On Matthew 4:23 through Matthew 4:25

Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, your guide to the Gospels of Jesus.  If you'd like to start from the beginning, which is recommended for advanced users, you can find the Introduction here.

For a second time since the outset of this project, I have failed to meet the pacing requirements that I've set for myself here.  I apologize for not posting anything last week.  I worked Saturday and Sunday, making for a thirteen day work week.  I normally get my writing done on the weekend...

... I shouldn't make excuses though.  I'll work to build a buffer system into my posting so that there will be fewer subsequent interruptions.  Again, my apologies.

Anywho...

If you'll recall, last time we considered the fact that many American Christians alive today believe that the whole Bible is the literal word of God.  This led us to three questions regarding the New Testament Canon.  Those questions were:

- Who set the canon, and why was the canon not set until, at the very earliest, two hundred years after the death of Christ? 

- There were numerous other Christian texts in wide circulation at the time, many bearing striking resemblances to the the New Testament we know today.  Did the person who set the canon have some method of categorization that allowed him to determine with certainty which of the early Christian texts were authentically "the word of God" and which were not?  If so, what were the criteria he used?

- Why do God's words in The New Testament contradict one another? 

Today, we'll start out on these questions slowly by simply meeting a man named Origen.

Origen of Alexandria

In 185 or 186 AD was born a boy called Origen, whose father, Leonides of Alexandria, laborored as a professor and a openly devout Christian.  Origen was born in Alexandria, Egypt, which had once been known the Greco-Roman-world over as the premier educational and scholarly center, containing within its bounds the famed Library of Alexandria.  You might recall the events of 48 BC, when Julius Caesar inadvertently set fire to the city of Alexandria as part of a tactic against Ptolemy XIII, in the aftermath of Ptolemy's assassination of Caesar's "friend" Pompey.  The famous ancient historian Livy tells us that this fire destroyed some 40,000 scrolls in the Library of Alexandria.

Since perhaps around the time of Caesar's fires, Alexandria's fame for being the world's intellectual center had waned.  However, at the time of Origen's birth there, the city would still have been host to a relatively rich scholastic community.

We know little for certain about Origen's early life, but scholars find it likely that his father schooled him well in reading, writing, philosophy, and Christian theology as it then existed.  Leonides would make the young Origen memorize lengthy passages of scripture as part of his studies.

In 202, when Origen was about sixteen, the Emperor Septimius Severus ordered the killing of openly practicing Christians, and Origen's father was arrested.  The story goes that Origen wanted to be captured and martyred with his father, and set his mind to do just that.  To prevent him, Origen's mother hid all of his clothes so that he was totally naked with nothing to cover himself.  Origen would not go outside the home naked, and so was not able to join his father in death.

The Roman authorities executed Origen's father by beheading, and confiscated his estate.  Origen was left the patriarch of a destitute family consisting of his eight brothers and sisters and his mother.  Thankfully, Origen was given a job as a catechist at the Catechetical School of Alexandria.  Origen's spiritual life thrived there, as he began to live more ascetically, walking barefoot everywhere and only allowing himself to own one cloak.  He didn't eat meat and didn't drink alcohol, and he would fast for extended periods of time.  He spent his days teaching, studying, and writing.

Eusebius writes that Origen was one of many Christian men at that time who had purposely had himself castrated as a direct result of his reading of Matthew 19:12, wherein Jesus says:

12 "Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it.”

"Incapable of marriage" is a nicer way of translating from the original Greek, "eunouchoi," which actually means "eunuch."  The gospels Origen was familiar with were almost certainly explicit in their use of the word "eunuch" here.

Although Origen was aware of the practice of self-castration among his early Christian brethren, it seems rather unlikely that the story of him castrating himself is true, especially when we see him railing against the practice from works written in his later life.

After some conflicts with Demetrius, the Bishop of Alexandria, Origen took up a permanent residence in Caesarea in Palestine.  There, he was ordained a priest and taught publicly, much to Demetrius' chagrin.  Origen continued to write prolifically.  At various times, he had to go into hiding, as persecutions of Christians became more common in the Roman Empire.

In 250, the Emperor Decius issued a decree for intense persecution against Christians, believing that they had been the cause of a recent devastating plague.  Origen was not able to find adequate hiding during this period, and was imprisoned and tortured for two years.  Upon his release from prison, he lived another year and then died in 253 AD, presumably weakened by the years of torture.

Origen is considered a "Church Father," putting him in rank among Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, and Ignatius of Antioch.  His writings are among the most important ancient Christian theological texts, and include his "On First Principles," "Contra Celsum," and the ever influential "Hexapla."

According to Professor Michael J. Kruger of the Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, NC, Origen should be credited as perhaps the very first to write down the twenty-seven book list that we now know as The New Testament Canon.  He quotes thusly from a work of Origen's called the "Homilae on Josuam":

But when our Lord Jesus Christ comes, whose arrival that prior son of Nun designated, he sends priests, his apostles, bearing “trumpets hammered thin,” the magnificent and heavenly instruction of proclamation. Matthew first sounded the priestly trumpet in his Gospel; Mark also; Luke and John each played their own priestly trumpets. Even Peter cries out with trumpets in two of his epistles; also James and Jude. In addition, John also sounds the trumpet through his epistles [and Revelation], and Luke, as he describes the Acts of the Apostles. And now that last one comes, the one who said, “I think God displays us apostles last,” and in fourteen of his epistles, thundering with trumpets, he casts down the walls of Jericho and all the devices of idolatry and dogmas of philosophers, all the way to the foundations.

This list, written by Origen perhaps around 250 AD, obviously matches with what we know today as the twenty-seven book canon.

This list in "Homilae on Josuam" is apparently the oldest extant twenty-seven book list.  We can imagine that this list predated Origen's record of it, but since we have no evidence for that, we must say the New Testament Canon did not exist in its modern form before around 250 AD.  For centuries after 250, in fact, we still see many different lists and arrangements of the Christian scripture.  It certainly wouldn't be until much later that the entire Christian world came to a consensus on Origen's list.

Jesus Christ died in 30 or 33 AD.  At the very minimum, it was between two and three centuries before The New Testament Canon began to take its familiar form.

Modern Christians frequently think of the Bible as the literal word of God, and as the salvation of the world.  Modern Christians are, by and large, unaware of Origen, or his apparent contribution as God's editor and compiler.

Next time, now that we've met Origen, we will look at the various Christian texts that would have been available to a man like Origen in those days, giving us a sense not only for what is in the canon, but what was left out.  The modern Christian may be surprised to know about the diversity of literature that existed in the early church.

For now, though, we'll get back to our gospel reading.

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Matthew 4:23 through Matthew 4:25

23 He went around all of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness among the people. 

24 His fame spread to all of Syria, and they brought to him all who were sick with various diseases and racked with pain, those who were possessed, lunatics, and paralytics, and he cured them. 

25 And great crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan followed him.

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There is quite a bit going on here in these three verses.

First, we should pay attention to where Jesus is teaching from here at the outset of his ministry.  He teaches from local synagogues.  Remember: he is worshipping with Jews, preaching to Jews, and considers himself completely Jewish.  Nowhere is this more clear than in the Gospel of Shoehorn Matthew.

While Jesus teaches, he is said to be "curing."  He is capable of curing "every disease and illness among the people."  Since our official stance here at The Moral Vision is that we do not believe in the supernatural, it is our understanding that Christ was not actually curing physical diseases.  He was more likely demonstrating social and philosophical prowess by effectively counseling people with psychological infirmities or situational pains, while generally inspiring a chronically depressed people with his hopeful words about a coming Kingdom of God.

It is imperative to understand that the validity of Jesus' reputation as a literal miracle worker will not have any bearing on his instruction to humanity, which he will very soon lay out for us in his Sermon on the Mount.  The moral vision of Jesus and its applicability to human life are the exact same whether you believe he could give sight to the blind or not.  This point is critical, and we will make it again and again as we move forward.

As this reading finishes itself out, we are told that a following developed behind Jesus immediately, and that the following consisted of a diversity of people.  People from as far away as Syria hear of his abilities and travel to Galilee to avail themselves of his counsel.

Last time, I postulated that we might spend some time looking at other ancient cases of "miracle healing" to give these verses context.  I am going to issue a rain-check on that discussion.  I promise, we will revisit it.  For now, we'll retire of our commentary here in anticipation of next time, when we will continue to learn about the New Testament Canon's formation, and then find ourselves right in the middle of some of Jesus' richest philosophical thought.

I can not wait.

Please share this writing.

Love.

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 4:21 through Matthew 4:22

Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.

This is a study designed to methodically refine the voluminous extant data about Jesus Christ's teachings found in The Gospels of Christ to a simple and historically reliable moral code.  Here, we believe that to receive the benefit of Jesus' ministry in its truest sense, we must thoroughly understand the truest sense of his ministry.  This means studying, within literary context, all available accounts of Jesus' life, as well as working constantly to better understand the historical, political, religious, and social context of his life.

If you want to start over from the beginning so that you are all caught up, the Introduction can be found here.

Very soon, as I've already mentioned in giddy anticipation, we will be reading the words Jesus was recorded to have said during his "Sermon on the Mount."  The upcoming monologues, if we can find them historically plausible, will allow us to start building a picture of what Jesus really thought and said about the moral fabric of human life.  We will find out what he was really concerned about, insofar as it can be known.

I've encountered some folks who say that, to their Christian faith, the words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel are not of prime importance.  A friend of mine argued the other day that, since they were divinely inspired, the words of Paul are as important as the words of Jesus.  He argued that, since they were divinely inspired, the words of the Book of Revelation are as important as those of Jesus.

This raised all kinds of old and loud questions in my mind.  I don't like picking at people, so I don't ask questions like these in person often, and never without great tact.  I can share those questions freely with you, though.

Some questions that I have for anyone who believes that the whole Christian Bible Canon is "divinely inspired" and "the word of God" are:

- Who set the canon, and why was the canon not set until, at the very earliest, two hundred years after the death of Christ? 

- There were numerous other Christian texts in wide circulation at the time, many bearing striking resemblances to the the New Testament we know today.  Did the person who set the canon have some method of categorization that allowed him to determine with certainty which of the early Christian texts were authentically "the word of God" and which were not?  If so, what were the criteria he used?

- Why do God's words in The New Testament contradict one another? 

Other such questions abound.

I'm going to let these questions marinate for a session.  Next week, we will begin to attack them head-on in some fashion. 

Today, let's focus on our reading.  Cheers.

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Matthew 4:21 through Matthew 4:22

21 He walked along from there and saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. He called them, 

22 and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him.

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Today, as we promised last week, Jesus continues recruiting the first disciples.  Recall that last week he recruited Peter and his brother from their fishing boats as he walked by the Sea of Galilee.  As he continues walking along the sea here in verse 21, he sees the "sons of Zebedee" mending their nets while sitting in a boat.  They are with their father, all three of them fishermen.  One can imagine the boat is very close to the shore here, perhaps not even floating in water.  The family would probably have been chattering away amongst themselves in Aramaic as Jesus, Peter and Andrew approached.

The nets they worked at mending might likely have been made of flaxseed cord or rope.  If the family was very well off, their boat might have been made of sturdy Cedar of Lebanon, the very same kind that held aloft great blocks of Aswan granite in the pyramids of Egypt.  If they were not well off, which is far more likely for a multi-generational group of fishermen, the boat could have been constructed with salvage wood from other boats, low quality local woods, or low quality woods available by trade.  These could have included pine, willow or jujube.  The boat would likely have had a bitumen pitch coating on the bottom to make it watertight.

The men were probably fishing for "musht," a species of tilapia found in the Sea of Galilee.  Alternatively, they could have fished for sardines or carp.  The men might have sold their catches at a local market where the fish would be bought to eat fresh or salted and treated for export.

This would have been their daily grind: pushing out into the lake to drag their nets about, hauling in what they could catch, mending their nets, fixing tiny leaks in their boat, and selling their product in town.

The event in today's reading is also attested in Mark 1:19.  Rather than being independent from Mark's account, Matthew likely got his accounting of the call of the disciples directly from Mark.

Both accounts have Jesus walking along and (presumably) seeing all three men.  In both accounts, however, he only calls to two of them.

The brothers Zebedee leave their father to work for Jesus.  This is perhaps the first in a series of familial abandonments or rejections on the behalf of Jesus mentioned in the Gospel.  As we will see, Jesus himself is said to have rejected his family (Mark 3:33), and to have been rejected by his family (Mark 3:21).

Why did Jesus only call the brothers and not the father?  We cannot know for sure.  I find it likely, if the incident happened at all, that Jesus called to all three of them, and that the elder of the three had insurmountable reservations about following a radical like Jesus, especially when he knew he had to wake up early the next day to fish again.  Early Christians conveying this story by mouth may not have liked the idea that Jesus offered discipleship to someone and was turned down, so they may have reworked the story so that the father Zebedee was never offered discipleship in the first place.

Either way, like Peter and Andrew before them, John and James "immediately" follow Jesus, which seems admirably obedient.

What must Jesus have said to these working men of the sea to inspire them to leave behind career and family without question?

I postulate that Jesus likely had a whole bunch to say to these men.  I postulate that he went to them proclaiming a message almost identical to that of John the Baptist's.  He went to them preaching repentance and a new radical moral philosophy or code.  He may also have carried a message of apocalypse to them, in that he might have approached them speaking about a near-to-come "end of the age."

The Gospel says that Jesus simply called to them, and they followed.  This doesn't seem very human to me.  I think that Jesus had some kind of detailed sales-pitch that isn't recorded here, and I think it must have been an extremely convincing one.

Either way, John and James find Christ's words, be they many or few, amicable, and decide to follow.

Next time, we'll be in Miracle Town, as the narrative of Matthew will show Jesus curing illnesses and diseases of all kinds.  For historical context, we might then look at what the ancient texts have to say about medicine in first-century Palestine.  It might behoove us to see how else people could be eased of their maladies in those days, if Jesus wasn't nearby.  It will behoove us to see that Jesus wasn't the only miracle worker on the block back then.

Tune in next time.  Thanks for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 4:18 through Matthew 4:20

Hello, friends, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.  This will be the most in depth gospel-study ever written by the time we are through with it.  If you're new here, you can acquaint yourself with this study by reading the Introduction, which can be found here.

Please note that we are developing an index of Christ's sayings as we move forward through the Gospel.  We are collecting certain data along with each saying that will allow us, one day, to peer into Christ's morality with a precision that has been (at least in recent times) unrivaled.  That index of sayings can be found here.

For the last six weeks, we spent a preposterous amount of time and effort to show the invalidity of the cosmology of Satan as a critical component of Jesus' moral teachings.  Going forward, at least for a while, I hope for there to be little more to say about that topic.  I appreciate the patience of those of you who stuck it through with me.

Today, we're going to talk a little more about the authorship of the Gospel, and then continue our reading of The Gospel According to Matthew.

Salud.

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A Brief Overview of the Authorships of the Gospels of Christ

When they're growing up, most American Christians today are taught (if they're taught anything about them at all) that the four gospels were written by the persons named in their titles; that The Gospel According to Matthew was written by a guy named Matthew; that The Gospel According to Mark was written by a guy named Mark, etc.  It is factually dishonest to teach people these ancient traditions.  Incorrect information about the nature and origin of the gospels has led to incorrect interpretations of the gospels.  Today, we will work to dispel some of these inaccuracies. 

What did the ancient Christians say about the authorship of these four books?

The ancient tradition holds that The Gospel According to Matthew was written by the Apostle Matthew, an eyewitness to the events of Jesus' life, who is mentioned in The Gospel as one of The Twelve.  The ancient tradition says that The Gospel According to Mark was written by John Mark, a figure occuring in The New Testament and sometimes described as "Peter's Interpreter."  The ancient tradition holds that The Gospel According to Luke was written by a certain Syrian from Antioch named Luke.  Finally, the ancient tradition says that The Gospel According to John was written by none other than John of Zebedee, an eyewitness to the events of Jesus' Galilean Ministry.

I hate to be the burster of bubbles, but none of that is likely correct.

Let's take this one at a time, in search of the actual authors.  Follow me.

The Gospel According to Matthew

Author - Anonymous

The Gospel According to Matthew, as we've mentioned, is anonymous.  There is no byline in the text, and the author of the text does not insert himself into the narrative at any juncture.  He never says "on summer evenings, me and Jesus used to wander out to the edge of town for prayer," or "I saw Jesus as they took him to be crucified."

The Gospel according to Matthew, far from being an original work, can actually be shown to be a combination of at least three different sources that existed prior to it.  Matthew is a combination of The Gospel According to Mark, the "Q-text," and what scholars call "M."  Recall that "Q" stands for the German "Quelle" meaning "Source," and indicates the source of work that Matt and Luke have in common that is not found in Mark.  "M" stands for "Matthew" and indicates written and oral traditions available to the author of Matthew but not reflected in the other two synoptics*.  

Matthew is a compilation, not a firsthand account.  If the author of Matthew had been Matthew of The Twelve, he wouldn't have needed to avail himself so heavily of Mark and Q.

The Gospel According to Mark

Author - Anonymous

The Gospel According to Mark, the oldest extant Gospel, is attributed in the ancient tradition to a gentleman named John Mark.  John Mark makes several appearances in The New Testament as a travelling companion of Paul and Barnabas, and as a subordinate of the Apostle Peter.  John Mark apparently never knew Jesus, but might have known people who knew Jesus.  To reiterate: the ancient tradition holds that Mark was not authored by an eyewitness.

It is not possible to say for sure who wrote Mark, as the text has no byline, so most modern scholars will simply tell you "we don't know who wrote Mark."

The Gospel According to Luke

Author - Anonymous

The Gospel According to Luke, as you may recall, is part-one of a two-part series that modern scholars call "Luke-Acts."  Part-two of Luke-Acts is The Acts of the Apostles, the first text to appear in The New Testament after the four Gospels.  Most scholars concur that the two texts are indeed of a common author.

Luke-Acts was ascribed, in the ancient tradition, to Luke, a physician and travelling companion of Paul.  This travelling companion is mentioned in a few instances in The New Testament, but it is hard to verify the character as an actual doctor, let alone the author of Luke-Acts.

The texts themselves are, in fact, anonymous, and most scholars will tell you "we aren't sure who wrote Luke-Acts."  What scholars will tell you is for sure is that Luke-Acts is not an eyewitness account, as evidenced by the prologue at the beginning of Luke, in which the author speaks of "those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning."  This means that two out of three of The Synoptic Gospels were understood in the ancient church to be non-eyewitness accounts.

The Gospel According to John

Author - Anonymous

The authorship of The Gospel According to John is perhaps one of the most important topics we will ever cover here at The Moral Vision.  There are a number of reasons for this, many of which will only become totally clear sometime in the future when our study has had time to mature.

When reading the Gospel straight through, The Gospel According to John feels like a sucker-punch after the three homogeneous Synoptics.  The tone of the writing, the style of the writing, and the cosmology conveyed by John are all markedly different than its Synoptic brothers.  Even the simple chronology of events is different in John.  In the Synoptic gospels, for instance, Jesus celebrates a Thursday Passover meal the night before his execution on Good Friday.  The Gospel According to John, however, indicates that the execution occurred the day before Passover.

We will write volumes about the incoherency between John and the other Gospels.  Today, as far as authorship is concerned, we will avail ourselves of the notation provided as an introduction to John in The New American Bible, Revised Edition.  The NAB notes the following about John:

Critical analysis makes it difficult to accept the idea that the gospel as it now stands was written by one person.  Chapter 21 seems to have been added after the gospel was completed; it exhibits a Greek style somewhat different from that of the rest of the work.  The prologue apparently contains an independent hymn, subsequently adapted to serve as a preface to the gospel.  Within the gospel itself there are also some inconsistencies, e.g., there are two endings of Jesus' discourse in the upper room (14:31; 18:1).  To solve these problems, scholars have proposed various rearrangements that would produce a smoother order.  However, most have come to the conclusion that the inconsistencies were probably produced by subsequent editing in which homogeneous materials were added to a shorter original. 

Other difficulties for any theory of eyewitness authorship of the gospel in its present form are presented by its highly developed theology and by certain elements of its literary style.

To be clear, this passage constitutes the Roman Catholic Church admitting that John was likely not an eyewitness account.

Ancient tradition said that John was written by John of Zebedee, an eyewitness to - and key figure of - the Galilean Ministry.  Ancient tradition ascribed the Epistles of John and the Book of Revelation to the same author.  There are many American Christians who still hold these ancient views today.  About the authorship of Revelation, the NAB has this to say:

The author of the book calls himself John, who because of his Christian faith has been exiled to the rocky island of Patmos, a Roman penal colony.  Although he never claims to be John the Apostle, whose name is attached to the fourth gospel**, he was so identified by several of the early church Fathers, including Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Hippolytus.  This identification, however, was denied by other Fathers, including Denis of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen, and John Chrysostom.  Indeed, vocabulary, grammar, and style make it doubtful that the book could have been put into its present form by the same person(s) responsible for the fourth gospel.

Scholars generally agree that The Gospel According to John was the last of the Gospels to find its present form, sometime between 90 and 110 AD.

So, what can we say about the Gospel, generally?

Each book of it arrives in its modern form anonymous.  Ancient attributions of these works have turned out to be questionable in every case.  None of the Gospels claim to be an eyewitness accounting of events, and modern scholarship indicates that ancient traditions attributing any of these books to eyewitnesses are incorrect.

So, we have no first-hand account of the life of Jesus Christ.  What we do have is four anonymously composed and compiled texts that sometimes disagree with one another.  Because they sometimes disagree, these texts must bear the maximum amount of literary scrutiny before they can be accepted as truly representing the teachings of Jesus.  And that, friends, is really the whole point of our broader endeavor.  Our study together constitutes this requisite scrutiny.

Now, let's get back to our Gospel.

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Matthew 4:18 through Matthew 4:20

18 As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen. 

19 He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 

20 At once they left their nets and followed him.

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You will tire of me saying "this is one of my favorite parts," but this is one of my favorite parts.

Jesus has just began his Galilean Ministry, and he needs to recruit some help.  He walks down to the shores of the Sea of Galilee and sees our man Peter (a.k.a. Simon, a.k.a. The Rock) fishing with his brother Andrew.  He calls out to them with Jesus Saying #6, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 

I love the abruptness to this scene.  There's an economy of language to Jesus here that makes him seem powerful.  "Fishers of men" resonates in my head like a bell.  

I love that, without a word, the brothers leave their nets, or their careers, behind.  What could it have been about the personality of this man that other men would just abandon their trades and follow him?  This scene affords us a good opportunity for this kind of reflection.  One thing that is fairly constant throughout the Gospels is Jesus' charisma and ability to captivate others.  I like to imagine what someone would have to say, or how they might have to act, in order to convince me to abandon my nets the way these boys immediately did.  

This personality must have been a force.  Whoever he was, he must always have been the center of attention.  Instantly the most important guy in every room.

I love how obedient Simon and Andrew are here.  "At once" they followed him.  They don't argue or make any excuse, but are so motivated by Christ's personality that they simply obey his words instantly.

Great reading.

Next time, we will see this scene replayed for the recruitment of the brothers Zebedee, neither of which authored The Gospel According to John.  Rapidly, we approach Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount," which contains some of the richest data we have about Jesus' moral code.  Join us again, because we are finally getting to the good stuff!***

Please share this writing.

Love.

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* The "Synoptic" Gospels are the first three: Matt, Mark and Luke.  "Synoptic" comes from the Greek "sunopsis" - literally "to see together."  This term is used to describe these Gospels because these Gospels share the same story arc, generally.  The term excludes The Gospel of John, because that Gospel is markedly different than the first three.

** Many Bible scholars call the gospels by their number, since we don't know who wrote any of them.  For them, "Matthew" is "the first gospel."  "Mark" is "the second gospel," and so forth.

*** Who am I kidding?  Ancient history is all good stuff.

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To read what's next, click here.
To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 4:15 through Matthew 4:17

Hello, friends, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, the most in-depth Gospel study you'll ever read.  If this is your first time here, you might go back to the Introduction and start there.  If you're a repeat reader, I love you.

Today, we will finally finish our six-part series about the origins of the modern "Satan."

It's been a long six weeks, and I'm grateful to all of you for hanging in there with me.

Before we start the last leg of this study-within-a-study, I'd like to recap some of the most important points we've learned over the last few installments.  To review:

1 - Devils, demons, and snakey supernatural creatures of malevolence exist in some of the oldest written human literature known - literature that predates Jewish traditions by a wide margin.

2 - The Jewish scriptures use the word "satan" with an article in front of it - "the" or "a."  The word is not capitalized in the Jewish scripture as a proper-noun would be, because "satan" is not a name in the Jewish scripture.  "Satan," in the Jewish scripture, always means "adversary," "accuser," or, as in Job, "one of a council of divine beings who exist in heaven with God and who have no power or authority outside of God."

3 - We can't find a story in The Old Testament about Satan being a lead angel who was kicked out of heaven for the sin of pride and then forced to administer a torture realm called "hell."  This is because "Satan" and "hell" didn't exist to the Jews of the Biblical era.  The concept of hell, and of an angelic fall from heaven, began to emerge during the Intertestamental Period, especially in The Book of Enoch.

4 - The New Testament features thirty-some references to "the devil" and thirty-some references to a "capital-S" Satan.  The New Testament doesn't describe the creature, but rather assumes the reader's familiarity with this "Satan."  Nowhere in The New Testament are we given any background information about this creature.  Nowhere in The New Testament are we given the story of Satan as a lead angel who was kicked out of heaven for the sin of pride.  Thus we can say unequivocally that The Bible is not where modern Christians get their concept of Satan.

That's it.  Those are your "must-remembers" thus far.  And now, without further ado, Part VI of our study.

Understanding the Origin of Modern Common Conceptions of The Devil in Christianity

Part VI

The Development of the Devil since the First-Century

Recently, a friend and I were discussing the issue of suffering in the world in the context of a God that is all knowing, all loving, and all powerful.  In philosophy, this topic is known as "The Problem of Evil."  My friend said something to the effect that "we suffer and get sick and sin and experience the frailties of flesh not because of God, but purely because of Satan.*"  My friend was expressing a view that is prevalent in Americans today.  This prevalent understanding of the universe is intellectually lazy in every sense of the word, and generally served as the impetus for this six-part study.

The blaming of the suffering of the world on an extremely powerful, but not-quite-Godlike, scapegoat called Satan is a clear attempt to have one's cake and eat it, too.  Rather than address The Problem of Evil head on, the modern Christian has eroded his God's power by giving a large share of it to this "Satan," essentially turning his monotheism*** into a bitheism****, with the devil playing the role of God Number Two.

The devil that my friend and the multitudes of American Christians believe in is, according to them, responsible for all discomfort, conflict, illness, and evil in the world.  The Devil that Modern American Christians believe in is omnipresent and omniscient, and can literally ensnare and control humans who do not resist him through a living appeal to God.  

The devil that American Christians believe in is snakey, tailed, horned, and pitch-fork-bearing.  He is frequently thought to be red in color when manifested physically.  Modern artistic depictions of the devil are almost always cartoonish, but Christians still believe that this character is directly responsible for the prevailing winds of cultural history.

Ultimately, Satan has evolved into the modern Christian's excuse for his complete unwillingness to imitate Christ.  People's egos keep them from accepting fault for almost anything, so it is hedonistically soothing to believe that all of one's mistakes and misfortunes come from the supernatural administrator of hell.  

This is the true purpose of the story of Satan: he is an excuse for human weakness.

"The devil made me do it."

Today, to wrap up our study, we will track the short-distance-evolution of the New Testament Satan into the Satan we know in cartoons today.  To this end, we'll first glance at the writings of Origen of Alexandria.  

Origen was a "Church Father," or an ancient theologian writer.  He was the most prolific writer of the early Church Fathers.  Origen was known in his time for preaching that God had created the souls of humanity before he created the universe, and that at the end of time, all souls might be redeemed to God.  Both of these concepts would later be seen by the Church as heretical.  

Origen was also known by a rumor that he had paid a doctor to surgically remove his testicles, either because a phrasing in The Book of Matthew recommends it***** or because Origen wanted to remove any doubt in the Alexandria community about his motivation in tutoring women as well as men in Christian theology.  Some historians speculate that he may have been accused of some impropriety early on in life, which might have spurred this action, if it did in fact occur.

One of Origen's most important and enduring works was On the First Principles, written between 220 and 230 AD, wherein he attempts to lay out his understanding of Christian theology in a very regimented and precise fashion.  Origen speaks of the Devil and human free-will in the preface of this text:

This also is clearly defined in the teaching of the Church, that every rational soul is possessed of free-will and volition; that it has a struggle to maintain with the devil and his angels, and opposing influences, because they strive to burden it with sins; but if we live rightly and wisely, we should endeavour to shake ourselves free of a burden of that kind.

Shortly thereafter, in the same text, Origen continues:

Regarding the devil and his angels, and the opposing influences, the teaching of the Church has laid down that these beings exist indeed; but what they are, or how they exist, it has not explained with sufficient clearness. This opinion, however, is held by most, that the devil was an angel, and that, having become an apostate, he induced as many of the angels as possible to fall away with himself, and these up to the present time are called his angels.

So, one of the most literate and educated Church Fathers of all time himself admits that the Christian Church as he knew it had failed to sufficiently explain the cosmology of Satan.  The question is then begged: if the cosmology of Satan was not sufficiently explained in 225 AD, how can modern Christians be so sure about what they know about Satan today?

Time seems to have been a salve for this uncertainty.

St. John of Damascus, regarded by the Catholic Church as a "Doctor of the Church," wrote a text known as An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith near the turn of the eighth century AD.  An Exact Exposition was a summary of the theological writings of the Church Fathers that had gone before St. John.  Like On the First Principles, it was designed to be a systematic elucidation of the sum of Christian theology.

About Satan, in An Exact Exposition, St. John writes:

...[he] was not made wicked in nature but was good, and made for good ends, and received from his Creator no trace whatever of evil in himself.

He continues, in talking about the dominion of Satan and his angel minions:

Hence they have no power or strength against any one except what God in His dispensation hath conceded to them, as for instance, against Job and those swine that are mentioned in the Gospels.

St. John was both eating and having some delicious cake when he was writing this.  According to him, Satan was made good by God, but of his own volition turned evil.  However, in his evil, Satan has no power except that allotted to him by God.  So evil is all ultimately controlled by God, but, simultaneously, God can wash his hands of all the evil.  The chasm existing in the middle of this logic is mind-bendingly wide.

Unlike Origen, St. John of Damascus appears to find the Church's explanation of Satan at least sufficient, as he is very confident throughout An Exact Exposition about the nature of all things metaphysical.  His confidence is apparent even in the title, by his use of the word "exact."

Moving on, I would call your attention back to the Fourth Lateran Council, which we mentioned previously.  Recall that the text of Lateran Council IV, written in 1215 AD, said the following:

The devil and the other demons were indeed created by God good by nature but they became bad through themselves; man, however, sinned at the suggestion of the devil.

The Fourth Lateran Council was one of the most significant ecumenical councils ever to be held, and the dogma spelled out therein would have been understood by most any Christian during the late middle ages.  By the spread of the dogma of this council, most Christians in the subsequent centuries came to believe that, at the time of the final judgment, all humans "may receive according to their merits, whether good or bad, the latter eternal punishment with the devil, the former eternal glory with Christ."

Moving along in time, we come to the 13th-century Codex Gigas, also known as The Devil's Bible.  This book, a manuscript of The Bible with some additional Christian literature, is known as The Devil's Bible because of its inclusion of a particularly mesmerizing full-page illustration of the devil.  The illustration, which can be found easily on the internet, depicts a devil that has two red horns, a forked or double tongue, a round, green head, sharp, menacing teeth, and four-fingered hands with vicious claws at the ends of their digits.  We mention the Codex here to illustrate the evolution of the visual imagery of Satan.

As we now know, Satan's physical appearance is not described in The Bible.  What you may not know is that we have no record of people visually depicting Satan until the middle ages.  Most of the earliest depictions of Satan in art have him looking a lot like the Greek fertility god Pan: goat-legged, cloven hooved, bearded, pointy-eared and goat-tailed.  Medieval depictions also gave Satan his trident, which was most certainly borrowed from the Greek god Poseidon.  Again we emphasize: any physical description of Satan is extra-scriptural.

Finally, we would be remiss if we didn't take a moment to look at the treatment of the devil towards the end of Dante's Inferno, the indescribably important 14th-century epic poem by Italian writer Dante Alighieri.

In Inferno, Dante is led through the concentric circles of hell, toward its very core, by the spirit of the poet Virgil, who wrote The Aeneid.  At the core of hell, Dante encounters a devil that is gigantic in proportion, and sits frozen in ice up to its chest.  The creature has three evil faces and three sets of bat-like wings.  The flapping of its wings freezes all the other inhabitants of that final inner-circle of hell.  As Dante walks by the frozen victims, he notes the positions they are suspended in.  Some on toes, some turned up on their heads, some bent over like a bow, heads toward their toes.  A creepy scene.

The writing is really too interesting to miss, so here you go - Dante's description of the devil:

          Were he once as beautiful as now he’s ugly
          (And yet he raised his fist against his Maker!)
          Well may all our grief come down from him!

          Oh how much wonder was it for me when
          I saw that on his head he had three faces:
          One in front — and it was fiery red —

           And two others, which joined onto this one
          Above the center of his shoulder blades,
          And all three came together at his crown.

          The right face seemed halfway white and yellow
          While the left one looked the color of the race
          That lives close to the source of the Nile.

          Beneath each face there sprouted two large wings,
          Suitably massive for such a bird of prey:
          I never sighted sails so broad at sea.

          They had no feathers but looked just like a bat’s,
           And he kept flapping these wings up and down
          So that three winds moved out from in around him:

          This was the cause Cocytus was all iced.
          With six eyes he wept, and from his three chins
          Dripped down the teardrops and a bloody froth.

          In each mouth he mashed up a separate sinner
          With his sharp teeth, as if they were a grinder,
          And in this way he put the three through torture.

          For the one in front, the biting was as nothing
          Compared to the clawing, for at times his back
          Remained completely stripped bare of its skin.

          "That soul up there who suffers the worst pain,"
          My master said, "is Judas Iscariot —
          His head within, he kicks his legs outside.

Here we see the ultimate evolution of the monster.  Large enough to fit multiple men in its multiple mouths as he chews at their forms and tears at their skin.  Once divinely beautiful, now unfathomably ugly.  The center of hell.  The great tortured torturer.  These motifs are some of the critical last steps in the evolutionary chain of the modern Satan.

Little about Satan has changed significantly since Dante, except that he had to face off with a chain-smoking Keanu Reeves at some point very recently.

What can we say then, in conclusion, now that we've thoroughly beat this dead horse?

We can say this: Satan is the Christian's intellectually dishonest escape from The Problem of Evil.  Concerns about Satan are not present in the moral teachings of Jesus Christ.  The modern understanding of Satan does not come from The Bible.  There is no reason, in all of history, to believe that Satan is any more real a figure than Zeus or Angra Mainyu or Darth Vader.

There is no reason to believe in the modern Satan, except that humanity requires a scapegoat for its folly, as it is fundamentally incapable of admitting its own fault.

The devil made me do it?

No, no, friend.  I made me do that.

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Matthew 4:15 through Matthew 4:17

15 “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles, 

16 the people who sit in darkness
have seen a great light,
on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death
light has arisen.” 

17 From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

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Jesus Saying #5!  And what an important one it is!  The words in Matthew 4:17 mark the beginning of Jesus' ministry.  It is at this moment he declares one of the fundamental tenets of his philosophy: that a "heavenly kingdom" is just around the corner, and that humanity needed repentance before the arrival of that kingdom.

So, to what exactly did Jesus refer here when he said "the kingdom of heaven?"

There are many ways to interpret this phrasing.  We will come across this terminology several times in Matthew, so we will have ample opportunity to discuss all the possibilities.

Being a rationalist, I would like to start with a rationalist reading of Saying #5.  I would like to suggest that the "kingdom of heaven," as spoken about by Jesus in The Gospel According to Matthew, is not the preferable half of a bipolar afterlife, but rather a time of unrivalled peace and bounty that Christ anticipated to be coming (with our hard work) to the physical realm; to the real world.  

We will have plenty of time to discuss alternative readings, and we will have plenty of chances to see that one's interpretation of this saying doesn't have any bearing on Jesus' moral prescriptions.  Those of you who find my rationalist reading preposterous will get yours in coming installments.

So, then, what did Jesus mean when he said "repent?"

In the simplest terms, "repent," in the ancient world, meant "to feel regret about one's misdeeds and to have a desire to live better."  This is certainly how the word is generally used in The Old Testament.  Since we have no reason to stray from this general definition, we can interpret "repent" to simply mean "reform yourselves whole-heartedly!"

"Repent."  This is the first word we read in The Bible that can be considered part of Christ's Ministry.  His first prescription for behavior.  Perhaps the first real clue to his morality, that sweet morsel we pine after.  "Repent," he says.  "Reform."

What does he want reformed?

You'll have to come back to find out.

Thank you so much for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.

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* Shortly after saying that Satan was the cause for all disease, my friend insisted that "you can't trust scientists," and that "the universe is only a few thousand years old."**

** My friend is a voting man. :-(

*** Belief in the existence of only one God.

**** Belief in the existence of only two Gods.

***** ...which it certainly does....

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.