On Matthew 5:36 through 5:37

Howdy, y'all.  Welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, the most exhaustive gospel study you will ever read.  If you're new, check this out from the beginning by clicking here.

Before we get going today, I'd like to admit that I have not been very good, to this time, with the housekeeping portion of this writing.  For the longest time, I neglected to put a "what comes next" button on the bottom of each section of writing, such that it might have been difficult for someone to navigate all the way through the body of work from the beginning.  I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.  I've just spent an uncomfortable hour remedying that error, and I promise to stay up-to-date with that moving forward.

I appreciate your patience.

Today, we finish up Jesus' "Teaching About Oaths" with a couple of verses that look fairly straightforward at the outset, but are relatively tricky to access in full.  We are in the middle of Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount," a lengthy discourse that spells out, better than any other section of text in the gospel, Jesus' expectations for his followers and his understanding of human morality.  Every word here is worth looking at with a magnifying glass.

Let's get started.

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Matthew 5:36 through 5:37

36 Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black.  

37 Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.

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Today, we'll begin by interpreting the two verses at hand broadly.  Next, we'll take a look at the Koine Greek that constitutes the phrase "from the evil one," and try to interpret those words in the context of ancient Judaism.  Finally, we'll look at the ancient practice of hair-dying as context for our reading, asking ourselves "was it really not possible to change one's hair color in Jesus' time?"

Broad Interpretation

Recall that, last we met, Jesus told his followers that it was not okay to take oaths, even though the Law of Moses sanctioned oath taking and even though the Old Testament is full of all kinds of ancient Jews (and even God himself) taking all kinds of oaths.  Jesus' words, again, appeared in the "you have heard it said... but I say..." format, which we have seen a lot of lately.  Recall that the "you have heard it said... but I say..." format constitutes what we call the "Antitheses."  The Six Antitheses are a highly structured set of verses that show Jesus negating the Law of Moses and augmenting it with his own view of morality.  The Antitheses are some of the most profound teachings that Jesus will offer during his Galilean Ministry in any of the gospels.

In today's verses, Jesus elaborates on his prohibition on oath-taking by telling his followers that they should not swear an oath even by their own head, because one cannot change the color of one's hair.  Jesus, in Matthew 5:35, was just saying not to swear "by the Earth" or "by Jerusalem" because these things were God's, not humanity's. This train of thought continues into Matt 5:36, which clearly indicates that Jesus thinks of a person's head as being in the domain of God, and not of the person.  

That said, we can summarize Matthew 5:34 through 5:36 thus: "all things in creation are God's, and to swear by something that is God's is a blasphemy, so you are not permitted to swear at all."

In Matthew 5:37, Jesus offers his positive prescription of behavior in regard to oaths.  He says that one shouldn't swear oaths or make promises, but rather that they should simply affirm or deny whatever they wish to affirm or deny.  He says that anything more than a simple "yes" or "no" is "from the evil one."  Simplicity and honesty are the order of the day from Jesus, and they remained the order for early Christians.

Some Koine Words

Now, for a moment, we're going to focus on the Greek phrasing "ek tou ponērou," which we have translated here as "from the evil one."  To dissect this rapidly, "ek" is simply the ancient Greek word for "from."  "Tou," unsurprisingly, is the article "the," and "ponērou" is the word from which we arrived at "evil one."  

"Ponērou" occurs as it does in Matt 5:37 only six times in the entire gospel.  One of those instances, in Matt 6:13, applies to the segment of the Lord's Prayer which reads "...but deliver us from evil."  "Ponērou" is translated simply as "evil" about as often as it is translated as "the evil one" in these six instances.

The New American Bible notates Matthew 5:37's use of "ponērou" as meaning "the devil."  This is the most common understanding of the verse.  As we've discussed before, the idea of a "devil" is one that didn't exist with the most ancient Jews.  You cannot find a reference to "the devil" or "Satan" anywhere in the foundational writings of Moses.  The idea of a "devil" didn't enter the Jewish worldview until much later, when the Jews had been exposed to dualistic religious systems like Zoroastrianism.  By the time of Jesus, some Jews did believe in some form of "devil," but the concept of a fallen angel named "Satan" who occupied a fiery underworld and coaxed all humans to him through sin didn't evolve fully until after Jesus' death.  Thus, even if Jesus did say "the evil one" in his Teaching About Oaths, it is impossible to know exactly what he meant by the term, and it is certain that he didn't mean "the devil" in the way modern "Christians" understand "the devil."

To be clear and redundant: there is no good evidence that Jesus believed in the fallen-angel, anti-God of a devil that today's "Christians" believe in.  In interpreting today's reading, it behooves us to concede that the devil is only vaguely illuminated in the gospel, and, more often than not, seems to be a literary personification of evil itself.  Ultimately, the "evil one" has no bearing on the moral prescription of Jesus Christ to his followers.  Whether Jesus meant, in Matt 5:37, that oaths are "evil" or that oaths are "from the evil one," his expectation of his followers is the same: do not take oaths.  This will hold true throughout the gospel; devil or no devil, Christ's moral prescription remains the same. 

Over the coming years, I hope you will not tire of me explaining that the devil that modern American "Christians" believe in didn't exist in the gospel.  It is a point we will revisit over and over again.

Hair Dying in Ancient Times

Before we wrap up today's study, I'd like to point out, as many have before me, that Jesus may have been technically mistaken in his words in Matthew 5:36.  Whereas Jesus seems to indicate a person's innate inability to alter his or her hair color, it is in fact true that ancient peoples living centuries before Jesus were able to change their hair color via several different methods.

Both the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Greeks were known to darken light or graying hair by various means.  From an article by Deven Hopp, writing for the online beauty publication "Byrdie:"

Given how accomplished the Egyptians were as a civilization, it shouldn’t really surprise us that they, too, dabbled in hair dye. They would use henna to camouflage gray hair (yes, the preoccupation with grays dates way back).

Years later, the Greeks and Romans used plant extracts to color their strands. They also created a permanent black hair dye. However, when they discovered it was too toxic to use, they switched to a formula made with leeches that had been fermented in a lead vessel for two months. It took a few hundred years to expand the color choices beyond black.

Leeches and lead?  Forgive me for letting my cultural relativism slide in saying "gross!"

We know of the ancient Romans dying their hair from many sources, including the poet Ovid.  In fact, Ovid leaves us an entire poem about hair dying gone awry.  The fourteenth entry of the first book of his timeless "Amores" has him consoling a love interest who has become nearly bald by dying her hair too frequently.  The poem was first published in 16 BC, and is quite hilarious. It reads roughly as follows:

I always used to say; "Do leave off doctoring your hair." And now you have no hair left, that you can be dyeing. But, if you had let it alone, what was more plenteous than it? It used to reach down your sides, so far as ever they extend. And besides: Was it not so fine, that you were afraid to dress it; just like the veils which the swarthy Seres use? Or like the thread which the spider draws out with her slender legs, when she fastens her light work beneath the neglected beam? And yet its colour was not black, nor yet was it golden, but though it was neither, it was a mixture of them both. A colour, such as the tall cedar has in the moist valleys of craggy Ida, when its bark is stript off. 

Besides, it was quite tractable, and falling into a thousand ringlets; and it was the cause of no trouble to you. Neither the bodkin, nor the tooth of the comb ever tore it; your tire woman always had a whole skin. Many a time was it dressed before my eyes; and yet, never did the bodkin seized make wounds in her arms. Many a time too, in the morning, her locks not yet arranged, was she lying on the purple couch, with her face half upturned. Then even, unadorned, was she beauteous; as when the Thracian Bacchanal, in her weariness, throws herself carelessly upon the green grass. Still, fine as it was, and just like down, what evils, alas! did her tortured hair endure! How patiently did it submit itself to the iron and the fire; that the curls might become crisp with their twisting circlets. "'Tis a shame," I used to cry, "'tis a shame, to be burning that hair; naturally it is becoming; do, cruel one, be merciful to your own head. Away with all violence from it; it is not hair that deserves to be scorched; the very locks instruct the bodkins when applied." 

Those beauteous locks are gone; which Apollo might have longed for, and which Bacchus might have wished to be on his own head. With them I might compare those, which naked Dione is painted as once having held up with her dripping hand. Why are you complaining that hair so badly treated is gone? Why, silly girl, do you lay down the mirror with disconsolate hand? You are not seen to advantage by yourself with eyes accustomed to your former self. For you to please, you ought to be forgetful of your former self. 

No enchanted herbs of a rival have done you this injury; no treacherous hag has been washing you with Itæmonian water. The effects, too, of no disease have injured you; (far away be all bad omens;) nor has an envious tongue thinned your abundant locks;'twas your own self who gave the prepared poison to your head. Now Germany will be sending for you her captured locks; by the favour of a conquered race you will be adorned. Ah! how many a time will you have to blush, as any one admires your hair; and then you will say, "Now I am receiving praise for a bought commodity! In place of myself, he is now bepraising some Sygambrian girl unknown to me; still, I remember the time when that glory was my own." 

Wretch that I am! with difficulty does she restrain her tears; and she covers her face with her hand, having her delicate cheeks suffused with blushes. She is venturing to look at her former locks, placed in her bosom; a treasure, alas! not fitted for that spot.
Calm your feelings with your features; the loss may still be repaired. Before long, you will become beauteous with your natural hair. 

Ha!

Ovid's bald lover, as we're told, will now have to wear the hair of some German girl, in the form of a wig.  If people compliment her hair, she will be tortured by the fact that they are complimenting the hair of a foreigner, and not her natural locks.  Again, I find the whole poem quite entertaining.

As for the ancient Palestinian context, we know that even the ancient Jews had the capacity and desire to dye their hair.  Our old friend Josephus tells us, in his "Antiquities of the Jews," that Herod used to dye his hair.  From Book 16, Chapter 8:

... Herod despaired to live much longer; (...) in order to cover his great age, he colored his hair black, and tried to conceal what would reveal how old he was....

It would appear that Herod, who lived at the same time as Christ, and in the same region, colored his hair for the same reason people color their hair today.  The vanity of it all!

So it was possible to change one's hair color in Jesus' time.  Perhaps, circumstantially, Jesus didn't know that coloring hair was something people could do.  Or perhaps he meant, in Matt 5:36, that one cannot change their natural hair color.  Either way, I found it interesting to note the potential incongruence of this verse with historical reality. 

Takeaways

Here are your takeaways for Matt 5:36 and 5:37:

1) Jesus considered all of creation to be the domain of God.  Even the top of your head.

2) Jesus thought that the honesty of his followers should speak for itself.  He told his followers not to swear oaths of any kind ever.

3) The use of the word "ponērou" in the gospel is not always translated as "the evil one," and thus cannot always mean "the devil."

4) Don't mess with your beautiful hair too much or you will go bald, says ancient Roman poet Ovid.

Next time, we'll begin dissecting what is perhaps my favorite of Jesus' teachings, Jesus' "Teaching About Retaliation."  Until then, thank you for reading, and please share this writing.

Love.

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To read what came prior to this, click here.

On Matthew 5:33 through 5:35

Hello all, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, what will be the longest and most detailed gospel study ever written by any man.  If this is your first time here, and you want to start way back at the beginning of all of this, you can follow this link.  Going back to the beginning is recommended for all newcomers.

Recall that last week we studied Jesus' "Teaching About Divorce," and then analyzed some statistics to come to the conclusion that American Christians don't pay much mind to Jesus' Teaching About Divorce, just like they don't pay much mind to almost any of what he says in the Sermon on the Mount.  

Today, we'll read and interpret the first three-fifths of Jesus' "Teaching About Oaths" and study some of the ancient Greek words that constituted the verses at hand. We will also look at ancient Jewish traditions about oaths for context, and then consider the Christianity or anti-Christianity of some of the commonly known and taken oaths in the modern United States.

There's a lot here, so we'll get started post haste.  Happy reading.

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Matthew 5:33 through 5:35

33 “Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow.’  

34 But I say to you, do not swear at all; not by heaven, for it is God’s throne;  

35 nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.

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By now, you're certainly seeing the pattern without me having to point it out; much of the Sermon on the Mount is an augmentation or replacement of the old Law of Moses.  We know for sure by now that Jesus did, in fact, intend to change and abrogate the old law.  The old law simply wasn't good enough, in the eyes of Joshua*.  Over and over he says "we've been living by such-and-such a law, but I say that such-and-such a law doesn't go far enough.  I say that God demands more from us."  He is laying the foundation of a new law.

In the verses at hand, Joshua follows the pattern we've been looking at for weeks on end now.  Today, "such-and-such a law" is Moses' law about oaths.  Moses' law about oaths, which we will look at in detail shortly, said, basically, "if you make an oath, you are required to keep it."  In today's gospel verses, Jesus says, basically, "I know that Moses said you could make oaths, but I say that making an oath is a blasphemy.  Moses was wrong again."

Like the vast majority of the data in the Sermon on the Mount, this requires very little interpretation.  Jesus says what he means, and means what he says.  That said, let's look at some Greek.

Some Greek

Let's start with the word "ancestors."  In the oldest available manuscripts, the word we have here in Koine Greek is "archaios."  "Archaios" is an adjective meaning "ancient" or "pertaining to the beginning."  In the manuscripts, this word is pluralized and made into a noun, giving us "ancients," which is easily enough, albeit perhaps not precisely, translated into "ancestors."

The next phrasing of interest is "do not take a false oath," which we get from the Greek "ouk epiorkeó."  "Ouk" means, roughly, "do not," and "epiorkeó" means "to commit perjury," "to make false pledges," or "to take false oaths."  This phrasing only occurs once in the entire New Testament.

We get the word "vow" at the end of verse 33 from the Greek "horkos," which can only be alternatively translated as "oath" or "swearing."

The phrasing "do not swear at all" comes from the Greek "mé omnuó holós," where "mé" means "non," "omnuó" means "to swear," and "holós" means "wholly," "completely," "generally," or "all together."  All three of these words are extremely ancient, and can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European language.  All three have cognates in Sanskrit.

The word we translate to "heaven" here is "ouranos," one we've discussed before.  This is what we learned about it previously:

To the Greeks, "ouranos" meant "the vaulted sky," "the home of the gods above the vaulted sky," "the universe in general," or anything shaped like the sky, i.e. a vaulted ceiling or a tent. This is a Greek term that originated to describe a Greek universe, in which many pagan Gods existed. Due to ambiguities within the multiplicity of first-century Jewish belief systems, it is difficult to say exactly what Jesus means here by the term "ouranos."

And that will suffice again.

"God's" in verse 34 comes from the Greek "theos," a word from the Proto-Hellenic language.  Proto-Hellenic is understood to have been a dialect of the Proto-Indo-European language.  Proto-Hellenic is the precursor to Mycenaean Greek, the oldest form of the Greek language.  All that is to say that this word is also very old.  The word "theos" meant, to the Proto-Greeks who invented it, "a god," "a deity," or "a ruler."  It should go without saying that this word was not originated to denote a singular God in a one-Godded universe, but rather any one of a pantheon of gods.  "Zeus" is a cognate of this word.

We could proceed with more translation, but everything else here is fairly straightforward.  To be clear, the modern dictionary definition of "oath" is "a solemn promise, often invoking a divine witness, regarding one's future action or behavior."  By that understanding, Jesus seems to be telling his followers "don't make grandiose promises about your future behavior - especially not promises that have to be backed up with the name of God."

One more thing I'd like to point out for certain before we move on from the linguistics is that Jesus is not talking about "swearing" in the modern sense of "using coarse or foul language."  In these verses, his use of "swear" is explicitly in reference to swearing an oath.  Jesus never, in any of the gospels, prohibited the use of a laundry list of "cuss" words.

Moving on...

Jewish Traditions Regarding Oaths

Ancient Jewish tradition held that Moses taught the following in regard to oaths, from the Book of Numbers, chapter 30:

3 When a man makes a vow to the LORD or binds himself under oath to a pledge, he shall not violate his word, but must fulfill exactly the promise he has uttered. 

4 “When a woman makes a vow to the LORD, or binds herself to a pledge, while still in her father’s house in her youth, 

5 and her father learns of her vow or the pledge to which she bound herself and says nothing to her about it, then any vow or any pledge to which she bound herself remains valid. 

6 But if on the day he learns of it her father opposes her, then any vow or any pledge to which she bound herself becomes invalid; and the LORD will release her from it, since her father opposed her.

In summation, Moses says that God said that men who make oaths are absolutely obligated to carry out whatever they've promised by invoking the name of God.  Women are obligated in a similar manner, unless they are still unmarried.  An unmarried woman among the ancient Jews could not make an oath without her father essentially co-signing the oath.  This is similar to modern American law in that a minor, male or female, is not allowed to enter into a contract without the consent of their legal guardian.

In the Old Testament, the Jewish ancients can be seen taking dozens and dozens of oaths about all manner of things.  There are oaths to withhold women from certain groups of people in order to end certain bloodlines.  There are oaths to not eat until certain vengeances are carried out.  There are oaths of truce between heads of warring States.  There are false oaths and good oaths and bad oaths and oaths of every kind.  The Old Testament occasionally advises people against oath-taking, while other portions, as seen above, contradict those parts and speak to the solemnity and importance of oaths.

One of the more interesting things we can learn about oaths in the Old Testament is that God himself makes oaths.  To the astute reader, an oath spoken by God himself begs the question: by whom is God's oath sworn?  Does God swear by himself?

God swears a number of oaths in the Old Testament.  As an example, take the following from Deuteronomy, chapter 1:

34 When the LORD heard your words, he was angry, and took an oath: 

35 Not a single one of this evil generation shall look upon the good land I swore to give to your ancestors, 

36 except Caleb, son of Jephunneh. He shall see it, for to him and to his descendants I will give the land he trod upon, because he has fully followed the LORD.

Here, God is swearing that all the complainers who have been doubtful and angry during the 40 years in the Sinai wilderness will not get to see the promised land of Milk and Honey, because they've been doubtful, angry complainers.  Again, the question is begged: who is God swearing by here?

We're getting drawn somewhat off-course, but I'd like to postulate an answer to the question.  The answer comes from later in Deuteronomy, from a couple of verses that I think many might find rather controversial.  The following comes from Deuteronomy, chapter 32:

8 When the Most High allotted each nation its heritage,
when he separated out human beings,
He set up the boundaries of the peoples
after the number of the divine beings; 

9 But the LORD’s portion was his people;
his allotted share was Jacob.

Slam the brakes. Scrreeeeeech.

Put some water in your mouth and read it again so you can do a proper spit-take.

These verses indicate the existence of not a singular God, but of a pantheon of gods.  Specifically, it indicates the existence of a "Most High" God - an uber-God, if you will - who apportioned out the human beings of creation to a number of lesser "divine beings," of which Yahweh was apparently one.

So, maybe, as some scholars have postulated, the most ancient Jewish tradition was more henotheistic** than monotheistic.  Perhaps this is how God can be seen offering oaths throughout the Old Testament.  In a henotheistic Old Testament, a human being could take an oath by swearing by the name of God, and God could take an oath by swearing by the name of the "Most High," or "uber-God."  Maybe.

Mind. Blown.

Oaths and Pledges in America

Regardless of what the ancients were saying and doing regarding oath-taking, Jesus came and abrogated it totally by saying "do not swear at all."  As we said above, Jesus doesn't seem to want his followers making big promises about their future behavior, especially if those promises have to be supported by invoking something sacred or truly valuable, like the name of God.

Smash-cut to millions of little kindergartners being forced to learn and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.  "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," they're forced to swear.  I would say that this solemn promise of allegiance to a flag and to a State is exactly the kind of oath Jesus was talking about in today's verses.  I believe that, by a strict reading of the gospel, a Christian is not permitted to pledge one's allegiance to a flag or to a State in such a solemn way.  I believe that, for a Christian, to pledge allegiance to a State in such a way is to negate one's allegiance to God.

Many American Christians would say that Jesus intended for them to make this pledge of allegiance.  To say that Jesus intended his followers to pledge allegiance to the United States of America is to say that Jesus has uniquely set aside the United States of America as special and blessed - a new Israel.  This concept is absolutely preposterous, especially in light of all of the anti-Christian values the US has always promoted: war, mass-incarceration, capital punishment, and the worship of money, to name a few.

Let's look at another well known oath Americans sometimes take, from Article II of the Constitution:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Interesting.  Solemnly swear, does he?  Oath of office, will he?

Jesus says "no!"

And let's look at one more.  The following text is from Title 10 of the United States Code.

"I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

This is known as the "United States Armed Forces Oath of Enlistment," and is taken by every young man or woman entering any of the many United States military branches.  I ask you: how can a young Christian man or woman take this oath, when Jesus has explicitly forbidden the taking of oaths in the midst of his most significant and focused extant moral teaching?  I ask you: how can a young Christian man or woman take this oath when the oath states explicitly that the enlistee will obey whatever orders given to him, regardless of their moral quality or agreement with the teaching of Christ?

The Uniform Code of Military Justice gives no credence to the Sermon on the Mount, I assure you.

The Marine Corps has no concern for Jesus' command that his followers "love their enemy" and "resist not one who is evil."  The Marine Corps teaches its enlistees to "crush the skulls" of their enemy.

These oaths are anti-Christian.  They cannot be taken by a Christian in good conscience.  Jesus was explicit about these things.

Next time, we'll talk a little more about oaths and promises as we finish up Joshua's Teaching About Oaths.  Until then, join me in reflecting on the oaths we may or may not take on a daily basis.  I will spend the interim thinking about what I swear, to whom I swear it, and by what, with a mind to try to eliminate oath-taking in my life.

Thank you for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.

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* Recall that Jesus' name, translated to English, would be "Joshua."  Recall also that the name "Jesus" would have sounded foreign to Jesus, who probably pronounced his name either "Yehoshua" or "Yeshua."

** Henotheism is the exclusive worship of one god that is acknowledged to exist within a pantheon of multiple gods.  It is different than paganism in that pagans ostensibly worshipped all the gods within their respective pantheon.

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