It is not easy for Protestants to understand why non-Protestants think so highly of the Virgin Mary.
http://glory2godforallthings.com/2014/08/14/leaving-mary-out/
Icon of the Mother of God “the Unburnt Bush”
Antique Homemade Carpenter’s Level
The meaning of the Greek word canon (κανών) is problematic. Karel van der Toorn says the term itself is of “Christian coinage.”[1] The term canon means table, rule, or measuring stick. In early Christian usage, the term canon has reference to the regula fidei, the rule of faith. This concept is best captured by the apostle Paul when he says the scriptures are “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim 3:16-17) This idea of canon as the regula fidei, the rule of faith, does not contain the idea of a list of authoritative writings.
When we think of the canon today, we generally think in terms of a list of inspired scriptures. However, the idea of canon as a list is a relatively recent development; the ancients used different term (pinakes or katalogos) for a catalogue of writings. Lee McDonald writes:
The word canon was not regularly used in reference to a closed collection of writings until David Ruhnken used it this way in 1768. In his treatise entitled Historia critica oratorum Graecorum, he employed the term canon for a selective list of literary writings. …In antiquity [the Greek word] pinakes is more commonly used of catalogues or lists.[2]
When modern theology conceives of canon as a list, it speaks solely of the text; when ancient theology conceives of canon as the rule of faith, it speaks of the revelation contained within the text. The two thoughts are not opposed to one another; a book becomes part of a list of scriptures texts because of the revelation contained therein. However, when we conceive of canon solely as a list, we wind up arguing over issues of canon and canonicity, rather than focusing on the revelation of Jesus Christ — which is, after all, the whole point of the Sacred Scriptures.
Catalogue, Dead Sea Scrolls
F. F. Bruce writes:
The Christian church started its existence with a book, but it was not to the book that it owed its existence. It shared the book with the Jewish people; indeed, the first members of the church were without exception Jews. The church owed its distinctive existence to a person — to Jesus of Nazareth, crucified, dead and buried , but ‘designated Son of God in power … by his resurrection from the dead ’ (Rom. 1: 4). This Jesus, it was believed, had been exalted by God to be universal Lord; he had sent his Spirit to be present with his followers, to unite them and animate them as his body on earth. The function of the book was to bear witness to him.[3]
Given that the function of Scripture is to bear witness to Him, it is curious that the idea of canon has shifted away from this idea to a mere listing of books. The discussion of the canon as a list of authoritative and inspired books, and canonicity as the process by which an individual text became part of that collection of books, has taken on increased urgency following the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the gnostic writings contained in the Nag Hammadi library. Together these have fueled the imagination of biblical scholars, and have added detail to the background of our Sacred Scriptures — all of which have sparked a renewed interest in the subject of canon and canonicity.
The debates over canon and canonicity are taking place more among the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches than among the Christian communions of the east. Seemingly every Protestant introduction and commentary on the Scriptures covers the issues surrounding the canon. But in the 16th century theological conversation between the Protestants and the Orthodox, the issues of canon and canonicity didn’t come up at all — in part because the Lutherans never mentioned their use of a different canon.[4] Instead, the Lutherans argued for the authority of Scripture, an issue then Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II accepted without comment. The discussion between the Lutherans and the Orthodox really focused on what was authoritative for faith and practice. The Lutherans kept bringing up Scripture as the authority, and the Patriarch accepted their position but included Holy Tradition as part of that discussion. In a sense, neither of them understood the other’s position, and so they simply talked past one another.[5]
As for the Eastern Orthodox position, consider the following. The two-volume Introduction to the Old Testament by the Very Rev. Paul Nadim Tarazi[6], Professor of Old Testament at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, does not discuss the issues of canon and canonicity at all. This topic is also glossed over or ignored in most Eastern Orthodox dogmatics. By way of example, Dumitru Staniloae’s five-volume “Orthodox Dogmatic Theology” discusses the nature of revelation, its relationship with the world at large, and its relation to the Church and Holy Tradition, but his books do not deal in any substantive manner with canonicity — at least not in a way the western Church would recognize. In Fr. John Breck’s book, entitled “Scripture in Tradition”, he avoids the subject of the canon altogether, instead focusing on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. How do we account for the difference between these approaches? What impact do these issues have upon the regula fidei, the faith once delivered to the saints?
While the use of canon as list is relatively modern, the issues regarding canon and canonicity have their roots in the Middle Ages. Fr. John Breck writes:
Scripture determines what constitutes genuine Tradition, yet Tradition gives birth to and determines the limits of Scripture. To many people’s minds, this way of envisioning the circular relationship between Scripture and Tradition appears untenable. The Protestant Reformers attempted to break this form of the hermeneutic circle by advancing the teaching known as sola scriptura [Scripture alone], holding that Scripture alone determines faith and morality… This was to a large extent in reaction to medieval Roman Catholicism which had separated Scripture and Tradition into separate domains, giving priority to the latter.[7]
When we debate the issues of canon and canonicity, it is helpful to discuss the Old Testament and the New Testament separately, because they each took very different paths in their development. As we know, the Old Testament is called “Scripture” by the New Testament authors, but there is little indication that the New Testament as we know it today was considered to be Scripture. There are two passages which may suggest some parts of the New Testament were considered Scripture (1 Tim:18 and 2 Pet 3:15-16), but as we will discuss in a later chapter, these are by no means conclusive. The apostle Paul did not refer to his writings as scripture, but instead categorized his teachings as “traditions”, and referred to his books as epistles (2 Th 2:15). Moreover, nowhere in the New Testament do we have a catalogue of canonical books, neither for the Old Testament books (which are explicitly called scripture) or for the writings of the New Testament.
The earliest evidence for the current list of Old Testament books comes from the period after the fall of Jerusalem, and is the first statement of what we now call the three divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. F. F. Bruce writes:
One of the clearest and earliest statements of these three divisions and their respective contents comes in a baraitha (a tradition from the period AD 70—200) quoted in the Babylonian Talmud, in the tractate Baba Bathra. This tradition assigns inspired or authoritative authors to all twenty-four books, and discusses their order.[8]
Babylonian Talmud
The problems with this reference to the Babylonian Talmud begin with the dates. A tradition dating from after the fall of Jerusalem, and as late as the end of the 2nd century, can scarcely be used to describe the state of Judaism in the time of Christ. This is especially true when we know that Judaism was forced to change in response to the destruction of the temple and the rise of Christianity. After the fall of Jerusalem, the center of Judaism could no longer be the temple, but was focused instead on the Hebrew Scriptures. And the Scriptures themselves changed in response to the growth of Christianity as a rival sect, a sect that used the Septuagint as its own Sacred Scriptures. This change in the Hebrew Scriptures began in the mid-2nd century, as demonstrated by Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew.[9]
Another problem is that the baraitha (or Babylonian tradition) quoted in the Babylonian Talmud was not authoritative, but was one of many voices in an ongoing discussion. That this particular bairaitha was not authoritative is demonstrated by its failure to be included in the Mishnah, which was completed sometime between 200 – 220 A.D. Not only that, but the proposed three-fold division of the scriptures was not adopted by the Christian community, who devised their own ordering and division of books.[10]
The example from the Babylonian Talmud demonstrates something that needs to be kept in mind, which is this: we cannot derive the pre-Christian status of the Jewish canon from post-Christian sources, because these are all arguing a point of view — one that is largely informed by and in opposition to Christianity.
The modern conception of canon as a list first began with the dispute between the Church of Rome and the Protestants, each of whom made the issue of the canon part of their dispute. But as there has never been a Reformation among the Orthodox, the issues of canon and canonicity are of no dogmatic importance in the East. Any splits among the Orthodox, including the Great Schism between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics, were about Christology, not the Canon; each collection of authoritative writings arose by common consent among the different groups, rather than as part of a formal dogmatic stance.
The Ecumenical Councils were generally uninterested in the issues of canon and canonicity. Dr. Constantinou writes:
By that time, certain books were unquestioned, while most apocryphal works were recognized as such and universally rejected. But individual churches and bishops exercised their own discretion among disputed works. Clearly the issue was not resolved at [the first council of Nicea because no pressing need to create a definitive canon was perceived: the question of the canon was simply not a divisive issue. This lack of concern among the participants of the Nicene council with respect to the canon indicates that opinions about the canon were not essentially dogmatic. Two persons could disagree about the canon and both could be entirely orthodox in doctrine.[11]
So how were the limits of our current canon determined? Initially, while Christian writings were shared between the churches, the title of Scripture was reserved only for the Old Testament, while the boundaries of the Old Testament were somewhat undefined.[12] Dr. Eugenia Constantinou writes:
Until the end of the second century, the term “Scriptures,” referred exclusively to the Jewish scriptures. Just as they had been the sole Scriptures for Christ and the apostles they remained the only Holy Scripture of the Church for many decades. Christ himself had quoted them, appealed to them, interpreted them and, most of all, fulfilled them. The Law and the Prophets had been normative for so long that it was difficult to conceive of any other writings achieving such high status. Although it appears that Christian documents were read within the context of Christian worship services by the early second century, another hundred years passed before they were recognized as possessing a level of authority that placed them on par with the Old Testament.[13]
Unlike what many of us were taught, and what seemed reasonable given the Protestant understanding of the canon, the development of the list of New Testament books occurred over some time, in fits and starts. The early church had the regula fidei, the rule of faith, as their guide. This guide led them to gradually accept certain books as scripture, and reject others as either not consistent with the rule of faith, or not rising to the level of scripture. Many of us were taught that the New Testament canon was closed with the death of the apostle John, who before his death was able to grant his apostolic seal of approval to all the New Testament books. But the historical evidence does not support this idea. Instead, what we see is the process of the Church gradually coming to a consensus on the limits of the New Testament canon, a process guided by the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit, working in and through the Church, the Bride of Christ.
There never was any formal agreement which settled the issues of canon and canonicity for the New Testament. This is why Martin Luther was able to consider eliminating books from the corpus of the New Testament — because in his day, the idea of canon as a list of books did not exist. Thus, when Martin Luther came into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church, he appealed to his peculiar regula fidei as his guide to determining which books should be in the canon. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and Luther was not allowed to alter the catalogue of the New Testament (although he was allowed to separate the “Apocrypha” from the rest of the Old Testament. The restrictions placed upon Luther’s alteration of the canon was likely done for practical reasons; by this time the canonical consensus was deeply ingrained, and the people would not have stood for it.
In response to the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church held their Concilium Tridentinum, or Council of Trent, and in their fourth session (8 April, 1546 A.D.) published their catalogue of the biblical books. This catalogue was not new, having previously been published by the Council of Florence in 1422 A.D., and contained our current 27 book canon of the New Testament. Since the Council of Trent was convened in response to the Protestant Reformation, it had dogmatic significance for Catholic and Protestant alike (in the sense that it hardened the dogmatic positions of each.) Thus, although the list of New Testament books remains the same for Catholics and Protestants alike; what differentiates them is the manner and context in which the texts are interpreted.
Breck, John. Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church. Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001.
Bruce, F. F. The Canon of Scripture. Kindle Edition. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2010.
Constantinou, Eugenia Scarvelis. Andrew of Caesarea And The Apocalypse in the Ancient Church of the East: Studies and Translation. Translated by Eugenia Scarvelis Contantinou. Laval: Faculté des études supérieures de l’Université Laval, 2008.
Mastrantonis, George. Augsburg and Constantinople: The Correspondence between the Tübingen Theologians and Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople on the Augsburg Confession. Edited by N. M. Vaporis. Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1982.
McDonald, Lee Martin. The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority. 3rd. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.
Schaff, Philip. ANF01 The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Vol. 1. 10 vols. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1884.
van der Toorn, Karel. Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.
[1] (van der Toorn 2007, 233)
[2] (McDonald 2007, 51)
[3] (Bruce, The Canon of Scripture 2010, 27)
[4] In the late 17th century, a group of Lutheran theologians sent a Greek translation of their Augsburg confession to Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople. What followed is an intriguing correspondence which took place over a period of years. While this theological correspondence is well known among the Orthodox, surprisingly few Lutherans and Protestants know anything about it, and fewer still have read the actual texts. It is unclear what the Lutherans were trying to do. Some think the Lutherans were trying to convert the Ecumenical Patriarch (unlikely). Some think the Lutherans were trying to become part of the Orthodox Church (also unlikely). The text seems to indicate that the Lutherans merely wanted the Ecumenical Patriarch to accept that the Lutheran doctrine was consistent with that of the Orthodox Church; the position of the Ecumenical Patriarch is that it was not.
[5] (Mastrantonis 1982, passim)
[6] The Very Rev. Paul Nadim Tarazi is a controversial and polarizing figure, so perhaps we should not read too much into his failure to deal with the issue of canonicity.
[7] (Breck 2001, 11)
[8] (Bruce, The Canon of Scripture 2010, 29-30)
[9] (Schaff, ANF01 1884, Chapters LXXI and LXXII)
[10] (McDonald 2007, 164-165)
[11] (Constantinou, Andrew of Caesarea And The Apocalypse in the Ancient Church of the East: Studies and Translation 2008, 38)
[12] (McDonald 2007, 22)
[13] (Constantinou, Andrew of Caesarea And The Apocalypse in the Ancient Church of the East: Studies and Translation 2008, 32)
The Wise and Foolish Virgins
The 45th Psalm is one of the so-called messianic psalms, which are psalms which refer directly to Jesus Christ as the Messiah. William N. Harding defines a Messianic psalm as follows.
A Messianic psalm is a psalm that makes predictions about the Messiah. These predictions include predictions about His birth, His person-that He would be fully God and fully man in one person, His life, His death, burial, and resurrection, His ascension into heaven, His priestly ministry, His second coming, His victory over His enemies, and His universal reign on the earth.[1] In general, there are two criteria used for determining a Messianic psalm. First, if the New Testament claims the psalm is about the Messiah; and second, if the psalm can only be applied to the Messiah, and not another human being.
This second criteria is too scholastic for my taste as it goes counter to a typological understanding of the Old Testament. In the book Why Mary Matters, Ithe importance of Typology for the Christological understanding of the Old Testament is discussed.
In theology, a type (or figure) is a form of foreshadowing, with the type serving as a figure of the fulfillment, or antitype. Typology is the means used to resolve the seeming incongruities between the Old and New Testaments. We have the witness of Christ himself, who “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). This exposition clearly contained a number of Christological types, as Jesus often used types as a means of demonstrating the continuity between the Old Testament and himself.
For example, Jesus drew a typological comparison between the bronze serpent lifted up by Moses with the manner in which the Son of Man, being lifted up, would draw all men to himself (John 3:14; 12:32). Jesus spoke of the prophet Jonas, drawing a comparison between how Jonah spend three days and nights in the whale’s belly, to how He would Himself spend three days and nights in the earth. In these passages, the Old Testament type prefigures the New Testament antitype, or fulfillment.[2]
Given this, the criteria that the Messianic psalm may only be about Christ, and cannot be applied to another human being, is unduly restrictive. In the case of the 45th psalm, a well-known Messianic psalm, the Messianic portion is often restricted to the verses 6-7, as these are quoted in Hebrews 1:8-9.[3] The reason why the whole psalm is often not thought to be Messianic is that much of the psalm seems to refer to Solomon and the daughter of Pharoah. Charles Hadden Spurgeon thinks this is shortsighted, and that the entire psalm is about Christ.[4] But if we examine the psalm typologically, it can have Solomon as the type, using the flowery language often used when referring to royalty, with Christ being the antitype, or the fulfillment.
If we accept that psalm 45 was written in celebration of Solomon and the daughter of Pharoah, then in what way could the psalm be about Christ? And more importantly, if Solomon is the type of Christ in this psalm, then the daughter of Pharoah is the type of whom?
1 My heart is indicting a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.
2 Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips: therefore God hath blessed thee forever.
3 Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty.
4 And in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.
5 Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies; whereby the people fall under thee.
6 Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the scepter of thy kingdom is a right scepter.
7 Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
8 All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.
9 Kings’ daughters were among thy honorable women: upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir.
10 Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house;
11 So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord; and worship thou him.
12 And the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift; even the rich among the people shall intreat thy favor.
13 The king’s daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold.
14 She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework: the virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee.
15 With gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought: they shall enter into the king’s palace.
16 Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth.
17 I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations: therefore shall the people praise thee for ever and ever.
The second half of psalm 45 concerns the queen, her virgin companions, and those who entreat the Queen’s favor. Now if Solomon is the type of Christ in this psalm, then the daughter of Pharoah is the type of whom? This last a most interesting question, one for which the Protestant churches have an unsatisfactory answer. The first answer is to restrict the Messianic portion of the psalm verses 6-7, which is that portion quoted by the author of Hebrews. This is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons: first, because a biblical reference wasn’t just to the verse specifically quoted, but to the passage and its context; second, because verses 2-8 clearly may clearly be applied to Christ; and third, because a well-known Protestant hymn, Out of the Ivory Palaces, is derived from verse eight.
My Lord has garments so wondrous fine,
And myrrh their texture fills;
Its fragrance reached to this heart of mine
With joy my being thrills.
Refrain:
Out of the ivory palaces,
Into a world of woe,
Only His great eternal love
Made my Savior go.
His life had also its sorrows sore,
For aloes had a part;
And when I think of the cross He bore,
My eyes with teardrops start.
[Refrain]
His garments, too, were in cassia dipped,
With healing in a touch;
In paths of sin had my feet e’er slipped—
He’s saved me from its clutch.
[Refrain]
In garments glorious He will come,
To open wide the door;
And I shall enter my heav’nly home,
To dwell forevermore.
[Refrain]
Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, says the references to the queen and her virgin companions are all references to either individual believers, or to the Church.[5] Spurgeon then interprets verse 12 to indicate the “daughter of Tyre” and the “rich among the people” are those outside the church who pay homage to her. He states that when the church is holy, “there shall be [no] lack of treasure in her coffers when grace is in her heart.”[6] Spurgeon does not seem to be interpreting this eschatologically, but implying this is an earthly bounty. In this, Spurgeon is following the general Protestant Reformed tradition which emphasized hard work, frugality, and diligence — which doctrine is the source of the Protestant work ethic.[7] This hard work, frugality, and diligence, undertaken as a means of providing the individual with assurance of salvation, resulted in a degree of prosperity. In the eyes of some, earthly prosperity was understood both as evidence that they were among the elect, and therefore as a sign of God’s favor. Thus Spurgeon’s interpretation contains the seeds of what has become, in our modern era, the Prosperity Gospel.[8]
I contend that the latter half of psalm 45 is about the Virgin Mary. She is the “queen in gold of Ophir” (v.9); her beauty so desired of the king is not her outward appearance, but that of her heart (v.13); and that the Church is represented by the virgins who accompany her (v. 14), and who venerate her (v.12). To make sense of this, we first have to understand the position of the queen in the Old Testament. The queen was not the wife of the king, but his mother. The king often had many wives, but only one mother. This subject in described in detail in this quote from the book Why Mary Matters.
In Jeremiah we have the following: “Say unto the king and to the queen, Humble yourselves, sit down: for your principalities shall come down, even the crown of your glory.” Interestingly, the word for used for queen (הריבג, gebiyrah) actually means queen-mother. We see an example of this in the story of Athaliah, Queen Mother of Ahaziah, who ruled in her son’s stead after his death (2 Kings 11:1-20). The paradigmatic example of this is found in the relationship between Bathsheba and her son, King Solomon. Adonijah, who had attempted to usurp the throne of David, yet whose life was spared by Solomon, attempted to usurp the throne through trickery by means of a request made to Bathsheba; it was assumed that Solomon would grant Adonijah’s request for the virgin widow of his father David, thereby sealing Adonijah’s claim to the throne. Interestingly, in this story the king says he will not say no to his mother, yet ultimately denies the request of Adonijah (1 Kin 2:12-25).
The following illustration helps our understanding. There is a man in a sinking boat with his mother, his wife, and his daughter, and he can save only one of them. Who does he choose? In the East the answer is clearly the mother, because while a man may get married again, and may father a daughter again, he only has one mother. By this we come to an understanding of the Scriptural perspective on the Queen as the mother of King.[9]
So who is the mother of the Messiah? It can be none other than the Virgin Mary, accompanied by the Church, and honored by the Church.
[1] Harding, William N. “Messianic Psalms.” Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute. September 2008.
[2] Carlson, Kristofer. Why Mary Matters. 4th. Norfolk: Dormition Press, 2014. 296-297
[3] Living Word Bible Church. “The Messianic Psalms.” Living Word Bible Church. n.d. http://www.lwbc.co.uk/messianic_psalms.htm (accessed August 30, 2014).
[4] Spurgeon, Charles Haddon. The Treasury of David. Vol. I. III vols. Mclean: MacDonald Publishing Company, 1988. 315
[5] Spurgeon, Charles Haddon. The Treasury of David. Vol. I. III vols. Mclean: MacDonald Publishing Company, 1988. 319
[6] Spurgeon, Charles Haddon. The Treasury of David. Vol. I. III vols. Mclean: MacDonald Publishing Company, 1988. 320
[7] For more information, see Max Weber’s The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
[8] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/opinions/outlook/worst-ideas/prosperity-gospel.html
[9] Carlson, Kristofer. Why Mary Matters. 4th. Norfolk: Dormition Press, 2014. 357-358
Lord have mercy.
Some Protestants are offended by the number of times we Orthodox say “Lord have mercy” in the Divine Liturgy. If my count is correct, this is said 116 times every time we celebrate the Divine Liturgy. This doesn’t count all the movable bits — the various hymns sung at various feasts, saints days, and the like; it doesn’t count the Orthros, Matins, or the Hours chanted before each Liturgy, or the Post-Communion Prayers chanted after the Liturgy.
On his YouTube show “Have a Little Faith“, Zach Anner visits a Greek Orthodox Church and asks a Noah Johnson a question about prayer. Noah tells him: “In Orthodoxy there’s really only one prayer…it’s ‘Lord have mercy’ and we pray that prayer for everything and everyone in the whole world.” The more I think about this, the more profound this is.
Zach Anna waving hello to the icon of Christ the Pantocrator (Lord of All)
What does it mean to pray “Lord have mercy?” This is an interesting question in itself. We should begin with the understanding that “Lord have mercy” was the cry of the beggar, the person in need who nonetheless had no claim upon anyone else. The beggar had no personal or familial ties to whomever was passing by; the best he or she could do was ask for mercy. The person giving alms was showing mercy upon the beggar. In one sense, this prayer illustrates our relationship with God. We have no claims upon God. God does not owe us anything. But God, in His mercy, provides us with existence, with being, and meets our physical and spiritual needs.
There are several examples of this type of prayer in the Gospel of Matthew. The first was the two blind men who followed after Jesus, crying out: “Thou Son of David, have mercy on us.” (Matt 8:27) The second example is the Canaanite woman who interceded with Jesus on behalf of her daughter: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David.” (Matt 15:22) And yet another example is of the man who interceded with Jesus on his son’s behalf: “Lord, have mercy on my son.” (Matt 17:15) In all these cases, Jesus was asked to heal someone. Yet no one dared demand healing, or imply that Jesus was obliged to heal them or anyone else. They simply asked for God’s mercy upon them and their loved ones. So, as we see, Lord have mercy is a prayer of intercession.
Lord have mercy has other connotations as well. The word mercy is the Greek word ελεεω (eleeo, el-eh-eh’-o). This is related to the Greek word for oil, ελαιον (elaion, el’-ah-yon). In the New Testament, there is a play on words here. Besides being used in cooking, oil was used to provide light, to heal the sick, to anoint someone, and as a means of cleansing the body.
Noah Johnson
When we pray “Lord have mercy”, we are asking God for enlightenment. With St. Basil the Great we pray: “Enlighten the eyes of my understanding; open my heart to receive your words; teach me your commandments and help me to do your will, confessing you from my heart, singing and praising your all-holy name: of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.”[1]
When we pray “Lord have mercy”, we are asking God for healing. The Orthodox understanding of salvation is that sin is a sickness we must be healed from. In the words of the Psalmist, we are asking for the anointing of the Holy Spirit: “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” (Ps 51:2, 7, 10). Perhaps the best description of this is in the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the Samaritan washes the injured man’s wounds, binding them with oil and wine. (Luk 10:33-34)
The idea of the “Lord have mercy” prayer having a connection to healing shares a natural affinity with its connection to repentance. In the pericope of the Pharisee and the Publican, the Publican dares not even lift his eyes to heaven, but beats his breast and prays: “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luk 18:13), which is one of the two prayers approved of by Jesus (the other being the Lord’s prayer). In like fashion, the psalmist opens the psalm of repentance with these words: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.” (Ps 51:1) This idea is extended in the Troparia of Repentance.
TROPARIA OF REPENTANCE
Have mercy on us, O LORD, have mercy on us, for laying aside all excuse, we sinners offer to you, our Master, this supplication: have mercy on us!
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
O LORD, have mercy on us, for in you have we put our trust. Do not be angry with us, nor remember our iniquities, but look down on us even now, since you are compassionate and deliver us from our enemies; for you are our God and we are your people; we are all the work of your hands and we call on your Name.
Now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
O blessed Theotokos, open the doors of compassion to us whose hope is in you, that we may not perish but be delivered from adversity through you who are the salvation of the Christian people.
LORD have mercy! (12x)[2]
When we pray “Lord have mercy” 116 times in the Divine Liturgy, it has all these meanings. We repent of our sins, we ask for healing of soul and body, we pray that God would enlighten our hearts, and we intercede with God on other’s behalf. Some of these meanings receive a greater emphasis in specific parts of the service, but they are all present. Thus, as Noah Johnson says in his video interview with Zach Anner, all of our prayer can be summed up the short phrase: “Lord have mercy.”
[1] All Saints of Alaska Orthodox Church (2011-03-22). Prayer Book – In Accordance with the Tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church (Kindle Locations 61-63). Saint Arseny Press. Kindle Edition.
[2] All Saints of Alaska Orthodox Church (2011-03-22). Prayer Book – In Accordance with the Tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church (Kindle Locations 315-324). Saint Arseny Press. Kindle Edition.
The Harrowing of Hell. This representation of Christ’s descent into Hell shows Him breaking down the gates of hell and restoring Adam and Eve to Paradise.
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ: Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.(1 Pet 3:18-22)
For Protestants, this is a difficult and most troubling passage, one whose meaning is unclear, and therefore subject to all sorts of interpretations. What does the phrase “spirits in prison” mean? Why did Jesus preach to them, and what was the content of His sermon?[i] When I was in High School, I remember a sermon on this passage in which it was claimed that the “spirits in prison” were the fallen angels, and Jesus message was: “I have beaten you.” While it made for a powerful sermon, this interpretation cannot be supported by the text — although in the absence of other evidence, it is certainly no worse than any of the other interpretations I heard.
And yet, none of the Protestant interpretations of this passage relate to the interpretation given by the early church, which was derived from the book of Tobit and various Old Testament passages, as illumined by the life of Christ. In the book of Tobit we read his prayer of thanksgiving, in which he makes reference to what most Christians call the Harrowing of Hell; the descent of Christ into Hell, where he led captivity captive — that is, from whence he delivered the Old Testament saints from their bondage of sin, death, and the devil.
Then Tobit wrote a prayer of rejoicing, and said, Blessed be God that liveth for ever, and blessed be his kingdom. For he doth scourge, and hath mercy: he leadeth down to hell [Hades], and bringeth up again: neither is there any that can avoid his hand (Tobit 13:1-2).
It is important to note that the verses above are from the King James Version, which tends to conflate the terms for Hell and Hades, translating them both as Hell. However, the word used here is not the Greek word for Hell, but the word for Hades [άδην], the place for disembodied spirits; in the Old Testament, this equates to the Hebrew word Sheol [שׁאול], being the grave, the abode of the dead. While in the New Testament Hades is reserved for the wicked awaiting judgment, in the Old Testament (prior to Christ’s Descent into Hades), Hades/Sheol held both the righteous and the damned.
One of the most important Old Testament passages concerning Christ’s descent into Hades is found in Psalms 24. This passage comes in two parts; the first declares that all of creation is the LORD’S, and states that only the pure in heart will stand in the holy place of God.
The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.
For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place?
He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah. (Ps 24:1-6)
After this passage comes the word Selah, which is a musical and liturgical term, giving one time to pause and reflect upon what has come before. Reflecting on the fact that only the pure in heart will see God (Mt 5:8), we must ask who, then, is pure? Who is without sin? (Joh 8:7) The answer, of course is Jesus, who was tempted like us, yet without sin (Heb 4:15); who was offered for and on behalf of our sins, and was raised again without sin (Heb 9:28). In the remainder of Psalm 24 we see Christ, the King of glory, as being the one able to conquer the hold death had on humanity, and who has opened for us the gates of paradise.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah. (Ps 24:7-10)
These last verses from Psalm 24 are part of the Paschal liturgy of the Eastern Church. After reciting (and acting out) this passage, the doors of the church are flung open and the people enter, after which is sung the Easter troparion: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tomb bestowing life.” This refrain, dating as early as the 2nd century, contains the theological meaning of what is termed the Harrowing of Hell. Death could not hold Him. In defeating death, Christ led captivity captive (Ps 68:18; Eph 4:8), meaning He led the souls of the departed righteous out of their resting place, where they are now kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation (1 Pet 1:5).
We should note that this doctrine is not some medieval invention of the Roman Catholic Church, but is in fact the universal witness of the Church into the apostolic age. We know this from a variety of sources; the New Testament itself, the apocryphal writings of the New Testament period, Christian poetry, and fathers of the early church.
New Testament sources include Jesus’ discussion of His impending three-day burial: “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”(Matt 12:40); Christian tradition holds this to be a foretelling of Christ’s descent into Hell.[ii] Other incidental passages include Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2:22-32); Paul’s sermon in the synagogue of Antioch (Acts 13:34-37); and “St Paul’s words that speak of how Christ ‘descended into the lower parts of the earth’ [Eph 4:9] and of his victory over death and hell.'[1 Cor 15:54-57; Rom 10:7; Col 2:14-15]”[iii] Perhaps the most important passage, which became a prototype for other writings of the post-apostolic period, is the passage from 1 Peter which opens this discourse.
Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev notes the Harrowing of Hell is much more prominent in the Christian Apocalypses than in the canonical texts. Among these texts, which were “indirectly” used by the early church are the Christiain interpolations into the Ascension of Isaiah and The Testament of Asher, along with the “Christian adaptation” of The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs. Other texts include The Gospel of Peter, The Epistle of the Apostles, The Shepherd of Hermas, The Sybilline Oracles, The Teachings of Silvanus, The Gospel of Bartholomew, and The Gospel of Nicodemus. This last book “exerted decisive influence on the formation of church doctrine on the subject.”[iv]
Besides the previously mentioned Easter troparion, which is dated to at least as early as the 2nd century, we should mention the poem “On Pascha” by St Melito of Sardis, and dated to the middle of the 2nd Century, a portion of which is quoted below.
66. When this one came from heaven to earth for the sake of the one who suffers, and had clothed himself with that very one through the womb of a virgin, and having come forth as man, he accepted the sufferings of the sufferer through his body which was capable of suffering. And he destroyed those human sufferings by his spirit which was incapable of dying. He killed death which had put man to death.
68. This is the one who covered death with shame and who plunged the devil into mourning as Moses did Pharaoh. This is the one who smote lawlessness and deprived injustice of its offspring, as Moses deprived Egypt. This is the one who delivered us from slavery into freedom, from darkness into light, from death into life, from tyranny into an eternal kingdom, and who made us a new priesthood, and a special people forever.
70. This is the one who became human in a virgin, who was hanged on the tree, who was buried in the earth, who was resurrected from among the dead, and who raised mankind up out of the grave below to the heights of heaven.
71. This is the lamb that was slain. This is the lamb that was silent. This is the one who was born of Mary, that beautiful ewe-lamb. This is the one who was taken from the flock, and was dragged to sacrifice, and was killed in the evening, and was buried at night; the one who was not broken while on the tree, who did not see dissolution while in the earth, who rose up from the dead, raising up mankind below. [v]
Instead of placing the saving work of Christ into different categories and treating each atomistically (as is done in western theology), St Melito of Sardis connects it all into a seamless narrative, flowing from the pre-existence of the Son of God, His clothing of himself of the flesh of the Virgin Mary, His life, death, burial, and His raising of mankind from the grave by virtue of His own resurrection. This same method is repeated elsewhere in his “On Pascha”, to similar effect.
Another interesting bit of poetry comes to us by way of the Odes of Solomon, a work most scholars believe first appeared in Syria in the mid-second century. About their origin, Rutherford Hayes Platt states: “one of the most plausible explanations is that they are songs of newly baptized Christians of the First Century.”[vi] With this in mind, it is interesting to note that these Odes contain significant references to and descriptions of Christ’s descent into Hades.[vii] Ode 42 is particularly interesting, in that it describes both the “spirits in prison”, and the content of Christ’s preaching.
ODE 42.
The Odes of Solomon, the Son of David, are ended with the following exquisite verses.
1 I stretched out my hands and approached my Lord:
2 For the stretching of my hands is His sign:
3 My expansion is the outspread tree which was set up on the way of the Righteous One.
4 And I became of no account to those who did not take hold of me; andI shall be with those who love me.
5 All my persecutors are dead; and they sought after me who hoped in me, because I was alive:
6 And I rose up and am with them; and I will speak by their mouths.
7 For they have despised those who persecuted them;
8 And I lifted up over them the yoke of my love;
9 Like the arm of the bridegroom over the bride, So was my yoke over those that know me: And as the couch that is spread in the house of the bridegroom and bride,
12 So is my love over those that believe in me.
13 And I was not rejected though I was reckoned to be so.
14 I did not perish, though they devised it against me.
15 Sheol saw me and was made miserable: Death cast me up, and many along with me.
17 I had gall and bitterness, and I went down with him to the utmost of his depth:
18 And the feet and the head he let go, for they were not able to endure my face:
19 And I made a congregation of living men amongst his dead men, and I spake with them by living lips:
20 Because my word shall not be void:
21 And those who had died ran towards me: and they cried and said, Son of God, have pity on us, and do with us according to thy kindness,
22 And bring us out from the bonds of darkness: and open to us the door by which we shall come out to thee.
23 For we see that our death has not touched thee.
24 Let us also be redeemed with thee: for thou art our Redeemer.
25 And I heard their voice; and my name I sealed upon their heads:
26 For they are free men and they are mine. Hallelujah.
This last phrase sums up the soteriological [salvific] theology contained within the description of Christ’s Harrowing of Hell. We were all in bondage to sin, death, and the devil; Christ has broken our chains, destroyed the gates of hell, and declares to all: “They are free men and they are mine. Hallelujah.”
An interesting patristic passage comes to us by way of Eusebius, in “The Story Concerning the King of Edessa.” King Agbar of Edessa[viii] was ill with some form of wasting disease. Hearing of Jesus, the King wrote and besought Jesus to come and heal him. Jesus sent King Agbar a letter saying one of his disciples would come and heal his sicknesses and bring salvation to his people. This was accomplished after the resurrection of Christ when Thomas sent Thaddeus (one of the seventy) to Edessa. Thomas not only healed King Agbar and a great many others, but preached the following Gospel to them, which included a description of Christ’s descent into Hades:
Because I have been sent to preach the word of God, assemble me tomorrow all the people of thy city, and I will preach before them, and sow amongst them the word of life; and will tell them about the coming of Christ, how it took place; and about His mission, for what purpose he was sent by His Father; and about His power and His deeds, and about the mysteries which He spake in the world, and by what power He wrought these things, and about His new preaching, and about His abasement and His humiliation, and how He humbled and emptied and abased Himself, and was crucified, and descended to Hades, and broke through the enclosure which had never been broken through before, and raised up the dead, and descended alone, and ascended with a great multitude to His Father.[ix]
The fact that the Harrowing of Hell featured prominently in the Apocryphal texts, Christian poetry, and patristics testifies to the early origins of this Christian doctrine. And the fact that this doctrine is supported from the Old Testament, including both canonical and so-called Apocryphal texts, suggests the loss of something vital to the Gospel when the Apocrypha were separated from the rest of the Old Testament.
[i] We won’t even discuss the problematic phrase: “even baptism doth also now save us”.
[ii] (Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev 2009, 17)
[iii] (Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev 2009, 19)
[iv] (Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev 2009, 20-29)
[v] (St Melito of Sardis 1989, 20-23; 32-34)
[vi] (Platt 2007, 205)
[vii] See Odes 17, 22, 24, and 42.
[viii] Edessa was the capital city of Osreone, which was part of the Syriac empire. The country of Osreone is roughly located in the border area of Turkey and Syria; the city of Edessa is located in modern-day Turkey, and known as Şanlıurfa (or colloquially as Urfa).
[ix] (Schaff, ANF08. The Twelve Patriarchs, Excerpts and Epistles, The Clementia, Apocrypha, Decretals, Memoirs of Edessa and Syriac Documents, Remains of the First Age 2005, 1098)
Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev. Christ the Conqueror of Hell. Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009.
Platt, Rutherford H. The Forgotten Books of Eden. Sioux Falls: NuVision Publications, LLC, 2007.
Schaff, Philip. ANF08. The Twelve Patriarchs, Excerpts and Epistles, The Clementia, Apocrypha, Decretals, Memoirs of Edessa and Syriac Documents, Remains of the First Age. Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2005.
St Melito of Sardis. “On Pascha.” Edited by Jr. James T. Dennison. KERUX: A Journal of Biblical-Theological Preaching (Kerux, Inc.) 4, no. 1 (1989): 5-35.
Prosperity Gospel
If a man desire much experience, she [wisdom] knoweth things of old, and conjectureth aright what is to come: she knoweth the subtilties of speeches, and can expound dark sentences: she foreseeth signs and wonders, and the events of seasons and times. (Wisdom 8:8)
For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. (Mt 24:24)
For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. (Mr 13:22)
Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe. (Joh 4:48)
By stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus. (Ac 4:30)
And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; (and they were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch. (Ac 5:12)
Long time therefore abode they speaking boldly in the Lord, which gave testimony unto the word of his grace, and granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands. (Ac 14:3)
Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. (Ro 15:19)
Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds. (2Co 12:12)
God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will? (Heb 2:4)
The phrase “signs and wonders” is used nine times in the New Testament, but never used in the Hebrew Scriptures. The phrase comes from the Wisdom of Solomon, and is found in an extended monologue on wisdom. Since we know wisdom to be allegorically associated with Jesus Christ, it is clear that it is Jesus Christ who foreseeth signs and wonders. Without the quotation from the Wisdom of Solomon, it is not clear what the difference is between the signs and wonders performed by Christ and His disciples, and the signs and wonders performed by the false prophets.
In Wisdom we see the growth of an individual who desires wisdom, which gives us a way of discerning between false prophets and true disciples.
The false prophet, who is no true disciple, will be no lover of wisdom, and will seek to profit from the gospel. The false prophet will be extravagant rather than prudent, and will surround himself (or herself) with the things of this world. The false prophet will be self-indulgent and reckless, will show partiality, and will lack courage and strength.
Notice that Jesus warns against those who seek to persuade the faithful through signs and wonders, and those who seek after signs and wonders instead of the Christ who is the source. Those whose preaching is focused on signs and wonders, and those whose desire is for signs and wonders instead of Christ, are equally in error. Signs and wonders are not salvific, nor do signs and wonders validate the teaching of a prophet. When the nobleman approached Jesus and besought him to heal his son, Jesus stated: “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.” The nobleman’s reply demonstrated his belief: “Sir, come down ere [before] my child die.” No longer was he asking for a sign, he was merely seeking for Christ to visit to come before his son died. In seeking after healing, he received neither healing nor the presence of Christ; in seeking after Christ, the nobleman received both Christ and the healing of his son.
[i] The Greek word translated here as fortitude (ἀνδρείαν, andreian) can be translated in a variety of ways. The short definitions are manliness, manhood, manly spirit. Please note that these are to be interpreted in the fashion of the ancient world, in which certain characteristics were thought to be “manly virtues”. In fact, the Latin translation for ἀνδρείαν is virtus, from the Latin root vir, meaning man. Thus the opposite of the manly virtues would be the feminine weaknesses (according to the ancient accounting, not modern approach to gender distinctions.)
The Visitation of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth
The Magnificat (Luk 1:46-55)
The Lord hath cast down the thrones of proud princes, and set up the meek in their stead. (Sirach 10:14)
He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. (Luk 1:52)
Abraham was a great father of many people: in glory was there none like unto him. (Sirach 44:19)
As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever. (Luk 1:55)
Mary’s Magnificat is one of the most notable prayers in all of Scripture. It is noteworthy for many things, not least of which is that it is filled with quotations from or allusions to scripture. Therefore, in context, it would be hard to say that a citation from Sirach is not scripture, when everything else quoted or alluded to is. Here is the text of the Magnificat, verse by verse, with all its Old Testament quotations and allusions.[1]
o 1 Sa 2:1 My heart rejoices in the LORD; in the LORD my horn is lifted high.
o Ps 34:2,3 My soul will boast in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together.
o Ps 103:1 Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
o Ps 18:46b Exalted be God my Savior!
o Isa 61:10 I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness.
o 1 Sam 1:11 And she vowed a vow, and said, O LORD of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the LORD all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head.
o Ps 138:6 Though the LORD is on high, he looks upon the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar.
o Gen 30:13 And Leah said, Happy am I, for the daughters will call me blessed: and she called his name Asher.
o Luk 1:28 And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
o Luk 1:42 And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
o 1 Sam 2:1 And Hannah prayed, and said, My heart rejoiceth in the LORD, mine horn is exalted in the LORD: my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies; because I rejoice in thy salvation.
o Ps 71:19 Your righteousness reaches to the skies, O God, you who have done great things. Who, O God, is like you?
o Isa 61:10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.
o Hab 3:18 Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.
o 1 Sa 2:2 There is no one holy like the LORD; there is no one besides you.
o Ps 22:3 You are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel.
o Ps 71:22b I will sing praise to you with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel.
o Ps 89:18 Indeed, our shield belongs to the LORD, our king to the Holy One of Israel.
o Ps 99:3 Let them praise your great and awesome name – he is holy.
o Ps 103:1b Praise his holy name.
o Ps 103:17 From everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children.
o Ps 89:10 Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain; thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm.
o 1 Sa 2:3 Do not keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance, for the LORD is a God who knows, and by him deeds are weighed.
o 2 Sa 22:28 You save the humble, but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them low.
o Ps 89:10 You crushed Rahab like one of the slain; with your strong arm you scattered your enemies.
o 1 Sa 2:4 The bows of the warriors are broken (as in Pharaoh, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, etc.)
o 1 Sa 2:4b but those who stumbled are armed with strength.
o 1 Sa 2:8 He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor. (As in Joseph, David, Daniel, Esther, etc.)
o Ps 113:7-8 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill; That he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people.
o 1 Sa 2:5b but those who were hungry hunger no more.
o Ps 103:5 who satisfies your desires with good things.
o Ps 107:8,9 Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.
o 1 Sam 2:5 Those who were full hire themselves out for food. (Note: This is the prayer of the barren Hannah, when she was blessed with a child.)
o Ps 98:3;
o Is 41:8-9
o Ps 25:6 Remember, O LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old.
o Ps 98:3 He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel.
o Ps 105:8-11 He remembers his covenant forever, the word he commanded, for a thousand generations, the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac. He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant: “To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion you will inherit.”
o Ps 136Aff. His love [mercy] endures forever.
o Gen 12:2-3 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
o Ps 147:19 He has revealed his word to Jacob, his laws and decrees to Israel.
o Mic 7:20 You will be true to Jacob, and show mercy to Abraham, as you pledged on oath to our fathers in days long ago.
o Sirach 44:19-22 Abraham was a great father of many people: in glory was there none like unto him; Who kept the law of the most High, and was in covenant with him: he established the covenant in his flesh; and when he was proved, he was found faithful. Therefore he assured him by an oath, that he would bless the nations in his seed, and that he would multiply him as the dust of the earth, and exalt his seed as the stars, and cause them to inherit from sea to sea, and from the river unto the utmost part of the land. With Isaac did he establish likewise for Abraham his father’s sake the blessing of all men, and the covenant, And made it rest upon the head of Jacob. He acknowledged him in his blessing, and gave him an heritage, and divided his portions; among the twelve tribes did he part them.
o Other references: Gen 13:15; 22:16-18; 26:3-4; 28:13-14; Lev 26:42; Dt 1:8; 6:10; 9:5, 25, 27; Ps 105:8-10
Jahn, Curtis A. Exegesis and Sermon Study of Luke 1:46-55 The Magnificat. Essay, Mequon: Wisconson Lutheran Seminary, 1997, 1-15.
[1] The cross-references for the Magnificat come from a number of sources. The versification is from an essay by Curtis A. Jahn. (Jahn 1997, 14-15)
From “Creation and the Heart of Man” by Fr. Michael Butler and Andrew Morriss
The Orthodox Church affirms that creation was a free act of God. However, the Orthodox go a step further and say that creation is not simply an act of God but a cooperative act of the Holy Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For ‘in the beginning,’ when ‘God created the heavens and the earth,’ ‘the Spirit [pneuma] of God was moving over the face of the waters’ 4 and God the Father spoke through his Word, and the creation came to be. 5 Indeed, St. Irenaeus of Lyons (d. ca. 202) calls the Son and the Spirit the ‘two hands’ of God with which he formed the world, 6 and St. John of Damascus (d. 749) says,
Since, then, God, who is good and more than good, did not find satisfaction in self-contemplation, but in His exceeding goodness wished certain things to come into existence which would enjoy His benefits and share in His goodness, He brought all things out of nothing into being and created them, both what is invisible and what is visible. Yea, even man, who is a compound of the visible and the invisible. And it is by thought that He creates, and thought is the basis of the work, the Word filling it and the Spirit perfecting it.[1]
Or, as St. Basil the Great puts it,
When you consider creation I advise you to think first of Him who is the first cause of everything that exists: namely, the Father, and then of the Son, who is the creator, and then the Holy Spirit, the perfector.… The Originator of all things is One: He creates through the Son and perfects through the Holy Spirit.… Perceive these three: the Lord who commands, the Word who creates, and the Spirit who strengthens.[2]
These statements of the Fathers are perhaps most simply put in the Symbol of Faith (the Nicene Creed), which acknowledges that the Father is the ‘maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible,’ the Son is he ‘through whom all things were made,’ and the Holy Spirit is ‘the giver of life.’
Butler, Michael, and Andrew Morriss. Creation and the Heart of Man: An Orthodox Christian Perspective on Environmentalism. Kindle Edition. Edited by Dylan Pahman. Acton Institute, 2013.
[1] St. John of Damascus , On the Orthodox Faith, 2.2 (PG 94.864C10-65A5), cited in Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), The Mystery of Faith: An Introduction to the Teaching and Spirituality of the Orthodox Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 43– 44.
[2] St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 16.38 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 62– 63 (PG 32.136A15-B3, B9-10, C11-13).
Dead Sea Scroll
It is not just the addition of vowel points and word spacing that differentiates the Masoretic text from the Dead Sea Scrolls, but that entire texts have been changed. The Book of Psalms, as found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, is quite different, including a number of psalms missing from both the Masoretic text and the LXX.[i] The book of Jeremiah is quite different, and agrees with the Septuagint instead of the Masoretic text. Karel Van Der Toorn, in his book “Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible”, writes:
Biblical scholars have long been aware of the fact that the Greek translation of Jeremiah as extant in the Septuagint is shorter by one-seventh than the text in the Hebrew Bible. Its arrangement of the material, moreover, differs at some points from that in the Hebrew text. The most striking instance is the position of the Oracles against the Nations. Whereas the Septuagint places them right after 25:13 (“ And I will bring upon that land all that I have decreed against it, all that is recorded in this book — that which Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations”), the Hebrew Bible has them at the end of the book (Chapters 46-51). The discoveries in the Judean Desert have yielded a fragment of a Hebrew version of Jeremiah (4QJerb) that agrees with the Septuagint (henceforth JerLXX) against the Hebrew text known from the Masoretic tradition (Henceforth JerMT). Based on this fragment, scholars have concluded that the Greek translation goes back to a Hebrew text of Jeremiah that differs in important respects from the Hebrew Bible. The differences between JerMT and JerLXX are such that they cannot be attributed to scribal errors in the process of transmission. Nor can the Hebrew vorlage[ii] of the Septuagint be interpreted as an abbreviated version of the book. In view of their different placement of the Oracles against the Nations, JerMT and JerLXX represent two different editions of the same book. Chronologically, the edition reflected in JerLXX precedes the one extant in JerMT.[iii]
Lawrence Boadt, in his book “Reading the Old Testament“, confirms this. He writes:
There were quite a variety of copies of the Hebrew Old Testament available by the time of Jesus. Since copying had gone on for a long time already, many different editions circulated, some longer with sections added in, some shorter with sections omitted. All had some change or error in them. Since a scribe in one area often copied from a local text, the same error or change often appeared regularly in one place, say, Babylon, but not in text copied in Egypt. Thus, at the time of Christ, three major “families” or groupings of text types could be found: The Babylonian, the Palestinian, and the Egyptian. …Only at the end of the first century A.D. did the rabbis decide to end the confusion and select one text, the best they could find, for each part of the Bible. In the Pentateuch they chose the Babylonian tradition, but in other books, such as the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah, they followed the Palestinian-type text.
These first century rabbis also inaugurated a method of guaranteeing the text from any more glosses and additions, though not completely from copying errors. They counted words, syllables, and sections, and wrote the totals at the end of each book of the Old Testament. …The standard Hebrew text that resulted from the decisions of these early rabbis has become known as the “Masoretic text,” named after a later group of Jewish scholars of the eighth to eleventh centuries A.D., the masoretes, or “interpreters,” who put vowels into the text, and thus “Fixed the words in a definitive form. No longer could a reader be confused by whether the word qtl in the text meant qotel, “the killer,” or qatal, “he killed.”[iv]
Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest known manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible were from the 10th or 11th century. The fact that these two manuscripts exist at all is something of a miracle, because the Jews have a tradition of destroying old, worn manuscripts. Because these were the only extant manuscripts in Hebrew, the Reformers (and the scholar Erasmus) chose them when translating the Old Testament, under the influence of the Renaissance humanists and their cry: “ad fontes”; to the sources. However, we not have older manuscripts in the Dead Sea Scrolls, manuscripts supporting the ancient idea that the Hebrews altered their texts in response to the challenge of Christianity.
Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest texts of the Hebrew Bible were in two manuscripts from the 10th or possibly the early 11th century known as the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex. These manuscripts—the Aleppo Codex, which was recovered partially after a fire and somehow brought to Jerusalem, and the Leningrad Codex, which is now in St. Petersburg—both of these nearly identical texts are what scholars call the rabbinic recension.[v]
The problem is this. The Masoretes fixed the text in a form significantly different than that used by the Jewish diaspora for several hundred years. This was a radical emendation of the text which, when coupled by the Masoretic vowel pointing, fixed the interpretation of the text. Thus it is clear that as Judaism underwent substantial changes subsequent to the destruction of the temple, so too did the text used as the basis for their faith.
[i] (J. A. Sanders n.d.)
[ii] Vorlage: a prior version of a text under consideration.
[iii] (van der Toorn 2007, 199-200, van der Toorn 2007)
[iv] (Boadt 1984, 73-74)
[v] (Shanks 2007, 19)
Boadt, Lawrence. Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction. New York: Paulist Press, 1984.
Sanders, J. A. “English Translation of the Psalms Scroll (Tehillim) 11QPs.” ibiblio.org. n.d. http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/Library/psalms.html (accessed January 02, 2014).
Shanks, Hershel. “The Dead Sea Scrolls—Discovery and Meaning.” Biblical Archaeology Society. Biblical Archeological Society. 2007. http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/free-ebooks/the-dead-sea-scrolls-discovery-and-meaning/ (accessed January 30, 2014).
van der Toorn, Karel. Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.
A number of the New Testament Greek texts we have today may not be the original language the books were conceived in, let alone written in. This is most obviously true in the case of Matthew, for which we have explicit evidence for its being originally written in Hebrew. The earliest church fathers are generally known as the Ante-Nicene Fathers, who form a contiguous chain from the Apostles to the 1st Ecumenical Council ( A.D., 325), also known as the Council of Nicea. They provide a consistent testimony to the Hebraic origins of Matthew’s Gospel.
The earliest witness to the Hebraic origin of Matthew is Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, in Asia Minor. The church historian Eusibius references his (now lost) Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord (c. 100), where he speaks concerning the Hebrew origin of the Gospels. Eusebius quotes Papias as follows:
Matthew put down the words of the Lord in the Hebrew language, and others have translated them, each as best he could. (Schaff 1890, 317)
Irenaeus (120-202 A.D.) was Bishop of Lyons in France. Most of his literary endeavors were undertaken in the last quarter of the second century A.D. Irenaeus states:
Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their owndialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. (Schaff, ANF01. The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus 1884, 685)
Origen (first quarter of the third century), in his commentary on Matthew, states:
Among the four Gospels,which are the only indisputable ones in the Church of Godunder heaven, I have learned by tradition that the first was written by Matthew, who was once apublican, but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, and it was prepared for the converts fromJudaism, and published in the Hebrew language. (Schaff, NPNF2-01. Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine 1890, 571)
Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (circa 325 A.D.), writes:
For Matthew, who had at first preached to the Hebrews, when he was about to go to other peoples, committed his Gospel to writing in his native tongue, and thus compensated those whom he was obliged to leave for the loss of his presence. (Schaff, NPNF2-01. Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine 1890, 265)
There are additional references in the later church fathers (generally known as the Post-Nicean Fathers, dating from approximately 325 A.D.). Epiphanius, for instance, writes at length about the Jewish-Christian sect of the Nazarenes:
They have the entire Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew. It is carefully preserved by them as it was originally written, in Hebrew script. (Bivin and Blizzard Jr. 1994, Kindle Locations 214-215)
Epiphanius also writes about the Ebionites, another Messianic sect:
And they too accept the Gospel of Matthew. . .They call it “according to the Hebrews,” and that is the correct way of speaking since Matthew alone of the New Testament writers presents the gospel in Hebrew and in the Hebrew script. (Bivin and Blizzard Jr. 1994, Kindle Locations 215-217)
Eusebius writes of Saint Pantaenus the Philosopher, a second century convert from the Stoics, who for a time was a missionary to India, and who discovered a Hebrew edition of Matthew that had reportedly been left there by Bartholemew.[1]
Pantænus was one of these, and is said to have gone to India. It is reported that among persons there who knew of Christ, he found the Gospel according to Matthew, which had anticipated his own arrival. For Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached to them, and left with them the writing of Matthew in the Hebrew language, which they had preserved till that time. (Schaff, NPNF2-01. Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine 1890, 445-446)
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Catechetical Lectures, says the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew. (St. Cyril of Jerusalem 2013, Kindle Locations 4317-4318)
The great bible scholar St. Jerome provides some of the most compelling testimony to Matthew’s Gospel being originally written in Hebrew. In his De Viris Illustribus, or On Illustrious Men (A.D. 492), Jerome writes of extant copies of the Gospel of Matthew that still existed in the library at Caesarea and among the Nazarenes.
Matthew, also called Levi, apostle and aforetimes publican, composed a gospel of Christ at first published in Judea in Hebrew for the sake of those of the circumcision who believed, but this was afterwards translated into Greek though by what author is uncertain. The Hebrew itself has been preserved until the present day in the library at Cæsarea which Pamphilus so diligently gathered. I have also had the opportunity of having the volume described to me by the Nazarenes of Berœa, a city of Syria, who use it. In this it is to be noted that wherever the Evangelist, whether on his own account or in the person of our Lord the Saviour quotes the testimony of the Old Testament he does not follow the authority of the translators of the Septuagint but the Hebrew. Wherefore these two forms exist “Out of Egypt have I called my son,” and “for he shall be called a Nazarene. (Schaff, NPNF2-03. Theodoret, Jerome, Gennadius, & Rufinus: Historical 1892, 626)
David Blivin and Roy Blizzard Jr., in their book Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus, write of the Hebraic background of the New Testament. They point out that although the New Testament documents are written in Greek, they are thoroughly Hebrew in their grammatical construction, which accounts for what many scholars call the “poor Greek” of the New Testament.
It should be emphasized that the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) is, in its entirety, highly Hebraic. In spite of the fact that portions of the New Testament were communicated in Greek, the background is thoroughly Hebrew. The writers are Hebrew, the culture is Hebrew, the religion is Hebrew, the traditions are Hebrew, and the concepts are Hebrew. (Bivin and Blizzard Jr. 1994, Kindle Locations 82-84)
Regarding the Gospel of Matthew, Dr. David Scaer notes that as Matthew was written as a catechesis, Matthew would have used several scribes as amanuenses. Thus, there would have been multiple autographs. (Scaer 2004, 102) It is unclear when the Gospel of Matthew was translated into Greek, but it must have happened rather quickly, after which the Greek text became the standard text, used in the increasingly Gentile church in preference to the original Hebrew text.
So what does this matter, you may ask? It matters because the only texts we have of the Gospel of Matthew are in Greek, and are therefore translations of the original Hebrew. We have the witness of Papias, as recorded by Eusebius, not only to the original text of Matthew’s Gospel being composed in Hebrew, but that it was translated into Greek by multiple people, “as best they were able.” This would account for some of the differing textual traditions of the Gospel of Matthew, and for the extensive Hebraisms found therein.
A Hebraism is a Hebrew idiom that is a literal word for word translation into another language — in our case, Greek. From there, our English bibles tend towards a literal, word for word translation of the Greek text. An idiom is generally defined as “a speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements, as in keep tabs on.” (FARLEX n.d.) A literal, word for word Greek translation of a Hebrew idiom results in a text that is obscure, often violates the rules of Greek grammar, and is therefore amenable to misinterpretation. From David Bivin and Roy Blizzard Jr.’s book, we will provide but a single example of a Hebraism from the Gospel of Matthew, one that changes the typical interpretation of the text.
A mistranslation of the eighth beatitude may also have been the cause of erroneous theology. Matthew 5:10 reads: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” On the basis of this translation, one would quite naturally assume that there is some religious merit in being persecuted for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Early in the second century A.D. this idea developed and found its fruition in the martyrdom of millions during the years of the ten severe persecutions until the Edict of Toleration by Constantine in 311 A.D. The idea of gaining religious merit through suffering persecution or through martyrdom has continued in the theological consciousness of the church to the present day. Is this really what Jesus is referring to in Matthew 5:10? Does Jesus mean that religious merit can be obtained by suffering persecution? Are we to seek persecution? No! This eighth beatitude should be translated: “How blessed are those who pursue righteousness, for of these is the Kingdom of Heaven.” There are actually four mistranslations in this one verse. We should not translate “persecute,” but “pursue.” Secondly, “righteousness” is an unfortunate translation in English. “Salvation” or “redemption’ would be more accurate. (See our discussion on page 60.) Thirdly, “theirs” also leaves the wrong impression. We do not possess the Kingdom. The correct translation would be “of these,” or “of such as these” as in Luke 18:16, “Let the children come to me and do not prevent them, for of such as these is the Kingdom of God.” Fourthly, the Kingdom of Heaven is not futuristic, as is so often understood. (See our discussion on pages 62-65.) In the eighth beatitude Jesus is not discussing persecution at all. He is describing people whose chief desire is for God to redeem the world. The Beatitudes are a description of the kind of people who make up the Kingdom of Heaven. This beatitude, like the others, characterizes the “Kingdom Man,” who wants above all else for God to rule in the life of every person. The eighth beatitude echoes the fourth beatitude which speaks of those who “hunger and thirst [i.e., ‘desire above all else’] for righteousness,” in other words, for God to save the lost. It also echoes Matthew 6:33 in which Jesus says that we are to “seek first [i.e., ‘desire above all else’] His righteousness [i.e., ‘salvation ].” (Bivin and Blizzard Jr. 1994, Kindle Locations 591-604)
Bivin, David, and Roy Blizzard Jr. Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus: New Insights From a Hebrew Perspective. Revised Edition. Shippensburg: Destiny Image Publishers, 1994.
FARLEX. The Free Dictionary. n.d. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/idiom (accessed April 26, 2014).
Scaer, David P. Discourse in Matthew: Jesus Teaches the Church. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2004.
Schaff, Philip. ANF01. The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Vol. 1. 10 vols. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1884.
—. NPNF2-01. Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Translated by Arthur C. McGiffert and Ernest C. Richardson. Vol. 1. 14 vols. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1890.
—. NPNF2-03. Theodoret, Jerome, Gennadius, & Rufinus: Historical. New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem. The Catechetical Lectures of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. Kindle Edition. Translated by Edwin Hamilton Gifford. 2013.
[1] There was a Roman trade route to India, with a sizeable Jewish population living there.