Tag: Greek

Anger and Patience

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Jesus’ words on anger in His Sermon on the Mount are incredibly challenging:

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, “You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.” But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. (Matthew 5:21-22)

In His words, Jesus connects a feeling – that of anger – to a felony – the crime of murder.

These words are not just challenging for us in our context, where societal anger is on display on social media, on cable news, and in the streets and where personal anger can be found in homes, in workplaces, and in relationships across this nation, these words have been challenging ever since Jesus uttered them.

We see just how challenging Jesus’ words have been in an interesting textual variant found in some of the ancient manuscripts of Jesus’ sermon. Some manuscripts add the phrase “without cause” to Jesus’ words:

I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister without cause will be subject to judgment. (Matthew 5:22)

Though these words, according to the best textual evidence we have, were almost certainly not original, they are widespread among the ancient manuscripts. It seems that even in antiquity, people thought that a prohibition against being angry with someone without qualification was a bridge too far. But when we are angry, none of us believe our anger is “without cause.” We all believe our anger is justified or even necessary. Jesus reminds us that it’s not. Anger is not the answer to offense.

Solomon once wrote:

A hot-tempered person stirs up conflict, but the one who is patient calms a quarrel. (Proverbs 15:18)

When we are tempted to become angry, patience is the key. For patience can produce what anger never can – peace. Patience can diffuse a situation instead of escalating it. And patient is what God was with us. In our sin, He waited for us to turn to Him in repentance.

Anger may make us feel better for a while, but patience can make the world better for the long haul.

New Discoveries of Old Scrolls

Written in Greek by two scribes, it dates from the period of the Bar Kokhba revolt, almost 1,900 years ago, when Jewish rebels fled with their families and hid from the Romans in the caves.
Credit: Greek City Times

Last Tuesday, researchers unveiled newly discovered fragments of some Dead Sea Scrolls. These fragments represent the first discovery of Dead Sea Scrolls in over 50 years and contain verses from Zechariah 8:16-17 and Nahum 1:5-6. And there’s plenty notable about these discoveries.

First, the text of these fragments is written in Greek, the language of the New Testament, instead of in Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, even though Zechariah and Nahum are Old Testament prophets. This is because these scrolls were written in the first century AD when the world spoke Greek. This is a reminder that the Jewish people treated their Hebrew Scriptures as eminently important, so they translated them into the lingua franca of the ancient world so that as many people as possible could read them and learn from them. They believed their Scriptures were good for the world and needed by the world.

Second, these fragments seem to indicate that there was some debate over how certain passages should be translated from their original Hebrew into the contemporary Greek of their day. The translation work in these fragments represents a revision of an older Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. So, for instance, in Zechariah 8:17, the older Greek translation renders a Hebrew word ish as “each other.” The verse reads, “Do not plot evil against each other.” This fragment, however, notices that, in the Hebrew manuscript, ish is the first word in the sentence and therefore leaves it there, and translates it using its most common meaning of “man.” It translates: “As for a man, do not plot evil against his neighbor in your heart.” This shows that, dating all the way back into the first century, people took translating the Scriptures seriously, even debating how to best translate various verses and difficult grammatical constructions. Their goal was to provide as accurate a rendering as possible of the original language texts they had because they held the Scriptures in such high regard. They wanted to be supremely careful in how they translated these holy documents.

Finally, these fragments also, quite uniquely, use the personal name for God: Yahweh. The scrolls leave the name of God in Hebrew with Hebrew letters, even though these are Greek manuscripts. Traditionally, in an attempt to avoid coming even close to misusing God’s name, translators would address God formally as “Lord” instead of invoking God’s name personally as “Yahweh.” But these manuscripts get personal. These translators seemed to have wanted to emphasize that there is a personal God who cares about people – personally.

A discovery like this reminds us that people have long revered the Scriptures and treated them with the utmost care. These were always considered to be sacred documents. They were not exalted to such a status later. This discovery also provides us a window into the faith of our forefathers, who trusted in a personal God and His personal concern for them. From them, we have learned the faith. From them, we have learned the Gospel. And for them, we should be thankful.

At God’s Core: Service

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Credit: Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles by Meister des Hausbuches, 1475

A while back, I was having a conversation with a friend who was going through a difficult time.  He was struggling relationally, vocationally, and financially.  And yet, throughout his struggles, he had managed to keep a remarkably clear head about what was most important.  “No matter how bad things may get,” he told me, “I still want to find ways to help and serve others.  It helps me take the focus off my own pain and remember just how important other people really are.”

I could not agree more.  This is wise insight from a good friend.  Serving others is a surprisingly great salve for a troubled soul.

In Philippians 2, the apostle Paul writes about the difficult times Jesus endured – specifically, His most difficult time of dying on a cross.  Paul also explains that as Jesus endured these times, He did so with the heart of a servant:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  (Philippians 2:5-7)

The Greek behind this passage is interesting and worth a moment of our reflection.  The passage above is taken from the ESV, which notes that though Jesus was God, He became a servant.  The ESV translates Jesus’ servanthood concessively.  That is, the ESV makes it sound like Jesus’ divinity and His servanthood are somehow logically antithetical to each other, or, at the very least, in tension with each other.  Jesus is God and has all the power, perks, and privileges that go along with being God, and even though He could have retained all those power, perks, and privileges when He came to this earth, He conceded them to become a servant.

The actual grammar behind this passage, however, is more ambiguous.  The word for “though” in Greek is hyparkon, a participial form of the verb “to be,” which, at the same time it can be translated concessively as the word “though” as the ESV does, it can just as easily and legitimately be translated causally as the word “because”:  “Jesus, because He was in the form of God…emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant.”

If I had to choose between a concessive or a causal translation of hyparkon, I would opt for the causal translation.  Here’s why.

To translate hyparkon concessively makes it sound like somehow the nature of God and the nature of a servant are at odds with each other.  But what if God is, in His very nature, a servant?  What if, as John Ortberg says, “When Jesus came in the form of a servant, He was not disguising who God is, He was revealing who God is”?[1]  What if the grandeur of God and the servanthood of Christ don’t conflict with each other, but correspond to each other?  What if Jesus not only explaining His mission, but revealing God’s nature when he said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28)?

Sometimes, we can be tempted to treat service as a bother, a burden, or, worse yet, as something that is beneath us.  But being a servant should never conflict with who we are.  It should reveal who we are.  Jesus was a servant not in spite of who He was as God, but because of who He was as God.  God is a servant at heart and so it only makes sense that Jesus would comes as a servant!  Likewise, we should be servants not in spite of who we are as business people, managers, or people who can command respect, but because of who we are as God’s children.

This is what my friend understood when he talked to me.  He wanted his service not to be incidental to his life, but core in his life.  May we want the same.

_________________________

[1] John Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 115.

Has The Bible Been Corrupted?

Greek Bible 2This past weekend in worship and ABC, we discussed some of the biggest objections and obstacles that people present to trusting in Jesus.  One of the objections and obstacles I covered in ABC had to do with the reliability of Scripture.  Bart Ehrman, a skeptical scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explains why so many people call into question the Bible’s reliability:

Not only do we not have the originals [of the biblical manuscripts], we don’t have the first copies of the originals.  We don’t even have the copies of the copies of the originals, or the copies of the copies of the copies of the originals.  What we have are copies made later – much later.  In most instances, they are copies made centuries later.  And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places…These copies differ from one another in so many places that we don’t even know how many differences there are.  Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms:  there are more differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.[1]

Many people wonder if that which is recorded in the Bible is historically accurate.  Recently, popular news commentator Bill O’ Reilly called into question the historicity of the biblical stories of Adam and Eve and of Jonah, saying, “I was taught, in my Catholic school, that a lot of the stories in the Bible are allegorical.”[2]  Bart Ehrman takes it a step farther.  He not only questions if what is recorded in the Bible is historically accurate, he questions if what is recorded in the Bible was even supposed to be there at all!  He notes the many ancient copies we have of the Bible differ from each other, thereby undermining their veracity, at least in Ehrman’s eyes.  After all, if no two ancient manuscripts completely agree with each other, how can we know which manuscripts record what was actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, et al?

In their book Reinventing Jesus,[3] three biblical scholars make some helpful distinctions concerning the types of variants, or differences, that we find in ancient biblical manuscripts.  In order to understand what is truly going on with the differences we have between ancient copies of the Bible, it is worth it to review their categories.

Spelling Differences

The majority of the variants we have in the New Testament are either alternate spellings or misspellings of a given word.  For instance, the name John is in some manuscripts spelled Ioannes, while in other manuscripts, it is spelled Iaones.  One “n” or two?  It doesn’t really matter.  Regardless of how this name is spelled, we know to whom the manuscript is referring.

Differences That Do Not Affect Translation

There are some differences between ancient copies of the Bible that have no affect on how we read something in English.  For example, Greek allows for definite articles before proper names, but does not demand them.  Thus, instead of referring to “Mary,” a biblical Greek text may refer to “the Mary.”  Or, instead of referring to Jesus, a Greek text may read “the Jesus.”  Because Greek allows for but does not demand these definite articles, some ancient Greek texts contain the definite articles in front of names while others do not.  This, however, does not affect the translation or meaning of a given biblical text.  Rather, the decision to retain or forgo a definite article is merely a matter of style.

Meaningful Variants That Are Not Viable

There are some differences between ancient biblical copies that do indeed affect the meaning of a text, but one of the variant readings is simply not viable.  For instance, ancient versions of 1 Thessalonians 2:9 refer to “the gospel of God” while a late medieval manuscript of this same verse refers to “the gospel of Christ.”  Though the gospel is indeed Christ’s gospel, because only one late medieval manuscript has this reading while almost all other ancient manuscripts refer to “the gospel of God,” the reading that refers to the gospel of Christ simply isn’t viable.  Too many other texts militate against this reading.

Meaningful and Viable Variants

Finally, there are some variants between ancient biblical copies that both affect the meaning of a text and are viable.  Romans 5:1 has variants that read, “We have peace” as well as “Let us have peace.”  Scholars are split on which one is original.  But even if scholars are split on which one is original, both statements are theologically correct.  After all, we are both promised peace through Christ and commanded to be people of peace by Christ.

It is important to note that the variants which are both meaningful and viable make up only about one percent of all textual variants.  Moreover, even with the many, but small, differences in our many ancient biblical manuscripts, not one of these differences – even the meaningful and viable ones – compromises a biblical doctrine.  Throughout all of these manuscripts, doctrines like the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and salvation by grace through faith are taught.  Indeed, Ehrman is finally forced to admit that the vast majority of variants in ancient biblical manuscripts are insignificant when he writes,  “Most of these differences are completely immaterial and insignificant.”[4]

So what does all this mean?  It means the text of the Bible we have is the text of the Bible as it has always been.  Thanks to the faithful and diligent efforts of many scribes and scholars over many centuries, the words of the apostles and prophets have been faithfully handed down from one generation to the next.  What we read now in the Bible is what the Christian Church has always believed, taught, and confessed.  Christ has preserved His Word from corruption by His grace.  Thanks be to God!

[1] Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus (New York:  Harper Collins, 2005), 10.

[3] J. Ed Komoskewski, M. James Sawyer & Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus:  How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Really Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture (Grand Rapids:  Kregel Publications, 2006), 53-63.

[4] Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 10.

The Exodus Belongs To Jesus

“The Israelites Leaving Egypt” by David Roberts (1830)

One of the things for which I am deeply grateful is the hard work of New Testament textual scholars who search out and study ancient copies of biblical manuscripts, comparing and contrasting their little differences, in order to try to discern what the oldest, best, and, hopefully, original reading of a biblical text may have been.  The standard for wading through the myriad of texts out there for pastors and scholars alike is the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece.  Your English Bible, if it is of recent translation, is more than likely based on this Greek text.

When I was in seminary, Nestle-Aland’s Greek New Testament was on its twenty-seventh edition.  Recently, the twenty-eighth addition hit the presses.  And though there are many notable changes and improvements, one change rises above the rest.  It is in Jude 5.  The NIV translates the verse this way:  “I want to remind you that the Lord delivered His people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe.”  Here, Jude hearkens back to God’s rescue of His people out of Egypt as well as their unfortunate subsequent destruction because of their rebellion.  He references the exodus to warn his readers against those “who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord” (Jude 4).

Interestingly, there has been a fair amount of dispute over the text of Jude 5.  The NIV translates it according to the preferred reading of Nestle-Aland’s twenty-seventh edition.  But the twenty-eighth edition makes an important change:  “I want to remind you that Jesus delivered His people out of Egypt.”  Rather than having “the Lord,” a title for God generically, deliver His people out of Egypt as the NIV translates it, the twenty-eighth edition of Nestle-Aland says this verse should read that it was Jesus specifically who led the people out of Egypt.  Bruce Metzger, a world renowned textual scholar, notes that “critical principles seem to require the adoption of ‘Jesus,’ which admittedly is the best attested reading among Greek and versional witnesses.”[1]

The change from “the Lord” to “Jesus” is of inestimable significance, for it gives us an important window into the way first century Christians understood God’s work in Christ.  Christ was no one new when He was born in Bethlehem; rather, He was older than creation itself.  Indeed, He was active in creation itself (cf. John 1:1-3).  And He has been active throughout the course of redemptive history, long before His incarnation.

Thus, wherever there is rescue, wherever there is salvation, wherever there is freedom, wherever there is hope – be that in the Old Testament or in the New Testament – there is Christ.  Christ is present and active throughout all of Scripture.  Christ led the charge out of slavery in Egypt for the Israelites and He leads the charge out of slavery in sin for us.  Jude 5 says so.

[1] Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the New Testament, 3rd ed. (New York:  United Bible Societies, 1971), 726.