Mike Winger Video 2.2 (Genesis 2)

1. My walk through Mike Winger's videos on women in ministry and leadership continues. He spends over an hour in his second video on Genesis 2. He goes through a lot of small arguments that various people make here and there. He seems especially to engage two resources.

First, I am glad that he has continued his dialog with Philip Payne. It seems to me he argues with him over small points. I went to those points in Payne's book and didn't get the same feel as you get from his video. I didn't disagree with Winger on most of his points in relation to these small points. There are so many arguments that have been made by so many people on both sides -- some are stronger than others.

The other source he engages significantly in this video is Two Views on Women in Ministry in the Zondervan Counterpoints series. It features Tom Schreiner and Craig Blomberg on the complementarian side and Linda Bellvue and Craig Keener (Asbury professor) on the egalitarian side.

You may be surprised to know that I agree with a great deal of what Winger says about the details of Genesis 2. In fact, he reminded me of some of the same reactions I had to various ideas in seminary. At Asbury, Don Joy was particularly fond of the suggestion that the initial 'adam of Genesis 2 might have been androgynous -- both male and female. I thought this was funny then. Joy had asked the Bible faculty at Asbury about the concept before he published his book Bonding. They told him they didn't see it, but he published it anyway.

I would say, though, that I don't think it's as outrageous as it might seem. I just don't think it's the right interpretation.

2. I do want to get to some key points of disagreement, though, before getting into minutia. Fairly early on in the video, he says that both complementarians and egalitarians both agree on the centrality of Genesis 2 for the debate. Let me say as an odd duck that I have never really felt this way. In my booklet, Why Wesleyans Favor Women in Ministry (2004), I didn't mention Genesis at all. I do mention it in my more recent, A Biblical Argument for Women in Ministry and Leadership because it is part of the debate, but it has never been the central part of the debate for me.

Why? Two reasons.

The first is something that I discussed in one of two posts I made in preparation for this one. We are in a phase of biblical studies and biblical theology that is characterized by what I have called "flatness." For most, it is a "pre-modern" or "pre-reflective" perspective. That is to say, it is based on a deficient understanding of how to read the books of the Bible in context.

I may actually be more annoyed at the prevalence of these "narrative" readings among post-liberals for whom it is a postmodern reading. These narrative readers deliberately minimize contextual readings in favor of reading the Bible as a single story. I am perfectly fine with this as long as you acknowledge that you are reading the Bible out of context to do so. 

The pre-modern reads the Bible as one book from God to us without awareness of context. But the post-liberal to a large extent ignores historical difference. For some, it's a matter of principle even. In my Who Decides What the Bible Means? I set out as legitimate 1) original meaning interpretations, 2) orthodox-consensus readings of Scripture, 3) church-community readings of Scripture, and 4) individual spiritual readings of Scripture -- the key being that the Holy Spirit is directing these readings.

3. But if we construct a biblical theology, it is clear that a Christian reading of Scripture must privilege New Testament conclusions on Old Testament issues over the original meaning of the Old Testament. [At this point, a number of evangelical Old Testament scholars break out in hives.]

For example, there is nothing in Leviticus to suggest that animal sacrifices (or the temple) will ever stop being offered. In this regard, Hebrews provides the authoritative perspective on those sacrifices. They were illustrations of the one effective sacrifice of Christ. Similarly, circumcision is the assumption of the Old Testament. But Paul tells the Galatians they will have fallen from grace if they get circumcised.

Finally, as I show in the previous post I mentioned, the New Testament has distinct interpretations of Old Testament passages that go well beyond what those passages meant originally. For example, we would not get the impression that Lot was greatly distressed about the sins of Sodom from Genesis, but 2 Peter 2:7-8 portray him as a righteous man vexed by the sins of the city. We can take 2 Peter to be making an inspired point through Lot without thereby changing our inductive interpretation of Genesis 19.

What are you getting at Ken? What I am getting at is that I am most concerned with what the New Testament has to say about men and women more than with what Genesis 2 by itself says. This is not because Genesis 2 isn't significant. It is because Christian theology prioritizes New Testament revelation as more complete and more precise. 

(Mind you -- I know I am creating challenges for myself hereby. Winger already mentions in this video that 1 Timothy 2:13 uses the order of Adam and Eve's creation to support 2:12. I will defer that discussion for later.) 

Let me illustrate this principle of NT privilege. Colossians 2:16 tells the Gentile Colossians to stand their ground about anyone who condemns them because they do not keep the Jewish Sabbath. Romans 14:5 similarly tells the Romans to decide as a matter of their own conscience whether they will consider one day above another -- a clear allusion to the Jewish Sabbath. In short, Paul did not consider the Jewish Sabbath to be binding on Gentile believers. For him, it was a matter of personal conviction for them.

Now this is a straightforward observation, in my opinion. But it causes all matter of hives for the Flatlanders. "But, but, but." One person said to me once, "But the Sabbath goes back to creation!" (Gen. 2:3). "I know," I responded. "Isn't it crazy? Paul doesn't care."

4. So what does Genesis 2 say? Here let me invoke two posts I did recently in my Science and Scripture series, one of which mentioned different approaches to Genesis 2-3 in that regard and the second of which did some preparatory work on questions of genre. I'll leave the New Testament use of Genesis 2-3 for later in Winger's series.

First, Genesis 2-3 in context was an expression of the messed up state of the world. That is its point. I argued in the second post just mentioned that a comparison of Genesis 1-2 suggests that these are not to be taken as rigid history but as more "archetypal" -- expressing fundamental things. The reason is because Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 present a different order of creation. This doesn't mean one is wrong. It means that we are wrong to expect them to be literal presentations. They are doing something more profound. They aren't exactly poetry, but what they are doing is as "poetic" as it is literal, in my opinion.

The later of the two creation presentations, Genesis 1, puts male and female together as co-regents of the earth with no fall mentioned.

The second presentation in Genesis 2-3 culminates in three expressions of the state of the world. Men work hard to get the soil to yield its fruit. Both men and women will die even though God had intended for them to eat from the Tree of Life and live forever. Women will have painful childbearing and they will find themselves dominated by their husbands. And of course there are consequences for snakes too.

This is the point of Genesis 2-3. These chapters express the fallen situation of humanity. They are "etiological." They answer the questions, "Why do men have to work so hard on the land?" "Why do people die?" "Why do women have such painful childbirth?" "Why are women dominated by men?" (And why don't people and snakes get along?) [1]

In the process, the point of Genesis 2 is to picture the world before it was this way. As I have argued, it is probably not a video tape. If it were meant as a videotape, it would contradict the order of Genesis 1. Rather, it expresses that 1) men did not have to work hard before the Fall, 2) women did not have a painful life before the Fall, with their husbands dominating them and, of much less importance, 3) snakes and humans weren't on such bad terms before the Fall. 

For this reason, if there is hierarchy in Genesis 2, it is not the point. Indeed, the point is the harmony of Adam and Eve before the Fall, their peaceful cooperation. Their co-regency. The point of the way it is presented is the oneness and unity of Adam and Eve before the Fall -- the one fleshness of them and the distinction of them from the animals -- not Adam's authority over Eve. That almost goes against the point.

Shocker -- I am willing to say that there could be a light assumption of Adam's primacy in the way Creation 2 is presented. What I am saying is that, not only is that not the point. I am saying that to emphasize it is to miss the point of the story, which is the harmony of the two prior to their act of disobedience. 

In such a thoroughly patriarchal world, how might you present a pre-Fall situation that did not have man and woman at each other's throats? That is what Genesis 2 is about. It is the structure of the ancient world without the conflict, struggle, and bitterness. It is God meeting them in their assumptions and moving them from there. It gave an idyllic picture that was the opposite of dominance.

But God wants to do more!

5. So the street warfare that Winger engages in is all fine and good. I agree with him on almost every minute point of interpretation. But, at the risk of playing into his hands, I believe that this is a spiritual struggle. There are women who know they are called. There are men who know women are called. Some of the interpretations of some can be a little "creative," shall we say. (And Winger fully acknowledges that there are some crazy complementarian interpretations out there too.) 

But is because they see the trajectory of Scripture. They see the whole council of God. One of the problems with fundamentalism, in my opinion, is that it can get so involved with the verse-by-verse street warfare that it misses the Spirit of Scripture. It misses the big point because it is arguing about some detail of the letter. This is what the Princeton Calvinists did with slavery in the mid-1800s.

This is not putting experience above the Bible. Interpreting and applying the Bible is a complicated thing -- look at how many thousands of interpretations and applications there are out there. A little guidance from the Holy Spirit seems in order. Indeed, Bible technicians, "letteralists," can be dangerous because they can miss the heart of Scripture while focusing on the details (cf. Matt. 23:23-24).  

[1] I have no problem seeing the snake as Satan, but this was not part of the original meaning of Genesis 3. Not only is Satan not mentioned, but the understanding of Satan does not seem to have come into play until after this time -- later in the post-exilic period. It is not until the first century BC that any surviving Jewish writing equates the snake with Satan.

8.2 Science and Scripture: Situating Genesis 2-3

continued from the last Science and Scripture post
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8.2 Situating Genesis 2-3
1. How then should we understand the genre of Genesis 2-3 and situate it within Genesis, the Pentateuch, and the Bible? We might start with the fact that the creation story of Genesis 1 and the creation story of Genesis 2 seem distinct from each other. A number of possibilities have been offered for how they might relate to each other, but which one is most likely? 

First, what are the main differences between the accounts? The most obvious difference is the apparent order of creation. Plants are created on Day 5 in Genesis 1. Then animals first on Day 6. Finally, humans -- male and female -- are created later on Day 6.

By contrast, in Genesis 2:4, "on the day when Yahweh God made land and skies," God first creates "the man" or "the human" (אָדָם -- 'adam). At that point "there was no plant of the field on the land nor herb of the field" (2:5). Here we immediately note three differences. First, Yahweh, the name of God, is used throughout Genesis 2-3. His proper name was absent from Genesis 1, where only the generic reference of God ('elohim) was used.

Second, the impression of 2:4 is that creation of humans, plants, and animals took place altogether on the same "day" as the creation of the land and skies. Finally -- and perhaps most striking -- the man is created before there were any plants in the land. It is not until 2:9 that Yahweh Elohim makes all the plants of the land.

The animals then are not created until Genesis 2:19. Like the man (ha'adam), God creates all the animals out of the ground and brings them to the man to name them. Interestingly, the creation of the animals was preceded by God's observation that the man should have a helper. So finally after the animals are created, God creates a "woman" ('ishshah).

Thus we see two other differences between Genesis 1 and 2. The animals are created after the man, and the woman is created last. To this point, the man and woman are not named Adam and Eve. 'adam so far would seem to be generic for a man, and the woman is simply the generic 'ishshah.

There are other differences that are perhaps less important for our purposes. Creation in Genesis 2 seems more personal and relational. Creation in Genesis 1 is by divine command and seems more formal. In Genesis 1, there is a plural used in the creation of humanity -- "Let us make." Genesis 2 only speaks of Yahweh God. 

Textbox: Differences between Genesis 1 and 2
1. Creation in six "days" versus one "day"
2. Different name/reference to God
3. Man created before plants and animals
4. Creation of woman separated from creation of man

2. What are we to make of these differences? If we take both accounts "literally" in relation to the same event of creation, they do not objectively seem to cohere together. That fact would leave us with three basic options: 1) they refer to different events, 2) they are different perspectives on the same event (e.g., different genres), or 3) one or both of them is incorrect in some way.

Let us assume that both of them are correct in some way. They do not seem to refer to different events, for 2:4 indicates that Genesis 2 took place on the day that God created the skies and the land (i.e., the heavens and the earth). And are we to think that God created other men and women before the man and the woman of Genesis 2? While that idea would fit well with the perspective of evolutionary creation, it seems like a doubtful (anachronistic) meaning for the biblical text.

That leaves us with the second option, namely, that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 both relate to the creation of humanity but in some different way. Chiefly, it leads us back to the question of genre. Presumably one or both of the accounts functioned as more than mere literal history. It would be fully in keeping with the genres of the Ancient Near East (ANE) if the stories are much more "archetypal," as John Walton has put it, rather than fully literal." [1]

3. At this point it is fitting to ask the question of sources. Most Old Testament scholars agree that Genesis reflects the integration of multiple sources, though there remains substantial debate about their exact number, nature, and dating. Nevertheless, it would not be deeply controversial to suggest that Genesis 2-3 come from an epic of Israel's story that goes back at least to the time of the early monarchy (e.g., the tenth century BC). Similarly, it would not be greatly controversial to consider Genesis 1 as an introduction to the entire Pentateuch written in the late exilic or post-exilic period (sixth or fifth centuries BC).

The origins of this consensus began in the 1700s with the observation not only that a number of stories in the Pentateuch are very similar to each other. But they have one key difference -- the name of God. For example, there are two very similar stories of Abraham telling a powerful figure that Sarah is his sister. In Genesis 12:10-20, Abram tells this to Pharaoh. In Genesis 20:1-18 (when Sarah is 90 years old in the flow of Genesis, incidentally), Abraham tells this to Abimelech. In the first instance, God is referred to as Yahweh. In the second, God is referred to as Elohim.

This pattern is so pervasive in Genesis that, in 1753, Jean Astruc suggested that perhaps Moses had synthesized two different sources together in the creation of Genesis, one of which used Yahweh in reference to God (later called the "J" source, since Yahweh begins with a J in German) and the other of which used Elohim (later called the "E" source). The details of such a theory have been debated back and forth for over 250 years. For our purposes, it is enough to note the consensus that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2-3 come from different sources. [2]

Given that consensus, it is easy to conclude that Genesis 1 and 2 had distinct purposes. In chapter 4, we argued that Genesis 1 was ancient cosmology. It amazingly seems to give man and woman an equal status as created in the image of God with dominion over the rest of the land with its creatures. Genesis 2-3 had its own distinct purposes. It does not fit precisely with Genesis 1 on the level of detail, suggesting that the truths we are to take from these chapters is more theological than precisely historical. 

4. What were those truths? We have been developing an approach to Scripture in the preceding chapters that takes fully into account this truth: revelation always starts with the language and categories of those to whom God reveals himself and then moves them from there. God does not expect us to climb the mountain to him or we would never understand what he wishes to reveal. Rather, he stoops to our weakness and elevates our understanding.

We thus should think of biblical revelation as "incarnated" truth. We collectively have to use discernment, guided by the Holy Spirit, to distinguish between the "that time" and the "all time," so to speak. There is always "that time" in revelation because that is the nature of all meaning. It is always contextual.

A second prong in our appropriation of Scripture recognizes that the same words can be given different emphases and even different meanings in different times and places. Thus, even within the Bible itself, the same passage may be taken differently by different authors -- with each different meaning inspired of the Holy Spirit. Thus, the original meaning of Genesis 2-3 may be different from the way various New Testament authors take various elements of these chapters. And yet each different meaning can be inspired!

What was the original point? ...

[1] John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve (IVP Academic, 2015) -- especially his proposition 9. It is important to note that Walton considers Adam and Eve to have been historical individuals. Perhaps I should also note that he sees Genesis 1 and 2 as sequential rather than two different presentations of the same creation (see his proposition 7).

[2] It is hard to underemphasize the significance of an editor intentionally integrating sources together that were not fully harmonizable on a literal historical level. It reveals that our modern sensibilities and default expectations of the text were apparently not those of the original authors and editors. It was wrong of an earlier generation of scholars to demean the biblical authors for practices that were fully appropriate for them. Similarly, it is inappropriate for modern scholars to preclude such possibilities -- operating on the same modern assumptions as the liberal scholars of an earlier generation.

The Third Dimension of Scripture

I have watched the more than one hour part of Mike Winger's second video on women in ministry that has to do with Genesis 2. I feel like to address it properly, I might need to do some prep work. So this is the first of two posts leading up to my response to his treatment of Genesis 2.

Much of evangelical (and of course fundamentalist) discussion of the Bible takes place in what I might call Flatland. It consists of two-dimensional discussions of the literary dimension of the text. Why? Because historical-cultural discussions are full of landmines. There is barbed wire and electric fences on certain issues. You're allowed to think freely and critically within the fence, but it can be risky to cross it.

Let me mention two flashpoints.

1. I grew up expecting God to speak to me and other Christians directly through the words of the biblical text. For example, you could read a verse that said, "They were all in one accord" and get the impression that God was telling you to buy a Honda Accord. It's not that we thought that was what the text meant to other Christians. It's just that God could speak directly to you through its words in magical ways.

In college and then seminary, I became more aware of what we might call the "original meaning" of biblical texts. I learned something called "inductive Bible study." You read a verse in the light of the verses that came before and after it. And you learned about historical context too -- the background of a biblical text in historical times and places.

I began to notice something. One thing I noticed is that the New Testament authors sometimes read Old Testament texts like I grew up reading them. For example, Hosea 11:1-2 is not a prediction of the future -- "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt. But the more I called them, the more they went away from me." It's talking about the exodus and the fact that Israel turned away from God.

Then imagine my surprise that Matthew heard in this verse an anticipation of Jesus going down to Egypt as a child and then coming out again. The verse had nothing to do with the Messiah originally. Matthew was reading the text in a way that went well beyond what the text was originally about -- and he does this regularly.

As I worked through the "prophecy-fulfillment" chart in the back of my Thompson Chain Reference King James Bible, I began to discover this dynamic repeatedly. The "fulfillments" of Old Testament words in the New Testament largely weren't from predictions. They were rather the NT authors reading the OT with spiritual eyes.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't have a problem with this. I've seen a lot of energy spent in evangelical circles trying to figure out ingenious ways to say, "No, no, wait -- they actually were reading the OT in context." What I'm saying is that this is not the Bible's problem. It's a problem with our expectations. If we let the NT authors read the OT like Pentecostals and holiness folk have always read the Bible, there's no problem at all.

2. Let me give another example, Luke hears in Psalm 16:10 a prediction of Jesus' resurrection. "You will not abandon my life to Sheol; you will not give your faithful one to see the Pit." In context, the meaning of the psalm seems pretty obvious to me -- the psalmist is thanking God for not letting him die.

But Luke's Peter hears resurrection. David died. If the passage was about David, Peter argues, then it couldn't be true. Rather, David is anticipating Jesus' resurrection.

This really bothered me in seminary. The meaning of the psalmist seemed so obvious. He's not talking about final death. He's talking about not dying at that point of his life. I might easily pray such a prayer tonight. I know I'll die eventually. I'm asking God not to let me die tonight or next week... now, in other words.

This doesn't bother me anymore. What is inspired is the point a biblical author is making. The path to such points may involve cultural assumptions. I often use Paul's comment about being taken to the third heaven in 2 Corinthians 12:2. His point isn't that there are three layers of heaven with God in the highest sky of the layer salad. That's just a cultural assumption. His point is that he was taken into the very presence of God.

3. What this means is that there may not be just one meaning to Genesis 1-3 in the Bible. There may be the original meaning of Genesis 1 and the original meaning of Genesis 2-3 and there may be the way Paul interprets Genesis 2 in 1 Corinthians and the way Paul interprets Genesis 2-3 in 1 Timothy. And all these meanings may not be the same, and yet they can all be inspired.

Texts are "polyvalent" -- susceptible to multiple potential meanings. Paul interprets Genesis 22:18 in both Galatians 3:16 and Romans 4:13, but he interprets it a little differently in each place. Daniel 11:31 interprets an abomination in relation to an event in 167BC, but Mark 13:14 take that same verse in relation to an event in AD70.

In short, the same words in Scripture can mean more than one inspired thing, and that's ok.

Therefore, in preparation for Winger's discussion of Genesis 2, 1 Timothy 2 can use Genesis 2-3 in an inspired way that, at the same time, is not what Genesis 2-3 originally meant. Or it can change the emphasis. And that's ok. The way a NT text uses an OT text only tells you for sure something about the NT text. It doesn't necessarily tell you as much about the OT text.

4. Here's the second flashpoint. As I went through seminary, I began to understand the reasoning behind some unpopular theories that went against tradition. For example, it is tradition that Moses wrote Genesis. 

But it's pretty hard to find a clear statement in the NT that Moses wrote Genesis. It's much easier to find connections between Moses and the rest of the Pentateuch but even here, it is often something Moses is saying in the Pentateuch that is referenced. I actually do think that the NT authors likely assumed Mosaic authorship. In my mind, this falls under the heading of cultural "assumptions that aren't the point."

Having learned inductive Bible study in seminary, it became clear 1) that Moses is never mentioned in Genesis and thus he is never said to be its author (it's anonymous) and 2) Moses is always referenced in the third person in the rest of the Pentateuch (Moses did this. Moses did that. Moses went up on a mountain and died.). From an inductive standpoint, we simply will not conclude that Moses wrote the Pentateuch.

5. Second, I used to laugh at the late 1800s source hypothesis JEDP. (And, by the way, it has been significantly critiqued and revised over the years.) But when I began to look at some of the reasons behind these sorts of source theories, many of them actually make some sense.

For example, there are several instances of a very similar story in the Pentateuch taking place, one of which uses Yahweh as the name of God and the other of which uses Elohim as his name. At one point, I made a chart of the Flood story. I put in one column verses with Yahweh and in another column verses with Elohim. You pretty much end up with two versions of the Flood story one of which has 7 of every clean animal and the other of which has 2 of every animal.

I don't know how it all worked. I don't have a good answer to all the whys. But it makes a lot of sense to me that Genesis 2-3 was part of an epic of Israel's story that is older than Genesis 1, which was perhaps an introduction added when the whole Pentateuch was finally collected as a whole.

Such theories bother a lot of people. For one thing, they can involve some speculation. It's educated speculation but still, scholars can get out of hand. 

The fact is, we just don't know a lot of things. Our lack of knowledge doesn't disprove that such things happened. The proper conclusion isn't, "Well then let's just say Moses wrote it." The proper conclusion is, "We don't know a lot of things for sure about how the biblical text came together."

6. The third dimension of Scripture, as I'm talking about it, is this highly complicated background of the text that is crucial in interpreting it for what it originally meant -- and that we often lack sufficient information about to know. 

God does just fine, and we do too. God makes the text come alive and speaks directly to us anyway. And of course, there is the church of the ages. God has arguably spoken to it as well and solidified some meanings.

This is quite involved. It is relevant to my engagement with Winger's discussion of Genesis 2 because I would say he reads the text in Flatland, and our discussions of the text often take place in Flatland. His arguments are often very grammatical and intratextual. But that's only part of the puzzle.

The discussion continues...

Through the Bible -- Mark 6

Now that we're past Pentecost, I want to go back and finish Mark. Previous chapters of Mark at bottom.
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1. The core theme of Mark 6 would seem to be discipleship and its cost. The chapter begins with Jesus visiting his hometown of Nazareth, where he is rejected. [1] Here we get the well known proverb that a prophet often has honor everywhere except in his own hometown.

His family is included. Mark gives us every reason not to think that his mother or brothers were on board with his ministry during his time on earth. We also have every reason to think that Mary went on to have other children. We have their names here -- James, Joses, Jude, Simon. He had sisters too. It is arguably an unhealthy view of sex that stands in the background of the Catholic and Orthodox belief that Mary remained a "perpetual virgin."

It says that Jesus "couldn't" perform many miracles there. This is a statement of Nazareth's lack of faith rather of Jesus' lack of power. Nevertheless, as with his omniscience, it is likely that the second person of the Trinity self-limited his use of power while he was on earth. Jesus arguably "played by the human rules" on earth, relying on the Spirit for his power to be an example for us as well.

2. The middle part of this chapter gives us another sandwich structure. Jesus sends out the Twelve on mission (6:7-13). [2] Mark tells about the fate of John the Baptist (6:14-29). Then the disciples return (6:30).  

The disciples are apprentices. They are following Jesus and learning from Jesus to do Jesus' "trade," which is the proclamation of the good news and the need for repentance. It is the healing of the sick and the casting out of demons. They go and do so with success. [3]

For their support, they are to rely on those to whom they are ministering (no bread, no bag, no money -- 6:8). They are not to give a sense of wealth (only one tunic -- 6:9). They are to stay with one host so that social pressures don't result in jealousy and infighting, which would distract from the mission (6:10). If a town rejects them, they shake the dust off their feet, a sign of leaving that village to its own fate (6:11).

3. To illustrate the possible outcome of being a disciple of the gospel, Mark has sandwiched in the story of John the Baptist's end here.

Herod Antipas hears about Jesus and is afraid that John the Baptist has come back from the dead. Others said Jesus was Elijah, the forerunner of the Messiah. Still others thought he might be a prophet. These are the same options that Peter will present in Mark 8 when Jesus asks who people are saying he is.

John the Baptizer had spoken out against Herod taking his brother's wife Herodias to be his wife. To do so, both had divorced their first spouses. Herodias was not happy about John condemning them, so Herod arrested John.

We know the story. On Herod's birthday, Herodias' daughter dances for him. He offers her pretty much whatever she wants. On her mother's advice, she asks for John's head. 

The telling of the story suggests that Herod was sympathetic to John. It blames his death primarily on Herodias. The impression we get is that Herod was pressured into it.

4. The rest of the chapter has two of Jesus' more well-known miracles. The first is the feeding of the 5000, the only miracle to appear in all four Gospels. We know the story. Jesus withdraws into a remote place. As a human, Jesus had a personality, and we wonder if he was actually an introvert.

The crowds follow him. Jesus performs a nature miracle for he breaks the law of matter conservation. He multiplies five loaves and two fish to feed the crowd.

This shows Jesus' compassion (6:34). They are "like sheep without a shepherd." Their lives lack meaning and purpose. They suffer without any hope. They are alienated from their heavenly Father. Jesus is showing them the way.

The theme of discipleship may also continue as Jesus asks his disciples to feed the crowd. Is this a test of their faith? If so, they do not particularly do well at it.

5. Another "super-natural" miracle then takes place when Jesus walks on water (6:45-52). The crowds have left and Jesus' disciples have also left for Bethsaida ahead of him. He wants some time alone with God to pray. But by evening, the disciples are making little headway on the Sea of Galilee because the wind is against them. He walks out to them on the water during the "fourth watch" (3-6am).

They think he is a ghost (phantasma). They are afraid. So while he was going to pass by them, he gets in the boat and the winds cease instead (6:51). The idea of Jesus "passing by" may be an allusion to Yahweh passing by Moses or Elijah.

The theme of the disciples not understanding is highlighted at the end (6:52). Their hearts are said to be hardened, a curious thing to say although it fits with Mark's theme that the disciples didn't get it. One wonders what this theme meant in Mark's own day.

6. The chapter ends with a summary statement of Jesus' ministry. They land at Gennesaret just west of Capernaum. Crowds come to him. He heals the sick. They want even to touch his garments and be healed, reminding us of the woman with a hemorrhage in the previous chapter.

[1] A key insight into Luke's artistic freedom is the fact that he, using Mark as a source, moves this event to the very begining of Jesus' ministry (Luke 4:16-30) and uses it to shape a kind of inaugural address that present the core theme of Jesus' earthly ministry based on Isaiah 61:1-2.

[2] The Gospel of Matthew, using Mark as a source, expands this mission into a whole chapter (Matt. 10) and adds a mission sermon.

[3] Luke, again using Mark as a source, adds the disciples' glee that even the demons obey them. Jesus then remarks that he is seeing Satan being dethroned as the prince of this realm (Luke 10:18).
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Mark 1:1-13
Mark 1:14-15 
Mark 1:16-45
Mark 2
Mark 3
Mark 4:1-34
Mark 4:35-5:43

Mark 11:1-11 (Palm Sunday)
Mark 11:12-25 (Temple Monday)
Mark 11:26-12:44 (Debate Tuesday)
Mark 13 (Temple Prediction)
Mark 14:1-52 (Last Supper)
Mark 14:53-15:47 (Good Friday)
Mark 16 (The Resurrection) 

Protest is Deeply American

1. Protest is deeply American. I pick up "ink and pen" this June 14, 2025, the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States Army. 

To call it an army seems a little exaggerated. The "Continental Congress" wasn't some permanently recognized group. The colonies had somewhat mutinously sent them to meet behind the King's back. The only real authority they had was that the local governments in the colonies sent these guys to represent them in the discussion of what to do. 

The story leading up to the "War of Independence" and the United States is really one of the people here in the colonies trying to get the King of England to recognize that they mattered. Their heads were filled with notions like "all men are created equal." They believed they should be treated with respect. They believed their voices mattered in decisions that had to do with their lives.

The King certainly didn't act that way. After all, he was the King. England was in charge. How dare these nobodies object to the things he or the Parliament decided! The colonies belonged to England. Treasonous! They deserved to be punished.

2. As is often the case with we humans, the situation escalated. The stubborn King wouldn't budge. The locals got more and more agitated.

In 1770, a crowd was yelling at some soldiers. The soldiers start shooting. In a moment, five people are dead. They called it the "Boston Massacre." 

You can hear the King. They were an angry mob. We had to keep order. You can hear the English back home, "They got what they deserved for opposing authority."

In 1773, there was a group of protesters, basically, who snuck onto some British ships in the Boston Harbor and dumped hundreds of chests of tea into the water (the "Boston Tea Party"). They called themselves the "Sons of Liberty." It was perhaps equivalent to several million dollars' worth of goods, and the King was ticked. 

Instead of listening to their complaints, he doubled down. The British Parliament with the full support of the King then passed measures the colonists called the "Intolerable Acts" (1774). They shut down Boston Harbor and with it the local economy. They demanded repayment.

They fired the people on the council running Massachusetts and replaced them with people loyal to the King. They more or less gave a pass to the King's people, making it so that they couldn't be tried for any wrongdoing in the colonies. They were sent back to England for them to decide. They demanded that local people give room and food to British soldiers in their homes.

3. The locals began to skirmish with the British troops. At Lexington in 1775, the British soldiers tried to confiscate the guns and ammunition of the locals. This is when Paul Revere rode to warn that the British were coming.

The British shot and killed several locals. This was the "shot heard round the world" that was considered to have been the real start of the revolution.

So later that day the locals jumped the British soldiers at Concord, causing some 270 British casualties. About ninety of the locals were killed or injured.

Protest is almost a mixture of the reasonable with the unreasonable. Excess is virtually assured on both sides. If the issue is serious enough, some protesters almost inevitably cross the line... and so will some authority. Even in a "just war," There will inevitably be atrocities on both sides. This is our fallen human nature.

Excess doesn't disprove that wrong has been done. Nor does it prove that authority is in the wrong. Amid distraction, the reasonable must try their best to work with each other toward the right.

4. Still, the representatives of the colonies tried to reconcile. In mid-1775, John Dickenson of Pennsylvania wrote "The Olive Branch Petition" and the Second Continental Congress approved it. Just show us some respect, man.

But kings don't like to admit they're wrong. He doubled down again. He declared the colonies to be in open rebellion. How dare they think they have any rights! I'm the king! I'm in charge here! The military presence and force became stronger and stronger. (By the way, this is part of why we don't allow the military to police us on our home territory.)

5. The protest gets stronger and stronger. Thomas Jefferson and Dickenson wrote "A Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms." It makes it clear. The colonies just want the rights that other British citizens have. They're not trying to become independent. They simply want to be treated fairly.

They are loyal to the King, they protest, but Parliament has been behaving badly. The tone was a mixture of resolve and regret. They want to lay down their arms if England will just grant them some basic decency. 

"Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable."

They were pushed into a fight for their independence due to the stubborn refusal of the King to listen. Instead, all protest was met with escalation on his part. So they met him at his escalation. 

On June 14, 1775, they officially formed a Continental Army.

8.1 Science and Scripture: Approaches to Genesis 2-3

Although I've been a little distracted by Michael Winger's videos, I did intend to write in the later part of this week on Science and Scripture. So why not jump to the proposed Genesis 2-3 chapter of the Science and Scripture book I've started working on? Previous posts covered all but the final piece of chapter 1.
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8.1 Approaches to Genesis 2-3
1. In chapter 4, we began to explore questions about Genesis' structure, genre, and historical context. We argued that these were often crucial elements in the interpretation of Genesis 1-3 as they relate to questions of science and faith. We showed how young earth creationists, old earth creationists, and evolutionary creationists each lean toward a different understanding of the genre of Genesis 1.

For example, young earth creationists often claim to take Genesis 1 "literally." We saw, however, that their interpretations were only selectively literal and that a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 would probably result in a picture of the cosmos that is quite different from the one with which they normally operate (e.g., a flat earth with waters above a dome and stars below the dome). An individual like Ken Ham tends to interpret Genesis 1 as historical narrative.

By contrast, old earth creationists tend to take Genesis 1 at least somewhat figuratively with the word day referring to an unspecified but large period of time, likely millions of years. This is the "day-age theory" which on days five and six allows for the millions of years of the fossil record -- with God stepping in with a special creation at the appropriate developmental points. Nevertheless, the structure of Genesis 1 is still largely seen as historical narrative -- just a less literal one.

Finally, the so-called "framework hypothesis" takes Genesis 1 not as a historical narrative but a theological one. We saw that John Walton, as an example, wonders if Genesis 1 was a liturgy for the new year whose fundamental purpose was to re-enact the installment of Yahweh as king of the world each year. Others might see a less specific situation. Clearly, Genesis 1 presents God as sole creator of the world. It indicates that God's creation is orderly. It situates humanity -- male and female -- as the pinnacle of creation.

Genesis 1 also, arguably, introduces the Pentateuch. In chapter 4, we briefly discussed questions of Genesis' authorship and noted that most see Genesis as the synthesis of both oral tradition and literary sources rather than a single document produced by Moses. In such hypotheses, Genesis 1 serves as a kind of introduction to the Pentateuch, written somewhere between the late sixth century and mid-fifth century. In this view, Genesis 1 "grounds" the Pentateuch in the sole authority of Yahweh, the God who brings order out of chaos.

Approaches to Genesis 1 that see it as historical narrative on some level do lead to tensions with modern science, especially the young earth creationist interpretation. However, interpretations that see Genesis 1 as a more poetic, theological presentation of creation leave ample room for theories of modern cosmology such as the Big Bang. Indeed, we argued in chapter 3 that the Big Bang theory actually supports faith in the special creation of the universe quite well. Science has no evidence-based theory on what caused the expansion of the universe from a singularity or why it expanded when it did. Faith in a Creator thus is in perfect alignment with current cosmological hypotheses. 

2. In this chapter, we want to continue this discussion into Genesis 2-3. Here we once again have three basic interpretations of the biblical text. First, young earth creationists (YEC) see Genesis 2-3 as historical narrative. Adam and Eve are understood to be literal historical individuals, the first humans to exist on the earth. Genesis 2 is seen as a template for ideal humanity, and Genesis 3 is seen as an explanation -- or etiology -- of why humanity is as it is today. Let us call this the traditional literal view.

Textbox: An etiology is an origin story that explains a particular practice or social reality

The old earth creationist (OEC) also takes Genesis 2 somewhat literally but situates it within a flow of millions of years. For example, the main difference between an old earth creationist and a young earth creationist on Genesis 2-3 largely has to do with what precedes and follows it. An old earth creationist would see Adam and Eve as the first humans on earth. They would see Adam and Eve as literal, historical individuals fashioned by the special creation of God. 

However, they might see God having created other hominins prior to Adam and Eve by special creation as well. For example, they might see God stepping into the flow of history to create Neanderthals and Denisovans some 100,000 years before he created homo sapiens. Another key difference has to do with the continuity of natural law. The young earth creationist might follow the traditional Augustinian approach and see a dramatic change in natural law after the Fall of Adam and Eve. For example, a YEC might see the second law of thermodynamics as a consequence of the fall (see chapter 12).

By contrast, an OEC would not likely see any wholesale change in natural law after the sin of Adam and Eve. For example, animal death would have existed before the Fall. The law of entropy would have existed both before and after Adam and Eve's sin. However, one might still propose that the power of Sin exacerbated the corruptive forces of the world after the Fall.

Because old earth creationists differ from young earth creationists primarily on matters that are outside of what Genesis 2-3 say, we will include it in the first interpretation of Genesis 2-3 that takes this story as historical narrative. The differences, as we mentioned, have to do with what happened before Genesis 2. OEC still takes Genesis 2-3 fairly literally. Adam and Eve are still literal, historical individuals.

3. A second interpretation of Genesis 2-3 still considers Adam and Eve to be literal, historical individuals like the young and old earth creationists. Like the old earth creationists, it sees Adam and Eve in a flow of millions of years that have preceded Genesis 2. However, this particular concordist view would situate Adam and Eve within a flow of evolution. I am calling this a distinct interpretation of Genesis 2-3 because Adam and Eve are not seen as the first homo sapiens but perhaps as representatives of the species before God. Let us call it the representative Adam view.

While this approach considers the key elements of Genesis 2-3 to be historical, it involves enough reinterpretation of the context of Genesis 2-3 to seem to warrant its own category. That is to say, the Genesis 2-3 story seems to be taken less literally than the old earth creationist takes it. It is a creative attempt to integrate the predominant scientific theory of human evolution with a mostly literal reading of Genesis. 

In the previous chapter, we have already discussed the question of whether genetics allows for two individuals to be either the direct or genealogical ancestors of the human race. The views of Walton and Swamidass both would allow for a somewhat literal interpretation of Genesis 2 within a flow of evolutionary development. However, we would need to infer that Adam and Eve are not the only humans around at the time, and the Fall would not result in as dramatic a change as in the traditional literal view. For example, death would have been present before and after Adam and Eve's sin -- not only for animals but for humans as well.

The genre of Genesis 2-3 in this approach seems less straightforwardly historical. John Walton would call it Ancient Near Eastern theological narrative. [] Adam and Eve are archetypes of humanity although not the first or only humans. The story is thus as much or more a parable of humanity as a historical story, although based on events that Walton believes literally happened.

4. A third interpretation sees Genesis 2-3 as myth in the technical sense or perhaps as a parable of humanity...

[complete]

Mike Winger Video 2.1: Genesis 1:26-27 and Co-Dominion

Recently, I started wading through Mike Winger's 13 hour series on women in ministry and complementarianism. In this post, I start with the first 20 minutes of his second video. His second video is over 2 hours long and discusses Genesis 1-3. I'll start with what he says about Genesis 1.
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1. Winger's analysis of Genesis 1:26-27 is correct. The Hebrew אָדָם ('adam) in these verses is generic and refers to humankind in general -- not to males in particular (a mistake Mark Driscoll once made). God creates humanity in his image, in his likeness. Male and female he creates them. He gives male and female dominion over the earth.

Winger seems quite keen to make sure his friends know that, even though he sounds egalitarian, he's not done yet. But he is emphatic that both men and women are equal in value and dignity. This is key to his presentation of complementarianism -- the roles may be different but the value is the same. 

I commend him on considering men and women of equal value. As Peter told the Gentiles, "God does not show favoritism" (Acts 10:34). The Holy Spirit fell equally on men and women on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:17). God doesn't love men more than women. Whatever Galatians 3:28 means, surely it at least implies that.

2. Winger wants to sharply distinguish complementarians from earlier "patriarchalism," where the man was considered superior in value to the woman. In straight patriarchalism, the woman is effectively inferior to the man in value. Complementarianism considers women "equal but different." Again, I want to commend the way complementarianism wants to consider men and women equal in value. 

From a sociological perspective, complementarianism is a fairly recent development -- younger than egalitarianism in fact. The idea of complementarianism in this form arose in the late 70s and 80s by individuals like Wayne Grudem and John Piper. I commend those with this view for recognizing that valuing men over women violates Scripture in places like Genesis 1.

I also agree with those who see it as a fall back position -- it conceeds as much as it must while preserving as much of the human status quo as it can. You might argue that it is simply a passible version of the earlier patriarchy. We know we can't love our wives and treat them as beneath us. So we say we love them just as much as we love men but insist that it's just the rules that keep them in a box.

In his first video, Winger implies that it is a slippery slope fallacy to assume complementarianism always devolves into abuse. I agree logically. However, this doesn't mean that complementarianism does not have a structure that practically is more conducive to abuse than egalitarianism. It raises the stakes on getting this question right.

3. Before we get to Genesis 2, I want to talk a little hermeneutics groundwork myself. In the circles where we debate these things, the Bible is usually interpreted in a very "flat" way. That is to say, the discussion is two dimensional -- it takes place in the "world within the text," within the literary context. Similarly, the whole Bible is treated more or less as a single text, not dozens of texts written over a 1000 year period. In other places, I call this an unreflective reading of the Bible. 

The third dimension of Scripture is the "world behind the text." This is not simply historical references -- most still think of those from inside the text. Reading the Bible in full context sees the books of the Bible themselves in history on a deep level. We can see Scripture as the story of God revealing himself to many different people in different places in different times, situations, and different cultures -- and thus in different ways.

Here's what I think. I'll leave out the 35 years of development for me to get here. Genesis 1 is an introduction to the Pentateuch. It is later than Genesis 2-3 by several hundred years. It is really even different in genre from Genesis 2-3. It's doing something different from Genesis 2-3.

Genesis 2-3 are part of an epic story of Israel's founding. Genesis 1 grounds that story (and Israel's religious practices) in God's sovereignty over the earth. Given the world of that day, Genesis 1 is quite remarkable. God alone orders the chaos of the world -- there is no conflict between him and other gods. He says it, and it is done.

And men and women are both given dominion over the earth. They are both created in God's image. As Winger says, Genesis 1 does not distinguish their value or dignity. This is quite remarkable, and it grounds the entire Pentateuch, including Genesis 2-3.

We will return to this deeper hermeneutical discussion as we move into Genesis 2-3.

4. I am pleased that Winger at least sees Genesis 1 as giving women dominion over everything except men. This is his complementarianism. For him, there is an order of authority in the home but it does not limit women in any way in relation to anything else. Women have dominion over trees like men. Women have authority over fish. Women have dominion over animals like men. They can cook beef and pig. Whew. This is the level of discussion we are at in American Christianity. Let that sink in.

He does address Titus 2:5, which says that wives should be "working at home" and "submissive to their own husbands" in the ESV. I ironically heard a very conservative woman preacher once point out the word "at" here from the pulpit, arguing that God's ideal was for a woman to stay at home. This was a quite remarkable moment of inner conflict for her no doubt.

I knew enough Greek at the time to see that the word at is not actually in the Greek. "working at home" is a single word in Greek (oikourgos). Her whole point was a coincidence of English translation. I suppose there's one small argument for knowing how to access the original languages.

We will get to Titus and the household codes in Colossians/Ephesians/1 Peter soon enough. Suffice it to say, their basic structure is completely in line with the culture of Paul's day. Their structure aligns completely with Aristotle in his Politics. In short, there is nothing distinctively Christian about them in their form. It was when early Christianity pushed against the culture of its day that it was revealing core Christian principles and values.

Titus 2:5 was thus depicting what an honorable woman looked like in that day. It is not transforming culture. It is not moving culture toward heaven or the kingdom of God. It was saying, "What does a virtuous woman look like in the late first century?" It was accommodating culture. 

How deeply ironic is that! Applying the household codes literally tries to make a secular culture today -- which has been shaped by Judeo-Christian values -- to conform to the secular Greco-Roman culture of 2000 years ago.

Winger's interpretation of this verse in Titus is that it is about fulfilling the responsibilities of the home rather than staying at home. He shows that in Luke 8:2-3, women supported Jesus' traveling ministry -- which means they weren't staying at home. That's a good point on his part.

I hate that we're even having questions like these. How much time can a woman spend outside the house? This sort of crap sure helps our witness. Not. I get why some women are sick of the church. Some of us can't even recognize the Christian influence on our own culture and want to return to the weak and beggardly elements of fallen human culture.

Mike Winger video 1: Listen to the Bible with an Open Mind

I've had Mike Winger's name mentioned to me often enough as a kind of trump card that I've decided to submit myself to his 13 hour extraganza on the topic of women in ministry. 

These are my notes. In more than one place I have heard, "Say what you want, but Mike Winger." 

So bring it.

I listened to Hour #1, the Prologue. He has 7 pre-points and 3 more pre-points. Here's what I heard:

1. Don't make your decision on the basis of experience, make it on the Bible.

2. No, not everyone who is in favor of women in ministry has been duped by feminism.

3. We good complementarians aren't arguing for the bad old patriarchy either.

4. Equal valuing of women doesn't rule out God-designed role differences.

5. Complementarianism doesn't necessarily lead to women abuse (even if some complementarians are abusers). 

6. A person's individual story doesn't trump the Bible.

7. Don't just use one verse to trump the rest of the Bible.

Then three things he says he won't do in the videos:

1. He will not submit the Bible to cultural pressures.

2. He won't play games with "polemics" or moral pressure.

3. He doesn't need to defend God or be his PR agent.

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OK. Bring on the Bible. Let's go. 

Here are some thoughts on the subtext of video #1 -- what's going on below the surface. 

1. He seems sincere. He says he really wanted to switch to being an egalitarian, but the Bible just didn't turn out that way. He says he's done lots of research. He doesn't yell at his wife even though he's a complementarian. Great. 

He portrays himself as a truth-seeker. Just the facts of the Bible, ma'am. You can see where the style would be very appealing to the Jordan Peterson type. This is the "T" personality that thinks it's logical while everyone else lets their feelings get in the way. None of this emotional crap. I'm going to tell it like it is. Nothing but the real Bible here. 

Before we've really heard a word of the Bible, he's beaming out, "You wouldn't need to watch any more videos to know that complementarianism is right. I've done the homework. You're good to go on being the head of your home, guys. Just reference the 13 hours. Nobody's going to actually watch all that."

2. But he is giving off a clear vibe -- in fact, it's more than a vibe. His subtext is that egalitarians aren't true to the Bible. He's beaming that egalitarians aren't good thinkers -- women egalitarians especially.

3. He does a hit and run on several books. Some will no doubt think -- I don't have to worry about anything those books have to say. Winger quoted a paragraph from them and, BAM, that means the rest of the book is crap. 

I want to focus on two in particular. One is Philip Payne's 512 page book, Man and Woman in Christ. Winger complains that it's a long book. I sure hope Winger engages this book in the later videos because otherwise he's dismissing this guy's work by quoting less than a paragraph of it. (Payne has a PhD from Cambridge and was a missionary to Japan)

Again, many will subconsciously think, "That whole book is wrong because Winger read a paragraph from it and trashed it."

What I found most objectionable was the way he scoffed at Beth Allison Barr's book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood. I'm sure some men watching enjoyed that. Stupid woman, chuckle, chuckle. Touchy feely. I seriously wonder if he read beyond the first chapter. We'll see. Now I feel like I need to blog through her book to make it clear how smart she is after his, chuckle, chuckle, stupid woman.

His hit job here quotes a passage where a student in one of her classes at Baylor -- yes, she has a PhD in history -- would not shut up and stop being rude to her because she was a woman professor. The student should have been kicked out of her class. 

Here's a logical fallacy. Just because a book has some experiential elements or personal stories doesn't automatically mean that its argument isn't biblically based. Let's see if he engages it again when he gets to the actual Bible because she discusses the Bible throughout the book. Otherwise, he may have revealed his true heart.

For many men, this is pretty much an academic issue. It's not personal, says the hit man about to kill someone. But women who hear God calling them face this stuff all the time. It is personal for them. And it's serious. The issue costs most men nothing. 

But if he's putting a stumblingblock in front of women God has called, that's serious. If he's putting roadblocks in front of the Holy Spirit, that's VERY serious. Why not take a Gamaliel approach -- if they're not called by God, God will stop them?

On to the Bible...

7.1 Learning Biblical Greek (Hermeneutical Autobiography)

It's pretty crazy to have five posts a week from five different writing projects with a different one almost every day of the week. So I thought I might do a two week cycle instead -- three days on one project, three days on the next, Sunday for Bible. Then complete the cycle the next week. That way the posts have more continuity rather than jerking readers in a different direction every day.

With that in mind, here is a continuation of yesterday's project, previously my Monday project -- a hermeneutical autobiography. Earlier posts at the bottom.
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1. I started off college as a chemistry major. I said I was going to be a doctor or a surgeon. I don't know if it was ever real to me. I don't think my mother necessarily thought it would happen. Probably a good thing. I probably would have left a scalpel in someone.

Near the end of my first semester at Central Wesleyan College, I felt like God was calling me into ministry. My mother wasn't surprised. My father advised I continue another semester as a chem major and then if I felt the same way, change my major then.

It's funny. I have doubted almost everything in my life at one point or another -- especially during the years from 1977-1987. But I didn't have any doubt that God wanted me to go to Central, and I never doubted that God was calling me into ministry. Strange things.

2. I dove into biblical Greek the fall of 1985. I would take enough Greek at Central to be a Greek Bible major alongside having general Bible and Religion majors as well. I enjoyed Greek. I had taken 2.5 years of Latin in high school, so it wasn't completely foreign to me. I knew about cases and changing endings on words. 

Knowing what I know now, I was not great at it, although I got As. Even with a Greek Bible major, I had to study my rear end off to pass the Greek competency entrance exam at Asbury. But I did pass it, and I guess not many did. David Thompson's study book was very helpful. I would only get really good at Greek when I became a Teaching Fellow and had to teach it. Along with philosophy, biblical languages have probably been my areas of greatest teaching giftedness.

I remember my brother-in-law having me try to read the Christmas story in Greek after my first semester. Of course, I couldn't. Not only is Luke some of the hardest Greek in the Bible, but you can't really do much with Greek after only one semester with it taught the traditional way. I would explore a different teaching approach later where you might have a better chance, but on vocabulary alone I was doomed in 1985.

I had Herb Dongell for my first year. He was very much the rote memorization type of teacher. He even had us learn all the accent rules. I remember trying to tutor a dyslexic ministry major on the accent rules the next year. We just busted out laughing at one point because of how silly some of the rules sound. "If the second to last syllable is long and the last syllable is short, if the second to last syllable is accented, it will take a circumflex."

3. If you asked me why a pastor should learn the biblical languages, there is of course the matter of always having to rely on someone else's word for it if you don't know them. There is frankly a lot of shlock out there coming from pulpits in the name of Greek and Hebrew. There's a lot of crazy stuff out there. Biblical languages are treated like magic tricks.

Most American pastors don't have the aptitude to learn them. This is why I never advocated that they be required in my circles. It ends up being a waste of time. Keith Drury and Russ Gunsalus had data ready to talk me out of requiring it at Wesley Seminary but I never had a thought of requiring it. When you forget 95% of what you didn't learn the week after finals, it's a bad use of time.

I pioneered Greek for Ministry and Hebrew for Ministry courses at Wesley Seminary. The goal was to teach use of the tools and the categories-meaning of the languages rather than expecting full memorization. I think there is much more hope for teaching the significance of Greek and Hebrew than having people memorize everything. In the years since, I have hammered YouTube with Greek and Hebrew videos. I even have a couple Hebrew courses on Udemy. 

But most American pastors simply won't be able to do it -- or more likely, will learn just enough to get it wrong. When I became a teaching fellow in biblical languages at Asbury in 1990, my predecessor had a sign on his desk that said, "Just remember. People are stupid." I thought that was awful. By the way, I am stupid in so many ways. But, 35 years later, I get what he was saying about seminary students and Greek. Most people just can't do it on any level of proficiency, not in the amount of time we give to it.

This is a parable, I suspect, for truly understanding the Bible in depth. (Keith Drury would kill me for saying this -- at least he would have at one point.) Most simply aren't going to. The purist says, "But they should, especially pastors!" The realist and pragmatist says, "Everyone has a different giftedness. Some people can climb mountains. Other people enjoy looking at them."

If I could go back to theological education 60 years ago and change the way Greek and Hebrew were taught, I've wondered if they might still be required. I would teach the significance of the categories of the language, much like a book I wrote last year. The free tools available make it so much easier now to learn the important things -- even more than when I wrote those Greek and Hebrew for ministry courses ten years ago.

4. The greatest value I experienced from these languages is the way they helped me enter the biblical worlds on a whole new level. When you are reading the Bible in English, it's like you are watching the biblical world on TV. You're not really there. It's really hard to get out of your culture and assumptions and get into the biblical worlds. The languages are a baptism by fire into their worlds.

Most Christians will never really enter that world on a deep level, including most pastors. It's like the person that eats at McDonalds when they're traveling Europe. They're joking about you in French behind your back, but you're oblivious because you don't speak the language. The taxi driver is charging you three times as much as normal but you don't know it.

Learning the biblical languages was the first step in beginning to read the Bible on its own terms rather than my terms. This was especially the case with Hebrew, which I didn't really start learning in depth until seminary...

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1. The Memory Verse Approach

2.1 Adventures in Interpretation
2.2 Adventures in Jewelry

3.1 Beginnings of Context
3.2 Adventures in Hair
3.3 What was 1 Corinthians 11 really about?

4.1 Keeping the Sabbath
4.2 The Sabbath as Conviction
4.3 The New Testament and Old Testament Law 

5. An Easter Morning in Galatians

6.1 Adventures in the King James Version
6.2 Beyond the King James Version

6.2 Beyond the King James Version

Mondays I am writing about my journey with Scripture in college, seminary, and beyond. Earlier posts are at the bottom. The previous post started chapter 5, "Adventures with the King James Version."
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5. I did not change my mind about the King James version over night. I wrestled with the question for about a year and a half after that college paper before I finally accepted the scholarly consensus.

For one thing, I wasn't sure who to believe about the manuscripts. In the 1978 version of the NIV, there was a note in a couple places that went like this: "The earliest and most reliable manuscripts do not have verses..." It was a bold claim. It said that the further back in history you go, the less you find these verses in the handwritten copies of the New Testament.

More recent editions of the NIV have softened the tone a little. So with regard to John we now find this note: "The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53—8:11." This is the story of the woman caught in adultery. It does not appear in the oldest Greek manuscripts of John.

Whaat???

6. You can see how unsettling notes like these were at first. You'd grown up with the King James Version. You'd heard this story of the woman caught in adultery your whole life. As a pastor, maybe you'd preached from this story your whole ministry. And now some new Bible implies it doesn't belong in the Bible.

I heard a sermon on the woman caught in adultery this past year. And I still from time to time hear people quote the Great Commission from Mark 16:15 (as opposed to Matthew 28's version). I don't usually point out to them that the verse probably wasn't part of Mark originally. But there's the note in the NIV2011 of Mark 16: "The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20."

I get it. It looks sinister. "They're cutting verses out of the Bible," people said and then invoked the condemnations of Revelation 22:18-19 about removing things from the book. [1] A book came out in 1993 called New Age Bible Versions that was extremely convincing if you didn't know anything about the subject. [2] By the time it came out, I was starting my doctorate and knew a fair amount of the debate so I found it pretty funny. 

For example, it tries to malign a famous Bible scholar from the late 1800s because he wrote in his journal that he liked to have evening strolls talking about "metaphysics." The author didn't know what metaphysics is in philosophy, which is clearly what this scholar meant. But she assumed he was talking about spirit guides and the kinds of spiritualist trends that were taking place in the 90s. 

I had a really good laugh about that one. But on a much more serious note, she suggested some translators of the NIV got Alzheimer's as God's judgment on them. This book had immense impact among those who didn't really understand the subject.

7. What you should realize is that scholars are not trying to take verses out. They have concluded that verses like the longer ending of Mark and the story of the woman caught in adultery were added in during the first few centuries of Christianity. It is natural for us to think of the King James Version (KJV) as old and the NIV as relatively young (not so much any more). But when we are talking about the handwritten copies they are translated from, the NIV Greek manuscripts are older than the KJV ones -- generally much older.

The 1611 King James Version was good scholarship for its day. But we now have manuscripts that are 1000 years older than the ones they used. This is just another example of tradition resisting change. You grow up with a faith that involves a mixture of gold and hay, but it's hard to realize which is which. You feel like someone is attacking your faith when they are only refining it. It's perfectly understandable.

The tradition of the Greek behind the KJV was so strong that it prevailed long after scholars realized that it wasn't likely as original as the older manuscripts that were being discovered in the 1800s. It was two individuals in particular -- B. F. Westcott and Fenton Hort -- who finally managed to dislodge the Greek "textus receptus" behind the KJV in Greek editions of the New Testament.

They did focus their argument on two key manuscripts that dated from the early 300s. One was found in the Vatican, called Codex Vaticanus. The other was found at a monastery on the Sinai peninsula -- Codex Sinaiticus. Mind you, even earlier Greek manuscripts have been discovered since then, and they largely support the readings of these two.

I grew up with these two men being demonized -- Westcott and Hort. Books like the New Age Versions of the Bible seemed to think that they could undermine the newer versions of the Bible if they could malign Westcott and Hort (and apparently the translators of the NIV). This is called the ad hominem fallacy -- where you attack the people rather than making an actual argument.

But Westcott and Hort only systematized what most experts of the biblical text already thought at the time. And, as I mentioned, even earlier manuscripts have since been found.

8. I should note, there were some very educated hold outs in favor of the traditional Greek text, the "textus receptus" or "received text." In the late 1800s, John Burgon argued that the manuscripts Westcott and Hort most relied on were corrupted manuscripts. F. H.A. Scrivener argued similarly. In the mid-1900s, E. F. Hills wrote a book called The King James Defended that I already mentioned.

In this present time, there are Majority Text scholars who are quite knowledgeable of the manuscripts and who have some very clever arguments against the majority. Indeed, in this reactionary moment in history with so much information at our fingertips, I sense a possible resurgence of cleverly argued "Greek behind the King James" support. We are living in an upside down time, a decade of unreason and irrationality.

9. Let me return to my own pilgrimage. After I became committed to the truth rather than tradition, I still didn't know what to make of the manuscript situation. After all, Burgon could have been right that Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were bad manuscripts. "Maybe that's why they have survived," it occurred to me. "Because no one used them."

Interestingly, modern manuscript studies that are based on computer analysis have seemed to undermine to some extent the families and grouping of manuscripts that I studied in college and seminary. [3] When I took a course in textual criticism with Bob Lyon at Asbury, we heard about the Alexandrian, Western, and Byzantine manuscript traditions. 

In my mind, I reduced them to 1) manuscripts that were like Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, 2) manuscripts that were like Codex Bezae, including many Latin manuscripts, and 3) all the medieval manuscripts that pretty much read the same way. The first group, I would later concede, had readings that were most likely original.

But to be frank, I didn't put as much stock in it as many did. It seemed to me like some wanted to systematize things a little too much. It was more of a trendline than anything you could absolutely depend on.

Majority Text scholars like James Snapp argue extensively from quotations by the church fathers and from early translations of the New Testament into other languages. This is very clever. It is to say, "There may not be early Greek manuscripts that support the traditional reading, but here's an early quote of it from so and so, and here is an early Syriac manuscript with it." Of course, you have to do textual criticism on the manuscripts of the church fathers too. [4]

10. So, the manuscripts -- or external evidence -- did not convince me. The arguments were far too complicated, far too minute. I have found over the years that minutia is often a tool to try to undermine the most likely. "The evidence looks like it supports x, but let me bombard you with a web of intricate details that show it's really y." 

Much of what is going around in political circles these days falls into this category. The result is that you feel really smart with secret knowledge when really it's just a smokescreen to wiggle out of the most likely conclusions. And you can smirk at your "uninformed friends" who think x seems right.

It was not the external evidence, which was very strong, but what is called the "internal evidence" that ultimately convinced me to change my mind.

Internal evidence is based on common sense. The most likely original reading is the one that would explain where the other readings came from. For example, take 1 John 2:23: "Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either, but the one who acknowledges the Son has the Father as well." Some copies of 1 John only have the first part: "Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either."

Was there some evil copyist who deliberately chopped this verse off? Not likely. The easiest explanation is an "eye skip." Two lines in the manuscript ended with "the Father." You copy the first line, looking from the original to the new copy. When you look back, your eye goes to the second line instead of the first (because they both end in "the Father"). Without realizing it, you have left a whole line of text out.

If you understand the scenario, this makes perfect sense. In fact, if you have ever copied something, you may have done this yourself. Most of the variations among the manuscripts are simple mistakes like this one. There was no evil fiend involved -- unlikely for someone whose job is to copy the Bible. 

Here's another one. In later Greek, the letter upsilon and the letter epsilon were both pronounced the same. That means that the Greek for "our" and the Greek for "your" sounded exactly the same. So, it is no surprise that the original text of 1 John 1:4 is uncertain. Some manuscripts say "our joy" and others say "your joy." Clearly, some copyist misheard what word was being said because the two words sound the same.

11. It was thus common sense that won out in the end for me. Why would anyone remove the story of the woman caught in adultery? It is a magnificent story that most find to resonate deeply with the character of Jesus. It might even be based on a story that actually happened. It makes much more sense that it was added in as an oral tradition about Jesus in search of a home -- rather than a story someone took out very early in church history.

Westcott and Hort suggested two rules that are not absolutes but more like trends. "Choose the more difficult reading" as more likely to be original (the lectio difficilior). Why? Because copyists were more likely to try to "fix" the unclear than to mess up the clear. "Choose the shorter text" because material was more likely to be added for clarity than to be cut out (the lectio brevior). Again, the second one is less powerful than the first, but it does seem to work much of the time.

Take Mark 16:9-20. Verse 9 starts the chapter all over again in a different style. We had already heard about the women at the tomb. Mark 16:9 acts like the first 8 verses weren't even there, like the copyist stepped out to use the restroom while the first eight verses were being read. 

We can have intricate arguments about the manuscript evidence (although not the Greek ones -- you have to bring in the fathers and the versions because the Greek tradition for this ending being early is very weak). But these verses don't read like they belong there. They summarize the resurrection appearances of the other Gospels. They don't continue the train of thought from 16:1-8.

Apparently, someone tacked an existing summary of resurrection appearances from elsewhere onto Mark 16:8. Why? Because otherwise the chapter ends saying, "The women told no one because they were afraid." It's a weird way to end the Gospel. You can see that someone would want to cap that tooth. In fact, there is another shorter ending as well among the manuscripts.

So choose the reading as original that would best explain how the other readings came about. Choose the more difficult reading. Well, the more difficult reading is for it to have ended at 16:8 with the women telling no one. It's obvious why the other readings would have arisen. 16:8 is just a strange way to end the story. It seems incomplete.

So amid all the intelligent sounding, clever arguments to the contrary, informed common sense time and time again comes out in support of the scholarly consensus and the text used in modern versions. There is no conspiracy here. In fact, it makes perfect sense that the church smoothed out the Greek text as the Bible was increasingly read as part of the liturgy of worship. In the 300s, as Christianity becomes legal and the church begins to standardize doctrine and canon, the text of the Bible becomes standardized as well.

12. Near the end of my textual criticism class at Asbury, Dr. Lyon asked me if I was a "closet textus receptus man." I was still a little unsure, but I fell off the log on his side in the moment. He was of course well-known in scholarly circles for his work with Codex Ephremi Rescriptus. Over time, my confidence in the scholarly consensus would only increase. Again, not because of the manuscripts but because of common sense.

Let me reveal the effect this pilgrimage had on me. I feel like I am particularly gifted at seeing the big picture and seeing connections and patterns. I have seen this pattern over and over again. There is a tradition. It is something a group has its identity strongly wrapped around. Then someone comes along with new evidence or a new perspective that seems to go against the tradition. That person perhaps has studied the subject more thoroughly. Perhaps they are somewhat of an expert on it.

Conservatism is, in its root meaning, a resistance to change, often in the name of preserving truth. But in my opinion, it is also often resistance to new insight. It is often the elephant that Jonathan Haidt writes about in The Righteous Mind. [5] The elephant is going to go where it wants to go. And when the stability of your world is based on the status quo, you're going to want to stick with the status quo. This is why the young are typically more open to new ideas than the old -- they have less invested in tradition and the status quo.

So, some very intelligent traditionalists -- perhaps I might even call them sentimentalists -- go to town trying to explain away the new data or the new evidence. It is an identity-preserving dynamic. It is exactly what Thomas Kuhn has said that "normal science" does in the face of new scientific theories. [6] It is entirely predictable and often ingenious.

I would see this pattern so often as I continued my education that I could smell it a mile away. Instead of pursuing the evidence to its most likely conclusion, one's intelligence is applied to try to argue for the traditional position. In Jonathan Haidt's imagery, the elephant rider comes up with smart-sounding reasons for why the elephant is going in the right direction.

I've called it "cooking the books." It's making arguments that might even seem silly to someone with an open mind. When you're in an echo chamber in a bubble, people are not looking necessarily for good arguments. You just need any argument that will give you an excuse to continue thinking what you already think. I would see this pattern over and over in seminary and in the years beyond.

13. There really aren't a lot of huge textual issues like the ending of Mark or the woman caught in adultery in John. No one need worry about losing their faith over this question of the text. Indeed, one of my takeaways from this journey is that God must be focused on the message of the Bible, not the minute details of the text. 

Of course this goes against some of the teaching you hear about how meticulous the copyists of the Hebrew Bible were. I hate that sort of stuff because it sets people up for a faith crisis later -- when there was no need for it. The meticulous copyists were the Masoretes in the Middle Ages. From what I can tell, some earlier copyists were more like The Message in temperament. The "Western" text of Acts is way longer and for no ideological reason. Someone just added a mess of details.

I want to end with 1 John 5:7. The KJV of this verse is the most Trinitarian verse in the Bible. The problem is that there isn't a Greek manuscript before the 1400s that has it. It is never mentioned as far as we know in any of the Trinitarian debates of the 300s -- rather odd if it had existed at the time. Even the man behind the Greek text of the KJV -- Erasmus -- didn't think it was original.

There's nothing wrong with the content of the verse. It's good theology. It just wasn't at all likely in the original version of 1 John. That's what the evidence and common sense say. 

Modern versions aren't part of some conspiracy to get rid of the Trinity. It's just that sometimes the facts don't say what we want them to say. 

[1] Of course, that verse was about removing teaching from the scroll of Revelation. The Bible wasn't packaged together when those verses were written. The scroll of Revelation traveled on its own then. And it is about the message of Revelation, not individual words. 

This is another example of what I have called a pre-modern or unreflective reading of the Bible. Our understandable default is to read the Bible as it appears to us, not as it actually is.

[2] G. A. Riplinger, New Age Bible Versions: An Exhaustive Documentation of the Message, Men & Manuscripts Moving Mankind to the Antichrist's One World Religion (A. V.. 1993).

[3] For example, by scholars using the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method or CBGM. My good friend Matt Whidden is deeply involved in such studies.

[4] I have worked a little with the Passion Translation of the Gospels. Its paraphraser, Brian Simmons, seems to consider the Syriac version of the Gospels almost a direct line to Jesus himself. By calling it the Aramaic text, he essentially claims to get behind the Greek to Jesus himself. It also allows him to consider original many of the traditional verses absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts. But ultimately, he is just finding a way to give priority to later Syriac manuscripts.

[5] Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Vintage, 2013).

[6] Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago, 1962).

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1. The Memory Verse Approach

2.1 Adventures in Interpretation
2.2 Adventures in Jewelry

3.1 Beginnings of Context
3.2 Adventures in Hair
3.3 What was 1 Corinthians 11 really about?

4.1 Keeping the Sabbath
4.2 The Sabbath as Conviction
4.3 The New Testament and Old Testament Law 

5. An Easter Morning in Galatians

6.1 Adventures in the King James Version

Through the Bible -- Acts 2

Last week I shifted my weekly through the Bible to Acts. Here is Acts 1. Today is Pentecost Sunday, so we shift now to Acts 2.
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1. Acts 2 is the birth of the church. It is the birth of the church because it commences the age of the Spirit. Before Pentecost, the Spirit is promised. After Pentecost, the Spirit is in us, empowering us for mission and righteousness, binding us together, and mediating Jesus presence among us.

The Spirit of God is in the Old Testament, but he often is not fully understood nor is his presence in the lives of God's people considered typical. The Spirit comes on Samson for strength, but Samson is far from righteous (Judg. 14:19). The Spirit of God is everywhere present but he is treated as simply the presence of God in the world rather than as a distinct person (Ps. 139:7).

Now, the Spirit will be in every believer. In fact, the Spirit is the indicator that a person has joined the people of God. One can repent and not yet be in Christ. One can confess one's sins, believe, and confess faith and yet not be saved. You can be baptized, as the Samaritans are in Acts 8, but they were not yet "in." 

The Spirit is God's seal of ownership (2 Cor. 1:22). The Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our coming inheritance and a foretaste of glory divine (2 Cor. 5:5; Eph. 1:14). If someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to him (Rom. 8:9). You can receive the Spirit before baptism, and you are saved (Acts 10:44-48). You can be baptized but not be saved because you do not yet have the Spirit (Acts 8:14-16).

In Acts 2:28, Peter sums up the process of joining the community of faith. Repent, be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgivness of sins, and receive the Holy Spirit. The crowds realize that they have crucified their Messiah, their anointed one, their king. They must repent. They need forgiveness for their sins.

In this regard, baptism symbolizes the washing away of their sins. God has offered the possibility of forgiveness on the basis of Jesus. Baptism into his name is an acknowledgement of him as king. Baptism in his name is to activate him as the authenticator and authority behind their reconciliation to God. Then they will receive the Holy Spirit and God will be in them, purifiying their hearts of sin (Acts 15:8-9), joining them together in unity, empowering them for witness.

2. What happened that day? They were no doubt praying, as we see at the end of Acts 1. The Day of Pentecost was the Jewish Feast of Weeks, fifty days after Passover. It was the day of the wheat harvest. And so the church will be born on a day of harvest, some 3000 souls will believe (2:41).

Pentecost had also come to be associated with the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai. And so on this day God writes his law on the hearts of his people through the Holy Spirit (cf. Jer. 31:33).

Pentecost is also the reversal of Babel. At the tower of Babel, God scatters the nations by dividing them by language. They are no longer able to understand one another.

But on the Day of Pentecost, the Spirit empowers the apostles to speak in other languages. Those Jews who are in Jerusalem for the feast all hear the good news proclaimed in their own tongues. It is far too early in the day for the disciples to be drunk. Rather, they are filled with the Spirit. 

3. The Spirit is the great equalizer. There are differences between men and women's bodies. But the Spirit comes equally on both of them. Sons and daughters will both prophecy by the same Spirit (2:17). There is no difference in spiritual capacity between them. There never was. But now we should expect the Spirit to speak through women regularly. The curse has been undone, and the Spirit shows no partiality. In Christ there is no longer male and female. 

4. Peter delivers the first sermon of Acts on the Day of Pentecost. The people are perplexed at what is happening. So, Peter will give the model sermon of Acts, the essence of what is called the "kerygma," what is proclaimed.

He begins with the story of Israel. This event has not happened out of the blue. It is the culmination of history. Peter quotes Scripture. This is the fulfillment of Joel 2. It is the beginning of the new covenant. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved (Acts 2:21).

Jesus had come as a man. God had done mighty works through him. The people of Jerusalem had handed him over according to God's foreknowledge and plan (2:23). In their ignorance, the audience itself had participated.

Then we get to the key line in every sermon in Acts: "God raised him" (2:24). [1] The resurrection is the centerpiece of Luke's theology. It represents the vindication of Jesus and his authenticity as God's representative. This is exactly what prophets like David had forseen. Peter reads Psalm 16 spiritually to hear a foreshadowing of Jesus not remaining in death.

Jesus has now been exalted to God's right hand -- enthroned as Messiah and Lord. Acts 2:36 gives us the timing in Luke's theology. These are royal titles, and Jesus "is made" Lord and Christ when he sits down and is enthroned at God's right hand. He was heir apparent before this time, but now he is seated at the right hand of the God as king. 

5. Three thousand are added to the company of believers. They devote themselves to the apostle's teaching. They are in constant fellowship, eating daily with each other, praying together.

The picture we get at the end of Acts 2 is a paradigmatic one, an idyllic one. It is Luke's picture of the ideal church. They worship daily together in the temple. They eat and fellowship with each other. They pray together. They share their possessions in common. If one person has more and another person has a need, they share.

Signs and wonders are normal. After all, they have the Spirit within them. The things that Jesus did by the power of the Spirit, they will now do in the power of the Spirit. Fear came on those watching, and new believers were being added daily. They were "being saved," meaning that they were becoming part of those who would escape the coming judgment of God. 

[1] Except for Stephen's in Acts 7 -- he was stoned before he got to that part of the sermon.