We’re about half way through the year, and I felt it appropriate to repost some housekeeping things I hope you read.

First, I posted the midterm and final I gave when I taught the 2nd half of New Testament at BYU in 2006. (Handouts and answers are down in the comments of that post.) Although we’re just getting into the material covered there,  it may be useful for study/question ideas. Continue reading

Today’s readings cover the events of Gethsemane, Jesus being brought before Pilate and a Jewish council, and other such well known events of the last days of Jesus.

We’ll pick up in  Matthew 26:50- And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him. (KJV)

Does Jesus mean it when he refers to Judas as “friend”? Is he making a point by using a term of address that contrasts with “brother,” the usual form of address between the disciples? Or is he perhaps being ironic? Could he be offering Judas an opportunity to repent?

Is Jesus really asking Judas why he has come?What is the point of Jesus’ question? Some translations take this as a statement, “Do what you have come for” rather than a question. Which way of reading what Jesus says makes more sense to you?  Why? – Faulconer, New Testament Made Harder

Pilate offers to release someone, including Barabbas. Little is known about him beyond what the NT tells us. However,

An interesting [manuscript] variant occurs in Matt 27:16–17, where he is called “Jesus Barabbas.” While extant manuscript evidence is weak, Origen implies that most manuscripts in his day (ca. A.D. 240) included the full name. Many scholars today accept the full name in Matthew as original and suggest that it was probably omitted by later scribes because of the repugnance of having Jesus Christ’s name being shared by Barabbas. It is not improbable for Barabbas to have the very common name Jesus. Matthew’s text reads more dramatically with two holders of the same name: “Which Jesus do you want; the son of Abba, or the self-styled Messiah.” There is some evidence that the full name “Jesus Barabbas” also originally appeared in Mark’s gospel.- “Barabbas (Person),” ABD

Breaking up Barabbas into its parts, this was Jesus Bar Abba, Jesus, son of the father. Pilate released Jesus son-of-the-father, and arrested Jesus the actual Son of the Father.

St. Peter’s of Gallicantu “crowing rooster”, the traditional location.

I heard a lecture this week from BYU Classics prof. Mike Pope, who presented some of his solid research on the background of rooster crowing. Surprisingly to us, there was a lot to be said, and his paper is under review in an academic journal. A very incomplete summary would include the ideas that roosters were taken as paragons of masculinity, as aggressive, fearless, and pugilistic. Soldiers might have a depiction of a rooster on their shield, for example. Cock-fighting was huge, culturally speaking. These gave rise to several axioms and aphorisms, e.g. about crowing before you win, as an unfit fighting cock might do.

“and a cock in a fight, when defeated in the struggle against an opponent, would not crow. Indeed his pride is broken, and he slinks away because of shame.” Ael. NA 4.29

How does this apply to our lesson today?
Note Peter’s bold and vehement declarations.

• Mark 14:31/Mat 26:35- Peter “said vehemently, ‘Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you.'” (NRSV)
• Luke 22:33- Peter “said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!”(NRSV)
• John 13:37- “Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” (Jn. 13:37 NRS)

Each of this is followed by Jesus prophesying that Peter will deny him three times before the rooster crows.

What happens?

When the fight comes, Peter defaults on his macho boasts, dissociates himself from Jesus three times, and crows no more, he slinks away in anonymous shame. “And he went out and wept bitterly.” (This is only half the story, but it must await publication.)

I’ve always found President Hinckley’s application of this moving.

What pathos there is in those words! Peter, affirming his loyalty, his determination, his resolution, said that he would never deny. But the fear of men came upon him and the weakness of his flesh overtook him, and under the pressure of accusation, his resolution crumbled. Then, recognizing his wrong and weakness, “he went out, and wept.”

As I have read this account my heart goes out to Peter. So many of us are so much like him. We pledge our loyalty; we affirm our determination to be of good courage; we declare, sometimes even publicly, that come what may we will do the right thing, that we will stand for the right cause, that we will be true to ourselves and to others.

Then the pressures begin to build. Sometimes these are social pressures. Sometimes they are personal appetites. Sometimes they are false ambitions. There is a weakening of the will. There is a softening of discipline. There is capitulation. And then there is remorse, self-accusation, and bitter tears of regret.- General Conference, 1979.

Looking NE from St. Peter’s to the old city and Mt. of Olives

Regarding Jesus’ trial, we need to be careful about the claims we make and how we read it. We have no contemporary records of the laws or customs governing such things, and people have usually gone to Talmudic records 200+ years later and read those back in to the NT, claiming it was illegal or irregular in several ways. While that is quite possible, it’s also not legitimate in terms of methodology or assumptions. Are todays laws and court procedures (whether civil or religious) identical to those 200 years ago? Certainly not. So, a grain of salt with any of those claims.

Jesus is taken to the temple authorities, whom Mark names as “the high priest, and all the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes” (14: 53) and as “the chief priests and the whole council” (14: 55). What follows is often called “the Jewish trial of Jesus” before “the high priest” and “the whole council,” resulting in Jesus’s condemnation to death. As narrated in Mark and the other gospels, it has led most Christians throughout the centuries to assign primary responsibility for the death of Jesus to the highest-ranking members of the Jewish nation and thus, uncritically, to “the Jews.” The story of Jesus’s interrogation and condemnation by the high priest and his council has often become a text of terror for Jews in subsequent centuries. Thus we need to pause for some historical comments. Though our purpose is to exposit Mark’s story of Holy Week and not to reconstruct the history behind it, here it is important to do so and to emphasize:

• Most likely, Mark (and other early Christians) did not know exactly what happened. The reason is that, according to Mark (and the other gospels), no follower of Jesus was present with him subsequent to his arrest (they had all fled). Though it is possible to imagine that somebody within the high priest’s circle later disclosed what happened, we cannot be at all certain of this. Thus the trial scene may represent a post-Easter Christian construction and not history remembered. We need to remember that this is the way Mark tells the story around the year 70. [Ben adds, other scholars date Mark earlier, but it is still at least a few decades after the events described.]
• It is unclear whether we should think of Mark as presenting a formal “trial” or an informal but deadly “hearing.” “Trial” implies a legal procedure that follows the accepted rules of the time; “hearing” implies a para-legal or even extra-legal procedure. Moreover, the “council” referred to by Mark may not have been the Sanhedrin of later centuries, but a “privy council” consisting of the high priest and his circle of advisers.
• The temple authorities did not represent the Jews. Rather than representing the Jewish people, they were, as local collaborators with imperial authority, the oppressors of the vast majority of the Jewish people. They did not represent the Jewish people any more than the collaborationist governments of Europe during World War II or during the time of the Soviet Union represented their people.

Borg and Crossan- The Last Week

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Between a family reunion on the east coast, and a busy work week, I offer a few tidbits on today’s readings.

First, though, a note on my work. I’m at BYU for the summer working on their New Testament Commentary series, at the summer seminar. Many people don’t know about either the series or the seminar. This project has been in the works for years and is just now coming to light. This is a formal, scholarly, confessional series of New Testament commentary. S. Kent Brown’s volume on Luke is the first to appear in print, though others have seen early release in “beta” form. The printed versions of those volumes are likely to differ, even significantly, from the early Kindle releases.

Many LDS are not in the habit of using commentaries, and we can hypothesize several reasons for this: lack of obvious models, uncertainty about what is good to use, discomfort with non-LDS views, or even theological arrogance (e.g. “We have the restored Gospel and prophets; what can non-LDS scholars possibly have to teach us?”) We can categorize commentaries several ways.

Depth: Study Bible; Single Volume commentary; Multi-volume commentary.

A study Bible is the Bible text, but augmented heavily with footnotes and essays. A single-volume commentary rarely includes the bible text, just commentary. Multi-volume commentaries can extend to, e.g. Marvin Pope’s 800 page Anchor Bible Commentary on the Song of Solomon.

Intended Audience: Lay people;  pastors/teachers;  Academic. These are essentially degrees of technicality and focus.

Approach or bias: General or Confessional (e.g. Jewish, Evangelical, Mormon, etc.). This means, to what extent does a commentary reflect a particular theological viewpoint? Or none at all, in the case of general/academic volumes?

BYU’s New Testament Commentary Series is multi-volume, quasi-academic, and represents LDS perspectiveS.

I say quasi-academic because it includes Greek text and analysis, with terms like aorist and genitive. These things are explained in a not-yet-available volume to be written, addressing things like Greek language, LDS assumptions, the role of the JST, etc.

I bold and capitalize the S to emphasize that these are perspectives, not representing some monolithic or official doctrinal view of many of the topics treated.

So this commentary is much more like, say, the Word Biblical Commentary series than the Anchor Bible Commentary series.

There will be a conference on July 31 about the commentary series, focused on 1 Corinthians, with speakers such as Kevin Barney and Julie Smith.

For more information, see the commentary home page.

Today’s tidbits.

 1) Matthew 26:30/Mark 14:26 both record that before going to the Mt. of Olives, they “sang a hymn.” This was probably part of the hallel or “praise” Psalms  (think hallelu-yah, a plural form). Psalms 113-118 were often sung at Passover.

2) On the Mt. of Olives is a garden called Gethsemane is Gath-shemen “the oil press.” (Shemen rhymes with Brehmen) Because of all the pilgrims who came to Jerusalem for passover, it is unlikely that Jesus and the disciples were completely alone there. More importantly, some Mormons have gone overboard in the past, playing up the events of Gethsemane and playing down Jesus’ death on the cross. (Protestant critics love to highlight those statements to argue Mormons aren’t Christians.) Both, however, are important and necessary, and such statements go out in official print with the missionaries and from President Hinckley.

Today’s chapters continue Jesus’ final sermon at the last supper, which uniquely extends to multiple chapters, only in John. These chapters have some puzzling statements, and are difficult to parse. I don’t have any magic unifying interpretation, so I’ll offer some specific points instead.

In terms of structure, 16 still sounds like exposition or sermon, whereas 17 is known as the great intercessory prayer. Were they still in the upper room at that point? Had they gone somewhere? Note that 14:31 says “Rise, let us be on our way” (NRSV), although there’s no indication that they then travel.

16:1 Jesus says, “These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.”  What is “offended”? I treated this in this lesson from one perspective. Here, Jesus seems to be preparing them, steeling them for the unpleasant times to come, as the NET Bible makes clear- “I have told you all these things so that you will not fall away.” How does such preparation help prevent people from “falling away”?

7– Here we find “the comforter” though not for the first time (John 14:16.). The greek is paraklete, like parakeet with an l. Other translations read “advocate,” “helper” or  “counselor.” In 1Jo 2:1, Jesus himself is termed a paraklete, KJV “advocate.” Notably, the Dictionary of Demons and Deities in the Bible has an entry. Among other things, it says

In common Greek usage [paraklete] means ‘called to one’s aid’, ‘summoned’, and as a substantive ‘legal assistant, advocate’, or, in a more general sense, ‘intercessor’. The reference is nearly almost to human persons, not to divine beings….No single translation of Paraclete covers both areas of activity: (a) suggests to understand it as the equivalent of the participle parakalōn, and expressing the relevant shades of meaning of that verb, such as ‘comforter’, ‘exhorter’; (b) rather suggests a judicial meaning, such as ‘advocate’, ‘counsellor’.

Because “no single translation” can convey both aspects, many reference works, scholarship, and at least one modern Bible translation (the 1985 New Jerusalem Bible) simply don’t translate. They just say Paraclete (substituting a hard “c” for the Greek k.)

In connection with this, Jesus gives the odd statement that if he doesn’t leave, the Paraclete won’t come. John 7:39 says something similar, that “[Jesus] said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” NRSV

What do we make of this? I’d suggest, not much.

“The statement that Jesus must depart before the Paraclete can come has led to some questionable exegesis.”- WBC on John 7:39.

“Why the Spirit’s influence could not be released during the earthly ministry of Jesus, as it was after His Passion and Resurrection, is a question to which no complete answer can be given.” ICC on John.

8-11 

The spirit, when it comes, will “prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.” Apparently, we lack the Israelite mindset necessary to instinctively grasp the import of this.

 Again and again the writers [of Psalms] call out to God, asking that he would judge them (e.g. Psalms 17, 26 and 43). We have got used to the words ‘judge’ and ‘judgment’ being used in a bad sense, to mean ‘condemn’ and ‘condemnation’. But to the ordinary worshipper in ancient Israel, things looked very different. The problem was that they couldn’t get their case to come to court. If only someone in authority could see what had happened and make the obvious decision! But they wouldn’t and they didn’t. So the Psalmists prayed that God would act as judge and decide who was in the right.

There were many times during Israel’s history when the nation as a whole found itself in the same situation. Big, powerful foreign nations invaded, attacked, and devastated cities, captured thousands of people, and took them away as slaves. Eventually the remaining people, living in the Jerusalem area, were taken away to Babylon. Even after they had returned, they were overrun and oppressed by one foreign power after another. And they developed a regular way of thinking about it all, based on their unshakeable belief that their God, the world’s creator, was the God of justice.
They imagined themselves in a lawcourt. (In the Hebrew system, there was no ‘director of public prosecutions’, so every lawsuit was brought by someone against someone else. The judge’s job was to decide between the two of them: to vindicate or uphold the one and to condemn the other one.) Israel was bringing a lawsuit against the foreign nations. What right had Babylon got—had Syria got—had Egypt or Rome or anyone else got—to oppress God’s people? What had they done to deserve it?

Sometimes—and you can imagine how daring this was— there were prophets who accepted this as the scenario, but declared that actually Israel had deserved it. Isaiah spoke of Israel rebelling against YHWH and YHWH being right to bring condemnation against the people. So did Jeremiah. So, in a memorable chapter, did Daniel (chapter 9).

But the prophets, including those same ones, regularly went on to see God taking his seat in judgment again, and this time bringing a different verdict. God would find in favour of Israel, and against the nations that had wickedly and arrogantly attacked it. This time, the lawsuit would go Israel’s way. This time, God would demonstrate that the world was in the wrong and that his people were in the right.

Once you grasp that whole way of thinking, and the Jewish way of looking at the world which goes with it, you are ready to understand the otherwise very difficult passage which is the key moment in this section. Verses 8–11 [ of John 16] speak of the holy spirit, the ‘helper’ we’ve already met in the previous chapters, coming as the advocate in a lawsuit, and proving that the world is in the wrong. The difference is that this time God’s people in the lawsuit are the followers of Jesus. ‘The world’ includes of course the pagan nations, but also, insofar as it hasn’t believed in Jesus, Israel as well.- Wright, John for Everyone

Chapter 17–

Many Christians refer to this chapter as “The Great High Priestly Prayer.” Why do you think they do so? Latter-day Saints usually call this prayer “the Great Intercessory Prayer.” Why? Are the two names for this prayer related? If so, how?

Though we know Jesus prayed often, we know the content of only a few of his prayers. Why did John believe it was important to tell us what Jesus said in his prayer?

How does the form of this prayer fit the form given to us in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4; and 3 Nephi 13:9-13)? If it doesn’t, how do you explain the differences?- The New Testament Made Harder. 

Multiple themes in chapter 17 appear temple-related. See here. One of them, interestingly, is “the world.”

LDS often talk about “the world” in vague ways. It’s a New Testament phrase, but the distribution is quite interesting. When you search the KJV Gospels for “the world”, John predominates, per the graph at left. (I accidentally cut off Acts, which is why the % don’t add up, e.g. Matthew has 13 occurrences of “the world” which is 13% of the total occurrences in Matthew-Acts.)

And when you break this down by chapters (the actual numbers don’t matter that much), look where the concentration spikes.

So John 17 involves both temple themes and a heavy concentration of “the world.” While that phrase can represent at least two different things in the Greek text (as I’ve mentioned before) here it is always the kosmos, which can mean various things like “the entirety of creation” (or cosmos, John 17:2), as well as “the world, and everything that belongs to it, appears as that which is hostile to God, i.e. lost in sin, wholly at odds w. anything divine, ruined and depraved ” (BDAG). Those two certainly don’t exhaust the meaning, but fit in John 17.

Jesus prays that his disciples will be separated from the world or made holy (one definition of holiness is “set apart, separated, different”); that although still physically present in the world, they will be protected from “the evil one” (not just generic “evil”) and that they may become one with the father as Jesus is one with him. How do we “become one” with the Father? Atonement.

Originally published in 4 parts in The Ensign, Hugh Nibley‘s “Meaning of the Atonement” has been reprinted in Approaching Zion, which is online here. Atonement really is taking two and bringing them to be at-one, healing a rift, closing a separation. Nibley draws upon the Book of Mormon and other sources to elaborate upon the atonement. If we are separated from God, an apt symbol of reconciliation and return to one-ness is the embrace, such as that between the prodigal son and his father. (I can only use public-domain pictures, or I’d have several here.) See also, “The Handclasp and Embrace as Tokens of Recognition” in this article.

Lastly, as always, you can support this site and my research by making Amazon purchases through this link, or the Support My Research links at the bottom of the About page. You can get updates by email whenever a post goes up (subscription box on the right). If you friend me on Facebook, please drop me a note telling me you’re a reader.

Carl Bloch’s Last Supper, public domain

Luke 22 opens with “Satan enter[ing] into Judas called Iscariot.” John refers to this as “Satan [had] put into the heart of Judas Iscariot… to betray” Jesus. The heart, in Israelite thought, was not just the center of emotion but also conscious thought and planning. In other words, while we could read Luke as something vaguely like demonic possession, John seems to say that Judas was tempted by the suggestion. Continue reading

A short commentary tonight, which I’ll try to update later this week.

Matthew 25 is part and parcel of Matthew 24, with two parables further illustrating Jesus’ eschatological themes. (Remember that our biblical chapter and verse divisions are medieval and somewhat artificial, not part of the original text. See here. The oldest divisions in the text are marked in the KJV by the ❡ or paragraph marker.) Continue reading