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.

Who were the Nephilim?

Q. Who were the Nephilim? Offspring of angels? Or is that theory completely wrong?

The Nephilim appear in the Bible early in Genesis, and they seem in some way to have helped bring about the flood. Their story is told this way:

“When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.’

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created . . .’”

I believe that here the biblical author is intending to describe marriages that are best understood as unions of human women and some sort of male supernatural beings. These marriages produced offspring who were “the heroes of old, men of renown.” That is, the offspring were capable of prodigious deeds. But as a result they also threw off restraint and led the entire world into “great wickedness.” God became so “deeply troubled” by this wickedness that he “regretted that he had made human beings” and decided to destroy them in the flood.

This passage naturally poses many problems for interpretation. If it really is describing marriages between humans and supernatural beings, how are we to account for its claim that such marriages not only took place, but actually produced offspring?

In light of this difficulty, many interpreters posit that the “sons of God” in view here are not actually supernatural beings, but rather the descendants of Seth, the son born to Adam and Eve after Cain killed Abel. He founded a line that “called upon the name of the Lord.” These godly Sethites, in the understanding of these interpreters, were corrupted by intermarriage into the culturally accomplished but godless line of Cain, which would be called here the “daughters of men.” Such dilution and compromise of the godly line led to unrestrained wickedness throughout the human population, these interpreters suggest.

But if this is the case, it is difficult to understand, for one thing, why intermarriage should only have been between Sethite men and Cainite women, rather than also between Sethite women and Cainite men.

Moreover, this interpretation requires that the term ‘adam, which to this point in the book has always had a generic meaning (“humanity”), suddenly and without indication be used to signify only a certain line of human descent (not “the daughters of humans” but “the female descendants of Cain”). But the generic meaning is clearly required again where God says “my Spirit will not contend with humans forever,” while the specialized meaning would be needed once more in the second reference to the “daughters of humans [Cainites?],” and the generic meaning would be needed again where God observes the wickedness of the “human race” and regrets making “human beings.” And yet there is nothing in the text to guide the reader in making these shifts of meaning.

Finally, the contexts of the other biblical occurrences of the phrase “sons of God” all call for a supernatural meaning. The term occurs near the beginning and ending of Job, for example, where the NIV translates it as “angels.” While it is true that the chosen people, to whom the Sethites would correspond at this point, are referred to metaphorically as God’s “sons” from time to time, the precise phrase “sons of God” is never used to describe them.

There is an alternative non-supernatural interpretation, first offered by Meredith G. Kline, in which the “sons of God” are kings. Kline argued that this passage actually describes human corruption in the form of institutionalized polygamy: “The sinfulness of the marriages described in [this passage] was not that they were . . . a mixture of two worlds . . . . The sin was that of . . . polygamy, particularly as it came to expression in the harem, characteristic institution of the ancient oriental despot’s court.”

But while this explanation accounts for why no marriages between the “daughters of God” and “sons of men” are described, it is still vulnerable to the same objections based on the shifts required in readers’ understanding of the term ‘adam (here it would have to mean “commoners” sometimes and “humans” the rest of the time) and the meaning of the phrase “sons of God,” which does not signify kings anywhere else in biblical Hebrew.

For all of these reasons, we should accept that the author’s intention is to refer to marriages between humans and supernatural beings, as difficult as this might be to square with our conceptions of those beings. As Derek Kidner notes at this point in his commentary on Genesis, “If the [supernatural] view defies the normalities of experience, the [non-supernatural] defies those of language (and our task is to find the author’s meaning).”

If this passage does describe marriages between humans and supernatural beings, however difficult it may be to understand how those could have taken place, this would actually fit well into the developing argument of the early narratives of Genesis, which explain the trouble-fraught human condition as a departure from an original paradisal state in consequence of measures God took to prevent human grasping after divinity.

The first pair are expelled from the Garden of Eden, for example, so that, having already become “like God” in “knowing good and evil,” they will not also “take from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” At the end of these early narratives, God divides the human community into contending factions through the confusion of languages, in order to frustrate its project of building a tower with its “top in the heavens.” In the same way, as Kidner observes, this passage “could well belong to the series [of human overreachings] as an attempt, this time on angelic initiative, to bring supernatural power, or even immortality, illicitly to earth.”

Even if the initiative was angelic, however, it appears that human consent was required, since the formal phrase for contracting a marriage is used in the passage: “to take a wife.” But we can imagine that this consent was granted only too willingly, since the prospect of semi-supernatural grandchildren would have suited perfectly the aspirations to “supernatural power” of the “men” who arranged these marriages for their daughters.

(The term Nephilim appears once more in the Bible, in the book of Numbers, at the place where the spies report back about the land of Canaan. But there the term probably just means “giants,” not semi-supernatural beings: “We saw the Nephilim there . . . We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”)

Where do the various topics in 1 Corinthians come from?

Q. My Sunday school class has just started studying 1 Corinthians. I have your study guide and I agree that the questions Paul addresses are of two sorts, some that were asked in person and some that were asked in a letter (that we do not have today).

My question is, what are the clues to do the sorting? Before your book I just thought that the division came about halfway through 1 Corinthians where Paul says, “Now for the matters you wrote about.” I thought that everything after that was addressing the questions from the Corinthians’ letter, and everything before that was addressing the questions delivered in person. But your book does not sort them that way, so I was wondering what clues I might be missing.

Here is how my study guide to Paul’s Journey Letters divides up the material in 1 Corinthians:

1 Corinthians Outline — (click to enlarge)

You’ll see that I distinguish between “things Paul heard about” and “things the Corinthians wrote about,” rather than between “things the Corinthians asked about in person” and “things the Corinthians asked about by letter.” This helps account for the way I sort out the material a little bit differently from the way you are used to.

I agree that it’s a perfectly straightforward reading of the epistle to understand that starting at the point where Paul says, “Now for the matters you wrote about,” he is answering questions that the Corinthians have asked him by letter. That’s really the only explicit indication he gives of the distinction between where the questions have come from. So why do I feel that two of the topics he addresses after this point (head coverings and the Lord’s Supper) actually aren’t things the Corinthians have asked about?

It’s because of the way Paul characteristically introduces topics as he takes them up in the letter. Paul explains when he begins to address his first topic, divisions in the church, that “some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you.” Paul is in Ephesus, across the Aegean Sea from Corinth, and apparently some servants of a woman named Chloe (presumably a member of the community of Jesus’ followers in Ephesus) have just returned from Corinth with disturbing news of problems in the community there that weren’t mentioned in the recent letter to Paul. So these aren’t so much matters that the Corinthians have asked about verbally via these servants; rather, they are matters that the servants have reported back to Paul.

And so Paul also says, as he takes up his next topic, “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you.” And since he does not refer to “the matters you wrote about” until after he has addressed his next two topics, lawsuits within the community and believers going to prostitutes, it appears that these are matters he has heard about from Chloe’s servants as well.

As Paul does take up the topics from the Corinthians’ letter, he characteristically introduces each one with a standard formula, peri de, translated “now for” or “now about” in the NIV. This is how he introduces his discussions of abstinence within marriage, whether to get married, food offered to idols, spiritual gifts, and the collection for the poor. Paul does not begin his discussion of the resurrection with this formula, but he nevertheless appears to be responding directly to their questions in what he writes on this topic.

By contrast, when Paul talks about the observance of the Lord’s Supper, he begins not with the formula peri de but once again by saying, “I hear that . . .” He doesn’t say this specifically when introducing the topic of head coverings, but he does use language of “praise” that is reminiscent of his adjacent discussion of the Lord’s Supper. Regarding head coverings he says, “I praise you for . . . holding to the traditions . . . but I want you to realize . . . ,” and about the Lord’s Supper he says, “I have no praise for you.”

These are admittedly subtle indications that are open to different interpretations. Nothing in them absolute rules out the division of material that you’re used to. But if we do take them as cues to where the topics in 1 Corinthians may have come from, they suggest that Paul is actually grouping his material somewhat thematically in places. He ends his opening discussion of things he has “heard about” with a teaching against going to prostitutes, and begins his discussion of the matters the Corinthians “wrote about” with thematically related teachings on sexual relations within marriage. And since the teaching about spiritual gifts has largely to do with their use in worship, he addresses two other topics related to worship, head coverings and the Lord’s Supper, just beforehand, even though they are matters he has presumably “heard about” rather than matters the Corinthians have “written about.” So in my understanding at least, Paul is not strictly dividing the two types of topics into separate sections of his letter.

I hope this explanation is helpful. And I wish you all the best as you teach this fascinating letter in your Sunday School class!

Was Jesus the “angel of the Lord” who warned Joseph?

Q. We were looking at the Christmas story in Matthew and noticed that Joseph was warned to go to Egypt by the “angel of the Lord.” Now I know many contend that the “angel of the Lord” in the OT refers to a pre-incarnation Jesus. And, Matthew is very tuned in to the OT. So…..does this mean that Jesus warned Joseph? I am guessing there is a Greek/Hebrew explanation for this.

I think there are a few reasons why it’s probably not actually Jesus, in the person of the “angel of the Lord,” warning Joseph in the Christmas story:

(1) First, the text should probably be translated “an angel of the Lord” rather than “the angel of the Lord.” Most contemporary English translations read this way, “an angel,” although some translations say “the angel.” (For the Greek/Hebrew specifics, see the bottom of this post.)

(2) Also, in Matthew this angel always appears in a dream. In the First Testament the angel of the Lord tends to appear in person. (Notice how, when an angel appears to Jacob in a dream, the phrase is “the angel of God” rather than “the angel of the Lord.”)

(3) 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 this.

So for these reasons I wouldn’t say that Jesus is warning Joseph to protect Jesus!

I hope you and your family had a merry Christmas. And as the story of the flight into Egypt reminds us that Jesus became a refugee shortly after he was born, let us remember all those in our world today who are refugees with our help and prayers.

Specifics regarding translation: Each of the three times the phrase occurs in the Joseph narrative (when the angel tells Joseph to take Mary as his wife; when the angel warns him to flee from Bethlehem; and when the angel tells him to return to Israel), “angel” appears in the nominative case in Greek with no article, which generally means an indefinite noun rather than a definite one, thus “an angel of the Lord.” By contrast, the phrase in the First Testament for these theophanies is definite, “the angel of the Lord,” because “angel” is in the construct state and dependent on YHWH, which as a proper name is always definite and so makes “angel” definite as well. If a Greek writer wanted to express in Greek that the noun was definite, using an article would be the clearest way to do this, but no article is present.

Did the apostle John write the book of Revelation?

Q. Thank you very much for your recent post about whether the apostle John was the author of the gospel of John. This has been a question at the back of my mind for some time and it’s great to hear your reasons for believing John to be the author. I was also wondering about the authorship of the book of Revelation. In your study guide to Revelation you state that its author was unlikely to be the apostle John since in the Gospel of John and his letters he never refers to himself as John, but goes by “the elder” or “the one whom Jesus loved.” Along with that textual evidence, I was wondering what other evidence supports this view. Has the church traditionally seen the apostle John as the author, or is that a more recent phenomenon?

“St. John Receiving His Revelation” from the Apocalypse of St. Sever (11th century). Church art customarily follows the traditional view in ascribing the book to the apostle John.

We need to recognize that there was a tendency within the early church to accept that the books they read in worship and considered reliable had been written by the apostles or else by their close companions (such as Luke). This was in keeping with the growing belief within the community that these books were authoritative. And so we find early figures such as Ireneus, Tertullian, Origen, etc. ascribing the book of Revelation to the apostle John.

Even so—and by contrast with most other New Testament books—there were some who questioned Revelation’s apostolic authorship. In his late third-century Ecclesiastical History, for example, Eusebius quotes Dionysius of Alexandria (who lived a generation earlier) as saying the following about Revelation:

“That this book is the work of one John, I do not deny. And I agree also that it is the work of a holy and inspired man. But I cannot readily admit that he was the apostle, the son of Zebedee, the brother of James, by whom the Gospel of John and the Catholic Epistle were written. For I judge from the character of both, and the forms of expression, and the entire execution of the book, that it is not his . . . I do not deny that the other writer saw a revelation and received knowledge and prophecy. I perceive, however, that his dialect and language are not accurate Greek, but that he uses barbarous idioms, and, in some places, solecisms.” (VII.25)

So in the case of every New Testament book, when asking about authorship, we have to reckon with the tendency of the early church to ascribe accepted books to apostolic sources. And we need to be prepared to critique this tendency in light of evidence that is internal to the book (as Dionysius did in the case of the book of Revelation less than two hundred years after it was written).

When it comes to the authorship of Revelation, in addition to the evidence you cited (the author’s own self-description), we can note, as I also say in the study guide (you’ll hear echoes of Dionysius here), that “the language, themes, and perspectives of the apostle’s writings are very different from those in Revelation.”

This is not a simple matter of style or genre; great authors can write in a variety of styles. (If we didn’t know better, we’d never imagine that James Joyce wrote The Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in a more conventional style, and then changed styles so drastically to write Ulysses, and then did so yet again for Finnegan’s Wake.)

Rather, the perspectives are different. The gospel of John is said to have a “vertical eschatology.” That is, eschatological realities are understood to be present now, breaking in from the heavenly realm. For example, when Jesus tells Martha, “Your brother will rise again,” and she replies, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day,” Jesus counters, “I am the resurrection and the life” (now).

Revelation, by contrast, has a “horizontal eschatology.” Eschatological realities are coming in the future and believers must await them faithfully and hopefully, enduring in order to “overcome.”

For reasons like these I consider someone other than the apostle John, but a person who was nevertheless named John, to have been the author of Revelation.

Did the apostle John really write the gospel of John?

Q. I’m reading through your study guide to the gospel of John and getting a lot out of it, but I do have one question for you. Why do you consider the apostle John to be the author of this gospel? Isn’t it the consensus of New Testament scholars that it was instead the product of a later community that looked back to John as its founder and inspiration?

To begin to answer your question, let me appeal to a helpful distinction that Raymond E. Brown introduces as he is discussing the issue of authorship in his influential commentary on the gospel of John. Brown notes that ancient works had both an “author” and a “writer.” He explains that “the writers run the gamut from recording secretaries who slavishly copied down the author’s dictation to highly independent collaborators who, working from a sketch of the author’s ideas, gave their own literary style to the final work.”

I think it is quite possible that the writers of the gospel of John were disciples or followers who worked the apostle’s recollections and teachings into the form we find them today. But I would still say that the author of this work, in the sense of the person essentially responsible for its content, was indeed the apostle John.

The scholarly debate about authorship is ongoing (some leading New Testament scholars continue to argue for John as the author in the most active sense), but I won’t review it here in this post. Good summaries of it can be found in most commentaries on the gospel of John, and I would recommend Brown’s particularly. Instead, let me discuss one feature of the gospel that I feel points strongly in the direction of John having been recognized from a very early date as essentially responsible for its content.

The gospel appears to end with the assertion that “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” This rounds out the main thematic development nicely.

But then there is an epilogue, apparently added later, whose main purpose seems to be to correct the mistaken impression that Jesus had said the apostle John would not die before he returned. Reading between the lines a bit, we can recognize that when this epilogue was added, John had just died, and his death was undermining confidence in the gospel of John itself, on the part of those who believed he wouldn’t die. That’s why the disclaimer was needed.

The fact that it was necessary to attach such an epilogue to the gospel, to preserve its credibility, strongly suggests that the gospel was largely completed before John died, and that it was considered within his lifetime to contain his teachings and recollections. Otherwise, his death would not have affected the reception of the written gospel so strongly. And it’s hard to imagine that anyone responsible in any sense for a work whose ethical teachings are so elevated would have allowed this belief in his authorship to persist if it had been inaccurate.

In short, I feel that the epilogue that has been added to the gospel of John constitutes very early evidence, from just after the apostle’s own lifetime, that he was considered its “author” to such an extent that its credibility rested on his personal credibility.

That is why I am very comfortable, despite the ongoing scholarly conversation, with the idea that the apostle John was the author of the gospel of John. But even so, the meaning and the message of this gospel can be appreciated without a commitment to any particular theory of authorship.

Why alphabetical order varies slightly in Hebrew (and why this matters)

The Hebrew alphabet in the conventional order. Read right to left, top to bottom. ‘Ayin and pe are at the far right and second from right, respectively, in the fourth row.

The Hebrew alphabet developed out of the Phoenician alphabet and it generally follows the same order for the letters. However, there is evidence in the Hebrew Bible of a slight variation in which the order of the sixteenth and seventeenth letters, ‘ayin and pe, is reversed. This is significant, for reasons I’ll explain shortly.

We know about these different orders because about a dozen compositions in the Bible are acrostics, in which consecutive lines (or half-lines, or pairs of lines, etc.) begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

In Psalms 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, and 145, in the first poem in Lamentations, and in the poem about a noble wife at the end of Proverbs, ‘ayin precedes pe.

But in Psalm 9-10, in the second, third, and fourth poems in Lamentations, and in the Septuagint text of the poem about a noble wife, the pe line precedes the ‘ayin line.

So why the occasional variation in alphabetical order in the case of these two letters, as attested by these few compositions? Many different theories have been advanced; I’m most convinced by the one that Julius Boehmer proposed over a hundred years ago. He suggested that alphabetically consecutive pairs of letters that formed two-letter words—these are relatively rare in Hebrew—were used in magical texts: ‘ab (father), gad (good fortune), hu’ (him), etc. No two-letter words could be formed from samek + ‘ayin, the fifteenth and sixteenth letters in the conventional order. But transposing ‘ayin and pe yielded sap (basin, goblet) and ‘ets (wood).

If the order of ‘ayin and pe was reversed for these purposes, this could have led to a second alphabetical order coming into limited circulation. This alternative order is seemingly reflected in a few biblical acrostics. But of course the biblical authors were using it without any magical intent. And that is where we see the significance of this other order.

If Boehmer’s theory is true,* this would be one more example of how the biblical authors made use of the cultural goods they found around them to tell the story of God’s dealings with their own community, appropriating and redeploying those goods without prejudice as to their origins or previous uses. Psalm 29, for example, depicts Yahweh as a storm god, using language that might previously have been applied to Baal—the imagery certainly was. Canaanite temples had three parts: an outer court, an inner sanctuary, and a most holy place at their core; Israel’s tabernacle and temple followed this same pattern.

Clearly God and the people of God, according to the way their story is told in the Bible, were not bothered by the idea that certain forms or images might have been somehow “tainted” by associations with idolatry. Psalm 24 proclaims that “the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it,” and in the case of the alphabet, that might even include an order that originally arose from a desire to create magical incantations. These possible origins don’t taint the letters; as an alphabet, they’re simply a neutral tool that can be used to tell the story of God, even as part of the inspired Scriptures.

So we today are free to use cultural forms, images, stories, and designs from a variety of sources in order to communicate the message about God’s work in our world in ways that our listeners will find accessible and meaningful. So long as we do not duplicate any previous message that is contrary to God’s purposes, the forms are freely available for our use. “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.”

*While Boehmer’s proposal is now over a hundred years old, I do not feel that any more plausible explanation has been advanced. For a survey of the issue, see Homer Heater, “Structure and Meaning in Lamentations,” Vital Old Testament Issues (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996), pp. 157-159, available online at this link.

What is a chiasm?

Q. Can you explain what a “chiasm” is? I often hear people use the word when they’re talking about things in the Bible, but I’m not quite sure what it means.

Simply stated, a chiasm is an arrangement of materials into nested pairs. For example, in a simple, four-part chiasm, the first and last elements would be paired with each other, and the middle two elements would also be paired together:

God created mankind
in his own image,
in the image of God
he created them.

Sometimes interpreters label the parts of a chiasm with capital letters to show these relationships more clearly:

A God created mankind
B in his own image,
B in the image of God
A he created them.

The word chiasm comes from the Greek letter chi, which looks like an X. If you go from top to bottom down this letter, it’s wide, narrow, narrow, wide–that’s why the letter is used for the name of this arrangement.

Hebrew authors considered chiasms to be an especially elegant and refined kind of literary creation, so they occur often in the First Testament. Since most of the New Testament authors were Jews, many chiasms are found there as well.

As illustrated above, brief chiasms can be found in lines of poetry. But chiasms can also be used on a larger scale. Psalm 103 as a whole, for example, is a five-part chiasm. (In a chiasm with an odd number of parts, the middle element stands alone, giving it a particular emphasis.) This psalm begins with an extended call to praise the Lord; it makes a short assertion about God’s reign; it describes God’s character; it makes another short assertion about God’s reign; and it ends with another call to praise the Lord.

In the gospel of John, the account of Jesus’ arrest and trial is arranged as a seven-part chiasm:

A The Jewish Leaders Demand Execution
B Pilate Speaks with Jesus About Kingship
C Pilate Declares Jesus Innocent; The Jewish Leaders Shout for Barabbas
D The Soliders Beat and Mock Jesus
C Pilate Declares Jesus Innocent; The Jewish Leaders Shout for Crucifixion
B Pilate Speaks With Jesus About Authority
A Pilate Agrees to the Demand for Execution

The account of the crucifixion is then arranged as another seven-part chiasm:

A Jesus is Brought to the Place of Execution
B Pilate Refuses the Jewish Leaders’ Request to Change the Inscription
C The Soldiers At the Cross Cast Lots for Jesus’ Clothes
D Jesus Entrusts Mary into John’s Care
C The Soldiers At the Cross Give Jesus Wine to Drink
B Pilate Grants the Jewish Leaders’ Request to Speed the Executions
A Jesus is Taken from the Place of Execution

Sometimes even longer stretches of narrative are arranged as chiasms. For example, the account of Noah and the flood is an extended nine-part chiasm, with a key theological emphasis in the middle element:

A Noah’s actions in building the ark
B God addresses Noah: “Go into the ark”
C Noah and the animals enter the ark
D The flood waters rise
E God remembers Noah
D The flood waters fall
C Noah and the birds verify that the flood has ended
B God addresses Noah: “Come out of the ark”
A Noah’s actions in offering sacrifice

In Genesis the lives of Abraham and Jacob are also related in nine-part chiasms, and chiasms are used to structure many other narratives and poems throughout the Bible.

So learning to recognize chiasms can give us many insights into the structures, themes, and emphases of biblical writings. The only danger in knowing about chiasms is a tendency to want to find them everywhere in the Bible. They’re not exactly everywhere. But they certainly are used frequently.

“To an unknown god” or “to the unknown God”?

I was speaking with a friend recently about the best way to translate the altar inscription that Paul saw in Athens, which he described in his speech to the Areopagus:

Should this be translated “to an unknown god” (as in the NIV, NLT, NASB, etc.) or “to the unknown god” (as in the ESV, KJV, NKJV, etc.)?

Greek grammar allows either translation, so the decision needs to be made based on context. It’s doubtful that the Athenians, by putting up this altar, were saying, “We don’t really know the true God, but at least we know that we don’t know, so we’re putting up this altar to acknowledge that God.” It’s much more likely that the Athenians were saying, “We’ve already got altars to all the gods we know, but in case we missed one, here’s an altar for that one, too.” This suggests that “to an unknown god” is the correct translation of what the Athenians intended.

However, Paul seems to be taking advantage of the ambiguity in the Greek phrase and addressing the Athenians as if they had dedicated this altar to the true God, whom they were worshipping without realizing it. “You are ignorant of the very thing you worship,” Paul says, “and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.” He then introduces the Athenians to “the God who made the world,” who is “the Lord of heaven and earth,” and who sent Jesus and raised him from the dead.

So it appears that when the Athenians put up the altar, they meant it to say “To an unknown god.” But when Paul read the inscription back to them in his speech, as far as he was concerned, it said “To the unknown God.”

Of course it’s impossible to capture this nuance in a single English translation, which has to say one thing or the other. But comparing different translations gives us a window into the fascinating dynamic of Paul’s speech, in which he cleverly and creatively finds common ground that allows him to introduce Jesus to yet another group of people.

For some follow-up thoughts on this topic, see this post.

Do social media promote narcissism and conformity?

Q. Do social networking sites (Facebook and Twitter in particular) promote a type of Social Darwinism along with narcissism? There is a strong element of conformity. Also one cannot deny the presence of cyber bullying and ostracism of those who do not conform to certain norms. I personally stay away from them but I don’t think they’re entirely bad. Still isn’t a system that in some sense runs on strength in numbers a little worldly? Your views?

I think the problems you’ve identified aren’t inherent in social media. Those are simply communication tools. These problems arise instead from the way those tools are used. The narcissism and bullying reflect the values and characteristics of the cultures and individuals who create and consume social media content. It’s possible to use the media themselves to challenge and critique those cultures and behaviors.

Similar concerns have arisen with every new media technology. Many Christians would not go to movies because they thought they were inherently worldly, based on the stories they told and the lifestyles of many actors and actresses. (Some Christians still won’t watch movies.) But I think we’ve seen, as the medium has matured and its possibilities have been explored, that in the right hands, movies can be a powerful tool to express a positive and godly vision for life.

The same is true of social media. They are the pervasive communication form of our time and I’d argue that followers of Jesus need to be in that space, transforming its culture and demonstrating its positive possibilities.

One thing this means is that we do need to be careful of narcissism. The very form of social media influences us towards posting deliberately crafted image-management status updates that assure everyone we know that we’re hip, stylish people. (In this sense it’s really true of social media that “the medium is the message,” as Marshall McLuhan said.) The values that Jesus and the apostles taught encourage us instead to ask about each potential post, “What will be the benefit for others?”

I’ve seen some good examples of positive, non-self-centered postings recently. Here in the United States we’ve just celebrated Thanksgiving. Several people I know posted something on Facebook that they were thankful for on each day leading up to the holiday. Now many of my friends are using Facebook to share their reflections on Advent, posting images and thoughts that speak of the coming of Christ as the Light of the World.

Another thing we need to be careful of, as you noted, is conformity. It’s only too easy to be carried along by trends and prevailing notions that “go viral.” Contrary voices can quickly be buried in an avalanche of disapproval and ridicule. (This is one form of social media bullying; another is even worse, the intentional targeting of individuals for a campaign of vicious comments.)

But if social media present these destructive possibilities, they also present constructive ones. At least that lone voice does get a voice on social media: there are no “gatekeepers” deciding who gets to speak and who doesn’t. And if a person is tactful, persuasive, and undaunted, they can eventually get their point across even in the face of an onslaught of contrary comments. This calls for the qualities of humility, graciousness, and persistence that the Bible encourages.

In short, I believe that social media, used well and in the right spirit, allow Christian values and perspectives to be articulated effectively for a potentially broad audience. So as I said, I would encourage followers of Jesus to be in this influential space, trying to exploit all of its possibilities to advance the kingdom of God.

What did Jesus mean by “night is coming, when no one can work”?

Q. In John, when Jesus heals the man born blind, he says that “as long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” So, when exactly is “night”? All the time since he left? Is this used to support the idea that we can’t do as many miracles now? Or does night refer to each person’s death? Or something else?

El Greco, “The Healing of the Blind Man”

I believe that in this context Jesus is using the image of “night” to describe his future arrest and execution. In the gospel of John, just before Jesus comes upon the man born blind, he narrowly escapes from a crowd that wants to stone him. Jesus knows that healing the blind man will create further notoriety and controversy. But he’s saying that he can’t let that stop him. For as long as he is free and alive (“as long as it is day”), he needs to do the works of the Father.

So for each individual follower of Jesus, “night” is the time when we are no longer free or able to be active in ministry. It can certainly describe our death, but it could also refer to times of persecution, imprisonment, or incapacity due to illness or accidents. The implication is that we need to make full use of every opportunity while we have it, without letting the risks or dangers involved deter us.

Of course we should be prudent, not reckless. Jesus himself strategically withdrew from direct confrontation several times in order to prolong his ministry. And we shouldn’t work so incessantly that we wear ourselves out, bringing on “night” prematurely.

But at the same time, we shouldn’t fail to take advantage of opportunities that are immediately before us, on the premise that “I can always do that later.” Jesus was telling his disciples that after a certain point, he wouldn’t be able to “do that later,” and by implication, neither would they. Not because God’s power wouldn’t be just as available after Jesus’ time on earth, but because sooner or later a personal “night” would render each one of them unable to minister actively.

So Jesus’ words are a warning and a call to action to us today: “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me,” because “night is coming, when no one can work.”