Readers Reply

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Cut Letters

Consider omitting fundamentalist letters. We get the point. We don’t have to see fundamentalist fulminations in every publication of BR.

Keep Letters

I am writing to tell you that I love BR. I find the articles to be insightful and thought provoking, and the scholarship beyond reproach. I also love the artwork that highlights and accentuates the topics discussed. However, I have to say that even if BR were just another journal with stuffy intellectual work and little art, I would still buy it simply because of the great delight I take each month in reading the letters to the editor. The reasons people find for raking you over the coals every other month and canceling their subscriptions bring considerable merriment to the otherwise boring routine of a pastor of a small rural congregation.

I will always be a subscriber to BR!

Noah’s Flood

It’s True

The last sentence in Mr. Hendel’s column “The Search for Noah’s Flood,” BR 19:03, goes, “Even if it didn’t happen, it’s a true story.” This is not only wrong, it has the side effect of leading people to believe that fiction (any fiction) can be believed as the truth! If the worldwide Flood of Noah did not happen, then the Bible story, and by extension the whole Bible, is fiction and not good for anything other than entertainment value, if that. The reason the Flood story is an immortal story is because it really happened.

It’s Not True, It’s Good

Mr. Hendel is right on the money. My thought on his last sentence is that stories are neither true nor false. They are either good or bad. Remember the story of Brer Rabbit. I never considered it to be true or false but only to be a good story. Thus, Noah’s story is either good or bad depending on one’s philosophy or theology. To say that it is true or false is meaningless from my viewpoint.

What’s True?

Ronald S. Hendel’s short column in the June 2003 issue makes the common assertion that Bible stories embody deep truths (see “The Search for Noah’s Flood,” BR 19:03). As he concludes about the Flood: “Even if it didn’t happen, it’s a true story.”

But what are the “deep truths” of the Flood tale? That God can have a temper tantrum and can kill innocent children? That an unchanging God can change his mind? That an omniscient God can suddenly find things didn’t work out as he had expected?

At least the Gilgamesh Epic has the lesson of man’s inevitable mortality. I have often asked what the lessons or deep truths of Noah’s Flood are, and am greeted with fumbling answers about God’s love of humanity … Well, er …

Ronald S. Hendel responds:

Dr. Roode points out astutely that the Flood story seems troubling with respect to God’s destructive behavior and abrupt changes of mind. Yet I think the story makes some deep points about the nature of our existence in the world. Humans are indeed morally challenged—just look at the world around us. How is it that a just God could put up with human evil? This is a tough question, and in the end the Flood story (in both the J and P versions) concludes that 004God must relax his pure moral standards and either reconcile to human evil (in J) or promulgate laws to regulate human violence (P). The idea that God can act harshly and then change his mind may be disturbing, but it conforms to our experience that harsh and violent things happen in the world, but that good things happen too. In other words, the Flood story treats the problem of human evil, the relation of God to this problem, and the way the world holds together. These are deep issues, and I think the Flood story is a profound response.

James

Edited Out?

Ben Witherington’s article “Bringing James out of the Shadows,” BR 19:03, puts a welcome spotlight on a long underrated New Testament figure. But rather than reading James’s gradual ascendance over the church into the New Testament, might one be justified in suggesting that James’s true role was stifled by later Gentile redactors embarrassed by the deeply Jewish roots of the original body of believers in Jerusalem?

Ben Witherington III responds:

One does not need to read James’s importance into the text, it is plainly there in a variety of sources—Paul, Acts and of course the book called James. As for later Gentile redactors, we have no textual evidence of attempts to erase James from the record. The evidence we have from extrabiblical sources like Hermas, the Didache and Clement of Rome does not suggest anything like embarrassment over James. Indeed the burgeoning apocryphal James material, beginning with the Proto-Evangelium of James in the second century, provides evidence of attempts to spread even further his influence and significance.

Reordering the Books

What a fantastic issue! Thank you for putting out such a great magazine. It has brought my study of the Bible to a whole new level. The article “Bringing James out of the Shadows,” BR 19:03, was an eye-opener.

But I do have a comment for Mr. Witherington. He says, “Galatians is thus one of the first New Testament books to be written.” Does he mean that this book should be inserted before the Gospels or should be the first book after the Gospels?

Ben Witherington III responds:

All of Paul’s letters predate the writing of the Gospels, which began with Mark in about 68 A.D. and continued on into the 90s with the Gospel of John. Galatians probably dates to about 49 A.D.

Which James?

Those pesky James boys are at it again, confusing us as surely as Abbot and Costello did in their old “Who’s on first” routine. You have two timely articles about James in the June 2003 issue of BR, but may be swamped with responses about the identity of who is which … or which is who … or who’s on first.

My confusion stems from the captions accompanying two of the pictures in Witherington’s article (see “Bringing James out of the Shadows,” BR 19:03). Current scholarship distinguishes the various 005Jameses as:

1. James = brother of John; son of Zebedee; son of Thunder (Boanerges); James the Greater.

2. James = son of Alphaeus; James the Less.

3. James = brother of Jesus; James the Just (or Righteous); head of Jerusalem church (and principal subject of your two articles).

4. James = son of Clopas.

Thanks for straightening us out.—Ed.

Harrowing of Hell

Mentioned Twice

Thank you for the fascinating history of the concept of the “Harrowing of Hell,” BR 19:03, by Heidi Hornik and Mikeal Parsons.

Please note that the descent into Hell is described in two lines of the Apostles’ Creed, not just one. The very next phrase, “he rose from the dead”—Latin, resurrexit a mortuis—means literally “he rose up from among the dead ones.” The word mortuis is plural, and means “those who have died.” The presumption is that Jesus was among the dead people for a while, and then rose from among them.

Heidi Hornik and Mikeal Parsons respond:

Thanks. Of course, technically, the second reference in the Apostles’ Creed is to the “ascent from Hell” rather than the “descent.”

The Robbing of Hell

The article on “Harrowing of Hell,” BR 19:03, suggests that “harrowing” means, metaphorically, “using a harrow,” an agricultural tool. Rather, it means “robbing.” Some of your readers may remember that Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400) in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales describes how a widow and her two daughters reacted when they saw a fox run off with their rooster in his jaws. They shouted, “Harrow!” (Robbery!), and the whole village joined them in noisy pursuit. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the use of “harrow” with reference to Hell to about the year 1000 in Old English, a couple of centuries before any reference to the agricultural implement.

Heidi Hornik and Mikeal Parsons respond:

We stand corrected. Thanks for your input.

Tell Me More

Please provide additional information about the crucifixion painting (above) by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his son, which illustrated your recent article on the Harrowing of Hell. The commentary states that Jesus appears twice in this “typical” crucifixion scene. My questions are as follows: Isn’t that Jesus making a third appearance in the background on the left side of the cross? He appears to be engaged in some sort of confrontation with a skeleton. Would that be Moses and the Israelites in their “tent city” with the bronze serpent in a pole in the upper right portion of the painting? Is that an angel in the sky with a banner of some sort? Is there an inscription on the banner? And what’s going on just below the angel on the horizon?

At far right in Lucas Cranach the Elder’s painting of the crucifixion, the Israelite 006camp is plagued by snakes until Moses erects the brazen serpent on a pole (Numbers 21:4–9)—an event often interpreted by Christians as a prefiguration of Jesus’ crucifixion. Just to the left, an angel with a banner announces Jesus’ birth to three shepherds in a field. In the central background (just right of Jesus’ bloodied feet), Moses presents the Tablets of the Law to the Israelites; to the left of this scene, Death and the Devil chase not Jesus, but Adam. As Neil MacGregor writes in Seeing Salvation: Images of Christ in Art (Yale, 2000), the picture illustrates “how sixteenth-century Protestants saw salvation. The word of Christ the Saviour, correctly received in faith, is sufficient to redeem us.”—Ed.

Another Reference

The references to Christ in Hell aren’t limited to the seemingly vague ones in Peter’s epistles. In Acts 2:25–31, Peter, inspired of the Holy Ghost, expounded on Psalm 16 (“For you will not leave my soul in Hell, nor let your Holy One experience corruption”) as a prophetic writing referring to the Messiah. To not be left in Hell, Christ first would have to have been there.

And Another One?

In the “Harrowing of Hell,” BR 19:03, Hornik and Parsons cite a number of passages from the New Testament, such as 1 Peter 3:19 and 1 Peter 4:6, but they do not mention a passage I feel is even more explicit in its reference to the descent of Jesus into Hades: Ephesians 4:9. This passage reads: “Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?” (as it is translated in the Complete Word Study New Testament).

The New Strong’s Expanded Dictionary of Bible Words says that the Greek words katoteros and meros, which are translated as “lower parts,” refer to the regions beneath the earth, that is, Hell.

Heidi Hornik and Mikeal Parsons respond:

We did not mean to suggest that we had presented an exhaustive list of passages that have been understood to refer to Jesus’ descent into Hell (though we do mention Psalm 16). Only the references in 1 Peter, at least as they were interpreted in the early church, were understood to give any indication regarding the activity of Jesus during his descent.

Descent as Doctrine

John Calvin himself would have bitterly repudiated Heidi Hornik and Mikeal Parson’s suggestion that Calvin “tended to dismiss the doctrine of the descent into Hell.” True, Calvin did dismiss as “nothing but a fable” the interpretation of that doctrine that “Christ descended to the souls of the [dead saints], to … bring them out of the prison in which they were confined.” The notion that the souls of the dead were in prison, Calvin regarded as “childish” (Institutes 2.16.9). However, interpreting the descent into Hell as the “dire and dreadful … tortures which [Christ] endured … in our stead” (2.16.10), Calvin defended the descent into Hell as doctrine that “we must not omit” as “omission of it greatly detracts from the benefit of Christ’s death” (2.16.8).

007

Moses’ Name

John Doe?

Regarding “Moses’ Egyptian Name,” BR 19:03, by Ogden Goelet: It seems that even before Moses was put in the river, he must have been given a name by his parents. In all cultures, a newborn is given a name or at least a pet name. So my question is, what was Moses’ name at the time of his birth?

Any suggestions?—Ed.

Osarsiph or Moses?

What about the ancient Egyptian historian Manetho who, according to Josephus (Against Apion 1.26), claimed that the Egyptians called Moses Osarsiph (which clearly contains the god-name Osar or Qusar or Asar, called Osiris by the Greeks)?

Potpourri

What’s on the Wall?

In “The Bible in the News” (Jots & Tittles, BR 19:03), Leonard Greenspoon made numerous references to the Babylonian king Belshazzar seeing “the handwriting on the wall.” Checking three different English translations, I found that all three referred to the king seeing “the hand writing on the wall,” but none said anything about the handwriting that the hand wrote on the wall. For those of us who do not read biblical Hebrew, which is it?

Leonard Greenspoon responds:

The expression “the handwriting on the wall” does not actually appear in chapter 5 of the Book of Daniel. Instead, the text (Daniel 5:5) speaks of “the hand [or literally, the palm of the hand] that was writing.” Verse 24 again speaks of (the palm of) the hand and also contains the noun for “writing,” which reappears in the next verse, along with the words of the cryptic message itself.

This expression—as both the hand writing 042and the handwriting on the wall—has a rich history of literary use and creative reuse (from Jerome to D.H. Lawrence), as can be seen in the article, “Handwriting on the Wall,” in the Dictionary of English Literature, ed. by David L. Jeffrey (Eerdmans, 1992). In today’s usage the expression “handwriting on the wall” invariably invokes the image of unpleasant news for the viewer or hearer.

On Intolerance

Two points in response to James Sanders’s welcome letter “Intolerance is Idolatry” (Readers Reply, BR 19:03). First of all, there is an important omission in it (as well as in the article by James Hough that he recommends to us; see “Ways of Knowing God,” BR 18:03). Hough writes: “Almost every religion claims that it is the exclusive path to a true knowledge of God”; and he goes on, quite justifiably, to talk about the past exclusiveness and intolerance of the Catholic church; but then, inexplicably, he fails to mention the revolutionary change worked by Vatican II when it rejected the traditional claim, “outside the church there is no salvation” (see Lumen Gentium n. 16), and went on to affirm freedom of conscience (see Dignitatis Humanae) and to call on Christians to learn to appreciate the other religions, with their moral and spiritual values, starting with Judaism (see Nostra Aetate). In its assertion that God seeks to bring all to salvation, Vatican II went so far as to state explicitly that this includes those without religion and nontheists.

Secondly, in his final paragraph, having stated that there will be “hope for the world when three of its major religions finally confess their particular idolatries in claiming to know who the One God really is,” Prof. Sanders continues, “They should instead confess that God is beyond all human ability to comprehend completely.” Good, but I trust that he holds that at least we know God sufficiently to reject and abhor one specific idolatry: the biblical texts that have God commanding and facilitating genocidal massacres (that is, the “ban” of Deuteronomy 20, Joshua, etc.), as well as all later traditions of divinely approved mass killing (e.g., in the New Testament, Revelation) that have their roots in these texts. When we recognize how radically ambiguous and flawed our own tradition is, it should make it easier for us to approach other traditions fraternally and affirmatively, but without needing to close our eyes to their possibly grave flaws.