Author: Christopher R Smith

The Rev. Dr. Christopher R. Smith is an an ordained minister, a writer, and a biblical scholar. He was active in parish and student ministry for twenty-five years. He was a consulting editor to the International Bible Society (now Biblica) for The Books of the Bible, an edition of the New International Version (NIV) that presents the biblical books according to their natural literary outlines, without chapters and verses. His Understanding the Books of the Bible study guide series is keyed to this format. He was also a consultant to Tyndale House for the Immerse Bible, an edition of the New Living Translation (NLT) that similarly presents the Scriptures in their natural literary forms, without chapters and verses or section headings. He has a B.A. from Harvard in English and American Literature and Language, a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell, and a Ph.D. in the History of Christian Life and Thought, with a minor concentration in Bible, from Boston College, in the joint program with Andover Newton Theological School.

Can you document that Domitian’s coins were held in the right hand and worn in bands on the forehead?

Q. Hi, brother. Peace be upon you. I was reading one of your articles about Domitian’s coins being (likely) the mark of the beast. My question is: Where can I find the information showing that Domitian’s coins “would be held in the right hand for transactions” and sometimes they were “worn in a band on the forehead” ? I found this article great, but I’d love to have the sources that can lead me to this conclusion, so that I could prove that point. Could you do this for me, please? Best wishes. God bless you in Christ!

Regarding coins worn in a band on the forehead, please see this article. It includes this illustration:

Regarding coins held in the right hand for a transaction, that is a self-evident practice in any culture that uses coins as money, as the Romans did.

Should the Bible be read and studied in the order it was written?

Q. Should the Bible be read and studied in the order it was written? I’ve just gotten back into reading and studying. I’ve read Deuteronomy, then the first three gospels, then Genesis. Also use Zondervan study guide. Wondering what to read next?

One problem with trying to read the biblical books in the order in which they were written is that we aren’t exactly sure what that order was. For example, some interpreters believe that Joel was the earliest prophetic books, while other interpreters believe it was the last one written! We have a good idea of when the events described in the Bible took place, but we aren’t always sure when the books that relate those events were written.

As a whole, the Bible tells one continuous story, from the first creation to the new creation. If you read the books of the Bible in the order that has become customary since the advent of printing (most Bibles published these days present them in that order), you will read this story roughly in order from Genesis through Esther, hear about various parts of it again, at many points not in chronological order, from Job through Malachi, and then get the rest of the story in the New Testament.

However, many people find this approach difficult because the narrative of the story is frequently interrupted at length by other genres such as law and genealogy. The typical person who tries to read the Bible straight through from Genesis to Revelation gives up somewhere in Leviticus!

So I would not recommend reading the biblical books for the first time either in their customary order or in the order in which they were written, to the extent we can determine that. Rather, I would follow the principle, “Understand the whole from the parts, and then understand the parts in light of the whole,” beginning with the parts that can be understood most readily. I would encourage anyone who was reading the Bible for the first time to start with the gospel of John. Jesus is the center and the climax of the biblical story, and John’s gospel introduces him in a way intended to be accessible to people everywhere. From there you might read Luke and Acts, which together give an overview of most of the New Testament period. Then you could read some of the shorter letters, such as Philemon, James, Jude, 1 and 2 Peter, and 1, 2, and 3 John. After that you could take on some of the more challenging books, such as Revelation and Paul’s longer letters, picking up the other two gospels, Mark and Matthew, along the way.

You could then turn to the Old Testament. Since you have already read Genesis and Deuteronomy, I would suggest reading Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1–2 Samuel, and 1–2 Kings. Those books are mostly narrative and they will fill in much of the story of the kingdom of Israel. You could read Psalms and Proverbs a little at a time while doing that. Once you have read the entire Old Testament, I’d recommend reading the New Testament again. You will understand much more about it when you know its background in the Old Testament.

You may also find it helpful to read the Bible in a format such as Immerse, a multi-volume edition of the New Living Translation that has no chapter or verse numbers in the text, presents the biblical books according to their natural literary divisions, and provides introductions to each book to orient the reader. I was a consulting editor for that edition, and I believe that it makes the Bible very accessible to readers. Often people read it in groups in a book-club format, and interestingly they read the New Testament first, then the rest of the Bible, then the New Testament again

I would also mention that you can download study guides to many of the biblical books for free from this blog. Here is the link. (Or just click on “Free Study Guides” at the top of this page.)

I hope these suggestions are helpful. May God bless your reading and study of his word!

Must women have children in order to be “redeemed” or “absolved from reproach”?

Q. Must women have children in order to be “redeemed” or “absolved from reproach”?

In some of my recent readings in the Bible, some of the women mention childbirth as a way to be saved from disgrace. For example, in Genesis 30:23, Rachel gives birth to a son and  says God has taken away her disgrace. Similarly in Luke 1:25, Elizabeth becomes pregnant and declares that God has taken away her reproach among people.

I had originally viewed these passages from a more cultural lens. Women were generally expected to have children, and having a child, particularly a male one, was a sort of insurance. If the husband died, a son could potentially care for his widowed mother.

However, in 1 Timothy 2:15, Paul writes that women are saved through childbearing. Now recently I’ve been considering committing to the advice in 1 Corinthians 7:8, which is to stay single and remain devoted to God. However, this advice appears to conflict with what Paul wrote in 1 Timothy. Is this a case where Paul, as a human, fell short of the mark and made a mistake? Does the advice in 1 Corinthians only apply to men, and women should marry and bear children for some sort of repentance for Eve’s transgression, as referenced in 1 Timothy 2:14? Or is there some other passage I’m missing with crucial information that can reconcile the two opposing ideas?

A. Thank you for your thoughtful question. It does not seem to me that Paul would be saying in the statement you cite that a woman needs to have children (presumably if possible—not all women are able to have children) in order to be saved. This would be contrary to Paul’s entire message of salvation by grace. Paul taught everywhere else that there is nothing we can do in order to be saved and that we do not need to add anything ourselves to what Christ has done for us on the cross. It is unlikely that he is saying differently here. So interpreters of the Bible tend to understand Paul to be saying something else than that women need to have children to be saved.

One possibility is that Paul is saying that women “will be kept safe through the process of childbirth,” as the NTE translation puts it. Other translations say  similar things. There is archaeological evidence from this time of the cult of a goddess whom women worshiped in the hopes of being preserved through childbirth. Paul could be saying that even if they abandoned the worship of this goddess—as they may have feared to do—they could trust God to protect them.

Another possibility is that Paul is saying that a role as wives and mothers can be a divine calling from God and that women do not need to forsake that role in order to live truly spiritual lives. We can see in Paul’s other epistles that some followers of Jesus at this time were so influenced by the Greek idea that matter was bad and spirit was good that they believed they should not get married. (This lies behind Paul’s discussion of marriage in 1 Corinthians, for example.) Note that there is a qualification on what Paul says in 1 Timothy: “Women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.” This is similar to what Paul says later in 1 Timothy about younger widows. Apparently they could have been “enrolled” as part of a special guild committed to singleness and devoted to service in the church. But Paul knew that many of them might change their minds and break that commitment, so he wrote, “I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes, and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander.” One way of life was not superior to another, in other words; both were spiritual callings.

While these are possibilities, 1 Timothy 2:15 remains a puzzling statement, and so I would apply the principle of trying to understand what is obscure in light of what is clear. I think that whatever Paul might mean, based on the rest of his writings, we can be very confident that he is not saying that bearing children is necessary for salvation. We should also apply the principle of comparing Scripture with Scripture in order to understand the whole counsel of God. While there are places where the Bible commends celibacy, for example, in 1 Corinthians as you mention, in other places the Bible praises marriage. For example, Proverbs says, “Whoever finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.” God himself said at creation, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make a helper suitable for him.” (The word translated “helper” actually means “strong ally”!)

Given this balanced teaching in the Bible, I think your inclination to understand the passages about Rachel and Elizabeth (and similar passages) through a cultural lens was correct.

In the end, I think each person needs to discern how God is leading, whether towards marriage or whether towards singleness. According to the Bible, each situation in life offers opportunities to serve God in distinct ways. The Bible does not say that situation is better than the other. So this is a matter of individual discernment.

However, people often do not see it that way. They may simply assume that God wants them to get married, or, on the other hand, they may not want to get married and so not seek God’s guidance about that. I commend you for recognizing this to be a matter of discernment and for being willing to commit to singleness if that is God’s will for you. I trust that you are also willing to be married if that is God’s will. May you hear clearly from God as you continue to seek direction!

Why does the Bible prophecy that Jesus will be a Nazarene?

Q. Why does the Bible prophesy that Jesus will be a Nazarene?

The first thing I need to say in response to your question is that the Bible actually did not prophesy that Jesus would be a Nazarene. Not in so many words, at least.

Matthew tells us in his gospel that after Jesus and his parents returned from Egypt, they settled in Galilee. Matthew then notes, “There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazarene.'” However, there is no such statement anywhere in any of the prophetical books.

So what’s going on here? This is actually an indirect quotation, not a direct one. Many English translations show that by punctuating Matthew’s statement this way: “And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.”

It seems that Matthew, in his appeal to the prophets, is actually summarizing their many statements that the servant of God would be “despised and rejected.” It appears that the term “Nazarene” had become a geographic term of derision. We may compare it to the term “Okie” that people in the United States used during the Dust Bowl years. It described people from Oklahoma and nearby areas affected by prolonged drought who migrated West in search of work and food. The word ceased to mean “someone from Oklahoma” and came to mean something closer to “gypsy.” Similarly, “Nazarene” at the time of Jesus meant more than “someone from Nazareth.” It was a term of derision, as we see in Nathanael’s question upon hearing about Jesus, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”

So the Bible did prophesy, in general terms at least, that Jesus would be a “Nazarene” in the sense of someone people looked down on and called by a derisive name. Your question was why the Bible prophesied that, and this was one of many ways in which the prophets indicated that the Messiah would first suffer and only then enter into his glory. Jesus himself said that that was the message of all that the prophets had spoken.

Did Adam lie before sin entered the world?

Q. When Adam added to God’s command in the Garden of Eden and told Eve that God had said not to touch the tree, rather than just not to eat of its fruit, was that a lie? How did that happen before sin entered in the world?

I will address your specific question shortly, but I should note first that Adam did not necessarily add to God’s command.

As we read through the Genesis creation account, we see that God gave Adam the command about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil before he created Eve. God’s command was simply not to eat of the fruit of the tree, but Eve told the serpent, “God said, ‘You must not eat from it, and you must not touch it, lest you die.'” One possible inference is that Adam told Eve that God had said this. However, there are some other possible explanations.

For one thing, Eve could have been using the word “touch” in a poetic sense to mean “have to do with.” In that case she would be repeating God’s statement for emphasis, and while she would not be quoting it literally, she would be conveying its meaning accurately: “You must not eat from it, indeed, you must have nothing to do with it, lest you die.”

Another possibility is that Adam and Eve agreed together that the best way to keep from eating the fruit of the tree was not even to touch it. Eve would then be mentioning not touching the tree as a natural outgrowth of the command not to eat from its fruit. Once again,she would not be quoting God literally, but she would be conveying the sense of the command as she and Adam had decided to obey it.

But it is admittedly possible that Adam himself added the stipulation not to touch the tree when he communicated God’s command to Eve, knowing that God had not said this, but leading Eve to believe that God had indeed said it. This would not have been, strictly speaking, a lie, since a lie is an intentional misrepresentation of the truth whose motive is to gain personal advantage or to harm another person. If Adam added to the commandment, it was with the best of motives.

Still, the end does not justify the means. Even with a good motive, it would have been wrong for Adam to tell Eve that God had said something when God had not actually said it. It would have been better for Adam to trust Eve and to trust God’s work in her heart and not think that Eve had to be deceived into obeying God. So if Adam actually deceived her knowingly, I think we would have to consider that a sin.

So how could Adam have committed such a sin before he and Eve ate the fruit of the tree and “sin entered the world through one man,” as Paul says in Romans?

We might just as easily ask how Adam and Eve could have disobeyed God and eaten from the fruit of the tree before sin entered the world, since that disobedience was itself sin. The answer is that Adam and Eve were not under the power of sin before they disobeyed God, but nevertheless they had complete moral freedom, which meant that they were able to obey and also able to disobey.

If we believe that Adam added to God’s command and therefore made it harder to obey, we should see that as part of an entire sequence of actions that ultimately constituted disobedience. When someone does something wrong, is rarely possible to look at the whole sequence of their actions and say, “There—that specific point is where the sin occurred.”

So if Adam did add intentionally to God’s command, then that was part of an exercise of moral freedom that unfortunately ended in him and Eve disobeying God and bringing all of their descendants under the power of sin.

How can believers in Jesus do even greater things than he did?

Q. If Jesus is God and is so powerful that he can even raise people from the dead, what does it mean when he says that people who believe in him will do “even greater” things than he does? (John 14:12, “Whoever believes in me will do … even greater things than these.”)

The works that believers in Jesus do are not greater in power than the works that Jesus did on earth, they are greater in glory. See the fuller context of the statement that Jesus made about this: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

While Jesus was on earth, his glory was veiled. It was possible to witness his miracles and claim, as some of the Pharisees did (absurdly, as Jesus pointed out), that he was doing them by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. And even those who recognized correctly that Jesus did his miracles by the power of God did not always understand who he was. Matthew tells us in his gospel, for example, that when Jesus healed a paralytic, “When the multitudes saw it, they marveled and glorified God, who had given such power to men.” They thought that Jesus was only a human being. (And it is true that Jesus did his miracles not as God omnipotent, but as someone who had emptied himself of such divine attributes when he became a human being. As such, he was completely dependent on God and yielded to God, and so a perfect channel for the Holy Spirit’s power.)

Nicodemus said to Jesus, “We know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform the miraculous signs that you do unless God was with him.” So Jesus’ miracles attested that God had sent him and was empowering him. But these miracles did not necessarily disclose that Jesus was the Son of God, come to earth as the Savior.

However, when Jesus’ followers starting doing works in his name after his resurrection, people were amazed that someone whom they knew had died was nevertheless still doing miracles when people called upon him. The apostle Peter, for example, said to a paralyzed man named Aeneas in the city of Lydda, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you,” and Aeneas got right up! So the miracles that Jesus’ followers did were greater in glory than the miracles Jesus did on earth because those later miracles attested to the fact that God had raised Jesus from the dead, beginning a new age in redemptive history, and that the resurrected Jesus was doing great works to confirm the message that his followers were proclaiming about him. So the miracles of Jesus’ followers glorified him in a way that Jesus’ own miracles on earth did not, and in that sense they were greater.

This is a challenge and an opportunity for all believers in Jesus to call upon him to do things in our lives today that will glorify him as the resurrected and exalted Son of God.

Will God really give us anything we ask for if we ask in Jesus’ name?

Q. Did Jesus give believers a “blank check” to ask for anything they want from God, so long as they ask it in Jesus’ name, when he said “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it” in John 14:14?

When Jesus spoke of his “name,” he meant much more than the word by which he was called.

Jesus’ name means, for one thing, his reputation. So to ask for something in Jesus’ name means to ask for it in order to advance Jesus’ reputation and purposes in the world.

Jesus’ name also means his person. So to ask for something in Jesus’ name means to ask for what Jesus would ask for if he were in our situation.

I think that if our request meets those two tests, then we can be confident that God will grant it. Indeed, it will likely have been the Holy Spirit who will have given us the desire to seek something that would advance the cause of Jesus and reflect his character.

Suppose I told you that I was going to be dealing with a certain organization and you replied, “Oh, they know me well there, just mention my name.” If I did that, I could expect that the organization would treat me just as favorably as they would treat you, knowing you well. But I should not expect that I could ask them for something unreasonable or unfair or something that was inconsistent with your character. The use of your name would be a privilege that I should be careful not to abuse.

So what Jesus said was in one sense a blank check, in that God does want us to ask with godly ambition for things that will advance the reputation and purposes of Jesus and reflect his character. But we do not have a blank check simply to say the name “Jesus” and expect that God will give us anything and everything we ask for, particularly not things that we ask for out of selfish or vainglorious ambitions.

If success makes us feel that God loves us, does that mean God does not love those who fail?

Q. I am certain Jesus loves me, and I love Him. After all, I am His creation and He made the ultimate sacrifice for me. That said, have we taken that concept too far as Western Christians? Have we assumed too much when it comes to how much Jesus loves each of us “personally”? Have we become too arrogant or prideful in our assumption?

Frequently an athlete will say after a win,”I thank Jesus for this win,” which is great, but what about the losing competitor? Are we assuming that Jesus does not love them as much?

Some time ago I heard a lady tell the story of how she missed an airplane flight and she was glad the Lord had caused her to do so because the plane went down and all the passengers were killed. It appeared to me that she made the assumption that Jesus loved her more than the other 200-plus folks who made the connection.

Is this taking our understanding of Jesus’s love for each of us personally too far? In other words, have we in this day and age misinterpreted God’s love for us individually and become arrogant, like James and John who requested that they alone were loved so much that they should be seated on the throne next to Jesus?

I certainly agree with you that when good things happen to us or bad things don’t happen to us, we tend to feel gratitude toward God and a sense that God loves us. I also agree with you that there are the troubling implications that perhaps God does not love people as much for whom good things do not happen or bad things do happen.

So there is another way to look at it. We could say that the gratitude we feel towards God is actually a recognition of his character as a loving, gracious, generous, and merciful God, and that any success or mercy we might experience triggers this recognition in us. But the success is actually the result of the hard work and perseverance of someone to whom God has given talents and ambition (for which they should genuinely be grateful to God), while failure or tragedy are misfortunes that happen to people in a world that God has created with a moral framework but in which God does not determine every specific event. If a person is spared a misfortune, direct divine intervention may not have been involved, but that person should nevertheless take the experience to heart and resolve before God, with gratitude, to make the best use of the time they will still have in this life.

This would avoid the unfortunate implications of the first view. However, perhaps it removes God too much from the picture. So I would actually recommend a third view. It is generally the same as the second view, except it allows for the possibility of direct divine intervention in particular cases, for God’s sovereign purposes. In those cases, the recipient of the blessing or mercy could well recognize it as coming directly from God, but others looking on would not necessarily have the benefit of that insight. So in such cases I would recommend being just as careful as we would be under the second view. We would not say in public, “I’m convinced that God spared my life for a purpose,” if there were others who were not spared.

I think the principle that applies is, “What you believe about these things, keep between yourself and God.” So, for example, if you are a young athlete who wins an important tennis match, you could thank God for the gifts of health and strength. But also be sure to congratulate your opponent on his or her excellent play and say what a pleasure and privilege it was to compete with him or her. And do not attribute your victory to direct divine intervention!

How did the shepherds know where to find baby Jesus?

Q. A few years ago I browsed the internet with many questions surrounding the biblical accounts of the nativity. One question I had was “How did the shepherds know where to go to find the newborn Jesus?” It was then I came across the proposition that he was born at Migdal Eder, also called “The Tower of the Flock” in Micah 4:8. I found the concept compelling due to the history of special type of shepherding that took place in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus birth. What are your thoughts about the possibility of this being where Jesus was born?

You are referring to an interpretation that a commentator named Alfred Edersheim offered of Micah 4:8, “And you, O tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of Zion, to you shall it come, the former dominion shall come, kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem.” There is a “tower of the flock” mentioned in Genesis 35:21, and Edersheim assumed that it still existed in the time of Jesus. He inferred from a reference in the Mishnah that sheep destined for temple sacrifices were raised and tended there, and so he saw symbolic significance in the location and suggested that Jesus had been born there.

However, this interpretation is not accepted by most biblical scholars. It is unknown whether the tower mentioned in Genesis still existed in Jesus’ day. In any event, the Mishnah reference simply specifies the radius around Jerusalem within which found sheep were to be considered temple sacrifices, using Migdal Eder (the location, not necessarily a tower by that name) to specify the distance. We do not need to infer from this that this was a place where temple sheep were raised and kept.

For his part, Micah seems only to be describing Jerusalem figuratively as the “tower of the flock,” that is, the city that watches over the people of Israel as God’s flock. Micah is promising that the kingship will return to Jerusalem. Christians believe that this promise was fulfilled with the coming of Jesus. But we do not need to conclude from the prophecy that Jesus was born at or near a tower by that name that still existed in his day.

So how did the shepherds find the baby Jesus? The angel who appeared to them told them how. He said, “This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” The shepherds would have known where the various animal feeding locations were in Bethlehem, and they just had to go from one to another until they found a baby, wrapped up as a newborn, in one of the mangers.

What evidence is there for the divine inspiration of the New Testament?

Q. What solid evidence is there for the divine inspiration of the New Testament other than alleged statements by Peter and Paul? Who gave them the authority to make such a declaration of divinity?

The divine inspiration of the New Testament is something that Christians accept by faith. If we believe in Jesus, we believe in the writings that testify about Jesus. That does not require the same kind of evidence that something would that we wanted to accept by reason.

Nevertheless, something we accept by faith should be reasonable. Faith and reason are two complementary ways of knowing the truth. While each understands a different aspect of the truth, their findings should be compatible.

And we can observe that the New Testament provides a reasonable account of how the trajectory of God’s redemptive work traced in the Old Testament reaches an intrinsically appropriate culmination in the life, teachings, sacrificial death, and resurrection of Jesus and in the way of life of the community of his followers. In other words, the New Testament reasonably is what we would expect it to be if it were divinely inspired. That does not convince us that it is, it reassures us that it is, once we already accept that by faith.

We would also expect the New Testament writers to be aware of this inspiration, and they are, as you note. And if the New Testament is indeed inspired, then that is what gives the writers the authority to declare that it is. Admittedly that is circular. But as one of my theology professors once said, “The only way to do theology is in a circle. The issue is how you get onto the circle.”

For many people, the problem in getting onto the circle is recognizing that faith is indeed as legitimate a way of knowing as reason. Along those lines, I find the following quotation from Blaise Pascal helpful. He was one of the most brilliant mathematicians who ever lived, so he certainly knew how to think reasonably and logically. But his genius also gave him the insight to realize that, as he put it, “The ultimate task of reason is to recognize that there is an infinite number of things that surpass it.” Specifically, there are divine realities that surpass human reason but that we can nevertheless access through the faculty of faith.

Now the capacity for faith is also the capacity for doubt. Anything that must be known by faith can also be doubted. But that is not a bad thing. By working through our doubts, we strengthen our faith. There is a difference between doubt and skepticism. Skeptics begin with the stance that they are not inclined to believe. People who doubt want to believe.

Your question is certainly a legitimate one. I hope you will continue to pursue it, and I hope you will do so as a doubter, not as a skeptic.