty years or so after Mark). These two writers used and edited several sets of earlier, apparently written, sources: Mark, Q, M and L, as well as oral tradition.

Here is a case on point from Baptist Bible study several weeks ago. Mark narrates two miracle stories (7:25-37: the healing of a deaf mute and the Syrophoenician Woman) that cast Jesus in a poor light. When Jesus heals the deaf mute, rather than healing with a word, he utilizes what appear to be magical gestures—“he put his finger into his ears and spat and touched his tongue, and looking up into heaven he sighed and said to him ‘Ephpatha,’ that is be opened” (Mark 7:33-34). Luke does not use this story and Matthew replaces it with a general story of his own composition (lacking specifics) of Jesus healing multitudes rather than a specific deaf mute (Matt 15:29-31).

Luke does not use Mark’s story about the Syrophoenician woman in which Jesus tells her: “Let the children first be fed for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” (7:27). The statement reflects negatively on Jesus by suggesting that he had a prejudicial preference for Israelites and harbored a negative attitude toward this Gentile woman, only healing her daughter because of her witty retort (Mark 7:29). Matthew, on the other hand, includes the story, including part of Jesus’ offensive statement to the woman in Mark (Matt 15:26). Matthew also puts another offensive saying on Jesus’ lips: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:24). This statement has the effect of showing Jesus won over by the woman’s intense supplication to him (Matt 15:22) and hence in Matthew Jesus praises her great faith (Matt 15:28), neither of which appear in Mark’s story. One can only wonder why Matthew decided to use the story but double down on the negative attitudes reflected by Jesus that offend later Christian sensitivities. Luke, on the other hand, reflects the mission of Jesus as clearly including Gentiles (Luke 2:32; 4:25-27), and his second book (Acts) features Paul, the great missionary to the Gentiles (Rom 11:13; Gal 2:8-9; Rom 1:5). This may help explain why Luke does not use Mark’s story of the Syrophoenician woman.

There is a fourth historical level that is only accessible to readers of Greek who have some knowledge of textual criticism. Virtually all of our New Testament manuscripts are third century and later. Later copyists made changes as seemed to them theologically right, or to correct a perceived error in the text, or for other reasons. For example, Mark 1:2 is wrong in how he introduces a particular quotation (Mark 1:2-3). He writes: “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet.” The quotation, however, is a composite of Mal 3:1 and Isa 40:3 and some later copyists catching the error changed the text to read: “As it is written in the prophets.”

            If you want to know what is actually going on in a gospel, purchase a Synopsis of the Four Gospels** and always read one gospel in the light of the other four. From my perspective the canonical gospels give us more reliable information about the origins of the early Christian movements in general, than about the historical Jesus in particular.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

*The male pronoun is used only for convenience. For my argument that the Gospel of Mark may possibly have had a female author see: Hedrick, “Narrator and Story in the Gospel of Mark: Hermeneia and Paradosis,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 14.3 (1987), 239-258, particularly the section on the gender of narrators (253-57).

**Available in English text only or in Greek-English from the United Bible Societies edited by Kurt Aland.

Rethinking “Evil”

I'll be the "meet the author" guest at Barnes & Noble in Springfield, Missouri on Saturday, April 13 from 1-4pm. The Bookstore is featuring my new book: Unmasking Biblical Faiths. The Marginal Relevance of the Bible for Contemporary Religious Faith. If you happen to be in or around Springfield at that time drop in and check out the book - and take a few minutes for a chat.

The word "evil" has its roots in the Middle Ages (Middle English, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old High German, Gothic).* Hence it appears to be a relatively late word in the family of languages that translators have chosen, along with its later associated ideas, to use in translating much earlier Greek texts. As used in English today, the word "evil" is a sinister word with supernatural associations. We generally reserve its use in the human community for the most "profound immorality and wickedness," and/or to describe an abstract supernatural force, which is the matrix of all wicked acts that are counter to all that is "good" or "right" in human life. Basically the word "evil" or its cognate in another language, in a secular context seems to mean "well beyond the limits of acceptable conduct."

I began this brief study by looking at value-laden language in English. There appear to be five sets of contrasting moral expressions in English. The expressions contrast human behavior in terms of positive and negative behaviors. The contrasts, as I describe them here, are what I gather to be polar opposites. As we use them in the Western world, each contrast arises out of a different context and each contrasting term carries a different significance deriving from the context in which it arises.

            The five sets and, in my view, the contexts from which each derives are as follows:

good/evil: religious or secular contexts based upon personal views;

good/bad: social contexts based upon particular community values;

right/wrong: social contexts based upon particular community values;

moral/immoral: social contexts based upon particular community customs;

legal/illegal: legal contexts based upon particular law codes.

The first contrast on this list (good versus evil) might be considered an abstraction and hence a basis for the other contrasts, which are then regarded as specific instances of good versus evil in the human community. At least I found the paired contrast between "good" and "evil" has appeared more often in the New Testament texts. When I checked the contrasting pairings of good versus evil in the New Testament, however, I discovered that it was apparently the translator's call whether or not to render certain Greek words by the English word "evil," for in the pairings of good versus evil other words are sometimes contrasted with good. In the contrasting pairings of good versus evil two Greek words (kakos and ponēros) are generally translated by the English word evil; sometimes the Greek words are translated as bad, wrong, or harm. In the pairings good or right is used to translate the Greek words kalos and agathos.**

One significant deviation from the usual contrast is the use of the Greek word phaulos for the negative value in the contrast of good and evil; phaulos is translated by the word "evil" in 2 Cor 5:10, but in Rom 9:11 it is translated as "bad." This latter Greek word in the lexicon has the following semantic value: "ranging in meaning from 'easy, light, simple' to 'common, bad'" (Danker/Bauer, 1050)—evil is not given in the lexicon as one of the translation possibilities for phaulos. In other words, in every instance where "evil" appears as a translation of the paired opposites the underlying Greek word might just as easily have been translated throughout as bad or wrong, or perhaps by harm.

To judge from the pairings of good versus evil, New Testament writers do not seem to conceive of "evil" in the abstract (i.e., disassociated from any specific instance of harm) as readers might think or as translators seem to suggest when they translate kakos or ponēros as "evil." If the evidence justifies this conclusion, one may reasonably therefore argue that the New Testament does not recognize the idea of an abstract principle of evil in the universe.***

Satan, for example, is portrayed in the New Testament as a kind of wicked actor who does bad things to people. The only passage that gives Satan a comprehensive role is Rev 12:9, where Satan is described as the "deceiver of the whole world." Nevertheless, Satan is not described as an abstract principle, but an individual actor. Even a passage like Eph 6:12 ("…against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places") is likewise particular rather than abstract.

So how does it seem to you?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

*See Webster's Third New International Dictionary, s.v. "evil."

**These are the passages I checked in the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament that contrast good versus evil: Rom 3:8, 7:21, 9:11, 12:21, 13:3, 16:19; 2 Cor 5:10; Heb 5:14; 1 Pet 3:11, 17; Matt 7:11, 7:17-18, 12:34-35, 20:15; Mark 3:4; Luke 6:9, 11:13.

***See also: "What should be done about Evil in the World," Wry Thoughts about Religion Blog, March 13, 2013; and "Does God Collude with Satan," Wry Thoughts about Religion Blog, June 20, 2018.

What happened to the Gods of Ancient Greece?

            Some years ago I spent six hours on the Greek island of Delos walking its streets and climbing among the various sanctuaries and temples dedicated to the ancient Gods of the Greco-Roman world.  Delos, a tiny island 5 kilometers by 1300 meters, began as a religious center dedicated to the Ionian God Apollo.  Its influence in the Greek Cycladic islands endured from the seventh to the first century BCE.  The devout of many faiths from all over the civilized world came to build holy shrines on Delos, and for six hundred years worshiped their gods there.  But now the site consists of crumbled ruins, whose white marble remains glisten as so many skeletons in the burning Greek sun. Apollo, Asclepius, Dionysus, Isis, Aphrodite, and the many other Gods of their generation survived into the Roman period, but to my knowledge today there is not a single active temple dedicated to the worship of these Gods, whose power captured the imagination of the people of the ancient Mediterranean world.

 

            One modern response is to say that they were not real Gods—meaning, I suppose, that they never existed at all. I can just imagine, however, the response of the hundreds of thousands who believed in them, and through the years made their holy pilgrimages to Delos—just as today modern Christians, Jews, and Moslems make pilgrimages to the holy shrines of their faiths.  The ancient believers came, offered prayers and sacrifices, and left inscriptions throughout the ancient world attesting to the power of these Gods and their influence in the daily lives of the believers.  They would be shocked at the idea that Asclepius and Apollo are not "real."  Nevertheless today their sanctuaries are silent and these Gods considered historical artifacts. What do modern believers in God say about the silent sanctuaries of Delos?  Should they assume that these ancient Gods were simply products of the over-active imaginations of a primitive and superstitious people who lived during a naïve age?

 

            If such popular and influential Gods can so completely pass out of fashion, or be so easily dismissed as never existing, what should one think about one's own God?  Is my faith really that different from these ancient faiths, whose Gods were credited with as much power and influence in the ancient world as the Gods of current faiths enjoy in the modern world?

 

            If there is no completely satisfying answer to these questions, they at least remind us of the character of faith: faith is not demonstrable proof; it is only the evidence of a deeply held hope.  God's existence cannot be quantitatively proven—at least not in a modern scientific test-tube sense.  And that knowledge should make us all a little less arrogant in our own religious beliefs, and just a little more tolerant of the beliefs of others. It also raises the issue as to whether or not the demise of the Greek Gods was the beginning of the twilight of all the Gods.*

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

*An earlier version of this essay appears in Hedrick, House of Faith or Enchanted Forest. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2009, 51-52.

WHAT DOES GOD DO?

Answering this question will depend on knowing which God and what is being said about that God, since not all Gods behave alike.  With those two caveats stated, this is the rule: Gods do what they are thought to do—no more, no less!  Basically God is an idea that "exists" in most human minds.  Hence, God has no "objectified existence"—that is, an "over-there-ness from me" that can be pointed to.  God "is" (only in a sense) akin to an invisible immaterial spirit—and even that is too concrete.  There is no spot in the entire universe where God can be located as a "material existing thing" or a person might be.  Nor is God spread pervasively throughout the universe "in all things."  To think in such a way is to objectify God by identifying God in some way with living creatures and plants (flora and fauna), and inanimate objects.  A saying in the Gospel of Thomas attributed to Jesus, however, says precisely that: "Split a piece of wood; I am there. Take up a stone and you will find me there" (77b; cf. Colossians 1:17).  God, if God there be, does not inhabit a space time continuum like the universe and human beings do.

            Primitive societies, however, did make one-to-one identifications between their idols and the spirit of mana that infused their idols.  The Greeks and Romans also objectified their Gods, representing them in statuary and even thinking that sometimes they had taken human form.  They even believed their statuary possessed some of the essential power of the God.  For example, in the council chamber of the city of Stratonicea (West Coast of Asia Minor) there stood the statues of Zeus and Hecate, which were said in a formal city decree to "perform good deeds of great power."  The citizenry celebrated their miracles daily by sacrifice, burning incense, praying, and giving thanks.  Christians generally do not objectify God—with one noticeable  exception.  In the 5^th century Nicene Creed Jesus the Jewish sage is elevated to "true God of true God" and "worshipped and glorified." This is apparently a dual movement consisting of God becoming man and man becoming God: it may be thought of as either an instance of the spirit "infused" into flesh and blood, or the materializing of immaterial divine spirit into human matter.

            An easier answered historical question, however, is what is God represented as doing in the Bible?  That question can at least be investigated.  The Bible is divided into two divisions: Hebrew Bible and New Testament.  Among other things these divisions are characterized by two completely different thought worlds: Semitic (Hebrew Bible) and Hellenistic (New Testament).  Hebrew Bible describes what God does from the perspective of Old Testament faiths according to Jewish tradition, and the New Testament, drawing on the Old Testament, describes what earlier followers of Jesus thought about God's behavior from the perspective of New Testament faiths. 

"Christian" ideas about what God does come much later as expressed in the early Christian creeds, which is not part of the biblical tradition, although Christians argue that the biblical tradition informs Christian beliefs.

Between the two divisions of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the New Testament lies Jesus of Nazareth.  The thought world of Jesus is indebted to the Hebrew/Jewish traditions.  Christian theology is partly based on the thought of Jesus the Jewish sage and partly on Graeco-Roman ideas of divinity.  The question becomes: according to Jesus the Jewish sage what does God do?  The most critical sifting of all sayings attributed to Jesus in early Christian literature of the first and second centuries by the Jesus Seminar suggests that there is only modest God-language to be found in the residue of Jesus sayings surviving lapses of memory, and the piety of the church. What little there is suggests that God is not sectarian but cares for good people and bad people alike (Matt 5:45b), even to the extent of providing for their daily needs, like feeding and clothing them (Matt 5:25-30; 7:11; 10:29-31).  Jesus prayed for the daily provision of the basic necessities of life, as though he were indigent (Matt 5:11), and he thought that God's watch-care over the world extended to "numbering the hair on peoples' heads" and micromanaging the deaths of sparrows (Matt 10:29-31).  He knows how to give good things to those who ask him (Matt 7:7-11).  People of means, however, will have difficulty entering God's imperial rule (Mark 10:28; Matt 6:24).

When it comes to Gods, the biggest mistake most people make is thinking that their personal beliefs control what God does.  As Job said, in a sudden flash of understanding, "Shall we receive good at the hand of God and not evil" (Job 2:10, cf. 30:26).  In short, the ways of the Gods, if Gods there be, are inscrutable.

 

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University