By Farther Steps

Reformed and Reforming, semper reformanda to Christ's glory.

Posts Tagged ‘Jesus’

Not Was but Who?

There is no witness like a hostile witness. When it comes to Christianity, Bert Ehrman is pretty hostile but he is a historian and he makes a pretty good case for the historical existence of Jesus (whatever you make of Him):

I don’t agree with how Ehrman processes the evidence (obviously); there are solid reasons for differences in the gospels and other things he mentions. I had to smile at the way the interviewer pushes back because Erhman is using the same approach apologists do. As if that in itself makes the facts wrong. The interviewer tries to resort to the same old “yeahbuts” but Ehrman is honest enough to point out that that particular emperor will be ill-attired for the coming winter months. He’s naked. Which is to say, those arguments play well to the sympathetic crowd but they don’t really work.

In the end Ehrman makes the point that you can’t look at the historical facts and say Jesus didn’t exist. So you’re not left with “Was he?” but rather “Who was he?” Once the point that Jesus existed is established there is a case to be made about who he is.

Christ’s Descent

Into the lower parts of the earth. 1 “For ‘the lower parts of the earth,’ they may possibly signify no more than the place beneath; as when our Saviour said, (John viii. 23,) ‘Ye are from beneath, I am from above; ye are of this world, I am not of this world;’ or as God spake by the prophet, ‘I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath.’ Nay, they may well refer to his incarnation, according to that of David, (Ps. xxxix. 15,) or to his burial. (Ps. lxii. 9)” – Pearson These words mean nothing more than the condition of the present life. To torture them so as to make them mean purgatory or hell, is exceedingly foolish. The argument taken from the comparative degree, “the lower parts,” is quite untenable. A comparison is drawn, not between one part of the earth and another, but between the whole earth and heaven; as if he had said, that from that lofty habitation Christ descended into our deep gulf. – Calvin’s Commentary on The Epistle to the Ephesians, commenting on Ephesians 4:9

↩1 “For ‘the lower parts of the earth,’ they may possibly signify no more than the place beneath; as when our Saviour said, (John viii. 23,) ‘Ye are from beneath, I am from above; ye are of this world, I am not of this world;’ or as God spake by the prophet, ‘I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath.’ Nay, they may well refer to his incarnation, according to that of David, (Ps. xxxix. 15,) or to his burial. (Ps. lxii. 9)” – Pearson

Pride Translated Into Praise

As I’ve been reading my Old Testament lately, I’ve been doing a little mental exercise. At first, it was a form or rebellion and then it turned into something better.

When you read in the Old Testament “the LORD” what you’re seeing is God’s covenant name “Yahweh” with the vowel dots for “Adoni” or “Lord”. The Masorite Jews did this in the 12th century when the included the vowel dots in the Hebrew manuscripts because traditionally the Jews would see YHWH and say “Adoni” so as to not violate the Third Commandment, “You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.” An admirable effort but not really what is intended there. It would easy to never say “Yahweh” and yet profane his name in any other number of ways.

Also, this convention winds up running into some translation issues. For one example (and there are many more) in 1 Kings 2:26 it says “because you carried the ark of the Lord GOD before David…” Literally it is “adoni Yahweh” and here Yahweh is translated as “GOD” because to follow the normal convention, it would read “of the Lord the LORD” which is a bit weird.

So my act of rebellion was to see “the LORD” and read it as “Yahweh” every time. After a bit I got worried that I was just being proud and clever; never a good thing. But then I thought about how the New Testament handles this. There the word “Lord” is used quite often in the context of Yahweh in the Old Testament. It is also used in a more familiar manner such as we might say “sir” today. Then another fashion it is used is as an act of political rebellion when the church affirmed that “Jesus is Lord” instead of Caesar.

And that’s when it came together. What I was actually doing was what the church had been doing. Seeing “Yahweh” and thinking/saying “Lord” for whatever reason; theological persnickety-ness or honoring God. But in the New Testament “Lord” is applied to Jesus. So when I read in the New Testament “Jesus is Lord” and hear in my head that habit from reading “Lord” in my Old Testament as “Yahweh” I’m actually doing the right thing! Jesus is Yahweh! Amazing how God turned my cleverness on its head and brought me to honor him even more through an translation oddity. I love him.