The Earliest Christian Confession?

The confession “Jesus is Lord” has been described as “the earliest Christian confession.”¹

One can scarcely be absolutely certain, however, that it is the earliest, since actual dating for the New Testament (NT) writings is unknown, and critically reasoned dates are the best that can be done. A second reason is that early Christianity was not a uniform movement but rather diverse. In the canonical texts we primarily are given the fourth-century orthodox view of the early Christian movements.

The confession, “Jesus is Lord,” has also been described as “primitive,”² suggesting that it might have emerged with the earliest followers of Jesus. Perhaps it is primitive, but even that cannot be confirmed on the basis of our extant materials. Nevertheless, it is true that this confession, bare of Christological dressing, is found in the letters of the earliest writer of NT literature, the Apostle Paul:

No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor 12:3)

If you confess that “Jesus is Lord” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Rom 10:9)

One can say that this confession is certainly less theologically advanced in the role it ascribes to Jesus, when compared to other very generous Christological epithets awarded Jesus elsewhere in the New Testament. “Jesus is Lord” is lacking many of these more generous claims for him. Instead, Jesus in this confession is simply “the Lord (ho kurios).” Other Christian confessions and creeds give him more extravagant epithets, for example: Jesus, the anointed (christos)[of God] (1 Cor 8:6); raised from the dead (Rom 10:9); the savior (2 Tim 1:10); equal with God (Phil 2:6); the agent of creation and human existence (1 Cor 8:6); Son of God (1 John 4:15); the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15); in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Col 1:19); the reconciler of all things (Col 1:20); the abolisher of death (2 Tim 1:10); the imprint of God’s very being (Heb 1:3); Jesus is God (John 20:28).³

            The confession, “Jesus is Lord,” is stripped of all such Christological glitter, and describes Jesus as Lord/Master. According to LSJ, the Greek word kurios (Lord), when used of people, has the meaning of “having power or authority over.”⁴ It can also be used of things. The term appears to have had a wide range of uses, such as being simply the head of a household or the leader of a nation, or an ancient Greek God.⁵ Thus, in itself, the word kurios does not necessarily carry the idea of deity, as is assumed by some.⁶ The expression kurios evoked political and common social concerns. Thus, the confession “Jesus is Lord” was understood to challenge “Caesar is Lord,” which the Romans demanded be confessed, probably as much for political reasons (Josephus, Jewish Wars, 7.418–419), as for religious reasons (Martyrdom of Polycarp, 8.2),⁷ since the Roman Senate had deified the emperor Augustus after his death, and temples and shrines were erected to honor his tutelary genius (spirit).⁸

            Nevertheless, it is important to note that the term Lord is the most prominent epithet for Jesus that appears in First Thessalonians, “the oldest document in the NT,”⁹ Paul’s earliest writing. In general, the letter reflects little in the way of high Christological epithets. Jesus is referred to as simply the Lord Jesus 6 times (2:15, 19. 3:11, 13; 4:1, 2); as the Lord 10 times (1:6, 8; 3:8, 12; 4:15, bis, 16, 17; 5:12, 26);¹⁰ and as simply Jesus, thrice (1:10; 4:14, bis). These titles are slightly elevated when the term christos (the Anointed) is used with the “plainer” epithets. Several times he is called the Lord Jesus Christ (1;1, 3;5:9, 23, 28) and as Christ Jesus (2:14; 5:18), or simply Christ (4:16).

The cross is not glorified in First Thessalonians. Jesus is simply “killed” by the “Judahites (2:15, usually translated “Jews”), but in some unexplained way his dying was “for us” (5:10). One clearly sees a difference when comparing certain of Paul’s statements about the cross and the death of Jesus in his later writings (Rom 3:24–25; 1 Cor 1:17–18, 23–24; 1 Cor 15:3–4; Gal 3:1,14; Gal 6:14; Phil 2:8). That what appears to be a primitive confession elsewhere in the NT (because it is stripped bare of generous Christological epithets), dominates in the oldest Christian writing increases the probability that it is the earliest confession of which we know.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (New ICC Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 582.

²Fee, First Corinthians, 579.

³Compare the Nicene Creed, Henry Bettenson and Chris Maunder, Documents of the Christian Church 93^rd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 28-29.

⁴Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, comp., A Greek-English Lexicon (revised and augmented by Henry Stuart Jones; Oxford: Clarendon, 1996).

⁵Werner Foerster, “κύριος,” pages 1039–1058 in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Gerhard Kittel, ed.; Geoffrey W. Bromiley, trans. and ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965).

⁶Fee, First Corinthians, 581. Fee is likely correct that Paul would have seen the term kurios in his situation as meaning “absolute allegiance to” a divinity, but what meaning might it have had in its earliest use?

⁷Oscar Cullmann, The Earliest Christian Confessions (J. K. S Reid, trans.; Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2018), 28–29.

⁸Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold, eds., Roman Civilization, Selected Readings (2 vols.; 3^rd ed.; New York: Columbia, 1990). Volume 1: The Republic and the Augustinian Age, 620–640.

⁹Edgar Krentz, “Thessalonians, First and Second Epistles to the,” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary 6:515.

¹⁰1 Thessalonians 5:2 could refer to the Lord God and the end of the cosmos (2 Pet 3:10–13) or perhaps the day of the return of Jesus (1Cor 1:8).

To Please Jesus?

As you likely do not know, every morning I read one very short essay in a small religiously conservative Daily Devotional magazine published by the denomination of the church that I attend. People from across the denomination, and others, submit a brief thought from their religious experience to share with readers. The purpose of each essay is to encourage the faith of the readers of the magazine. I initially began reading the magazine as an academic experiment to see if it is possible to identify the gender of the writers, but I have come to discover a second reason for reading. It is to get a sense of what is going on in the heads of those who occupy pews in the modern church, to sense the contemporary faith of believers of the modern Christian tradition. These are the anonymous voices of men and women from around the world, from the church’s mission fields and other countries, and from the New York Islands to San Francisco Bay. They are everybody and nobody, and represent all levels of the educational systems of the world; mostly, however, they are everyone’s next door neighbor. And their voices are all intensely religious, and trinitarian in orientation.

I was a bit confused by an essay I recently read one morning, however. The writer averred that “a pure heart reflects…a desire to please Jesus…” I was under the impression that the Bible holds up Yahweh, the God of Biblical faith, as the setter of standards for the way one lives one’s life in the Christian tradition. That is to say: people who consider themselves children of the God of the Bible, should aim to please God, or at least the biblical writers seem to think so (for example, Micah 6:6–8; 1 John 3:19–22). Aiming to please Jesus with one’s living may be traditional orthodox Christian theology but it is not Biblical theology. Pleasing Jesus is a statement based on the fourth-century church’s belief that God is a three-in-one whole, a Trinity, comprised of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three divine entities are depicted in the Bible as being separate entities until they were declared to be one by Church councils in the fourth century.¹

There are at least three passages that attest to a belief in the oneness of God among the earliest followers of the Jesus way. The first is from the Bible used by the earliest followers of Jesus: Deut 6:4, “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” The second is from Mark 12:29–30, where Jesus quotes from Deut 6:4, showing that followers of the Jesus way believed that Jesus shared this belief. The third is a liturgical or confessional statement from 1^st Tim 6:4, “For God is one, and one mediator of God and humanity, a human being, Lord Jesus, the Anointed…” This confession shows distinct and different roles for God and Jesus.² God is God, and Jesus, a human being, is the mediator between God and humanity. I suspect the earliest followers of Jesus who made this confession would be quite surprised at the attempt to interpret God’s oneness as meaning three distinct figures constitute one God.

There is a similar liturgical/confessional statement in 1 Cor 8:6 that contrasts with 1^st Tim 6:4 both in the role of Jesus and in the character of God’s oneness. In this confession Jesus appears to play a part in creation, which appears either to make him share in the divine nature (a duality) or be a second divine entity. From the context (8:4–5), a second contrast is that the oneness of God is clearly intended to contrast with the many Gods of polytheism. That is to say, we affirm one God in contrast to the many Gods of paganism. Most of the creedal-like statements in the New Testament share a similar view as 1 Cor 8:6,³ which makes 1 Tim 6:4 all the more unusual in its naming of Jesus only as one the mediator and lacking the higher Christology of other confessions.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Hedrick, What the Church Doesn’t Tell You. Pondering Christian Tradition (Eugene, OR: Pickwick: 2026), 232-36.

²My translation. See, What the Church Doesn’t Tell You, 215-18 for a discussion of the passage.

³For example, Col 1:15–20; Phil 2:5–11; Heb 1:1-4.

What Do Gods Do?

There is more than one God being worshipped around the world, so answering this question will depend on knowing which God one is referring-to and what is being said about that God, since all Gods do not behave alike. With those two caveats stated, this (it seems to me) 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 away 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" as 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). All Gods (if Gods there be) do not inhabit a space time continuum in the universe as human beings do.

Primitive societies, however, did make one-to-one identifications between their idols (things representing God) and the spirit of mana thought to infuse their idols. The Greeks and Romans also objectified their Gods, representing them in statuary and even thinking that sometimes the God 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, on the other hand, generally have not objectified 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 an instance of divine spirit "infused" into flesh and blood, or the materializing of immaterial divine spirit into human matter. He was not always the Son of God (Rom 1:3).

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 Hebrew tradition, and the New Testament, drawing on the Old Testament, describes what earlier followers of Jesus believed 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 of the fourth and fifth centuries and later, which are not part of the biblical tradition, although Christians argue that both the Hebrew tradition and the early Jesus tradition inform Christian beliefs.

Between the two divisions of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the New Testament lies Jesus of Nazareth. The thought world (how he expressed himself) of Jesus is indebted to the Hebrew/Jewish traditions. Christian theology is partly based on the sayings 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 that survived the lapses of memory of his earliest followers, and what was attributed to him in the piety of the later 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 himself 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, on the other hand, 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.¹

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹This essay first appeared on this blog on June 13, 2013. It later appeared in print in Hedrick, Unmasking Biblical Faiths (2019). It appears here again reedited and expanded.

Things Jesus may have said

Or perhaps he didn’t say it after all. In Luke 14:1–6 there is a certain disagreement in the manuscript tradition between manuscripts. The question is what is the earliest recoverable reading for Luke 14:5?

And he said to them, “Which of you shall have…or an ox fall into a well, will not immediately draw him/it out on the Sabbath Day?”

Here is the problem: The oldest reading for the missing word in the passage above is uios (son). It pairs up with ox (bous) to make a rather incongruous pair: if your son or your ox falls into a well will you not immediately draw him out? Of course, you would; you would break sabbath laws and rescue your son! Children are a heritage from God, the psalmist believed (Ps 127:3). You have absolutely no choice assuming you are humane, religiously inclined, and concerned about pleasing God. And the saying seems to assume that to be the case on the part of those hearing the saying.

            Later copyists, however, in some manuscripts changed son (uios) to ass (onos) as making a better pairing (compare Luke 13:15) with ox (bous), or changed the word son to sheep (probaton). A few manuscripts even use all three words: son, donkey, sheep.* Since one of the canons of textual criticism is “the more difficult reading is to be preferred,” the preferred reading, text critics aver, appears to be son.**

The similar saying in Luke 13:15 reads:

You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manager, and lead it away to water it?

There is a third saying appearing in Matt 12:11, which reads:

What man of you, if he has one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out?

None of these three sayings, as related as they are in concept and style, have parallels in the other two synoptics.

The Jesus Seminar in its deliberations did not regard Luke 13:15 as originating with Jesus. On the other hand, Luke 14:5 and Matthew 12:11 were given gray ratings.***

The rationale of the Fellows of the Seminar with regard to Luke 14:5 was that the historical Jesus did not debate the finer point of Torah nor did he debate about sabbath observance (like the rabbis). “The Fellows of the Seminar strongly agreed that Jesus did engage in activities that suggested that he had little concern for sabbath observance.”**** His actions, however, could have provoked those who did care about sabbath observance, which could have led to arguments about proper sabbath observance.

            The two earliest texts (P⁴⁵ P⁷⁵) that read “son” are from the third century. This time frame allows for over 100 years from original composition of Luke to the copyists in the third century, during which time texts were copied and altered. In other words, earliest recoverable forms are not the original and are still suspect.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

*Metzger, Textual Commentary, 138–39.

**The King James Version, however, reads ass/donkey, as does the New King James Version.

***See Funk, et al., The Five Gospels, 36. A gray rating indicates: “Jesus did not say this, but the ideas contained in it are close to his own.”

****Funk, et al., Five Gospels, 350.

When did Jesus stop talking?

It sounds like a trick question, right? Nevertheless, I will attempt to show you that it is quite serious. When Jesus died by crucifixion at the hands of the Romans somewhere around 30,¹ his early followers believed that God restored him to life and the three authors (whoever they may have been) of the canonical gospels (which Christians today affirm as God’s Word) conclude their gospels with resurrection narratives.² All but Mark end their gospels with a series of post-crucifixion appearances of Jesus in which Jesus (back to the land of the living) speaks. None of the sayings of Jesus in these appearance stories, however, are regarded by historians as sayings of the historical man, Jesus.³

            Later followers of Jesus (30-70), before the canonical gospels began to be written, apparently believed that resurrection appearances of Jesus confirmed that Jesus had, in fact, been raised from the dead. See Paul’s statement (1 Cor 15:3-8) that after the crucifixion Jesus had appeared to Cephas (Peter), to the twelve (disciples), more than 500 people on one occasion, James, all the apostles, and even to Paul himself. And the voice of the living Jesus continued to be heard through the mouths of prophets whom, as it was believed, God had appointed to speak in the name of the Lord in the gatherings of Jesus followers (1 Cor 12:10, 28).⁴

The early Christian prophet was an immediately-inspired spokesperson for God, the risen Jesus, or the spirit who received intelligible oracles that he or she felt impelled to deliver to the Christian community or, representing the community, to the general public.⁵

The most intense period of early Christian prophecy was roughly 30-70 before sayings of Jesus were incorporated into gospels.⁶ During this period prophets circulated among gatherings of Jesus followers and, when prompted, spoke the Word of the Lord to their contemporaries (Didache 11:3-13:7). Hence, the oral tradition about Jesus’ sayings and doings contained both sayings of the (dirty-footed) historical man and sayings of the (spiritually?) resurrected Lord. Such sayings entered the stream of Christian oral tradition, which was the resource used, in part,⁷ by the authors of the canonical gospels in narrating the teaching and deeds of Jesus reported in their gospels.⁸

            A case on point is a saying of the resurrected Lord spoken by the early Christian prophet, John the revelator:

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (Rev 3:20 RSV)

Should this saying be regarded as spoken by Jesus? John regards it as part of the revelation of Jesus Christ (Rev 1:1), which came to him through the Lord’s angel (Rev 1:2) while he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day (Rev 1:11) as a part of a “letter” to the Jesus gathering in Laodicea (Rev 3:14). If you regard it as a saying of Jesus, should it be accorded equal weight with sayings that came out of Jesus’s own mouth? The big question, however, is how does one sort out sayings in the gospels that probably came from the Lord’s own mouth from sayings that may have come from an early Christian prophet or the creative imagination of the evangelists?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Jesus was crucified at some point within the Prefecture of Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea, 26-36: Tessa Rajak, “Pontius Pilatus,” Oxford Classical Dictionary (3^rd ed., 1999), 1220.

²Mark 16:1-8; Matt 28:1-8; Luke 24:1-12; John 20:1-10.

³The empty tomb stories, resurrection appearances, and ascension of Jesus are not printed at their narrated place in each of the gospels but handled in a separate section in the back of R. W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus (HarperCollins, 1998), 449-95.

⁴http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=early+Christian+prophets

⁵M. E. Boring, “Prophecy (Early Christian),” Anchor Bible Dictionary (1992). 5:495-502.

⁶Although the oral tradition was still influential into the second century.

⁷Matthew, Luke, and John also drew from other written texts, and their own creative imaginations. None of them were eyewitnesses to what they reported.

⁸Hedrick, When History and Faith Collide, 127.

Jesus said: "Love Your Enemies"

In this most outlandishly stated, mind-boggling, aphorism Jesus says “Love your enemies.”¹ Such a statement prompts me to ask,

Now wait a minute Jesus, do you mean that I should respond with love to someone who wants to destroy me? Love them like I love those closest to me in whose behalf I would gladly do anything humanly possible? Or do you simply mean that I should treat them kindly and humanely? Actually loving an enemy could well get another loved one, or myself, injured or killed.

            The saying, “love your enemies,” enters the stream of the written Jesus traditions through the now lost (or hypothetical) Gospel Q² The earliest the saying appears is the second half of the first century, (arguably) copied independently at different times from Q by Matthew (5:44) and Luke (who uses it twice, Luke 6:27, 35). The raw statistical records of the voting of the Jesus Seminar do not agree and hence send mixed signals as to whether the aphorism originated with Jesus.³ In the Five Gospels, however, two of these sayings are colored red and one (Luke 6:35) is colored pink.⁴ The color red/pink accords the saying the status of having probably originated with the historical man, Jesus of Nazareth (as opposed to it being a saying from an early Christian prophet, or borrowed from elsewhere and attributed to Jesus).

            By contrast, in the Israelite tradition, one is directed to love one’s neighbor (Lev 19:18), who is identified as a fellow Israelite (Deut 15:2-3). Israelites also have the obligation to help enemies (Exod 23:4-5) and treat them humanely (Prov 25:21).⁵ Even the stranger or alien in the land is to be treated as a native of the land (Lev19:33-34). The Israelite tradition sets a high ethical standard for the Israelite to follow, without enjoining the extraordinary, perhaps even preposterous (that is, utterly absurd or ridiculous), injunction to love the enemy. On the other hand, In Ps 139:21-22 the psalmist says that he “hates the enemies of the Lord.” That is to say, the Lord’s enemies are his enemies too, but even hating the Lord’s enemies is excluded by the unqualified assertion of Jesus. People who love their enemies, from their own perspective, have no enemies. Nevertheless, those whom one previously regarded as an enemy may not reciprocate that sentiment and may still regard you as an enemy anyway, even though you love them.

            Matthew and Luke, however, offer a practical interpretation of the radical saying of Jesus by which one can treat enemies humanely and religiously without actually loving them (Matt 5:43b: “pray for those who persecute you”; Luke 27b: “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you”). Their suggestions for understanding the radical saying effectively explain the saying in actions that one can perform without becoming sentimental.

            The saying itself and its interpretation by the evangelists raise the following two questions: Do I heed the radical call of Jesus to an unconditional love for all God’s creatures regardless of their attitude toward me or may I follow the more practically minded evangelists and simply treat enemies humanely? And if I decide the former, how am I supposed to make myself love someone who is sworn to destroy me?

Would someone please advise me?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹For the definition of an aphorism see Hedrick, “Aphorisms of Jesus,” Wry Guy Blog: August 9, 2020, note 1: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2024/08/aphorisms-of-jesus.html

²For a brief discussion of Q, see Hedrick, When History and Faith Collide. Studying Jesus (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999; 2^nd printing, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock,2013), 95-109.

³The reason I say that is because the aphorism was classified both certain and doubtful at the same meeting. See “Voting Records,” Foundations and Facets Forum 6.3-4 (September/December 1990), 245-352.

⁴Robert Funk and Roy Hoover, eds., The Five Gospels (New York: Macmillan, 1993).

⁵https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5756-enemy-treatment-of-an

Was Paul a follower of Jesus?

My title begs for definitions. By Paul I mean to designate the author of the seven undisputed first-century letters attributed to him: Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, First Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon. By Jesus I mean to designate the early first-century Judean man who was crucified by Roman authority between AD 26 and 36. By follower I mean to raise the question was Paul an adherent, disciple, or partisan of, and loyal to, the ideas he gleaned from the man from Galilee of Judea, who died when Pontius Pilate was Prefect of Judea.

            Paul knew bits of data about the life of the Judean man that came to him through the tradition: Jesus was born of woman under the Israelite Torah (Gal 4:4); Paul knew that Jesus had a brother (Gal 1:19). Paul also mentions three incidents from the life of Jesus. He ate a meal on the night he was arrested (1 Cor 11:23-25), he was crucified (Gal 3:1) and was buried (1 Cor 15:4).¹ Paul also was aware of certain sayings that perhaps can be traced back to sayings attributable to the man from Galilee (1 Cor 11:23-25, 7:10-11; 2 Cor 12:9; 1 Thess 4:15). But he attributes these sayings to "the Lord."² By the use of this title is he referring to the Judean man or the spirit of the resurrected Lord of faith who, he claimed, dwelled within the believer (Rom 8:9-11)? What is at issue is precisely whom does he follow.

            Paul uses the name of the Judean man, Jesus, only ten times alone in the undisputed letters without the Christological titles awarded to him by the faith of the later religious community. Generally, he uses the name of Jesus in combination with the theological titles. The titles are, Christ and Lord, or some combination thereof, but in these ten instances Paul uses the name of the Judean man alone. Which figure does he seem to be evoking by using the name Jesus alone: the Judean man or the Christ spirit within him?

            Rom 3:26 concludes: "…that he [God] is righteous, justifying a person by the faith of Jesus."³ Here he appears to be speaking about the Judean man, not the Christ spirit that motivates him.

            Rom 10:9: "Jesus is Lord"; Jesus refers to the Judean man and the title Lord refers to the resurrected Lord of faith, whom Jesus became by his resurrection from the dead.

            1 Cor 12:3: in both cases, the name Jesus refers to the Judean man and the title Lord refers to the Christ spirit within Paul.

            2 Cor 4:10-11: "the death of Jesus" evokes the death of the Judean man, while "the life of Jesus" evokes the resurrected Lord of faith.

            2 Cor 11:4: the "Jesus" that Paul proclaimed was Christ crucified (1 Cor 1:23), an expression evoking the death of the Judean man.

            Gal 6:17: the "marks of Jesus on Paul's body" could only refer to the crucified Judean man.

            1 Thess 1:10: it was the Judean man who was "raised from the dead," albeit spiritually (1 Cor 15:44, 50).

            1 Thess 4:14: The Jesus who died and rose again was the Judean man, albeit spiritually resurrected (1 Cor 15:44, 50).

Phil 2:10: Phil 2:6-11 has long been regarded as an early pre-Pauline hymn that Paul quoted and in doing so added the following words to verse 8, "even death on a cross." In the hymn, Jesus (2:10) is the Judean man whom God exalts. I suggest that Phil 2:11 are Paul's own words added to the hymn to harmonize the Judean man with the spirit of the resurrected Lord of faith. Compare in the first half of Phil 2:11 the words "every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord" to Rom 10:9 and in the second half of the verse the words "by the glory of God, the Father" to Rom 6:4.This latter phrase appears as a standard Pauline element of the epistolary salutation in his letters: "Grace to you and peace from God, our Father…" (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:2; Phil 1:2; Philemon 3), as well as in Pauline doxologies (2 Cor 1:3; Gal 1:4; Phil 4:20) and thanksgivings (1 Thess 1:3).

            Here is a statement Paul makes in 2 Cor 5:16: "…if also we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer think [of him that way]."⁴ If this statement were applied to the situation in this essay, it would suggest that Paul no longer thinks of Jesus as a Judean man become divine (i.e., a half human⁵), rather he now thinks of Jesus as the Lord Jesus Christ, God's son, rather than Mary's son.⁶

This essay is incomplete; it is more suggestive than definitive.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Hedrick, The Wisdom of Jesus, 1-2.

²In Rom 13:9 Paul does not cite the Lord as source; he likely knew it through reading Hebrew Bible (Lev 19:18).

³The Greek reads: dikaiounta tov ek pisteōs Iēsou. See the translation of Rom 3:26 in A. Dewey, et al., The Authentic Letters of Paul (Salem, OR: Polebridge Press, 2010), 219. See also the cameo essay on Gal 2:16, pp. 65-66.

⁴The literal expression "according to the flesh" (kata sarka) in the Danker-Bauer Greek-English Lexicon is translated as: "according to human standards."

⁵A term (ēmianthrōpos) used of Dionysus by Lucian in the second century (the Parliament of the Gods, 4). For a list of the Demigods in ancient belief see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demigods.

⁶The statement by Paul has created a great deal of difficulty for commentators on the text of second Corinthians. See Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 32 A; New York: Doubleday: 1984), 312-14, 329-32.

Knowing Jesus

I was chatting with a friend about someone I knew who was at the extremity of life and described him/her as a person of devout religious faith in one of the more liturgical traditions (for example, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Catholic, Orthodox, etc.). My friend, quickly replied, “Does he know Jesus?” For a moment I was flabbergasted! The suggestion was palpable—how could one of those possibly “know Jesus.” How does one respond to such a question and suggestion?

            Jesus, as every conscious person in these United States knows, is a figure of the ancient past; he lived around two Millenia ago. An obscure (in his day) healer, thaumaturge and religious teacher during his life, he was crucified at the hands of the Romans on a charge of sedition and near the middle of the first century CE he was touted by his followers as being raised from the dead.

            Hence, the question could mean, does my seriously ill friend know Jesus like a figure of human history, or does he know Jesus as a figure in modern culture, for the name of Jesus is touted by innumerable religious groups, by their church steeples on countless corners, in religious commercials on television, in religious publications, in political movements, in marketing, etc.

            But I do not think my friend, who raised the question, was talking about knowing Jesus as a figure of the ancient past or as a cultural icon in the modern world. I was being asked if my seriously ill friend knew Jesus intimately, as we know those dear to us. That is, does he know Jesus spiritually, in his heart by faith? Has he been “born again” through a faith encounter with the living Jesus?

            Physically, human beings have only five faculties of sensation: seeing, smelling, hearing, touching, tasting.¹ These are the only means by which we are able to “know” the world around us. Physical sensations encountered through our senses are transmitted by means of neural activity to the brain where the brain interprets them. For example, we sense a touch, and the brain interprets it as soothing or painful.

Christian folk, however, believe there is also another non-physical way of “knowing.” It is by perceiving “spiritually.” Spiritual perception, they claim, is not dependent on the physical senses but rather on the Spirit of God that communes with the human spirit (Rom 8:14-16; 1 Cor 2:11-14; 6:17) to impart a knowledge of Jesus, the Christ (Phil 3:7-11). It is in this spiritual sense that I was being asked if my seriously ill friend “knew Jesus.”

The difficulty, however, is that human beings don’t have indwelling spirts as a distinct, identifiable aspect of the human anatomy. Human beings can “show spirit,” for example, but the spirit in this case is a motivational attitude that animates an individual, and that attitude would likely be considered an emotional response to some exterior stimulus. “When Paul speaks of the pneuma [spirit] of man, he does not mean some higher principle within him or some special intellectual or spiritual faculty of his, but simply his self…”² Nor do we usually speak in polite society of an exterior spirit acting upon us to produce an emotional response, such as that of “knowing Jesus.”

            As with any stimulus, the brain must process the putative “spirit encounter.” The stimulus in this case would be hearing the “Gospel” in the clamor of the different gospels preached by the likes of a Jim Jones or Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Benny Hinn or Billy Graham, Martin Luther or Norman Vincent Peale, Billy Sunday or Bishop John Shelby Spong, etc. Two texts in the New Testament even disagree over the role of Faith (Paul: Gal 3:6-19) and Works (James 2:18-26) in salvation. In short, there are competitive gospels, and each proclaimer is arrogant enough to think the gospel he preaches is absolute divine Truth to the exclusion of all other truths. Compare Paul’s arrogant statement about those who disagreed with his gospel in Gal 1:6-9. We tend to forget in our arrogance that it is God (if God there be) who will judge the condition of the human soul (if human soul there be) and will thereby “separate the sheep from the goats.”³

            There appears to be no accounting for the unusual things people will take as “gospel truth” when it comes to religion.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Philip G. Zimbardo, et al., Psychology. Core Concepts (Boston, MA: Pearson, 2009), 305.

²Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (2 vols. in 1; trans. K. Grobel; New York: Scribner’s1951, 1955), 1.206.

³An image used by Matthew’s Jesus in Matt 25:31-46.

Aphorisms of Jesus

Here are three examples of an aphorism:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

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

²Crossan, In Fragments, 67.

³Crossan, In Fragments, 237-244.

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

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

Jesus Remembered: A Gadfly on Israelite Religion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

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

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

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

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

⁵Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, 50.

"A Power came-out from Him": Healing and Exorcisms in Luke

Last Sunday morning as the minister was reading the text I was following along in the Greek and was immediately struck by a statement in Luke 6:19, which only appears in Luke.

The whole crowd sought to touch him because power came-out from him and healed all.

What struck me was that Jesus was not portrayed as the source of the healing of the crowd, rather “a power (dunamis) that came-out from (para) him” brought-about the healing. Jesus was the source for the power but the power itself was the source of the healing. The same phrase appears in Luke 8:46, “a power had come-out from (apo) him,” and that is also the case in Mark’s parallel passage (Mark 5:30), “A power (dunamis) had come-out (ek) from him.” In this latter passage the woman had touched his garment, which triggered the emanation of power from him. Jesus did not know who had touched him and was only aware that power had suddenly emanated from him.¹ It seems that the power operated independently of the will of Jesus (Mark 5:30-32).

            It appears that Luke conceived the power in Jesus as the power of God: “And there was a power of the Lord [present] for him to heal” (5:17). Again, it was not his power but the power of the Lord. This sentence is lacking in the parallel passages Mark 2:2 and Matt 9:1. In Luke’s source, Mark (1:25) reads “With authority he commands the unclean spirits,” whereas Luke (4:36) reads “With authority and power he commands the unclean spirits.” One might almost say: Jesus’ authority and God’s power. When Jesus sent out his disciples on a mission, Matthew (10:1) and Mark (6:7) read that Jesus gave them authority over unclean spirits. Luke (9:1), on the other hand, reads: Jesus “gave them authority and power over the unclean spirts.” In his second volume (the book of Acts) of his two-volume work (Luke-Acts) Luke makes a point of emphasizing the role of the power of God active in the community of Jesus followers (1:8; 10:38; compare Luke 24:49).

            In other healing or exorcism stories in Luke, it is not a power emanating independently of Jesus without his intentionally directing it that heals. Jesus heals by a laying on of his hands (4:40; 13:12-13), by a touch (5:13) by words or a word (5:24-25; 6:10; 7:14-15; 8:54; 9:42). In some cases, there is no description as to how he healed (14:4; 17:14). Once, the healing is at a distance but no description of how the healing occurred is given (7:9-10).

            Luke appears to conceive of this power of the Lord present in Jesus but not totally controlled by Jesus. It acts in a similar way to demons, and unclean or evil spirits, when they are exorcised. Luke describes the emergence of the power of the Lord from Jesus with the same expression that he uses in describing the exorcism of a demon or spirit: “it came/went-out from him” (4:35-36, 41; 8:33; 11:14; 11:24). Luke 9:42 does not contain the phrase: “it came/went-out from him,” but such is suggested by 9:40.

These descriptions of the activities of Jesus are simply another reminder² to the reader that in Luke’s Gospel we are not reading a historical account of Jesus’ career as it actually happened but rather we read what Luke thought had happened from the disparate bits of oral tradition s/he gathered from oral reports, or that s/he had read in the written reports of others (Luke 1:1-4).³ And that brings me to the rubric “Word of God” used to describe the Bible. At its worst, the expression is a learned religious confession elevating the Bible to an iconic status in the religious community. At its best, it is a metaphor converting the human wisdom of its authors and texts into a divine guide for faith and practice. Nevertheless, calling the Bible the “Word of God” dismisses the human role in the production of the Bible.⁴

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹See W. L. Lane, The Gospel of Mark (NICNT; Eerdmans, 1974), 192-93.

²See Charles Hedrick Blog, Wry Thoughts about Religion: “The Challenge of the Proverb”: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2024/02/the-challenge-of-proverb.html

And “Euphemisms in the Bible”: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2024/02/euphemisms-in-bible.html

³Modern scholars have identified three of those written sources as the Gospel of Mark, the hypothetical source Q, and Luke’s special source, dubbed “L” (written or oral is unknown”). See Vincent Taylor about sources in Luke, “Luke, Gospel of” in G. A. Buttrick, et al., The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (4 vols.; Abingdon, 1962), vol. 3. 184-85.

⁴See Charles Hedrick Blog, Wry Thoughts about Religion: “The Bible’s Story: A Brief Summary”; for the part of human beings in making the Bible a book, see: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2023/10/the-bibles-story-brief-summary.html

And “Inspired Writings”: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2023/11/inspired-writings.html

The Challenge of the Proverb

Proverbs are traditional pithy sayings that briefly and memorably express some general truth about life in the world. Proverbs are distillations of community wisdom whose ideas have been hammered out of common human experience. One might think of it as a bit of homely wisdom that originates around some nameless person’s kitchen table and becomes part of community lore by oral transmission. It is a universal form emerging through the ages in various cultural contexts and languages. The Book of Proverbs in Hebrew Bible is an anthology of many such sayings.

            Here are a few American proverbs that I have learned somewhere along the way: “A stitch in time saves nine”; “The early bird gets the worm”; “Actions speak louder than words”; “Birds of a feather flock together”; “Better late than never.” One I quote to myself all the time is “Haste makes waste.” I am certain that the reader recognizes most, if not all, of these, and can easily add more to my short list.

The New Testament also has a few proverbs, but they are not necessarily traditional oral sayings that emerge out of the life of a people. In some cases, identifiable writers compose proverbs, such as George Bernard Shaw, Robert Frost, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Herman Melville, and others.¹ Here are a few of the proverbs in the New Testament: Luke 4:23, Acts 17:28, Acts 26:14, 1 Cor 15:33, Titus 1:12. To these I would add Mark 2:21-22, Gal 6:7 (compare Prov 22:8). One must argue, however, for the position that these proverbs are traditional rather than having a known origin in a given author. Some of them come from ancient Greek poets. Other proverbs in the New Testament come from Hebrew Bible: Prov 11:31=I Pet 4:18; Prov 3:11-12=Heb 12:5-6; Prov 22:8 (Septuagint)=2 Cor 9:7; Prov 25:21=Rom 12:20.

Here are two traditional proverbs preserved in Luke 12:54-55. Luke has narrated them in a prose form: “He said to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It’s going to rain’: and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’: and so it happens.”

Notice that both proverbs are not attributed to Jesus, but in the text of Luke’s gospel they are attributed to Luke’s character, Jesus, who in turn attributes the sayings to the crowds. In their present form they are neither pithy nor memorable, however. In a proverbial form they would have been orally repeated, I suppose, as something like: “Clouds in the west, rain comes on apace.” “South winds gust, heat scorches us.” So far as I know, however, these proverbs are not preserved in the literature in memorable forms. They are only preserved in these prose forms.

Matt 16:2-3 is similar to Luke 12:54-55:

[Jesus] answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.”²

Again, in the context Matthew’s Jesus takes it to be a traditional proverb by attributing it to the Pharisees and Sadducees as a group (Matt 16:1).

These verses are, however, a suspected interpolation into the text of Matthew.³ At least three modern translations of the Bible treat the saying as an interpolation and accordingly follow the lead of those ancient manuscripts that do not have the saying in the Gospel of Matthew (The Complete Bible. An American Translation; the translation of James Moffatt; and The Revised English Bible).

If there are traditional proverbs in the Bible (and there appear to be), it poses a problem for those who place such a high value on the biblical text by referring to it as “the Word of God.” Such an idea completely overlooks the human inspiration for proverbs and raises the question: Why should the traditional words of a given people, hammered out of their common sense and human experience, be regarded as divine words? The people that I know who use the expression, “the Bible is the Word of God,” do not regard that expression as metaphorical, rather they seem to regard it as literal.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proverb.

²Compare the modern proverb thought to be derived from Matt 16:2-3: “Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailors delight.”

³See Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels (Macmillan, 1993), 205, 344. For the reason see Bruce Metzgar, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2^nd ed; United Bible Society, 2000), 33.

Once upon a time, a Man Became God

How in the world did that happen, do you suppose? Well, as with all good stories, there are several different accounts in the New Testament. The best known appears in two different versions (Matt 1:18-25 and Luke 1:26-2:20).¹ These narratives are blended and celebrated annually every December in Christian church and family settings. The narrative leads the reader to think that the God-Man (or man-God) was born naturally like all human children, as a flesh and blood child through the vaginal canal of his birth mother. The conception of the child by the birth-mother, however, is most unusual. Matthew says that the child’s mother conceived by a holy spirit (Matt 1:20) in fulfilment of Scripture. The child was to be called Emmanuel (Isaiah 7:14), which Matthew interprets as “God with us” (Matt 1:23). Luke also describes the child’s conception through a holy spirit that “comes upon” the mother and a “power of the Most-High overshadowing her,” suggesting that conception occurs in fashion similar to human conceiving, by a spiritual sperm.² This child, Luke opines, shall be holy and called a son of God (Luke 1:35).

            In John’s Gospel, there is a third version of the story in the prologue to John’s Gospel (1:1-18) for how a divine figure came to be man. The fragmentary narrative (John 1:1-2, 14) lacks in clarity. A figure, described as logos,³ who was from the primordial beginning alongside God and “what God was, the logos was.”⁴ Hence, the logos shared God’s essence, while being distinguishable from God (cf. Phil 2:6). In John 1:14 this spiritual figure “was made flesh” (cf. John 1:3).⁵ I take this to mean an incarnating or “enfleshing” of the logos in the sense of Phil 2:7: “taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men, and being found in form as man…” How ever the author of the introductory poem to John may have conceived the event, it seems clear that conception and birth in the Matthaean and Lukan sense is not the process being described.

            A fourth version of the story appears in Rom 1:3-4 where God’s son is “born (genomenou) from the sperm (spermatos) of David according to the flesh,” and “appointed (oristhentos) son of God with power according to a spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead.” Jesus was a human being, a descendent of David, born of fleshly sperm, and was appointed, or declared, son of God by the spirit at his resurrection. His historical life was therefore not lived as the son of God. He was only advanced to that status at the end of his life at his resurrection.

            The early period of the Jesus movements was one of speculation about the identity and nature of Jesus. The historical matrix providing the spark that led toward the regarding of Jesus as son of God was plausibly the influx of gentiles into the gatherings of the Jesus followers.⁶ The cessation of early speculation about the nature of Jesus, which effectively weeded out other views and resulted in the dominance of the stories of Matthew/Luke, was occasioned by the early confessions of the church in the fourth century and at the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth,⁷ where Jesus was acclaimed as “very God and very man.” That declaration by the council is an uneasy solution, since it is challenged by other views reflected in the early Jesus gatherings and preserved in biblical texts. So, What is your thinking was Jesus a God-man or a man-God?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹They are not contradictory narratives but just completely different, but they both agree in the birthing process.

²See Charles W. Hedrick, “Early Christian Confessions and the Language of Faith,” The Fourth R 52.1 (January-February 2019): 15-20; idem, “How Do Divine Beings Procreate,” The Fourth R 36.6 (November-December 2023): 18-19.

³Logos is a central term in classical Greek culture. Its range of meaning in English is generally covered by two different ideas: speech and reason. See the entry logos in Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3^rd ed. Oxford: University Press, 1999), 882. And the discussion by Ernst Haenchen, John 1. A Commentary on the Gospel of John Chapters 1-6 (Robert W. Funk, trans. and ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 135-40.

⁴Here is the translation of John 1:1-2 in the Revised English Bible: “In the beginning the Word already was. The Word was in God’s presence, and what God was the Word was.” It is at once as much an interpretation as a translation.

⁵See Bauer-Danker, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (3^rd ed. revised; Chicago: University, 2000), 196-99, taking ginomai in the sense of Bauer-Danker’s second entry rather than the fifth.

⁶Hedrick, “Early Christian Confessions,” 13-20.

⁷Hedrick, “Early Christian Confessions,” 17, 20.