Sunday Morning Greek Blog

April 24, 2011

Lost and Found

Filed under: Greek,Luke Gospel of,New Testament,Repentance — Scott Stocking @ 7:42 am

God never has accidents. This is not to say that God “controls” everything in such a way as to make free will a farce. Nor does this imply that God necessarily chooses to know all the free will choices everyone will make in the future: if he did, this would also bring free will into question, because nothing then could happen contrary to his knowledge of the future. (If C.S. Lewis is correct in Screwtape Letters, God sees past, present, and future in his “Now.”) All this to say that I think it is no accident that my reading this Resurrection Sunday is the Parable of the Lost Son (Luke 15:11–32). With apologies to the Olympic speed skating champion of the same name, I’m going to call this lost son Apollo, from the Greek ἀπόλλυμι (apollumi /ah POL loo mee/ ‘I destroy’, ‘I lose’).

To set the background of the story, I noticed a few things as I was reading. The one thing that sticks out most prominently to me is that there are three different Greek words used for the workers in the story:

  1. μίσθιος (misthios /MISS thee os/ [/th/ as in “thin”; always this way in Greek]), which means ‘hired hand’ (similar to the Greek word μίσθος (misthos /MISS thoss/ ‘pay’, ‘reward’)
  2. δοῦλος (doulos /DOO loss/) and its related verb δουλεύω (douleuō /doo LYOO oh/), ‘slave’ or ‘servant’ and ‘I slave’ or ‘I serve’.
  3. παῖς (pais /piess/ [like the word “pie” with an /s/ instead of a /z/ sound]) ‘servant’, ‘child’, ‘boy’, ‘girl’.

I can relate to the story of the Prodigal Son all too well, but not in the way you might think. In my adult life, I have known several times when God was calling me to do something or warning me not to do something, but did not always recognize what he was trying to tell me. In 1981, after I graduated from high school, I knew God wanted me at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. God brought several people into my life in my four years there who helped solidify my foundation in the faith. However, in 1983, as I was loading up to move back to UNL for the school year, I felt an incredible pull to stay in Omaha and not return to UNL for that school year. There is a part of me that still wishes I would have heeded that call: I wound up in one of the worst relationships of my life that caused me (and her) great heartache. However, out of the ashes of that failure to discern God’s will, I also met a man who would become one of my best friends and mentors, and who still is today. Through him and his wife at the time, I was encouraged to attend Lincoln (Illinois) Christian Seminary. In 1987, when I packed up my Chevy S10 with pretty much everything I owned, I knew without a doubt that God wanted me in seminary in Illinois.

But somewhere during my 23 years in Illinois, I got “lost.” I won’t go into details, because the choices I made were intensely personal. Yet God has blessed me and prepared me in so many ways for where I am today, that I cannot imagine my life having taken another course. (Well, I can, but like Aslan said in the Chronicles of Narnia [I think it was in The Horse and His Boy], “It’s not permitted for you to know what might have been,” or something to that effect.) At one point, perhaps five or six years ago, I started feeling the tug to come back to Nebraska. I attributed it to homesickness, but I know now that God had indeed begun the process of calling me home. I was not “spending my possessions on wasteful living,” but I knew I didn’t have my financial priorities in order, going into debt when I had no prospects for a decent job in Illinois.

In the last two years, after my wife filed for divorce from me, I found myself feeling very much like Apollo in a far off land. I had been trying on and off for several years to find full-time employment. The editing work I had became steady, but the pay was woefully late. At every turn, I was turned down for positions for which I was adequately or more than adequately qualified. The best I could do was to maintain some part-time teaching and substitute teaching assignments. In the year or so before moving back to Omaha last September, I began hearing the Nebraska Cornhusker fight song playing in my head, even when my cell phone wasn’t ringing. I was flat broke, and the best job I could come up with was $100/week preaching at a congregation of less than 10 and about $150/week part-time at the IGA. I was broke, at rock bottom, and I felt as Apollo did (and not without cause), that most people were better off than me.

I had become a δοῦλος to my stubbornness to remain in Illinois near my kids. I had no money, no vehicle, and no prospects for gainful employment. I fought tooth and nail to find employment (some weeks submitting more than a dozen résumés for professional jobs, not to mention the countless near-minimum-wage jobs) to keep me near my kids, but still, “There Is No Place Like Nebraska” kept ringing in my ears. It was inevitable: I had to return “home.” I knew job prospects were better here, and even though my parents didn’t have a family business that I could jump into as a μίσθιος, I knew I stood a better chance of being a μίσθιος for someone else, and I could stay with my parents until I got back on my feet. And that is exactly what happened: My first full business day back in Omaha, I got hired for a FT temp position at West Corporation. What I learned there directly related to the FT permanent job I have now, a job that pays better than any other job I’ve ever had, and a job that stretches me to use all of my God-given skills and talent. I have truly been blessed by heeding God’s call, even if it means I am separated from my kids by the miles. But I have to trust that God has brought me here for a reason yet undisclosed, and that I am preparing the way for my kids to reunite with me at some point in the future.

Now that you have my testimony, I have a few more comments about the parable itself. One of my favorite songs of all time is “When God Ran,” the story of the Prodigal being greeted joyously by his father, who ran to meet him in the distance. That is what God the Father does when we return to him. Apollo was welcomed back with great fanfare. I have been blessed to have the support of my family here in my months of transition, but I think sometimes we overlook the lessons from the son who stayed home and slaved (his words, δουλεύω) for his father, complaining that he never once got even a goat to celebrate with his friends. In fact, when he heard the celebration coming in from the field, he called one of the “servants” (παῖς) to ask him what was going on. Notice here first of all that the servant does not have a possessive pronoun associated with it, so he probably isn’t the elder son’s servant. He’s not one of the hired hands (μίσθιος) either. However, the word παῖς can also mean ‘child’ (male or female); but again, without the possessive pronoun, we can’t say for sure it was one of the elder son’s children. I tend to think it was a child, though, rather than a slave (δοῦλος), because of the answer (and I embellish here): “Uncle Apollo has come home, and grandpa’s throwing a party!”

The son complains, but the father’s answer I think gets overlooked all too often. No, not the answer about “My son was dead but now is alive; my son was lost but now is found.” I’m talking about the verse before that, verse 31: “My child, you are always with me, and everything that is mine is yours.” If the father in the story represents God the Father, then should we not take this message to heart as well? We have the riches of God at our disposal; all we need to do is ask.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3, emphasis mine). This Resurrection Sunday, I celebrate my life resurrected, for I had become as dead in Illinois, and now am alive again in Nebraska; I had lost my way in Illinois, but have found it again in Omaha. Even so, my life here is nothing compared to the eternal reward that awaits me in his glorious kingdom.

Εἰρήνη Peace! And have a blessed Resurrection Sunday!

April 17, 2011

Guarding against Yeast

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Luke Gospel of,New Testament — Scott Stocking @ 3:01 pm

Luke 12:1 offers some interesting grist for this blogger’s mill this morning. The chapter begins with Jesus telling his disciples: “Guard (προσέχω, prosechō) yourselves from the yeast (ζύμη, zumē ‘leaven’, ‘yeast’), which is hypocrisy, of the Pharisees,” which represents the literal word order in the Greek text. It is punctuated in the UBS 3rd and 4th editions to emphasize that “yeast” and “hypocrisy” are in an appositive relationship. Of this, I have no doubt. But the writings of Scripture in their original hand almost certainly did not have punctuation, let alone word spaces. Papyrus and other epigraphic surfaces were precious, and the writers didn’t waste space with punctuation. Perhaps I’m overanalyzing here, but there are times when it is appropriate to be suspicious of punctuation in the Greek text. I have, after all, written a 20-page paper about a comma in Acts 2:42, but I promise I will not spend 20 pages on the comma here.

There are two ways the passage could be read, and I will make a quick comment on the difference before moving on. Most English translations render the verse similar to the NIV/TNIV: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” In this translation, translators move what they consider to be the appositive phrase, “which is hypocrisy,” to the end of the sentence. But word order in Greek is often significant. What if the appositive phrase is not just “which is hypocrisy,” but “which is the hypocrisy of the Pharisees” (i.e., what if there shouldn’t be a second comma)? Then the passage takes on a subtle nuance: “Guard yourselves from yeast, which is the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.”

Now I don’t want to imply here that the real substance “yeast” is inherently evil or bad for you (any dieticians out there are welcome to chime in on any nutritional properties of yeast). Nor do I want to say that bread made with yeast is bad, because Jesus calls himself “The Bread (ἄρτος artos) of Life” in John’s Gospel, but stick with me for a minute and I’ll come back to that. I think I am on solid ground to suggest that Jesus is not talking about yeast itself, but its properties. Most of us know that yeast is added to bread to give it more “volume” and to soften the texture. Unleavened bread, what many of us in the Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ use for our weekly celebration of the Lord’s Table, is dry and flat. Some congregations use the Jewish unleavened matzo crackers for the same purpose. Jews had to rid their houses of yeast at the first Passover, not because it was an unclean food, but because they didn’t have time for the “fluff and flavor” before they escaped Egypt.

Yeast “bloats” the dough, makes the final product less dense, but does add some flavor to the product. I believe Jesus is speaking here of yeast in the context of Passover. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees (for which yeast is a symbol in Luke 12:1) is that they were adding requirements to the law that weren’t essential to the core principles of the law. In some cases, they bloated the law, adding more to it than was required. For example, in the previous chapter (Luke 11:38), the Pharisees were amazed that Jesus did not “immerse” (βαπτίζω baptizō) his hands, (presumably his hands are meant and not his whole body, although the text does not say that specifically) as was their custom, even though, according to Craig Keener in the IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, this was not a requirement of the Old Testament law. He had also issued several warnings (“woes”; see earlier blog on that topic in Matthew) to Pharisees and teachers of the law at the end of the previous chapter for adding burdens to the people.

The Pharisees often soften the law in places as well, but typically this happens when the money trail leads back to them. In Mark 7:11, Jesus condemns ––the Pharisees for nullifying the commandment to honor your father and mother so they could take the Korban into the Temple treasury.

So those warnings are fresh in the minds of his disciples when Jesus speaks to them in Luke 12:1. Jesus is, in one statement, giving his disciples some reassurance that his harsh words to the Jewish rulers (one of them mentions Jesus’ “hubris” for confronting the Pharisees and teachers of the law even though Jesus was their guest at dinner!), but also preparing them for his teaching about whom to fear in the first part of chapter 12.

Jesus’ ministry was all about simplifying and restoring what the Pharisees, Sadducees, and teachers of the law had mucked up over the years. Love God. Love your neighbor. Act justly. Show mercy. Repent. Have faith. Forgive. Fear God. I am speaking to myself with this next statement as much as I am speaking to others: “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

I said I would return to Jesus’ statement about being the Bread of Life. Jesus does use this statement about himself, but it comes on the heels of the feeding of the 5000+, and he directly references that event in the pericope leading up to his statement. But he also uses the more general word for food in that section, βρῶμα (brōma), so it is fairly clear to me that he is not referencing the leavened bread that the 5000+ ate for their lunch, but is using “bread” as a symbol for “food” (the technical name for that kind of figure of speech is synecdoche /sin EK doe key/, the part represents the whole). Johannes Behm, in his article on ἄρτος in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Vol. 1, pp. 477–78) says the phrase has no parallel in Jewish literature. He also says that some ancient Greek writers still distinguished wheat bread from barley bread (μᾶζα maza, could this be matzo?).

Peace

April 10, 2011

Turning, Returning, and Repenting

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Luke Gospel of,New Testament,Repentance — Scott Stocking @ 8:26 am

As I have been reading through Luke 3–9, I have noticed the repetition of words I have not seen or noticed before in the other Gospels. This is not unusual. I blogged earlier about Mark’s use of the word εὐθύς (euthus /yoo THOOS/ ‘immediately’), which occurs more than 40 times in his Gospel. Luke uses the word only once as an adverb, but he chose another word that he uses almost exclusively, παραχρῆμα (parachrēma /pah rah CHRAY mah/), to mean the same thing. Of the 18 occurrences of this word, 16 appear in Luke-Acts, with the other two found in Matthew 2:19–20. So Luke’s emphasis on immediacy is not quite as strong as Mark’s, but significant nonetheless.

Another word that kept popping up over and over again was the word Luke uses (again almost exclusively) for “return,” ὑποστρέφω (hypostrephō /hoo po STREH foe/). By itself, the word is not spectacular in any way. Every time Luke uses the word in Luke-Acts (32 times of 35 total occurrences of the word in the NT), it refers to actual physical movement from one place to another. Only Peter, in 2 Peter 2:21, uses the word in a figurative sense, and that negatively, referring to those who “turn their backs on the sacred command.” Keep that in mind, because this passage becomes important a little later in this discussion. The word is only used three times of Jesus returning; most of the other occurrences refer to people returning home, returning to Jerusalem, or returning to Jesus to give a report or to give thanks. Again, nothing spectacular in any of this, but it does suggest that Jesus and his followers never sat still for too long and that there was a lot of activity around him.

This has something to say about what the ministry of local congregations should look like. Congregations that are buzzing with activity through the week, whether in the church building, in the homes of its members, or in popular meeting places like Panera’s or Starbuck’s, are making a difference in the lives of people. In Luke 9:10, the Gospel writer records that the 12 apostles (as long as we’re talking about frequently used words, the number “12” occurs 6 times in Luke 8–9 referring to 4 different entities) “returned and reported to [Jesus] what they had done.” I’m getting ahead of my reading schedule a bit by citing this next verse, but it reflects the same principle: In Luke 10:17, when the 72 return from their mission (similar to the mission of the 12), they report to Jesus that “the demons obeyed us in your name.” What would Sunday morning or small group be like if, each time we returned, we told what the Lord was doing in and through us? What would the dynamic of your small group look like if you not only did a Bible study, but just shared about the great things God is doing for you? Our congregation occasionally shows video testimonies of how God is working in the lives of his people. That has had a powerful impact on those seekers who are looking for a meaningful connection to the body of Christ. So when you return to church or small group or Sunday school class each week, share something good that God has been doing in your life, not just the prayer requests for your concerns.

The beautiful thing about doing word studies like this is that one can make many serendipitous discoveries along the way. One of the questions I asked myself as I began looking at ὑποστρέφω was, “What other words are used for ‘return’ in the NT?” I checked Louw & Nida’s Greek-English Dictionary Based on Semantic Domains for all the Greek words that carry the idea of “return” in their use in the NT. I found a handful of words that, in a few instances, carried the same idea as ὑποστρέφω and together occurred fewer times in the NT than ὑποστρέφω. But one related word stood out, ἑπιστρέφω (epistrephō /eh pee STREH foe/ ‘turn’, ‘return’, ‘turn back to’). Half of the 36 occurrences of this word in the NT are found in Luke-Acts (he does like to corner the market on word usage!). Of those 36 occurrences, 21 of them refer to “repentance” and turning to God, or in a couple cases just the opposite, turning back to the ways of the world. Of Luke’s 18 uses of the word, 12 (there’s that number 12 again!) have the sense of turning or returning to the Lord, often with the idea of repentance present in the immediate context. I mentioned the lone figurative use of ὑποστρέφω in 2 Peter 2:21 above. One of the negative uses of ἑπιστρέφω follows on the heels of that in 2 Peter 2:22, where Peter quotes Proverbs 26:11: “A dog returns to its vomit.” This exemplifies the acts of negative repentance to which the word refers (see also Galatians 4:9).

So how do I tie this all together? Simple. When we return (ὑποστρέφω) to church or small group each week, let’s tell others about the great things God is doing for us, so the world will see that we don’t just come to have needs met and prayers answered. When the world sees that dynamic relationship that we have with God, and that a relationship with him can be about more than just having needs met, they will return (ἑπιστρέφω) to God and join in the great kingdom experience. How much more vibrant would our service and worship be if we adopt this attitude! And in keeping with the sense of παραχρῆμα, let’s not waste any time getting it done!

Εἰρήνη! (Peace!)

March 30, 2011

Opening the Womb

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Birth Stories,Greek,Luke Gospel of,New Testament,Old Testament — Scott Stocking @ 6:45 am

I spent six days last week working through Luke 1–2. One might think that the third Gospel might not offer anything new after working through the first two Gospels, but this is Luke: evangelist, scholar, and physician. Luke is certainly more detailed than any of the other Gospel writers, so he offers a lot more detail to digest.

One of the interesting things I discovered is that Luke’s description of the “womb” is quite different for Elizabeth and Mary. Four times in Luke 1, Luke uses the Greek word κοιλία
(koilia) to describe the womb: three times it refers to John in Elizabeth’s womb, and once to Jesus in Mary’s womb. This is the more common word for “womb” (10 of its 20 uses in the NT refer to the womb or birth) in both the OT and NT, but it is also a more generic word for the “belly.” About one third of its uses in the Septuagint (LXX, Greek OT) are tied to the Hebrew word בֶּטֶן (bě∙ṭěn, ‘womb,’ ‘belly’). But when it comes to the birth of Jesus, Luke bests Matthew in his use of the OT and draws on the Passover story for a uniquely different word.

Luke, in 2:23, cites Exodus 13:2: Πᾶν ἄρσεν διανοῖγον μήτραν ἅγιον τῷ κυρίῳ κληθήσεται, (pan arsen dianoigon mētran hagion tō kuriō klēthēsetai, ‘every male who opens the birth canal will be called holy to the Lord’). It was the phrase διανοῖγον μήτραν that caught my attention. There is nothing special about the word διανοῖγω that would suggest “firstborn” necessarily, but of the few times the word is used in the NT, the “opening” is always dramatic. The prefix on the word (δια-) implies an opening “through” something. The word μήτρα
is more specific than the womb. The fact that it is apparently related to the Greek word for “mother” makes the word unique to women, first of all. Second, the fact that Luke, the physician, uses a more anatomically correct term from the Greek version of the OT, indicates that there is indeed something special about this birth. One third of the occurrences of μήτρα in the OT are in a phrase about the firstborn “opening the womb.” The term is so tied to the female sexual organ that Louw and Nida, in their Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains, warn that a literal translation of the phrase in another language might imply the first act of coitus with a woman rather than the first male to be born from her womb.

The only other use of the word in the NT is found in Romans 4:19 with respect to Sarah’s “dead” womb. The word is also used in that context in several places in the OT as well, referring either to infertility or a stillborn child. One of the most notable occurrences is in 1 Samuel 1:5–6, the story of the birth of Samuel. Hannah has been unable to have children, and in the course of time, after much fervent prayer and the blessing of Eli, Hannah conceives and has a son, whom she dedicates to the service of the Lord. That son was Samuel, the last judge before Israel demanded a king. He was the first son of Hannah, but not of Hannah’s husband, Elkanah, who had children by another wife, Penninah.

Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 2 has many parallels to Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55) and Zechariah’s song (Luke 1:68–79), and the connection here with Luke’s birth stories brings attention to the whole history of the “firstborn” in Israel. If you’ve ever read through the OT, you may have noticed that the firstborn, even though Exodus says he is holy to God, never seems to get the full blessing that would have been standard in that culture, at least not for the major players in the biblical story. Cain, the first firstborn, started things off on the wrong foot by killing his (obviously) younger brother Abel, and the story of the firstborn (or at least, the first son of a father) became almost a curse for the history of God’s people in the OT. Abraham took matters into his own hands with Hagar and his firstborn, Ishmael, proved to be a thorn in the flesh for the offspring of Sarah’s firstborn, Isaac. Later, Isaac and Rebekah had twins, Esau and Jacob, but Jacob (later Israel) deceived his father to steal the birthright of the firstborn from Esau. Jacob’s first son was not the star of the show, but Rachel’s first son by Jacob, Joseph, became the savior of Israel’s family. Even Judah, from whom Jesus is descended, was not the firstborn, but the fourth son of Leah, Jacob’s least-favorite wife. King David, again in the lineage of Jesus, was the youngest of all his brothers.

How does all this tie into the birth stories of Jesus and John the Baptizer? With the births of John and Jesus, the history of the firstborn in Israel is redeemed. In those stories, we have not one, but two sons miraculously conceived. Elizabeth’s story parallels Sarah’s: barren into her old age. Mary’s story is completely new: a son conceived by the Holy Spirit; no human intervention other than Mary carrying the child to birth. John is empowered by the Holy Spirit to testify about his cousin Jesus, and of course, Jesus is God’s (not to mention Mary’s) firstborn, spotless lamb, Savior of the world. Finally, stories about firstborn sons who got it right! As a firstborn myself, I’m a little sensitive to that, but by God’s grace, I will go forward in faith, and I pray that I will lead my firstborn son (and my younger daughters) along the path of godliness and faithfulness.

Peace!

February 21, 2011

Entering Heaven Difficultly (Matthew 19)

Filed under: Biblical Studies,Ephesians,Eschatology,Greek,Luke Gospel of,Matthew Gospel of,New Testament,Soteriology — Scott Stocking @ 5:18 pm
Tags: , , , ,

January 30, 2011

It seems like Sunday is the only time I have to blog on reading through the Greek New Testament, so I’ll just call this the Sunday Morning Greek Blog.

I could say much about Jesus’ discussion of divorce in the first part of Matthew 19, but I think I’ll wait until my own divorce is finalized and well behind me.

However, I did discover something interesting today about Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man in the last part of Matthew 19. Now I am neither rich nor young, but having landed a new job that pays better than any job I’ve had before, I should probably start paying better attention to teachings about wealth.

The thing that struck me most about my reading today was how the Greek text records Jesus’ answer to his disciples about how difficult it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. The English translations usually say something like, “It is difficult for a rich man/person to enter the kingdom of heaven.” This makes it sound like the main verb is “to be difficult” and “to enter” is an infinitive that completes the thought of the main verb.

But this is not the way it is written in Greek. The actual phrase in Greek (for my Greek geek friends) is πλούσιος δυσκόλως εἰσελεύσεται εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν, which translated literally would read “[a] rich one difficultly will enter into the kingdom of heaven.” The main verb here is the verb εἰσερχόμαι (“I enter”), which is used as a future tense form here (εἰσελεύσεται, “[he/she] will enter”). The word for “difficultly” (δυσκόλως) sounds a bit awkward for English, but I use it here to emphasize that the word is an adverb, which means it modifies or describes the action of the verb. (Remember “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here!)

Jesus says the rich “will enter the kingdom of heaven” (this is not to say that being rich is the only or any kind of qualification for entering the kingdom of heaven!), but they will do so with difficulty. Jesus doesn’t condemn wealth here; he just wants to make sure we have the proper attitude toward wealth. In vs. 24, when he says it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle (a real sewing needle, not a narrow gate as some have tried to purport) than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven, his disciples ask, “Who then can be saved?” Think about that for a minute. Jesus tells them the rich enter with great difficulty, then they ask “Who then can be saved?” as if they think the nonrich can’t be saved!

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but that seems to reveal to me an attitude about prosperity in that day. Jesus did much of his ministry among the poor and oppressed, but he did not shy away from confronting (or in this case, reaching out to) the prosperous either. Could it be that the masses flocked to Jesus because the poor thought they had no hope for eternity? Even after all this time with Jesus, did the disciples still think salvation was something only for the prosperous?

Salvation is for all, rich or poor. Prosperity teachers need to sit up and take note here: When you tell your flock that God can make them rich, you might want to include this passage so they know the trouble they’re in for!

Again, this is not to say wealth is bad. I like Ephesians 4:28: “Those who have been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.” Luke 16:9 is even more compelling: “Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Wealth is a blessing, and if we use it to bless others, I think we discover a new type of neighborly love.

Scott Stocking, M.Div.

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