020

“Be fruitful and multiply”—these are the first words God speaks to humanity in the Bible (Genesis 1:28). For many interpreters and religious communities, ancient and modern, they have been taken as a command to procreate, and procreation has been understood as a primary divine directive. But these words can read very differently to those who are unable to have children. Are they somehow in violation of the divine directive—or are they somehow cursed with infertility? This is a common view both in faith communities and in critical scholarship: that, in the Bible, infertility, like other physical impairments, is somehow a punishment for sin. In our book Reconceiving Infertility: Biblical Perspectives on Procreation and Childlessness, we push back against this reading.¹

Although it is spoken to the first humans in Genesis 1, “be fruitful and multiply” is not a command that pertains to all people at all times. Even in the Bible itself, these words cannot be taken as straightforward instruction: Both Noah and Jacob are told to be fruitful and multiply, yet in both cases God says this to them after they have finished producing offspring. Moreover, this blessing is given only to those individuals who stand at the head of necessary lineages: the first humans, Noah, Abraham and Jacob. Once Jacob’s 12 sons are born, no one else in the Bible will ever be told to be fruitful and multiply. After all, we are told already at the end of Genesis that the Israelites had become fruitful and numerous. The command has long since been fulfilled.

Though Genesis, and much of the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, is concerned with lineage, there are plenty of characters, especially women, who are not said ever to have offspring: Dinah, Miriam and Deborah, among others. They are not condemned for their childlessness—nor, for that matter, are the five famous barren women of the Hebrew Bible, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Hannah and Samson’s mother, who later all conceive. Though some ancient interpreters tried to identify some rationale for these women’s infertility, the Bible itself attributes no faults to them. They are, simply, barren—and blameless.

Responsibility for barrenness did not fall on the infertile individual (or, more specifically, on the infertile woman; the Bible seems to contain little to no recognition of the possibility of male infertility). Indeed, in the ancient Near East, there was a broader understanding that every successful procreation was the result of divine intervention: The deity had to “open the womb” in order for conception to occur. Like the opening of a rock to give forth water or the opening of the donkey’s mouth to speak to the prophet Balaam, the opening of the womb was miraculous, despite its frequency. The absence of this miracle could hardly be a reflection of some human sin—and, in the case of the barren matriarchs, it is never described as such.

The fundamental insistence on biological procreation as divinely ordained, derived from the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, is called into question when we turn to the New Testament. There the most important parent-child relationship, that of God and Jesus, is presented in explicitly non-biological terms. Rather, the driving metaphor is one of adoption, a well-attested and well-respected practice in the Greco-Roman world. This comes out in Mark, the earliest gospel, which completely lacks a birth story for Jesus: For Mark, Jesus becomes the son of God through the rite of baptism with which the gospel opens. Even when a “biological” relationship of God and Jesus is posited, it is not then imposed as normative on the community of Jesus’ followers. Quite the contrary: Paul does not value biological lineage for its own sake, but rather upholds a model of lineage by choice, as it were. Those who are part of the family are those who choose to follow Jesus: They are adopted children of God and co-heirs with Christ. Indeed, God sacrifices his biological child, Jesus, for the sake of his adopted children, the nascent Christian community.

The importance of biological procreation, or having offspring at all, was not obvious to some early Christian communities. The Greco-Roman world valued restraint and self-control as a marker of individual strength, a perspective that is central for understanding Paul’s writings on sex and marriage. Paul’s preference is for celibacy; the family he values is the broader Christian one, not the nuclear one, in line with Jesus’ statements in the Gospel of Mark that he does not recognize his own biological 066relatives and wants his followers to abandon their families. These views led to the early Christian valuation of celibacy, virginity and monasticism, all aspects of voluntary infertility. In the modern world, we have separated the blessed state of chastity from the broken state of infertility; yet in the ancient world, such a clear distinction was not always drawn. Pregnancy and childbirth were not unambiguous goods for early Christians.

For both Jews and Christians in antiquity, the common vision of the eschaton (the afterlife or the world to come) was one in which there was no sex, no procreation. As heavenly bodies were seen to be healed of their earthly impairments, so too angels and the resurrected were understood to be barren. In this way, those who are infertile in their earthly existence could be viewed not as flawed, but as embodying the heavenly ideal. A culture’s depiction of heaven is always a reflection of its own values; the perfected body in ancient Judaism and Christianity was a barren one.

Centuries of accumulated “wisdom,” guided by God’s first words to humanity in Genesis 1, have led to an understanding of procreation that not only excludes the infertile, but often actively harms them. Infertility is, in many communities, a true disability, one that entails social shame, whether or not it is explicitly linked to some imagined sin. There is no question that the Bible generally presents fertility and childbearing as good and blessed—a notion that continues to permeate our literature, our pulpits, our medical establishment and our public policy. But it is not the case that it therefore necessarily renders infertility and childlessness as bad or cursed. On the contrary, there are many voices and perspectives in the Bible that, though they may not have received the blessing of orthodox tradition, challenge these conventional views and may rehabilitate the Bible as a source of comfort for those who cannot be fruitful and multiply.

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Who is responsible for sin and death? According to the Apostle Paul, it was Adam. In his letter to the Romans, Paul names Adam as the first sinner and the reason death entered the world (Romans 5:12, Romans 5:14). While most modern readers of the Bible are familiar with the conclusion, not everyone in antiquity agreed. Although they were all reading the same Bible, some blamed Cain rather than Adam.

In Genesis, Adam and Eve disobey God, but their actions are never described as sin. Although God warned them that “in the day that you eat of it, you shall die” (Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:3), Adam lives to be 930 years old. The incongruity between God’s words and Adam’s longevity could suggest that Adam was not responsible for sin and death.

The first time sin and death are mentioned in the Bible is after the Garden of Eden—in God’s warning to Cain to resist sin (Genesis 4:7). God’s words serve as both warning and commentary about Cain’s murder of Abel in the very next verse. Thus, despite God’s warning to Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:17), their son Abel is the first person to experience death at the hand of the first sinner, Cain.

This interpretation of Genesis is found in the Wisdom of Solomon, where we read: “Wisdom protected the first-formed father of the world, when he alone had been created; she delivered him from his transgression and gave him strength to rule all things” (Wisdom of Solomon 10:1–2).

In this interpretation of Genesis, neither mortality nor bad consequences resulted from Adam’s sin. Rather, Wisdom saved Adam, and his sin is glossed over. But in the very next verses our attention shifts to Cain. Cain, we are told, was unrighteous, rejected Wisdom, killed his brother and caused the world to be flooded, which in turn led to his own death:¹ “But when an unrighteous man [Cain] departed from her [Wisdom] in his anger, he perished because in rage he killed his brother [Abel]. When the earth was flooded because of him, Wisdom again saved it, steering the righteous man [Noah] by a paltry piece of wood” (Wisdom of Solomon 10:3–4).

Reinforcing this interpretation is an earlier statement in Wisdom of Solomon 2:24: “But through the envy of the diabolos [δɩᾱβολος], death entered the world.” Some might want to read diabolos here as “the devil,” a reference to the serpent in Eden.

In the Septuagint, diabolos is the normal rendering for the Hebrew “Satan” (שטן), but it usually means “enemy” or “slanderer” and only rarely refers to a being.² Furthermore, “Satan” is used only six times as a proper noun and is translated each time by diabolos.³ So, while it is possible that Wisdom of Solomon 2:24 is referring to the deception of Eve, it is not certain. Moreover, if diabolos is intended to be understood as an allusion to Genesis 3:4, then it is one of the earliest extant Jewish documents to equate the serpent with the devil.⁴ If, on the other hand, we were to translate diabolos as “of the enemy,” then it is possible that Wisdom of Solomon 2:24 constitutes an allusion to Cain’s murder of Abel.

In the Wisdom of Solomon, Cain is a type for the enemies of the righteous (Wisdom of Solomon 1:16–3:13), both of whom reject Wisdom and murder the innocent.⁵ Wisdom of Solomon 2:24 seems to refer to Cain, who was envious of Abel. According to this text, death entered the world not because of Adam, but because of Cain’s murder of Abel.

Similarly, according to the interpretation of the Jewish historian Josephus, when God warns Adam and Eve not to eat the forbidden fruit, the punishment is not death but “destruction” or “ruin” (Antiquities 1.40). Later, when the couple does eat, God explains that it had been his intention that “old age would not come upon you swiftly and your life would be long,” suggesting that death was natural, albeit in the distant future (Antiquities 1.46). A few lines later, however, death appears in the world through Cain’s murder of Abel. In contrast to Adam and Eve—who would experience a later, natural, death—Abel’s death is sudden and unnatural. As in the Wisdom of Solomon, death enters the world not because of Adam’s sin but because of Cain’s murder of Abel.

At this point we might easily conclude that some Jewish interpreters held an opinion different from Paul’s regarding the origin of sin and death. But, somewhat surprisingly, this interpretation is also found among some Christian authors who lived after Paul and were certainly aware of his writings.

In 1 Clement 4:1–7, for instance, we find a verbatim citation of Genesis 4:1–8 (from the Septuagint). Immediately preceding this citation is the statement “by envy death entered into the world.” Following the citation of Genesis 4:1–8, Clement says, “You see, brothers, how envy and jealousy led to the 062murder of a brother” (1 Clement 4:7). Clearly, Clement is quoting Wisdom of Solomon 2:24, and his placement of the verse around the Genesis 4 citation demonstrates his conclusion that death originated with Cain’s envy and murder of Abel.

Likewise, Irenaeus of Lyons refers to Cain as the primordial example of sinful behavior and describes his life as a cascading series of sins. While comparing Adam and Cain, Irenaeus concludes: “Cain, not Adam, committed the more serious sin. Adam immediately felt a sense of shame, repented and was not cursed. Cain, on the other hand, persisted in evil and received the curse of God” (Adversus Haereses 3.23.3–4).

Finally, Theophilus of Antioch lays responsibility for death on Cain. Like Clement, Theophilus associates the envy of the diabolos in Wisdom of Solomon 2:24 with the Cain and Abel story. However, unlike Clement, he does not identify envy with Cain “the enemy,” but rather conflates Cain with the serpent’s deception of Adam and Eve:

When Satan saw that Adam and his wife not only were alive but had produced offspring, he was overcome by envy because he was not strong enough to put them to death, and because he saw Abel pleasing God, he worked upon his brother called Cain and made him kill his brother Abel. And so the beginning of death came into the world, to reach the whole race of men to this very day.

(Apologia ad Autolycum 2.29)

As I noted at the outset, Paul’s conclusion that Adam is the source of sin and death was not embraced by everyone. Although Paul’s argument certainly works well with his Christ/Adam parallel, not all of his readers would have been convinced. Other interpreters laid the blame on Cain. Consequently, what may sound like a logical argument to us today may not have been to some of Paul’s readers who were aware of alternative suggestions for the presence of sin and death in the world.

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The Lord’s Supper commemorates the meal when Jesus broke bread and distributed wine to his 12 disciples as symbols of his body and blood. How did this tradition, which the early Christians called the Lord’s Supper (or the Agapē), transition into what Christians today commonly call the Eucharist, Holy Communion or a sacrament? How did it evolve from a full meal to a ritual in the early Christian church?

The Synoptic Gospels recount that Jesus gave bread and wine to his 12 disciples during a Passover meal (Mark 14:22–25; Matthew 26:26–30; Luke 22:14–23). For the earliest Christians, Jesus’ final meal became a model for their own meals.

The phrase the “Last Supper” implies Jesus ate many meals during his life, and indeed several are recorded in the Gospels. During these meals, Jesus calls social outcasts to repentance and discipleship (Mark 2:13–17; Luke 15:1–2; Luke 7:34–50).¹

According to the earliest account of Christian activities in the Book of Acts, presumably written by Luke the Evangelist, the community in Jerusalem “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers” (Acts 2:42). Biblical scholars agree that this meal tradition called the “breaking of bread” was a full communal meal in which symbolic bread and wine were distributed to guests who shared a table in the dining room of houses.

Early Christians participated in meals characterized by inclusivity, care for one another and unity (Acts 2:43–47; cf. Acts 6:1–7). But as Paul’s letters indicate, these idealistic practices at the Lord’s Supper sometimes became abused because Christians either practiced Jewish purity laws at the table (e.g., considering what types of foods were appropriate to consume), or they transformed the meal into a gathering modeled after Greco-Roman banquets by drinking too much wine (Galatians 2:11–14; cf. Romans 14–15; 1 Corinthians 11:17–34).²

To correct the abuses at the Lord’s Supper in Corinth, Paul reminded the Corinthians that the bread represented their unity as Jesus’ followers and that they shared in the blood of Christ as members of the New Covenant by drinking the wine (1 Corinthians 10:16; cf. 1 Corinthians 11:25). Undoubtedly, this emphasis on unity explains an alternative name for the Lord’s Supper in early Christian literature, Agapē, a Greek word that is usually translated as either “love” or “love feast” (Jude 12; cf. 2 Peter 2:13).

The Didache, one of the oldest collections of Christian teachings, relates that early Christians offered a prayer of thanksgiving over the bread and/or cup. The Didache calls this prayer the Eucharist, a term that derives from the Greek word for “thanksgiving.” In some early Christian communities, this title for the prayer became an alternative name for the Lord’s Supper (Didache 9–10, 14).³ Perhaps, as some Biblical scholars postulate, the memory of Jesus’ Jewish blessing and prayer of thanksgiving at the Last Supper became part of the early Christian meal (Mark 14:22–25; 1 Corinthians 11:23–25).⁴

In the second century, Justin Martyr’s community in Rome assembled Sunday evening for a full meal. During this meal, as he relates, the president offered a prayer of thanksgiving over the bread and wine before distributing it to those who were present (Apology 65).⁵ According to some scholars, various Christian communities sometimes shifted their worship practices due to local circumstances.⁶ For example, in some cities Christians may have drunk water instead of wine at their communal meal.⁷

By the third century, the Lord’s Supper transitioned from a full meal to a ritual. Whereas Christians previously gathered for a full meal in the evening in the dining room of a house, the apologist Tertullian recounts how his community in Carthage began to assemble in the mornings to participate in a separate Eucharistic ritual at an altar (De Corona 3).⁸ Nearly half a century later, the evening banquet had drastically declined in popularity. According to Cyprian, a third-century bishop, Christians in Carthage regularly gathered as one large assembly in064 the morning at an altar for a Eucharistic sacrifice in buildings devoted to religious activities (Epistle 62.14–17; Epistle 33.4–5).⁹

The Eucharist experienced more change than continuity for various reasons: (1) culturally-based abuses of the evening meal encouraged the clergy to distribute the Eucharist in a more formal environment in contrast to the setting of a mundane meal; (2) Roman pressure to offer altar sacrifices to the gods motivated Christians to perceive the bread and wine as a Christian sacrifice; (3) the desire for all the members of a Christian community to gather as one large group required buildings devoted to religious activities, since the dining rooms of houses had a limited capacity; and (4) Christian communities may have preferred to partake of the Eucharist in a morning ritual that was separate from the evening meal.¹⁰

Thus the Lord’s Supper, which originally consisted of a full evening communal meal, transitioned over a period of approximately three centuries to a Eucharistic ritual. By at least the third century, Christians referred to the Eucharistic bread and wine as an “oblation,” that is, a sacrificial offering at an altar (The Apostolic Tradition 4).¹¹

022

The Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon) from the Hebrew Bible is a love song beyond compare—although it has been compared to everything. Some have deemed it ancient pornography. Others have sung its praise. In the second century C.E., Rabbi Akiva called it the “holy of holies.”^a

Saadia Gaon, a prodigious tenth-century scholar and rabbi, observed that Song of Songs resembles a locked door to which the key is missing. However, I believe that the key to understanding the Song is near at hand:

⁶ Set me as a seal upon your heart,

As a seal upon your arm.

For strong as death is love,

Harsh as the netherworld (Sheol) is passion.

Her flames are flames of fire,

a mighty blaze.

⁷ Torrents of water cannot extinguish love,

Rivers cannot sweep it away!

[Yet] if a man were to expend

all the wealth of his house for love,

[People] would surely heap scorn upon him.

(Song of Songs 8:6–7, author’s translation)

Although the translation “strong as death” in verse 6 is long established—going back to the earliest translation we have, the Greek Septuagint (c. 150 B.C.E.)—I would add the nuance, “fierce.”¹ “Fierce” has the advantage of being a good parallel to “harsh,” and both “fierce” and “strong” are definitions available to the Hebrew reader. Both characterize the attitude toward love of the Song.

Scholars have long tangled with this passage. An example of a scholar armed with erudition and insight, yet who comes to a startling conclusion, is that of Aren Wilson-Wright of the University of Texas at Austin.² To Wilson-Wright, “the Song identifies love with the most powerful force in the Israelite imagination—YHWH, the divine warrior.” Wilson-Wright uses the comparative method, using texts from within and outside of the Hebrew Bible. However, if you read the Song itself, you realize that Wilson-Wright is wrong. The Song has almost no mention of war, divine or otherwise, and it never uses that ubiquitous Hebrew name of God, YHWH. Wilson-Wright can come to his conclusion only by ignoring the end of the passage, “Yet if a man were to expend all the wealth of his household for love, people would surely heap scorn upon him,” which strongly militates against the idea that the poet is making a statement about love as the God of Israel.

There is thus one thing that love does not overpower among the common people, and that is money—a startlingly modern sentiment. Yet the poet probably says this wryly, as something he or she (some scholars believe a woman wrote the book³) deplores, based on the attitude toward love manifested in the entirety of this little Biblical book.

The sentiment in the last line of the Song quoted above has the ring of a proverb, and we may compare it to Proverbs 6:30–31. (The words in italics are found in the Hebrew of both Proverbs and Song of Songs):

[People] should not despise the thief who steals

to fill his gullet because he is starving.

But if he is caught he shall pay sevenfold;

he shall expend all the wealth of his house.

(Proverbs 6:30–31, author’s translation)

[Yet] if a man were to expend all the wealth of his house for love,

[People] would surely despise him.

(Song of Songs 8:7b, author’s translation)

Although the topic in Proverbs is different from the verse in the Song, the overlap in language is striking. The Song has been considered wisdom literature. Yet if we compare it to books that are clearly in the wisdom genre—namely Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes—we see that while the Song here and elsewhere has a connection to wisdom, it is in a class by itself. Where else in the Bible can you find lines060 like, “My love is mine, and I am his”?

The Song (at least on the basic level) doesn’t treat God or the fate of the people Israel: The name Israel appears but once in passing in the book—in Song of Songs 3:7. No less a Bible scholar than James Kugel (and among others, Wilson-Wright) has translated the words I translated above, “mighty blaze” (Hebrew shalhebetyah) as “flame of Yah,” where Yah is a divine name, a sort of abbreviation for the four-lettered name of God, YHWH. However, many scholars disagree and argue that the “yah” of Hebrew shalhebetyah is not to be taken as a divine name or epithet, but as a superlative (hence my translation, “mighty blaze”; compare with Jeremiah 2:31, “deep gloom”). And shalhebetyah is a reference not to the God of Israel but to love, as the continuation, “Torrential waters cannot extinguish love,” shows. “Torrential waters” come as an antithesis to the “mighty blaze,” but the word that is in parallel with shalhebetyah is love. The word that I translate as “extinguish” always refers to something burning, usually a flame—sometimes the burning of God’s wrath. (A good example is Jeremiah 7:20: “Thus says the Lord God: My wrath and rage shall be poured out [singular verb in Hebrew] … It shall burn, with none to extinguish it” [author’s translation].) Here it is love that is burning. Just so it is love whose flames are flames of fire, approaching the text from the other side. The poet’s language is crystal clear; it sings in a fresh way of the power of love. We see this, too, in the image of the woman’s wishing to be a seal on the male lover’s heart and arm to express her love, in a way that Shakespeare imitated when he wrote of Romeo wishing to be a glove on Juliet’s hand.

The poet’s aim, I would posit, is to sing of love with all the power of the Hebrew tongue. The Song is not a polemic, as some think, but a song of victory celebrating romantic love. And Song of Songs 8:6–7 is the “key” that unlocks the poem. A brief example: Chapter 3 begins with the woman on her bed, apparently dreaming. Yet she awakes and rouses herself in search of her love, encounters the city watchmen, and then finds her man. There are scholars who claim the whole thing must be a dream, because no woman would go out at night in ancient Jerusalem. It seems to me that a young woman—presumably a teenager—who is madly in love would risk going out at night. Chapter 5 fleshes out this contention. The lover knocks, but the woman is slow to answer. He disappears into the night, and she heads after him, only to receive a hiding—perhaps actually a wound—from the watchmen.

The poet isn’t naïve: “Harsh as the netherworld is passion.” Thus we see that the passage with which we began is the key to these two episodes, for to the impetuous young woman, “love is strong as death.”

022

For those of us over 50, any mention of a person with tattoos often brings to mind a rowdy sailor or a motorcycle gang member. Over the past generation, however, the art of tattooing has become part of mainstream culture, part of a larger phenomenon that includes the art of body piercing. It is not just young people who engage in this form of body art; many of those who have tattoos are at the social forefront of society: mothers, business people and sports stars. One cannot view an NBA game without seeing multiple tattoos on some of the players.

The Biblical writers clearly condemned the practice of tattooing. Leviticus 19:28 prohibits cutting or marking the body. No reason is given in this verse, however, which probably means it was obvious to the ancient reader—but not to us. The larger context of the passage is concerned with pagan mourning practices and idolatry. Thus, tattooing has been traditionally deemed “guilty by association” with other pagan rites. This is how it has been interpreted by both Jews and Christians over the centuries. Interestingly, a parallel passage in Leviticus 21:5 mentions mourning prohibitions—but without any reference to tattooing.

Three years ago, John Huehnergard and Harold Liebowitz challenged the traditional reasons for the Biblical prohibition of tattooing.¹ They recognized that mourning practices in mythological texts from Ugarit (a Canaanite town on the coast of Syria from the Late Bronze Age) involved the cutting of the body.² However, tattooing is never mentioned in these texts. That is also true of mourning practices in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

Oddly, there is a possible positive reference in the Bible to tattooing. In a poetic line from Isaiah 44:5, an Israelite commits himself to God by inscribing God’s name on his arm. Thus, the Israelite in Isaiah was willingly proposing to become a servant of God.³ This is reminiscent of the common Mesopotamian and Israelite practice of marking or branding slaves with the name of the owner, often involving the forehead or hand, perhaps so slaves could be returned to their owner if they had fled.⁴ If this is correct, then tattooing was considered by the ancients as a mark of ownership.

Many of the laws in Leviticus were made to disassociate the Israelites from their neighbors, the Canaanites, and from the Egyptians, their former masters. Tattooing, an insignia of ownership, was perhaps condemned in Leviticus because it reminded them of their past. After all, they had just spent the last four centuries as slaves in Egypt, where tattooing was also used as a sign of slavery.⁵ No longer considered slaves, the Israelites now were prohibited to mark their bodies with permanent signs of servitude to former masters. This did not have to be explicitly articulated to them; no one need ask prison inmates why they shed their orange jump suits when they are no longer incarcerated.

Later Jewish tradition viewed humans as bearing the image of God. Thus, they concluded that tattooing was a permanent marring of the divine image.

I think the meaning behind the body inscription is what mattered. As a sign of ownership, it mattered to whom the tattooed person belonged. If the person belonged to the God of Israel, then tattooing was perhaps deemed acceptable, according to my understanding of this passage of Isaiah.

What does this mean for our contemporary society? People get tattoos for a myriad of reasons: identification, artistic expression, honoring the memory of a loved one or expressing permanence in love. Though the Levitical reason may no longer be as relevant, tattooing can be seen as a conscience issue. Each one must take a serious look as to the purpose for making a permanent marking on his or her person.

022

With the advent of multi-national corporations and widespread international travel, it has become increasingly obvious that communication between people of different cultures is difficult at best. In fact a substantial industry has developed, designed to teach diplomats, business people and assorted travelers how to communicate with people from other countries.

Why does this matter to American readers of the Bible? Because of a simple, obvious—but usually overlooked—fact: The Bible is not a Western book. It was written by, for and about people from the Mediterranean world who did not think, live or communicate like Westerners and who would be astonished at many of the things modern, Western readers “find” within its pages. Moreover, few of us are aware of the subtle ways in which we unconsciously import our American culture into the world and language of the Biblical text. The fact is that miscommunication is no less a peril in reading the works of persons from other cultures than in speaking with them face to face.

In Matthew 25:14–30 Jesus tells a story about a rich man going on a journey who entrusted large sums of money to three slave-managers. The two who received the largest sums traded up, doubling the amounts they had taken on deposit. The third slave, however, buried his master’s money to ensure that it remained intact. When the returning master learned what happened in his absence, he praised and rewarded the first two slaves and bitterly rebuked slave number three.

Luke also has a version of the story (19:11–27). There each slave receives ten pounds and is told to “do business” with them until the master returns. The first slave makes 1,000 percent on his money and the second 500 percent. Both receive high praise and are rewarded by being placed in charge of ten and five cities, respectively. Thus one prominent western commentary author pronounces the astonishing returns in Luke “a most satisfactory result.”¹

Americans love this story because it seems to be a kind of homespun capitalism on the lips of Jesus. We imagine the master in the story to be an analogue for God and thus see the story as divine affirmation of our Western economic practices of trading and investment.

The problem, however, is that given the “limited good” outlook of ancient Mediterranean cultures, seeking “more” was considered morally wrong. Because the pie was “limited” and already all distributed, anyone getting “more” meant someone else got less. Thus honorable people did not try to get more, and those who did were automatically considered thieves: To have gained, to have accumulated more than one started with, is to have taken the share of someone else. As the early Christian theologian Jerome would later write: “Every rich person is either a thief or the heir of a thief” (In Hieremiam II.V.2; CCL LXXIV 61). And as Sirach puts it, “A merchant can hardly keep from wrongdoing, and a tradesman will not be declared innocent of sin” (26:29).

Of course the elite tried to deflect accusations of getting rich at the expense of others by having their affairs handled by slaves—exactly what is described in the story Jesus tells. Shameful, or even greedy, behavior could be condoned in slaves because slaves had no honor nor any expectation of it. As Sirach so wisely says, it amounts to this: “A rich man will exploit you if you can be of use to him, but if you are in need, he will forsake you” (13:4). And exploitation is exactly what this ancient story is about.

The returning master admits to what the third slave knew ahead of time: that he is a “hard” (the Greek term here, skleros, is used by ancient writers to describe someone who is cruel, merciless or arrogantly inhumane) man who “reaps where he did not sow and gathers where he did not scatter seed” (Matthew 25:24). The perfect definition of a thief! How have we missed that? Moreover, the master in Luke’s version is even worse. There he owns up to this same merciless attitude but then goes much further: ordering his enemies slaughtered in his own presence.

And what about the third slave, the one so bitterly rebuked by the returning master and vilified in virtually all Western interpretation for failing to invest the money? In Matthew, he buries the deposit for safekeeping. The rabbis argued that this was precisely the right thing to do so the deposit062 could be returned intact (b. Baba Mezi’a 42b; m. Baba Batra 4:8.) In fact they ruled that burying the deposit meant the trustee was not liable if a loss occurred. Though the Lukan slave ties the money in a cloth—thus taking what the Mishnah specifies as the riskier course—he nonetheless preserves the pound as any honorable man would. He does not participate in the scheme to double the master’s money, but honorably refrains from taking anything that belongs to the share of another.

In both versions of the story, the third slave is told he should have invested the money with bankers so the master could have at least earned interest on his money. But seeking interest from another Israelite was forbidden by the Torah (Deuteronomy 23:19–20), and, elsewhere in Luke, Jesus says that we should lend “expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35). Even more telling is a third version of this parable quoted by Eusebius (265–339 C.E.) from the now-lost Gospel of the Nazoreans. There Eusebius is quite explicit that the hero of the story is the third slave who refused to cooperate in the investment schemes of the greedy master (Theophania 22).

What causes cross-cultural miscommunication is the unwarranted assumption that people from other cultures think like we do. But they don’t. So when we read this story (and so many others in the Bible) through Western eyes, we miss completely what it once said to people in the ancient Mediterranean world. Perhaps it might have been possible for Western readers to see this master’s rapacious behavior for what it really is had we not been so eager to discover our own cultural values affirmed in the sacred text.

020

What roles did women fill in the early Christian community as described in the Book of Acts? What does this New Testament book say about women leaders, and how does this portrayal differ from Greco-Roman characterizations in general of women leaders and intellectuals?

In Satires from the late first or early second century C.E., the Roman satiric poet Juvenal expresses his opinion of Roman women as scholars:

Don’t let the lady reclining next to you have her own rhetorical style or brandish phrases before hurling her rounded syllogism at you. Don’t let her know the whole of history. Let there be a few things in books that she doesn’t even understand. I loathe the woman who is forever referring to Palaemon’s Grammar and thumbing through it, observing all the laws and rules of speech, or who quotes lines I’ve never heard, a female scholar indeed!

Reading this quotation might lead you to lament its misogyny and the status of women in the Greco-Roman world. However, this type of statement may not be normative. These sorts of scathing comments were all written by male, elite authors. These men were highly invested in maintaining the economic and social status quo, so any threats to this balance were viewed with suspicion at best and bitter invective at worst. Therefore, their critiques are best read reflexively; namely, there would be no need for these criticisms without the pervasiveness of female autonomy.

Letters, grave inscriptions and other artifacts demonstrate that women maintained businesses, made independent choices and managed their own finances in ways that would grant them—and their children—economic independence. By some estimates, women owned as much as one-half of the property in certain regions. These women acted as lenders as well as borrowers. They used their own property as collateral to secure loans, bought and sold goods commercially and advocated on their own behalf in the legal system. In effect, women routinely engaged in all of the practices listed as “prohibited” by male authors.

In addition, women were involved in commercial trade of all kinds, especially within the textile industry. Numerous examples come from Pompeii, which acted as a bustling trade center in Greco-Roman times. One of the most impressive buildings in all of Pompeii was the “Hall of the Fullones” (fullers—those who cleanse cloth and make it thicker during the cloth-making process). The size and central location of the building suggest that its uses went far beyond the needs of fullers and was likely used as a combination marketplace and business club where high-level negotiations took place. The inscription on the building lists only one name as its donor: Eumachia. Based on this sizable civic donation, Eumachia was not a worker, but an important civic patroness and shipping magnate who did not need to list her husband’s or father’s name to give herself legitimacy. Eumachia is just one example of many successful, independent female entrepreneurs in the Greco-Roman world.

How do we situate Tabitha (Acts 9:36–43) and Lydia (Acts 16:11–15, 40) within this social world? When reading Acts, it is easy to dismiss them as “minor characters,” especially when they appear next to the likes of Peter and Paul. But careful exegesis reveals that it is the women, not the apostles, who draw the focus in the passages in which they appear.

As a patroness of her community in Joppa, Tabitha played a crucial role in binding the Christian community together and seeing to the well-being of its members. This is evident in Acts 9:38, when two men went to Lydda and requested that Peter come to Joppa “without delay” because Tabitha had died. It is unlikely that the men expected Peter to raise Tabitha from the dead—since in that scenario Peter would have simply fulfilled the community’s expectations rather than060 amazed them, leaving little reason for their resulting belief (Acts 9:41–42). Instead, the urgency of the request seems to be because Peter was seen as a stabilizing and supportive figure for a grieving—now leaderless—community. Peter’s rapid compliance with the emissaries’ request suggests that Tabitha was an important patroness of the Jesus movement in the region surrounding Joppa and was therefore well known to Peter.

Tabitha was called a disciple, the only woman to receive this title in the Biblical corpus. She also acted as a patroness to the numerous widows who mourned her passing while plaintively displaying the clothing she had made “while she was with them.” Their grief was especially poignant since Tabitha’s loss may have put the widows in significant economic danger. While Tabitha’s resuscitation did demonstrate Peter’s authority, it also highlighted the indispensable leadership role that Tabitha played within her community.

Lydia’s characterization bears marked similarities to Eumachia. Lydia was a dealer in purple cloth, a luxury commodity that was sold mainly on the international market. The term “dealer” here designates someone who bought and sold (not manufactured) goods. Lydia and her household were baptized at her request, suggesting that she could make decisions for those under her authority without the oversight of a husband or male guardian. Lydia asked Paul to accept her hospitality in language that was quite forceful (Acts 16:15). However, there is no suggestion that this type of assertive behavior would have been considered unwomanly or shameful. On the contrary, Acts holds Lydia up as a moral exemplar for disciples of the risen Christ.

Roman elite writers such as Tacitus and Suetonius praised women for their motherhood, modesty, deference and wifely support. On the contrary, virtuous women in Acts are shown without husbands or children and acting on their own authority. Compared to a woman like Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11) who abeted her husband in his financial misdeeds, or to a static character like Drusilla (Acts 24:24), Tabitha and Lydia’s independence and leadership demonstrates the dynamic role that women played in the emerging Christian movement. Tabitha and Lydia were praised for their acts of service, hospitality and willingness to act as leaders and benefactresses on behalf of their communities.

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One of the problems in reading ancient texts like the Bible in the 21st century is the danger of anachronism—by which I mean bringing unhelpful modern ideas and expectations to our readings. This problem becomes all the more acute when dealing with ancient texts on which much historical import hinges.

For example, we are a people obsessed with time—and with exactness when it comes to time—down to the nanosecond. In this regard, we are very different from the ancients, who did not go around wearing little sundials on their wrists and did not talk about seconds and minutes. They did not obsess about precision when it comes to time.

Take a few examples from the Gospels that may help us read the stories about Jesus’ last week of life with more insight.

Some texts tell us that Jesus predicted he would rise “after three days.” Others say he would rise “on the third day.” In Matthew 12:40 Jesus mentions, “three days and three nights,” but this is just part of a general analogy with the story of what happened with Jonah and the whale, and as such the time reference shouldn’t be pressed. Jesus is just saying, “It will be like the experience of Jonah.”

On the other hand, in Mark 8:31 Jesus says, “The Son of Man will rise again after three days.” He mentions the same event in John 2:19 as “in three days,” and on various occasions the Gospel writers tell us Jesus used the phrase “on the third day” (see, e.g., Matthew 16:21; 17:23; 20:19; Luke 24:46). On the face of it, this might seem to involve a flat contradiction. While both predictions could be wrong, is it really possible both could be right?

The problem with this sort of modern reasoning is that it assumes the Gospel writers intended always to write with precision on this matter. In fact the phrase “after three days” in the New Testament can simply mean “after a while” or “after a few days” without any clear specificity beyond suggesting several days, in this case parts of three days, would be involved. In fact, the Hebrew Bible provides us with some clues about these sorts of differences. Second Chronicles 10:5, 12 clearly says, “Come to me again after three days … So … all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day because the king had said ‘Come to me again the third day.’” Apparently “after three days” means the very same thing as “on the third day” in this text. Is this just carelessness, or is it in fact an example of typical imprecision when it comes to speaking about time? I would suggest that the phrase “after three days” is a more general or imprecise way of speaking, whereas “on the third day” is somewhat more specific (though it still doesn’t tell us when on the third day). These texts were not written to meet our modern exacting standards when it comes to time.

One of the keys to interpreting the time references in the New Testament is being aware that most of the time, the time references are not precise, and we must allow the ancient author to be general when he wants to be general and more specific when he wants to be more specific. Especially when you have both sorts of references to the time span between Jesus’ death and resurrection in one book by one author, and indeed sometimes even within close proximity to each other, one should take the hint that these texts were not written according to our modern exacting expectations when it comes to time references.

Isn’t it about time we let these authors use language, including time language, in the way that was customary in their own era? I would suggest it’s high time we showed these ancient authors the respect they deserve and read them with an awareness of the conventions they followed when writing ancient history or ancient biography and not impose our later genre conventions on them.¹

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Religious violence is a problem in the world today. We have seen too many cases where fundamentalist terrorists kill innocent people in the name of God. Recently in Paris and San Bernardino, radical Islamic terrorists murdered innocent people in the name of Allah. But radical Islam is not alone. We have also seen fundamentalist terrorist attacks in the name of the Christian and Jewish God: Recently a Christian terrorist murdered innocent people at an abortion clinic in Colorado Springs, and Jewish terrorists murdered a Palestinian family in Duma in a revenge attack. The name of God differs—Allah, Christ, Ha-Shem—but the religious motivation for violence is palpable. Is there something wrong with religion that it gives rise to the murder of innocents? This is a problem that we cannot escape.

These recent examples of religious violence stem from fundamentalist versions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. These are the three major monotheisms, all Biblically based or derived. Is there something wrong with Biblically derived monotheism that gives rise to religious terrorism—to murder in the name of God? Some people have argued that the answer is yes. This calls for careful reflection.

The doctrine of holy war (ḥerem in Hebrew) is mentioned or implied many times in the Hebrew Bible and is prominent in the Book of Joshua.¹ When the Israelites approach Jericho, Joshua commands the army, “Yahweh has given you the city. The city and everything in it are to be dedicated (ḥerem) to Yahweh” (Joshua 6:16–17). This means that the city is to be razed and every living thing in it killed—including men, women, children and animals—as a way of “dedicating” them to God. According to the doctrine of holy war, victory belongs to God, and all the spoils of war are his. The message seems to be that war is not for material gain but only for the glory of God.

Such is the ideology of holy war. A moment’s reflection—and the testimony of the historical evidence—tells us that it rarely ever happened this way. The reality of war is conquest for material gain: territory, trade routes, taxes, power, natural resources. Even in the Biblical accounts of holy war, the spoils are often kept by the victors. The ideology of holy war is an overlay that masks the pragmatic motives for war. This same religious ideology—war’s justifying face—is found throughout the ancient Near East. The Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II crows about his victories, “I massacred them, carried off captives from them, razed, destroyed and burnt (their) cities.” Why did he do this? Because the god Ashur wanted him to destroy the rebellious enemy. The enemy is a threat to the cosmic order.

Similarly, when the Moabite king Mesha writes about his victorious war against Israel, he describes it as the victory of Chemosh, his god. The Mesha Stele says, “Chemosh said to me, ‘Go and seize Nebo from Israel,’ and I went in the night, and I battled against it from the break of dawn until noon, and I took it, and I killed all of them—7,000 men and boys and women and girls and maidens—for I dedicated [the verb of ḥerem] it to Ashtar-Chemosh, and I took from there the vessels of Yahweh, and I dragged them before Chemosh.” Here Chemosh is the god of cosmic order, and Israel is the chaotic enemy.

The ideology of warfare in the ancient Near East is aptly described by Assyriologist Mario Liverani as a clash between order and chaos. The king is the defender of order. He “had a direct and legitimate link with the gods … On the contrary, the enemies were ‘godless’ or were abandoned by their gods, or were supported by inferior deities.”² Only by conquest could the enemy be civilized and chaos contained. The enemy was wrong or misguided, since they worshiped false or ineffective gods. Liverani concludes, “The comparison between the two ‘faiths,’ one being the correct one and the other simply delusional, brought an obvious outcome.” The king must uphold the divine order, and the enemy is inevitably destroyed.

There is a problem with this religious justification for violence—in antiquity and today—but the Bible is not its source, nor is monotheism. The problem is a false ideology, one that gives a066 justification for war and killing in the name of God or the gods. Wars are fought by states or polities for material gain. The religious ideology of holy war, which has trickled down into the religious motivation for religious terror, is a mask, a justification and a deception. It deceives its practitioners and its victims. Ashur does not want the death of the people of Laqe, nor does Yahweh want the death of the people of Jericho, nor does Chemosh want the death of the people of Nebo. Nor does Allah want the death of people in California. These are fictions that overlay national, ethnic and religious dreams of conquest and power. From Ashurnasirpal to ISIS, the motivation for war and terror is cloaked in an ideology of divine blessing and justification. But conquest is an assertion of power, not of moral worth. We have seen enough war and mass murder to figure this one out.

The Bible and Biblical monotheism are not the source of religious violence. The problem stems from a toxic mix of religion and nationalism, or of religion and ethnocentrism. Freud diagnosed this as a group neurosis, which he called the “narcissism of minor differences” (e.g., the minor differences between Sunni and Shia—or between Muslim, Christian and Jew). What is the solution? Although it may seem undramatic, I am partial to the Enlightenment idea of the separation of church and state. This separation opens a space for religious plurality and respect for differences of belief and practice. The dangers of religious fundamentalism are restricted and marginalized when they are separated from the state’s monopoly on lawful violence.

People will still kill other people—just as chimpanzees kill other chimpanzees—but at least this rule reduces licit killing in the name of God. The separation of church and state is fragile in the West and is nonexistent in the Middle East. If we peel away the religious justification for institutional and state violence, then we can see violence in its true naked cruelty. As the sixth commandment says, murder is a crime, all the way down. It is a deception to say that it is, or ever was, holy.