My Thoughts on the Duck Dynasty Uproar

So A&E has suspended Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson for bashing gays in a recent article in GQ.  I won't quote the whole thing, but he likened homosexuality to sex with animals and adultery and said he just doesn't get why a man's "anus" is more alluring than a woman's vagina.

He also talked about how all the black people he knew in the South prior to "welfare and entitlement" were "godly" and "happy" and he never saw any of them treated badly.

Now we can debate about whether A&E should have suspended him (after all, what did they expect from such a person?).  Supporters, of course, are talking about free speech and what not.  But free speech has nothing to do with it.  He's not being jailed for what he said.  And I'm sure that there is probably language in his contract with A&E that gives them the right to suspend him from the show if he does or says things that reflect poorly on A&E.  The same way that you'll probably get in trouble if you say or do things that reflect poorly on your place of employment.

An evangelical Christian on Facebook likened this "censorship" of Phil Robertson to the silliness of people's reaction in the 1960's to the Beatles and Elvis.  Which I find odd since it was evangelical Christians who wanted to censor the Beatles and Elvis.  But anyway,  no one is "censoring," or even calling for the censorship, of Phil Robertson - as evangelical Christians did with the Beatles and Elvis. Being suspended from your reality show for making offensive comments in national media is not "censorship."  No one is burning Duck Dynasty DVD's.

Furthermore, how do you suppose, for instance, that TBN (an evangelical Christian network) would respond if one of their employees made comments in national media that were offensive to an enormous swath of TBN's viewership and not in keeping with TBN's own views? Keep them on the air?  Or suspend, or even fire, them?  I think we all know the answer.  

But what really annoys me is how so many of Robertson's supporters are acting like he's being persecuted or treated unfairly because of his views.  A friend of mine (who will likely read this post) referred today to Mark 13:13 in regards to this issue.  That verse has Jesus "predicting" that people will persecute (actually, it says "hate") future Christians because they follow Jesus.

Let me be very clear here: Phil Robertson has not gotten in trouble because he's a Christian or Christ-follower.  He's gotten in trouble because he's an unapologetic bigot.

Being an unapologetic bigot against gays is not part of what it means to be a Christian.  In fact, it's decidedly un-Christian in every sense of the word.

And I could care less what anyone thinks Paul said about homosexuality in 1 Corinthians or 1 Timothy or Romans.  After all, Paul also said, in Ephesians: "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up."  Why are no evangelical Christians condemning Robertson for tearing people down with hurtful words, likening their human relationships to illicit sex with animals?

I don't like Duck Dynasty.  It's amusing at times, but it's heavily staged and scripted and I'm not much a reality TV fan anyway.  Be that as it may, I couldn't care less what the stars of the show believe or think or do or say.  They have become heroes to evangelical Christians and that's totally fine with me.  Everybody needs their heroes.  It wouldn't have bothered me if A&E had not suspended Phil Robertson for what he said.  As I said above, what, exactly, do they expect from such a person?

But please don't act like these people represent Christianity, or all Christians, or act like Robertson's punishment is equal to censorship or persecution of Christians.  That's just nonsense.

Paul vs. Matthew: A Christian Conundrum

From Paul's letter to the Romans, circa 58 C.E., chapter 7, verse 6:

But now we are discharged from the Law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.

From Matthew's Gospel, circa 85 C.E., from the lips of Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 5, verses 17 to 20:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Christianity and Old Testament Law, Part II

In Part I of this series, we saw that Christian tradition has long rejected the need for Christians to follow Old Testament Law. This tradition goes back a long way; indeed, all the way back to the mid-1st century and the Apostle Paul. We looked briefly at what exactly this Law is – called by various names, it was the complete set of legal, cultural, and religious codes outlined in Jewish scriptures, called the Old Testament by Christians.

We also saw, however, that Jesus – as depicted in the Gospel tradition – seems to have strongly affirmed adherence to Jewish Law. Indeed, most scholars today agree that Jesus is best understood as a 1st century Jewish male living in the Jewish homeland and working and teaching within Judaism and its practices. We looked at several pieces of Gospel text that confirm this portrait, including an eye-raising teaching from the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus explicitly denies that his purpose was to “abolish” Jewish Law. In this passage, Jesus instead affirms that his followers are expected to follow Old Testament Law down to the letter, so that their adherence to the Law surpasses even that of the Pharisees, who were famous in Jesus’s day for their commitment to these traditions.

CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS

Christian apologists frequently explain that God’s Law from the Old Testament was given to and for God’s chosen people, the Jews. The “Law of Christ,” however, was given for all people, and superseded the earlier, uniquely Jewish, Law. In this understanding, Jewish Law was the original “path of salvation,” but was provided only to Jews. The Law of Christ, however, replaced the old ways, providing a new “path of salvation” and given to all people, not just Jews.

Apologists will additionally argue that while Jesus’s earthly message was directed at Jews, God used Paul to expand Jesus’s “mission field” and bring the message to Gentiles. Paul himself makes this argument, stating that the message was “for the Jew first, but also for the Greek [i.e. ‘non-Jew’]”.

Thus, even though Jesus came only to Jews, his mission was just the beginning. Paul came along next, almost like a “part two,” to continue God’s plan and expand the message to non-Jews. Paul understood Jesus’s death and resurrection as the ultimate atonement for human sin, and thus argued that the Law of Moses was no longer necessary for salvation. It had been replaced by the Law of Christ, a phrase Paul himself uses at least twice in his letters, and which involves faith in the atoning nature of Jesus’s death and resurrection. In Romans, Paul also states categorically that: “Christ is the end of the Law.”

This would work well as an explanation of Christian rejection of Old Testament Law if not for that pesky, absolutist statement of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. Let’s look at it again:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

As we saw in Part I, Jesus makes it clear in this statement that Jewish laws and customs – the Old Testament Law of Moses – is not simply for Jews. After all, this is a statement recorded in Christian scripture for Christian readers by a Christian evangelist. Nor is the Law only valid for a short period of time, until Paul comes along in a few decades. No, according to Jesus, the Law is forever, and he specifically and explicitly counters the notion that his purpose is to “abolish the Law or the Prophets” (as Paul asserts in Romans). In fact, Jesus says, one cannot enter the kingdom of God unless one not only adheres to the Law, but adheres even better and more stringently and more loyally than the Pharisees, who were famous for their righteousness.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

So how are Christians to understand this passage? How can we reconcile Jesus’s words with our own Christian practice in the modern world? To begin with, let me make one thing clear: I don’t believe the historical Jesus made this statement, and there are several reasons I can give to support this.

First, the teaching that Jesus contradicts – that is, the suggestion that he has come to “abolish the Law and the Prophets” – is a post-Easter, early Christian problem. In fact, it was specifically a problem related to Paul’s mission to the Gentiles, which occurred, quite obviously, after Jesus’s death. It was not a problem, or an accusation, that would have existed during Jesus’s life. Thus, there would have been no reason for him to address a problem that didn’t exist.

Secondly, in addition to countering the notion that he has come to “abolish” the Law, Jesus also ominously states that any person who breaks the commandments, and teaches others to do the same (think of Paul and his followers), is excluded from the kingdom of heaven. This is clearly a case of the writer of Matthew attacking notions begun by Paul that Jewish laws and customs didn’t have to be followed.

Finally, scholars and theologians have recognized for centuries that Matthew’s Gospel is the most “Jewish” of all the Gospels of the New Testament. There can be no question that the writer of Matthew was a Jewish Christian writing to a Jewish Christian audience. His readers were concerned about the growing tendency among Gentile Christians to throw away Mosaic Law. Thus, this writer put a statement on the lips of Jesus to directly and explicitly address that problem.

In the end, it seems unlikely to me that the historical Jesus ever actually uttered this statement.

A NUGGET OF AUTHENTICITY

Despite my historical conclusion about Matthew’s use of this quote, there may be a nugget of authentic Jesus material in this saying. In particular, I am referring to the second sentence in the statement: “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” This particular saying comes from the Q Gospel – in other words, it is also present, in a slightly different form, in Luke. From chapter 16: “It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.”

If scholars are right about the Q Gospel – and I think they are – then it was a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus that was first written down around the year 50 C.E. – contemporary with the letters of Paul. Used by Luke and Matthew when they wrote their Gospels, it predates the Gospel of Mark – the earliest Gospel in the New Testament – by as many as twenty years. If my own theory is correct, this Q Gospel may have originally been known as the Gospel of Matthew (with our own Gospel of Matthew being an extension of it), written in Aramaic, and composed by the disciple of Jesus known to history as Matthew or Levi.

Regardless of my own pet theory, if the mainstream ideas about the Q Gospel are correct, then this saying may have historical reliability, simply by virtue of being among the earliest written material attributed to Jesus.

Thus, if Jesus did make this statement – that not the least “stroke of a pen” will ever disappear from the Law – then there is something there to be considered for the modern follower of Jesus. What might Jesus have meant with such a statement? It’s clear that Matthew took it to mean that the Law was for all Christians for all time. But Luke had a different perspective and placed it in a different narrative context. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says:

The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it. It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.

Luke’s own perspective on this quote seems to be a negative one. The Law was valid until John the Baptizer – Jesus’s mentor. Since then, the kingdom of God has been preached. Presumably for Luke, as it was for Paul, the “kingdom of God” is an alternative to the Law and the Prophets. Indeed, it is replacing the Law and the Prophets. Thus, Jesus laments how difficult and slow this change has been – it is easier for the universe to disappear than for people to give up their adherence to the old ways. In this regard, the statement is reminiscent of another famous quip by Jesus: “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.”

So which way was it? Did Jesus mean this statement positively, as asserted by Matthew, or did Jesus make this statement as a lament about how long it takes people to break old habits? My feeling is that Matthew’s perspective is closer to the truth. Luke’s perspective reflects Christianity of the late 1st century – Christians were breaking away from Judaism, but most Jews refused to give up the old ways and turn to God’s new way. Thus, I think Matthew probably retains the original spirit of the Q material, whereas Luke redacted it towards the negative. Instead of “heaven and earth” disappearing before the Law is abolished (as in Matthew), it is now “easier for heaven and earth to disappear” than it is for the old ideas to give way to the new. This is a distinct reflection of late 1st century Gentile Christianity, and not the early 1st century Jewish Jesus.

CONCLUSION

So we’re left with the same problem. It is historically probable that Jesus said something akin to the quote recorded by Matthew. If we accept this as true, how does this impact our own Christian lives? Should we be following Jewish customs and traditions? Should we not be planting two different seeds in the same field? Should we not be blending cotton and linen? Should we be eating only kosher foods? Should we, in short, be Jewish Christians?

I wish I could provide some valuable and profound theological insight here. I really wish I could. But I honestly don’t have any very good answers. Jesus was a Jew, living in the Jewish homeland, preaching and teaching within the bounds of 1st century Judaism. He taught his followers that Jewish laws and customs were part of God’s eternal plan for humanity. His earliest followers believed ardently that Christianity and Judaism could not and should not be separated.

For those of us who aim to follow Jesus on the Way of personal and spiritual transformation of ourselves and our world, this is a perspective worth pondering.

Christianity and Old Testament Law, Part I

One of the oldest traditions in Christianity is the belief that Jewish laws and customs are not binding upon followers of Christ. When Jesus died, the argument goes, he rendered Mosaic Law irrelevant. Salvation, then, comes from belief in Jesus’s death and resurrection, and not from following the rules and regulations of the Old Testament.

This tradition goes back to the earliest days of Christianity, and the basic formulation was developed by Paul and taught amongst the congregations he founded throughout the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Today, not only are Paul’s letters used to support this notion, but even words attributed to Jesus can be called upon to undergird the tradition.

What exactly are these commandments, and why don’t Christians follow them?

JEWISH LAW AND CUSTOM

First, it is necessary to clear the air on what is meant by common phrases such as “Jewish Law,” “Mosaic Law,” “The Law and the Prophets,” or sometimes just “the Law.” All of these phrases mean the same thing, but there seems to be a lot of confusion in many circles about exactly what they refer to.

Jewish Law came in two parts, and it included far more than simply legal codes dictating criminal and civil offenses. To be sure, Jewish Law included these things, but it also included rules and regulations dictating daily behavior and customs of the Jewish people. It included things such as how to make clothes, how to plant fields and how to raise cattle, how to treat others in relationships, how to prepare food, how to structure family life, and so on. Of course, it also detailed the sacrificial system of ancient Judaism. In short, it was a complete system of legal, religious, and cultural codes for living as a Jew in the ancient world.

The first aspect of this Jewish Law consisted of written laws and customs. Most came from the Torah – that is, the first five books of the Christian Old Testament, also called the Pentateuch, and believed by the ancient Jews to have been given by Moses. By the time of Jesus, Jewish scripture included a lot more than just these five books. There were also texts detailing Jewish history, books of poetry, proverbs, and literature, and books of prophecy. Some Jewish sects, both then and know, followed only the Torah. Mainstream Judaism, however, regarded these other traditional Jewish texts as scripture, and this is where familiar New Testament phrases such as “the Law and the Prophets” come from. The Law was the Torah; the Prophets were the books of prophecy such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and a dozen others.

In addition to this written aspect of Jewish Law – those codes and customs outlined in Jewish scripture – there was also an oral aspect that consisted of the interpretation of these codes and customs. This interpretive aspect of Jewish Law was well established in oral form by the time of Jesus, but did not achieve codification in written form until several centuries after the time of Jesus. Collectively called the Talmud, these interpretative traditions were the hallmark of the Pharisees, an influential group of 1st century Jews whose practices and traditions became the basis of Rabbinical Judaism, which has been the most common form of Judaism for nearly two millennia.

These two aspects of Jewish religious and cultural customs – Torah and Talmud, the instructions of Moses and the rabbinical interpretation of those instructions – constitute what is meant by phrases such as “Jewish Law.”

JEWISH LAW AND CHRISTIANITY

For most of Christian history, Christians have disregarded Jewish Law, both the written Law of Moses and the rabbinical interpretation of that Law. It is perhaps easy to see why Christians have never given much thought to the interpretative side of Jewish Law. In the Gospels, Jesus himself is frequently depicted at odds with the Pharisees – the experts of interpretation – and consistently insults and degrades them, even as he disagrees with them in their interpretations. While much of the antagonism in the Gospels between Jesus and the Pharisees is a reflection of the antagonism between Christians and Jews of the late 1st century, there is little doubt that Jesus had run-ins during his life with the Pharisees, whom he saw as collaborators with Roman imperial domination. As a rural Galilean, the Pharisees would have seen Jesus as a rabble-rouser and fiery revolutionary, while Jesus, for his part, would have seen the Pharisees as pretentious, so-called “experts” who were more concerned with their scholarship than with real people in real life. One might compare this situation to a Pentecostal preacher from rural Alabama meeting a group of Reformed theologians from Oxford.

But in addition to dismissing the interpretive traditions of the Pharisees and their later rabbinical successors, Christians have also long rejected the written Law of the Old Testament – the set of laws and customs ostensibly given by God to his chosen people.

As we saw above, this rejection of written Mosaic Law comes largely from the influence of the apostle Paul.

Paul was one of the earliest and certainly most influential Christians. Though he never followed or even knew of Jesus during Jesus’ life, he was converted to Christianity within a few years of Jesus’ death, after a vision of the resurrected Christ.

The Apostle Paul

Very early on, he seems to have begun to jettison his old ways within Judaism, and by about 50 C.E., a major conflict arose between Paul and the leaders of the Christian community in Jerusalem.

To put it briefly, the Jerusalem community in the time of Paul was the center of Christendom. It was to Paul’s era what Rome is today to Catholics. This community was supported by many of Jesus’ disciples (such as Peter and John), and led by Jesus’ brother, James. To these Christian leaders, Christianity was essentially a sect within Judaism. It was not a different religion from Judaism, but was instead a new form of Jewish practice. These Jewish Christians believed very strongly that Christianity should remain part of Judaism – in other words, Jewish traditions and customs were still very much a part of their religious practice.

Paul, on the other hand, believed that Jesus’s resurrection had effectively done away with these traditions, and following Jewish Law was no longer necessary. If pressed on the matter, I’m sure Paul would have agreed that if someone wanted to follow Jewish customs, they were certainly entitled to do so, but his argument was that these customs were no longer necessary for salvation. Instead, salvation came through faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection, which Paul saw as the ultimate and final atonement for human sin. Since Jesus made himself the ultimate sacrifice, humans could now be forgiven and thus saved, with or without adherence to the Law of Moses.

Needless to say, the Church in Jerusalem did not take Paul’s ideas very well. As described in the book of Acts, and also discussed by Paul himself in Galatians, things came to a head when Paul visited Jerusalem in about 50 C.E. The Jerusalem leaders attempted to reach a compromise with Paul, and agreed that while Paul’s converts did not need to become circumcised (which, in the ancient world, was the “official” way that someone became Jewish), they did need to follow Jewish dietary customs. Specifically, according to Acts, they were to refrain from eating food sacrificed to idols, food from strangled animals, and any food with blood in it.

Paul seems to have accepted this compromise, then immediately gone back to the missionary field and ignored it. Time and again in his letters, Paul insists that “all food is clean,” and even goes so far as to suggest that eating food sacrificed to idols is permissible, because idols are not real, they are simply inanimate objects. The only exception to this rule, for Paul, is when someone’s dietary habits may cause problems for someone else. In other words, if a Christian is eating with another Christian, and the second Christian believes strongly in the difference between “clean” and “unclean” food, then the first Christian should respect that belief and only eat “clean” food when they are eating with that person. Otherwise, “all food is clean” and permissible to eat.

In time, after Paul’s death and the deaths of James, Peter, and the other early Christian leaders, Christianity slowly became more and more of a non-Jewish religion. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. by the Romans, there was no longer a Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem, and the center of Christendom shifted first to Alexandria in Egypt, and later, of course, to Rome. This led, during the last few decades of the 1st century, to a painful separation between Christianity and Judaism, a separation that is reflected in the Gospels, which were written around this time. By the start of the 2nd century, Christianity was essentially a non-Jewish religion, and Paul’s viewpoint won the day.

One example of this is reflected in the letter of 1 Timothy, a letter forged in Paul’s name in the late 1st century. The writer is discussing false Christian teachers, which he calls “hypocritical liars,” and he states that they teach people to “abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving.” The writer goes on to say: “For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.” So much for the views of James and Peter that some foods are unclean.

Christians from that time to now have left Jewish Law and Jewish customs behind them.

JESUS AND JEWISH LAW

We have looked at what Jewish Law was, and we have also seen why Christians don’t follow Jewish Law. Even though the earliest Christians – the followers of Jesus and their converts – seem to have adhered strongly to Jewish norms and customs, and seem to have believed, at least early on, that one needed to become Jewish in order to be Christian, Paul challenged all that and spread the gospel of Jesus to non-Jews, leading Christianity to an eventual separation from Judaism all together. It became, by the end of the 1st century, a non-Jewish religion that did not adhere to Jewish laws and customs.

But since Jesus is the heart and soul of Christianity, one might wonder what Jesus himself had to say on this matter. For many Christians (and for institutional Christianity in general) Jesus was not just a prophet, but the Son of God, even God himself in human form. For Christians, then, one would expect Jesus’s words to carry significant weight.

Many folks may be surprised to discover that Jesus seems to have strongly affirmed adherence to Jewish Law. Consider, for instance, Matthew 23, where Jesus states: “The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’s seat. You must obey them and do everything they tell you.” He goes on to encourage his listeners not to be hypocritical like the Pharisees, but he affirms that their teaching of the Law is sound and his listeners should follow it. For Jesus in this passage, the problem with the Pharisees is not their reliance on Jewish Law, but on the fact that they are hypocrites who don’t really follow it.

Consider also a story repeated in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, where Jesus heals a man with leprosy. Afterwards, he instructs the man to go to the temple to be ritually purified and to “offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded.” Clearly he found these customs to be necessary.

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, provided by Luke, Jesus tells of a beggar named Lazarus who always had to eat the scraps from the table of a rich man.

The Rich Man and Lazarus, by Leandro Bassano

The rich man lived the high life and consistently ignored the plight of Lazarus. In time, both men died, with the rich man going to hell, and Lazarus going “to the bosom of Abraham.” The rich man begs Abraham to let Lazarus return to earth to warn his brothers about the dangers of luxurious living. Abraham responds that the rich man’s brothers “have Moses and the Prophets” and that they should “listen to them.” Abraham goes on to say that if the rich man’s brothers won’t listen to Moses, then neither will they listen to someone who is raised from the dead (i.e. Lazarus). Jesus, through this parable, is affirming the salvific nature of Mosaic Law.

In a story related in Matthew and Mark, Jesus is approached by a Gentile who wants him to heal her daughter. Jesus flatly refuses to do so, stating that he has come only “to the lost sheep of Israel” and that it is not right to take “the children’s bread” (that is, Jesus’s teachings) and “toss it to the dogs” (that is, unclean Gentiles). The woman persists, however, and Jesus finally agrees to heal her daughter. But he does it from a distance; he does not go to the woman’s unclean, Gentile house.

A similar story is found in both Matthew and Luke. Here, the Gentile is a Roman centurion, and the sick person is his servant. Jesus agrees to heal the servant, but, as with the story from Matthew, he does not go to the centurion’s house, and instead heals the servant from afar.

It is noteworthy to point out that these are the only two healings attributed to Jesus from afar. They are also the only two healings of Gentiles attributed to Jesus. In the Gospel tradition, Jesus keeps away from Gentiles, because he viewed them as unclean, which was consistent with a Jewish worldview.

Finally, there is a passage from Matthew where Jesus explicitly talks about adherence to Jewish Law and customs:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

It is hard to imagine how Jesus could be more explicit. “Until heaven and earth disappear” – that is, until the end of time – the Law of Moses is valid. Unless your righteousness – that is, your adherence to God’s commandments – exceeds even the righteousness of the Pharisees, who are famous for their strict adherence to the Law, you will not see God’s kingdom.

CONCLUSION

This final passage from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount is a difficult one to reconcile in light of traditional Christian practice. As we saw above, from the time of Paul, Christians began rejecting Jewish laws and customs, and by the beginning of the 2nd century, virtually no Christian followed any of the laws of Moses, except those that they found particularly important. This is true even today, as many Christians revere the Ten Commandments, but handily reject countless other mandates from the Old Testament.

As we have seen, Jesus was a Jewish man, living in the Jewish homeland, and teaching and preaching within the worldview of 1st century Judaism. In the Gospel of Matthew in particular, Jesus is fiercely loyal to Jewish laws and customs, and explicitly states that these commandments are valid for all time – indeed, “until heaven and earth disappear.”

In Part II of this series, we will look much more closely at this passage from Matthew and consider how we might reconcile it with modern Christian practice.

Judas and the Great Betrayal

If you follow my blog, you’ll know I’ve written previously on the subject of Judas, but like a lot of issues in Christianity, it is one worth revisiting from time to time.

In this essay, I want to look specifically at a question many people may not have given much consideration to: Did Judas actually betray Jesus?

Though some scholars, such as J.S. Spong and Hyam Maccoby, have suggested that Judas himself is a fictional creation, most scholars accept that Judas was a real figure of history. He seems certainly to have been one of Jesus’ followers, though there is very little we can say about him as a person. What we do know is that Christian history tells us that Judas was the betrayer of Jesus. Are these stories reliable?

For many Christians, the answer to this question would seem obvious. Of course Judas betrayed Jesus. It is one of the most familiar stories from the Gospel tradition. We find the stories in multiple accounts, some of which are independent of one another.

These independent sources are one of the keys scholars look for when determining the historical reliability of a story from history. If two authors give us the same story, but one of those authors used the other author for his information, then we have only one independent account. If, however, two authors give us the same story, and they are writing independently of one another, then this increases the probability, in the estimation of historians, that the story is reliable.

In the case of the betrayal, we do have these independent accounts – the two primary ones being Mark and John (Matthew and Luke both used Mark as source material). We may have other independent accounts as well, including the 2nd century Gospel of Judas (this text has only been available to scholars for a few years, but the preliminary research indicates that the writer probably did not know the Gospels of the New Testament).

As such, there seems to be good historical reasons for supposing that the betrayal story is true. There is a problem, however. And it’s a big one.

Put quite simply, our earliest sources reveal no knowledge of the stories about the betrayal of Jesus by Judas, one of his inner circle.

This is a big problem because in addition to multiple independent sources, scholars like to have early sources. The earlier the better. While we have multiple independent sources for the Judas stories, they are not our earliest sources. Our earliest sources, on the other hand, make no mention of Judas, and imply instead no knowledge of anything like a betrayal by anyone, much less one of the Twelve.

Just what are these sources? The first is the hypothetical source scholars call Q. The Q Gospel is the common material between Luke and Matthew that is not found in Mark. Scholars are in virtual unanimous agreement that Luke and Matthew both used Mark as a primary source. However, there is a lot of material found in both Luke and Matthew that is not found in Mark. Where did this material come from? This is what scholars believe is the Q gospel – a text no longer in existence, but available in the 1st century to Matthew and Luke, which contained very little narrative framework, but was instead primarily a list of sayings attributed to Jesus, many of them apocalyptically oriented.

There are some scholars who doubt Q’s existence, but in my experience, the majority of major textual scholars accept it as real.

In any case, the Q Gospel is by its very nature earlier than the Gospels – at least earlier than Matthew and Luke. It is impossible to say, of course, whether it predates Mark, but most Q experts believe it was composed sometime in the 50’s or 60’s C.E., prior to Mark or the other Gospels.

As such, it is an early source for Christian material, and it is noteworthy that it includes nothing about Judas Iscariot or any betrayal of Jesus. Now, this in and of itself is not so strange. The text is mostly just a list of sayings attributed to Jesus, with very little narrative. It could be that the Q writer knew of the Judas story, but simply did not find it germane to his literary purposes in compiling a list of Jesus’ sayings.

More important than this problem of omission, however, is the fact that one saying attributed to Jesus in the Q Gospel implies that not only did the author of Q know nothing about the betrayal of Judas, but neither did Jesus.

Our later Gospels, of course, tell us that Jesus had foreknowledge that he was going to be betrayed. Consider, however, this saying from Q. In it, Jesus is speaking to his disciples in private:

Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

What’s so world-shattering about this statement? Quite simply, Jesus apparently has no knowledge, at least at this point, that Judas is going to betray him. He predicts that when he comes into power in God’s kingdom, his twelve disciples – all twelve disciples – will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. This group, by necessity, must include Judas Iscariot.

Not only does this passage contradict later Gospel depictions of Jesus having foreknowledge of Judas’ treachery, but it also implies that the writer who wrote these sayings down also didn’t know anything about Judas’ treachery, otherwise we can assume he would have redacted it appropriately.

The second early source at issue here are the letters of Paul. Paul’s letters are the earliest Christian texts in existence, written during the 50’s C.E., or about twenty to thirty years after Jesus’ death. In them, Paul never mentions anything – not one solitary word – about Judas Iscariot or his betrayal of Jesus. He implies no knowledge of any such act.

Like the omission in Q, some may write this off as unimportant – Paul’s purposes in his letters were to address specific problems in his congregations, so it stands to reason that he may never have had reason to bring up Judas Iscariot. Indeed, Paul mentions virtually nothing about the life of Jesus at all in his letters. So this fact of omission about Judas may not tell us much.

But, again like the saying in Q, Paul does say something that implies he had no knowledge of Judas’ betrayal. It comes in a famous passage in 1 Corinthians where Paul is talking about the people the risen Christ appeared to. He states that Jesus appeared “to Peter, and then to the Twelve.” Of course, we know from our Gospel accounts that Jesus appeared only to the eleven remaining disciples, because Judas was gone by then. And Paul couldn’t have been referring to Judas’ replacement, Matthias, who was voted on by the remaining disciples as depicted in the book of Acts, because that event occurs after Jesus’ ascension into heaven. As far as Paul was aware, the Twelve were still intact after Jesus’ death.

The most common argument against this point is that when Paul used the phrase “the Twelve,” he was using it as a generic title for Jesus’ inner circle. They were known as “the Twelve,” even though one eventually departed and betrayed Jesus. This, of course, is certainly possible, but it doesn’t seem very probable. The Gospels, after all, do not use any such euphemism. They tell us explicitly that the risen Christ appeared to “the Eleven.” The Twelve were no longer intact. Furthermore, making this assumption requires reading something into the text that is not actually there. It requires reading Paul through the lens of the later Gospels. If one had only Paul’s letters to go on (as his congregations did), one would make the plain, simple, and obvious deduction that the Twelve were still intact after Jesus’ death.

Some of my more savvy readers may be screaming by this point that I have overlooked a salient passage in Paul, where he explicitly talks about Jesus’ betrayal.

The passage in question is from, strangely enough, the same letter where Paul talks about “the Twelve” – 1 Corinthians. This time, Paul is talking about problems the Corinthians are having while celebrating the Lord’s Supper. In one of the very few instances where Paul refers to an event in Jesus’ life, he writes: “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread…”

This seems to be a reference to a familiar passage from the Gospels – Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples, which occurs on the night Judas betrays him. Clearly Paul is talking about Judas here!

Not so fast.

The word translated in that passage as “betrayed” actually means “handed over,” whether handing over car keys or handing over a perpetrator to the police. Depending on context, of course, it can also mean something like “betrayed.” In the Gospels, for instance, this is the word of choice for describing what Judas did – he handed Jesus over. Since Judas was part of his inner circle, and did it behind his back, this constituted a “betrayal.”

However, without context to imply an act of betrayal, the word simply means “handed over.” In Paul, there is no context given to suggest betrayal. Quite literally, Paul says: “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread…”

But couldn’t the context be implied? Perhaps Paul and his readers know how Jesus was handed over, and know who did it, so Judas and his betrayal are simply understood in unwritten context. This is possible, but when one looks at the greater context of how Paul, himself, uses this word most commonly, a more reasonable context comes into play.

Put simply, when Paul talks about Jesus going to the cross and being resurrected, he frequently uses this same word. But when he uses it elsewhere, he uses it in the context of God “handing Jesus over” to be crucified.

Consider, for instance, Romans chapter 8: “He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?”

Or Galatians chapter 2: “And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

There are roughly ten other similar examples in the writings of Paul, where he uses this word to refer to passing something on, or giving something up, or handing something over. Never does he use the word to imply betrayal. And when he specifically uses the word in regards to Jesus’ death, as in the quotes above, it is always an act of God; God handed Jesus over to death so that we might be saved.

Given that context, it is reasonable to assume that in the passage from 1 Corinthians, when he is talking about the Lord’s Supper, he is saying, in effect, “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over [by God unto death], he took bread…” This fits into the context with which Paul exclusively uses this word. It only fits into a betrayal context if you read Paul through the lens of later authors and their stories, and ignore Paul’s own way of using the word.

Even if one wants to argue that Paul was, in fact, referring to Jesus being physically handed over, and not just God “handing Jesus over” to death and resurrection, the phrase still does not explicitly tell us that this “handing over” was an act of Judas or one of Jesus’ inner circle. Perhaps Paul meant that Jesus was “handed over” by the Jewish leaders to the Roman authorities – which is, of course, consistent with the later Gospel accounts. Perhaps he means that some other person known to Jesus “handed him over” to the authorities. A nosy neighbor, perhaps, or the groundskeeper of the garden where Jesus was arrested.

This is all speculation, of course, but the point is that Paul is not explicit. The only context suggests that Paul is speaking metaphorically about an action of God, but even if we assume he was speaking more literally, there is no indication that this “handing over” was an act of betrayal by Judas or anyone else of his inner circle. This is particularly true in light of the fact that Paul’s use of the phrase “the Twelve” implies that he knew of no inner circle betrayal.

There is a possible third early source to consider as well. Most scholars date the Gospel of Thomas to the early 2nd century, but a few scholars, notably J.D. Crossan, have argued that Thomas predates the Gospels of the New Testament, composed around the same time as the letters of Paul and Q.

If we accept this early date for Thomas, it is significant to note that Thomas also includes nothing about a betrayal, and implies no knowledge of any such act. Like the Q Gospel, Thomas is a sayings gospel, providing very little narrative framework. In any case, Judas and the betrayal are never mentioned or implied.

This leaves us, of course, with the problem I mentioned at the beginning. We have multiple independent accounts of the betrayal by Judas, but these are later accounts, and our earliest accounts say nothing about the event, and instead say other things that imply the writers, in fact, had never heard of Judas’ betrayal.

How do we reconcile this? Ultimately, both camps have some explaining to do. If one doubts that Judas betrayed Jesus, then one must explain why our later accounts, some of them independent of one another, agree in their descriptions of Judas betraying Jesus. But if one accepts that Judas did, in fact, betray Jesus, one must explain why our earliest accounts don’t reflect the story, and the writers seem to know nothing about it.

In my opinion, this second “explanation” is the tougher one. There are, however, a few possibilities. Perhaps the Q hypothesis is completely bogus and Q never existed. Instead, the Q material is simply Luke copying from Matthew. Therefore, we can’t count Q as an early source that does not show any knowledge of Judas’ betrayal.

Furthermore, even if we accept that Q is real, the fact that the betrayal is never mentioned is immaterial. It also never mentions Jesus’ death by crucifixion, but we know that happened. And the quote about the “twelve thrones” may simply reflect that the historical Jesus did not know Judas was going to betray him (even though he is later depicted as having this foreknowledge).

As for Paul, perhaps “the Twelve” was just a euphemism, and when he talks about Jesus being “handed over,” he was, in fact, thinking of Judas, and knew his readers would know what he was talking about.

Even if we accept that Paul knows nothing about Judas, this still does not undermine the stories of the betrayal. Maybe Paul simply hadn’t heard the story. Paul claims in his letters to have gotten his information originally by direct revelation from the risen Christ. He explicitly denies that he heard the story of Jesus from the disciples (see Galatians chapter 1). Perhaps the risen Christ simply didn’t find it necessary to tell Paul about the betrayal.

For me, none of these explanations is very satisfying. The issue with Paul, in particular, is a very tough one. I can simply think of no way to explain why Paul wouldn’t have been intimately familiar with the story of Judas and the betrayal, if in fact it happened. How could he not have known this information? Even if we accept his assertion that he did not first learn the story of Jesus from the disciples, he certainly met the disciples later in life – before he wrote 1 Corinthians. He tells us about these meetings, after all. By the time he was writing that letter, it is simply unthinkable that he would never have heard the Judas story.

Is it possible, some may ask, that Paul and the author of Q (and Thomas, if it is early) were simply trying to suppress the story – that it was an embarrassing moment, one that folks like Paul were not inclined to talk about? This, I suppose, would be the best explanation, if one accepts that the Judas stories of the Gospel tradition are historically reliable. By the Gospel era, it wasn’t such a painful memory because so many years had passed. But during the early years, when Paul and the Q author were writing, Christian evangelists weren’t as likely to talk openly about it.

As for the other side of the debate – those who are skeptical of the betrayal stories – what answer can be given to explain the stories of the Gospel tradition?

This is an easier question to answer, in my opinion. It does not take a graduate degree in world mythology to understand how legends can and do arise. The stories of Judas in the Gospels are simply polemical. Judas is the embodiment of “the Jews,” and thus painted as the betrayer and Christ-killer. Why Judas, and not someone else? Maybe Judas was an easy target. Perhaps he died shortly after Jesus’ own death, and by the time of the Gospels, no one really knew anything about him, thus making him an easy pick for a betrayal legend – particularly given his name. Perhaps Judas had some kind of falling out with the early Christian movement. Perhaps he didn’t like what the other disciples were saying and preaching, and instead preached a different gospel – one at odds with the others. Perhaps he grew disillusioned after Jesus’ death and decided that they had all been deluded by a fancy talker. Maybe he became an enemy of the Christian movement because he thought they were crazy for claiming that Jesus was alive. Any of these things could explain why he would later come to be vilified as the betrayer of Jesus.

In the end, I tend toward skepticism about the betrayal stories. For me, I simply can’t get past the idea of Paul not knowing about the betrayal. He must have heard such stories, if indeed those stories were around, yet his words imply the opposite. Taken together with the lack of knowledge in the Q gospel (which I believe existed), and Thomas (which I also tend to think is earlier than many scholars suppose), it simply seems unlikely to me that the betrayal stories are historically reliable. As I said earlier, I do accept that Judas was a follower of Jesus and a real person of history, but I think the speculations I provided in the previous paragraph probably give a better explanation for why he later came to be vilified in the Gospels of the New Testament.

God in Popular Consciousness

Over the years, I have come to understand something about Christian belief in God: a lot of folks, whether they are casual believers or weekly church-goers, whether they are Protestant, Catholic, or non-denominational, whether they are male or female, black or white, American or foreign-born, rich or poor, rural or urban, east coast, west coast, or Midwest – regardless of any of those things, many have a stunningly shallow conception of God.

That may sound like a harsh and blanket criticism, but it is not intended to be so. Certainly there are plenty of folks, from all those categories, who have very well-developed, consistent, deep, and meaningful conceptions of God. And one can argue over how to even establish what constitutes “deep” and “shallow” in such a metaphysical discussion. But it certainly seems, to this casual observer anyway, that the deep believers are heavily outweighed by those for whom God is just a sweater they put on from time to time, but mostly just gets moth-eaten in the drawer.

I was thinking the other day about some of the more typical and traditional views of God, as accepted by a lot of Christians and Jews around the world (and a lot of other religions, for that matter), and it struck me that a lot of folks pretty much treat God like Santa Claus for Adults. Or, reversed, Santa Claus is God for Children.

In any case, consider the following similarities:

1. Santa lives above us, at the North Pole, which is a magical place no one can see. God lives above us, in heaven, which is a magical place no one can see.
2. Santa gives us things we ask for in letters or in person. God gives us things we ask for in prayer.
3. Sometimes Santa doesn’t give us what we ask for. Sometimes God does not answer our prayers.
4. Sometimes Santa brings us things we didn’t ask for. God too.
5. Santa is a man. So is God.
6. Santa is old, with a white beard. God is the Old Man In the Sky.
7. Santa “knows when we’ve been bad or good” and can essentially monitor our behavior all year long from afar. God has this omnipotent quality too.
8. Santa is immortal. So is God.
9. Santa can perform miraculous feats such as entering and exiting locked houses and individually bringing toys to all the world’s children in a single night. God too can perform various kinds of miracles.
10. Santa is surrounded by a retinue of elves. God has angels.
11. Santa rides a sled through the sky, pulled by magic reindeer that can fly. In Jewish mysticism, God rides a chariot through the sky, pulled by magic horses that can fly.
12. Santa likes milk and cookies. God likes milk and honey.

Okay, so that last one was kind of a joke, but you get the point. Either way you look at it, Santa Claus is God for Children, or God is Santa Claus for Adults.

Do we want to live our lives putting God on like a sweater and viewing God as little more than Santa Claus for Adults? Or do we want, as the apostle Paul said, to give up our childish ways and come to a deeper, more meaningful, and life-changing understanding of God and our relationship to God? In following the example of Jesus, I have chosen the latter.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the road less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Christian Forgiveness

Recently, in an online discussion about Christian forgiveness as it relates to the Tiger Woods situation, one of my good friends, who is a pastor, made the following statement:

In my experience there is no such thing as forgive and forget – that lets people off the hook. And forgiveness is not condoning either. Forgiveness is being able to let go and move on.

I think this perspective on Christian forgiveness is a pretty common one. I also think it’s probably common in general among people whether they are Christians or not.

I agree that forgiveness does not (and should not) equate to condoning a behavior. Obviously if someone wrongs me, and I forgive them, that doesn’t mean I approve of whatever wrong they committed. Similarly, if I wrong someone, and they forgive me, I wouldn’t read that forgiveness as a suggestion that my behavior was okay after all.

The point, of course, is that receiving forgiveness is not a license for continuing hurtful behavior.

On the remaining points, I would like to write in a sort of “dialogue” with my friend about forgiveness because my perspective is somewhat different.

First, my friend notes that the idea of forgive and forget “lets people off the hook.” My view diverges here. I guess you could say that I am “big believer” in “forgive and forget.” I have always had a forgiving spirit. I don’t know if that is because of the Christian background I was raised in, or if it is simply part of my personal nature. I suspect it’s probably a little of both, but probably more nature than anything else. I simply don’t tend to hold grudges. When someone wrongs me, it is not difficult for me to forgive them if they sincerely ask for forgiveness. I’m not a robot, of course. I have certainly had experiences in my life that I had trouble letting go of – experiences where I had trouble forgiving the person who I felt had wronged me. But in many (if not most) of those cases, the person in question never actually showed any remorse or gave any kind of sincere apology.

Be that as it may, those incidents are few and far between. Throughout most of my life experiences, I have not struggled with forgiveness. To put it in the words of the apostle Paul, forgiveness is perhaps one of my “spiritual gifts.”

I recognize, however, that forgiveness does not come so easily for many Christians. This doesn’t mean they are bad people. It just means that forgiveness is not one of their spiritual gifts; it is something they frequently struggle with. They’re only human, after all. But whether one struggles or does not struggle with forgiveness, I can’t identify with the argument that forgiveness, at its core, is not about “forgive and forget.” In my opinion, that is exactly what forgiveness is about.

In the New Testament, the word used for “forgive” is aphiemi. This Greek word has many possible usages, but in general it means to “leave,” “send away,” “disregard,” or “let go.” The most frequent Biblical usage is “leave,” but it is also the word the writers of the New Testament used for “forgive.”

In the same way that our word “forgiveness” is a form of the word “forgive,” so too in the Greek. Aphesis means quite literally to release someone from captivity (such as a prisoner). It is translated as “forgiveness” in most English language Bibles.

Thus, in the Biblical sense, forgiving someone means letting go or disregarding the wrong they have done you. It means releasing them from the debt they owe you. The idea of sin being like a debt is one that is deeply entrenched in the Jewish scriptures of the Old Testament. For the ancient Hebrews, sin was equated with breaking God’s commandments handed down in the Torah – the law of Moses. When one of these laws was broken, obtaining forgiveness for the sin was not just a simple matter of asking God to forgive you. Your sin was like a debt you owed to God, and that debt could not just be “released” or forgiven. In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul makes this Jewish sentiment quite explicit: “The wages of sin is death.”

For the ancient Hebrews, the way to erase this debt was to offer blood sacrifices. The slaughtered animal atoned for the debt you owed God. God accepted the sacrificed animal in your place. The sin wasn’t actually forgiven – “forgive,” remember, means to “let go” or “release.” Atonement, on the other hand, refers to accepting one thing in payment for something else. If I run my car into your living room, you can forgive me – release me from the debt – and I will go my merry way. Or, I can atone for the “sin” and pay to have your living room fixed. For the ancient Jews, there was no forgiveness for breaking the law of Moses. Only atonement. For those of us living in the modern world, this may seem like insufferable hair-splitting, but for the ancient Jews, it was most definitely not.

Consider the story of David and Bathsheba from 2 Samuel. David commits adultery with Bathsheba, a married woman. She gets pregnant. David tries to cover it up by calling her husband – Uriah – back from his military campaign so that he will sleep with his wife and never know that her child was not actually his own. When this ruse fails to work, David arranges for Uriah’s death by ordering him to the front lines of the battle. When that deed is accomplished, David takes Bathsheba as his wife. Thus, David has broken three of the Big Ones from the Ten Commandments – he has committed adultery, lied about it, then orchestrated the death of his lover’s husband. The story ends with one of the more humorous moments of understatement in the Bible: “But the thing David had done displeased the Lord.” You can say that again.

After David has committed these sins, God sends the prophet Nathan to condemn him. David admits to his sins. God accepts this repentance, but does not simply offer forgiveness. Instead, David’s “atonement” for the sin is that the child carried by Bathsheba will die. The sins are not forgiven; they are made up for – atoned for – by the blood of David’s child. In modern language, we might call this a “punishment,” but punishment is, in fact, “atonement” for a wrongdoing. You do something wrong, you have to pay the price. If the price is paid (in the case of David, the price was the blood of his son), then forgiveness becomes a moot point, because the wrong has already been made right through atonement.

In the Jewish scriptures, atonement and forgiveness are most definitely two different things.

The New Testament brought a new perspective to this old Jewish idea. Since Jesus’ death, in the Christian view, had functioned as the ultimate blood sacrifice – the ultimate atonement for sin – Christians were no longer in “debt” to God because of their sin. Instead, forgiveness was theirs for the asking. No longer did God require a burnt offering or a blood sacrifice. The sin had been atoned for by Jesus, so Christians had only to believe in his death and resurrection and accept the gift of salvation.

But how does all this relate to the question of “forgive and forget”? Going with the Biblical model, it is clear that “forgiveness” means just that – to forgive and forget. If my bank forgives my debt, that means I don’t have to pay it anymore. It has been “forgiven and forgotten.” “Forgive and forget,” in that sense, is a redundancy. To forgive means to forget. To release. To let go. If I forgive someone in the Biblical sense, I have let it go. I have freed my “debtor” from their debt. I have made it as if it never existed. Atonement, on the other hand, does not imply forgetting. Atonement, in fact, implies that the debt is not forgiven and must be repaid in some form or fashion. Thus, if I forgive someone, I am not requiring atonement for the debt, and therefore I have forgotten it – I have made it so that it doesn’t exist.

This is why I disagree that “forgiveness” is not about “forgive and forget.” In the Biblical model – the model Christians follow – forgiveness is forgetting. It is making it as if the sin never happened. Of course we are not robots. The event may remain in your memory. But if you have truly forgiven someone, the event remains just that – a memory. If the event continues to hold a special place in your heart – if you hold a grudge, as it were – then you have not actually engaged in forgiveness.

For that reason, I believe Christian forgiveness involves completely releasing someone. In his comment, my friend said that forgiveness is about “being able to let go and move on.” I agree with that to some extent, but I disagree with the general implication that forgiveness is primarily about the person doing the forgiving. Forgiveness, in the Biblical model, is about the person receiving forgiveness, not the person giving it. Yes, it’s about letting go. But it’s primarily about letting go for the sake of the person being released. When you truly forgive someone, it is a selfless act of love done for the sake of the person being forgiven, not necessarily a self-centered act of moving on with life so you don’t have to fret over it anymore. That’s part of it too, but that should be the result of releasing the other person, not the motivation for releasing the other person.

In the Lord’s Prayer, which is given to us in Matthew and Luke – meaning it comes from the now lost document scholars call the Q source – Jesus tells us to ask God to “forgive our debts” in the same way that we have forgiven our debtors. We are told to release others just as God releases us. In Luke’s version, in fact, we are told to ask forgiveness (release) from God for our sins because we also forgive (release) those indebted to us. In other words, in Luke’s version, forgiveness for sin comes from God if and only when we also release others from their sins against us.

If we aren’t forgiving (which means releasing and thus “forgetting”) other people’s sins against us, how can we expect God to do the same for us for our sins against him?

This may sound nice, some readers may think, but what about situations in which a person continually wrongs us? I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of people, Christian or otherwise, would agree that forgiveness only goes so far. If someone engages in hurtful behavior, apologizes, receives forgiveness, then continues to do the same thing over and over, surely there comes a time when forgiveness is no longer an option?

As hard as it is to swallow, Jesus seems to suggest otherwise in Luke chapter 17. There, he says: “And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent’, you must forgive.”

This material also comes from Q, and Matthew gives a slightly different version of it, one that is even more radical than Luke’s (and seems, in fact, to contradict Luke’s version):

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”

Jesus’ vision of forgiveness is far more radical than what most people practice (especially in the Gospel of Matthew!). His entire message, of course, was far more radical than what most people practice. This is what makes his message so appealing but also so difficult to follow. This is also why Jesus constantly talked about the dichotomy between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of “this world.” “This world” says that forgiveness only goes so far. Jesus says that forgiveness never goes far enough.

I believe that fostering a forgiving spirit is vital to the Christian lifestyle. It is one of the very core philosophies of Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels. For those who like numbers, Jesus uses some form of the word “forgive” no fewer than 36 times in the four Gospels of the New Testament. By way of comparison, he uses the word “hell” about 12 times (and he never uses it in the Gospel of John).

In the Biblical model, forgiveness is about releasing someone from their debts, which is the same as making it so that the debt no longer exists. Forgiving and forgetting are one and the same.

Also in the Biblical model, forgiveness is a selfless act of love which results in an ability for the forgiver to not only receive divine forgiveness themselves, but also to move on with a life of purity.

Despite that “give and take” nature of forgiveness, it is foremost and primarily an act done for the sake of others, just as God forgives us for our sakes and not for his own.

Luke the Evangelist

In Church tradition, the Gospel of Luke (GoL), together with Acts of the Apostles, are two books widely believed to have been written by the same person, a man Church tradition has called Luke the Evangelist (hence, of course, the Gospel bearing his name). This same Church tradition tells us that Luke was both a doctor and a Gentile, meaning that his two volumes, GoL and Acts, are the only books in the New Testament written by a non-Jew. This is more significant than one might suspect at first glance. There are 27 books in the New Testament, so two books might not seem like so much, but in fact those two books are among the longest in the New Testament, and thus make up something like 25% of the entire canon. That makes the author of GoL and Acts the most prolific of the New Testament authors, including Paul (and that’s even assuming that Paul wrote all the letters attributed to him, which is doubted by the majority of scholars).

So as the author of a full one-quarter of the Christian scriptures, the question “Who was Luke?” is an important one for Christians.

The short answer to that question, unfortunately, is that we know hardly anything about Luke, and in fact there are many good reasons to doubt that the historical person known as “Luke the Evangelist” had anything to do with writing either text.

In tackling the question of authorship in regards to GoL and Acts, there are three important questions to ask. First, were GoL and Acts written by the same person? If so, was that person a physician named Luke, a companion of Paul? And finally, was that person also a Gentile?

WERE GoL AND ACTS WRITTEN BY THE SAME PERSON?

All the available evidence suggests strongly that Church tradition is correct in saying GoL and Acts were written by the same individual. The most compelling reason to accept this is that the author himself says as much. Consider the prologues to both GoL and Acts:

Gospel of Luke: “I…write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.”

Acts: “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught…”

Both books are addressed to someone named “Theophilus” and the opening paragraph of Acts makes it clear that Acts is a sort of second volume to the story begun in the Gospel of Luke. (Theophilus, by the way, may have been an individual, or it may have been a euphemism meant to refer to any Christian reader, since “Theophilus” literally means “Friend of God” and was routinely used in the 1st century as an honorary title rather than an individual name.)

Of course, just because a writer claims that his present book is a continuation of a former book doesn’t mean it’s true. We know that Christian history, after all, is rife with what are called “pseudonymous writers” – that is, scribes writing in other people’s names. Be that as it may, the linguistic characteristics of GoL and Acts – writing style, grammar, word usage – indicate strongly that, in fact, both books were written by the same person. Furthermore, the general theological thrust of the books is similar, again suggesting that we are dealing with a single writer.

WAS LUKE A PHYSICIAN AND COMPANION OF PAUL?

This question can be asked more pointedly like this: “Was the author of GoL and Acts the man known as Luke the Physician in the letters of Paul?”

A man named Luke is mentioned in three letters attributed to Paul the apostle – Philemon, Colossians, and 2 Timothy. In Philemon and Colossians, Luke is mentioned as one of the people with Paul who “sends greetings” to the recipients. In 2 Timothy, which is written as a personal letter from Paul to Timothy, Paul mentions in passing that “only Luke is with me.”

Thus, Luke appears to have been one of Paul’s companions. In Colossians, Paul mentions specifically that Luke is a “beloved doctor,” which has lead, quite obviously, to the conclusion that Luke was a physician, and also has led many to suggest that Luke must therefore have been Paul’s personal doctor.

There are at least two major problems here, however. The first problem is the most obvious: just because Paul had a companion named Luke doesn’t mean this person wrote the Gospel of Luke and Acts. Certainly nothing in the letters of Paul suggests this, nor is there any indication in GoL and Acts about the identity of the author (those books mention the recipient, Theophilus, as we saw above, but make no mention of the author).

So where did the connection to Luke the Companion of Paul come from? Quite simply, it comes from Church tradition, a tradition that first begins appearing in the historical record near the end of the 2nd century. Does that mean the tradition didn’t begin until the late 2nd century? Not necessarily, but we simply cannot know with any kind of certainty when the tradition began. We know by the end of the 2nd century, many Christian groups were connecting GoL and Acts to Luke the Companion of Paul. But we don’t know if that tradition went all the way back to the actual time of composition, or if it was simply an “emerging” tradition – someone was trying to figure out who wrote it, and decided Luke the Companion of Paul was the best choice.

It is significant to point out that many early manuscripts of GoL do not use Luke’s name in the title. While that’s not a “silver bullet” argument against Lukan tradition, it does seem to indicate that the tradition was not known in certain areas of Christendom until much later.

Those who argue that Luke the Companion of Paul wrote GoL and Acts can point to a number of arguments. First, roughly 66% – or two-thirds – of Acts centers on the life of Paul. Paul is the main figure in that text. This would seem to indicate that the writer was especially partial to Paul – thus probably a follower or companion.

Second, there is a portion of Paul’s story in Acts were the writer suddenly, and seemingly inexplicably, switches into a first-person narrative. Instead of “they” and “them,” it suddenly becomes “we” and “us.” A few paragraphs later, the narrative switches back to third-person again, just as abruptly. This actually happens several times throughout the narrative. This occasional switching into first-person has been seen as evidence that, in fact, GoL and Acts were written by a companion of Paul – thus leading the writer to write in the first-person whenever he was actually present during an event he was describing.

This seems to make sense on the surface, and certainly seems to suggest strongly that the Lukan tradition must have a basis in reality – whether it was Luke or not is up for debate, but it seems that these books must at least have been written by a companion of Paul. There is one problem, however. This problem involves literary techniques frequently employed in the ancient world by Greek writers. In Greek literature, it was common for a writer to switch into the first-person when narrating stories involving sea voyages. This may seem odd to our modern literary sensibilities, but it was a well-established poetic technique among Greek writers of the ancient world.

If you read the book of Acts, you’ll find that every time the perspective switches into first-person, the narrative centers on a sea voyage. In fact, every sea voyage discussed in Acts is written in first-person.

Thus, the first-person narratives of Acts may not, in fact, indicate any implication on the part of the writer that he was there himself – that he was among Paul’s companions in these scenes. The writer may simply have been using a tried and true Greek literary technique.

The second major problem regarding the character of Luke from the letters of Paul is that only one of those letters – Philemon – is one of the so-called “undisputed” letters of Paul. Among New Testament scholars, there is wide agreement that at least seven of the thirteen letters attributed to Paul actually came from the historical Paul. Philemon is among these. Three others, however, are widely debated, with some scholars accepting Pauline authorship, and others rejecting it. Colossians falls into this category. Furthermore, there are an addition three letters attributed to Paul on which there is wide consensus that the historical Paul, in fact, did not write the letters, and 2 Timothy is one of these.

Since Luke is mentioned in Philemon, we can be fairly confident that Paul did, in fact, have a companion named Luke (though that tells us nothing, of course, about whether this Luke wrote GoL and Acts). However, the designation of Luke as a physician comes from Colossians – one of the disputed letters. If Colossians was indeed pseudonymous, is there any reason to suppose that its personal data about Paul’s life (such as commenting that his companion Luke was a doctor) can be trusted as historically accurate? Maybe, but also maybe not. In either case, it casts some doubt on the supposition that the author of GoL and Acts was a physician.

WAS LUKE A GENTILE?

Putting aside the questions about whether Luke the Companion of Paul actually wrote the books attributed to him and whether or not this Luke was actually a physician, we move on to the issue of whether GoL and Acts were written by a Gentile.

That these two books were Gentile-authored has been an assumption on the part of scholars and theologians for centuries. But that assumption is primarily based on the presupposition that Luke the Companion of Paul was the author of these books. If he wasn’t, then the remaining discussion is moot. For now, then, we’ll assume that Luke the Companion of Paul wrote GoL and Acts.

Why is Luke called a Gentile? The primary reason is rather convoluted, but it involves an interpretative reading of Paul’s greetings in the book of Colossians. Recall that many scholars doubt Colossians was actually written by Paul. So again, for the moment, we will presuppose that Colossians was, in fact, an authentic letter of Paul.

In Colossians, as we saw above, Paul mentions that Luke is a “beloved physician” and that he sends his greetings to the Christians at Colossae. Prior to this, however, he had mentioned a few other companions, namely Tychicus, Onesimus, Aristarchus, Mark, and Jesus (no, not that Jesus). After mentioning these people, he notes that “these are the only Jews among my co-workers for the kingdom of God.” After this, he names several more people, including Luke. This, therefore, has led to the assumption that Luke, and the others mentioned with him, were Gentiles.

This may seem like an opened and closed case. Luke the physician was a Gentile, according to Colossians. But there is one major issue. Despite the fact that many modern English translations have Paul explicitly say that “these are the only Jews among my co-workers for the kingdom of God,” Paul doesn’t actually use the word “Jew.” Instead, he uses a euphemism that translates to “those of the circumcision.” This is typically a phrase that refers in general to Jews, but more specifically to people who follow Jewish purity laws. A Gentile convert, for instance, would have been “of the circumcision,” even though he wasn’t ethnically Jewish. In the same way, someone could be ethnically Jewish but not be part of the “circumcision crowd” because they didn’t follow Jewish law. Paul himself would be among this group, because he gave up adherence to the Torah.

In the book of Romans, Paul makes his views clear: “Circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the [Jewish purity] law; but if you break the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.” He goes on to say: “For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart – it is spiritual and not literal.”

In other words, in Paul’s view, whether a person is ethnically Jewish (that is, physically circumcised) or not is irrelevant. What makes a person Jewish is that they follow Jewish purity rituals.

In light of this, it is certainly possible that Paul never meant to imply that Luke, and the others listed with him, where actually Gentiles. He may simply have meant that Luke and the others had – like Paul himself – given up adherence to Jewish law, and were thus no longer part of the circumcision crowd. Still ethnically Jewish, but no longer Jews at heart.

The point, of course, is this: the book of Colossians, despite surface appearances, does not explicitly and unquestionably assert that Luke was a Gentile. That may not be what the passage is saying at all. In the end, we can’t know for sure. But if that’s not what the passage was saying, then there is certainly no reason to assume the writer of GoL and Acts was a Gentile.

Some supporters of Lukan tradition will say that even without the evidence of Colossians, GoL and Acts themselves give indication that the writer was a Gentile. The Gospel of Luke, for instance, seems clearly to have been written for a Gentile audience, and this is widely recognized among scholars. However, Mark and John were both written for Gentile audiences too, and no one supposes that those writers were Gentiles themselves. Furthermore, if Luke was a Gentile, he demonstrates a remarkable understanding and familiarity with Jewish customs that one would not expect of a 1st century Gentile from Roman Asia Minor, far removed from the Jewish homeland.

CONCLUSION

There is no question that a reasonable argument can be made to support the Church tradition of Lukan authorship. I want to make this clear, lest I be seen as simply trying to buck the trend for the sheer joy of it. It’s possible that Luke the Companion of Paul wrote GoL and Acts, and it’s possible that this person was a physician and a Gentile. It is not outside the realm of historical plausibility.

However, there are so many question marks in this tradition that I think scholars and theologians should take more care when asserting this conclusion. We do not know when, or why, the tradition of Lukan authorship first arose. We know it was there by the end of the 2nd century, but we have no knowledge of whether it began at composition, or arose later as leaders in the Church attempted to attach familiar and authoritative names to all the various texts floating around the emerging Christian world. It does not take a great leap of faith, nor does it constitute unusual criticism, to suggest that Church tradition might have gotten it wrong when it attached Luke the Companion of Paul to the Gospel of Luke and Acts.

Furthermore, as illustrated above, there are a number of question marks about the details of who Luke was – physician, Gentile, etc. The letter of Colossians, which gives us this information, has a disputed authorship, with some insisting it is authentically from Paul and others insisting it is not. If Paul didn’t write it, there is good reason for doubting its historical accuracy when calling Luke a physician (or a Gentile, for that matter). Furthermore, whether Paul wrote it or not, it is not entirely clear that the author intended to imply that Luke was a Gentile. The implication may have been that Luke, like Paul, was an ethnic Jew who had given up Jewish purity customs. Ultimately, it’s impossible to say for sure, but if the writer of GoL and Acts was a Gentile, he had a remarkably intimate knowledge of Jewish history, traditions, customs, scriptures, theology, and eschatology. It’s hard to imagine that a 1st century Gentile who did not live in the Jewish homeland (Church tradition says Luke came from Troas, in Asia Minor) could possibly have known Judaism so thoroughly and intimately.

Here’s what I think the most likely scenario is. We don’t know who wrote the Gospel of Luke and Acts. It was not a man named Luke. It was not someone who was a doctor. It was not someone who had accompanied Paul on missionary journeys, nor was it someone who probably even knew the historical Paul. Instead, the writer was probably a Jew who lived in one of the cities where Paul had founded a Christian congregation decades earlier (perhaps Ephesus). At some point he had become involved with this congregation, converting ultimately to Christianity. He knew Jewish history and theology so well because he was a Jew. He had a special affinity for Paul’s story because he was a member of a congregation founded by Paul (though, as I said, he probably never knew Paul).

I use a lot of “probably’s” there, and that was done on purpose. Any of those suggestions could be wrong. It may be that the writer did, in fact, know the historical Paul, having been a member of the congregation during Paul’s life. It may be that the writer was, in fact, a Gentile, though if that is true, I think it is likely that he was what many Jewish writers of the 1st century called a “God-fearer.” The God-fearers were Gentiles who did not convert to Judaism (that is, they did not become circumcised), but they had an affinity for Jewish customs and religious traditions, and they were generally looked upon kindly by Jews. The Jews considered them allies, as it were. They were essentially doing in the 1st century what a lot of folks still do today – engaging in buffet-style religion. They were taking the best of all the available religions (in this case, Roman paganism and Judaism) and combining them into a highly personal faith system. They didn’t care much for the pagan gods of Rome and liked the idea of Judaism’s monotheism, but they certainly had no intention of circumcising themselves and sticking to all the difficult purity laws of the Jewish Torah. Instead they worshipped a single God, perhaps took part in Jewish holidays, but also no doubt celebrated pagan holidays, and probably still occasionally burned incense in pagan temples and paid their homage to the emperor. This, of course, made them prime targets for Christian evangelists in the 1st century – they were already nearly halfway there. They liked Judaism’s God and Judaism’s traditions, but they weren’t Jews by birth, had no need for Jewish purity rituals, and likely found Christianity’s easy message of faith and grace quite palatable. Scholar J.D. Crossan, in fact, has argued quite well that Paul’s missionary journeys primarily consisted of converting these “God-fearers” to Christianity rather true Jews or true Pagans.

It’s noteworthy to mention that the book of Acts mentions these “God-fearers” more than a dozen times. It may just be that the writer of GoL and Acts was one of them. I still think it’s more likely, however, that he was a true Jew who became a Jewish-Christian.

In any case, all of these things should cause us to take a bit more care when assuming that the Gospel of Luke, or the book of Acts, was necessarily written by a Gentile, a doctor, or a companion of Paul. Maybe all those things are right. More than likely, however, they are not.

The Bible and the Afterlife

Perhaps no topic in human consciousness has received quite as much “publicity” over the millennia as the concept of life after death. It has been the subject of countless books, films, and theatrical productions. It is part of the core of just about every religion in history. “What happens when you die?” is a question that all human beings ultimately have to ask and search out answers to.

If you go to Google and type in the phrase “what happens,” before you’ve even finished typing the second word, Google populates a list of possible searches, and the first one (and thus, most popular) is “what happens when you die” (the second option, humorously enough, is “what happens when you lose your virginity”).

Google returns about 12.5 million topics on “what happens when you die” (sadly, only about a quarter of a million on virginity). On “afterlife,” the return is about 6.2 million. For “life after death,” the number soars to 55.4 million.

As Internet search engines attest, the afterlife is a popular topic indeed.

Like most religions, Christianity has deeply-entrenched traditions on life after death. For Christianity, in fact, life after death is at the very core of its entire theology – the belief that because Jesus died for our sins and was raised on the third day, we can be forgiven of our sins and be raised to eternal life as well. While it’s true that many branches and forms of Christianity may or may not emphasize this aspect of Christian tradition, there can be no question that it was a primary characteristic of the earliest Christian church, reflected in the New Testament.

In my experience, it seems that most Christians (I might even be inclined to say “the vast majority of Christians”) believe that when you die, your soul goes to heaven. This is reflected in countless ways in society. When a loved one dies, for instance, we might talk about them looking down on us from heaven, or we might imagine them finally meeting God in heaven. Songs reflect this belief, such as MercyMe’s wildly popular song “I Can Only Imagine,” which pictures the singer’s reaction to arriving in heaven and seeing God face-to-face. We tell formulaic jokes about someone dying and going up to meet St. Peter at the gates of heaven.

Indeed, the idea of your spirit or soul going to heaven when you die is certainly one of the most common beliefs among Christians. I’m not even sure that I personally know any self-professed Christian who does not believe that when you die, your soul goes to heaven. This is a belief that I have personally held throughout my entire life. Even when I have struggled intellectually with my personal beliefs, I have never questioned that the basic concept on life after death is that you go to heaven when you die.

What, then, does the Biblical tradition have to tell us about life after death? Surely it supports this view? Many people may be surprised to discover that our modern conceptions of life after death have almost no parallels in the Biblical tradition. A few months ago, I wrote about misconceptions regarding Biblical content. I recognize now that I was remiss in not including a discussion of life after death in that essay. As I have studied this topic in recent weeks, I can only describe my reaction as “dumbfounded.” How has an idea become so deeply ingrained in Christian culture when it has no basis in the Biblical tradition, and is, in fact, contradicted by the Bible’s own theology on life after death? That analysis is beyond the scope of this essay, but I do want to look deeply at what the Bible itself says about life after death and human eternity.

JEWISH BACKGROUND

Before one can understand anything in the New Testament, one must have a contextual framework from Jewish tradition. The earliest Christians, after all, were Jews working within the structure of Judaism. So was Jesus. Thus, to understand what they were talking about, we have to understand first where they were coming from.

To put it simply, the ancient Jews of the Old Testament did not believe in life after death, at least not for the average person. The ancient Jews did not have a concept of a soul or a spirit separate from the human body. The idea of a soul unbound by “the flesh” of the body originated with the ancient Greeks – who came along after most of the books of the Old Testament were written.

The Jews weren’t unique in their beliefs that the soul and body were united as one. Prior to the Greek philosophical revolution, no ancient civilization imagined a soul separate from the body. The Egyptians, for instance, certainly believed in life after death, but it wasn’t the soul that lived forever, it was the whole body. That’s why they mummified themselves and buried themselves with all their earthly possessions – possessions their physical body would need on its journey through the afterlife.

For the Jews and other ancient “pre-Greek” civilizations, body and soul, “flesh” and “spirit,” were inextricable. One did not exist without the other. Thus, for an ancient Jew, the idea that the soul would leave the body upon death and go to heaven would have been foreign and nonsensical. “Soul” and “body” were words that could be used interchangeably because they meant the same thing – they referred to the whole person, not two disparate parts of a person.

The Jews were certainly familiar with Egyptian ideas about life after death. But like so many other theological beliefs that the Jews regarded as hallmarks of paganism, the Jews rejected the Egyptian concept of the afterlife. For the ancient Jews, when a person died, they didn’t go to heaven, hell, or any other divine plane of existence. Instead, they simply went to a place called sheol in Hebrew. That word translates into English as either “grave” or “pit.” Quite simply, when you died, you went into the ground.

This is evidenced throughout the Jewish scriptures.

From Genesis, chapter 3: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

From Job, chapter 7: “As the cloud fades and vanishes, so those who go down to the grave [sheol] do not come up; they return no more to their houses, nor do their places know them anymore.”

From Psalm, chapter 6: “For in death there is no remembrance of you; in the grave [sheol] who can give you praise?”

From Ecclesiastes, chapter 9: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in the grave [sheol], to which you are going.”

The word sheol appears no fewer than 65 times in the Old Testament. Sometimes it refers simply to Jews dying and going into the grave. Sometimes it is used polemically against Jewish enemies in a sense of threatening them with death. Sometimes it is used pleadingly when a person is asking God to rescue them from death and physical destruction (“O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me…you brought my soul up from the grave [sheol]” – Psalm 30:2-3a).

What is clear from the Old Testament is that when people die, they go into the ground. In Jewish tradition, only the greatest of the greats among prophets were given the blessing of going to heaven to be with God for eternity. Elijah being taken up to heaven in a whirlwind is a primary example, and note that in the Elijah story, Elijah doesn’t actually die – his still-living body is taken up to heaven. The reason for that is clear: if he had died, he would have been dead (in sheol) and therefore couldn’t have gone to heaven!

Despite this tradition within the most ancient forms of Judaism, the Jews did, of course, eventually develop an afterlife theology. As best as can be reconstructed from the available texts, this seems to have begun developing in widespread fashion in the middle of the 2nd century, B.C.E. It was during that era, around 160 B.C.E., that the Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes laid siege to Jerusalem and began offering swine on the altar of God inside the Temple. This act was referred to in the book of Daniel (and later mentioned by Jesus in the Gospels) as the “desolating sacrilege” or, in the more poetic words of the King James, the “abomination of desolation.”

In response to this, the Jews revolted, led by a powerful Jewish family known to history as the Maccabees. They succeeded in defeating Antiochus and subsequently set up a Jewish dynasty known as the Hasmoneans, who ruled independently for the next 120 years. That dynasty ended only when Herod the Great came to power in Judea, but even Herod legitimized his own claim to the throne by marrying a Hasmonean princess.

It was during that time of upheaval, revolt, and war that the Jews seem to have begun developing afterlife theology on a widespread basis. Antiochus IV Epiphanes waged a campaign of terror and violence against the Jews. Jews were slaughtered by the thousands for refusing to worship the Greek gods. One story tells of two women who circumcised their children in the Jewish fashion and were punished by first having their children murdered, then parading the women through town with the children strapped to their breasts as though nursing, and ending with the killing of the women themselves by being thrown from the city wall. Another account says: “There was a massacre of young and old, a killing of women and children, a slaughter of virgins and infants. In the space of three days, eighty thousand were lost, forty thousand meeting a violent death, and the same number being sold into slavery” (2 Maccabees, chapter 5).

In the end, of course, the Jews were vindicated. The Maccabees overthrew the violent oppression of the Greco-Syrian Antiochus IV Epiphanes. But what about all those innocent martyrs who died during the occupation? Surely God could not just abandon them to the grave (sheol)?

Thus, the idea of a general resurrection was born in Jewish theology. God would right all the wrongs. God would perform what scholar J.D. Crossan calls “the Great Divine Cleanup” of the world. A great new prophet – called “messiah” or “son of humanity” in Jewish scriptures – would arise to lead the Jews into an eternal earthly kingdom of God’s divine justice; a kingdom of peace and equality opposed to the violent, oppressive kingdoms of the world. When this happened, part of that earthly transformation would include the resurrection of the dead – the vindication of the martyrs.

This resurrection would, by definition, be a bodily resurrection. The dead would physically rise from their graves into newness of life.

THE NEW TESTAMENT

The preceding is the historical context in which the writers of the New Testament, and Jesus himself, lived and worked. This was their religious and theological background.

Ultimately, they did not stray very far from it.

One criticism frequently aimed at the Bible is that it is inconsistent on a variety of theological topics. One topic, however, that the Bible is very consistent on is the topic academics call “eschatology.” That’s just a fancy word that refers to metaphysical ideas about the ultimate destiny of humankind and the end of the world.

In the Gospels, Jesus is frequently found discussing various eschatological topics. True to his Jewish context, Jesus sees the end of the world as God’s “Great Divine Cleanup.” For Jesus, however, this eschatological event has already begun. The kingdom of God – also called the kingdom of heaven – is already present here on the earth. In the Gospel of Matthew alone, there are no fewer than 31 references to Jesus’ vision of “the kingdom of heaven.” The first comes in Matthew’s third chapter, where John the Baptist says: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” In Matthew’s vision, it was Jesus who brought the reality of heaven’s kingdom to earth.

Outside of the Gospels, the various writers of the New Testament continued this vision of God’s kingdom here on earth, and they began to imagine God’s “Great Divine Cleanup” as being an action that would occur in two stages. The first stage had already happened. The kingdom of God had come with Jesus. Now, it is up to Christians to live within that kingdom by emulating Christ. The second stage would come when God consummated the kingdom – when God finished the work, as it were. Jesus would return in a Second Coming and the world would be transformed from a human world of violence and oppression into a Godly world of justice and equality.

This theology forms the entire basis of the book of Revelation, where Jesus – called “the Lamb” – defeats the powers of the world and inaugurates a “new Jerusalem,” which descends down to earth out of heaven. For the writer of Revelation, eternity is here on earth in a world transformed by God through Christ.

Part of this transformation includes the Jewish idea of the resurrection of the dead. Paul talks about this explicitly and in depth in the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished.” In other words, if Christ has not been raised, then neither will anyone else be raised. The dead are still dead. They have no hope. Paul goes on to say:

As all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.

Christ was raised first, as the “first fruits” of the general resurrection. At his second coming (and not upon their own deaths), the dead in Christ will also be raised. After that, the end of time comes, when Jesus turns everything over to God.

Paul speaks explicitly about this in 1 Thessalonians as well. He starts off saying: “We do not want you to be uninformed…about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”

Paul’s congregation in Thessaloniki was concerned about their members who had died. What would happen to them? Paul tells them that since they are Christians, they have a hope that others do not share. He goes on to say: “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.”

In other words, God will save those who have died. They are not lost to the grave. But how exactly will this happen? Paul tells us.

For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Thus, when Jesus returns at the Second Coming to consummate God’s kingdom on earth, the dead will rise first to meet him. This is the “hope for the dead” that Paul gave to the congregation at Thessaloniki. Paul’s hope wasn’t that the souls of the dead go to heaven. His vision was that the dead will be raised at Jesus’ Second Coming.

After the dead are raised, then, according to Paul, “we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.”

So the dead will rise first. Then those still living will meet Jesus in the air as he descends. Then all will live eternally with Christ on a transformed earth.

Some have read this passage to support the notion of eternity in heaven. Those still alive will be “caught up in the clouds” to meet Jesus “in the air.” Surely this implies an ascension into heaven? Yet Paul explicitly says that this will happen when Christ is “descending” to the earth. Christians are simply rising up to meet Jesus in the air, then to descend along with him to live on the divinely transformed earth.

This fits, in fact, with a known historical practice for receiving dignitaries. First, take note that cemeteries in the ancient world sat outside the city limits. Tuck that in the back of your mind.

In ancient Rome, when the emperor or some other important figure visited a city of the empire, the custom was for the population to exit the city walls and meet him on the road. That was proper etiquette. You didn’t sit inside the city waiting for the dignitary to arrive; you met him outside.

Thus, a visiting dignitary to a Roman city would first be greeted by the dead (the cemeteries were outside the city walls), then by the population who came out to greet him on the road. Following that, everyone, dignitary and populace, would continue back into the city.

This is the ancient model Paul surely had in mind when he described Jesus’ Second Coming to the Thessalonians. As Jesus descended in his Second Coming, he would first be met by the dead. Then the living would rise (leave the earth/city walls) to meet him. Then all would return to consummate God’s kingdom.

All of this is perfectly in line with Jewish theology about the “Great Divine Cleanup” and the general resurrection. The dead are dead. In death, they await resurrection at the end of time when God will right all the wrongs.

CONCLUSION

The point in all this, by now, should be fairly clear. The Bible makes clear and explicit its ideas about life after death. The afterlife does not being when you die. When you die, you are simply dead. In the grave (sheol). Dust to dust. The afterlife begins when God, through Jesus, consummates the “Great Divine Cleanup” of the world, a process that has already begun through Jesus’ earthly life. It will be finished when Jesus returns in the Second Coming to rule over God’s transformed earth, and it is at that time that the dead will be raised and thus the “afterlife” will begin for those who have died.

There is simply nothing in all of the Biblical tradition, both Jewish scriptures and Christian scriptures, to indicate that souls ascend to heaven upon the death of the body. The dead are dead. Their hope is in Jesus’ Second Coming and the inauguration of the general resurrection. This is a consistent and explicit theology throughout the New Testament, and consistent with the Jewish context of the Old Testament.

The idea that the soul goes to heaven (or some other plane of existence) upon death, while the body decays in the earthly ground, is certainly a perfectly valid metaphysical belief. A lot of people across many religions share it. In fact, it may very well be 100% true.

But when a Christian accepts this belief, they do so at the expense, and even in contradiction of, the clear theology of afterlife found in the Biblical tradition.