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.
Q. How old was Jesus at his presentation at the temple?
Since Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph offered “a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: ‘a pair of doves or two young pigeons,'” we know that Mary was performing the ceremony for purification after childbirth, as described in Leviticus. There we read, “A woman who . . . gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days . . .On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised.Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified. . . . When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering. . . But if she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering.”
So we know from this that Jesus was 7 + 33 = 40 days old at the time of this ceremony. (We know that the eighth day after birth is the first of the following 33 days because the account also says that after the birth of a daughter a mother waits twice as long, specifically 14 + 66 = 80 days.)
It’s interesting to compare Mary’s 40 days of waiting to dedicate Jesus, during which she no doubt continued to “treasure up” all the events surrounding his birth and “ponder them in her heart,” with Jesus’ 40 days of testing in the wilderness as he prepared to take on his role as the Messiah. In fact, for Jesus himself this time right after his birth was 40 initial days of waiting to assume a life dedicated to God.
Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, 12th century cloisonné enamel icon from Georgia.
Q. According to Luke, at the Last Supper Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.” What does “all of you” mean in this context? That Satan wanted “all of Simon,” or that he wanted to sift all twelve of the apostles? If the answer is that Satan wanted to sift all twelve of the apostles, then why did Jesus tell only Simon that he had prayed that his faith would not fail? Why didn’t Jesus pray for all twelve of his disciples?
“All of you” means that Satan wants to sift all twelve of the apostles. The pronoun “you” is plural in the Greek, and the NIV, which you are quoting from, is using the expression “all of you” to reflect that. Other translations say “you apostles,” “you disciples,” or “you men.”
When Jesus addresses Simon specifically, the pronoun becomes singular in Greek. I think Jesus recognized the bravado that Peter in particular was likely displaying as the disciples, in response to Jesus’ warning that one of them would betray him, instead argued about which one of them was the greatest. Sure enough, Peter then boasted that he would never abandon Jesus, and Jesus had to tell him that he was actually going to deny him three times.
But Jesus had Peter in mind all along for a leadership role in the community of his followers after his death, and “strengthen your brothers” is a call to step into that role even after the denial. (It’s like “feed my sheep” at the end of the gospel of John.) As for why Jesus didn’t say that he was also praying that the faith of the other disciples wouldn’t fail, perhaps Peter was at the greatest risk because he was the most insistent that his faith would never fail.
“The Denial of St. Peter,” Flemish, early 1600s. Despite his bravado at the Last Supper, Peter denied Jesus that same evening. But later he did “return” and “strengthen his brothers,” as Jesus had prayed he would.
Thomas Cole, “The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds,” 1834
Q. While reading the Christmas story in Luke, I noticed for the first time that “the glory of the Lord” came from “the angel of the Lord.” I had always assumed that this angel was an ordinary one, but God does not share His glory, so perhaps this was a theophany, as at the burning bush, where the “angel of the Lord” appeared. The glory was not from an ordinary angel, but from God.
In some online commentaries it is suggested that the burning-bush angel was an apparition of the pre-incarnate Christ. But it would seem odd or impossible for the angel of the Lord in Luke to be Christ, if he was at that very same time wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. What are your thoughts about this? I would say that if the angel of the Lord is a theophany, then it could be the Father or the Spirit as an apparition of God in both cases. I also like that in both accounts, the angel of the Lord appears to shepherds…major turning points in God’s relationship with man.
A very similar question is asked in this post about an episode a little later in the Christmas story: “Was Jesus the “angel of the Lord” who warned Joseph?” The questioner in that case also noted that “many contend that the ‘angel of the Lord’ in the OT refers to a pre-incarnation Jesus.” It’s the same kind of situation: Jesus is already on the scene, as a baby, so how can he also be the angel who appears with a divine message?
Much of what I said in response to that question applies to the situation you’re asking about as well:
• The text should probably be translated “an angel of the Lord” rather than “the angel of the Lord.” So it’s not the same figure encountered in the Old Testament. (The earlier blog post gives the specifics as to why the Greek and Hebrew should be translated “an angel” in these accounts in the gospels but “the angel” in the Old Testament.)
• While some interpreters do believe that the “angel of the Lord” in the First Testament is a manifestation of the pre-incarnate Jesus, I think it’s better to consider it more generally a “theophany,” that is, an appearance of God in human form, without being any more specific than that.
It is true that the shepherds say, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” But I think we can easily understand this to mean “which the Lord has made known to us by sending an angel to tell us,” rather than, “which the Lord has made known to us in person” (in the figure of “the angel of the Lord”).
Also, the fact that the “glory of the Lord” shone around the shepherds when the angel appeared doesn’t necessarily mean that the angel had this glory personally because it was the angel was the Lord. Rather, the Lord sent both his angel and his glory to convey the announcement.
I do like the parallel you draw between this angel in Luke appearing to shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus and “the angel of the Lord” appearing to a shepherd (Moses) at the burning bush. In both cases humanity was crying out for and expecting a deliverer, and the announcement of deliverance was made to humble, hard-working representatives of humanity. (Although in the case of the burning bush, the announcement was made to a shepherd that he would be the deliverer!)
Q. I would like to read through the Bible systematically over some period of time, free from chapter and verse interruptions but with approximately similarly sized sections each day, breaking at points that make some sense in context of the text. Are there word counts available for the various sections of Scripture, in order to draw up a reading plan?
Just the kind of reading plan you’re asking about has already been created. As I explain on the “About” page for this blog, I 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. My work with Biblica also included helping them develop a program of Community Bible Experiences (CBEs), in which groups read through the Bible following a reading plan precisely like the one you’re envisioning.
The CBE resources are now available through Zondervan, the commercial publisher of the NIV. On this site you can get a free digital sample kit that includes reading plans. All you would need to do is buy individual copies of the four volumes in which The Books of the Bible is now being published. But you can order copies through that same site.
I’d encourage you to start with one of the volumes—perhaps the “Covenant History,” Genesis through Kings—and see how it goes. I imagine that you’ll ultimately want to get all four volumes and read through the whole Bible following the natural literary forms of the books rather than the later artificial chapter and verse divisions. Happy reading!
Q. Paul writes to Timothy, “We have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.” Universalists use this as a backing for all being saved. What does Paul mean when he refers to God as being the “Savior of all people,” and why does he add “especially of those who believe?”
I think what Paul means is that there isn’t any other Savior for people. His statement here is equivalent to what Peter tells the Sanhedrin when they want him to stop preaching in the name of Jesus: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” So different nations or cultures aren’t saved by different gods; the living God (that is, the only God who truly exists) is the one that all people must look to for salvation.
But this God is the “Savior” in a more specific sense of those who already believe in him and have found salvation. That’s why Paul adds, “especially of those who believe.”
Q. Luke tells us how Jesus went to the house of Jairus, whose daughter was “dying” (at first) but apparently “dead” when Jesus arrived. Jesus said, “She’s not dead but asleep.” But Luke says that when he took her hand, “Her spirit returned.” Then Jesus told the girl’s parents not to tell anyone what had happened. So was the girl dead or asleep? Why did Jesus tell them she was “not dead”? And why did he tell the girl’s parents not to tell anyone what had happened, when he had just instructed the man who’d been freed from the legion of demons to tell people how much God had done for him?
As for Jairus’s daughter being dead or not, I think the key to what Jesus meant is that a common expression for death in ancient cultures was “falling asleep.” We see this in several places in the New Testament, for example, in 1 Thessalonians, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope,” and in 1 Corinthians, “Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.” We also see this in the Old Testament; a common way to describe someone dying is to say that they “went to sleep with their ancestors.” While the Old Testament examples are in Hebrew and the New Testament ones are in Greek, the image would also have been used in the Palestinian Jewish culture of Jesus, where Aramaic was spoken, so we can be confident that the Greek-language New Testament writings are preserving Jesus’ expression accurately.
Now “fallen asleep” has the connotation of potentially waking up; “died” is more final. So I think Jesus meant that the wailing and mourning were not appropriate in any event because the girl already had the hope of life after death, and moreover in this case she was just about to be raised from the dead as a proclamation of the kingdom that Jesus came to bring. So the main point really is, “Stop wailing,” or, “Do not grieve as those do who have no hope.”
As for why the man freed from the legion of demons was told to tell all his friends what happened, while this girl’s parents were told not to tell anybody, I think this has something to do with is sometimes referred to as the “Messianic secret.” Jesus couldn’t let his own people know too soon who he was, or that would provoke deadly opposition from their leaders before his purposes on earth had been completed. But there wasn’t that risk among Gentiles; instead, the proclamation among them prepared the way for further ministry to them by Jesus (he later went back across the lake and this time the people wanted to see him for teaching and healing) and for proclamation of the good news to them by the apostles after the resurrection.
Q. Something Jesus said has always been a bit troubling to me. He told his disciples once that they hadn’t been able to cast out a demon “because you have so little faith.” Then he added, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” I have to say I certainly believe I have faith and strive for it, but I’ve never quite been able to make a mountain jump. That said, I have not noticed anyone else making mountains jump either. Are we to assume that no one currently on earth has the kind of faith needed, or was this a parable not to be taken literally?
I believe that Jesus’ comment about moving a mountain is the kind of hyperbole (rhetorical exaggeration to make a point) that we also see him using elsewhere. (This was a favored device of rabbis at the time.) For example: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven”; “When you give to the needy, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing”; “If your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out.”
This device was attention-grabbing, and I think one thing that made it memorable and effective was that listeners were indeed left wondering whether to take it literally, and if not, what it actually meant. I think the main point here is the contrast between small faith and a great mountain.
At this point in Matthew, Jesus has just come down from the Mountain of Transfiguration, so he may well be gesturing towards that mountain, which would be looming above him and his audience. But he made the same point on another occasion, apparently in a different location, by saying, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”
So no one should feel that if they can’t imagine themselves literally making a mountain move, they must not have enough faith. Instead, I think we’re meant to apply the image metaphorically and ask, “What is the ‘mountain’ in my life that seems impossible to move? That must be possible for God, because even if I have the tiniest bit of faith, so long as it’s in an infinitely powerful God, this situation can be addressed.”
That last thought relates to the question of why Jesus told the disciples they couldn’t cast out the demon because of their little faith, when only the tiniest bit of faith is required. Did the disciples really not have even a minuscule amount of faith? No, I think we’re supposed to ponder this issue that the statement raises as well and realize that the question isn’t how much faith we have, but how much power God has, who is the object of our faith. We can then put our faith to work and trust God to address any situation where his great power is needed to advance his purposes.
Q. When Ezekiel was called to be a prophet and he “went in bitterness and anger of spirit,” was he angry with God for what he had to do, or was he angry with his people for living contrary to God’s will?
It’s hard to tell the answer from the account of Ezekiel’s calling, which you’re asking about. God shows him a scroll with “words of lament and mourning and woe” written on both sides of it. God tells him to eat the scroll and “go and speak to the people of Israel.” Ezekiel says that the scroll “tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.” God promises to protect him even if the people oppose his message, and then, Ezekiel reports, “The Spirit lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit, with the strong hand of the Lord on me.”
We could get the impression from this that Ezekiel was angry with God for forcing him to go on a mission on which he would have much opposition and little chance of success. (One translation says, “I went bitterly and angrily. I didn’t want to go. But God had me in his grip.”) On the other hand, Ezekiel could have been angry with his fellow Israelites at the thought that they would resist God and suffer for it. Either interpretation is possible.
Fortunately, in this case we get some help from another place in the Bible that seems to allude to this episode and comment on it. This other passage gives us the impression that Ezekiel was upset because of the content of the message he had to deliver to a nation that was unlikely to listen. In Revelation, when John is halfway through his vision, he is shown a little scroll and told, “Take it and eat it. It will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.” John eats the scroll and he finds that it is sweet in his mouth but bitter in his stomach. He is then told, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages and kings.”
Most interpreters understand this to mean that it is sweet to speak the words of God, even when they are words of judgment and warning, but that it can be a bitter experience to see people suffer consequences that they’ve received fair warning about, especially since those people could have been spared and restored if they’d listened. If that is the meaning in Revelation, then it’s also the likely meaning in the passage in Ezekiel that Revelation is alluding to. So Ezekiel was probably not angry and bitter towards God. Rather, it was the stubbornness of his own people that made him so upset.
Q. Was it the gift of tongues being exemplified in the book of Acts at Pentecost or would this fall under the category of a great miracle? I ask this because many cessationists believe that the babbling experienced today in many churches is not of God, yet literally everyone that is close to me prays in tongues. Some will point back to what happened in Pentecost and say that the “babbling” today can’t be of God because the gift of tongues is not that, yet Paul says to the Corinthians, “For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to people but to God. Indeed, no one understands them; they utter mysteries by the Spirit.” So was the gift of tongues at Pentecost or was this symbolic of the Great Commission and the gospel being preached to all nations?
I’d like to point out first that it’s never correct to describe the exercise of the gift of tongues as “babbling.” That implies that what is being said is nonsensical. “Babbling” is a term that’s used by people who want to oppose and perhaps ridicule the use of the gift today. But the Bible describes at least three uses of this gift, and in every case the understanding is that the person is speaking something meaningful in an actual language. The word “tongue” is being used in the sense of “language,” as when we say of a person, “His mother tongue is English.” The Greek uses the usual word for “language,” which can also mean “tongue,” whenever it describes this gift.
Greek has a separate, distinct word for “babbler,” meaning someone who says things that don’t make sense. This other term is found, for example, in the book of Acts, when the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens accuse Paul of making no sense because he’s talking about the resurrection of the body: “What is this babbler trying to say?” But that term is never used in the Bible for someone who’s “speaking in tongues,” which really means speaking in a language that has not been acquired in the usual way through immersion or study.
One use that Paul describes for this gift is to bring an authoritative message from God to a group of believers who have gathered together for worship. But the premise is that this message is meaningful, in an actual language, because Paul says that such a message should only be shared if someone is present who can “interpret” it. The word used means to “translate” from one language to another, as in Acts 9:36, where Luke reports, “Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas.” So clearly an actual language is in view.
Another use that Paul describes for the gift of tongues is in prayer to God. I believe that’s what he’s referring in the passage you quote in your question. No one else understands the person not because what they’re saying isn’t meaningful, but because they don’t understand the language that’s being spoken. And so, Paul warns, such prayers should not be said out loud in worship if they are not interpreted. “Otherwise when you are praising God in the Spirit, how can someone else,” Paul asks, “say ‘Amen’ to your thanksgiving, since they do not know what you are saying?” Clearly the speaking here is directed towards God, not towards the assembled believers. So this is a second use of the gift. And note that Paul doesn’t say, “since what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense,” i.e. you’re “babbling.” Instead, he says, “they do not know what you are saying,” that is, they don’t understand the actual language in which you’re speaking.
We might wonder what the value of this would be even for the person praying, since they don’t know what they’re saying either. But I think this is also what Paul is talking about when he writes in Romans, “We do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us.” (There Paul says that this is through “groanings too deep for words,” but in both cases the idea is that the Spirit is taking someone’s prayers beyond the limits of the human language that they know.) So the value for the person praying is to have the reassurance that the Spirit’s prayers are being added to their own as they intercede for something. They don’t understand what’s being said, but they know that it has to be meaningful.
The third use for the gift of tongues is to proclaim the good news about Jesus across a language barrier that would otherwise stand in the way. This is what I see happening on the day of Pentecost. It’s true that the events of that day also constitute a great sign that the good news is for all people and that the curse of Babel has been broken that made different languages a barrier to human community. As the book of Acts progresses, we see the promise of this day realized as people from wider and wider parts of the Roman Empire become followers of Jesus. But the promise began to come true on the day of Pentecost itself, as three thousand people became believers after hearing the good news in their own languages.
There are stories and traditions in church history about further uses of this expression of the gift of tongues. For example, some of the earliest missionaries to various parts of the world are said to have been granted the ability to preach the gospel in the local languages without formally acquiring them. I’ve personally heard several anecdotes about people in our own day having similar experiences. A further theory I’ve heard is that this expression of the gift of tongues might also manifest itself in divinely aided language acquisition: God would help us learn a new language much faster and better than we could in our unaided human ability, so that we could use that language to share the good news. I don’t see why we couldn’t consider that an expression of the gift of tongues as well.
So to summarize, if someone argues that the gift of tongues was not being used on Pentecost because the speech then was meaningful, while speaking in tongues consists of meaningless babbling, the proper response is to say that the gift of tongues actually always involves speaking meaningful things in an actual language, whether to address a group in worship, to speak to God in prayer, or to share the good news across a language barrier. So if speaking in tongues in worship or prayer is meaningful speech, then the events of the day of Pentecost, which were also meaningful speech, could have been, and were, another expression of the gift of tongues.
An icon of the Holy Spirit descending on the first believers at Pentecost.
Good Question 