Gospels and Act

NT211
Introducing the Gospels and Acts:

Their Background, Nature, and Purpose
Darrell L. Bock
Lexham Press, 2014

NT211: Introducing the Gospels and Acts: Their Background, Nature, and Purpose
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Syllabus
Course Description
This course walks through the pivotal events of history that shaped the social, religious, and
political environment of Jesus and the early church. It examines the nature of the Gospels,
explores why the religious leaders opposed Jesus, demonstrates the significance of the
resurrection, and discusses key events in the life of the early church.
Course Outcomes
Upon successful completion you should be able to:
• Understand the effect of Hellenism on Second Temple Judaism
• Discuss the significance of the temple in Second Temple Judaism
• Summarize the ways in which Jesus created conflict with the religious leaders
• Compare and contrast the canonical Gospels with the “missing gospels”
• Explain the issues of authorship and date associated with each Gospel
• Describe the concept of resurrection in Judaism and the Graeco-Roman world
• Discuss the significance of the resurrection in each Gospel account and to the gospel
message
• Summarize the key events in the life of the early church
Recommended Base Package

Logos Bible Software, Platinum Edition.
To download a Notes document that highlights the readings for this course, join the
NT211 Faithlife group: https://faithlife.com/nt211.
Course Outline
Introduction
Introducing the Speaker and the Course
Unit 1: Background to the New Testament
1. Understanding Backgrounds
2. The Nature of Judaism
3. Alexander the Great
4. Hellenization and First Maccabees
5. Jewish Responses to Hellenism
Unit 1a Quiz
6. The Temple Story
7. The Start of the Maccabean War
8. The Impact of Hellenism and the War on Jewish Identity
9. The Romans in the Holy Land
10. Psalms of Solomon
Unit 1b Quiz
11. The Ministry of Jesus
12. Forgiving Sins: The Healing of the Paralytic
13. Messing with the Sabbath
14. Challenging Tradition and Ritual Purity
15. Claiming to Be King
16. Cleansing the Temple
17. The New Testament Collection
Unit 1c Quiz
Unit 2: The Nature and Purpose of the Gospels
18. Orality and Memory
19. The Value of a Voice
20. The Quality and Types of Orality
21. Corporate and Individual Memory
22. Examples of Memory
Unit 2a Quiz
23. The Gospel Genre
24. The Dates of the Gospels
25. The Authorship of Mark
26. The Authorship of Luke
27. The Authorship of Matthew
28. The Authorship of John
29. The Four Gospels
30. Four Perspectives
Unit 2b Quiz
31. The Missing Gospels
32. Gnosticism
33. The Gospel of Thomas
34. Background of the Gnostic Creation Story
35. The Gnostic Creation Story
36. Summary of the Missing Gospels
37. Summary of the Nature and Purpose of the Gospels
Unit 2c Quiz
MIDTERM EXAM
Unit 3: Resurrection in the Gospel Accounts
38. An Introduction to Resurrection
39. Resurrection in Judaism and the Graeco-Roman World
40. Jesus’ Predictions about His Resurrection
41. Resurrection and the Old Testament
42. Jesus at His Jewish Examination
Unit 3a Quiz
43. Resurrection in Mark’s Gospel
44. Resurrection in Matthew’s Gospel
45. Resurrection in Luke’s Gospel
46. Resurrection in John’s Gospel
47. The Credibility of the Resurrection
48. The Significance of the Resurrection
Unit 3b Quiz
Unit 4: The Early Church in Acts
49. The Ascension of Jesus
50. Pentecost: The Spirit and the Resurrection
51. Pentecost: The Exaltation
52. To the Gentiles
53. Jew and Gentile Together: The Jerusalem Council
54. Jew and Gentile Together: Ephesians 2
55. Persecution and Martyrdom: Acts 4
56. Persecution and Martyrdom: Stephen
57. Persecution and Martyrdom: Paul
58. The Gospel Message
59. The Core Message of the Gospel
60. The House Church
Unit 4 Quiz
Unit 5: Conclusion
61. Course Summary
FINAL EXAM
APPENDIX: SCREENCASTS
62. Searching Encyclopedias for Alexander the Great
63. Searching and Researching the Apocrypha
64. Using Notes to Study the Pseudepigrapha
65. Using the Topic Guide to Study the Sabbath
66. Using Bible Harmonies to Compare Gospel Accounts
67. Searching and Highlighting the Early Church Fathers
68. Creating a Clippings Document of Gnostic Writings
69. Using Interlinears to Explore a Verse in the Original Language
70. Using Different Greek Lexicons
71. Using Clause Search to Find References to the Holy Spirit
Course Exams
The midterm exam covers the course material to the point at which it appears in the course
outline. The final exam will cover everything after the midterm exam.
Objective exams will consist of multiple-choice and true or false questions. Use of a Bible
or any other tool is not permitted for objective exams.
Introduction
Introducing the Speaker and the Course
The Speaker
Welcome to this course through the Logos software system. I’m Darrell Bock, Senior
Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, as well as
Executive Director for Cultural Engagement for the Howard G. Hendricks Center for
Christian Leadership and Cultural Engagement at the seminary. I grew up learning my
theology first, interestingly enough, at the University of Texas at Austin, where I was a
history major. Actually, they didn’t teach me any theology at all; it was a state university.
But from there, I went to Dallas Theological Seminary, where I got a master’s degree in
theology, and from there, went on to spend three years doing doctoral work at the University
of Aberdeen in Scotland. I’ve also spent four years on different sabbaticals—four single years
in the University of Tubingen in Germany, which is where I have done all my post-doctoral
work.
The Course
And so, with that background, I bring, hopefully, some expertise to help to discuss various
issues in the NT, which is what this course is about. We’re going to give you some discussion
of the background of the NT and how background fills in and helps us to understand what’s
going on in the text. We’re going to take a look at the Gospels and how they work and how
they’re structured and why we have four of them. We’re also going to look at all those other
gospels that you hear about and why they don’t become a part of Scripture—why they’re not
in the Bible. We’re going to consider the resurrection—a central event of the NT—and take
a look at detail about how those accounts work together to present who it is that Jesus is and
what it is that He’s done. And then finally, we’re going to take a look at the early church—
the way in which it ministered after Jesus’ death and resurrection, and how the Spirit of God
empowered the early community to be effective in the taking of the gospel message out to
the world and to be a missional church.
So I invite you in for the journey, and we trust that your study and the time and the
discussions that we lead into will be something that will encourage you in your own study of
the Scripture.
UNIT 1
Background to the New Testament

1. Understanding Backgrounds
2. The Nature of Judaism
3. Alexander the Great
4. Hellenization and First Maccabees
5. Jewish Responses to Hellenism
6. The Temple Story
7. The Start of the Maccabean War
8. The Impact of Hellenism and the War on Jewish Identity
9. The Romans in the Holy Land
10. Psalms of Solomon
11. The Ministry of Jesus
12. Forgiving Sins: The Healing of the Paralytic
13. Messing with the Sabbath
14. Challenging Tradition and Ritual Purity
15. Claiming to Be King
16. Cleansing the Temple
17. The New Testament Collection
SEGMENT 1
Understanding Backgrounds
Learning Objectives
After this section, you should be able to:
• Define the concept of a cultural script
• Discuss the role of cultural scripts in the NT and their effect on our understanding of it
Cultural Scripts
Welcome to “Background of the New Testament.” It is important to understand the nature of
backgrounds when it comes to the study of the NT, and oftentimes backgrounds are
underappreciated. And I thought I would start off the course by talking about how
background works. The phrase I actually like to use for backgrounds is “cultural scripts.”
Cultural scripts are things that the reader and the writer share because they share the culture,
which means a lot doesn’t have to be explained in order for them to get it.
For example, if I were to use the sentence, “The Cowboys are going up to the frozen
tundra to melt the Cheeseheads,” you would know immediately I’m talking about American
football if you lived in the United States. But if someone in Saudi Arabia was learning
English as a second language and they picked up a lexicon that was English-Arabic, they
could translate every one of those words and have no idea that American football was being
talked about. And notice that American football wasn’t even in that sentence. You know
immediately what the topic is by the nature of the material because you connect to the code
words that help open up the background: Cowboys, frozen tundra, Cheeseheads.
Now, if I change that sentence and I say, “Ian Botham marched to the crease to defend
the ashes on behalf of Her/His Majesty,” that would probably give you pause, at least if you
live in the United States, because you’re not a cricket fan. If you understood British cricket,
then you would understand that sentence as well.
Cultural Scripts in the Bible

Well, the Bible is loaded with cultural scripts that are informed by the background that
contributes to them, and the more you understand the cultural scripts and the culture of the
NT, the more you’ll understand what’s going on with the passages. So we’re going to be
introducing you to a lot of events and backgrounds that contribute to the understanding of
the NT and why the NT focuses on the kinds of issues that it does and the way that it does,
because the religious world of the first century was not quite the religious world of our time.
And so it’s important to understand the cultural scripts in order to understand what’s going
on in the text.
Explore*
See Also
Appreciating the Cultural Context of the Gospels SHJ:GSM
Introduction to Bible Backgrounds MML:ZIBBCV1
The Nature of History NTT
Activities, Guides and Tools

Segment 1 Activities
SEGMENT 2
The Nature of Judaism

Learning Objectives
• Identify and describe the five features that made Second Temple Judaism unique in the
ancient world
Introduction
As we think about backgrounds of the NT, we cannot talk about the NT without thinking about
Second Temple Judaism. Second Temple Judaism was a peculiar religion in the ancient
world. It had a lot of unusual practices that were seen as signs of faithfulness for those who
practiced the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms—practiced Judaism—and there are really
five features that make Judaism unique.
Monotheism
The first, of course, was its monotheism. There was a belief in one God and one God only.
In contrast to the Graeco-Roman world, where there were gods all around, Judaism held to
one God alone. In fact, if you walk into Pompeii today and you take a tour of that city, which
has been preserved for us from the first century, you will see numerous temples to various
gods as you walk in the marketplace, or the agora area. And if you [walk out] from the agora
area, you will also see more temples to more gods. But Israel had one God only, and so this
monotheistic faith drove them to react to the Gentiles who were all around them.
A Single Temple
A second feature that made the faith of Jews unique was the single temple, which of course
reflected the belief in the one God. We have one temple because we have one God. We don’t
have many temples because there are many gods, and this single temple was another feature
that made Judaism unique. The belief was that God dwelled in this temple, in the holy of
holies, in what was called the Shekinah, which was the most sacred spot on earth as far as a
Jewish person was concerned. Of course, this temple was located in Jerusalem.
Special Calendar and Days

The third feature that made Judaism unique was its special calendar and its special days.
Actually, one day in particular was special, and that was the Sabbath. One day a week, people
would pause to take a look at and reflect upon God and what He was doing. And this special
day was unlike the rest of religious faith around them in that one day was concentrated and
dedicated to not working and spending time with God.
Circumcision
Another feature that was unique to the Jews and that got a lot of criticism and flak from the
Graeco-Roman world around it was the practice of circumcision—that males would be
circumcised as a sign of the covenant to show their commitment to God. This is another very
unique feature of Second Temple Judaism. And those outside the faith saw it as a very cruel
act and something that wasn’t supposed to be—wasn’t worth imitating or even thinking about
imitating. It was just too painful to think about.
Special Diet
And then, last but not least, we have diet, a special diet. What we call kosher today, the Jews
kept to show their faithfulness to God and to distinguish clean from unclean foods as a way
of showing the peculiarities of the way God has ordered the creation.
Conclusion
So these features made Second Temple Judaism unique from the religious world around it.
And what’s really important to appreciate about that is that when Gentiles had these other
practices, Jews, in order to affirm their faithfulness to their God, would engage in these
practices that were distinctive to mark them out as distinct.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Second Temple Judaism BEB
Fundamental Elements of Judaism NBDTE
Gentile and Jewish Religions NTS
See Also
The Cultural Tensions and Judaism NTT
Stereotypes of Judaism EJ:ETJ

SEGMENT 3
Alexander the Great

Learning Objectives
• Outline the brief life of Alexander the Great
• Describe his view of Greek culture and the impact of this on the Jews
The Life of Alexander the Great

The first key event and figure that impacts the NT actually takes place centuries before the
time of the NT. It is the figure of Alexander the Great. He is a dominant figure of this period
and a dominant figure of classical history because of the amount of territory that came under
his authority as he was ruling. He was the son of Philip of Macedon, and as he expanded the
Macedonian Empire and acquired more and more territory, his influence grew.
He didn’t live very long. He only lived into his thirties. He was born in 356 BC and became
king in 336 BC, but by the time he died just slightly more than a decade later, he had
conquered territory extending all the way from Egypt over to India, and that influence was
huge. A review of his life and his key conquests will show how quickly this expansion took
place. And remember, we’re in a time in which we do all this by foot and by elephants and
by horses and not by planes.
His Conquests
He became king in 336 BC. He attacked Persia [on the] Granicus in 334, and a look at the
map will help you to see where these locations are. Syria and Palestine were next in 332 and
331, and his influence over Israel was important. Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian,
even talks about his visit to Jerusalem. As we continue on and thinking about where his power
found itself, he reentered Persia and took very much control of that area, which had been the
dominating empire in the region up to that point, in 331. He reached India by 326, and he
died in 323.
Rebellion and Death

His soldiers were not comfortable with all the conquests because it took a lot of work to
conquer all this land in the speed with which Alexander the Great did it, and they started to
rebel against him as he was on his way back. And making a stop on the way home back to
Macedonia, he became ill and passed away suddenly. He died in 323. He only ruled for 13
years, but he conquered all this territory in the meantime. He lived only to his early thirties.
Really an amazing story and an amazing figure.
The Lasting Influence of Greek Culture

But the reason he’s important for the NT is that he unified a culture under the influence of the
Graeco-Roman world. And the phrase “Graeco-Roman” that feeds into the NT
backgrounds—the “Graeco” part of that influence is really the legacy of Alexander the Great.
Alexander the Great emphasized Greek culture. He lifted it up, and he tried to unify the world
under this culture, and with it came a polytheism and all the practices associated with
polytheism that threatened Jews in terms of their own particular religious faith and their
distinctives of their religious faith. This put terrific pressure on Judaism, and it was something
that made them very uncomfortable with the Gentile presence, particularly a Gentile presence
in their own land that would surround them and put pressure on them as the influence of
hellenization impacted itself on Israel.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Alexander BEB
Alexander the Great LBD
Intertestamental History NTS
See Also
Jewish Political History from Exile to Alexander SHJ:GSM
Alexander the Great DNTB
Alexander the Great EJ:ETJ

SEGMENT 4
Hellenization and First Maccabees
Learning Objectives
• Define Hellenism and hellenization
• Summarize the view of 1 Maccabees 1:1–15 toward hellenization
• Describe the two main responses of Jews to the infiltration of Greek culture
Alexander the Great and Hellenization
As we noted, Alexander left a terrific imprint on the ancient world. It was an imprint that
lasted for several centuries, including the time of the NT, and the major feature of that that
imprint is the idea of hellenization. Hellenization was the moving [of] the world in the
direction of Graeco-Roman culture and of Greek practices in particular.
Influences of such figures as Plato and Socrates and other great Greek philosophers
formed the way in which politics was pursued and also influenced the way in which cultures
were structured. And Alexander left this imprint and passed it on, and even though when he
died his kingdom was divided, the influence of the pressure of hellenization remained across
the extant world of that period and particularly creeped into Israel, where the Jewish faith
and the Jewish nation was put under pressure.
Hellenization According to 1 Maccabees

Nothing shows this as vividly as the book of 1 Maccabees. This is a work which is often
associated with what is called the OT Apocrypha, but it still has value as a historical work in
illuminating the background that feeds into the NT, because it gives us a glimpse at the
attitudes certain Jews had toward the influx of hellenization.
And rather than my talking about this, I think the words of the ancient texts themselves
express themselves very clearly about what was felt about Hellenism. So we’re going to take
a quick look at 1 Maccabees 1 and some events described in chapter 2 to get a feel for what’s
going on here.
First Maccabees 1:1–5

So, 1 Maccabees 1:1–5 reads as follows: “After Alexander son of Philip, the Macedonian,
who came from the land of Kittim, had defeated King Darius of the Persians and the Medes,
he succeeded him as king. (He had previously become king of Greece.) He fought many
battles, conquered strongholds, and put to death the kings of the earth. He advanced to the
ends of the earth, and plundered many nations. When the earth became quiet before him, he
was exalted, and his heart was lifted up. He gathered a very strong army and ruled over
countries, nations, and princes, and they became tributary to him. After this he fell sick and
perceived that he was dying.”
And so first, the book of Maccabees begins by telling us the story of Alexander the Great,
the king, as he expands his power by conquering various nations. But it’s not just the presence
of power that is threatening; it’s what the presence of that power represents.
First Maccabees 1:10–15

And so we read on a few verses later, in 1 Maccabees 10–15: “From them came forth a sinful
root, Antiochus Epiphanes, son of King Antiochus.” We’ve now moved from the 320s, if
you will, now to about the 160s BC. It says he “came forth a sinful root, Antiochus Epiphanes,
son of King Antiochus; he had been a hostage in Rome. He began to reign in the one hundred
and thirty-seventh year of the kingdom of the Greeks.” So powerful was the influence of
Alexander the Great that the calendar was dated by how long the kingdom he had established
and had set up had been present. And so Antiochus Epiphanes appears in the 137th year of
the kingdom of the Greeks that Alexander the Great started.
“In those days certain renegades came out from Israel, and misled many, saying, ‘Let us
go and make a covenant with the Gentiles around us, for since we separated from them many
disasters have come upon us.’ This proposal pleased them, and some of the people eagerly
went to the king, who authorized them to observe the ordinances of the Gentiles. So they
built a gymnasium in Jerusalem, according to Gentile custom, and removed the marks of
circumcision, and abandoned the holy covenant. They joined with the Gentiles and sold
themselves to do evil.”
Compromise and Resistance

This last set of verses in 1 Maccabees 1 that we read, verses 12 to 14, shows the threat. And
the threat is that covenant has been abandoned—that is, the Jewish covenant—the law has
been abandoned, and certain people decide to follow the practices of the Gentiles. And the
cultural influence comes into Judaism, and some people are comfortable with this and are
willing to compromise their faith in order to engage in these practices.
On the other hand, the writer of 1 Maccabees is alarmed. He is alarmed at the fact that
Jews would choose to take up Gentile practices; that they would leave the law behind; that
they would go to the gymnasium, which would be a place where they would exercise in the
nude, something that would be offensive to Jews; [and] that they would, as a result, remove
the marks of circumcision, the sign of the distinctiveness of who the Jewish people were that
was the sign of the covenant that every male was to perform in Judaism. That distinction was
left behind as well as many other practices, and so the text says that they went on to do evil—
clearly not an acceptance of what was going on and clearly seeing the incursion of Gentile
influence as a threat to Jewish practice.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Hellenism BEB
Jews in the Greco-Roman World INT:CMMF
Books of the Maccabees LBD
See Also
Hellenism EJ:ETJ
Hellenism NTT
Hellenism DNTB

SEGMENT 5
Jewish Responses to Hellenism
Learning Objectives
• Identify and describe the four kinds of responses Jews had to Hellenism
• Discuss the significance of the Septuagint as a Greek document
Introduction
When we consider the various responses to the arrival of Hellenism on Israel’s political and
social map, what we see are a variety of reactions that produce different groups that respond
to this. And so, the groupings that we see in the NT—or that we see around the NT in some
cases—are the result of different reactions to the presence of Hellenism in Israel’s life and
culture.
The Sadducees
For example, there are the Sadducees. The Sadducees basically accept that Hellenism is
present. They welcome some of the aspects of Graeco-Roman culture. They cooperate with
the Gentile rulers who they come in contact with in Israel. And they emerge as the people
who are trying to make the best of a bad situation by simply assimilating to it.
The Pharisees
In contrast to that, we have the Pharisees, who emerge in the period of Antiochus Epihanes,
and they emerged by engaging the culture. They have their own view of the way things work.
They have their own way of doing things in terms of Judaism, and they engage with that and
try and push back to limit the amount of influence that takes place that’s coming from the
Hellenistic culture.
The Qumran Community

We have others who feel so pressured by the influx of the culture that they withdraw. They
withdraw into the desert, into Qumran, in the Qumran community. The Dead Sea Scrolls, so
famous, come from a group we think are made up of Essenes, who are ascetic Jews and strict
practicers of the law. And they feel so limited by what the Hellenistic culture does to them
that they move out into the desert and create their own community and their own world in
which the influence of Hellenism can be seemingly minimized.
The Zealots
Then, last but not the least, we have those who fight against the presence of the Greek culture
and want to eliminate the presence of Gentiles in the world of which they are a part. And
those become the Zealots, a group that emerges officially with that name in the 60s and 70s
[BC] and leads to a war that Israel eventually has with Rome that leads to the destruction of
the temple in Jerusalem.
Summary of Responses
So these are the four key reactions that we see: you can accept the culture like the Sadducees
do, you can engage the culture like the Pharisees do, you can withdraw from the culture like
the Essenes do, or you can fight the influence of hellenization like the Zealots sought to do,
even though they had no chance of removing a power like Rome at the time of the NT when
they tried to eject the foreigners, if you will, from their land.
The Septuagint
The last thing that you see that is an adjustment to culture is the presence of the Septuagint—
translating the Hebrew Scriptures into the Greek language so that people can understand what
the law is outside those who speak Hebrew and the emerging important language, Aramaic,
another Semitic cousin to Hebrew which is what Jews spoke but, of course, wasn’t what
Gentiles spoke. As Jews were dispersed through the presence of Hellenism in their land
across from Egypt to Babylon, and as they lost contact with the Semitic language and
Hebrew, they came to adopt the language of the Greeks and adopt Greek.
And so, even the sacred Scriptures had to be translated into Greek in order for Jews to
appreciate what was going on in what had been, up to that time, the Hebrew Scriptures. And
by doing so, it represented a picture of the cultural shift that was going on. So the Septuagint
is evidence of the nature of this influence. The Septuagint started to be translated about 250
BC or so, and that process of translation took several decades until it was completed probably
well over 100 years later. But it shows the influence of the culture on the Jewish people.
Conclusion
So we see here the various responses to Hellenism. And we see out of those responses the
very groups that we meet in the NT—the Sadducees and the Pharisees, in particular, two very
different parties, two actually conflicting parties within Judaism. But then when Jesus comes
on the scene, they will unite in reaction and in response to Him. And so Hellenism is an
important first event and first story that incorporates and that encompasses a key part of the
background to the NT.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Sects and Varying Aspects of Second Temple Judaism NBDTE
The Septuagint INT:CMMF
Groups in Judaism NTS
See Also
Key Sects in Judaism SHJ:GSM
Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Sanhedrin EJ:ETJ
Hellenistic Judaism DNTB

Unit 1a Quiz
To take the Quiz for this unit please click here.
SEGMENT 6
The Temple Story
Learning Objectives
• Describe the problem that Antiochus Epiphanes had, prompting his attack on the Jews
and Jerusalem
• Discuss the causes of the Maccabean war
• Summarize Antiochus’ offenses against the Jews as recorded in 1 Maccabees
Antiochus Epiphanes
The second key part of background to the NT beyond Alexander the Great is the story that
circulates around the temple. The temple is the central part of the story—what I’m calling
the temple story—because the temple was desecrated in the centuries just before the time of
the NT by Antiochus Epiphanes, a ruler from Syria who was a Hellenist and tried to assert
Syria’s power over Israel.
It was a power that he had to assert because the pressure of Rome on his own empire and
in war that the Syrians had lost had required the payment of [a] terrific amount of reparations
from Syria to Rome. So the ruler had to find different means of raising revenue to pay off the
reparations that Syria owed to Rome.
The Maccabean War
One of the ways to do this was to really steal the resources of the temple and the money that
had been gathered there. And that, along with the desire to unify the cultures of the nations
that Syria ruled over—that is, under a Hellenistic umbrella—put pressure on Judaism to the
point where Antiochus really tried to completely remove the Jewish distinctives that resulted
in a war known as the Maccabean war.
This war [was] fought from 167 to 164 BC, although the cleanup after the war lasted as
far as 142 BC. This war really explains why Judaism is the way that it is at the time of the NT,
why there’s so many people who are committed to being faithful to the law in the NT, and
what piety in faith and faithfulness did in leading toward that emphasis on the law and the
role of the law. Because in the face of a foreign culture, the way in which you assert your
identity and assert your beliefs—your religious beliefs—is to remain committed to the
religious principles that mark you out as distinct. And that’s what happened in Judaism in
this time.
So the Maccabean war led to the threat of distinction, and out of that battle, with that war,
there was a terrific impact on Jewish identity. During this time as well, the temple was
overrun, the holy of holies was ransacked, [and] pagan sacrifices were offered at the temple.
These were things that shocked Judaism at the time. And the reaction in trying to regain the
temple is what the Maccabean war is all about.
First Maccabees and Antiochus Epiphanes

Again, rather than my telling you about this, I think the best way to see what the reaction was
of people at the time—at least the pious Jews—is to read some of the ancient texts that tell
us what was going on. And so again, we’re back in 1 Maccabees; we’re in 1 Maccabees 1.
Defiling the Temple

And we pick up the story with Antiochus Epiphanes in verse 20. It says, “After subduing
Egypt, Antiochus returned in the one hundred and forty-third year. He went up against Israel
and came to Jerusalem with a strong force. He arrogantly entered the sanctuary and took the
golden altar, the lampstand for the light, and all its utensils. He took also the table for the
bread of the Presence, the cups for drink offerings, the bowls, the golden censers, the curtains,
the crowns, and the gold decoration on the front of the temple; he stripped it all off. He took
the silver and the gold, and the costly vessels; and he took also the hidden treasures that he
found.”
So Antiochus is looting the temple, and he is looting the temple for the gold and silver
that can be turned into monetary resources and funds that he can send back, then, not only to
his own pocket but also to pay these high reparations that he owed Rome because his
ancestors had lost a battle to the Romans and had been required to pay this amount of money.
Shedding Blood
We read on in 1 Maccabees because it tells the reaction of how they felt about the fact that
these things were going on.
In 1:24–26, it says, “Taking them all, he went into his own land. He shed much blood,
and spoke with great arrogance. Israel mourned deeply in every community, rulers and elders
groaned, young women and young men became faint, the beauty of women faded.”
It was a tough time. And the text is indicating that by the way it describes the reaction of
the people as to what was happening during the Maccabean war. The Maccabean war left an
imprint on the Jewish soul and on the Jewish psyche that really feeds into what we see in the
NT.
Making One People

Reading on a little further in 1 Maccabees 1, the story continues, “Then the king wrote to his
whole kingdom that all should be one people …”—that’s 1 Maccabees 1:41—“and that all
should give up their particular customs. All the Gentiles accepted the command of the king.
Many even from Israel gladly adopted his religion; they sacrificed to idols and profaned the
Sabbath.” This would have been turning your back on the historic faith of Judaism and the
historic commands of the Torah. And this was an affront and an offense to pious Jews. And
you can almost see the tone coming out in the way the text describes the events that are being
portrayed.
Outlawing Jewish Traditions

First Maccabees 1:44–50 completes the story, and it reads as follows: “And the king sent
letters by messengers to Jerusalem and the towns of Judah; he directed them to follow
customs strange to the land, to forbid burnt offering sacrifices and drink offerings in the
sanctuary, to profane sabbaths and festivals [those were the special days that we were talking
about], to defile the sanctuary and the priests [that’s the single temple that we’ve been talking
about], to build altars and sacred precincts and shrines for idols [that’s the polytheism that
runs against the monotheism that we’ve talked about], to sacrifice swine [swine, of course,
were one of the unclean animals that was part of the special diet that the Jews follow by not
eating swine and other unclean animals], and to leave their sons uncircumcised [circumcision
is a sign of the covenant, another important distinctive of Judaism that we’ve talked about].”
So all the major distinctives of Judaism are coming under attack by this edict that the
king is saying Jews can no longer perform. They were to make themselves abominable. It’s
clear that the author of 1 Maccabees dislikes what’s being asked for here. “They were to
make themselves abominable by everything unclean and profane, so that they would forget
the law and change all the ordinances.” And he added, “Whoever does not obey the command
of the king shall die.”
Summary
So even to the threat of one’s life, one was required to renounce all the distinctives of Jewish
faith that the law had prescribed. And this caused pious Jews to be shocked. This is why they
went to war. This is why they fought to regain the temple. But more important almost than
regaining the temple was the fight to regain their identity and to regain their right to practice
their religious faith in the face of an effort to make it extinct.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Ptolemies and Seleucids NTS
Torah, Temple, and Tradition INT:CMMF
Intertestamental Period LBD
See Also
Jews in the Homeland EJ:ETJ
The Road to War SHJ:GSM
Syria and the Seleucids NTT

SEGMENT 7
The Start of the Maccabean War
Learning Objectives
• Identify Mattathias
• Summarize the events at Modein that initiated the Maccabean War
• Explain the background of the Feast of Hanukkah
Introduction
The start of this war is revealing in the attitudes that it reflects from pious Jews. And again,
it is 1 Maccabees that helps us to get a feel for the heartbeat of what is going on in the people
who are reacting to what it is that Antiochus is doing as he asks really for the annihilation of
Jewish religious practices.
The King Challenges Mattathias

So we’re in 1 Maccabees again. We’re in chapter 2 now, and we’re in verse 15, and this is a
very famous incident that took place in the town of Modein. It represents the start of what
became the Maccabean war. We’re in 167 BC, and according to 1 Maccabees, this is what
happened:
“The king’s officers who were enforcing the apostasy …”—notice the description—
“came to the town of Modein to make them offer sacrifice. Many from Israel came to them;
and Mattathias and his sons were assembled.” Mattathias belongs to a family known as the
Hasmoneans. They are going to be the key family that resist this effort to wipe out Judaism
and, in the process, really became in some ways the savior of Jewish practice, because had
Antiochus been successful, Judaism as we know it would have disappeared.
It says, “Mattathias and his sons were assembled. Then the king’s officers spoke to
Mattathias as follows: ‘You are a leader, honored and great in this town, and supported by
sons and brothers. Now be the first to come and do what the king commands, as all the
Gentiles and the people of Judah and those who are left in Jerusalem have done. Then you
and your sons will be numbered among the friends of the king, and you and your sons will
be honored with silver and gold and many gifts.’ ”
So the request is that Mattathias should succumb to these rules, these changes, that wipe
out Jewish practice, offer sacrifices to idols, and embrace, if you will, the Graeco-Roman
culture.
Mattathias Refuses
“But Mattathias answered and said in a loud voice: ‘Even if all the nations that live under the
rule of the king obey him, and have chosen to obey his commands, every one of them
abandoning the religion of their ancestors, I and my sons and my brothers will continue to
live by the covenant of our ancestors. Far be it from us to desert the law and the ordinances.
We will not obey the king’s words by turning aside from our religion to the right hand or to
the left.’ ”
And so Mattathias makes the commitment they’re going to keep the law. He doesn’t care
what anybody else does. He’s going to make sure they keep the law. He will not violate his
religious conscience.
A Sacrifice at Modein
It goes on: “When he had finished speaking these words, a Jew came forward in the sight of
all to offer sacrifice on the altar at Modein.”
Now, it’s important to understand this is an altar outside the single temple. This is an altar
and a sacrifice probably associated with swine. This is an altar and a sacrifice associated with
swine outside the temple area, and we’re going to have a second altar outside the temple area
in violation of the monotheism of the Jewish faith, so everything about this act stands against
what’s called for in the law.
It says, “When Mattathias saw it, he burned with zeal and his heart was stirred. He gave
vent to righteous anger; he ran and killed him on the altar. At the same time he killed the
king’s officer who was forcing them to sacrifice, and he tore down the altar. Thus he burned
with zeal for the law, just as Phinehas did against Zimri the son of Salu.” And so the
comparison is made to other faithful Jews of the past who kept the law.
Mattathias stands up for the law. He kills the Jew who’s going to compromise with
reference to the law. He kills the king’s officer, and this is the start of the beginning of what
became the Maccabean war—a war eventually that was won by the Jews as they reclaimed
the temple.
Reclaiming the Temple

They kicked Antiochus out of Israel, and they re-sanctified the temple. When they re-
sanctified the temple in 164 BC, they rededicated it in the menorah that is—that we all see
as—a symbol of Judaism. The idea of relighting the menorah becomes the symbol for
reclaiming the temple, and it also becomes the basis of the Feast of Hanukkah, which is still
celebrated by Jews today around Christian Christmastime that commemorates not just the
regaining of the temple but really the survival of Judaism as a religious faith.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Maccabees HBDRU
First and Second Maccabees HBDRU
Festival of Dedication HBDRU
See Also
The Events in 1 Maccabees EJ:ETJ
The Maccabean Revolt NTT
1 and 2 Maccabees DNTB

SEGMENT 8
The Impact of Hellenism and the War on

Jewish Identity
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the impact of the temple’s defilement on the Jews’ sense of identity
• Summarize the long-term effects of the defilement on the Jewish community
• Describe the Jewish expectations for the Hasmoneans
A Long Shadow
It’s hard to overemphasize the impact of the Maccabean war in the story of the temple for
the identity of Judaism and how that influences the NT. There’s no way to treat this as a small
event. It’s a huge event, casting a huge shadow over the psyche of Judaism, a shadow that
really is cast across several centuries and not just decades.
And in fact, its influence never really leaves Judaism even after the time of the NT in a
development of what became rabbinic Judaism. The memory of this event continues to cast
itself in [such] a way that one should never forget that there was a time in which Gentiles
attempted to literally wipe Judaism off the face of the Earth, an influence that might be
paralleled today by the way in which the Holocaust is remembered by Jews as a traumatic
event in the modern history of Judaism. That’s what the Maccabean war was for the Judaism
of its time.
The Reaction to the Temple Story

And so, when we think about what this actually represented and its impact on Jewish identity,
we see the threat of the extinction of Israel literally present in the attempt to wipe out all the
distinctive practices of the Jewish faith by Antiochus Epiphanes.
Reclaiming Religious Rights

And this produced a huge pushback by the nation to reclaim her faithfulness to the law and
her right to practice her religious faith.
Pursuing Faithfulness to the Law

What we see in reaction also is the pursuit of a faithfulness through the keeping of the law.
We see the law becoming important as a sign of a distinctive of what it meant to be a Jew,
particularly what it meant to be a Jew in the face of a Gentile presence that was trying to wipe
out the Jewish right to be distinctive. And so, in the pursuit of this faithfulness, there became
an attachment to keeping the law and to reflecting the law that would be a reflection of piety,
be a reflection of a commitment to God, be a reflection of covenantal faithfulness.
Preserving an Identity
And so piety is seeking to preserve its identity to maintain a sense of who the Jewish people
are as Jewish people, and this influence really keeps itself as the driving force behind the
reaction to the attempt to wipe out Judaism.
Fearing Gentile Influence
The destruction of the temple in this context produces as well a fear of the influence of
Gentiles. This is what the presence of the Gentiles means to Israel. They threaten to
extinguish Israel if we do not remain distinct. It produces a model for the antichrist—the one
who marches into the temple, desecrates God, and asks God’s people to do that which is
opposite of what God requires. Antiochus Epiphanes becomes the model in Scripture for
what the world will do when it’s allowed to encroach on the practices that God has
commanded, and he becomes the prototype figure for what becomes the antichrist in the NT.
Hope for the Golden Age

The victory of the Jewish people leads to the reestablishment of the temple as a sacred place,
and it produced new hope for Israel. The hope had been that maybe now, the ruling family—
a dynasty within Israel, the Hasmoneans—might bring the golden age and might restore
Israel to faithfulness and truth. It didn’t work out that way, and it took only about 100 years
for that hope to collapse. But that was the hope coming out of the victory of the Maccabean
war. The hope was, “We had resisted; we had shown ourselves faithful to the law; we now
have a king who is a Jew who rules us. Maybe now is the time when God will act on our
behalf and bring total peace.” But it didn’t happen.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Hasmonean Dynasty LBD
Maccabees NBDTE
See Also
Hasmonean Rule EJ:ETJ
The Hasmoneans NTT
Hasmonean Rule SHJ:GSM
Hasmoneans DNTB

SEGMENT 9
The Romans in the Holy Land
Learning Objectives
• Describe how the Romans came to power in Israel
• Discuss the controversy surrounding the Hasmoneans
• Summarize Jewish expectations for a messiah by Roman times
The Beginning of Roman Rule

The third key event before we get to the NT is the involvement of the Romans in the Holy
Land—the Romans in Israel. We are now on the other side of the Hasmonean rule, and even
though during the period of the Hasmoneans for a time there was an expansion of territory
that rivaled the reach of the empire under Solomon, it eventually imploded—so much so that
by the time we get to the 60s BC, brothers are fighting against one another for control of
dynasty. And eventually both sides invite Rome into Jerusalem in one way or another to help
stem the tide of what’s going on.
So the Romans didn’t conquer Israel by force so much as they did by ineptitude and by
almost a civil war situation that emerged. They did eventually have to lay siege to Jerusalem
to take it in 63 when Pompey, the Roman general at the time, took over Jerusalem. But he
did so at the invitation of some of the Jews who wanted the Romans to help bring peace and
stability to the region that was beginning to fall apart.
The Demise of the Hasmonean Dynasty

What we see then in the Romans’ invasion of Jerusalem in Judaea in 63 [ BC] is the failure of
the Hasmonean dynasty—the failure of the community, the Jewish community, to take care
of itself politically through its own political rule.
Controversy from the Start

Actually, things started out badly for the Hasmoneans, because when the Hasmoneans came
into power, the priesthood and the kingship were united in one figure, something that the law
did not permit. And this was controversial at the beginning point of the Hasmonean rule and
got the Hasmoneans off on a bad foot in their rule. That was so disturbing that the Essenes
withdrew to Qumran to separate themselves from the Hasmonean dynasty and to live in their
own context, because the hope that the Hasmoneans had given of restoring the law and of
doing things according to the law seemed to have fallen apart by this combination of the high
priesthood and kingship in one office. [This was] because, in the OT, the priestly role was
given to one figure and the kingship was given to another to divide the power rather than to
unite it.
A Temporary Fix
The excuse that the Hasmoneans gave for doing this was that they had—that they would do
so temporarily until a prophet should arise that would lead to the delivering time of God on
behalf of Israel in front of all the nations. When that happened, the idea was they would
separate the responsibility. But some believed it would never happen, and so they rejected
that idea.
Infighting
So from that bad start—that misstep, if you will—even though the Hasmoneans did rule for
a time, by the time we get to the 60s we have brothers fighting with one another over who
will control the dynasty, and the Romans are invited in. So it is Maccabean failure that led to
the Romans—to the Gentiles—reappearing in a significant way in the life of Israel. And this
is in 63 BC, so this is several decades before Jesus is born.
Rome and Messianic Hope

As I mentioned, they were invited into the temple to take control, and we’re going to look in
a second at a very important text—the Psalms of Solomon 17 and 18—expressing an intense
messianic hope that emerges because Rome is now in the land. And the desire is that the
Gentiles who have now taken over Israel would be removed from the region. This hope fuels
the desire for a messianic deliverance and fuels the hope that maybe Israel can be freed from
the constraints of Gentile presence.
Jesus and Messianic Expectations

And this attitude also feeds into the NT period with the messianic expectation. That means
that Jesus has to be careful about how He talks about messiahship as He presents who He is.
The intensification of the Roman presence is seen in the presence of taxes in AD 6. As Rome
takes a census and begins to collect taxes, it is obvious now that Rome is in control of the
land. This also produced a spate of reaction against the Romans—some efforts at rebellion,
that kind of thing—as a way of freeing one from what was perceived to be growing Roman
presence and influence. These efforts also fail, but they showed the tension of what the
Romans being in the land meant.
And so, when Jesus comes on the scene and there’s a hope for kingship, this kingship is
often fueled with the desire and the hope that Rome will be removed as being over Israel.
When Jesus comes on the scene and claims His messiahship, however, it begins to show that
He is the one in whom God’s hope resides. What Jesus does is to show that the battle is not
a political battle with Rome but rather that the battle is a larger battle with Satan and with
spiritual forces—with forces that oppress humanity, not in a social way so much, although it
manifests itself sometimes socially, but ultimately from the human heart itself.
And this is Jesus’ twist on the background and against the background in which He finds
Himself. And so He has to negotiate the presentation of who He is and what He’s doing very,
very carefully to deal with this intense expectation and hope that one day the people will be
delivered by a messiah. And that messiah will kick out the Romans, and Israel will be free
from this Gentile pressure that she has had to live with now for several centuries.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Roman Influence NTS
The Environment of Early Christianity, Part 1 INT:CMMF
The Environment of Early Christianity, Part 2 INT:CMMF
See Also
Roman Rule SHJ:GSM
Enter the Romans EJ:ETJ
Roman Rule EJ:ETJ

SEGMENT 10
Psalms of Solomon
Learning Objectives
• Explain what the Psalms of Solomon are
• Describe the three aspects of messiahship that the Psalms of Solomon anticipated
Introduction
The Roman takeover of Israel was very traumatic for the nation, and it led to the production
of attacks that expressed the hope that one day Israel would be able to free itself from the
yoke of Roman presence. This was done symbolically in a picture in a text that has probably
the most famous messianic military text of Jewish hope that we have from the Second Temple
period in a work called the Psalms of Solomon.
We think the Psalms of Solomon was written sometime after Pompey took over Jerusalem
in 63 BC. And so we’re going to look at this text because, again, I think the words of the
ancients help to express the background more powerfully than I can do it by just simply
telling you the story. Let’s hear the story of the ancients in their own words.
Psalms of Solomon 17:23–39

So I’m in Psalms of Solomon, chapter 17 in verse 23, and we’ll be going through verse 39.
A Conquering Messiah
In verse 23, it begins, “Behold, O Lord, and raise up unto them their king, the son of David,
At the time in which you see, O God, that he may reign over Israel your servant. And gird
him with strength, that he may shatter unrighteous rulers, And that he may purge Jerusalem
from the nations that trample her down to destruction. Wisely, righteously he thrust out the
sinners from the inheritance, He shall destroy the pride of the sinner as a potter’s vessel. With
a rod of iron he shall break in pieces all their substance, He shall destroy the godless nations
with the word of his mouth; At his rebuke nations shall flee before him, And he shall reprove
sinners for the thoughts of their heart.”
So here we see the picture of the hope for a messiah who will defeat the nations, who will
be a powerful ruler, who will dismiss them and crush them and establish and lay the
framework for the reestablishment of righteousness in Israel.
Righteousness in Jerusalem
The text continues in verse 28: “And he shall gather together a holy people, whom he shall
lead in righteousness, And he shall judge the tribes of the people that has been sanctified by
the Lord his God. And he shall not suffer unrighteousness to lodge any more in their midst,
Nor shall there dwell with him any man that knows wickedness, For he shall know them, that
they are all sons of their God. And he shall divide them according to their tribes upon the
land, And neither sojourner nor alien shall sojourn with them any more. He shall judge
peoples and nations in the wisdom of his righteousness.”
This second portion of the hymn that gives the messianic hope from a military perspective
not only sees the Messiah conquering the nations but also establishing righteousness within
Jerusalem and producing an environment in which righteousness can flourish within
Jerusalem.
An Oasis of Righteousness
And so the text goes on: “And he shall have the heathen nations to serve him under his yoke;
And he shall glorify God in a place to be seen of all the earth; And he shall purge Jerusalem,
making it holy as of old: So that nations shall come from the ends of the earth to see his glory,
Bringing as gifts her sons who had fainted, And to see the glory of the Lord within which
God had glorified her. And he shall be a righteous king, taught of God, over them, And there
shall be no unrighteousness in his days in their midst, for they shall be holy and their king
the anointed of the Lord. He shall not put his trust in horse and rider and bow, Nor shall he
multiply for himself gold and silver for war, Nor shall he gather confidence from a multitude
for the day of battle. The Lord Himself is his king, the hope of him that is mighty through his
hope in God. All nations shall be in fear before him, And he will smite the earth with the
word of his mouth for ever.”
And the text goes on. And the point here is that the Messiah is a place where righteousness
is established, the nations are expelled from the land, the people themselves of Israel become
righteous, and the nations begin to flock to Israel, to this oasis of righteousness that the
Messiah creates in the pictures of a golden age that the Messiah is responsible for.
Summary
This was the hope that beat in the hearts of many pious Jews in the time after Rome took over
Jerusalem in 63 BC. This is the heart that beat within Israel as Jesus was born and as His
mission came forward. And this is why, when Jesus is thought perhaps to be a king, that some
thought that what He would do [was] come and wipe out Rome. Jesus did come to be the
Messiah. That’s what the NT is trying to affirm. But He didn’t do it in such a way that He was
going to deal with the political realities of Rome. He was going to do it in a far more profound
way, in a way that dealt with human hearts.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Messiah LBD
Psalms of Solomon LBD
Psalms of Solomon POT
See Also
Psalms of Solomon DNTB
Psalms of Solomon EJ:ETJ

Unit 1b Quiz
SEGMENT 11
The Ministry of Jesus
What Got Jesus into Trouble?

The fourth event that we want to look at that informs the background of the NT is the ministry
of Jesus Himself. This is a crucial section, obviously. The NT deals throughout its entirety
with the impact of the life and ministry of Jesus, and there’s absolutely no way for us to cover
all of this in this kind of a course. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to focus on a
particular aspect of Jesus’ ministry—the central aspect of Jesus’ ministry—and that’s what
led to His crucifixion and resurrection. And we can’t get to crucifixion without asking what
caused people to want to put Jesus to death. And we can’t get to that question without looking
and asking the question: What got Jesus into trouble?
So what I want to do is to take a handful of events—certain key events; five of them, in
fact—and take a look at how it is that they have impacted the movement of the opposition to
want to put Jesus to death. What got Jesus into trouble? What put Jesus on the cross? How
did Jesus get to the cross? In each one of these events, there will be aspects of background
that are important to appreciate to get the sense of the full force of what is going on. And to
focus on those events, we will occasionally look at some element of cultural background or
background in the law that is fueling what is taking place. Our hope is that by doing this,
you’ll get a sense of how background is of significance in understanding what’s going on in
given passages in the NT.

SEGMENT 12
Forgiving Sins: The Healing of the

Paralytic
Learning Objectives
• Summarize the controversy in the account of the paralytic’s healing
• Explain how Jesus tied together the man’s healing and the forgiveness of his sins
• Discuss the Second Temple view on forgiveness of sins and the relationship of The
Prayer of Nabonidus to this perspective
• Describe how Jesus claimed to have authority in this story
An Overview of the Controversies

As we consider what got Jesus into trouble, we come to a very important part of the Synoptic
Gospels. In two of the Synoptic Gospels, in Mark and in Luke, we get five events put in
sequence with one another about what got Jesus into trouble. We’re actually not looking at
all of those events. We’re going to look at a couple of them.
In Mark and Luke

But it’s important to know that in Mark 2:1–3:5 and in Luke 5:17–6:11, we have five
consecutive controversy accounts that describe different things that Jesus did that got Him
into trouble. They were the way in which He claimed to forgive sins; the nature of His
associations—He didn’t associate with the kinds of people they expected a pious person to
associate with; the way in which He engaged in religious practices—prayer and almsgiving
wasn’t like the Pharisees and John the Baptist, so Jesus got asked a question about that; and
then two controversies related to the Sabbath. We’re going to select out the controversy that
starts this sequence—the forgiveness of sins—as well as the controversies that end it—the
healings tied to the Sabbath. But know that these two units exist because they are important
parts of the scriptural text.
In Matthew
Matthew has the same five controversies, but he doesn’t group them together one after the
other as Mark and Luke do because he has a different way of arranging the material and
presenting the material that he is concerned about doing. So he breaks up these controversies
and spreads them out, but they’re all there.
The Text
So we start then with the controversy of the healing of the paralytic in in Mark 2:1–12. And
it begins like this: “Now after some days, when he returned to Capernaum, the news spread
that he was at home. So many gathered that there was no longer any room, not even by the
door, and he preached the word to them. Some people came bringing to him a paralytic,
carried by four of them. When they were not able to bring him in because of the crowd, they
removed the roof above Jesus. Then, after tearing it out, they lowered the stretcher the
paralytic was lying on.” It says, “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to paralytic, ‘Sons, your
sins are forgiven.’ ”
Now, there are two important features to this: the claim to forgive sins and the fact that
that isn’t why the paralytic came to Jesus. He wasn’t coming to Jesus to have his sins
forgiven. He was coming to Jesus to be healed. I often like to have fun with this text and talk
about what it was like for Jesus to be talking in front of the crowd [and] all of a sudden to
see snowflakes coming down from above, raining in on the crowd, seeing the paralytic
lowered in front of Jesus. It would have been a very dramatic scene to visualize. And there
he is in front of Jesus, and Jesus says to him first thing, “Your sins are forgiven.” Of course,
the paralytic sitting there would have thought—this isn’t in the text, but it’s important—
would have thought, “Well, that isn’t why I came here. That isn’t why I crashed this party.
That isn’t why I’m here. I came here to be healed, not to have my sins forgiven.” But Jesus
is doing something profound by connecting the situation of the paralytic with sin, and that’s
what He goes on to explain.
Forgiveness and The Prayer of Nabonidus

It says in the next verse of Mark—Mark 2:6—“Now some of the experts on the law were
sitting there, turning these things over their minds. ‘Why does this man speak this way? He
is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ ” And this is where the core
background of the text comes because the idea of God forgiving sins is fundamental to the
background of Second Temple Judaism, and no one else forgives sins but God. We see this
idea in a text whose translation actually is controversial—in a Qumranian text, The Prayer
of Nabonidus, 4Q242, in which Nabonidus was smitten with some type of infirmity that was
threatening his life. And so he prays out to God. And it says, “I, Nabonidus, was smitten with
a severe inflammation lasting seven years. Because I was thus changed in becoming like a
beast, I prayed to the most high and he forgave my sins.” This is actually one way to translate
the passage. Another way in the translation of the passage is that Nabonidus invites in an
exorcist, who forgives the sins. And if that’s the case, this is the only text we have in Second
Temple Judaism where someone else other than God is attributed with forgiving sin.
So, despite the dispute about this text, what it shows is that forgiveness of sins is
something God does, and if the exorcist does it in this text, then it’s an unusual text that’s out
of step with the rest of what it is that God is only said to do. So that background is important
because the theologians are saying, in effect, that Jesus is making a claim that He shouldn’t
make.
Jesus’ Challenge
Jesus is doing something else, though, that’s also important. He is tying something you
cannot see to something you can see. Let’s read on and see how He does this.
The complaint was, “Why does this man speak this way? He is blaspheming! Who can
forgive sins but God alone?” That’s verse 7. Verse 8: “Now immediately, when Jesus realized
in his spirit that they were contemplating such thoughts, he said to them, ‘Why are you are
thinking such things in your hearts?’ ”
Let me give you something to note about the Gospels, and that is that whenever anyone
does thinking privately in front of Jesus, it’s not good for the person doing the thinking. And
so in this text, Jesus is getting ready to challenge something. Usually when the text notes that
someone’s thinking something in front of Jesus, a challenge to that thinking is coming, and
that’s exactly what happens here.
“He said to them, ‘Why are you thinking such things in your hearts?’ ” Picking up in
verse 9: “ ‘Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven,” or to say, “Stand
up, take your stretcher, and walk”? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has
authority on earth to forgive sins,’—he said to the paralytic—‘I tell you, stand up, take your
stretcher, and go home.’ And immediately the man stood up, took his stretcher, and went out
in front of them all. They were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We have never seen
anything like this!’ ”
The Choice
Now, the key part of this text is the part in which Jesus says, “In order that you might know
that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to him, ‘Get up and walk.’ ”
And so the choice is between forgiveness of sins and walking.
You can see a paralytic being healed so that he is able to walk, but you cannot see
forgiveness of sins. And so Jesus, when He asks the question, “What is easier, to say ‘Your
sins are forgiven’ or ‘Get up and walk’?” [is] actually asking a trick question. On the one
hand, it’s easier to say “Your sins are forgiven” because you can’t actually see if it’s taken
place. No one has seen what forgiveness of sins looks like. I mean, you don’t sit there and
say “Your sins are forgiven” and then the next thing you do is you wave to sin as they depart,
saying, “So long, sin. Been nice to see you. Hope you never come back.” It’s something you
can’t see.
But if a paralytic is told to walk, you can see that healing. Jesus links the two to say that
the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. “Son of Man” also has important
background because the title “son of man” comes out of Dan 7:13–14. In that text, a human
being—that’s what a son of man is: a son of a human being—a son of man rides the clouds
to receive judgment authority from the Ancient of Days.
The Son of Man

In the OT, only transcendent beings ride the clouds. Only the God of Israel rides the clouds,
or the other gods ride the clouds. Human beings don’t ride clouds. So this title has a mixture
of human and divine authority tied to it because the Son of Man receives judgment authority
from God and rides the clouds. It’s that figure who’s been given authority to forgive sins.
And in that authority to forgive sins, we see Jesus stepping on the view of the leadership that
says only God has the right to forgive sins.
So Jesus performs the healing. In the healing, and when the healing happens, the steps of
the paralytic now walking, talk. And what they say is the Son of Man has authority on earth
to forgive sins, the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, the Son of Man has
authority on earth to forgive sins. And so what you can’t see—forgiveness of sins—is tied to
what you can see—the healing of the paralytic in a way that points to the authority that the
Son of Man now has.
Conclusion
This was one of the early events that got Jesus into trouble: the claim to forgive sins. And in
the claim to forgive sins, Jesus’ authority is put forward in a background that says the only
being that can forgive sins is God. Thus, Jesus is making a claim about who He is that the
leadership found offensive but that the healing established had come from God.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Notes on Mark 2:1–12 FSB
Commentary on Mark 2:1–12 NAC:M
Prayer of Nabonidus LBD
See Also
Forgiveness of Sins DJG
Miracles of Jesus DJG
The Healing of the Paralytic JC:BRGS

SEGMENT 13
Messing with the Sabbath
Learning Objectives
• Describe the Sabbath in Jewish tradition
• Summarize the four examples Jesus used to challenge the tradition of the Sabbath
• Explain how He claimed divinity in His challenge of the Sabbath
Introduction
Well, we’ve looked at Jesus’ authority over sin as one of the issues that got Jesus in trouble.
Now we’re going to look at a second event. This is the event of the Sabbath. This is a really
important event. And unfortunately, because we don’t appreciate the background of the
Sabbath today, it’s hard to appreciate exactly how important this is. So let me talk a little bit
about the background of the Sabbath.
The Sabbath in Jewish Tradition

The Sabbath was a special day in the Jewish calendar. That, we’ve already talked about. But
it was so special that it was seen to picture God’s day of rest after creating the world. That
got formalized in the observation of the Sabbath day in the Ten Commandments and in the
Law so that every week, a Jewish person would take one day out of a week—the Sabbath,
the last day of the week—in which to rest and contemplate the goodness, compassion, and
creative activity of God. And so, [on] the day of rest, a Jewish person was to do nothing but
contemplate God and pray to Him, to be engaged in religious reflection on who it is that God
was.
This was so formalized that in the Mishnah—which is the written codification of the
Jewish oral law written at the end of the second century AD, about AD 180 or so—there is a
tractate—a section, a topic, a chapter if you will—called “The Sabbath.” And in this tractate,
called “Shabbat 7:2,” there is a listing of 39 things you cannot do on the Sabbath. The passage
is known as the “Forty less one.” And if you were to look it up and take a look at it, you
would see a listing of a variety of things that you can’t do on the Sabbath. You can’t thresh
and winnow grain. You can’t slay a deer—you can’t go hunting on the Sabbath. You can’t
erase two letters in order to write two letters—you can’t do any writing on the Sabbath. You
can’t transport an object from one location to another. There was a whole series of things that
you couldn’t do on the Sabbath, and this was seen to reflect your pious commitment to God
and who He was. So this is a very, very important background text that we’re dealing with.
Jesus Confronts Sabbath Tradition

Well, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke—in all three gospels—there’s an incident, one of several
Sabbath controversies that appear. We’re going to look at the version in Matt 12, because it
gives the fullest version of Jesus’ reply. And this passage begins in Matt 12:1 like this: “At
that time Jesus went through the grain fields on a Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and
they began to pick heads of wheat and eat them.” That would involve threshing and
winnowing, which would be a violation of the Sabbath. “But when the Pharisees saw this,
they said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing what is against the law to do on the Sabbath.’
He said to them, ‘Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were
hungry—how he entered the house of God and they ate the sacred bread, which was against
the law for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests?’ ”
Eating the Shewbread

So Jesus begins by replying by using scriptural examples that show that not everything is a
violation of the Sabbath. Granted, this event does not take place on the Sabbath, but it does
show a violation for the law by doing something that the law prohibited from being done—
in this case, being done for someone for whom it was not allowed. The shewbread was bread
that was only supposed to be for the priests, and yet David and his men were said to eat it on
this occasion. There were no lightning bolts; there was no destruction of David and his men
for having violated the Sabbath. So Jesus raises this as an example of an exception to the
rule, if you will.
Priests Working on Sabbath

The second example comes next, in verse 5: “Or have you not read in the law that the priests
in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are not guilty?” His point is, the priests work in
the temple on the Sabbath day. They do labor, and yet they’re not violating the Sabbath.
That’s a second scriptural example. The third example comes in verse [6] after Jesus’
transition by making a point about who He is: “I tell you that something greater than the
temple is here.” So if the priests can serve in relationship to the temple and not desecrate it,
and [if] something greater than the temple is here, then those who serve with Jesus don’t
desecrate the Sabbath either. That’s the second example.
Mercy, Not Sacrifice

And here’s the third that follows it, in verse 7: “If you had not known what this means: ‘I
want mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.” So a third
example comes from the saying of the prophets that says that God desires mercy and not
sacrifice. That’s where His heartbeat is. So something that is a reflection of just meeting a
basic need of feeding yourself on the Sabbath is not a violation of the Sabbath, according to
Jesus.
So three reasons are scriptural reasons. One is the example of David and the shewbread,
the second is the priests in the temple, [and] the third is the prophetic declaration that God
desires mercy and not sacrifice.
Lord of the Sabbath

But if those aren’t good enough, there’s a last one coming that’s even stronger. It’s in verse
8: “For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” Now Jesus is making a claim, and the claim
is He has authority over this Sabbath, which raises this question: Who has authority over a
day which God established by His activity, and who has authority over a day which God has
put in the Ten Commandments? Who has authority over a day that God has sanctified in His
law given to His people? Who has that kind of authority?
And it’s [by] the very fact that Jesus is pushing against the edge of divine authority by
making this statement that He is the Lord of the Sabbath that the Sabbath controversies are
one of the ways that got Jesus into trouble. On the one hand, He forgave sin. Only God can
do that. On the second hand, He claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath. Only the Lord God has
authority over the Sabbath, and He claimed He could do that.
Summary
So you begin to see the types of things that get Jesus into trouble, and the background of
these texts helps us to explain the nature of the challenge that Jesus is issuing about who He
is as He does these things.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Sabbath LBD
Notes on Matt 12:1–8 FSB
Commentary on Matt 12:1–8 NAC:M
Sabbath after the OT BEB
See Also
Sabbath DJG
Notes on Matt 12:1–18 MML:ZIBBCV1
Sabbath Observance and Jesus EJ:ETJ
Sabbath Concerns and Jesus SHJ:GSM

SEGMENT 14
Challenging Tradition and Ritual Purity
Learning Objectives
• Describe how Jesus dealt with the tradition of hand washing and why it caused a
problem with the religious leaders
• Summarize Jesus’ teaching about His purpose with respect to the law
• Explain Jesus’ core ethic and how it differed from what the religious leaders taught
• Summarize the three areas where Jesus got in trouble with the religious leaders
Introduction
A third passage that got Jesus into trouble was His handling of issues related to ritual purity
and His handling of the law in general, and we’re going to look at that in this segment. We’re
going to begin in Matt 15, where Jesus is challenged because His disciples aren’t keeping
certain practices, and this leads to a question and exchange between Jesus and the leadership.
Washing Hands
In Matthew 15:1, we have the following passage: “Then Pharisees and experts on the law
came from Jerusalem to Jesus and said, ‘Why do your disciples disobey the tradition of the
elders? For they don’t wash their hands when they eat.’ ” And of course, the background here
has to deal with the practice of hand washing so as to avoid ritual uncleanness. If you became
ritually unclean, you couldn’t go to the temple to worship God, so the idea was to keep your
hands ritually pure so that they wouldn’t become unclean.
For the Priests and Everyone Else

This practice primarily focused on the priests, but in the first century, it had expanded in the
expectation of some to include everybody, and that’s the situation that we have here.
The Corban
In verse 3, we continue on: “He answered them, ‘And why do you disobey the commandment
of God because of your tradition? For God said, “Honor your father and mother” and
“Whoever insults his father and mother must be put to death.” But you say, “If someone tells
his father and mother, ‘Whatever help you would have received from me is given to God,’
he does not [need to] honor his father.” You have nullified the word of God on account of
your tradition.’ ”
There’s a tradition in Second Temple Judaism called the “corban”—“given to God” or
“given over to God”—and the allusion is saying that something’s given over to God and then,
by doing so, that’s dedicated to the temple, and those resources or that thing, whatever it is,
can’t be used to help someone else because it’s dedicated to the temple of God. That’s what
Jesus is alluding to here. And His point here is that this was done often enough or so often
that the ability to help one’s parents was impaired by the way in which this practice was
employed.
What Really Defiles

[In] verse 7, Jesus goes on, “ ‘Hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied correctly about you when he
said, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, and they worship
me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” ’ Then he called the crowd to
him and said, ‘Listen and understand. What defiles a person is not what goes into the mouth;
it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person.’ Then the disciples came to him and
said, ‘Don’t you know that when the Pharisees heard this saying they were offended?’ And
he replied, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father did not plant will be uprooted. Leave them!
They are blind guides. If someone who is blind leads another who is blind, both will fall into
a pit.’ But Peter said to him, ‘Explain this parable to us.’ And Jesus said, ‘After all this, are
you still so foolish? Don’t you understand that whatever goes into the mouth enters the
stomach and then passes out into a sewer? But the things that come out of the mouth come
from the heart. These things defile a person. Out of the heart come evil ideas, murder,
adultery, sexual immortality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are the things that defile
a person; it is not eating with unwashed hands that defiles a person.’ ”
Jesus’ Indifference
Now, that’s the passage that shows how Jesus handled the tradition of keeping your hands
clean so that you could maintain ritual purity. And the problem that we see is that Jesus’
attitude toward the law reflects at best a kind of indifference toward certain practices that
were expanded to extend from the priest into the general populace, whereas His concern is
the character of a person—what’s going on relationally between them. If you look at this
passage on what comes out of the mouth of a person is that which defiles and look at the
things that are in the list, they’re all things that talk about how we relate to one another—
what our ethic is, if you will. That’s what Jesus concentrated on, as opposed to the legality
of the stipulation.
The Core of Jesus’ Ethic

And you see this in a more powerful way in some ways in another very famous passage that
wasn’t controversial but did reflect the core of Jesus’ ethic, and that’s in Matt 5. In Matthew
5, we get a picture of a passage where Jesus lays out how He thinks the law should be
followed.
Fulfilling the Law

He begins the passage in chapter 5 verse 17, when He says, “Do not think I have come to
abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfill them.”
And then from there, He goes on to specify that someone should not teach even one stroke
of the law to pass away—that anyone who does that falls short in the eyes of God—and [He]
teaches them to obey the least of the commandments [to avoid falling] short in the eyes of
God. But then He goes on to explain what it is that He’s talking about in verses 21–48.
This is the first part of what is known the Sermon on the Mount. And what’s interesting
is that He pushes on the difference between what the stipulation says—what the law says—
and what it’s driving toward.
“You Have Heard That It Was Said …”

And so you get passages like this, starting in Matt 5:21: “You have heard that it was said to
an older generation, ‘Do not murder,’ and ‘whoever murders will be subject to judgment.’
But I say to you that anyone that is angry with a brother will be subject to judgment. And
whoever insults a brother will be brought before the council, and whoever says ‘Fool’ will
sent to fiery hell.”
“So then, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother has
something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled
to your brother and then come and present your gift. Reach agreement quickly with your
accuser while on the way to court, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge hand
you over to the warden, and you will be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will never
get out of there until you have paid the last penny!”
You take these six passages together and look at them, and the point Jesus is making is,
“Look, the issue is not law, the law about murder. You aren’t innocent of the law if you
simply haven’t murdered someone. No, the law is driving towards anger which takes you to
murder.” And so He drives beyond the stipulation to the heart and, in that process, ups the
ante on what it is that the law exposes, because the law is after the heart, not just of the mere
level of the stipulation.
Adultery
He does the same thing in the next example that deals with adultery. He says, “You have
heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ ” This is Matthew 5:27. “But I say to you
that whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his
heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away! It is better to lose one
of your members than to have your whole body thrown into hell. If your right hand causes
you to sin, cut it off and throw it away! It is better to lose one of your members that to have
your whole body go into hell.”
And so, here the issue is not the stipulation of adultery but what leads to adultery—the
desire of someone who is not your wife, what He describes as lust—and so the idea here is
again to drive toward where the heart is going.
Marriage and Divorce

The next one does the same thing with the commitment to marriage. Don’t think about what
I can get away with in order to get a divorce. If you’ve made a commitment to marriage, you
should stay married. Or the next one deals with [how] you don’t need to say an oath. Your
“yes” should be good enough that your “yes” is good enough. We only use oaths because we
can’t trust somebody. We ought to be able to trust the person who issues an oath.
Summary
And so it goes all way through Matt 5, where we’re deepening the level of law so that the
law is not just about the stipulation [but] it’s about the ethic that the law’s pushing for that’s
to come out of the heart. And Jesus’ emphasis on moving beyond the stipulation and dealing
with the ethic of how people related to one another was another area that got Him into trouble.
It’s the third area that we’ve talked about as He challenges tradition and ritual purity, and
in it He shows His authority to have the right to interpret the law and to oversee what the law
is about. Who has authority over God’s law? Only God does. This is another push on the
authority. He’s had the right to forgive sins; only God can forgive sins. He has authority over
the Sabbath; only God has authority over the sacred calendar. And now He has authority over
God’s law; only God is to oversee what’s going on with God’s law.
So everything that got Jesus into trouble got Him into trouble because He was pushing
on the edges of the authority of God. And by pushing on the edges of the authority of God,
He was revealing on the one hand who He was, but He also was engendering the reaction of
those who didn’t like what He was claiming on the other side because His claims were so
extensive.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Corban BEB
See Also
Purity and Jesus SHJ:GSM
Food Laws EJ:ETJ
Ritual Purity in the Gospels DJG
Jesus and the Law DJG

SEGMENT 15
Claiming to Be King
Learning Objectives
• Contrast the expectations of Zechariah and the Pharisees about the coming Messiah
• Describe how the triumphal entry was a claim for royal authority
Introduction
Yet another area where Jesus’ authority or claims of authority got Him into trouble was the
way in which He entered into Jerusalem claiming to be a Messianic figure. Both the way He
did this and what the expectations were come into confrontation in this scene.
The Triumphal Entry

And we’re looking at a passage that actually is depicted in all four Gospels, but we’re going
to look at the version in Luke 19, starting in verse 28, where we see Jesus going up to
Jerusalem. And then it says, “Now when he approached Bethphage and Bethany, at the place
called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, telling them, ‘Go to the village ahead
of you. When you enter it, you will find a colt tied there that has never been ridden. Untie it
and bring it here. If anyone asks you, “Why are you untying it?” just say, “The Lord needs
it.” ’ So those who were sent ahead found it exactly as he had told them. As they were untying
the colt, its owners asked them, ‘Why are you untying that colt?’ They replied, ‘The Lord
needs it.’ Then they brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt, and had Jesus get on
it. As he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he approached the road leading
down from the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of his disciples began to rejoice and praise
God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen. ‘Blessed is the king who comes
in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!’ But some of the Pharisees
in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples.’ He answered, ‘I tell you, if they
keep silent, the very stones will cry out!’ ”
Zechariah’s Expectations
So here we see Jesus entering the city on the back of a colt. A couple of the Gospels, Matthew
and John, tell us the background here, and that is that the expectation was from Zech 9:9 that
the king or the messianic figure of the nation would ride the back of a colt—actually, the
back of a donkey. It was a way of picturing a humble Messiah as opposed to the powerful
Messiah that we read about in the Psalms of Solomon earlier. This is not a military deliverer,
but this is someone who enters the city humbly but nonetheless comes to the city claiming to
have the authority of coming in the name of the Lord.
The Pharisees’ Expectations

Well, the Pharisees don’t accept this picture of messiahship and this picture of Jesus, and
they want Jesus to stop His disciples from making these utterances about coming in the name
of the Lord—a passage, by the way, which comes from Psa 118. In doing that, Jesus responds
with basically saying if He doesn’t do that, the stones will cry out.
Now, another important piece of background that helps you to understand this passage is
that whenever creation is said to speak or be a witness to something in the Hebrew Scriptures,
it’s something we’re really supposed to pay attention to. And that’s what’s happening here.
Jesus is saying, “Look, if my disciples didn’t say it, the creation would cry out about it.” An
example of this is how, when Cain killed Abel, Abel’s blood cried out for justice.
And so we see these pictures of where creation, or inanimate parts of the creation, cry out
and speak in a way in which they normally would not. And that is said to underlie the
testimony of what is going on.
Jesus’ Claim to Be King

In this text, Jesus enters the city, claiming authority over the kingdom and claiming to be a
king but a king of a different sort, a humble king. Everything about His entry is in contrast
to the way, say, Pilate would enter in the city. When Pilate came in the city, he would come
with a huge throng of authority wrapped around him, and he would show up with an army to
come into the city. He would expect the city officials to greet him and lead him in, almost as
if he was coming in on a red carpet. Jesus merely rides in all by Himself on a colt. He has
His disciples around Him, but there’s no throng, there’s no army.
And so this event has been called—I think, appropriately—by some, an “atriumphal
entry,” even though the traditional name is the “triumphal entry.” An “atriumphal entry” is
better because of the humble way in which He comes into the city to picture the nature of His
messianic authority and the way it’s going to be executed. He’s going to suffer as a Messiah
rather than simply use the strong power of Messiah in order to accomplish God’s will. This
is a surprise to the leadership. They don’t accept who Jesus is as He comes, and so they ask
Him to stop His disciples. He refuses because He has a different kind of authority that’s going
to be exercised over the kingdom.
Summary
Nonetheless, the claim to be king is something that the leadership is upset about, and the
nature of this entry is another thing that got Jesus into trouble because His claim to be a
different kind of Messiah was something they weren’t comfortable with.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Commentary on Luke 19:28–40 NAC:L
Commentary on Zech 9:9–10 NAC:Z
See Also
Notes on Luke 19:28–44 MML:ZIBBCV1
Triumphal Entry DJG

SEGMENT 16
Cleansing the Temple
Learning Objectives
• Describe the place of the temple in Jewish life
• Summarize the significance of the temple cleansing in Jesus’ ministry
Introduction
The final event that got Jesus into trouble was the cleansing of the temple. We’ve looked at
several events already. We’ve looked at His authority to forgive sins. We’ve looked at His
authority over the Sabbath. We’ve looked at His authority over the law and ritual cleansing.
And we’ve looked at His entry into Jerusalem and the kind of king that He portrayed Himself
to be. But the action that comes next is probably the one that precipitated His arrest, because
after it, there was no choice. The leadership had to deal with Jesus. This is the cleansing of
the temple.
The Temple in Jerusalem

And to appreciate this event, you have to understand how important the temple was in Jewish
thinking. This was the one temple where God resided, a reflection of the monotheism of
Israel. This was the most sacred spot on the earth as far as a Jewish person was concerned.
In the later Talmud, it is said of Jerusalem that it is the navel of the world, which is a way of
complimenting it as being at the center of the world. Well, at the very center of the center is
the temple. And that’s what we have here—the most sacred spot that Israel deals with in her
religion and in her worship—and Jesus is now exercising His authority over that location.
The Jewish leadership felt that they had the responsibility for overseeing what was going
on at the temple and that they had authority over the temple, so when Jesus comes in and
challenges the money changers and turns over the tables, He is challenging directly their
leadership. They are left with no choice but to respond to Him when [He does] this.
The Temple Cleansing in Mark 11

This is another text that is alluded to in all the Gospels, but in this case, we’re going to look
at the version in Mark 11:15–18. And Mark 11:15 reads as follows: “Then they came to
Jerusalem. Jesus entered the temple area and began to drive out those who were selling and
buying in the temple courts. He turned over the table of the money changers and the chairs
of those selling doves, and he would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the
temple courts. Then he began to teach them and said, ‘Is it not written: “My house will be
called a house of prayer for all nations”? But you have turned it into a den of robbers.’ The
chief priest and the experts in the law heard it and they considered how they could assassinate
him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.”
Authority over Sacred Space

And so we see Him cleanse the temple. We see the plot to deal with Jesus and put Him to
death is solidified as a result of this event, because Jesus is now claiming authority over
sacred space, and this is another event that gets Jesus into trouble. He’s claimed authority
over sin, He’s claimed authority over the Sabbath, He’s claimed authority over ritual practice,
He’s claimed authority over the kingdom, and now He claims authority over the most sacred
spot in all of Israel.
And this produces a huge reaction as a result. In fact, later on in the text, it says that they
asked Him, “By what authority do you do these things?” And Jesus responds with the
example of John the Baptist. By what authority did he do what he did? And of course, what
the leadership is saying and asking—“By what authority do you do these things?”—they’re
saying of themselves, “We didn’t give you this authority. You didn’t get this authority from
us, so how in the world are you able to do this?” By pointing to the figure of John the Baptist,
He’s highlighting the fact that the authority comes from God. It doesn’t come from them.
The authorities refuse to answer the question of where John the Baptist’s authority comes
from, so Jesus says He won’t answer the question about where His authority comes from.
But the example makes the point clear enough. Jesus’ authority comes from God. He has
authority over sacred space as well as all the other things that we’ve looked at that have
gotten Jesus into trouble.
Summary
At the core of Jesus’ ministry is a confrontation between the kind of Messiah that Jesus was
and the expectations of the Jewish leadership with regard to law and with regard to Messiah.
It was this series of events that led to the leadership saying, “We’ve got to get rid of Jesus.”
And the next thing that happens in these Gospels, after a little bit of deliberation, is the
movement towards the crucifixion, which leads into the resurrection. Thus, these five events,
although they’re not the only five, were among the reasons Jesus got into trouble, and in each
case, we have tried to point out some of the background that shows what it is that got Jesus
into trouble.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
See Also
Notes on Mark 11:12–24 MML:ZIBBCV1
Temple Cleansing DJG

SEGMENT 17
The New Testament Collection
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the view that “history is written by the winners” with respect to the NT
• Describe the four traits of NT books that distinguish them from other books
• Summarize the collection process from the first through fourth centuries
Introduction
The last area that we’re going to look at in relationship to the backgrounds in the NT actually
has to do with how the NT itself was collected. It’s often said that these books were selected
by a church council, and in fact, historically, nothing could be further from the truth. By the
time these church councils are meeting in the fourth century and in the fifth century, these
books that are the NT have percolated to the top by their use.
In fact, even in the early part of the third century, in the later part of the second century,
we have writings that indicate that most of this collection was already being used by the
churches. And a single church council hadn’t yet met. In fact, it would be another century-
plus, before any church councils would meet.
Recognized, Not Selected

So what we get in the gathering of the NT books are books that, through their use and their
circulation and through the contents of their teaching, commend themselves as being special
for the church and books that have proved their value to the church. So the church recognizes
their inspiration and accepts them as being recognized for their inspiration, rather than
selecting a collection of books out of a larger pot, if you will. So what we see in the early
church are churches that are not so much picked to be inspired but recognized as inspired by
their intrinsic use across many churches, by their apostolic roots—that kind of thing.
History by the Winners?

Now, something that also is said about this material and the collecting of it is that history is
written by the winners. And this often is true—that we hear about history through the eyes
of those who win and through the writings that survive. And usually, it’s the winner’s
writings that survive. This is left to imply that there are all kinds of other things going on in
Christianity that we don’t know about historically that were a part of the discussion.
We actually do know about these other voices because the winners themselves write
about them. And it is true that sometimes the winners write about them and only put them in
a negative light and that the winners write about them and sometimes there may be bias or
distortion in what is said.
The Pedigree of New Testament Books
But there also is the case that sometimes the winners win because the winners deserve to win.
There’s something about the pedigree of what they represent that means that they have the
right to make the case that they’re making. And in the case of these books that go into the
NT, these books that go into the NT have credentials that cause them to come forward.
Apostolic Roots
They have apostolic roots and [were] written by an apostle or someone who is related to an
apostle.
Widespread Use
They have a history of a widespread use across a large set of geographic areas, as opposed to
being localized in their use.
Orthodox Content
And they have a content of orthodox theology, particularly their view of God that shows its
roots coming out of the Judaism out of which the Christian movement emerged, in contrast
to the other books that are oftentimes put alongside these biblical books and suggest that,
well, maybe these other books were important as well.
Gnostic Creation
Let me just give one example of that, of orthodoxy. In the gnostic Christian writings, there is
a teaching about creation that says that God Himself did not create but actually it was an
underling god that created. Actually, it was two layers down of gods that created, because in
the gnostic world, you have God, who creates a layer of another set of gods, and those gods
also create gods.
And in the gnostic story, oftentimes it’s a female deity, interestingly enough, who creates
the deity that himself is responsible for the creation. She botches the job in creating her layer
of deity, and the deity that creates the creation botches the job in his level of creation. In fact,
this figure even has a name, Yaldabaoth.
Anyway, this creation is botched from the beginning, and everything about the creation
is an attempt to recover the botched creation from the beginning in gnostic Christianity. The
valuable thing about a human being in gnostic Christianity is to realize that they are a spiritual
being living in a world created to be fallen.
Orthodox Creation
Now, contrast that with the orthodox story that comes out of Judaism—the book of Genesis,
the book of Psalms. In the beginning, God creates. That creation is a good creation. The flaws
in the creation are a result of rebellion against the Creator, as opposed to being inherent to
the creation itself.
We know that Christianity came out of a pious Judaism. It didn’t come out of an impious
Judaism or a Judaism rebelling against Judaism’s picture of God. And so there is no way that
the books that support gnostic Christianity, which are the bulk of the extrabiblical books that
we have written, could possess a claim to be tied to orthodoxy, in contrast to the orthodox
books.
The Status of the Books

So we’ve got apostolic roots, we’ve got widespread use, and we’ve got the presence of
orthodoxy that commends these books to themselves. And the status of these books that rose
to the top was very well known for a long time.
When Irenaeus is writing at the end of the second century, about AD 180, he names 21 of
the 27 NT books as books that the churches are using. The four Gospels, Acts, all the Pauline
Epistles, 1 Peter, [and] 1 John are in his list. He talks about how there can only be four
Gospels, just like there are four directions of the wind. And so we get a sense of how
established these books are in the latter part of the second century, long before church
councils started to meet in 325 at Nicaea.
And what this shows is that the recognition of these books took place over a period of
time, to be sure, and took place over a period of time to be sure about their contents. And that
extends all the way to Athanasius, who’s the first one to list the 27 books of the NT in AD
367. Over that period, the rest of the list—we’re talking now about Hebrews, Revelation,
Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John—these books also came to be recognized. And certain books that
were considered for a time, like 1 Clement, The Shepherd of Hermas, [and] Didache, dropped
out of the list and out of consideration because over time, as the church had more time to
assess which books really spoke in a special way to the church, certain books rose to the top.
Summary
So the background of the NT isn’t that church leaders selected them long after they came into
power and after the time of Constantine but [that] these books rose to the top long before
Constantine came on the scene in the early part of the fourth century and were being used in
the churches and being recognized as having something special to teach to the churches.
That’s how we got the collection of the NT. Those books were not selected; they were
recognized.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
New Testament Canon LBD
New Testament Canon BEB
Formation of a “New” Testament INT:CMMF
The Formation of the New Testament FSB
See Also
Canonical Formation of the New Testament DNTB
Introducing New Testament Canon Formation HVS:ABFNTC
Some Thoughts on the History of the New Testament Canon T:V7N31982
From Scripture to Canon BC:IOTA

Unit 1c Quiz
UNIT 2
The Nature and Purpose of the Gospels

18. Orality and Memory
19. The Value of a Voice
20. The Quality and Types of Orality
21. Corporate and Individual Memory
22. Examples of Memory
23. The Gospel Genre
24. The Dates of the Gospels
25. The Authorship of Mark
26. The Authorship of Luke
27. The Authorship of Matthew
28. The Authorship of John
29. The Four Gospels
30. Four Perspectives
31. The Missing Gospels
32. Gnosticism
33. The Gospel of Thomas
34. Background of the Gnostic Creation Story
35. The Gnostic Creation Story
36. Summary of the Missing Gospels
37. Summary of the Nature and Purpose of the Gospels
SEGMENT 18
Orality and Memory
Learning Objectives
• Identify the two features from this lecture that factor into the production of the Gospels
• Discuss the importance of these two features in an ancient culture
Introduction
We come to our second part of our study, the nature and purpose of the Gospels. We’re going
to look at what feeds into the Gospels before we even had them written down—before we
put whatever you put down on a papyrus to make a Gospel—and then we’ll look at the
Gospels themselves. Now, this is an important overview because a lot of the things that we’ll
talk about, most people don’t think about in relationship to the Gospels. We’ll be talking
about things like orality and memory, which feed into the tradition that stood behind the
Gospels before they were written down.
Orality
And so, our first topic is orality because we live in a digital culture. We don’t live in an oral
culture, but the ancient world was part of an oral culture. Remember that we’re even before
the printing press, and making copies weren’t a function of a Xerox machine. It was hand
done. It was very expensive to make hard copy, if you will, of events, and so most people
learned things not by writing them down or recording them but by remembering them, and
they passed it on orally. So how stories function in an oral world is an important part of the
tradition that stands behind the Gospels. An oral world is not a book, and it’s not a digital
world. It’s a very different kind of world, and sometimes we don’t think about what it’s like
to have to remember most everything without having anything written down or without
looking at a screen.
So when we talk about the tradition, we really are talking about two features that come
together that we don’t think about very much. One is orality, on the one hand—this oral
passing on of tradition and how stories work.
Memory
And the second is the role of memory—actually remembering what’s going on. And
particularly when we think about memory, we have to think about it not just as individual
memory—what I remember about what happened—but as corporate memory. Corporate
memory is a group getting together to remember something, to reflect upon it—to leave a
tradition behind, if you will—and that works very, very differently than individual memory.
And there are tests and experiments that have [been] done. A lot of tests and experiments
have been done on individual memory, but there hasn’t been as much study of corporate
memory, and corporate memory is what we’re dealing with in the Gospels.
Summary
So when we think about what it takes to get to the point where a writer sits down to record
the stories of Jesus, we have to remember we’re dealing with orality on the one hand and the
recorded memory of eyewitnesses on the other. Both [go] together to feed into the story,
[with] not just one eyewitness but many eyewitnesses. And that corporate memory passed on
verbally is how the stories of Jesus originally circulated before there was a written Gospel.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
The Building Blocks Behind the Gospels INT:CMMF
Oral Tradition BEB
See Also
Introduction to Oral Tradition BG:UOT

SEGMENT 19
The Value of a Voice
Learning Objectives
• Contrast the ancients’ view of orality and written records with ours
• Discuss the significance of orality to the date of the Gospels
Introduction
An oral world is not a world of books, nor is it a digital world. We’ve noted that. But there
was a reason for this. The role of orality in ancient culture was not merely a function of the
difficulty of writing things down and the expense of doing so, but it also was because the oral
word was valued. People thought much more of a report coming from a live witness—a living
voice, if you will—than they thought about it coming through someone who had written
something down and recorded it and just reading it off a page.
Papias
We know this because ancient writers talk about this to us and their view of the difference
between a live witness, if you will, and someone who reads something that’s written down.
And perhaps one of the most famous quotes that we have from an ancient writer comes from
Papias, a church father of the early second century. He’s quoted in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical
History. Eusebius wrote his Ecclesiastical History in about 325. Papias comes from the early
part of the second century. He’s speaking around 110 or so, and he says this about his attitude
toward books versus witnesses: “For I do not think that information from books would profit
me as much as information from a living and abiding voice.”
And so that tells us the value that ancients held of someone speaking about something
they experienced and, if you will, experiencing that event directly, orally, from the person
who spoke. Very different than our own time, generally speaking, although we actually do
value the recording of events and that kind of thing, which is similar.
Orality and the Date of the Gospels

This leads to another phenomenon that I think it’s important to understand about the Gospels,
and it has to do with the date of the Gospels. If you think through what this means, you don’t
go about the business of recording the Gospels and passing them on until you begin to lose
those living eyewitnesses of the events. As they move toward dying, then all of a sudden it
becomes important to record the experiences they had versus relying on the oral testimony
that they possessed about those experiences and allowing that to circulate orally.
And so, [this is] much like today. We have done [likewise] with Holocaust witnesses
when, as Holocaust witnesses got older, we sit down and record them so we don’t lose their
testimonies. So in the ancient world, we produced Gospels and wrote them down once we
started to lose the eyewitnesses who experienced the life and ministry of Jesus.
So that explains why our Gospels are written as late as they are. Perhaps as much as 30
to 35 years after the time of Jesus’ life, we begin to record the Gospels. Most people put Mark
in either the late 50s or early 60s if they don’t push it past 70. And so we’re somewhere in
that range. Then our last Gospel was written somewhere in the 90s. But we’ll come back to
that idea of dating. For now, the important thing to remember is [that] the reason they were
written down is we were losing the living voice of orality, the living voice of the experience
of the person as they grew older, and the threat was [that] they would pass away and we
would lose the witness. Then we record it.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Papias HCC
Eusebius of Caesarea 131CESK
See Also
Prolegomena to the Study of Orality JOGT
The Ancient Media Situation BG:UOT

SEGMENT 20
The Quality and Types of Orality
Learning Objectives
• Describe the three models of orality
• Summarize the strengths of the third model of orality and discuss the textual evidence
for it
Introduction
Now, when we think about the tradition that feeds into the writing down of the Gospels, the
Gospels are only as good as the memory of the events and their communication, the quality
of the orality that passes them on. This is another important issue to think about it in
relationship to the Gospels because sometimes we think the important feature is how close
in date the Gospels are to the events. And certainly that can be an important factor. But if the
quality of the tradition is good and the tradition is being passed on well, then really, it doesn’t
matter what the date of the Gospel is. So this is an important feature when we put orality and
memory together: to realize that the quality of the tradition is directly related to the quality
of the orality—how the tradition’s been passed on and the way in which it’s been passed on.
Three Models of Orality

When we think about types of orality, there really are three models that people discuss in NT
studies.
Informal and Uncontrolled

The first model for orality that was proposed was kind a freewheeling informal and
uncontrollable approach to orality. No one oversaw it. Anyone could pass on the story. There
was no oversight of it; it just kind of happened willy-nilly. And the picture is of people adding
as things go along, things that really have very little to do with the events themselves. A lot
of creative activity is seen in the informal and uncontrolled approach to orality in the view
that that’s how the early church did it.
And there’s a problem with this view. The problem with this view of orality is that it’s
too loose and it ignores the features of Jewish memory and tradition-keeping that are a part
of the life and culture of the ancient world, particularly when Jews cared about something.
Nonetheless, the informal and uncontrolled approach to orality was the initial way this was
put forward, and people compared it to what is called the “telephone game” today or what
they call, in Australia, the “Chinese whispers game.” I actually [think] “Chinese whispers”
is a better name than the “telephone game.” The idea is you tell someone a story at the front
of a sequence of people. Each person passes it on and tells it to the next person. And the way
this is normally told in this model is [that] by the time the story gets to the end of the chain
versus the start, you have a very different story than what you started with.
It’s important that when we talk about this, we don’t think about the way in which orality
works. And we don’t have really good systems of orality, generally speaking, because we are
a culture that writes things down and records things digitally. And so we don’t have to work
so hard at remembering things. Thus, the assumption is that things are as loose and kind of
undisciplined as they can be in our own world, but it’s a poor assumption.
Formal and Controlled

Now, the second approach to orality that emerged in NT studies was considered formal and
controlled, and the model here was the model of the rabbis and how the rabbis passed on
either traditions about their own teaching or recorded text as they passed them on from
generation to generation—biblical text. This was a very formal process. “Formal” means it
was overseen, and “controlled” means that there were strict rules by which the whole process
was disciplined. It’s a very, very precise view, and Scandinavian scholars put forward the
argument that this was a better model than the informal and uncontrolled approach that had
originally been proposed.
Obviously, this approach has a much higher respect for the quality of the tradition and
what feeds into the Gospels. The problem that comes from suggesting that this is the model
or orality is that when we actually look at the Gospels, we have a feature that stands out that
doesn’t fit the model, and that is [that] even though we get parallel events, we get it told with
variation in wording. So this doesn’t look as precise as the formal and controlled method that
was proposed—that the rabbis used—in which the wording, the specific wording, was very,
very important. There’s too much variation in our Gospels for this to be the model that really
works, and so a third model was proposed, and it’s called “informal and controlled.”
Informal and Controlled
The informal and controlled model means that there were apostles who were overseeing how
the tradition was being passed on, but it was informal in that it wasn’t left to the apostles to
be the only teachers. Anyone could teach it. Anyone who heard the stories again and again
and again could pass them on. And in the context of the church, there was some control with
how the stories moved on in the oversight of the apostles.
This is seen in the selection of the person who replaces Judas as the twelfth apostle in
Acts 1. When Matthias is chosen, the criterion is put forward that this person had to be with
Jesus from the very beginning. He had to really know what Jesus’ teaching was. And this
shows the oversight characteristic that apostles had for the tradition that we possess.
So this formal—or rather, informal and controlled—approach to orality is this suggestion
of a man named Kenneth Bailey. This is a man who lived among bedouins as a missionary
for decades and began to pay attention to how they passed on stories, as these communities
lived in an oral world. And he noted this informal but controlled approach to storytelling,
[of] which he said, “Anyone could tell the story, but there were always elders or people who
knew the story really well who had responsibility for oversight of the story, and if the story
deviated too much, then the elders would step in and correct the way the story was told.”
That’s the feeling that you get from the Gospels because, again, you get these parallel
accounts with some variations. Stories can be told with some variation, but the gist of the
story is always going to be the same, and the core point is going to remain consistent as we
retell the story in one version versus another.
A good example of how orality works in the NT is the threefold telling of Jesus’
appearance to Saul or Paul when Jesus called Saul to be an apostle. Here we have the same
author, Luke, telling the story three times: in Acts 9, in Acts 22, and in Acts 26. In each case,
the core story is the same, but also in each case, the variations of the details surrounding the
story are different, as each telling has a fresh element to it to keep the story somewhat fresh.
That’s actually the reason for the variation.
Conclusion
So what we get in orality is a consistent telling of a story in which the core is the same, but
there’s variation. It’s informal on the one hand—anyone can tell the story who knows the
story—but it’s controlled on the other in that those who are aware of the story will keep an
eye on how it’s passed on. And this is how we know that the quality of the tradition that feeds
the Gospels is a solid tradition that reaches back to the earliest days, is rooted in eyewitness
memory, is passed on orally, and is passed on carefully, orally.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Informal Controlled Oral Tradition T:V20N2J1995
See Also
Orality, Literacy, and Performance OO:NPCTB
The Rabbinic Model (Formal and Controlled) BG:UOT
Informal Controlled Oral Tradition BG:UOT

SEGMENT 21
Corporate and Individual Memory
Learning Objectives
• Explain how multiple witnesses affect our perspective of the Gospels
• Describe how corporate memory checks individual memory
• Discuss the value of the Gospels as the product of corporate memory
Introduction
Now, when we think about memory in the passing on of stories, we also want to think about
the way in which corporate memory works versus individual memory.
Multiple Witnesses
One of the features of corporate memory, of course, is that it’s multiple. You have multiple
witnesses talking about the same event, and they will have different details that they present
as they reflect on the event. All you have to do is ask a couple about their courtship, and
you’ll understand that point.
And so, when we think about corporate memory, the way I like to think about it in a
visual world is to think about the way in which instant replay works in sports. And you ask
yourself, when you have instant replay, do you want one camera angle, or do you want many
camera angles? Well, in fact, the more camera angles you have for instant replay, the fuller
picture you get of the impact of the event; a fuller look you can get at it. And sometimes one
angle is better or gives you more detail or gives you a look at the play from a slightly different
perspective that impacts what you see.
Thus, multiple witnesses are important to events, and the corporateness of the angle is
important in thinking about the Gospels. I actually think this is one of the reasons why we
have four Gospels instead of just one running account. It allows us to look at Jesus from a
variety of angles and a variety of perspectives, and we get a much fuller and more holistic
picture as a result. So the example of instant replay helps us to think through the idea that the
more angles we have on an event or on a person, the better we understand its impact and the
variety of ways the same event may have been read by different people.
Correcting Individual Memory

Another important value of corporate memory is that it can check individual recollection.
Corporate memory can serve as a backdrop—net, if you will—to catch the quality of an
individual’s memory. And we’ve all been in conversations in which we have events that we
remember together with other people who were also there, and the other people who were
there sometimes will remember something that we don’t or know a detail that we don’t [or]
maybe even adjust an angle or an emphasis that we have and balance it out—that kind of
thing.
That’s what happens in corporate memory, and we see those kinds of elements in the
Gospels where one person is struck by one thing that happens [and] another person is
impacted by something else. There’s a feel of one mood from an event from one person.
There might be a slightly different feel from another person about the same event. And so we
get a multiplicity of angles that help to develop the fullness of what this event was about.
Usually, one telling doesn’t exhaust the story of what an event is about, particularly when
it’s a significant event.
Summary
So it’s important to recall that when we think about early church memory, it is corporate; it’s
not individual. And even though we’re hearing one voice, we’re hearing one voice—one
Gospel writer—presenting material that is a reflection of tradition that has gone through the
church and has had, if you will, the eyes of the apostles or other witnesses on it contributing
to what is present. This is one of the reasons we get the variation in detail, but this is also one
of the reasons we get the variation of portraiture about Jesus that helps to fill out who He is.
Explore*
See Also
Oral Tradition JOGT
Memory and Tradition BG:UOT

SEGMENT 22
Examples of Memory
Learning Objectives
• Explain the significance of five memory examples to our understanding of the Gospels
Introduction
When we think about memory, I always reflect back to a particular conversation I had in a
public conversation with John Dominic Crossan, who was chair of the Jesus Seminar and
certainly wouldn’t be classified theologically as a conservative [but as] someone who chaired
an approach to Jesus that doubts that He said a lot of what is attributed to Him in the Gospels.
In this presentation, John Dominic Crossan, who had the major responsibility for the
presentation, got up and talked about memory. He said, “Even if we’re dealing with memory,
and even if we’re dealing with eyewitness events, psychological studies and other studies of
memory prove that memory leaks—that individual memory doesn’t always work
effectively.” And he used this study from Emory University to make the point.
Emory University Study

Here’s how the study went. The study commenced after the Challenger disaster. Now, you
may or may not recall that the Challenger disaster was a space shuttle that blew up upon
launch, and it just so happened it was tragic not just because astronauts lost their lives but
[because] an elementary school teacher was on this particular mission and the plan had been
for her to broadcast to students literally around the country about the value of science from
space. Well, she never made it, and it was a very, very traumatic explosion.
So, what Emory University did is, they called freshman students in and asked them,
“Where were you when you heard about this, and what were you doing when it happened?”
And they recorded the results, and they sent the students out. Three years later, they invited
the students back on the premise that they were seniors and would be leaving the school soon.
That may not be the best premise, but nonetheless, that’s what they did. And they asked the
students again, “Where were you when the Challenger disaster happened, and what were you
doing?” And they recorded the results. And then they paused for a while, brought the students
back shortly after, and compared the two sets of answers and asked the students which answer
is their recollection—the one they gave originally right after the event or the one they gave
three years later. And Crossan noted that in this study from Emory University, most students
picked the memory that they had most recently—the memory further removed from the
event. And particularly when there were differences, that was the memory that was preferred.
Memory Leaks
So the point that he was making is that memory leaks, that we don’t remember things well,
that our initial impression about what happens with an event isn’t necessarily the impression
that stays with us, and that the details that we remember initially don’t often stay with us
either. And this is a way to undercut the quality of the tradition that feeds into the Gospels.
Indifferent Participants
Well, I had the response for the rejoinder at this event that was held at Southern Methodist
University. And when I got up, I made the point that it was interesting to look at a study like
this, and certainly memory does leak for individuals, but I also made the point that these
individuals had nothing at stake in the Challenger event. And so I raised the question whether
or not if they had done the study with NASA astronauts—if they had actually had the
astronauts remember what it was that was going on because those astronauts one day would
have to climb into something like the Challenger, into a space shuttle, and be shot off into
space with their lives at risk—whether the memory features would be the same. And so I
suggested that to compare students selected randomly who had no stake or no interest in the
space program other than their national curiosity and patriotism is not the same kind of study
as what you’re dealing with with NASA astronauts.
The Disciples’ Memory

And the reason this is important is because the disciples are more like the NASA astronauts
than they are the Emory University students. They have something at stake in what they’re
saying about Jesus. People were being persecuted and were being put to death for what they
believed about Jesus. It wasn’t just that they were sharing whatever they wanted, however
they wanted. There was something involved that could alter the state of their lives. And so
this suggests that I think that memory, in cases where there’s something at stake, is a more
precious thing and something watched over more carefully than just a random recollection
of what’s going on.
A Couple Recalls Their Courtship

Now, I think it’s important to consider other kinds of memory and how they work. Another
feature of the memory that we see in the Gospels is that it’s corporate; it’s not individual.
And nothing shows this perhaps as vividly as when you ask a couple about their courtship. I
guarantee you that if someone asks about my wife’s and my courtship, I remember certain
things about it, and she remembers certain things about it. Some of the things that she
remembers perhaps I wish she hadn’t remembered, but she does, and [I’m] the same way the
other way around.
And so, when we think about memory, corporate memory, what we get are a variety of
angles, as we’ve mentioned before, and we get different interests that are drawn to
remembering certain things that fill out the picture. That’s the value of corporate memory.
Corporate memory can also serve as a check on individual memory [and] some of the leakage
that Dr. Crossan was talking about.
Memories of a Loved One

Another example of corporate memory is when friends and family gather to recall the life of
a loved one who’s passed away. I often think through what happens in families after someone
has died and the family and friends gather and the people begin to tell the stories of what
impacted them about the person who’s died. And what you often get are details on one side
or the other. In some cases, you get the same event retold but, again, from a variety of angles,
and that variety of angles fills out the picture.
Viewpoints on Battle
When I was once talking about this topic to an audience in New Zealand, someone came up
to me afterwards and made the point, “You know, people who are part of the military, who
fight in a battle, have different perspectives about what’s going on in that battle, so that if
you ask a chaplain, for example, what happens in a battle versus an Army officer, they’ll be
at the same event, they’ll be experiencing generically the same event, but they’ll experience
it very differently because of their roles in the military.” And I thought that was a very good
example as well of the way in which corporate memory can shape things.
Preliterate Children’s Memories

And then finally, the last example, the one that I really like the most, is the one I learned from
my children and my grandchildren, because my children and my grandchildren live in an oral
world until they learn to read and write. They function orally with things, and my grandkids
can tell you things about the details of Star Wars—because they’ve seen it again and again
and again and again—that I don’t recall.
More than that, when I read stories to them, if they’ve had the story told to them
somewhat repeatedly, if I change the story—and I’ll sometimes do that as a dad or granddad
to have them pay attention—both my daughter and her children—her sons, my
grandchildren—would say the same thing to me whenever I’d change the story: “Opa, that’s
not the way it goes.” And then they would tell me what the story is. Here are people living
in an oral world who learn from hearing something again and again and again what the core
story is. They know how it goes, and when you change it significantly, they’ll make an
observation about the way in which the story goes.
Summary
So these are features that give us a feel for memory and orality and their interaction. These
are little glimpses about how orality works in our own world to remind us of how orality also
may have worked in the ancient world in a culture in which they were much more used to
telling and remembering stories this way. And it shows that orality can be careful in the way
in which it’s constructed and memory also can be careful in what it recalls.

Unit 2a Quiz
SEGMENT 23
The Gospel Genre
Learning Objectives
• Describe the genre of “Gospel” in the context of other ancient biographies
• Discuss the role of the apostles in the writing of the Gospels
A Basic Question
And when it comes to the recording of the Gospels, a very basic question is, what kind of
work is a Gospel? What’s its genre? Some have suggested that the Gospel genre is completely
unique and that there is no slot in the Graeco-Roman world into which it fits. But this is
actually unlikely. The idea that you would create a genre out of whole cloth and not be able
to locate the story of Jesus in the context of the ancient world is really not very likely and
[not] very plausible, especially when you begin to do careful work on how the stories of lives
of other greats from the Graeco-Roman world are told.
Ancient Bios
And this has led to the observation by many scholars that the Gospels are what is known as
bios. Now, that’s an ancient form of biography. It isn’t like modern biography. Modern
biography starts with, usually, “What family did you come from?” and “How did you grow
up?” and all those kinds of things. We certainly don’t have that with Jesus. We get a little bit
about His birth, we get one incident when He’s 12 years old, and then we don’t get anything
until He’s 30. So that’s not like a modern biography.
But in ancient biography, the stress was on the deeds that a famous person participated
in as well as the kind of teaching that they set forth. The structure was not on the context of
their growth and life and their psychological condition. The stress was on the things that they
did and the things that they said. Deeds and teaching—that’s ancient bios.
And studies have been done in great detail, [including] a particular study by Richard
Burridge, asking what the Gospels are, that compared in detail the structure and topics of the
Gospels with ancient biographies and showed that there’s a very good correspondence
between the two. This is important because it does tell us that part of the goal of the Gospels
is to present information about the life of Jesus that’s rooted in what He did and what He
said, and that this is very much a historical genre in what is being told and the way it’s being
said.
“Apostolic Memoirs”
In fact, so much so that Justin Martyr—who was a church father of the second century living
in the middle of the second century and writing in the middle of the second century, about
AD 160 or so—when he described the Gospels, he called them apostolic memoirs. I tell
people, what do you call a Gospel if you don’t call it a Gospel? And really, the phrase
“apostolic memoirs” is a good description for what it is. They are memories. They’re not
memories coming to us directly from Jesus—Jesus didn’t write a word of the NT—but they’re
apostolic reflections on the impact that Jesus had on those around Him. And actually, in many
ways, telling the story of history is a story of impact. It’s not just what the person intends to
do, but it’s how what they did impacted others that’s really at the core of what’s going on
historically.
The apostolic memoirs give us this in the Gospels as they are a form of ancient bios,
telling the story of the life of Jesus in such a way that we begin to get a feel for how He
impacted others, both those who responded to Him and what caused people to react
negatively to Him as well. Of course, the Gospels are full of accounts where the reaction is
negative and where there’s pushback against what Jesus is doing. So these Gospels tell us in
a significant way of the variety of actions and the impact that Jesus had on those around Him.
The Apostles’ Role

And the role of the apostles in forming this tradition and in leading into the way in which it
was recorded cannot be overestimated. They had a very significant role. They were called to
know the story of Jesus because they were with Him from the beginning. Acts 1 tells us this.
We know that as the movement of new Christians moved from place to place, apostles would
go to check out that movement. So in Acts 8, when the gospel gets to Samaria for the first
time, the apostles were there. It’s through an apostle—through Peter—that the gospel begins
to go out to the Gentiles. There were meetings of groups of apostles and church leaders to
oversee how Jews and Gentiles came together and whether Gentiles had to become Jews in
order to become Christians, and the answer to that question was no.
Summary
So the role of the apostles in telling the story is important as we feed into the apostolic
memoirs that on the Gospel side are a bios, or an ancient biography, of the life of Jesus,
whereas on the side of Acts, when we come to the second volume of Luke—Acts—what
we’re looking at is the discussion of the origins of the Christian movement and how this
movement corporately began to form its identity and its self-understanding.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
What Is a Gospel? INT:CMMF
Gospel Genre LBD
Justin Martyr 131CESK
See Also
The Bios of the Hero JOGT
Gospel Genre DJG
Genres of the NT DNTB
Ancient Biographies WAG:CGRB

SEGMENT 24
The Dates of the Gospels
Learning Objectives
• Explain the contribution of Papias to the dating of the Gospels
• Discuss the theory that Mark and Luke did not write their Gospels
• Explain how the date AD 70 factors into dating the Gospels
• Summarize how the order of the Gospels’ composition contributes to dating the books
Introduction
When we turn our attention to determining the dates of when our Gospels are written, we
really are having to put together a variety of pieces of evidence to try and figure that out.
External Evidence
On the one hand, there’s external evidence. There’s the testimony outside the Gospels about
what they are and what people have said about them, particularly people who were very close
to the time of the events, of which the most important figure is Papias. In fact, he’s so
important in terms of what he says about Matthew and Mark that we’re going to look at those
citations in detail in a little bit. He’s writing in the early part of the second century somewhere
around AD 110, but he’s talking about conversations that he had and meetings that he had in
his life that take place earlier, so we may actually be dipping into the latter part of the first
century for his testimony.
Unfortunately, the five volumes that he wrote on the expositions of our Lord, we no
longer have. We only know about them through the testimony of Eusebius and what he tells
us about them in AD 325. Nonetheless, his testimony is very important in telling us what the
view was in the early second century about the origins of this material, and so we’re going
to take, as I said, a careful look at Matthew and Mark later.
Traditional Ascriptions
But a look at Mark as author is an important question because sometimes the claim is made
about the Gospels that we don’t know who wrote them and that the traditional names
associated with the Gospels do not belong with the Gospels with which they’re associated.
So the claim is made that even though Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have the names of
authors attached to them, we really don’t know if Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John wrote the
Gospels to which their names are attached. This kind of skepticism is written about all the
time and is presented all the time particularly in the context of specials that one sees on
cable—that kind of thing—or even some of the writing that you see in books written about
the Gospels.
And so I want to challenge the theory that says that what happened was, is that when we
didn’t know who the Gospel [writer] was, we picked a name of someone famous and
significant, put it in the slot of x for the author, filled in the gap, and in that way, the credibility
of the work of the Gospel was lifted up as a result. Let’s take a look at that with two of our
authors, Mark and Luke.
Mark as Author
Let’s start off with Mark. Mark is said in the tradition to have gotten his Gospel in part from
Peter—we’ll be reading that citation from Papias later—but if you had a choice between
Mark and Peter and you could put into the slot of the Gospel writer whoever you wanted,
who would you pick to enhance the quality of the Gospel and to give it a name and an
association that would lift it up? Would you pick Mark, or would you pick Peter?
Let’s compare their resumes—their CVs. In the case of Mark, we know fundamentally
two things about him. He didn’t make it through the first missionary journey because the
pressure was too great. He went home to mama after the first missionary journey. And the
second thing that we know about Mark from our early materials is that he caused a split
between Paul and Barnabas that caused Paul to go out on his own in the second missionary
journey, while Barnabas went in a different direction, taking John Mark in embarking on his
own separate missionary journey. Paul and Barnabas couldn’t work together because of their
different views about John Mark. So that’s not a very impressive CV.
Peter’s CV, on the other hand, is very impressive—lead apostle; helped take the gospel
to the Gentiles; according to tradition, had a major role in planting the gospel in Rome.
Literally, everywhere you turn, Peter’s fingerprints are on it.
So you have a choice between selecting Mark as the author who’s going to lift up the
quality of an unnamed Gospel—an unknown author Gospel—or Peter. Who are you going
to pick? And whenever I post this question, audiences never blink. They all say, “Well, if I
had the choice, I would pick Peter.” So then, the question becomes, why isn’t the second
Gospel called the Gospel of Peter rather than the Gospel of Mark, if the theory is in place
that we put the name of an author that will lift up the quality of a Gospel in order to fill in a
gap of something we don’t know.
My own view is just that what this shows is that the tradition is actually very, very careful
about the naming of the Gospels. And then, even though the tradition connects Mark with
Peter in such a way that you could have gotten away with naming this Gospel the “Gospel of
Peter,” the tradition still named it the Gospel of Mark because the tradition knew that Mark
was responsible for the writing of this Gospel. So that’s a very important feature in thinking
about dates and what are often said about it.
Luke as Author
The same story holds for Luke as an author. Luke is also not very well known other than his
association with this Gospel. So before his name became attached to this Gospel, all that we
know is he was a follower of Paul. He had a reputation as a doctor. He lived to probably an
old age is what the tradition tells us. And so those are the three things we know about Luke.
There’s nothing else outstanding about him other than sometimes the author of the third
Gospel in Acts appears to have been with Paul at certain points during the book of Acts. We
actually don’t know if that’s Luke until we name him as such.
So what’s going to cause Luke to be the Pauline companion who is put in that blank slot
other than the knowledge of the tradition? And particularly, given so many candidates to
choose from as to who Paul’s companion might be, why is it the tradition is so consistent that
the Pauline companion who writes Luke-Acts is Luke rather than someone else—say, a Silas
or Epaphroditus or Epaphras or someone like that? So this is another example of where the
tradition is very, very consistent and very, very careful about what it’s doing.
Accuracy of Traditional Ascriptions

My point in going through some of these details is to show that the traditional associations
of authorship, which are consistent and whose dates go way back—the association of Luke
and Mark go back to the early second century in terms of attestation—have a better chance
of being accurate than our attempts to dismiss what those associations are. Now, we’ll talk
more about authorship related to Matthew and authorship related to John later. But those
were the key points I want you to understand about how authorship is put together in looking
at the Gospels.
The Destruction of the Temple

There’s another feature that’s very, very important in dating the Gospels, and it has to do
with Gospel order and the events of AD 70. Some people believed that the events of AD 70—
the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem—are written about in such a way in the Gospels
that we’re looking back on that event rather than looking forward. People who suggest this
doubt that Jesus would have predicted the date of the destruction of Jerusalem ahead of time,
but that, rather, we’re getting a reflective look after the fact. This ignores a very important
point, however, and that is that Jesus believed that Israel was in covenantal unfaithfulness—
was committing covenantal unfaithfulness—by rejecting the Messiah.
This is a very, very important point because in the OT in Deuteronomy, when the nation
is engaged in covenantal unfaithfulness, she either is put into Diaspora and spread out and
kicked out of the land, or the nations invade her and put her under pressure as a form of divine
discipline. So all Jesus has to do to be able to understand that the temple in Jerusalem may
be put under pressure is to believe that the nation of Israel has been covenantally unfaithful.
I don’t think the issue of AD 70 and the issue of the discussion of the destruction of the
temple helps us to date the Gospels, although others will make that claim.
The Order of the Gospels

Finally, we have Gospel order. Most scholars believe that Mark is the first Gospel written
and that Matthew and Luke used Mark. So you can’t have Matthew and Luke written before
Mark. If that’s the case, then the date of Mark becomes very important for setting the date of
at least the other two Synoptic Gospels that use them. John is pretty traditionally dated in the
90s, and that is likely the date of his Gospel.
When we come to the Synoptics, the order is Mark and then either Luke and Matthew or
Matthew and Luke. There’s debate about whether Matthew used Luke or not and knew Luke,
and in fact, I think it’s unlikely that one of them used the other. But here’s the point. Mark’s
date normally is put—at least by some conservatives—into the 50s. That’s actually not the
best place to put Mark because Mark has a lot of discussion of discipleship in the context of
persecution. We think Mark is associated with Rome. The period of intense persecution for
the church really happens in the early 60s, so [the] early 60s is a slightly better date for Mark.
In fact, anytime in the 60s would fit because there was terrific pressure on Jewish
communities from Rome as well as on Christian communities in the 60s.
That means that Matthew and Luke are written sometime after that because AD 70 is not
a focus of these Gospels, nor is a point made about the fulfillment of the destruction of
Jerusalem. When the destruction of Jerusalem is mentioned in the NT, those Gospels need to
be written either before AD 70 or well after. They aren’t going to be written in the early 70s
with the shadow of that traumatic event around it not being mentioned.
So this means the scholars will either put Matthew and Luke in the 60s—which I think is
likely—or they’ll put it in the 80s, which also is possible. So that explains where we get our
dates for the Gospels. It is really a reflection of the order of the Gospels and the sequence in
which we think they are written, and particularly, the date of Mark is important in kicking
off that sequence.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
A Note on the Dating of the Gospels LBD
Divine Authority and Scriptural Authority GRA
See Also
Gospels (Historical Reliability) DJG
Gospels BC:IOTA

SEGMENT 25
The Authorship of Mark
Learning Objectives
• Explain who Papias was and how we have his testimony about Mark’s Gospel
• Describe the relationship between Mark and Peter
• Summarize why Mark is the most credible author of the second Gospel
Papias and the Gospel of Mark

We’re now going to look at the discussion of authorship for each of the Gospels one at a
time, and I’m going to start with Mark. And to get at the authorship of Mark, really, the most
powerful and important piece of testimony that we have from the tradition is what Papias
tells us about the authorship of this Gospel. And this has been passed on to us through
Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History.
Papias’ Time
As I mentioned before, Papias is writing in the early part of the second century, although the
reports that he talks about appear to have come to us earlier. He’s passing on oral tradition
about where these reports come from when he writes it down the early second century. Those
reports appear to go back to the latter part of the first century. And the reports, as we have
them, come to us through Eusebius and his Ecclesiastical History.
Papias’ Testimony
We’re actually in book three, section or chapter 39, and then paragraph 15. That’s where this
citation of Papias about Mark is found, and here is the text. It says, “This also the presbyter
said.” He’s passing on this conversation with the figure called the elder, who is rendering
these traditions and passing them on to Papias. “Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter,
wrote down accurately, though not indeed in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things
said or done by Christ.” That’s actually an important sentence because it tells us that Mark
isn’t always giving us chronological sequence.In the ancient world, oftentimes it was more
important that something happened than pinpointing the time or the sequence in which it
happened, and that is what’s reflected in this quote.
“For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him.” So Mark wasn’t someone who knew
the Lord’s ministry firsthand. “But afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his
teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of
the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he wrote in this manner some
things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things
which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely.”
Mark and Peter

So Papias reports that Mark is interacting with that which Peter had taught and preached.
He’s doing so in his own way, and he’s being very careful about it. This is the key part of the
tradition that we talked about that shows the relationship between Peter and Mark in the
second Gospel.
Sometimes people say that, in doubting that Mark wrote the Gospel, they would challenge
it by saying, “Why would Matthew use so much of Mark if Matthew was an apostle and Mark
wasn’t?” But I actually think that if Mark’s Gospel is rooted in the teaching of Peter and in
the recollections of Peter, then it makes sense why Matthew would use the Gospel that also
is a reflection of Peter’s fingerprints, if you will.
The Gospel of Peter?

So we come to the issue of this question that we raised earlier, and now, with this quote
behind it, we can review and appreciate it even more. If you had the choice between Mark or
Peter, who would you choose to be the author, on the assumption that you really don’t know
who the author of the second Gospel is? And you can make it whoever you want.
As I mentioned to you, the skeptical take on authorship says that we put the name in of a
luminary to lift up the quality of the Gospel, and so, in this case, Mark as an apostolic
associate lifts up the quality of the Gospel. Of course, unfortunately in this case, Mark’s
resume isn’t that strong. As we noted, he went home to mama within the first missionary
journey [and] caused a split between Paul and Barnabas in the second.
So again, if you had this choice, given the tradition associates Peter with Mark, would
you have named this Gospel the Gospel of Mark or the Gospel of Peter? Most people would
have chosen the Gospel of Peter if they had just a raw choice. But the tradition has chosen to
identify the Gospel with Mark.
Summary
And so I think the tradition and the way the selection works and what we know about Mark
and Peter shows the quality of the tradition and the quality of the choice. Now, the example
here is important because it shows us something about the nature of this tradition that we’re
dealing with and the way in which tradition worked in the early church. And it suggests
something about the quality of the tradition that we’re dealing with here in terms of these
kinds of matters. That reflects not only on the authorship of the Gospels but the quality of the
tradition at large for the Gospels as well.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Authorship of Mark NAC:M
The Gospel of Mark LBD
Mark’s Gospel BEB
See Also
Gospel of Mark DJG
The Authorship and Audience of Mark GM:SRC
Date and Author GM

SEGMENT 26
The Authorship of Luke
Learning Objectives
• Describe suggestions for the purpose of the “we” sections in Acts
• Discuss why tradition accepts Luke and not one of Paul’s other associates as the author
of Luke-Acts
The “We” Sections of Acts

And when it comes to the authorship of the third Gospel, we need to think through how this
view that Luke is associated with this Gospel came to be. We have the tradition—which is
very, very consistent—that Luke is the author, and we have an association in the tradition
that the author of the Third Gospel is a companion of Paul. This actually comes, we think,
from the “we” sections of Acts, where the author of Acts has inserted himself into the action.
At least, this is one of the explanations for these passages that come from Acts 16:10–17,
Acts 20:5–15, Acts 21:1–18, and Acts 27:1–28:16.
“We” as a Travel Itinerary

And these “we” sections show someone who has joined Paul in the action. What’s interesting
about them is that they’re rather randomly placed. They’re not in significant events. They’re
not at Pentecost. They’re not at the gospel going out to Samaria or the gospel going to the
Gentiles. They’re not in the Jerusalem Council. In fact, the only thing that these events have
in common is that they’re part of a journey motif often involving a sea voyage.
“We” as the Authors of Acts

That’s about it, but these “we” sections have suggested that it’s a Pauline companion who’s
the writer of Acts, although other people think that the “we” sections might just be the
insertion of a travel itinerary of a source having nothing to do with the author, although that
would be a little odd.
“We” to Create an Eyewitness

And then the third option is that these “we” sections are completely constructed to give the
impression of an eyewitness to lift up the quality of Acts for a series of traditions that actually
aren’t very well-rooted. The problem with that is that the events to which the “we” sections
are tied are not significant events in the movement of Acts overall, as I just noted, and so, if
you were making up the text for that reason, you would think you would put the person in
scenes that were more important to Acts than the ones where the “we” sections show up.
They’re too random to be a literary device to lift up the quality of the author.
Paul and the Author of Luke-Acts

Nonetheless, the association with Paul seems to be there, and that leads to a myriad of
candidates. Now, initially, one might think, “Well, you’ve got Titus, you’ve got Silas, you’ve
got Timothy. There are all kinds of people who might be the candidates here.” The problem
is that once you put the “we” sections next to the naming of other figures, you tend to exclude
those who have been named as not being part of the “we” because if that’s how the author is
signaling his presence, then once he’s named someone, that person is excluded from being
in the anonymous “we” section, if you will.
So then the question becomes, is Luke the most prominent of the candidates left over
once you take out those who are named? And actually, he isn’t. There are others, like
Epaphroditus and Epaphras, who we know more about and who have in some ways a more
illustrative and visible ministry in association with Paul than Luke does. In fact, if you take
Luke out of the mix as the author of the third Gospel and Acts, all that we know about him
is that he isn’t a Jew and that he was a doctor. That’s it—not very much. And so he doesn’t
commend himself by the nature of his reputation in ministry as being someone who goes into
an x-slot, the identity of whom we don’t know otherwise.
The Credibility of the Tradition

Thus, it suggests that the tradition knew what it was talking about when it named Luke and
put him in this prominent position. In fact, it’s a very prominent position because Luke wrote
more of the NT than any other writer of the NT, including Paul. When you put Luke and Acts
together, that’s more of the NT as a single corpus than any other writer, including all the
individual Epistles of Paul put together, so Luke is a very prominent figure.
What this suggests, I think, is that the tradition knew something when it put Luke in this
slot, and it does so very, very consistently. There’s not a competing set of names of Pauline
companions who were put into this slot.
Summary
In thinking about how the tradition knows something like this both in terms of Luke’s
authorship and Mark’s authorship, I think what we see is the care with which the early church
tradition worked. And I’m thinking about the care with which the early church tradition
worked in places where we can really reflect on it like we can in areas of authorship. That
also speaks well to the quality of the tradition at large in that it suggests that the tradition
knew something, not just about its authors, but also may well have known something very
much about the traditions of Jesus that it passes on.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Introduction to Luke’s Gospel NAC:L
Luke’s Gospel BEB
Authorship of Luke LBD
See Also
Authorship, Origin, and Purpose of Luke DJG
Introduction to Luke IVPNTCS:L
Origin and Purpose BECNT:L1:19:50

SEGMENT 27
The Authorship of Matthew
Learning Objectives
• Explain what Papias says about the authorship of Matthew
• Discuss the idea of Matthew as a Hebrew document
• Describe the issues that Papias’ statements about Matthew’s Gospel raise
Introduction
Now, when we turn to authorship of the first Gospel, the Gospel attributed to Matthew, we
again have a citation from Papias. But this citation is different than the others in that it
introduces some issues that we’ll have to reflect upon as we read it.
Papias on Matthew
But here is Papias’ testimony about Matthew. And again, we’re getting it through Eusebius
in his Ecclesiastical History, and we’re in [book] three 39:16—that’s book three, chapter 39,
paragraph 16.
“But concerning Matthew, he writes as follows: ‘So then Matthew wrote the oracles in
the Hebrew language, and everyone interpreted them as he was able.’ ” The phrase “oracles”
is problematic because we don’t know—is he talking about teachings of Jesus, or is he talking
about a Gospel? And the description of the Gospel as oracles [is] in other places where
Eusebius writes, and that generalized kind of description leaves it up in the air whether we’re
talking about a Gospel or whether we’re talking about, say, teaching collections—a logia or
sayings collection; that kind of thing. It could be either, although most scholars in working
with this do think that Papias is alluding to the Gospel.
The text goes on: “And the same writer uses testimonies from the first Epistle of John
and from that of Peter likewise. And he relates another story of a woman, who was accused
of many sins before the Lord, which is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews.
These things we have thought it necessary to observe in addition to what has already been
stated.” So the actual citation about Matthew’s Gospel is very, very short.
Matthew and Hebrew

We’re dealing with oracles, and perhaps more [important] is the idea that it comes out of the
Hebrew language or the Hebrew dialect or in a Hebrew manner. Something like that is the
import of that phrase. Now, what makes this particularly interesting is that the Gospel that
we have of Matthew is not written in Hebrew. It’s not written in Aramaic. It’s written in
Greek. It’s definitely a Greek Gospel. And in fact, when you look at the Greek, it doesn’t
look like it’s a translation of something earlier that was in a Semitic language. It looks like
it’s really written in Greek.
A Collection?
And so the Gospel that we have is a Greek Gospel, but the Gospel that Papias talks about has
its roots in a Hebrew origin. We don’t have access to that work anymore—at least directly,
the best that we can tell. So the problem that we have with the association with Matthew tied
to Papias is this different background that’s tied to it. Are we really talking about a Gospel,
or we are talking about a collection, if you will, that fed into a Gospel, which is also a
possibility?
The First Gospel?

And in particular, what do we do with this language difference? It’s actually this citation that
led scholars for a long time to think that Matthew was the first of our Gospels written.
Because of the Hebrew roots of the Gospel tied to it, that would more naturally come in a
setting earlier on in the church versus later.
But upon reflection, the idea that Matthew is the first Gospel written because it’s tied to
an apostle or it’s associated with this Hebrew origin seems to be problematic because of the
Greek nature of the Gospel that we actually have.
A Change of Direction?
Some people today have suggested that Matthew starts off coming out of a Hebrew origin
but eventually is crafted in a Greek direction, and that’s the Gospel that we have, so that
Matthew began work on his Gospel before Mark wrote his. This is entirely possible. But it’s
something that is shrouded in the lack of evidence that we have about the origins of this
material.
Summary
So we have an association with Matthew tied to the idea that he is an apostle—again,
traditionally presented, rooted in the presentation of Papias. But in all honesty, what Papias
is telling us has some issues tied to it that make its connection with our Greek Gospel less
than tight, unlike the situation we have with Luke and unlike the situation that we have with
Mark.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Introduction to Matthew NAC:M
Composition of Matthew LBD
Hebrew Version of the Gospel of Matthew LBD
See Also
The Origin of Matthew’s Gospel DJG
Structure, Author, Provenance, and Date GM:SRC
Background for Matthew GM

SEGMENT 28
The Authorship of John
Learning Objectives
• Identify the evidence for authorship in the Gospel of John
• Summarize the support for John as the author of the fourth Gospel
Introduction
Now, when it comes to the fourth Gospel, known as the Gospel of John and often associated
with John the apostle, the identification of the author in the case of this Gospel is very much
related to identifying the identity of the beloved disciple. And it’s been the case for several
centuries that the argument goes that as you zero in on features within the Gospel that tell us
about the beloved disciple, we get to zero in on the identity of who this figure is. And so
we’re going to take a look at that argument as we think about the authorship tied to what is
called the Gospel of John.
A Jewish Author
First of all, we know that the author was Jewish. He knows Jewish feasts, and he knows
Jewish customs, and he does so with a detail that reflects the knowledge of what is more than
likely a Jewish person as opposed to a Gentile.
A Palestinian
Secondly, the author was a Jew in Palestine because he knows details of Palestinian
topography—about when you’re going uphill or downhill, when you’re going north and
south, and even some other details of topography that suggest that this is a Jew residing in
Palestine.
An Eyewitness
Third, the author portrays himself as an eyewitness of what he wrote about, so he’s among
those who saw Christ’s glory. In John 1:14 the author says, “We beheld his glory, glory as
the only begotten from God.” And at one level, if you push this real literally and you think
about an event like the transfiguration, that really does narrow things down. But he may be
speaking generically about the general power and authority of Jesus that many of the apostles
observed and were eyewitnesses to. So that, by itself, may not narrow things down entirely,
although it might.
Apostolic Awareness
The next level of the argument is that the apostle is someone who knows apostolic thinking
because in various passages—like John 2:11, John 4:27, and John 6:19—we see him
reflecting on the kind of thinking that’s going on in the group and portraying that in some
detail.
The Anonymous Disciple

The last step in the argument is that the author was the apostle John because John is otherwise
anonymous among the key disciples. Most of the other key disciples are named. Peter is
named, Andrew is named, Nathaniel is named, [and] Thomas is named.
Conclusion
And so, when we go through that list and we think about who’s left—who has all the other
features that we’re talking about but hasn’t been named by name in the Gospel—we come
back down to John the apostle. So the suggestion is that we know [who the author of] the
fourth Gospel is because of this argument of concentric circles that zeroes in on who the
author of the fourth Gospel is based upon some of the details that are going on within his
Gospel. And the tradition outside suggests this as well, as the tradition is that two of the
Gospels were written by apostles, namely Matthew and John, and two of the Gospels were
written by apostolic associates, namely Mark and Luke.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Authorship, Dating, and Provenance NAC:J111
Introduction to John LBD
Gospel of John BEB
See Also
The Origin of John DJG
Introduction to John GJ
Authorship and Origin of John NIVAC:J

SEGMENT 29
The Four Gospels
Learning Objectives
• Explain the difference between “heaven-down” and “earth-up” Gospels
• Discuss why three Gospels share the “earth-up” perspective and only one has the
“heaven-down” perspective
Introduction
Now we’re going to turn our attention to the content of the Gospels themselves, and we’re
going to make an initial observation that actually is important in understanding how all four
Gospels relate to each other. As I’ve noted before, it’s no accident that we have four Gospels
rather than one, even though Tatian in the latter part of the second century wrote a work
called the Diatessaron, which means “through the four.” He actually tried to put all the
Gospel stories together into one running account.
The canon has decided that it was better to tell four distinct stories of Jesus from four
different angles, and I think there’s a reason for this that’s transparent once you reflect on
what’s going on between the Synoptics and John in particular.
From the Earth Up

The Synoptic Gospels tend to tell the story from what I describe as the earth up, and the point
that I’m making here is that as you look at the story in the way it begins and the way it
proceeds, you watch it dawn on people who Jesus is. And for the most part, we’re working
with categories that we’re used to. We’ve got a baby born to a set of parents in two of the
Gospels, in Matthew and Luke. In Mark, we just start with the ministry of John the Baptist.
We don’t see anything about the infancy.
From Heaven Down

Now, contrast that start to John, which begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.” In emphasizing that point, we start right at the first
verse telling you right at the start that Jesus is God who became incarnate. That is a heaven-
down way of telling the story, while the Synoptics start from the earth up.
Granted, the infancy material because of a virgin birth is telling you unusual things are
happening with this child and tell you this is not going to be a normal story. But the Synoptics
let it unfold who Jesus is and let it dawn on people, whereas John does all the heavy lifting
for us in terms of who Jesus is and tells us very directly from the very start and throughout
who Jesus is.
Three-to-One
Now, this has led to one of the perplexities in using the Gospels. Namely, the church really
likes the Gospel of John because it’s so direct, and it does all the heavy lifting for the church.
But the canon has chosen to tell the story of the Synoptics three times from the earth up and
one time from heaven down.
I actually think that’s not an accident because, if you think about it, everyone who comes
to understand who the story of Jesus is and what the story of Jesus is and where it’s going
has to understand the story from heaven up. We normally don’t think about God becoming
incarnate, being a human being, and there being such a thing as a God-man. That is a unique
construction out of all the human beings who have ever been on the earth. As I say, most
people don’t come to Jesus this way: The doctor gives the swat of life at the beginning of a
child’s birth, and the first words out of the child’s mouth are “Jesus, the second person of the
ontological Trinity, wah wah wah.” That’s not how people come to Jesus. They don’t
inherently understand who He is. Someone has to sit down and explain the uniqueness of
Jesus and what it is that He’s doing and what it is that He’s offering and who it is that He is.
Someone has to explain Jesus from the earth up.
So it’s no accident that three of our Gospels tell this story from the earth up, while one
chooses to tell it from heaven down. And it’s important to appreciate how the story of Jesus
dawns on people and how His authority is displayed kind of a piece at a time so that as we
move along, we get a better impression of who He is.
Understanding Jesus
If you remember, earlier in this course, we went through a section in which we talked about
what got Jesus into trouble. And we looked at some of the issues of authority that He
displayed—that He had authority over sin, that He had authority over the Sabbath, that He
had authority over the law and their issues of ritual purity, that He claimed to be king riding
in on the back of a donkey, and that He had authority over sacred space when He cleansed
the temple. These are the types of things that show the authority of Jesus. Of course, nothing
shows the authority of Jesus more than the claim that God is going to vindicate Him, a claim
that He made before the Sanhedrin—the Jewish leadership—that God is going to vindicate
Him and give Him a place and let Him sit at the right hand of God in heaven—sit in the very
presence of God, with God, and share His rule and authority.
All these details in the Gospels point to Jesus’ authority and build the picture of Him
from the earth up so eventually you realize this isn’t just any normal human being. The
Gospels are presenting the story of a unique figure at the center of the program of God who
sits at the right hand of God and who is a very core figure alongside God Himself and
everything that God is doing—so much so that by the time we get to the book of Acts, we
can call on the name of the Lord and be addressing Jesus and expect Him to save us, expect
Him to forgive our sins, [and] expect Him to give us the Holy Spirit as a seal of the fact that
we are God’s children.
These texts then show Jesus from the earth up. They show how it gradually dawned on
people who Jesus was. When He calmed the storm, the disciples ask, “Who is this who is
able to calm the wind and the waves?” and they obey Him. It’s precisely the right question
to ask. It’s the question the Synoptic Gospels in particular ask, and they show the construction
of the life of Jesus from the earth up in contrast to John’s very direct heaven-down. If you
get that core feature about the Gospels, then the differences in how Matthew, Mark, and Luke
tell the story versus how John tells the story won’t be disturbing. You’ll just understand that
each author has taken a different angle in telling how the story of Jesus works.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Synoptic Gospels LBD
The Synoptic Gospels FSB
Relationship of John to the Synoptics LBD
John and the Synoptics NAC:J111
See Also
John and the Synoptics DJG
John and the Oral Gospel Tradition JOGT

SEGMENT 30
Four Perspectives
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the distinct perspectives and emphases of the four Gospels
Introduction
Now, when we think about the content of each of the Gospels, each one of them gives us a
look at Jesus from a slightly different perspective and with a slightly different emphasis. And
that’s what we want to talk about now.
Mark
The Gospel of Mark, in particular, is focused on the idea of Jesus’ suffering. There’s a lot
about discipleship, and there’s a lot about following in the way of the cross. In fact, Mark’s
Gospel has been described as a Passion Narrative with a huge introduction because, literally
at chapter 8 out of 16 chapters, it turns the corner with the confession that Jesus is the Christ.
And then a lot of the discussion afterwards is about the suffering that Jesus will go through
as a model for the suffering that believers will go through as well—that disciples will go
through—and being prepared for that.
So the two words to associate with Mark are suffering and then exaltation. That’s the
sequence that is tied to Jesus. First He suffers, and then He will be exalted. And that’s the
example that will come for disciples as well.
This is why we think that Mark fits best in a historical setting tied to the persecutions of
Rome in the 60s, particularly in the early 60s—events that are tied to things like the fire of
Rome that Nero blamed on the Christians and used as an excuse to persecute them. Mark fits
into that kind of scenario and prepares the disciples for what they’ll face that will be like
what Jesus went through when He was crucified.
Luke
We come to Luke. Here, the emphasis is on Gentile inclusion. Luke-Acts is really one
volume, even though it’s been split in the canon. And it is the story about how the Gospel
eventually included Gentiles in connection with the promise of God. The emphasis in Luke-
Acts is on legitimization. This is a sociological term that is describing the attempt to
legitimize or substantiate the sociological place and identity of a community.
In the ancient world, it wasn’t the thing that was new that was respected, particularly
when it came to religion. Something needed to be old; it needed to have a pedigree; it needed
to have experience and the evidence of experience in order to be respected. And Christianity
looked like the new kid on the block. Luke is explaining through his use of Scripture and
talking about the covenants and the program of God that, really, this new movement is an old
movement. It’s rooted in old promises that go all the way back to Abraham and all the way
back to Moses and the Torah. And so this seemingly new entity is actually an old entity, and
the promises that were made originally to Israel are the promises that now reside in the
community that is becoming the church.
So Luke emphasizes Gentile inclusion, he emphasizes fulfillment, and he emphasizes the
identity of the Christian community as a Jew-Gentile community—a really revolutionary
move in light of the history of the relationship between Gentiles and Jews. In fact, if you
remember where we were earlier in the course with the threat the Jews felt about
hellenization, you’ll remember that in thinking about the threat of hellenization in the way in
which Jews separated themselves in the presence of Gentiles, [it] made them nervous. This
union of Jew and Gentile into one body is really revolutionary at a sociological level in terms
of what it is that God is doing. And it shows how the Gospel is ultimately, in part, about
reconciliation.
Matthew
We come to Matthew, and Matthew is dealing with the response of Israel. He’s trying to
explain how it is that Israel’s opposition grew and grew and grew to Jesus and what drove
that opposition.
Unlike Luke’s beginning in his infancy narrative, where everything is hymns and singing
and joy, the note of tension comes directly at the very start of Matthew’s story and his infancy
material as the very announcement of the arrival of a potential Messiah by the Magi to Herod
and the leaders causes Herod to kill the babies in Bethlehem. And there’s a note of tension
from the very beginning of that Gospel running all the way through it as Matthew recounts
the story of how Jesus is really Israel’s Messiah even though Israel has rejected [Him]. That’s
the thrust of what Matthew is about.
And many issues of the law and the relationship of the law to what Jesus is doing is
another major concern of Matthew as he attempts to legitimize the claim of Christians that
they also inherit the promise of God.
John
Then finally, the fourth Gospel, John, has Jesus as inseparably linked to the Father from the
very beginning, as we noted before, even in the first verse: “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” From the very beginning, we get this
sense about how the Son and the Father are inseparable.
In John 5, when there’s a dispute on the Sabbath and Jesus heals on the Sabbath, He
begins to talk about the fact how He and the Father act in conjunction with one another. In
John 10, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” [illustrating] this inseparable relationship
with the Father that Jesus has as the Son. He is the sent one in John. He is sent from heaven
to come to earth to minister. He is deity taking on the form of humanity. He is the presence
of the Father and the presence of the program of God connected inseparably to the Father.
And it is this knowledge and this relationship that people are supposed to really appreciate
about who Jesus is. As we’ve said, John’s Gospel is the most direct in the height of its
Christology. It’s the most direct in asserting this relationship and oneness with the Father,
and it emphasizes that Jesus Himself is the expression, the Word of God, the literal voice of
God, the literal presence of God. The tabernacle’s among us, and in that tabernacle He points
the way to God.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
The Composition and Relationship of the Gospels INT:CMMF
Why Four Gospels? WFG
The Canonical Jesus LBD
See Also
Four Gospels, One Jesus FGOJ:SR
Christology of Matthew NAC:M
Interpretation and Theology of Mark BNTC:GSM
The Purpose and Theology of Luke NAC:L
The Purpose of John NAC:J111

Unit 2b Quiz
SEGMENT 31
The Missing Gospels
Learning Objectives
• Define what a “missing gospel” is
• Identify and describe three important topics related to the “missing gospels”
Introduction
We’re now going to shift gears. And it’s probably a little bit unusual to walk into a course on
the Gospels and talk about more than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But in the rest of what
we’re going to do in this section of the course, I’m going to focus on those other gospels—
those missing gospels, those secret gospels—that people talk about and that they raise as a
way to talk about the breadth of the way Jesus was talked about in the first, second, and third
centuries and to suggest, in some cases perhaps, that the Gospel, the four Gospels, aren’t all
there is to the Jesus story and that really we have a very skewed look at who Jesus is because
we don’t pay sufficient attention to these other missing and often gnostic-oriented gospels.
What I want to do is put these gospels in their place by orienting them in relationship to
the canonical Gospels but also describing what they are so you can see the difference and get
a sense for why it is that these gospels ended up historically in a marginalized position. They
weren’t marginalized simply for political or theological reasons alone. They weren’t
marginalized simply as an exercise of power. They ended up in a marginalized position
because they expressed a completely different picture of Jesus, the roots of which we can
show actually [do not] go back to the earliest period of the Christian movement. And so they
get their position not because history is written by the winners. They get their position
because sometimes the winners deserve to win.
Gnosticism
Now, when we think about these other gospels, the bulk of them will have to do with
something that’s known as Gnosticism. This is a philosophical movement that is a dualistic
movement. We’ll talk more about that later, but the point is, it’s a philosophical Graeco-
Roman approach to reality that became synthesized with some Christian associations and
produced its own unique mix of gnostic Christianity or gnostic-like Christianity. So later,
we’re going to take a specific look at what is involved in this feud, where it was formed,
when it emerged, and what that means.
The Gospel of Thomas

Perhaps of all the other gospels, the one that’s most talked about is the gospel of Thomas,
and this is an interesting and fascinating gospel comprising 114 alleged sayings of Jesus
covering a wide variety of topics in a wide variety of ways. And this gospel has produced a
lot of discussion because it looks to be an early second-century gospel, and some of the
tradition that we see looks very much like what we see in the four Gospels that we have in
the Bible as well as other material that we have—that we look at—that doesn’t fit that
material at all. So we’ll take a little bit of a close look at the gospel of Thomas as well.
The Gnostic Creation Story

A third thing that we’re going to do that’s really, really important is looking at the creation
story that’s tied particularly to the gnostic gospels. This creation story reveals a lot about the
theology of gnostic Christianity, and it also shows and helps to explain why this material
ended up being on the edges of the Christian community rather than being central to it.
Summary
So when we put this all together and we summarize it, what we will see is a glimpse of the
character of these materials—the theology/philosophy that moved them—and thus be able to
better explain why they had the historical function that they do, which is that they never
ended up in the center of the Christian experience or the center of the Christian movement.
They were always seen as somewhat fringe and a variation—if you will, a deviation—from
what is was that Jesus taught.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
What about “Gospels” Not in Our NT? ASB:RQSASF
The Fourfold Gospel INT:CMMF

SEGMENT 32
Gnosticism
Learning Objectives
• Define and describe Gnosticism
• Explain the two different expressions of Gnosticism’s belief about the body
• Discuss the “alternative Christianities model”
• Summarize what the evidence indicates about Gnosticism’s relationship to early
Christianity
What Is It?
When we think about the extrabiblical gospels, we have to talk about Gnosticism. Gnosticism
was a Greek philosophy that had a different worldview about the way in which one looks at
the world. And it begins with a dualism—that there is that which is evil, and there is that
which is good. And anything that has to do with matter—with the material world—was
viewed as evil, whereas anything that was spiritual was viewed as good.
Special Knowledge
The term itself comes from the Greek word for gnosis, which means “knowledge.” A gnostic
was someone who had a proper understanding of the way in which the world was created and
constructed. And they understood this dualism—that that which is matter is evil, and that
which is spirit is superior.
The Superiority of Spirituality

And so gnostic Christianity became this entity expressed in a variety of ways—in fact, so
much variety that some people say we shouldn’t talk about gnostic Christianity as if it’s a
single thing. But what they all shared was the idea that the appreciation of being a spiritual
being is the core of what salvation is about. There’s no Jesus who dies for sin. There’s no
view of the world that says that the creation has fallen because the creation is flawed from
the beginning. And the understanding that you are a spiritual being is that in-house
knowledge that you have. And then, living as a spiritual being is what you’re encouraged to
do.
Two Expressions of Gnosticism

Gnosticism could express itself in two very disparate ways, depending on what you did with
this knowledge.
The Body Is Evil
Some gnostics said, “It doesn’t matter what you do with your body. It’s evil, and it’s going
to decay anyway, so you can do whatever you want with it.” If you read 1 Cor 6, you’ll see
the shadows of that kind of a view, which is actually a neoplatonic view of philosophy.
The Body Should Be Controlled
And then the other view took the view that, no, because you’re a spiritual being, you need to
really discipline your body and bring it under your own control. This produced a kind of
Gnosticism that had a certain morality to it and a certain ethic to it, unlike the more libertine
form. And it meant that some gnostics were very disciplined in the way they lived their lives.
Of course, the church fathers, when they railed against Gnosticism, railed against the libertine
form of Gnosticism as opposed to this more ascetic type.
But Gnosticism was this knowledge that you are a spiritual being and living out of that
knowledge and the salvation involved, embracing that idea who you are as a spiritual being,
and Jesus as a teacher pointed the way to this spiritual understanding. There was nothing
special about His person and nothing special about His work other than that.
When Did It Appear?

When did Gnosticism appear in association with Christianity? The best that we can tell, full-
blown Gnosticism emerged in the early part of the second century and gnostic Christianity is
an AD second-century phenomenon. So it’s not something that goes back to the earliest roots
of the time of Christianity. There are several generations that pass before it begins to come
on the scene.
What Do Some Scholars Claim for It?

Now, some scholars claim that gnostics existed alongside Christians in the early period, even
in the earlier eras. But what they are doing is confusing the presence of neoplatonic dualism
for full-blown Gnosticism. There were roots in Gnosticism that came through Platonism and
neoplatonism into the expression of Gnosticism. And some of that is what we see in the first
century in a text like 1 Cor 6, where Paul exhorts, “It does matter what you do with your
body because there is going to be a resurrection body,” as opposed to the view that says, “It
doesn’t matter what I do with my body; it’s going to decay. And so I can be morally whatever
I want because it doesn’t matter.” That conflict is not the presence of gnostic Christianity in
the first century fighting against another expression of Christianity as an alternative.
This is the alternative Christianity model that says there’s orthodoxy and alongside it was
this competing form of Christianity that was equally virulent and equally accessible to
people, and then eventually orthodoxy crushed Gnosticism, and Gnosticism disappeared
from the scene, not because it was a deviation off of orthodox Christianity, but because the
two had existed side by side from the beginning.
That’s the alternative Christianities model, and that’s how some scholars present it today.
That’s how you sometimes see it talked about on television.
What Does the Evidence Show?

But the fact is that we don’t have evidence that pulls this Gnosticism back into the first
century and that shows that it was present at that time, and so Gnosticism is a syncretistic
approach to the Christian faith in which Greek philosophy has been mixed with some
expressions of Christianity and put alongside it to argue for this alternative model, which
probably isn’t really historically what did happen. And this is what the evidence shows. The
evidence shows that our gnostic sources are basically second century and beyond. We can’t
reach back to the earlier periods.
A little later, I’m going to talk about the creation story that’s a core of gnostic Christianity
to show how different this particular view of God was from the view of God that you see in
the materials that we see from Christians writing in the first century. It shows a disconnect
between what Gnosticism has done with the Jewish creation story and where early Christians
are. It shows that it emerged later. That’s what the evidence shows, is that Gnosticism is a
later phenomenon, not an earlier one.
Conclusion
So what do we do with Gnosticism? It’s a very, very important movement in the history of
the Christian church for the second and third centuries. It shows what happened to some
expressions of faith tied to the person of Jesus in the second and third centuries. But it doesn’t
go back to the very beginning, and it doesn’t have any claim for apostolic roots. And it is a
movement that should be regarded as fringe. And so the gospels and other works that
Gnosticism produced—some of these missing gospels or secret gospels—are not early works,
and they don’t represent the earliest forms of the Christian faith. And therefore, their position
on the fringe of Christian history is an appropriate place to have them.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Gnosticism BEB
Gnosticism LBD
Gnosticism INT:CMMF
See Also
Gnosticism DNTB
Gnosticism MG:UTBAC

SEGMENT 33
The Gospel of Thomas
Learning Objectives
• Compare and contrast the gospel of Thomas with the four Gospels
• Discuss the date of Thomas
• Describe what Origen said about the gospel of Thomas
Thomas’ Difference from the Gospels

Now, one of the more important of the missing gospels is certainly the gospel of Thomas.
It’s created a large stir in the public square, and really appropriately so.
If you look at Thomas, it’s different from our biblical Gospels in that it is a collection of
sayings of Jesus—114 alleged sayings of Jesus—some of which may actually go back to
Him. In fact, if you read the gospel of Thomas, here’s what you have; this is what the gospel
of Thomas is. You read about 25 percent of it, and you say, “That sounds like Matthew,
Mark, Luke, or John,” because it is like Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. If you read another
25 percent, you go, “Well, that’s sort of like Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John,” because it is
sort of like Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. But if you read the other 50 percent, you go,
“Whoa. I have no idea what that is. I have no idea where that came from.”
What the Gospel of Thomas Is

You see, Thomas is a hybrid gospel. It looks like it has a foot in the orthodox side of the
church, if you will—or in the church that goes back through the apostolic tradition, to the
disciples—and then it has another foot somewhere else. Some of that “somewhere else” have
tinges of Gnosticism associated with it and are later, and some of it doesn’t. Some of it’s just
kind of a mysticism, or a spiritual kind of view of things. And we really do think that Thomas
conceivably may have been built gradually in terms of its formulation and collection, and so
some of the sayings may well be earlier than others.
The Date of the Gospel of Thomas

So when we ask what the date of the gospel of Thomas is, most scholars will place the date
in the early second century, somewhere around 110 or 120 or so, although there is a group
that is dating Thomas much later, even to the latter part of the second century, about 180 or
so.
Some scholars have argued that it shows influence of Tatian’s Diatessaron, which wasn’t
written until 170. That’s by far a more minority view, but it is beginning to be discussed as a
possibility. Still others go to the other side of the spectrum and say, “Well, you know, some
of the pieces of Thomas are actually quite early, even though other pieces of it may be later.”
And they use this early date as a way to talk about the tradition that feeds Thomas as being
reflective of a tradition that’s alongside orthodoxy along the way yet another expression of
the alternative Christianities model that we’ve talked about. But really, to take a handful of
pieces of tradition that may actually be rooted in the orthodox church and to use those as a
way for talking about what Thomas is as a whole is really a distortion of what that book is as
a whole because the other elements are later and seem to come in alongside.
So a date somewhere in the second century makes sense, and this is a late date for this
work. Even though some skeptical scholars in using this material have tried to put Thomas
and the date of Thomas alongside some of our earliest Gospels—they’ll put it alongside
Mark, they’ll put it alongside Q, they’ll make it earlier than Matthew and Luke—and this is
actually very, very unlikely and represents an enhancement of the importance and role of
Thomas from what it really has historically. In fact, this is one of the mistakes made by the
Jesus Seminar—that the Jesus Seminar gave Thomas such an exalted and early position in
the sequence of the Gospels, something that doesn’t reflect general scholarship.
Origen on the Gospel of Thomas

Now, when we ask what the reception of Thomas is, really our best indication of this is
something that Origen said at one point in one of his writings. He made the point, “We don’t
read Thomas in the churches,” which is a way of saying, “We don’t present it as Scripture.”
A Gospel that was read in the churches was being read as Scripture, and Thomas in the early
third century, early 200s, is saying in effect, “Thomas is not something we regard as
Scripture.” And it doesn’t show up in any list, any canonical list. It doesn’t even show up on
the fringe of books that are being considered.
Summary
So Thomas has been elevated to an importance in our time that probably exceeds its genuine
historical importance, although as a testimony to what’s happening in the second century and
what’s happening with a fringe of what’s going on in the Christian movement, Thomas is
actually an extremely important witness because it shows, on the one hand, some concerns
with theology expressed in orthodoxy along with a mix of other stuff.
So that means Thomas is important as a hybrid gospel of the second century, but of
course, its relevance for the earliest Christianity is basically nil.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Gospel of Thomas HBDRU
Gospel of Thomas BECA
See Also
Gospel of Thomas DJG
The Gospel of Thomas NHLE
The Gospel of Thomas MG:UTBAC

SEGMENT 34
Background of the Gnostic Creation Story
Learning Objectives
• Describe the Nag Hammadi library and explain its importance
• Explain what the Apocryphon of John is and its value for understanding Gnosticism
• Discuss the importance of Irenaeus in our understanding of the gnostic creation story
Introduction
Now, when we think about gnostic Christianity, probably the central feature of gnostic
Christianity, besides its dualism, is its picture of the creation story. And so I need to give you
a little bit of background to talk about how we know about this material and where it comes
from. And then, we’ll zero in and take a look at the creation story itself.
Nag Hammadi
The materials that we have that reflect gnostic Christianity come primarily from a collection
of finds that date back to the 1940s at a place in Egypt called Nag Hammadi. And in this
locale, a library was dug up called the Nag Hammadi library that had a collection of a whole
array of texts. Many of our extrabiblical texts and many of our gnostic Christian texts were
in this collection.
This appears to have been a library that someone hid away because we are hitting a period
in which the church did demand that such works be destroyed or burned or otherwise
confiscated. And so, someone who wanted to keep this collection alive and accessible hid
them in this location in Nag Hammadi, and only recently, within the last century—in fact,
just barely outside the last 50 years—have we dug them up.
The Apocryphon of John

Now, what’s important about this find is that certain works appeared multiple times. There
was more than one copy and actually more than one version. One of these key works was
what was called the Apocryphon of John. The Apocryphon of John is present in four different
manuscripts in the Nag Hammadi collection. And these four different manuscripts come in
two fundamental versions, one a longer version than the other. It was the most widely attested
work written in repeated manuscripts that we found at Nag Hammadi.
Creation in the Apocryphon

And in this work is the creation story itself that we’ll take a more detailed look at in just a
little bit. However, certain themes become very clear. God is not the creator in creation;
underling gods do that creating. The creation is flawed from the beginning, and all of this is
very different from the book of Genesis.
This is significant because it shows that gnostic Christianity is not rooted in a pious
Judaism that accepted the story of the Pentateuch as the core story for theology and for the
definition of God and His activity in the world.
Now, this philosophy, if you will, that has been wed to Judaism and then ultimately to
Christianity, is a variation and a hybrid and is a deviation from that kind of teaching. So the
significance of the background of this material is actually pretty important.
A Familiar Story
Another important detail about the Apocryphon of John needs to be highlighted, and that is
that when we dug up these texts and we began to read the Apocryphon of John and they read
the creation story that was in it, the scholars who read the creation story began to realize that
they had heard this story before, that this wasn’t the first time they had seen creation
presented in this way.
And the scholars who really knew what they were doing recognized that Irenaeus, a
church father writing at the end of the second century, around 180 or so, presented gnostic
Christianity as one of the things Christianity at the time was reacting against. And he went
through the story of creation as the gnostic Christians held to it in ways that showed what the
story was and why the church was uncomfortable with that story. So they read this story, and
all of a sudden when they were reading the Apocryphon of John, they recognized, you know,
that’s the same story that Irenaeus tells, and he told it so well that they recognized the story
when they dug up the text that presented the story.
Why is that important? That’s important because sometimes the suggestion is, we have
these new gospels—these hidden gospels, these secret gospels, these mystery gospels—and
they’re telling us stuff about the history of the Christian church that we didn’t know before.
Now, it is true that these works are telling us these doctrines from the perspective of
people who held to these views. That’s true, and that makes these works significant to find
and reflect upon. But it is not true that this is new material for us, because it isn’t new
material. Those who were writing against Gnosticism were writing about what it was that
they taught, and basically presented the core story of creation in such a faithful way that when
we dug up the works that had that story, we recognized the story from what had been written
literally centuries before. That means the material isn’t so new, it isn’t so secret, [and] it isn’t
so mysterious as some suggest.
Summary
So these finds at Nag Hammadi, in association with the gnostic gospels and the story of
creation, are important because they show what the nature of this material is, but it also shows
that we’ve known about it for some time.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Nag Hammadi LBD
Nag Hammadi HBDRU
Irenaeus ODCC
See Also
The Nature of God and Creation MG:UTBAC
The Apocryphon of John AG:I

SEGMENT 35
The Gnostic Creation Story
Learning Objectives
• Summarize the gnostic story of creation
• Describe the key differences between the Christian and gnostic creation stories
God’s Uniqueness
Now, let’s take a closer look at the creation story as it is presented as a core of gnostic
Christianity. And the version that we’re going to look at is the one in the Apocryphon of John,
this popular text found at Nag Hammadi. And we’re going to start in part two, 2/33–4/10,
which is a long description of God’s uniqueness. Then from there, we are told He is “more
than a god … nothing is above him.” That’s in 2/35.
And then His attributes are described: He is illimitable, total perfection, immeasurable,
invisible, eternal, unnamable, pure, holy, not corporeal—doesn’t have a body, of course; He’s
a spiritual being—and superior from other beings, among a variety of attributes. “He is an
aeon-giving aeon.” He gives birth to the ages and to these elements—these sub-gods, if you
will—that are known as aeons, in 4/3. He is at rest [in] 4/11.
A Second Tier of Gods

It was His thought that “performed a deed and she came forth.” This is 4/27. “She is the
forethought of the All” and “the glory of Barbelo.” And the Barbelo is the invisible virginal
spirit. So what we’ve got is a creation of a sublayer of gods of which a female god is a part.
Now, this will be important later in the story. Next is named a series of aeons that came from
the Father. So she’s not the only one [but] part of a whole host of gods that the Father is
responsible for creating. The key event follows.
Sophia Acts Alone

Sophia, an aeon herself—this is the female god whose description we just discussed—
conceives of a thought from herself. This is in 9/25–26. She sought to conceive without her
consort’s consent—9/34—which means that she moves to create without actually asking for
the right or the permission to do so. It’s a patriarchal god story.
The Great Ruler

What she produced was “imperfect and different from her appearance.” That’s in 10/4. “[A]
lion-faced serpent” called Yaltabaoth. This is the first archon, or ruler, to take power from
his mother. That’s described in 10/9–19. He is also called the “great ruler,” and here is the
start of evil emerging from an act independent of the highest God.
A woman god, Sophia, acts on her own, and her creation is so flawed that she repents and
asks for forgiveness. This is in 13/36–14/10. The creation is not something—at least of the
beings associated with the earth—is not something that is the product of the hand of God.
It’s a product of the hand of this underling god, this woman god.
Yaltabaoth
And then there’s the work that Yaltabaoth does as well that we’re now going to turn our
attention to. Yaltabaoth moves to create the first man, which is what chapters 15 and 16 are
about in detail as they tell the creation of man kind of a part, one part, after another.
Later, the command of the “[Mother-Father of the All]” sends five lights to Yaltabaoth
to tell him to breathe into the being a breath. Unknown to him, Yaltabaoth breathes into the
body an element of power from his mother. This is the spiritual impulse that drives humanity.
The being moves, coming to life; 19/15–33. The archons, the rulers, are said to have “power
over the natural and perceptible body.” But in him was an Epinoia—that’s the Greek word
for “mind”—hidden into Adam that was the correction of the mother’s deficiency.
A Summary of the Story

So here’s the way the creation works in the gnostic Christian story: Creation doesn’t come
from God. The aeons do; the underling gods do. And then the underling gods move to create
independently of God, and they botch the job. Yaltabaoth is a botched god in terms of
creation. Yaltabaoth moves to create the earth. So if you want to think of this along the lines
of kind of the old European divisions of soccer, we’re not talking about the Premier Division
god. We’re not even talking about the Second Division layer of god. We’re talking about a
Third Division god, who creates and does so poorly. And in the process of that poor creation,
we have a flawed creation.
The only thing that sustains humanity and gives them a right of existence and value is the
spiritual breath that is supplied to Yaltabaoth [and] supplies the spiritual part of who the
human being is. So we’re part of a flawed creation at the start. That flawed creation exists,
and the only thing of redeeming value is the spirit that is created within humanity.
That’s the story of creation that comes out of Gnosticism. And one can quickly see how
different that story is from the book of Genesis, [where] “in the beginning God created,” and
the creation was very good. He rested from the creation from which He was satisfied. And
the flaws that come into creation come in as a result of rebellion against God in Gen 3, and
it’s not the failure of the gods to create well or anything like that.
Christian Creation and Gnostic Creation
This shows a huge difference in the picture of who God is at the core of gnostic Christianity
and at the core of Gnosticism. And this is one of the explanations why Gnosticism and gnostic
Christianity can’t go back to the earliest era of the Christian period. [It’s] because their view
of God is so different from the view of God that fueled early Christianity that came out of
pious roots and out of a pious form of Judaism and the belief that God was the creator and
that the creation was good and that the flaws in the creation are our fault [and] not the fault
of gods or other forces.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
The Apocryphon of John NHLE
See Also
The Nature of God and Creation, Part 2 MG:UTBAC

SEGMENT 36
Summary of the Missing Gospels
Learning Objectives
• Explain the significance of Gnosticism being a second-century phenomenon instead of
a first-century movement
• Discuss how Gnosticism was both a derivative and a fringe movement with respect to
Christianity
A Second-Century Phenomenon
Well, it’s time for us pull everything that we’ve said together about those other gospels
together, and the main thing to understand about what we’ve discussed is that these gospels
were never widely circulated in the earliest Christian period. In fact, the best we can tell,
Christian Gnosticism didn’t exist for much of the first century. It’s a second-century
phenomenon, and as a second-century phenomenon, the writings associated with it come
from the second century. And even though there are other writings around Christianity that
come from an earlier period, the gospel of Thomas or at least portions of the gospel of
Thomas might reflect this.
A Derivative Group
In general, what these writings as a whole give us tells us more about the second and third
centuries of the Christian movement and what’s going on among the various groups that
claim the name Christian than anything that it tells us about the first century. In particular, it
is their view of God that would not come out of a pious Judaism as the earlier Christian
movement did that shows that this is a later and derivative movement as opposed to a
movement rooted in the earliest period of Christianity.
The Creation Story

We know from the Gospel materials that Jesus and the apostles respected the creation story,
believed God was the creator, [and] saw the flaw in humanity as a product of something that
was going on in people as opposed to being something that was designed in the creation from
the very beginning. And so, for that reason alone, we can tell that this material is derivative
as opposed to being a competing movement with the earliest kind of Christianity.
Their View of Jesus

It’s also true that their view of Jesus as a person and His death is distinct from the biblical
Gospels. Although we haven’t talked about this in detail, the view of Jesus simply being a
pointer to humans having a spirituality and not having anything in His person to deal with—
not having died for sin, for example—is another key difference. In fact, if you look at it in
detail, Jesus Himself wasn’t crucified on a cross. Rather, the spirit of Jesus occupied a human
body, and it was the human person—just the human shell—that was crucified. But the person
of Jesus Himself—or the spirit of who Jesus was, if you will—departed the body before it
was crucified.
In some versions of the crucifixion story, it’s even a second being that’s crucified on the
cross. Jesus Himself doesn’t even go to the cross at all. What’s interesting, perhaps, about
this is that the idea that Jesus wasn’t really crucified is an idea we see in forms of Islam as
well in talking about Jesus, and there is the possibility that perhaps what’s going on in gnostic
Christianity with the story of Jesus has come into expression as well in the teachings of Islam.
A Fringe Movement
Nevertheless, the point remains that the gospels that surround the canon—that are outside of
it, that are part of [this] missing gospel or secret gospel collection—these other gospels are
truly other in what they represent. They represent a movement alongside early Christianity
that emerged in the second century, doesn’t go back to the earliest period, and, therefore,
represents reflection of what’s going on on the fringe of Christianity as opposed to something
that reflects part of a Christian debate that goes back to the very beginning of the time of
Jesus and the disciples.
This is important, as I’ve mentioned, because today a lot of people have a model of the
early Christian church that talks about alternative Christianities as if these groups existed all
alongside one another and held a kind of equal sway of hearts during this earliest period.
That’s certainly not the case. This gnostic Christianity and the things associated with it are a
much later movement—a derivative movement, even a deviating movement—that aren’t part
of the original Christian story.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Apocryphal Gospels LBD
See Also
Conclusions about the Missing Gospels MG:UTBAC
Jesus: Divine and/or Human? MG:UTBAC

SEGMENT 37
Summary of the Nature and Purpose of

the Gospels
Orality and Corporate Memory

So we’ve taken a survey of the Gospels, both the Gospels that are in the canon and the gospels
outside the canon. We’ve said that the Gospels inside the canon deal with eyewitness
testimony in an oral context that moved through a carefully reflected-upon and recorded
tradition that is recorded mentally by people who had pretty good memories as a corporate
body and that this corporate memory helped to drive the tradition [and] record what was
going on with Jesus in which the stories and their gist are always the same. But these stories
are also told with some element of variation. Nonetheless, the apostles oversaw this tradition
and kept an eye on it for its accuracy and care in presenting who Jesus was, and the apostles
were people whose ministries were rooted in a full experience of the life and ministry of
Jesus. We’ve talked about the fact that corporate memory is important in this process and
helps to underscore the tradition.
Authorship Traditions
We looked at the nature of the tradition and the way it works by looking at issues tied to
authorship—particularly the authorship of those gospels associated not with apostles but with
apostolic representatives or those who knew the apostles. In the case of Mark and Luke, we
showed that you don’t just supply a name and attach it to a gospel and that automatically lifts
the gospel up, because the nature of the choices in the early church were such that had that
been the case, Mark and Luke likely never would have been associated with the Gospels tied
to their name. No, the tradition knew something and it knew something well, and so that’s
where we get these names from. That’s where the origins of the Gospels are likely rooted—
in a tradition that knows where they came from.
Dates of the Gospels

We talked about the Gospels themselves being written somewhere between the late 50s, early
60s, and the 90s—in the latter half, if you will, of the first century. In all likelihood, the
Synoptics predate AD 70, although it’s possible they might postdate it. John’s Gospel likely
comes from the 90s, but the issue is not so much when the Gospels were written as the quality
of the tradition that is recorded within them. We made the point that you don’t write a Gospel
while you have the living voice around, but once you start to lose the living voices, then you
record that testimony so that you don’t lose it. And that’s what we have in the Gospels.
The Nature of the Gospels

Gospels can be called apostolic memoirs. We still hear the voices of the apostolic memory
of Jesus in what we have in the Gospels as we work with them. That’s their nature. And their
purpose, of course, is to encourage allegiance and faith in Jesus Christ, and we talked about
the different things that the four Gospels do: how Mark is focused on discipleship and Luke
on Jew-Gentile union in Christ; how Matthew dealt with the question of Messiah in
relationship to Jewish rejection and how John dealt with the person of Jesus as inseparable
from the Father. Those are the major thrusts of the four Gospels. We could fill that out a lot
more if we had more time and energy and perhaps specific courses on each of the Gospels.
We’ll do this one day.
The Missing Gospels

Finally, we come to those other gospels—those gospels that are outside the canon and what
caused them to be fringe—and we looked at gnostic Christianity [and] its character. We
talked about where the gnostic Christian texts come from—from Nag Hammadi. In
particular, we focused on the different creation story that shows that it doesn’t come out of a
Judaism that respects God as creator but that sees the creation as flawed, created by underling
gods, an idea that can’t go back to the earliest Christianity. So these other gospels have their
place in history, but they really do represent an alternative and fringe expression of the
Christian faith and of the role of Jesus.
Conclusion
That’s what we’ve said about the nature and the purpose of the Gospels, and we hope this
helps you get oriented to both the Gospels that we have in the canon as well as the gospels
that we see outside of it.

Unit 2c Quiz
Midterm Exam
To take the Midterm Exam for this course please click here.
UNIT 3
Resurrection in the Gospel Accounts

38. An Introduction to Resurrection
39. Resurrection in Judaism and the Graeco-Roman World
40. Jesus’ Predictions about His Resurrection
41. Resurrection and the Old Testament
42. Jesus at His Jewish Examination
43. Resurrection in Mark’s Gospel
44. Resurrection in Matthew’s Gospel
45. Resurrection in Luke’s Gospel
46. Resurrection in John’s Gospel
47. The Credibility of the Resurrection
49. The Significance of the Resurrection
SEGMENT 38
An Introduction to Resurrection
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the centrality of the resurrection to Christian faith
• Identify and describe three difficulties people have with the resurrection
Introduction to the Central Event

We are now going to look at the resurrection in the Gospel accounts, and the resurrection is
a central event in the NT. Without it, we really wouldn’t have the Christian hope or the
Christian message. The resurrection ultimately is the vindication of Jesus and His claims by
God. God is responsible for raising Jesus from the dead, and He goes to the right hand of
God, according to Jesus’ remarks in front of the Jewish leadership, the Sanhedrin, when they
decided to take Him on to Pilate to seek His crucifixion. So the resurrection is central to the
Gospel accounts.
The Controversy of the Resurrection
The Problem of Miracles

Now, the resurrection is also controversial because it is probably the major miracle of the NT,
and as the major miracle of the NT, it runs into all kinds of issues for those who have questions
about miracles. So when we think about why the resurrection matters, we have to think about
the skeptics’ take on the resurrection as well. Obviously, it’s wrapped up in a worldview
issue about whether miracles happen or not. If God exists and He engages with His creation,
[and] if He creates life, then obviously God can recreate life as well. But if you doubt that,
then you’ve got to have another explanation for where the resurrection came from.
Differing Accounts
And oftentimes, what happens is that the differences between the accounts become a reason
for questioning the accounts. There are differences in the way the story is told in the various
Gospels, and although none of these are insurmountable as a problem, some raise them as an
objection to the truth of the accounts.
Mark and the Other Gospels

Another key difference in the Gospels are the differences that we find between Mark and the
other Gospels. Mark only has an empty tomb with an announcement that the tomb was empty,
but there are no appearances of the raised Jesus in Mark, and Mark is generally viewed to be
the first Gospel written.
The other Gospels have these resurrection appearances in various places and in various
ways, and these are seen as an addition by skeptical readers to the resurrection account
coming after the story of the empty tomb. In their view, the empty tomb came first as a key
idea to indicate that something had happened to the body, [although] exactly what is not
clear. But then, the resurrection appearances were added to give credibility that Jesus had
been raised from the dead. But these were fabricated by the early church rather than being
part of the real event and, thus, created an impression of resurrection rather than the reality
of resurrection.
So we’ll be looking at these issues as we go through the various accounts and think
through what it is that’s happening in each of them. They are important for the discussion of
what’s going on with the resurrection.
The Importance of the Resurrection
Central to Christian Hope

Now obviously, the resurrection is central to the Christian hope. And it not only represents
the idea that there’s life after death and that those who believe in Jesus will be with Him
forever and live eternally, but it also—more importantly, although usually
underappreciated—represents the vindication of Jesus’ claim that He made in front of the
Sanhedrin that He would go to the right hand of the Father and share in His rule.
Vindication of Jesus’ Divinity

Jesus was predicting at that scene, as He was answering the question whether He was the
Christ, that He would go to the right hand of God, sit on the throne with God, and share power
with Him. It was a visible way, speaking of the right hand, a metaphorical way of talking
about being directly in God’s presence, sharing His rule and sharing His glory.
The Jewish leadership thought this was blasphemous because it represented sharing the
glory of the one and only God, but in fact, Jesus was predicting that whatever they did with
Him in this trial, one day He would come back and be seated with God in heaven and would
one day be their judge. Obviously, they didn’t like hearing this and rejected the idea. But it
is wrapped up in the claim, and thus the resurrection ultimately is about God’s vindication of
Jesus, His message and who He is, and the kingdom of hope that He brings.
Skepticism in the Ancient World
Now, in fact, skepticism is something that also exists in the ancient world about resurrection,
and Paul himself addressed this question directly in 1 Cor 15 in talking about the resurrection
hope for Christianity. And so we’re going to look at that passage because Paul addresses this
issue very directly, and it is in 1 Cor 15:12–19 that we see this expression of response to
skepticism.
In 1 Corinthians 15:12, Paul says, “Now if Christ is being preached as raised from the
dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? [But] if there is no
resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been
raised, then our preaching is futile and your faith is empty.” He’s basically saying [that] if
there is no resurrection, there is no Christian hope.
“Also, we are found to be false witnesses about God, because we have testified against
God that he raised Christ from the dead, when in reality he did not raise him, if indeed the
dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised. And
if Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless; you are still in your sins. Furthermore,
those who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished.” “Fallen asleep in Christ” is a
figure for having died. “For if only in this life we have hope in Christ, we should be pitied
more than anyone.”
So Paul is saying from this text, “The resurrection is central to the hope. If there is no
resurrection, there really is no Christian hope. You’re still in your sins.” And really, the belief
of believing in a resurrection when there isn’t one leaves one in the most pitiful state possible
in terms of theology and personal expectation. So Paul is saying the resurrection is central.
It is central to the Christian hope. It is a necessary belief, and it is a necessary belief that has
persuaded itself—its reality, that is—on the apostles and on Paul. It has them convinced that
Jesus did indeed rise from the dead and that others will rise from the dead after Him. In other
parts of this passage, Paul speaks of Jesus as the firstfruits in the resurrection, being the first
of many to follow.
Summary
So our hope is built on the resurrection. Thus, its importance is central to the NT, to NT
theology, and to the Christian faith.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Objections to the Resurrection BECA
Commentary on 1 Cor 15 EPB:IFFOCG
See Also
Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? IDHEFBA
The Resurrection of Jesus SSC:DC
SEGMENT 39
Resurrection in Judaism and the Graeco-

Roman World
Learning Objectives
• Explain how the Graeco-Roman world viewed resurrection and life after death
• Discuss the Jews’ view of resurrection based on 2 Maccabees 2
The Importance of Background

Before we think about resurrection in the NT, we really need to put it in its context by placing
it in the larger background and backdrop of Second Temple Judaism and the Graeco-Roman
worlds.
Jewish Hope for Tangible Resurrection

The importance of this background will become obvious because the resurrection in Judaism
was primarily an expression of a physical hope of a very tangible kind of resurrection. We
aren’t talking about immortality of the soul. We aren’t talking about reincarnation in some
form or another. We’re talking about a glorified physical body that has physical
characteristics. And this becomes clear in a text that we’ll be looking at in just a minute in 2
Maccabees 7, which is a very graphic portrayal of this idea of a physical resurrection. So in
Judaism, there was, for those who believed in resurrection, a hope of a physical
transformation of the body that was a part of the resurrection. Resurrection was both spiritual
and material in terms of its makeup.
Graeco-Roman Philosophy and Resurrection

In contrast to that, the Graeco-Romans—the best we can tell—have no doctrine or
expectation of resurrection. There are a few texts that are debated in this regard, and some
people think that there might have been some pockets of belief about resurrection. But those
texts also are questioned, so the Graeco-Romans may have had no resurrection belief at all.
And in fact, the bulk of the Graeco-Roman hope has no resurrection in it. You either died
and your body decomposed and there was no hope whatsoever, or there was a belief in some
type of immortality of the soul—a spiritual form of resurrection but no physical dimensions
to it whatsoever. And so Graeco-Romans either had immortality of the soul or you died at
death, so the resurrection would be a completely new concept.
The Gospel in Context

This is important background because, one, it tells us what kind of resurrection is being
preached on the one hand out of the Jewish background. And it also tells us that the preaching
of resurrection in the larger Graeco-Roman world would be the injection of a new idea or a
new concept—a problematic concept for a lot of the Graeco-Romans. So this will become
important to us when we look at the resurrection stories and how they’re told, because that
backdrop impacts how that story is told and presented.
Second Maccabees and Resurrection

Well, I promised you a look at a text that informs the background very vividly, and that text
is 2 Maccabees 7. It is a key text in Second Temple Judaism because it expresses a
resurrection hope in very concrete terms.
The Background
Let me set the scene for you. This is during the Maccabean war, and during the Maccabean
war, martyrs are coming forward who will defend their right to practice the law in the face
of the Syrian attempt—Antiochus Epiphanes’ attempt—to wipe out the law from the culture.
And so people are being martyred for their faithfulness. In one particular scene in 2
Maccabees 7, seven brothers are being executed in front of their mother, and we get the
portrayal of what this execution was like in this text.
An Execution
It begins as follows in verses 1 and following: “It happened also that seven brothers and their
mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and
thongs, to partake of unlawful swine’s flesh.” So they were being forced to eat pigs, which
was something they were not supposed to be doing according to the law. “One of them, acting
as their spokesman, said, ‘What do you intend to ask and learn from us? For we are ready to
die rather than transgress the law of our ancestors.’ ”
The text then moves on to discuss what happened when they stood up in defense of their
commitment to the law. It says, “The king fell into a rage, and gave orders to have pans and
caldrons heated. These were heated immediately, and he commanded that the tongue of their
spokesman be cut out and that they scalp him and cut off his hands and feet, while the rest of
the brothers and the mother looked on.”
“While he was utterly helpless, the king ordered them to take him to the fire, still
breathing, and to fry him in a pan. The smoke from the pan spread widely, but the brothers
and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying, ‘The Lord God is watching
over us and in truth has compassion on us, as Moses declared in his song that bore witness
against the people to their faces, when he said, “And [he] will have compassion on his
servants.” ’ After the first brother had died in this way, they brought forward the second for
their sport. They tore off the skin of his head with the hair, and they asked him, ‘Will you eat
rather than have your body punished limb by limb?’ He replied in the language of his
ancestors, and said to them, ‘No.’ Therefore he in turn underwent tortures as the first brother
had done.”
A Hope for Resurrection

“And when he was at his last breath, he said, ‘You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this
present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life,
because we have died for his laws.’ ” There is the hope of resurrection expressed. But the
vivid example comes next: “After him, the third was the victim of their sport. When it was
demanded, he quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands, and said
nobly, ‘I got these from Heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope
to get them back again.’ ”
Now, that verse by itself depicts the physicality of the resurrection that is expected. Not
only is there going to be a life, not only is there going to be a soul that is brought back to life
and that lives in an immortal way, but even those parts of the body that are being destroyed
in martyrdom in this scene are going to be restored and given back to the one who is martyred.
So this text, 2 Maccabees 7, vividly portrays the resurrection as a physical hope, not just
in immortality of the soul but the restoration of the body in some material form as a result of
resurrection. So when this is preached by Paul, who was a Pharisee in his background and
who believed in the resurrection from a Jewish point of view, this is the resurrection that is
being declared. A physical resurrection is the point.
Summary
So when we put this all together, what we see is what’s excluded. We’re not talking about
immortality of the soul. We also see that reincarnation is excluded. We’re not thinking about
a rebirth and a new life starting from scratch. We are talking about—neither are we taking
on the view about there being no afterlife of any sort. The expectation is that God will revive
a person’s soul and give him a body—a renewed, a reconstructed body, if you will—a
physical dimension to the new life that one has. And this is the resurrection hope coming out
of Judaism that is in contrast to the general portrait of the Graeco-Roman world.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Immortality HBDRU
Resurrection HBDRU
See Also
Shadows, Souls, and Where They Go RSG
Resurrection in Judaism RSG
Resurrection in Second Temple Judaism GRHD:TJRLA
Resurrection in the Hellenistic World GRHD:TJRLA
Resurrection and Intertestamental Developments DJG
Resurrection in the Second Temple Period DNTB

SEGMENT 40
Jesus’ Predictions about His Resurrection
Learning Objectives
• Describe the differences between the Jews’ expectations of Messiah and Jesus’
predictions
• Define the “criterion of embarrassment”
• Explain the twofold significance of Jesus’ rebuke of Peter in Mark 8
A Suffering Messiah
Now, before we get to the resurrection itself, we need to take a look at another feature that
leads into the resurrection and that is an important part of the backdrop leading into it, and
these are the predictions that Jesus made—that He would suffer and then be vindicated by
God. This is something that Jesus introduced immediately after He was confessed by His
disciples to be the Christ—namely, confessed by Peter at Caesarea of Philippi, or in the
region Caesarea of Philippi, as Mark 8 depicts it. And right after this, Jesus introduces the
idea that He’s going to suffer.
That’s a surprising element because the expectation in Second Temple Judaism was that
the Messiah would be a conquering figure. He would not experience suffering; he would
bring victory. In fact, if you remember the passage that we looked at in Psalms of Solomon
17–18, the section from chapter 17 that we actually looked at was the picture of a conquering
Messiah who defeated the nations on the one hand and who purged and brought righteousness
to Israel on the other. This exclusively triumphant picture of who the Messiah was to be is
what the Second Temple Jewish expectation was, and the disciples shared it.
So when Jesus introduces this idea that He’s going to suffer, they begin to react to Him.
And so this is an important element in leading into the predictions about suffering and
resurrection, for reasons that we’re about also to develop. In fact, a look at the passage will
get us started.
Mark 8:31–33
In Mark 8:31–33, “Jesus [began] to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things
and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and experts in the law, and be killed, and after
three days rise again. He spoke openly about this. So Peter took him aside and began to
rebuke him. After turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind
me, Satan. You are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but on man’s.’ ”
Jesus’ Expectations
This rebuke of Peter is very important. It’s strong. It’s direct. He called Peter “Satan.” It’s
not exactly a compliment in terms of what he’s trying to do. And Peter is responding out of
the Second Temple Jewish expectation that the Messiah doesn’t suffer. So he takes Jesus
aside and, if you will, says, “We need to reshape the way you’re thinking about the end. You
need to retake the Eschatology 101 class and think through what it is that you’re really saying,
Jesus.” Jesus pushes back and says, “Get behind me, Satan. What you’re suggesting, Peter,
is exactly how not to think about what’s going to happen at the end.”
That pushback is important for a historical reason because it not only stresses the fact that
Jesus expected to suffer and that Jesus expected to be vindicated by God ultimately after that
suffering.
The Account’s Credibility

But it also, from a historical angle, has the picture of credibility attached to it in the way it’s
told. In Historical Jesus studies, one of the standards or criteria that are used to evaluate the
historical Jesus and whether texts are authentic or not—whether they go back to real events
or not—is the criterion called embarrassment. This is the idea that the early church would
not make up a story like this.
And the criterion of embarrassment applies to this particular scene, because Peter, as a
leader of the apostles, is someone whose credibility is important to the early church. You
wouldn’t create a story in which you call the thinking of that leader something coming from
Satan unless that was an authentic event and something that left its stamp and its mark on the
tradition in a deep kind of way. The early church wouldn’t create a story like this out of whole
cloth. Something like it must have happened to create this level of rebuke for Peter and for
the early church to tolerate passing it on.
So this event has the look of historicity about it, which means that Jesus did anticipate
His suffering—Jesus did anticipate His vindication—and that this scene has all the footprints
of being a genuine event, even when evaluated on the standards that more skeptical people
might take a look at the event and question it. The criterion of embarrassment, if you will, is
the answer to that kind of skepticism.
On the Way to Jerusalem

Now, these predictions not only occur in a single passage like this [but] they are reinforced
on the way to Jerusalem. This is one of several passages like this where Jesus lays out the
fact that He’s going to suffer and that God will vindicate Him. It sets the stage for the
significance of the resurrection coming out of Jesus’ death as a vindicating act of God. And
what it shows is that Jesus went into Jerusalem very aware that He would be rejected, that
He would suffer, [and] that He would die, but that His hope was—as He predicted in front of
the Jewish leadership at the Sanhedrin—His hope was that God would vindicate Him one
day through resurrection.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Commentary on Mark 8:31–33 M:BCWT
Searching for the Jesus of History INT:CMMF
See Also
Resurrection and Jesus DJG
Resurrection and Jesus DNTB
Multiple Sources and the Historian CF:HHKWTKJ

SEGMENT 41
Resurrection and the Old Testament
Learning Objectives
• Identify and describe several OT passages that portray the exaltation of the Messiah
• Discuss the significance of Psa 110 to Jesus’ exaltation
Introduction
If we consider what texts out of the Hebrew Scripture, or out of the OT, relate to exaltation,
there really are a handful of texts that are very important either on the suffering or exaltation
side, or on a combination of the two, whether we think about Jesus’ suffering and rejection
on the one hand as the premise for His death or we think about the exaltation, the lifting up
of Jesus, [and] the presenting of His importance of who He is as a result [of], or out of, that
suffering.
There are certain texts that the NT appeals to that lay out this theme. They form kind of
the backdrop for the justification of an expectation of a suffering Messiah who is exalted,
alongside the existing picture in Second Temple Judaism of a strictly triumphant Messiah.
Now, these passages are important, and they’re cited in various places in the NT, some more
than others.
Three of the most important texts that we deal with are Psa 118:22, Psa 110:1, and Isa
52:13–53:12. There actually is another extremely important text just on exaltation alone.
That’s in Daniel 7:13–14. We’ll talk about that text later.
Psalm 118:22
Psalm 118:22 reads as follows: “The stone which the builders discarded has become the
cornerstone,” or the chief stone, if you will. And the picture here is in a psalm in which the
king is leading an entourage to the temple, and he’s about to be welcomed in the temple as
the one who comes in the name of the Lord. But this king has suffered rejection and challenge
even as he’s welcomed in the temple. The backdrop appears to be a king who’s going off to
war who nonetheless represents the position and support of God in going to war. And so he’s
welcomed by the priest at the temple. This is a typology or a pattern text in which something
that happened to a king in Israel typifies or pictures or mirrors what also will be happening
with Messiah. Messiah will win a battle, and he will come in the name of the Lord. He is to
be welcomed in the name of Lord even though he’s in the face of much opposition. So on the
one hand, he’s a stone the builders rejected. This actually implies rejection within the nation
in the context of its usage here. He’s a stone the builders rejected on the one hand, but God
will make this figure a chief cornerstone. So that’s the first key OT text on exaltation that we
see.
Psalm 110:1
The second text actually runs throughout the entire NT. It’s probably one of if not the most
important text on this theme. And it reads, “Here [is] the LORD’s proclamation to my lord,”
or literally, “The LORD said to my Lord.” Now, in Hebrew this would be, “Yahweh said to
my Lord,” and we would be able to distinguish the lords. But in the verbal presentation of a
passage like this in Judaism, you didn’t say God’s name. You didn’t say “Yahweh.” You put
in a substitute for it, and the normal substitution was the idea or the term “Lord,” and thus
you get the expression, “The LORD said to my Lord.” In fact, in the Greek translation of the
Hebrew text, that’s exactly what you have. You get the substitution, and you get the
ambiguity of the title “Lord” as a result: “The LORD said to my Lord” or “Here is the LORD’s
proclamation to my lord: ‘Sit down at my right hand until I make your enemies your
footstool.’ ”
A Predicted Vindication
And the prediction is that God will vindicate and defend the one who He shares authority
with or who shares authority with Him. The idea is, this one sits at the right hand, right next
to God, and in this position shares the will and the way of God. He is God’s vice-regent, if
you will, and God defends him. So he has an exalted position on the one hand, and God will
defend or vindicate him on the other. And so this passage becomes a key text in the NT to
discuss Jesus’ exaltation and where He goes. He goes to the right hand of God, according to
the psalm.
Jerusalem Geography
What’s interesting is the geography of Jerusalem even supports this if you were to look at a
picture of an ancient map of first-century Jerusalem—and you can see this kind of a map if
you go to the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem today. As you face the temple and the holy of
holies and the Shekinah in the holy of holies from the Mount of Olives and then you allow
that the Shekinah is facing you as you look at it, on the right hand of the Shekinah in the
geography of Jerusalem is the city of David. So the king’s home, if you will, sat at the right
hand of God, symbolically in Jerusalem, just like this psalm talks about.
This psalm is making the point not just about a symbolic picture as we see it in Jerusalem,
but the reality is that the Messiah, the king of the Davidic line, is someone who sits at the
right hand of God not just on earth but even shares His rule over His kingdom. That’s the
point that Jesus makes from the passage, and the assumption behind it is the reality of
resurrection leading to the idea of Jesus being seated at the right hand of God.
Isaiah 52:13–53:12
The other two texts are also important. Isaiah 52:13–53:12 is the Servant Song text about the
servant, the one who suffers on the one hand and yet is exalted on the other—a very core
theme to that entire Servant Song, pieces of which we see scattered throughout the NT.
Psalm 16
And then finally, Psalm 16 is a psalm that appears in Acts 2. It also appears in Acts 13 in
speeches that the apostles make as a defense of the resurrection. “You will not abandon your
Holy one to see corruption. You will not abandon your holy one to see Hades.” And so the
picture of the psalm is, again, of God’s vindication on Jesus’ behalf.
Summary
We mention these texts because they form the backdrop—the theological backdrop—for the
claim that God had a program and a plan to exalt the Messiah, not merely to have him suffer
but to have him be vindicated. And this gets translated into the idea of resurrection, and out
of the idea of resurrection, of course, comes the Christian hope. And even though Second
Temple Judaism was not expecting this, they didn’t tend to look at these passages in this kind
of a light. These passages assembled together point to the idea that in God’s program,
Messiah would not only suffer, but he also would be exalted.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Cornerstone BEB
Commentary on Isaiah 53 NAC:I4066
See Also
Time to Wake Up RSG
Resurrection in the OT DJG
Resurrection in the OT DNTB

SEGMENT 42
Jesus at His Jewish Examination
Learning Objectives
• Explain the significance of Jesus’ use of Psa 110:1 and Dan 7:13–14 before the Jewish
leaders
• Discuss the “yes” votes for two powers in heaven
• Summarize the “no” votes for two powers in heaven
Introduction
Another key event that sets up the resurrection is the discussion that Jesus has with the Jewish
leadership at His examination. Now, this is often called a trial, but it really isn’t a trial. The
Jewish leadership is not able to give a guilty verdict in such a way that they can execute Jesus
or carry out a punishment of crucifixion. Only Rome could crucify someone. So they really
are gathering evidence to take to Pilate. Thus, the term “examination” is better than “trial”
for this scene.
Psalm 110:1 and Daniel 7:13–14

In it, when Jesus is asked about being the Christ, He responds with an answer that cites both
Psa 110:1 and the picture of the right hand with Dan 7:13–14, the image of the Son of Man.
In two of the versions, the Son of Man rides the clouds. So He sits at the right hand, and He
also rides the clouds. In Daniel 7, the figure, the Son of Man, [is] a human being who rides
the clouds. That pictures His divinity, or at least His transcendence, because only gods ride
the clouds in the OT. Only God or the gods do.
So a transcendent figure rides clouds, but the “Son of Man” refers to a human being. This
is actually Jesus’ favorite name for Himself. And I think it’s because it combines these human
and transcendent elements all in one figure. Anyway, that’s an aside.
The point here is that this figure, the Son of Man, receives judgment authority from God
and is welcomed and received in heaven by God. This text then combines with Psa 110, the
idea of being seated with God at the right hand to show the authority of who Jesus is. And
so, when He’s asked if He is the Christ, rather than answering yes or no, He answers with
imagery that combines these two passages, then in effect says, “Not only I am the Christ, but
I will be vindicated by God and share His authority, His ruling authority from heaven.”
A Debated Issue: Two Powers in Heaven

Now, this raises the question whether anyone can sit with God on His throne in heaven. And
someone who thinks about Judaism with its intense monotheism—that there’s only one God,
according to Deut 6:4—might think that the answer of someone being able to sit with God in
heaven on His throne might automatically be negative.
But in fact, in the Judaism of the time, or surrounding that time, this issue was debated.
There was a doctrine at the time developed by some in Judaism—and others were against
it—called the Two Powers in Heaven Doctrine. And we have some texts that show the kind
of contemplation that went into the possibility of Jews being able to think about this kind of
category.
“Yes” Votes
Exagōgē Ezekiel
The first is a text from the second century, or actually from around 200 BC—maybe a little
earlier than that; 250 or so—called the Exagōgē of Ezekiel, also known as Ezekiel the
Tragedian. In lines 68 to 82, Moses has a dream, and God invites him to sit on the thrones of
heaven. Thrones is plural. The only place where thrones is plural in the OT is in Dan 7.
And so Moses was invited to sit on the thrones of heaven with God, and he doesn’t
understand the dream. It perplexes him. And so he asks for an understanding of what it means,
and Jethro interprets the dream for him and, in effect, says that when you exercise the
authority of God in the plagues, it’s like you’re sharing in God’s rule.
In fact, most interpreters of the Exagōgē of Ezekiel think that it is a midrash or an
exposition of Exod 7:1, which reads, “I will make you God to Pharaoh.” That’s something
that God said to Moses as He was commissioning him to carry out the plagues. Some
translations kind of see that as too direct, and so they soften it into “I will make you like God
to Pharaoh.” But the actual Hebrew reads, “I will make you God to Pharaoh.”
So here’s one text that contemplates the possibility, at least metaphorically picturing a
human being sitting on a heavenly throne with God. But that figure is a luminary. It’s Moses,
and it is in a special situation of Moses being the mediator for the plagues. That’s a yes vote
for the idea of someone being able to sit with God in heaven and be vindicated or represented
in this kind of a way.
First Enoch 37–71

The second text that is also a yes vote is 1 Enoch 37–71. This is a pseudepigraphical work
out of the Second Temple period. Many people date 1 Enoch in the middle part of the first
century AD, but actually there’s a very good case that can be made that its date should be
considered earlier. It should come from a period somewhere between the shift from the first
century BC to the first century AD. And in that shift, that is an important period because it is
the period of messianic ferment in the Second Temple period.
There’s good evidence for this earlier date. The last set of events mentioned are events
tied to Herod the Great’s reign, who died in 4 BC, and the second evidence that we have is
we think we’ve found a relief at a synagogue site in Galilee that portrays some of the imagery
of 1 Enoch 37–71, what is known as the Similitudes or the Parables of Enoch. So these are
important passages. In fact, I’ve just recently edited a work with Jim Charlesworth at
Princeton University that goes through a series of articles making a case for this being the
date for this particular portion of 1 Enoch.
Why is that date important, and why is this text important? In this text, there is a figure
called the Son of Man. He sits on a throne with God. He is preexistent. He participates in the
final judgment. Much of the authority that we see invested in the figure of the Son of Man is
like the kind of authority that Jesus talks about for the Son of Man in His own remarks.
And so, if this work is circulating around Galilee around the first century AD, it may be
that these kinds of ideas were well known in certain segments of Judaism, at least in segments
of Judaism that would have populated the very regions in which Jesus preached. So here is
another yes vote for the idea that God will vindicate someone and that someone will operate
in power in very close proximity to the God of Israel.
“No” Votes
Now, there are other important texts as well. But these are no votes. These are votes that
refuse to recognize that someone can sit with God in heaven.
Third Enoch
In 3 Enoch, a text in the latter part of the first century AD or the beginning of the second
century AD, we have a text in which Enoch is given a tour of heaven by an angel named
Metatron. I like to joke that Metatron’s not a cartoon character. He is a figure, he is an angel,
and he’s giving a tour of heaven to Enoch. And in the midst of that tour, he refers to himself
as the lesser Yahweh.
Now, after that tour is done, God calls Metatron in for a talk. When I was a child, my dad
used to have talks with me, and I learned very quickly these were not conversations. This
would be when he would sit down and tell me something I needed to hear. And that’s exactly
what Yahweh is going to do with Metatron. He’s going to have a talk with Metatron. In fact,
He punishes Metatron for even suggesting that his glory could approach that of the unique
God of Israel. And so this text is a no vote against the idea of anyone sharing power or
authority with God.
Rabbi Akiba
Another no vote text comes in a tradition about Rabbi Akiba that actually appears in several
passages. This tradition was well known and circulated in various versions. And in it, Akiba
says that David is able to sit with God in heaven—that’s actually how he is reading Psa
110:1—and the sages—that is, the other rabbis—react to his teaching. Akiba is a rabbi from
the early second century AD, so it shows the attitude that existed in Judaism during this time.
Anyway, Akiba says that David could sit on the heavenly throne, next to God. And the sages
reply, “How long will you profane the Shekinah?” [This] is an indirect way of saying,
“You’re risking uttering a blasphemy here,” and it’s an attempt to get Akiba to correct his
view.
That’s also a no vote. So what we see in Judaism is a dispute about whether or not
someone could share authority in this kind of way, where they could expect a kind of
vindication, if you will, that would place them at the very side of God. Some Jewish people
might entertain that idea, but others would definitely reject it.
The Sadducees
Now, one more important factor is important here. The Sanhedrin is made up primarily of
Sadducees. The Sadducees don’t like the development of oral tradition in theology. They are
focused primarily on the Pentateuch—on the Torah—for their theology. So they would be
very disinclined to be open to the idea that someone could share their authority with God in
the way that Jesus is talking about. And as the majority stakeholders in the Sanhedrin—the
majority membership of the Sanhedrin—they would react to the type of thing that Jesus is
saying.
Here’s what we’re saying about this event as a whole event. We have this declaration by
Jesus that God is going to vindicate Him and put Him at the right hand of God. It’s a
prediction about what is involved in the resurrection. But those who hear it would see it as
an affront to God. Jesus’ claim of exaltation is running headlong into the idea of blasphemy.
And it’s like two trains running on opposite sides of the same train track that crash into each
other at this trial. Jesus claims God is going to vindicate Him and exalt Him.
The Jewish leadership says there’s no way that theology can be correct [and] that’s
blasphemy. And so, as a result, Jesus gets taken to Pilate so that the Jewish leadership can
translate that religious charge into a political charge—Jesus claims to be a king that Rome
doesn’t appoint—and get Pilate to react on behalf of Caesar, defending Caesar’s interest,
because the Romans believe in law and order. “You follow our law or we’ll put you in order.”
And the one thing the Romans don’t like are people who are claiming to be king who they
did not appoint. It’s in that context—that religious and social and political context—that the
death of Jesus takes place.
Conclusion
Oh, one other thing. The person responsible for the testimony that leads to Jesus’ own death,
in the movement of the NT, actually, interestingly enough, is Jesus Himself. In effect, as the
text depicted, Jesus dies an innocent death, and He dies a death for having spoken the truth
about who He is and what God would do. All of this is wrapped up in what happens in the
resurrection, so that when the tomb goes empty and Jesus is raised, it is these claims that are
evoked, as supported by God [and] by the empty tomb. Thus, the background to the empty
tomb and to the resurrection is set and established by what Jesus says in front of the Jewish
leadership.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Old Testament Godhead Language FSB
Books of Enoch ODCC
Sadducees NBDTE
See Also
Ezekiel the Tragedian OTGPM
Metatron EDEJ
Metatron DMUG:TSPTGHS
Sharing the Throne of God JVG

Unit 3a Quiz
SEGMENT 43
Resurrection in Mark’s Gospel
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the differences between the short and long endings of Mark’s Gospel
• Explain how skeptics explain the long ending of the Gospel
• Describe how the short ending leaves the reader with a choice
Introduction
It’s now time for us to take a look at the actual resurrection accounts as they appear in the
various Gospels and think about what’s happening with each one of them and how they relate
to each other. And we’ll go in the order in which most scholars think the Gospels were
produced at least in terms of the starting point—and most think that Mark is the first Gospel
written. And more importantly, perhaps, most think that the shorter ending of Mark is the
likely ending of Mark.
The Ending of Mark’s Gospel

Now, there is some dispute about this. If you pick up your Bible and you look at it, you will
see that Mark 16 goes to verse 8. And then, starting in verse 9 and running down to verse 20,
usually the text is in brackets with a textual note saying that only certain manuscripts have
this longer version. And in fact, what it looks like is a combination of the endings of the other
Gospels about resurrection. And so this has led some—because it’s not in some of the earliest
manuscripts—to suspect that the longer ending of Mark is not original.
A Long Ending?
Some people think that because this ending is so abrupt and there are also no resurrection
appearances in this chapter at all, that we’ve lost the original longer ending of Mark and
we’ve never had it, in effect, in the version of Mark that circulated across the churches. This
is possible, but I think it’s less than likely. I have a different explanation for how to think
about this ending in Mark. It’s a short ending, as I’ve mentioned. It’s so short, in fact, that
there are no resurrection appearances, unlike the other Gospels.
A Later Doctrine?
And so, what skeptics will do with this is, they’ll say, “See? There are no resurrection
appearances. The resurrection itself is a later doctrine. All that the early church taught was
that there was an empty tomb and that there was some kind of vague vindication of Jesus that
it represented. The resurrection and the idea of a physical resurrection is an idea that comes
later from the early church.” I don’t think that’s the best way to read this material from Mark.
The Text
Anyway, here’s the passage itself. We can get it in front of us, and then we can talk about it.
Here’s what Mark 16 says: “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother
of James, and Salome bought aromatic spices so that they might go and anoint him. And very
early on the first day of the week, at sunrise, they went to the tomb. They had been asking
each other, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?’ ”
If you were to go to Israel today and go to the hotel—to a very famous hotel, [the King]
David Hotel—in Jerusalem, you will see there the remains, the remainder, of a family burial
area from the time of Herod that has the tomb and has the stone on a channel that moves back
and forth that covers the door. It’s a good example of a first-century tomb of a wealthy person
and how the tomb was structured. They’re worried about how to roll that stone away because
that stone is very large. If you stood next to it, it would be about your height in terms of its
size.
Anyway, it says, “ ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?’
And when they looked back, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled
back. As they went into the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on
the right side; and they were alarmed.” This is the biblical way to refer to the appearance of
an angel that happened to be dressed in white.
“But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who
was crucified. He has been raised! He is not here. Look, there is the place where they laid
him. But go, tell his disciples, even Peter, that he is going ahead of you into Galilee. You will
see him there, just as he told you.’ ” And then the curious verse that ends the Gospel: “Then
they went out and ran from the tomb, for terror and bewilderment had seized them. And they
said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” And the Gospel ends.
Leaving the Reader with a Choice

Now, this is a very different ending than the other Gospels. The other Gospels have this kind
of a scene followed by the report of the women to the disciples and various appearances. But
I think this ending is a purposeful literary ending by Mark. I think that what he’s doing here
is, he’s calling on his reader to decide what they themselves will do with the resurrection.
The tomb is empty. Jesus claimed that He would be vindicated. The women have been told
by a messenger from heaven that Jesus has been raised from the dead. They have been told
to go tell the disciples, and at that point, the reader is left with on open-ended literary ending
in which they’re supposed to decide what to do.
So why do we get this note about them being afraid and saying nothing to anyone?
Because I think that was their initial reaction. That was their initial response to what to do
about what was going on, even though later, they went and reported what took place. It’s
clear they reported what took place because the disciples and others find out about the
resurrection, and the other accounts tell us that they did.
So this is an initial reaction that we’re getting, and it sets up the literary ending of the
short version of Mark, which I think opens the door for whether or not you’re going to believe
in the account of the resurrection. In fact, in the middle portion of Mark, there is a section in
which God appears, and you have the choice either to fear and walk away from what it is that
God is doing, or you can embrace what God is doing with faith. You kind of have a choice
between fearing and faithing, if you will. And in this context, Mark is leaving that door open,
using the women as an example and basically saying, “Now, what will you do with the
resurrection?”
Conclusion
So this is Mark’s short version of the resurrection. As we mentioned, the longer version
incorporates the kinds of things that you see in the other Gospels, so we won’t talk about the
longer version here. And I think the short version is a purposeful literary presentation that
presents the reality of the resurrection [and] the angelic announcement, and now the reader
is left to decide what to do about it.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Commentary on Mark 16 NAC:M
See Also
Fear and Trembling: Mark RSG
Mark’s Ending DJG
The Resurrection in Mark DJG

SEGMENT 44
Resurrection in Matthew’s Gospel
Learning Objectives
• Identify and describe the two unique features in Matthew’s account of the resurrection
• Explain the significance of mentioning the guards at the tomb
• Discuss the place of the Great Commission in Matthew’s post-resurrection account
Introduction
We come next to the Gospel of Matthew. And here, we’re going to look at two particular
features of Matthew’s presentation of the resurrection that are a focus of his. On the one hand,
there is the addition of guards who are assigned to watch over the tomb. This is a detail we
do not have in the other Gospels. And the second feature unique to Matthew is the idea that
the Gospel charges the disciples with going to Galilee in order to meet up with Jesus and
receive the commission of what it is that they’re going to do.
Now, it’s important to remember what has the disciples in Jerusalem to begin with. They
have come down for the Feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread, a feast that lasts eight
days, begins with Passover, and then you have the week of Unleavened Bread. And they are
there as pilgrims coming to Jerusalem for a time, fully intending to go back to Galilee and
engage in their ministry. That’s going to be important when we compare Matthew to Luke
because Luke is going to ask the disciples to remain in Jerusalem. And so the question
becomes, “Did they just stay there, or did they have to go back to Galilee, collect their
belongings, if you will, and move down for a longer stay in Jerusalem?” I think that latter
scenario is the more likely one, and this helps to explain why Matthew focuses on
appearances in Galilee while Luke focuses on appearances that take place in the Jerusalem
and Judaean regions.
The Text
Anyway, let’s take a look at the key portion of the unique part of Matthew, and that comes
from Matt 28:9–15. It says, “But Jesus met them, saying, ‘Greetings!’ They came to him,
held on to his feet and worshiped him.” This holding on to the feet shows the physicality of
the resurrection.
“Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee.
They will see me there.’ While they were going, some of the guard went into the city to tell
the chief priests everything that had happened. After they had assembled with the elders and
formed a plan, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, telling them, ‘You are to say,
“His disciples came at night and stole the body while [we were] asleep.” If this matter is
heard before the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.’ So they took the
money and did as they were instructed. And this story is told among the Jews to this day.”
The Guards at the Tomb

So we’re told a couple of things. There were guards at the scene. Of course, the nature of the
vindication, with God moving in and acting and removing a body, if you will, and
transforming it so it departs, left the guards with nothing to do in terms of guarding the tomb
and its having been opened up and exposed—something they couldn’t control. And so they
go and put together a theory that says that the body was stolen.
Now, of course, this leaves the guards looking like they were incompetent in guarding
the tomb. It’s inherently implausible with the guards there that the disciples would have
gotten away with this without anyone knowing. And so, anyway, they put together this story,
and Matthew says, “That’s what Jews say about the empty tomb up to this day.”
It’s interesting that the controversy surrounding Jesus’ death does involve the mutual
observation that the tomb in which He was placed is no longer where He is. And then there’s
a different explanation for how that happened.
Nonetheless, what Matthew tells us is that there were guards, and they were told to go to
Galilee. Of course, they were headed back to Galilee after the feast, anyway, because they
had come down only for a time to celebrate the feast.
The Great Commission

Now, the other feature of Matthew that’s important is that we get the Great Commission, the
idea of going out and making disciples and going out and making disciples and “teaching
them to obey all that I command you” and “baptizing them in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit.” This commission is at the center of what Jesus is doing in gathering
disciples, and we also have the picture of, in effect, the first of multiple appearances that we
see in the Gospels in the time when this appearance takes place in Galilee. It’s the first one,
and the one that Matthew mentions. Luke will have others, and John will have others.
Summary
So the Matthean story is unique in emphasizing the role of the guards and how they guarded
the temple but didn’t do so successfully. The story that comes out of that [is] that the body
was stolen, as well as the idea that there was a commission given to the disciples when Jesus
appeared to them in Galilee—the first of many multiple resurrection appearances that the
Gospels record.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Commentary on Matthew 28 NAC:M
See Also
Earthquakes and Angels RSG
The Resurrection in Matthew DJG
Notes on Matthew’s Account of the Resurrection MML:ZIBBCV1

SEGMENT 45
Resurrection in Luke’s Gospel
Learning Objectives
• Identify the unique emphases of Luke’s account of the resurrection
• Describe how the criterion of embarrassment factors into Luke’s account
• Discuss the significance of Jesus’ command to the disciples to stay in Jerusalem
Introduction
The third Gospel that portrays the resurrection is the Gospel of Luke. And here, the emphases
are on multiple appearances on the one hand. This Gospel records several different kinds of
appearances as well as the role of Scripture in the promise and the program of God that
become a part of the story of what is communicated during these appearances. And then
finally, there’s the emphasis on remaining in Jerusalem until they are equipped for mission
by the coming of the Spirit. Those were the features that surround the unique contribution of
Luke to the picture of resurrection.
The Text
The initial picture that we get is in Luke 24:10–12, and it reads as follows: “Now it was Mary
Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told
these things to the apostles.” They eventually did come and tell the apostles what was going
on. “But these words seemed like pure nonsense to them, and they did not believe them.”
Criterion of Embarrassment
This is another example of the criterion of embarrassment, where we make up a story,
supposedly, and we have a detail in it that would be unlikely for the early church to make up
because now we’re getting a reaction from the leaders when they hear about resurrection that
they are disbelieving. Would you create the story in this way that reflects so negatively on
your leadership unless it really happened? That’s the idea.
And it says that the words “seemed like pure nonsense to them.” The Greek here suggests
the idea of it being an idle tale—that it’s something that’s made up or fabricated; that it’s the
power of positive thinking, if you will, that has taken place. The way I like to say this is that
when the women report to the disciples that the tomb is empty and that Jesus has [risen], their
response suggests that they think that the women are suffering from post-crucifixion
syndrome, that the crucifixion has been such a traumatic event, and [that] they haven’t gotten
enough rest and there’s been a lot of stress and so they’re not thinking clearly. That’s the
reaction that you get.
Witnesses to the Empty Tomb
Now, it does go on to notice that not everyone responded this way. The next verse says, “But
Peter got up and ran to the tomb. He bent down and saw only the strips of linen [cloth]; then
he went home, wondering what had happened.” And so Peter doesn’t wait for the [sorting]
out of the story. He takes off and heads to the tomb. In fact, John tells us that Peter isn’t the
only one who went to the tomb [but] that John accompanied him and, just for the sake of
detail, the beloved disciple was faster than Peter in getting to the tomb. These are reports of
physically seeing the empty tomb [and] the witnesses to the empty tomb that are being
highlighted. That’s the first part of Luke’s account of the resurrection.
Appearance on the Emmaus Road

The second portion is an appearance to disciples—two disciples—walking to Emmaus, a
town outside of Jerusalem, not quite a day’s walk away. And they are journeying on the road,
and Jesus appears to them. They don’t recognize that it’s Jesus, and in fact, there’s a very
funny line in the midst of this appearance in which the [Emmaus] disciples say to Jesus, who
they don’t recognize as Jesus, [thinking He’s just] another person walking on the road, “Are
you the only one in Jerusalem who doesn’t know what’s happened in Jerusalem in recent
days?” And they’re talking to the one who is at the center of the history of what happened.
So there’s a little bit of humor about how the resurrection works in Luke as we think
about this appearance. Eventually, Jesus sits down to have a meal with these disciples,
showing the physicality of this resurrection. And He opens up the Scripture and shares with
them the Scripture about what it is that they were looking forward to. Finally, His identity is
revealed, and as soon as His identity is revealed, the appearance is over.
One of the interesting features of the [Emmaus] appearance is that on the way, there were
remarks made in spots about the messianic hope that the disciples had that seems to have
been quashed by the Messiah’s death, or the seeming Messiah’s death, and that the odd thing
that they were discussing on the road was this appearance to the women which has been
reported on and which these disciples are aware of, and they are contemplating what it might
mean.
Appearance to Disciples
The next scene in Luke is an appearance to the group as a whole, and Jesus appears to them.
He sits down, and He has a meal.
Opening the Scriptures

He opens up the Scripture to them, and He urges them in the midst of opening up the Scripture
to carry out a commission that He gives to them to go into all the world. The key passage in
the commission is Luke 24:44–49. In the midst of it, He tells them to stay in Jerusalem.
Here’s the text, and it reads as follows: “Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I
spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses
and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ ”
Opening Their Minds
“Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus
it stands written that the Christ would suffer and would rise from the dead on the third day,
and repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations,
beginning from Jerusalem.’ ” This is another form of commission, and here, the specific
connection is to the Scripture.
The Scripture taught three things: that Christ would suffer, that Christ would be raised,
and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all the world beginning
from Jerusalem. It says, “You are witnesses of these things.” “Witnesses” is a technical term
here, meaning people who actually experience this in their life. They aren’t people who
merely testify to what they believe about Jesus. They experienced the events that they’re
talking about.
Stay in the City

“And look, I am sending you what my Father promised. But stay in the city until you have
been clothed with power from on high.” So the exhortation is for them not to launch out into
this mission into all the world until they have been equipped and empowered and enabled to
carry out that mission by the coming of the promised Spirit to the disciples. This is an
evocation of the promise of the new covenant, the idea of giving the Spirit to God’s people
that is at the core of what the gospel is in the NT. You have your sins forgiven so that you can
become a cleansed vessel so that the spirit of God can indwell and empower you so you can
walk with God. That’s the picture that we have here.And so the commission ends with this
commissioning.
Now, just because they’re told to stay in the city doesn’t mean that they’re prevented
from going to Galilee [to] collect their possessions in order to allow themselves to stay in the
city for a longer time. That’s probably what happens, even though Luke doesn’t have any
mention of any trip to Galilee or anything like that. He simply says, “Stay in the city; i.e.,
don’t launch out into this mission into the world until you are equipped for it.” And that’s
what the disciples wait to do, and the early chapters of Acts tell that part of the story.
Summary
So what we see in Luke are multiple appearances associated with Jesus in a different locale,
all in the Judaea region, all in the region around Jerusalem. And this is a locale different from
Matthew but not in contradiction to it, simply put alongside of it. What we’re seeing as well
in these accounts is that each account is giving us distinct and complementary features of
what happened as a result of the resurrection and the way in which the disciples as a larger
and larger group came to be impressed with the fact that God had in fact raised Jesus from
the dead.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Commentary on Luke 24:1–53 NAC:L
See Also
Burning Hearts and Broken Bread: Luke RSG
The Resurrection in Luke DJG
Resurrection in Luke-Acts GRHD:TJRLA

SEGMENT 46
Resurrection in John’s Gospel
Learning Objectives
• Describe how John’s Gospel orders the resurrection account differently
• Summarize the emphases of John’s account
An Overview
The final Gospel to describe a sequence of resurrection appearances is the Gospel of John.
And in fact, it probably is the Gospel of John and the way he tells the story that introduces
enough difference in the way the stories work to really get people thinking about how these
accounts work in relationship to each other. This is because of the nature of the report that
the women give when they first show up and the way in which the appearance to Mary
Magdalene is laid out. The difficulty here is that when the women report the resurrection
scene in John in this first scene, they report it by stressing the fact that the body has been
taken and they don’t know where it has been placed.
A Literary Take on Sequence

Now, the impression you get from the other Gospels is that the women had announced to
them that the tomb was empty, and in having the announcement of the tomb being empty,
they simply declared the resurrection. Whereas here, we seem to have the injection of an
obstacle to the overall picture.
I think what’s going on here is that, actually, what we are getting is another literary take
on the sequencing. And the first thing that we get in the opening part of chapter 20 is how
John heard about the resurrection. And the way I think this works is [that] the women come
back, they begin their report, they begin their report with an empty tomb, they don’t know
where Jesus’ body is, etc. That was their initial reaction when they saw the stone rolled away
and they realized that the tomb was empty.
And Peter and John don’t wait for the full report of the women. They immediately bolt
out to take a look at what’s going on with the tomb, as John’s Gospel says in mentioning both
of them, and as Luke’s Gospel also noted in mentioning Peter. They don’t wait for the whole
story of what we see in this first scene in John. Rather, they go to check out what’s going on.
They only heard a part of it, and so John only tells that part to which he himself is a witness.
The Appearance to Mary Magdalene

Then we go back and we collect the appearance to Mary Magdalene that Jesus makes in John
20:11–18, which is how Mary knew that Jesus was actually raised from the dead. Not only
did the angels announce it, but Jesus appeared to her as well as she was contemplating what
had taken place. In other words, John is adding detail to something that has been collapsed
in the telling by the Synoptics.
The Text
So, with that as an overview, let’s look and see what John is doing. John 20:1–4 says, “Now
very early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the
tomb and saw that the stone had been moved away from the entrance. So she went running
to Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved and told them, ‘They have taken the
Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they have put him!’ Then Peter and the other
disciple set out to go to the tomb.” So she goes, she reports to them, [and] they react by taking
off.
Meanwhile, they’ve got to report to the entire group. That’s going to go even longer.“The
two were running together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and reached the tomb
first.” And then we get a description of how they looked in [and] saw the grave clothes and
the tomb, etc. That’s how the sequence continues.
A Focus on John and Peter

We end up focusing on how the beloved disciple and Peter—and we’ve made the case that
the beloved disciple is John—how the other disciple and Peter are the two who witnessed
this first event, and they’re the focus of the first scene in John.
The Appearance to Mary

Then we get this appearance to Mary in John 20:11–18. And in John 20:11–18, the key part
of that scene is that Mary grabs hold of Jesus when she recognizes who it is that is speaking
to her. She initially doesn’t recognize Him, thinking He’s the gardener, and Jesus tells her to
let Him go, that He has to go to the Father. So this is an appearance to Mary.
More Appearances
So John has multiple appearances, as Luke does. And then we get, finally, in John 21, yet
another appearance in which Jesus appears to the whole group as they’re fishing in Galilee,
and He has a meal with them as well. And then He calls Peter to be restored from his three
denials and predicts that Peter will suffer death as a result of his faithfulness to Jesus, while
at the same time, John is being told that he will live—or at least the implication is [that] his
end is going to be different than Peter’s, suggesting that John is going to have a long life and
not be martyred. So that’s the emphasis that we see at the end of John’s Gospel.
Summary
Putting it together, we’ve got the short ending of Mark. We’ve got a longer ending with a
key appearance of guards in Matthew and a focus on Galilee. We’ve got appearances in
Judaea in Luke along with the emphasis on Scripture. And then in John, we have multiple
appearances as well with an emphasis on an appearance in Galilee as well, in chapter 21, as
well as the picture of how the story came to Peter and to John originally alongside an
appearance to Mary.
You put that all together [and] there are multiple testimonies to who it is that was raised
from the dead [and] who it is that got vindicated—namely, Jesus—when that tomb went
empty. And the resurrection becomes a story of the vindication of Jesus—just as He
predicted—when He was being examined at the trial or by the examination of the Jewish
leadership that led to His trial before Pilate, His crucifixion, and His death.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Commentary on John 20–21 NAC:J1221
See Also
New Day, New Tasks: John RSG
The Resurrection in John DJG
A Literary-Theological Reading of Resurrection in John TJGL:WCSG

SEGMENT 47
The Credibility of the Resurrection
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the features of the Gospels’ resurrection accounts that reflect a real historical
event
• Summarize the significance of the women as witnesses of the resurrection
Introduction
We’ve taken a look at the resurrection accounts in each Gospel. Now we need to put this
together and take a look at the composite of all these together and why we think these texts
are a reflection of a real historical event. And there are various features that point in this
direction.
Immediate Burial
First of all, there’s an immediate burial, and that burial takes place in a non-family tomb, in
a tomb supplied by Joseph of Arimathaea. It is the custom in Judaism to bury bodies
immediately. You don’t leave dead bodies out because of the association with ritual
uncleanness that death produced. And so you bury a body as immediately as you can. This
fits Jewish custom.
Not a Family Tomb

But more importantly is the feature about not being buried in a family tomb. When someone
is executed as a felon, the Mishnah tells us that the requirement is that a person can be buried
if he’s not put in a common grave. A person can be buried, but they can’t be buried in a
family tomb. This is part of the dishonor of having been executed as a criminal. Jesus’ death
fits what the Mishnah tells us in Tractate Sanhedrin about how Jewish felons should be
buried.
The Third Day

Another indication that something is going on is the idea of a resurrection on the third day—
a resurrection, if you will, in the midst of history. Judaism believed in a resurrection at the
end of history when everything was all done, but the idea of someone being raised in the
midst of history is unprecedented.
So what causes the mutation in the normal Jewish view? One could have defended Jesus
and His future and His identity by simply saying, “Well, when the resurrection comes at the
end of history, Jesus will run the judgment. He will be raised and exalted and run the
judgment.” That would be how to do it on the basis of Jewish precedent and expectation. You
wouldn’t need a resurrection in the midst of history. And yet, what we get is the resurrection
in the midst of history. Something has put pressure on creating that mutation in Jewish
expectation and Jewish thought.
Women as Witnesses
Another very important feature is the idea of women witnesses. It’s very important to
appreciate how crucial this idea is, because in the culture of the time, women could not be
witnesses and weren’t viewed as credible witnesses. The only time a woman could testify in
a court case and be involved as a witness are in some cases of sexual abuse. But otherwise,
she didn’t count as a witness, and we have numerous texts both in the Mishnah and in the
Talmud that make the statement that a woman’s testimony is not to be taken or trusted.
Now, why is that important in terms of the resurrection? Well, remember that the
alternative theory is that the church made up these stories and made up these stories of the
appearances of Jesus and the involvement of the women and the situation of the empty tomb.
So you’re in a meeting in which you’re going to keep hope alive. You’ve got a dead messiah;
you want to have a live theology. So how are you going to do that? Well, the argument is—
on the made-up version—that what the church did is, they concocted the story of the empty
tomb, and they concocted the story of the appearances. And then they used women witnesses
to lead off the telling of the story.
So you’re in a PR meeting, and this is going to be the case you’re going to make: “I’ll
tell you how we keep hope alive. Let’s talk about a resurrection because Judaism expects a
physical resurrection. Let’s talk about a resurrection in the midst of history. That’s a new
idea. And let’s sell that idea, which is an unpopular idea. Graeco-Romans don’t have it. Let’s
sell that idea by having our first witnesses be people who culturally don’t count as witnesses.”
You would never make up the story this way if it were made up. You would figure out a
different way to do it. In other words, the women are in the resurrection story because the
women were in the original resurrection story. They couldn’t be excised out and tell the story
of the empty tomb. And so they’re there because they are there, and it’s a countercultural
move. And interestingly enough, it is culturally so surprising that it adds to the picture of the
credibility of this scene.
The Disciples’ Incredulity

Another pinpoint that points to the credibility of this scene is the disciples’ incredulity when
this report is made. Remember, we talked about [how] when the women report in Luke about
the tomb being empty to the group, the group’s reaction is, “Oh, that’s an idle tale. You’ve
made it up. You’ve had too much stress.” And the idea that the portrait of the body would
be, that it would be universally unbelieving when they hear this report, is not a detail you’d
be likely to make up if you were making up the story from scratch. The picture of the disciples
not believing and not being open to the resurrection is a detail that looks like it’s authentic
because the story is authentic.
No Detailed Account with Peter or James

Another feature that points to the credibility of the Gospel accounts is that there’s no detailed
account of appearance to Peter or James alone. We know such appearances took place
because they’re reported to us, but we don’t have any detailed story about an appearance to
Peter or James alone.
Why is that important? That’s important because the alternative theory, remember, is that
the church gets to make up the stories about these events that are so theologically important,
and the way you want to make up the story is you want to have attached luminaries who will
give credibility to the story because of their own importance.
Well, if that’s the case, why don’t we get a detailed account of an appearance to Peter
alone, and why don’t we get a detailed account of the appearance to James alone? Peter [was]
the lead apostle by all accounts, and then James, the leader of the community in Jerusalem
by many accounts. Paul mentions this as well as Acts. And so why don’t get detailed accounts
of appearances to these two key figures as a way of enhancing the credibility of what it is
that took place? No, actually, what we’re seeing is the tradition that’s being careful about
how it handles and reports what it does. And we don’t get the creation of things that we might
expect had these traditions been created.
Summary
So for these various reasons, these Gospel accounts have the appearance of being credible
and reporting real experiences that the disciples believed they had and real experiences the
disciples believed really took place. They believed it so much they were willing to die for it.
They believed it so much they were willing to have their lives transformed by it. That’s the
power of the resurrection. It not only is about the vindication of Jesus, but it is evidence of
the presence of the life-giving, transforming power of God.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
The Surprise of the Resurrection Narratives RSG
Evidence for Resurrection BECA
Evidences of the Resurrection CCT
See Also
Appearances as Evidence RJ:NHA

SEGMENT 48
The Significance of the Resurrection
Learning Objectives
• Summarize three key points that show the importance of the resurrection
Introduction
Well, we’ve looked at the backdrop to the resurrection in Judaism. We’ve looked at the
backdrop to the resurrection in the Gospels before we get to the resurrection scenes. We’ve
taken a brief look at the resurrection scenes themselves. We’ve talked about the theology of
what goes on with the resurrection and why we should we view that as historical.
Now it’s time to pull it all together and ask what the importance of the resurrection is.
And, really, it can be summarized in three points. There are many other things that you could
say about it, including things about Christology—that kind of thing. But the really key points
are in these three ideas.
Life after Death

The first is obvious. It is the idea of the picture that there’s a reality to life after death and
there’s accountability to God as a result of our lives and what we will experience after death.
So the idea that God brings people back to life, and then the implications associated with
judgment associated with that, point to the importance of the resurrection as to what it has to
tell us about our own existence and our own lives. That’s the first point.
The Vindication of Jesus

The second point has to do with the vindication of Jesus, and we’ve talked a lot about this
because this is often underappreciated about the resurrection, but the resurrection is God’s
act on behalf of Jesus. And by raising Him from the dead, and by Jesus telling us where He
has gone as a result—to the right hand of God—we see the vindication of who Jesus claims
to be, the nature of His ministry, [and] the associations He makes with the kingdom of God.
In [God’s] vindicating Jesus, we also get a vindication of the program of Jesus that He
presents in the Gospels, and this ends up being a supportive point to all that Jesus is saying
and doing. It makes the resurrection the great sign of the NT—the great miracle, if you will,
of the NT.
God’s Vote for Jesus

And the last point of importance with regard to the resurrection [lies] in this picture of a
dispute that we see in the Gospels between the Jewish leadership and Jesus and the view
about “Does Jesus have the right to be exalted by God? Will God exalt Him, or is that claim
of exaltation an act of blasphemy?” In that dispute, God’s vote goes in Jesus’ box, if you
will, through the resurrection. And the resurrection shows God’s support for exaltation as an
act which God Himself is responsible for as opposed to being perceived as something that is
blasphemous.
Summary
So these three features are the ideas that come out of the importance of the resurrection—
[and] the centrality of the importance of the resurrection for the NT—and are the key results
of what it means to accept the resurrection as a real event, something that God did on behalf
of Jesus to point to who we are—we have life after death—[and] to point to who Jesus is—
He is vindicated in His claims—and to point to what God is about. God is about establishing
the program and plan of His kingdom. Through a raised Jesus, to Him we are called to have
a relationship.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
The Significance of the Resurrection FC:USY
New Testament Developments LBD
See Also
Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 RSG
The Return of the King JVG

Unit 3b Quiz
UNIT 4
The Early Church in Acts
49. The Ascension of Jesus
50. Pentecost: The Spirit and the Resurrection
51. Pentecost: The Exaltation
52. To the Gentiles
53. Jew and Gentile Together: The Jerusalem Council
54. Jew and Gentile Together: Ephesians 2
55. Persecution and Martyrdom: Acts 4
56. Persecution and Martyrdom: Stephen
57. Persecution and Martyrdom: Paul
58. The Gospel Message
59. The Core Message of the Gospel
60. The House Church
SEGMENT 49
The Ascension of Jesus
Learning Objectives
• Describe how the ascension of Jesus functions as a transition in the Gospels’ story
• Discuss Jesus’ response to the disciples’ question about the kingdom
Introduction
In this part of the course, we’re going to look at the early church. This involves events and
issues that deal with the earliest period of the Jesus movement. And the Jesus movement
really emerges from an event known as the ascension. The ascension is only told to us by
Luke in the book of Acts, and he discusses how Jesus went to the side of God to prepare to
distribute the Spirit to God’s people to enable them for mission. This event is central to the
starting point for moving the church out into the world.
A Key Transition
And so when we come to the ascension, we come to a key transition in the story of the
Gospels. This puts us in Acts 1, and the disciples’ question triggers the explanation of Jesus
about what it is that the disciples are to do as they become members of the church.
The passage is Acts 1:6–8. It reads as follows: “So when they had gathered together, they
began to ask Him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?’ He
told them, ‘You are not permitted to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his
own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you
will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the farthest parts of
the earth.’ ”
The Father’s Business

The disciples have spent 40 days with Jesus hearing about the program of God, sitting under
the Scriptures of the OT, and hearing what it is that Jesus has for them to do. After those 40
days, they still think that the kingdom program involves a period of restoration to Israel
because the bulk of Israel has not responded to Jesus’ message. Nothing in Jesus’ answer
takes that premise and says it’s wrong. Jesus accepts the premise of the question and then
moves on to say, “It’s none of your business. That timing is the Father’s business.”
And then He goes on to give them the mission that they are called to carry out, and that
is to take the gospel to the ends of the earth—the ends of the earth being symbolized in Acts
by Rome, which is the center of the empire that covers this part of the world. And so the
exhortation is, “Don’t be concerned about what’s going to happen in the future. Don’t try and
set a calendar. God has that taken care of. In the meantime, your priority is to take the gospel
to the ends of the earth.” And that’s precisely what they seek to do.
Summary
So this event sets the tone for what the church is to be and what its calling is. The early church
is called to be missional. It is called to take the message of the gospel to those who haven’t
heard it and to those who can benefit from being reconnected to the living God.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Commentary on Acts 1 NAC:A
World Mission of the Church NAC:A
Spreading the Good News of Jesus FSB
See Also
Who Are We and What Are We Here For? MGP:BTCM
Ascension DLNTID

SEGMENT 50
Pentecost: The Spirit and the

Resurrection
Learning Objectives
• Explain how Peter uses Joel 2, Psa 16, and Psa 132 in his Pentecost sermon
• Discuss the two key elements from Joel 2 that Peter incorporates into his message
The Promise of the Spirit

The second event to consider when we look at the early church is actually, probably, one of
the most foundational and important events that we will discuss, and it is the event of
Pentecost. This is the arrival of the Holy Spirit on the people of God—something that had
been promised in the OT by prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel [and] something that John the
Baptist had said would be the indication of the arrival of the Messiah and the new era in Luke
3:16. And so now we get the arrival of the Spirit and a speech from Peter that explains what
it is that’s taking place, because the people around don’t understand what is happening.
This speech is built around four OT citations: Joel 2, Psa 16, Psa 132, and Psa 110. And
the point of these texts put all together is that Israel can know that Jesus is the Messiah despite
His crucifixion because the Spirit has been poured out on God’s people, marking the arrival
of the new era, marking the arrival of the promise and power and presence of God. And so
what we have is the promise of the Spirit and the new age.
The Emphasis on Christ

This is seen in other texts in Acts when the emphasis is on work that is done in the name of
Jesus or in the name of the Christ, showing His authority in the way in which God is working
through Him, mediating salvation through the work that God is doing through His Messiah,
Jesus Christ. So there’s an important emphasis in this speech, and we’re going to look at it
one OT text at a time.
It starts off in Acts 2:14–15 and reads as follows: “But Peter stood up with the eleven,
raised his voice, and addressed them: ‘You men of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem,
know this and listen carefully to what I say. In spite of what you think, these men are not
drunk. It is only nine o’clock in the morning.’ ” And so, then, the speech comes to build
around four OT texts, the first of which comes from Joel 2. And that’s what Peter cites next
as he moves into his speech and begins to walk through this scriptural explanation of the
events that are taking place around them.
Joel 2
Acts 2:16–21 reads as follows: “But this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘And
in the last days it will be,’ God says, ‘that I will pour out my Spirit on all people, and your
sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old
men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit
in those days, and they will prophesy. And I will perform wonders in the sky above and
miraculous signs on the earth below, blood and fire and clouds of smoke. The sun will be
changed to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and glorious day of the Lord
comes. And then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ ”
The Pouring Out of the Spirit

Now, the key points from Joel 2 are that the Spirit has been poured out on the people of God
and [that] this spiritual outpouring involves everybody—old, young, men, [and] women. No
one is excluded. In the OT, there were outpourings of the Spirit on special individuals for
special times [but] just for short periods oftentimes. But here we have a pouring out of the
Spirit that’s permanent, that’s on the entire community. That’s the first thing that’s being
emphasized.
The Coming Judgment

The second thing that’s being emphasized is that this is coming in the context in which a
judgment is coming. That’s where the fire and the smoke come from. This is imagery about
the Day of the Lord and the judgment of God. And so the next thing on the calendar is that
people will be held accountable for how they respond to the living God. And so Peter stresses
this and then issues the third point, which is that [people need] to respond by calling on the
name of the Lord [because] by crying out and seeking the Lord’s deliverance and receiving
His grace, one is protected from the judgment that is to come.
Psalm 16
So all these points fuel what is going on with regard to this passage and the point that Peter
is trying to make from it. This allows Peter to build a bridge to what happened to Jesus that
moves into the concept of the resurrection. And that part of the passage comes in Acts 2:25–
28. In verses 22–24 [Peter] made a point about who Jesus is and that God was working
through Him.
And then he comes to the death and resurrection of Jesus in 2:25 with the following: “For
David says about him, ‘I saw the Lord always in front of me, for he is at my right hand so I
will not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced; my body also will
live in hope, because you will not leave my soul in Hades, nor permit your Holy One to
experience decay. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of
joy with your presence.’ ”
Psalm 132
And then from there, he goes on to raise Psa 132. “Brothers, I can speak confidently to you
about our forefather David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this
day. So then, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to
seat one of his descendants on his throne …”—that’s the portion from Psa 132:11—“David
by foreseeing this spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was neither abandoned
to Hades, nor did his body experience decay. This Jesus God raised up, and we are all
witnesses of it.”
Summary
So Peter transitions from the distribution of the Spirit to the resurrection of Jesus as a
realization [of] a promise made to David that a descendant would sit on his throne and would
receive the benefits of the protection of God. That protection extended even to the protection
of His life after death in resurrection, and it’s out of this context of resurrection that leads to
ascension and that leads to Jesus going to the right hand of God, [allowing] Him to distribute
the Spirit, which the crowd is now seeing evidence of as people are praising God in a variety
of languages.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Commentary on Acts 2:1–31 NAC:A
Ascension of Christ LBD
Joel 2:28–32 and Pentecost NAC:HJ
See Also
Pentecost DLNTID

SEGMENT 51
Pentecost: The Exaltation
Learning Objectives
• Explain how Peter used Psa 110 in his Pentecost sermon
• Summarize the theology of Christ’s exaltation
Review
As we come to the key part of Peter’s speech at Pentecost, we’ve been through three OT
passages. Joel 2 emphasizes the idea that the Spirit has been poured out on the entire believing
community and that those who call on the name of the Lord will be spared from the Day of
the Lord. The use of Psa 16:8–11 makes the point that God is protecting His holy one and
does not allow Him to see corruption. He is not allowed to decay in Hades. This points to a
resurrection. The third passage is Psa 132:11. This is the promise that a descendant of David
would be seated on David’s throne, which is also God’s throne. The two are one and the
same. There are passages in Chronicles that talk about this, that Solomon sat on the Lord’s
throne as the Davidic heir, and so the picture is that God’s throne is David’s throne because
this is the throne through which promise comes.
Psalm 110
Having set up this emphasis on exaltation and having made the point that Jesus is risen from
the dead and that this promise is something that God promised to David, Peter now drives
his point home by explaining what has happened as a result of resurrection and what is
happening now. That story gets picked up in Acts 2:33, and it reads as follows: “So then,
exalted to the right hand of God, and having received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the
Father, he has poured out …”—that’s an allusion back to the Joel 2 passage—“he has poured
out what you both see and hear. For David did not ascend into Heaven, but he himself says,
‘The Lord said to my lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for
your feet.” Therefore let all the house of Israel know beyond a doubt that God has made this
Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.’ ”
The Theology of Exaltation

This passage from Psa 110 is a passage we saw when Jesus was examined by the Jewish
leadership, the Sanhedrin, as He was being examined to take to Pilate to face crucifixion. It’s
a very, very important text, and it shows up in all the key passages involving Jesus’ life. It
makes the point that God is going to vindicate Jesus and bring Him directly to His right hand
in Heaven. There, they will share and mediate salvation together, [with] things being initiated
by the Father [and] passed on through the Son. And by the Spirit the community has its
connection to the threefold, three-person God who is one. That’s the idea of where the Trinity
comes from. So this distribution of the Spirit is evidence that Jesus is alive. It’s evidence that
He is the Christ. It’s evidence that He is the Lord. It’s evidence that He has been exalted to
the right hand of God and now is administering as an executive, as a functioning Christ, the
salvation that God has designed and promised long ago.
Thus, the call in the rest of the speech is to respond to what it is that Jesus has done, with
the church carrying out the mission that God has given it, to take the gospel to the ends of
the earth beginning from Jerusalem. This speech took place in Jerusalem.
That’s the theology of exaltation—the idea that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father,
receives the promise of the Spirit, and passes it on to those who respond to Him.
Summary
In other words, this speech is saying that Israel can know that Jesus is the Christ because He
gives the evidence of the benefits of the new era—namely, the promise of the Spirit that
points to and shows that the new age has arrived. And so, when the crowd asked what do
they need to do, Peter responds by saying that they can be baptized in the name of Jesus
Christ, showing that the authority of salvation now resides and is mediated through Jesus
Christ.
This Christian messianic foundation of what the new community is to be leads to
Christians later being called, not surprisingly, Christians because they are people who believe
in the Christ and in the work that He’s done that is promised from God, that’s rooted in the
covenants, and that connects to the idea of God empowering and connecting with His people
through the Spirit of God that He gives to them to indwell them.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
The Ascension and Priesthood of Christ UTVO
See Also
Exaltation, Enthronement DLNTID
Ascension and Session WL:STVT

SEGMENT 52
To the Gentiles
Learning Objectives
• Summarize the events behind Peter’s interaction with Cornelius and his household
• Explain the significance of these events in light of Jewish theology
• Discuss the relationship between repentance and the gift of the Spirit
Introduction
The second event that we just looked at was Pentecost, and it established the empowering
base for mission, the giving of the Spirit to the people of God so that they are equipped and
enabled to take the message of the gospel to the ends of the earth. But this equipping involved
only Jews.
Later on in Acts, in Acts 10–11, Peter takes the gospel—or, actually, observes God taking
the gospel—to the Gentiles. This involves Cornelius—a soldier, a centurion—and his
household, and God takes the initiative in making this happen. There are two visions that set
this up: one to Cornelius that tells him to send soldiers to get Peter to come to him to share
the message, and a vision to Peter that he can eat any kind of food as a sign of showing that
he can associate with any person, Jew or Gentile.
That background is important because of where we started the course. Remember, we
talked about the enmity that existed between the Jews and the Gentiles and the history of
early Christianity and the background of it because of the hostility that existed through things
like the Maccabean war.
God Takes the Initiative

Now all that is being reconciled through what’s happening in the gospel, and God has taken
the initiative to make it happen. He went out of His way to make it happen because uniting
Jew and Gentile in one community would have been, sociologically, a challenge, and it is—
it was—sociologically a challenge because of this enmity. And the gospel is overcoming that
enmity and allowing for reconciliation to take place. In fact, reconciliation is one of the great
evidences that the gospel is at work. When you bring people together who formerly were
estranged and you pull them into one place, getting them functioning alongside one another,
that shows the real effect of the Gospels.
Peter’s Interrupted Speech

Now, Peter gives a speech to Cornelius in which he’s laying out the gospel, but before he
gets finished, he gets interrupted with the distribution of the Spirit on the Gentiles who have
responded in faith, a faith that God has acknowledged. And so, in [Acts] 10:44, we’re told
how this happens.
The text says, “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all
those who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter were
greatly astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.”
In fact, I think if you had a soundtrack during this event that has taken place, you would have
heard something like this going on: “Did you see that?” It would be a complete surprise that
the Spirit would be bestowed on Gentiles. And so it says [the circumcised believers] were
“astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they
heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, ‘No one can withhold the
water for these people to be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we did, can
he?’ So he gave orders to have them baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked
him to stay for several days.”
So they get baptized, and now Gentiles have received the same gift as the Jewish believers
had, showing their equality and showing they are also equipped for this mission as well as
being welcomed by God.
Jewish Background
Now, it would take some Jewish background and Jewish theology to understand how
significant this event is—the Spirit coming on people through Jewish eyes. And the
background is the doctrine in teaching related to cleanness and uncleanness in the OT. When
someone was unclean in the OT, they couldn’t fellowship with God—they couldn’t go to the
temple—so they had to participate in a washing or a cleansing, and the goal of that exercise
was to declare them clean so they were now properly prepared to meet with God.
Well, the picture of the Holy Spirit indwelling people is like the picture of a vessel that’s
been cleansed. The Spirit can’t get inside the person unless there’s been a forgiveness of sins
and a cleansing of the vessel in which the Spirit is going to reside. So when the Jews saw the
Holy Spirit being poured out on Gentiles and the evidence of its presence being manifest,
they immediately recognized that God had cleansed these Gentiles who they had tended to
regard as unclean. As a result of their faith and because there was a cleansed vessel, the Spirit
could reside within them, thus showing their reception of the Spirit, their reception of faith,
and more importantly, God’s reception in welcoming of them and equipping of them for the
same mission, to be part of the same community as the Jewish believers were.
Peter’s Explanation
The text goes on to explain this in the next chapter when there’s controversy about the
Gentiles having been included in the community. And Peter explains how this works in Acts
11:15, when he says this: “Then as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as he
did on us at the beginning.” That’s an allusion back to Pentecost in Acts 2. “And I
remembered the word of the Lord, as he used to say, ‘John baptized with water, but you will
be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ ” This is actually an allusion back to Luke 3:16, a teaching
that John the Baptist initially gave in which he said, “I baptize with water, but the one coming
after me is stronger than me. I am not worthy to untie the thong on his sandal.” “I’m not
worthy to wash his feet,” in effect, is what that’s saying. He’s going to baptize with the Holy
Spirit and fire. And then Jesus passed on this teaching as well. This is something that Acts 1,
4, and 5 also underscore. So this is a theme we see all the way through Luke-Acts that’s being
applied here now as evidence of the fact that Jesus has come to do His work.
Repentance and the Gift of the Spirit

We continue on now in the Acts 11 passage. And it says, “Therefore if God gave them the
same gift as he also gave us after believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to hinder
God?” It’s a very good question. “When they heard this, they ceased their objections and
praised God, saying, ‘So then, God has granted the repentance that leads to life even to the
Gentiles.’ ” And there’s an interesting linkage in this passage: The gift of the Spirit is seen
as the gift of life that’s triggered by repentance.
This is Acts’ favorite word for a response to the gospel. Oftentimes, we think of the
response as being faith, and that’s where it lands. Repentance becomes faith. So we can talk
about where the process starts in terms of the change of mind that is repentance, or we can
talk about faith, which is the trust, which is where the change of mind lands. Here, this text
emphasizes repentance and that repentance is said to lead to life and that life is connected to
the presence of the Spirit of God, which enables people having been cleansed to be received
as part of the family of God and also equips them for the mission that the church is to have.
Summary
So this third event—this taking of the gospel to the Gentiles as pictured in Cornelius and his
family—is a mirror of Pentecost, our second event, and shows how important the arrival of
the Spirit is in the community, not only to show that God has accepted the Gentiles but also
to make the point that Jews and Gentiles are to function alongside one another as a part of
the community as evidence of the reconciliation that the gospel gives. That establishes the
foundation of what the early church is all about.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Commentary on Acts 10:1–11:18 NAC:A
Cornelius BEB
See Also
Cornelius DLNTID
Gentile Mission DLNTID
Notes on Acts 10:1–11:18 JA:ZIBBCV2

SEGMENT 53
Jew and Gentile Together: The Jerusalem

Council
Learning Objectives
• Explain the need for the Jerusalem Council
• Describe the limitations placed on Gentile Christians
• Summarize Paul’s teaching on Gentiles’ relationship to the law
The Need for the Jerusalem Council

The fourth event that we’re going to look at is one of the most interesting and fascinating
events in the life of the early church. It’s what’s called the Jerusalem Council. There was
controversy about how Jews and Gentiles could come together in one body and function
together alongside one another. Did Gentiles have to become Jews and get circumcised in
order to become believers? That was one of the questions.
The other questions had to do with how much practice did a Gentile have to reflect out
of the Jewish background in order to be a part of this community. Some people said they
needed to be circumcised, and some said they needed to keep the law to some degree. And
others said no, no, no, the fact that the Spirit came on them at the beginning without them
having to do any of that showed God’s acceptance of them from the very beginning. Gentiles
didn’t need to become Jews first in order to become believers.
This led to a dispute in the early church about how Jews and Gentiles were to function
together. And this led to a council being called where the leaders gathered together in
Jerusalem to discuss the problem.
Acts 15:19–21
At a key point in this discussion, Peter reviews what happened with Cornelius and how the
spirit of God cleansed—came on the Gentiles with their hearts having been cleansed by faith,
is the way he describes it. Then James gets up and cites the prophets and talks about the
rebuilt hut of Jerusalem and the deliverance of all the humanity, and says, “We don’t need to
put a yoke on the Gentiles of the law that we ourselves were not able to bear.” And so, these
two ideas coming from Peter and James—the idea of the yoke on the one hand and how this
fulfilled Scripture on the other—leads to the decision of the Council not to have Gentiles be
circumcised nor requiring them to follow the law.
The Limitations
Nonetheless, there was sensitivity to the fact that Jews were in the synagogues and were
concerned about certain practices. And thus, there were certain limitations put as pieces of
advice to the Gentiles about how to relate to Jews in defense of the mission that was being
undertaken. These limitations are described in Acts 15:19–21, and so we’re going to look at
that passage now.
Idolatry
The text reads, “Therefore I conclude …”—this is James speaking—“we should not cause
extra difficulty for those among the Gentiles who are turning to God, but that we should write
them a letter telling them to abstain from things defiled by idols.…” Idolatry was particularly
offensive to Jews.
Sexual Immorality
“… and from sexual immorality.” This may well be not just sexual immorality in general but
sexual immorality associated with idolatry and tied to the temples.
Blood Sacrifices
“… from what has been strangled and from blood,” looking at the quality of some of the
sacrifices that would be offered in those kinds of situations.
Summary of the Limitations

So basically, these restrictions were restrictions of a religious nature saying, “Don’t do
anything that connects to the idolatry of the Graeco-Roman world. Gentiles, you’ve left that.
Separate from that. Don’t cause offense to the Jews by kind of hanging around the fringes
and engaging in that.” “For Moses has had those who proclaim him in every town from
ancient times, because he is read aloud in the synagogues every Sabbath.”
So the point of this text is to say out of sensitivity for the Jewish community, even though
Gentiles are not being asked to follow the law, they are to show sensitivity to the monotheism
that is at the core of Judaism and, of course, is at the core of this new Jesus movement as
well.
Paul’s Similar Teaching

This reflects something that Paul also taught in 1 Cor 9. Sometimes Paul is portrayed as
having a different point of view with regard to the law than this decree in Acts. But really, 1
Corinthians 9:20–21 shows that Paul’s attitude is similar, so that text is worth looking at.
Here’s what it says: “To the Jews I became like a Jew to gain the Jews. To those under the
law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) to gain those
under the law. To those free from the law I became like one free from the law (though I am
not free from God’s law but under the law of Christ) to gain those free from the law.”
So Paul is saying that in sorting this out in his own mind, he is like a Jew and lives like a
Jew when he’s in a Jewish context, and he lives like a Gentile in a Gentile context. Neither
context controls him. But out of his love for Christ, and out of his desire to reach out in all
directions, he doesn’t let anything get in the way of the gospel.
Summary
It’s that spirit that we see seen in the Jerusalem Council discussion and in the decision that
comes out of the Jerusalem Council, which says on the one hand [that] Gentiles do not have
to become Jews in order to become believers in Jesus, but on the other hand, neither should
Gentiles be insensitive to the monotheistic respect for God that comes out of Judaism. And
that is also a part of this new movement.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Jerusalem Council BEB
See Also
Notes on Acts 15:1–35 JA:ZIBBCV2
Food, Food Laws, and Table Fellowship DLNTID
The Jerusalem Council DPHL

SEGMENT 54
Jew and Gentile Together: Ephesians 2
Learning Objectives
• Identify the basic differences between the Gentiles and the Jews that Paul discusses
• Explain the significance of one body and one Spirit
• Discuss the concept of reconciliation in Eph 2
Introduction
We have said that the Jerusalem Council gives evidence for how Jews and Gentiles can
function together with sensitivity and also portrays the reconciliation that comes through the
gospel message at a corporate level between groups and not just reconciliation between
individuals. And no text shows this more vividly about the attitude of the early church than
a text in Eph 2:11–22.
I want to work through it gradually to present how the cross brings reconciliation to
groups and how important an idea—to stamp how important an idea—this is for the early
church, for its theology, and for an understanding of its witness, because one of the great
testimonies of the community that something different is happening and that change has come
and that God is at work is to bring together people who formerly were estranged from one
another and could not get along.
Five Gentile Differences

This text starts in Eph 2:11, and this is how it reads: “Therefore remember that formerly you,
the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called ‘uncircumcision’ by the so-called ‘circumcision’ that
is performed on the body by human hands—that you were at that time …”—and then there
are five things that are listed: “… without the Messiah, alienated from the citizenship of Israel
…[,] strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope[,] and without God in the world.”
Five different things: one, without the Messiah; two, alienated from the citizenship of Israel;
three, strangers to the covenants of promise; four, having no hope; and five, without God in
the world. It’s not a great resume that the Gentiles have, but it is where they were before
Jesus came.
Making One Body

“But now in Christ Jesus you who used to be far away have been brought near by the blood
of Christ.” The picture here is of the drawing together of Jew and Gentile into one body,
functioning together. The Gentiles being far away, the Jews being near, and now they’re
being brought together.
The language of being brought near isn’t the idea that they’ve been brought close to
Christ, as we’ll see in the rest of the passage. It’s the idea that they’ve been brought near to
one another and brought together in Christ, as the next verses show. In fact, if we read on in
the passage, what we see is the following: “For he that is Christ is our peace, the one who
made both groups into one and who destroyed the middle wall of partition, the hostility, when
he nullified in his flesh the law of commandments in decrees. He did this to create in himself
one new man out of two, thus making peace.” The image of the new man that we see in the
middle of this passage is not a description of something going on inside of individuals. The
image of the new man is a new community—a new personality, if you will, that is the church
community as a whole. And it’s made up of Jew and Gentile so that the two have become
one and become one entity. That which was formerly distinct and separated and even hostile
to one another has now been joined together and become one thing.
Reconciling Together
The passage moves on, and it says, “He did this to create in himself one new man out of two,
thus making peace, and to reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by
which the hostility has been killed. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off
…”—that is, the Gentiles—“and peace to those who were near”—that is, the Jews.
And so the cross becomes the basis of a peace, not a personal individualized peace
between me as an individual and God, but a peace that works on a three-way plane in which
it’s between God, the Jew, and the Gentile all together. They’re brought into a community,
[and] they’re reconciled to one another. This is one of the core features of the gospel that is
to fuel the early Christian movement, and that is the idea that people who formerly were
separated are not only brought in reconciliation back to God but they’re also brought in
reconciliation back to one another.
One Spirit
The text moves on to complete itself in this way to show what it is that Christ has made out
of this community that He has formed, this one new man. It says, “So that through him we
both have access in one Spirit to the Father.” Notice it’s in the Christ and by one’s spirit we
have access to the Father. We’ve got the same elements that we had at Pentecost. We’ve got
the same elements that we had when the Spirit came on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ.
“So then you are no longer foreigners and noncitizens, but you are fellow citizens with the
saints and members of the household of God.”
In fact, we could go back to the listing earlier on in the passage in that resume and we
could say they’ve all been reversed. They were without the Messiah before; now they have a
Messiah. They were alienated from citizenship of Israel; now they’re connected to citizenship
with Israel. They were strangers to the covenants of promise; now they’re participants in the
covenants of promise. They didn’t have hope; now they have hope. They were without God
in the world; now they have God in the world. And so the reconciliation has not only impacted
their relationship to Israel and to Jews, it’s impacted their relationship to God.
Fellow Citizens
So the text says, “So then you are no longer foreigners and noncitizens …”—this is 2:19—
“but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household, because you
have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as
the cornerstone. In him the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple
in the Lord.” The whole thing is pictured as a sacred space. This community is sacred space.
It is the temple of God. It represents the presence of God in the world. But not only is there
the sacred space of all the communities of Jesus Christ spread across the globe, but there’s
also this particular community in Ephesus and what it represents. That’s what the rest of the
passage is about.
”[I]n whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”
So there’s a big temple—that’s everybody—but then there are the little temples, if you will,
in each location. That’s the Ephesian community or any other community. And these temples
have been sanctified—both Jew and Gentile—so that Jew and Gentile can function together
in one community and give evidence of the reconciliation, not just between the individuals
and God, but also between each other that itself serves as a witness to the gospel.
Reconciliation: A Witness to the Gospel
So one of the key ideas in the early church was the idea that, through the gospel, not only had
individuals been reconciled in their individual salvation relationship with God, but groups
had been reconciled to one another, so now Jews and Gentiles could function together as
groups alongside one another, part of the same entity, and that reconciliation was a witness
to the gospel because previously Jews and Gentiles were at odds with one another.
Previously, Jews and Gentiles had enmity for one another, and God had done a wonderful
thing. He had not only saved them individually, He had not only saved them as groups, but
He has brought them together to show [that] what God does is to bring people not only back
to Himself but bring people back to one another.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Commentary on Eph 2:11–22 BNTC:EE
Commentary and Application of Eph 2:11–22 BCBC:E
See Also
Reconciliation DPHL
Notes on Eph 2:11–22 RP:ZIBBCV3

SEGMENT 55
Persecution and Martyrdom: Acts 4
Learning Objectives
• Describe what the early church prayed for in the face of persecution
• Explain how their request was answered
• Discuss the model the early church established
Introduction
Now, the fifth key event that we’re going to look at in the early church is really a theme, and
it is the theme of martyrdom in the defense of the faith, the presence of persecution, and how
the early community reacted to it.
Prayer for Boldness

Interestingly, the early community did not pray to crush the enemy. The early community
did not ask to be spared from the pain of the pressure or persecution. What the early
community prayed for was for boldness. What the early community showed was boldness.
Three Portraits
And so we’re going to look at three portraits coming out of the book of Acts that show this
theme, the idea of facing persecution with boldness on the one hand [and with] no whining,
no complaining, no desire to avoid the pain or the suffering or the tribulation, but engaging
it, but engaging it with faithfulness—with a bold faithfulness that stood up in the face of the
opposition and simply represented very clearly and very faithfully what it was that the
community believed.
We’re going to look at this through three different scenes. One is a prayer in Acts 4, the
second is the example of Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts 7, and the third is the thrust of Paul’s
defense when he stands before rulers of Rome and other leaders and declares why it is that
he is doing that which he is doing, why [and] how he is representing Jesus, and what that
means.
The Request
So we’ll take these one at a time, and the first is the prayer in Acts 4. Notice what they pray
for and what they don’t pray for as we read this text, Acts 4:25–30. In 4:25 it says, speaking
of David and the Holy Spirit, “Who said by the Holy Spirit through your servant David our
forefather, ‘Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot foolish things?’ ”
This is the community praying and citing the Scripture. “Why do the nations rage, and
the peoples plot foolish things? The kings of the earth stood together, and the rulers
assembled together, against the Lord and against his Christ.”
So the picture is of a citation from Psa 2, where people are gathered against the Lord, His
anointed, and the community that He represents. And now they’re going to talk about the
fulfillment of that that’s happening in their time in a psalm that actually is what we call a
pattern psalm or a mirror psalm. This happened again and again and again and again in
history, and now here’s yet another instance, [starting in] 4:27 of Acts: “For indeed both
Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, assembled together in
the city against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do as much as your power
and your plan had decided beforehand would happen. And now, Lord, pay attention to their
threats, and grant to your servants to speak your message with great courage.”
Faithful Courage
There’s the prayer request. The prayer request is that they would speak with great courage,
that they would be faithful, that they would represent God well. Nothing is said about their
opponents [but] simply [about] how God is going to take care of them.
Compassionate Authentication
“[W]hile you extend your hand to heal, and to bring about miraculous signs and wonders
through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” Not only are they going to be faithful, but
they’re going to turn around and minister to the very community that is rejecting them
through miracles and signs and authentication about what they are saying—authentication
that says that what they are saying is true and that God is behind it. So they pray for
faithfulness, they pray for boldness, [and] they pray for enablement to serve the community
that is rejecting them as a commendation to the message that they give.
The Answer
The text goes on and says, “When they had prayed, the place where they were assembled
together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the
word of God courageously.” They had asked to preach the Word of God with courage, and
now their prayer was being answered.
A Model in Persecution
So what we see here in this first incident is a model of how the church faced persecution and
opposition. It didn’t shake its finger at the opponent. It didn’t pray that their opponents would
be crushed. They left the justice part of this to God. What they prayed for was their own task
in the mission, which was to be faithful, to be strong, [and] to continue to serve the people
who were rejecting them as a way of giving attestation to the message that they were bringing.
It was a model for how to face persecution, and this helps to explain why the early church
was so effective in this period: because they were faithful to God, and in their faithfulness to
God, they were able to show what it was that God was doing through them and what it was
that was in their message that had an expression of outreach and compassion even to those
who were opposed to them. That’s what the early church tried to be, that’s what the early
church was, and that helped the early church to be effective in those early years.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Persecution BEB
See Also
Notes on Acts 4 JA:ZIBBCV2
Persecution DNTB
Persecution DLNTID

SEGMENT 56
Persecution and Martyrdom: Stephen
Learning Objectives
• Describe the negative and positive responses to Stephen’s speech
• Explain the significance of Stephen seeing Jesus standing at God’s right hand
• Summarize the importance of Stephen’s example in persecution and martyrdom
An Example of Bold Faithfulness

Not only do we have the example of the church praying for boldness in the face of persecution
but we actually have an example of this boldness and faithfulness in the person of Stephen.
In terms of response, the speech hardly ranks as a success. The audience killed him. That is
hardly a model of persuasive speech at one level. But in the narrative of Luke-Acts, Stephen
is set forth as someone who has faithfully proclaimed the Word of God and, by doing so, has
remained faithful in representing what God is about.
Laying the Foundation for God’s Work

The reaction is an inappropriate reaction to Stephen’s speech. And in fact, Saul, who
participates it—who participates in it by watching what is taking place and guarding the
cloaks while Stephen is stoned—ends by being impacted by this event to such an extent that
when the Lord appears to him a couple of chapters later, he completely reverses himself and
takes on a role of preaching the gospel as a result.
So even though this appeared to be an initial failure, and even though Stephen died for
what he said, on the other hand, all the seeds were laid for later, other responses that would
lead to a positive response to the gospel.
Stephen’s Speech
What we see is someone speaking faithfully about the history of Israel and Israel’s consistent
ability to disobey God through history—so much so that when Stephen gets to the end of his
speech, he makes the following points in wrapping up.
Honest Confrontation
We’re in Acts 7:51–58, and here’s what it says: “You stubborn people, with uncircumcised
hearts and ears! You are always resisting the Holy Spirit, like your ancestors did!” Sometimes
being faithful means being honest with the audience and confronting them. That’s what
Stephen is doing. “Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those
who foretold long ago the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you
have now become! You received the law by decrees given by angels, but you did not obey
it.”
Seeing the Son of Man

“When they heard these things, they became furious and ground their teeth at him. But
[Stephen], full the Holy Spirit, looked intently toward heaven and saw the glory of God, and
Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘I see the heavens opened, and the
Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’ But they covered their ears, shouting out with
a loud voice, and rushed at him with one intent. When they had driven him out of the city,
they began to stone him, and the witnesses laid their cloaks at the feet of the young man
named Saul.”
So we see, in this speech, Stephen being faithful. We see the reaction—the negative
reaction—of the crowd that wants to kill him. We also see in the middle of this a very
important scene, Jesus standing as the Son of Man next to God, an illusion to Psa 110:1:
“Behold, the LORD said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a
footstool for your feet.’ ”
An Endorsement
And so the picture here is of Jesus welcoming Stephen and endorsing what it is that Stephen
is doing and saying. When Jesus is portrayed as being next to the right hand of God verbally
by what it is that Stephen is announcing he is seeing, it leads to his death. It wasn’t so much
his speech that led to his death, although it certainly set it up. It’s this vision of Jesus being
at the right hand of God that produced the reaction. And so this idea of Jesus being exalted
and mediating salvation at the side of God is even in the midst of the first passage that depicts
the initial martyrdom of the church of Stephen.
A Martyr’s Example
What we see in Stephen is faithfulness. What we see in Stephen is boldness. What we see in
Stephen is a directness in confrontation in faithfully laying out that message, and the success
of his effort is not in the way he persuades the crowd. The success of the effort is in his
faithfulness in bringing forth the message of God. So we see here the example of the initial
martyr of the faith—someone who’s bold; someone who simply sets forth what God is doing,
and then the results are left up to the sovereignty of God.
Stephen never knew that the event that he participated in that led to his death also led to
being the first seed that was planted in the life of a figure named Saul, who became Paul. He
never saw that on the earth. He only saw it from heaven. And in looking down from heaven
and seeing the program of God, what we sometimes see is that the persecution that comes on
the church has results that sometimes we don’t appreciate when we’re in the midst of those
events. And so the call is to be faithful, and the call is to represent God well. That’s what
Stephen did.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Commentary on Acts 6:8–8:1a NAC:A
Stephen BEB
Stephen LBD
See Also
Stephen DLNTID
Martyrdom DLNTID

SEGMENT 57
Persecution and Martyrdom: Paul
Learning Objectives
• Explain why Paul faced opposition in Acts 23:6, Acts 24:14–15, and Acts 26:6–8
• Describe Paul’s example under persecution
Introduction
Now, the last example of someone modeling what happens in the context of persecution in
defense of the faith is the figure of Paul. Paul ended up being arrested for disturbing the
peace, in effect—at least that was the claim—and he was gradually moving from Jerusalem,
by way of Caesarea Maritima, [or] “Caesarea by the Sea,” and then, by boat, he was on his
way to Rome.
In the midst of a variety of defense speeches that he makes, as he is arrested and as he
gets closer [and] closer to making his case before Caesar, Paul makes a few remarks about
what he is having to defend and what he is on trial for. And the interesting thing is the way
he proclaims this hope and what he has to say about it. So we’re going to look at handful of
passages that show Paul commenting on what it is he is defending as he gets up and speaks
on behalf of the hope that is in Jesus Christ.
Acts 23:6
And we begin in Acts 23:6, which says the following: “Then when Paul noticed that part of
them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, he shouted out in the council, ‘Brothers, I am
a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the
dead!’ ”
And so the first aspect of Paul’s defense is that he sees himself being on trial simply
because he believes in the doctrine of the resurrection—that he believes that there is a hope
that people will live eternally, that there is life after death, and that God has promised to give
life after death to those who respond to Him and connect them eternally with the living God.
So this is a message of continuity. Paul doesn’t come along and say, “Oh, you know, I’m
doing something new. This is something you’ve never heard about. It’s unconnected to
promise, it’s unconnected to hope.” No, this a hope that resides in the promise of God to give
eternal life, to give resurrection from the dead.
Acts 24:14–15
The second example comes from Acts 24:14–15. It reads as follows: “But I confess this to
you, that I worship the God of our ancestors according to the Way (which they call a sect),
believing everything that is according to the law and that is written in the prophets. I have a
hope in God (a hope that these men themselves accept too) that there is going to be
resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.”
Again, Paul repeats himself that he preaches nothing other than what God has promised
in the Law and the Prophets. And within that promise of the Law and the Prophets there is a
hope of eternal life—a hope of an ongoing, everlasting relationship with the living God.
That’s the word that he is proclaiming. That’s why he is arrested. And so we see the
community carrying out its mission of taking the message of God into the world and
proclaiming that message. That message is about the hope of life. That message is also about
accountability to God—that everyone will give an account to God one day. And so it’s
important to be rightly aligned to God as you think about what it is that you do in this life.
Acts 26:6–8
The third passage that we’ll look at is Acts 26:6–8. And here is what it says: “And now I
stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors, a
promise that our twelve tribes hope to obtain as they earnestly serve God [night and day].
Concerning this hope the Jews are accusing me, Your majesty! Why do you people think it
is unbelievable that God raises the dead?”
And so, again, he says he’s on trial for the hope of Israel. That hope is related to
resurrection. That hope is related to the establishment of a life of peace with God for all time,
for eternity. That’s what Paul is on trial for.
So here we get a glimpse of someone speaking boldly, faithfully, in the midst of a defense,
in a trial, on why it is that they are being arrested. And their charge simply is, “I am being
arrested for being faithful to the Law and the Prophets. I am arrested for being faithful to the
promise of God. I am arrested because I have a hope in the resurrection from the dead. I am
being arrested because I believe God will hold people accountable, righteous and
unrighteous, one day. That’s why I am on trial here.”
Summary
And in faithfully proclaiming that message, he is giving yet another example of someone
who is faithful in the midst of persecution. And the defense that the church undertakes in the
midst of persecution is simply to say, “We are being faithful in delivering the message of
God.”
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Commentary on Acts 22:30–24:23 NAC:A
See Also
Afflictions, Trials, Hardships DPHL

SEGMENT 58
The Gospel Message
Learning Objectives
• Identify the “formula” of the gospel
• Explain what the gospel is not
• Discuss what the gospel is
Introduction
Now it’s time to look in detail at the gospel message, the message of good news, as Acts
presents it and to think through what is going on and how that presentation has taken place.
We actually could look back at either Acts 2 or Acts 10 and see what is the focus.
We worked through the speech of Acts 2 in detail earlier, and the focus wasn’t so much
on how God saves. The stress isn’t so much, “Oh, I want you to understand how forgiveness
of sins comes [and] how Jesus died in your place for sins.” The stress is much more on who
brings the salvation in a message of a positive thrust about being reconnected to the promise
and help of God, [and] who this person [is] to whom you connect in faith and who gives you
forgiveness of sins and who gives you this relationship with God through the enablement that
comes through of the Holy Spirit that connects you to God as a part of His family.
Forgiveness + Holy Spirit = Eternal Life

In fact, the gospel message could be put in a simple mathematical formula that goes like this.
At least, this is how Acts portrays it: Forgiveness of sins plus the Holy Spirit equals eternal
life with God. So forgiveness of sins plus the Holy Spirit equals eternal life with God. The
Spirit comes in a cleansed vessel, and in that cleansed vessel we see the establishment of a
relationship with God that sanctifies us, that makes us, both individually and corporately, a
temple of God—that which has been set apart and regarded as special because of the fact that
God resides within us.
What the Gospel Is Not

So the focus is on who is bringing about this positive experience, not just avoiding something.
I often listen to gospel presentations that I hear today where people say, “Oh, you shouldn’t
be a sinner. You dirty rat. You shouldn’t be doing that.” Or I think of the picture of The
Matrix, where we’re dodging bullets, and the picture is of avoiding something
negative.That’s not the gospel. The gospel is not about a negative.
What the Gospel Is

Ultimately, the gospel is about a positive—about receiving a relationship with the God of the
universe, having the ultimate network connection, if you will, and the ultimate enablement
to live life the way it was designed to live. This is something Acts 2 and Acts 10 both show,
and what they underscore, and what Acts stresses, is that the gospel is about reestablishing a
relationship with God on His terms, receiving His forgiveness as a gift. And out of that
forgiveness comes this reestablished relationship that then becomes a journey and a walk of
life that never ends and that leads into the way of peace.
In fact, this new community called itself, in Acts, “the Way,” and the point was to
emphasize that there was a path that God designed life to be lived on and walked on that
people were to follow who were a part of the community. They were a part of the Way.
Summary
So the gospel message, as we see it stressed in Acts, is about this establishment, this
reestablishment, of this relationship with God that has forgiveness of sins so that there is no
guilt, has a cleansed vessel so that the vessel is clean, [and] has the presence of the Spirit
within God’s people so that they can live and walk with God. At its core, that’s the gospel
message according to Acts.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
Gospel BEB
The Way BEB
See Also
The Gospel DLNTID
The Gospel in Paul DPHL

SEGMENT 59
The Core Message of the Gospel

Learning Objectives
• Describe the two ways people explain the message of the gospel
• Discuss how the Gospels and Paul’s writings present these two facets of the gospel
• Summarize the core message of the gospel
Either/Or
Now, sometimes when people talk about the gospel today and we get into a debate about the
gospel, we present it as if we have a choice. Some people say that the gospel isn’t so much
about the cross and what happens there as what happens with the kingdom—that Jesus
preached the kingdom, and that the stress on the cross is something that we have brought to
the gospel message.
Other people like to stress, “No, the really central thing is the forgiveness of sins on the
cross. Jesus died for your sins, and we shouldn’t emphasize the kingdom so much.” And
they’ll make the point that Paul’s discussion is about the cross and Jesus’ forgiveness of sins,
and so we kind of get a pitting of Jesus against Paul, and then you make the call.
Both/And
Well, I think the better way to think about this is to not think about this as an either/or but a
both/and. The cross is the hub out of which forgiveness of sins comes, and out of which the
relationship with the Spirit comes as a result because you can’t get to the Spirit unless you’ve
cleansed the body and removed it from the situation that deals with sin. So it stands at the
hub, but at the core of the preaching of the gospel message is not the fact of how this happens
but who it is that you’re relating to as a result, and then the “who” takes care of the “how.”
And I think we see this very clearly by how the gospel is stressed in Luke and Acts, so I
want to walk you through some key passages in Luke and Acts and then go back and collect
Paul and show how he fits the same idea.
In Luke-Acts
This emphasis that the gospel is about the cross clearing the way for new life in the Spirit
and that new life in the Spirit is the emphasis of what the gospel was about—this
empowerment, this enablement for mission, this enablement to walk with God that God’s
spirit supplies—starts with John the Baptist in Luke 3:16.
In Luke 3:16, John the Baptist says, “I’m not the Christ, but the one who comes after me,
who’s stronger than me, is the Christ. He’s going to baptize you with the Spirit and with fire.”
And that starts the theme that literally runs through Luke-Acts. In Luke 24:49 we get a
passage in which the community is told after Jesus’ resurrection to wait for the arrival of the
promise of the Father, when they will be “clothed with power,” the word is, “from on high.”
Also, in Acts 1:4–5, that idea is reiterated, and Jesus goes on to make the point beyond
that, that He also taught that He would baptize with the Spirit one day, and so they’re to wait
until they are baptized with the Holy Spirit of God. That Spirit’s coming is the speech and
the event of Acts 2. Now, we looked at Pentecost earlier, and we looked at it in detail, and
we saw that the point of that speech was to say that the way you can know that Jesus is both
Lord and Christ is because the Spirit has been poured out on God’s people just as God
promised in the book of Joel.
So this emphasis is something that is rooted in the OT. This emphasis is something that is
rooted in the promise of God. This emphasis is rooted in the idea that God gives power or
enablement to God’s people to live in a way that is honoring to Him, and that’s at the core of
the gospel. Now, that’s the message in Luke-Acts, [and] actually, that theme also gets
reinforced in other passages later on in Acts. In Acts 10, 11, and 13, there are other speeches
that allude back to this promise in one way or another, so it runs all the way through Luke-
Acts.
In John’s Gospel
It also has an emphasis in different words in the Gospel of John. In the upper room when
Jesus is gathered with His disciples, He makes the point that He has to depart, He has to go
away, so that He can send another, a figure called the Paraclete, the Comforter. And the
picture of the Comforter is the promise of the distribution of the Spirit on God’s people in
fulfillment of the new covenant hope. So John makes the same point in his Gospel that Luke
does. He just uses different words to say it.
In Paul’s Epistles
And now, perhaps most importantly for people who see this as a tension, Paul also makes the
same point in Rom 1:1–8. In Romans 1:16 Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it
is the power of God unto salvation for those who believe, to the Jew first and also to the
Greek.”
And the question is, why does Paul pick the word “power” to summarize what has him
excited about the gospel and why he’s not ashamed about the gospel? Well, if you think
through the story of Romans—think of it as a story and not just theological teaching—you’ll
see what he’s talking about, and you’ll see that what he’s talking about is exactly what Luke
is talking about and exactly what John’s talking about because it begins with people dead in
their trespasses and sins. The first three chapters of Romans say we all need Jesus because
we all have fallen “short of the glory of God” and, in effect, we’re dead in our trespasses and
sins.
In fact, Paul says it exactly that way when he goes through the same sequence of theology
in Eph 2:1–3. Then, in chapters 4 and 5, a person is justified. They, by faith, come into
relationship with the living God. But Paul isn’t done with the story when he gets to Romans
4 and 5 because he follows it with Romans 6, 7, and 8. By the time we get to Rom 8, we have
people walking in the power of the Spirit who are able to live and do what God has designed
them to live and do in a way that is honoring to God, in a way that brings life and not death,
because we walk by the Spirit of God, and we walk by faith.
That’s precisely the same picture of enablement that Luke is depicting in the coming of
the Spirit. That’s precisely the same kind of enablement that John’s Gospel was depicting
when it tells the story of the upper room and has Jesus talk about the Paraclete, who’s going
to instruct and guide the disciples.
A Core Gospel Message
So what we see is a core gospel message running through the NT. And that core gospel
message is, “As a result of the forgiveness of sins and that which the cross provides, you gain
access to God through the provision of the Spirit, and that gives you the [power] and
enablement to walk with Him and live with Him the rest of your life in conjunction with the
enablement that He gives.” That’s very, very important.
The gospel is not just about the cross. The gospel is not just about providing forgiveness
of sins. The Gospel is not just checking a box saying, “I did that and gave at the office.” The
gospel is about entry into a relationship with God in which He empowers and enables us to
live in a fallen world in which there’s a lot of pressure, in a way that is honoring to God and
is faithful to Him. And in that walk of that life, God is well represented by how we live. That
is the core of the gospel as we see it in the early church.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
What Is the Gospel? CSR
The Nature of the Gospel Call CCT
Peace with God BCBC:R
See Also
Gospel (Good News) DJG
Some Thorny Issues BMLC:CBJ

SEGMENT 60
The House Church
Learning Objectives
• Describe the church community according to Acts 2
• Discuss the leadership of the early church
• Summarize the nature and purpose of the NT church
Introduction
What we’ve seen so far is more what the church is saying and doing, and we’ve talked very
little about where the church meets, what the structure of its meetings are, [and] what a church
does when it gathers together as a community, say, on a Sunday or something like that. That’s
very much on purpose because what the Scripture shows about the church in its text has much
more to do with what the church is and what its mission is and engaging in its mission than
in spending a lot of time talking about what the church is doing internally, even though many
of the Epistles do deal with some of these issues.
The Church in Acts 2

To show what the church is doing as a house church in the city, probably the clearest passage
that describes what happens in the church meeting is found in Acts 2. And it’s important to
appreciate that the early church did gather in house churches, probably huge buildings in
many cases. They could hold maybe 30 to 50, or at most, 100 people. If they were really
large, they might get slightly larger than that. But in most cases, these were communities that
met in houses and that had the intimacy of fellowship—table fellowship—that gave the feel
of being a part of a family.
We also hear what the church did in this text of Acts 2:42–47, which is a nice summary
of the types of things that were happening when these people got together in these churches.
Here is what the text says: “They were devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to
fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Four fundamental things: apostolic
teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread—probably a picture of the Lord’s Table—and prayer.
Then it goes on to say, “Reverential awe came over everyone, and many wonders and
miraculous signs came about by the apostles. All who believed were together and held
everything in common, and they began selling their property and possessions and distributing
the proceeds to everyone, as anyone had need.”
A Caring Community
This was a community that cared for one another—cared for one another so much that people
didn’t think of possessions as their own to keep and to use however they wanted. People
thought of their possessions as stewards did, as things to minister to and through for others,
and so they were generous with those things that were theirs.
And the text is very warm and positive about this kind of sharing that’s going on in the
communities. “Every day they continued to gather together by common consent in the temple
courts, breaking bread from house to house, sharing their food with glad and humble hearts,
praising God and having the good will of all the people. And the Lord was adding to their
number every day those who were being saved.”
So this welcoming, functioning community—this community that was generous with one
another, this community that was generous in trying to engage and connect with larger society
and minister in positive ways towards it—that’s what we see in the early church. And we’re
seeing people gathered to this community, as the way in which they live and function with
one another surely stood out in contrast to the way a lot of life was being lived in the Graeco-
Roman world.
Leadership in the Church

Notice that we see very little about form in this text. There’s no discussion of the structure
of leadership or how the structure of leadership is put together. There is no detail on what the
qualifications for elders and deacons are; the Pastoral Epistles give us that kind of
information later on. What we see instead is a community functioning where there’s less
concern about structure and power—although there is apostolic oversight, and there are
elders and deacons who are named as the stories are told—and much more a story about how
the whole community is functioning and being a witness and how the whole community is
representing what God is doing and being about.
And so we see these house churches functioning in the culture. We see the church
engaged in the culture and with one another, supporting one another, encouraging one
another, [and] living in such a way that their message is endorsed by how they engage and
function in the culture. And in doing that, they show who they are and show what the house
church in the city looks like. It is missional, it is engaged, it is serving, it is reaching out, it is
faithful, [and] it is bold. And in that way, the church does the responsibility—or performs the
responsibility—of meeting its mission.
The Church in the Pastoral Epistles

Now, I need to make one final note about the Pastoral Epistles as we talk about this, because
the Pastoral Epistles—these are the Epistles of 1–2 Tim and Titus—do discuss structure in
the church, [including] the way the church should be organized [and] the way it should be
built around elder leadership [with] mature spiritual leadership [and] deacons who supported
in the ministry and service things that the community is doing. And this structure alongside
the teaching pastor, if you will, make up the leadership of local communities and how they
are run. And there are certain qualifications that these leaders are supposed to have, and
there’s certain functions that they’re supposed to be equipped to perform. And they lead,
guide, and oversee the church.
But it still is interesting that when we look at the NT as a whole, we get much more
description about what the church is doing or what it should be doing and how it should be
doing it—or in some cases, as in letters like 1 Cor, what the church is doing that it shouldn’t
be doing. Then we get descriptions about how its structure is put together [and] what happens
within the hour or the time when they worship together. There’s not one verse about the kind
of music that’s sung in the churches, for example, or anything about that. There’s simply
[description of how] the church gathers together, she is taught, she prays, she has communion
together, she fellowships together, and she engages in mission together.
Summary
And so the calling of the church, as we see it in the early period, is of a community that is
faithful to God, takes the message out to the world, serves in such a way that that message is
reinforced, encourages one another in a way in which community shows itself, [and] gives
evidence of reconciliation showing that God has brought Jew and Gentile together in a way
that is surprising in a world in which, normally, Jews and Gentiles fight with one another.
And in the testimony of what all that is, the power of the gospel was displayed, and the
power of the gospel to reflect life as the way God designed it to be lived is shown. And in
that testimony, alongside the word with the deed comes the message of the community to the
world of what the gospel is. And that early church had wonderful success not only in being
faithful but in drawing people to what it was showing that God was about.
Explore*
Suggested Reading
The New Community in Acts 2 BCBC:A
Acts and the Early Church INT:CMMF
Acts and Ministry Formation INT:CMMF

Unit 4 Quiz
UNIT 5
Conclusion
61. Course Summary
SEGMENT 61
Course Summary
Introduction
Well, I’m glad you’ve been able to spend this time with us taking a look at various aspects
of how the NT fits together and how it works. And we’ve really done this in four movements,
if you will. It’s almost like an opera with four scenes.
New Testament Backgrounds

The first is the backgrounds. We’ve talked about the backgrounds of the NT. We’ve talked
about the historical and social background, and we tried, in the midst of doing that, to show
how understanding little pieces of background in the environment in which the NT is written
helps to open up what’s actually going on in specific passages. We’ve only scratched the
surface in that regard, but in very many ways, if you appreciate the background of the NT—
the cultural scripts that feed into it—then the Bible opens up in all kinds of deep ways.
And the way to get access to this background is to look at some extrabiblical material, at
the history that surrounds the NT period, and through various resources that can be made
available to you. You can get hold of these texts, read these passages, see these practices in
action, and thus come to understand kind of the tone and the heartbeat of the text, not just its
words.
The Gospels
The second thing that we did is we looked at the Gospels. We looked at what produced them
[and] the tradition that feeds into them. We talked about issues of morality and memory and
how that’s important to the quality of what went into the Gospels. We talked about why you
had the living voice. The living voice was valued more than the written word, and so our
Gospels come down the road to be written down once we start to lose the apostolic witnesses.
Then we talked about what the Gospels were individually, their order, [and] some of the
issues surrounding their dates. And we talked about the individual emphases of the various
Gospels. Mark deals with suffering, Luke with discipleship, Matthew deals with issues
related to the Jewish community, [and] John tells the story of Jesus from heaven down and
emphasizes who He is from the very beginning. The three Synoptics tell the story from the
earth up, and we gradually see who it is that Jesus is, and we watch it dawn on people who
He is. All those things show the core characteristics of the Gospels.
We also looked at those other gospels, the gospels that didn’t make it into the Bible, and
we explained why that was. We’ve talked a lot about Gnosticism and the background of
Gnosticism and how it was very different in its story of creation than the story of creation
that you see in the Scriptures—in the Hebrew Scriptures in the OT, in Genesis and Psalms—
and this disqualified those books from being at the center of the Christian movement or
reaching back all the way to its earliest origins.
The Resurrection
Then we looked at the resurrection. We looked at those accounts in detail, and we saw how
the resurrection is ultimately about God’s vindication of Jesus and His claims and who He
is, making the case for what it is that Jesus is doing and why it is that He’s doing it and why
Jesus is unique.
We also actually looked through each of the Gospel accounts—at Mark, with no
appearances; at Matthew and Luke, with their different locales, Galilee and Judaea; and John,
with his multiple appearances and his telling the story of how John experienced it first. And
we showed that despite the differences in details in the way that material was put together,
that there is a way to weave together and to see how it all makes for one story pointing to the
vindication that God has given of Jesus Christ. We talked a lot about the trial scene that led
into Jesus’ death and resurrection and how important that is theologically in creating a
theology of exaltation that sets up what happens in the early church and with the gospel
message.
The Early Church

Finally, we came to the early church, and we looked at a series of events that pointed through
the ascension to Pentecost [and] to the gathering of both Jew and Gentile into one community
reconciled to itself in Jesus Christ. We took a look at the way in which this early community
functions in the face of persecution [and how] its boldness and its faithfulness are what
counts. We took a look at the fact that this message is in continuity with the Law and the
Prophets and is built upon the hope of the resurrection of the dead.
And then we talked a little bit about house churches and how they functioned and how
people gathered together for teaching and for fellowship, for breaking of bread—that is, the
Lord’s Table and [Lord’s] Supper and communion and prayer—and how these four things
built a community in which people gave of their own belongings, everyone was family, and
people were cared for.
That’s a glimpse of what’s in the NT. There’s no way in the time that we’ve had to do
anything but kind of hit the tip of the iceberg. But that’s what the Bible is there for. The Bible
is there for [us] to dig in and to look deep. And, hopefully, we’ve given you some signposts
and some hook points to take a look at the Bible and to understand and appreciate what it is
and how it works a little more clearly and in a little more organized way so that you can look
ever more deeply at what’s in the Scripture.
The Nature of the Gospel

The final thing that we highlighted, particularly in the discussion on the early church, was
the nature of the gospel itself. And the gospel itself is ultimately about forgiveness of sins
and the provision of the Spirit leading to life, because the gospel is good news because it
talks about a life lived in the way God designed for it to be lived—lived in the context of
God’s forgiveness; lived in the context of God’s grace, where He offers us something we
cannot do for ourselves. [We receive] it as a gift by faith, and in that faith we receive the
enablement and empowerment of the spirit of God to walk in fellowship with Him.
Ultimately, biblical study means little unless you have that dimension of the equation. And
so, ultimately, our hope is that this exposure to the NT will encourage you to reflect on your
own walk with God and to walk listening to His voice.
Final Exam
To take the Final Exam for this course please click here.
APPENDIX: SCREENCASTS
62. Searching Encyclopedias for Alexander the Great
63. Searching and Researching the Apocrypha
64. Using Notes to Study the Pseudepigrapha
65. Using the Topic Guide to Study the Sabbath
66. Using Bible Harmonies to Compare Gospel Accounts
67. Searching and Highlighting the Early Church Fathers
68. Creating a Clippings Document of Gnostic Writings
69. Using Interlinears to Explore a Verse in the Original Language
70. Using Different Greek Lexicons
71. Using Clause Search to Find References to the Holy Spirit
SEGMENT 62
Searching Encyclopedias for Alexander

the Great
Learning Objectives
• Create a custom collection of encyclopedias
• Search your encyclopedias for articles on Alexander the Great
• Make use of the articles in the Lexham Bible Dictionary
Introduction
In his lecture, Dr. Bock discusses Alexander the Great, a figure not mentioned by name in
the Protestant Bible. In this video, we will see how to search your Logos encyclopedia for
information on Alexander the Great and learn why it’s so important to learn about him if we
want to have a full understanding of the NT.
Creating an Encyclopedias Collection

We first create a collection of encyclopedias. To do this, click the “Tools” title at the top, and
select the “Collections” option from the list below. You should now have opened a
Collections panel. In the upper box, you should see the words “Unnamed Collection.” Click
this box and type “Encyclopedias,” which will be the name of this new collection.
In the lower box, immediately below the words “Start with resources matching,” you
should see the word “Rule” lightly written in italics. We could use a rule that created a
collection of all the resources by a certain author or by a certain publisher or in a certain
language. But in this case, we want a rule that creates a collection whose resource type is
encyclopedia. So, in this box, enter the following words—“type:enc”—and a collection of
encyclopedias should appear.
We can now scroll down the collection to see if there are any resources that don’t belong
in this collection. The Cascadia Syntax Graphs of the New Testament: Glossary is an
encyclopedia of sorts, but it does not really belong in this collection, so simply place your
cursor over the icon and drag it to the section labeled “Minus these resources.”
As we scroll further down, we see Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology.
Again, place your cursor over the icon and drag it to “Minus these resources.” We can do the
same for The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament Glossary. And, lastly, we do the same
for That’s Easy for You to Say: Your Quick Guide to Pronouncing Bible Names. Now our
collection is complete.
Searching Encyclopedias for Articles on Alexander the Great

We now want to search for material on Alexander the Great. Click on the Search icon, which
is the magnifying glass in the top left part of the screen. This opens a search panel. In the
upper right portion of the search panel are written the different modes of searching: Basic,
Bible, Image, Clause, Morph, and Syntax searches. Click on the “Basic” search option.
At the top left of the Search panel, just above the search box, it probably reads “Search
All Text in Entire Library for,” with “All Text” and “Entire Library” displaying in blue
letters. Click on “Entire Library,” and it gives you a variety of options of resources that you
can search in. Choose the option “Encyclopedias” under the section named “Collections.”
Type “Alexander the Great” in quotations in the search box, and click on the blue button
with the white arrow in it at the far right of the search box. This will produce results for all
occurrences of the phrase “Alexander the Great” in any of your Bible encyclopedias.
However, many of these results will be articles about other topics in which there just happens
to be a mention of Alexander the Great.
We can refine our search to include only articles that have a specific heading on
Alexander the Great. Click on the “All Text” phrase in blue, and you should see a triangle
followed by an empty box, followed by the words “Search Fields.” Click on the triangle, and
a further set of options appear. Click in the box next to “Heading Text.” Now we have exactly
the results that we want.
Using the Lexham Bible Dictionary Article on Alexander the Great

One of your results should display as “Alexander the Great” in blue with LBD to the right of
it. Click on the blue writing, and the Lexham Bible Dictionary article on Alexander should
appear on the screen. It has an “Introduction” section with a subsection on “Conquests” and
“Influence.” Notice the last sentence in the subsection on “Influence”: “For these reasons, a
clear knowledge of Alexander the Great and of his influence on Western civilization is
essential for understanding the Bible and the ancient world in which it was written.” The
Lexham Bible Dictionary confirms what Dr. Bock said regarding the importance of knowing
about Alexander the Great.
As you scroll down the article, you will discover material discussing our historical
sources for information about Alexander; a discussion of Alexander’s predecessors; the story
of Alexander’s rise to power; his tours through Gaza, Israel, and Egypt; the surrender of
Jerusalem; and much more, including a bibliography for further studying. The Lexham Bible
Dictionary is one of your best resources for expanding your Bible knowledge.
SEGMENT 63
Searching and Researching the

Apocrypha
Learning Objectives
• Open up and read any book in the Apocrypha
• Do Bible searches both including and excluding the Apocrypha
• Use other resources involving the Apocrypha
Introduction
In the lesson, Dr. Bock quotes from 1 Maccabees in order to discuss the persecution of the
Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes. In this video, you will learn how to study the book of 1
Maccabees for yourself so that you can gain a rich understanding of the pivotal events it
reports.
Opening a Book in the Apocrypha

We begin by opening up the NRSV. If you type “nrsv” in the Command box and choose the
option “Open The New Revised Standard Version,” the NRSV will open up to whatever Bible
passage you were studying last in Logos. Now click in the reference box and type “1 Mac,”
and press Enter. The NRSV will open up 1 Maccabees, the very book that Dr. Bock discussed.
If you click in the inverted triangle to the bottom right of the NRSV book icon, it opens up
a panel. One option is “Show table of contents.” Click on this option. In the left-hand column
of the books of the Bible, you will see that after Zechariah and Malachi—the last books of
the Protestant OT—come the books of Tobit, Judith, and other books, including 1 Maccabees.
These books are known as the Apocrypha or deuterocanonical books. These are books
written by Jews that are accepted by Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox as
part of the canonical OT. However, these books are not considered canonical by Jews and
most Protestants. Several of these books, including 1 Maccabees, contain valuable historical
information that all Christians would profit from studying.
Searching the Apocrypha with Bible Search

The next thing that we’re going to learn is how to do a Bible search involving the Apocrypha.
First, click on the icon in the upper left corner that looks like a magnifying glass. This should
open up a Search panel. In the previous video, we did a Basic search, but here we need to
click on “Bible” in the upper right section of the panel to initiate a Bible search.
Just above the search box, you should read something like “Search All Bible Text in All
Passages in English Standard Version,” or whatever version you last used to do a Bible
search. If you click on the name of that Bible, which should be written in blue letters, you
should bring up a panel of options regarding Bible versions to search in. In the box next to
the words “Search In,” type “NRSV,” and press Enter. The Search panel should read “Search
All Bible Text in All Passages in The New Revised Standard Version.”
Now type the word “Darius” in the search box, and press Enter. You should have a
number of hits in Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, Haggai, and Zechariah—which are in the
Protestant OT—and also some hits in 1 Maccabees and 1 Esdras. There are no NT results
because “Darius” does not occur in the NT, but if it did, they would be displayed.
Suppose that we wanted to limit our results to just the Apocrypha. Click on the “All
Passages” in blue letters, and look at the options under “Common Divisions.” There is an
option called “Apocrypha” that limits a search to only the Apocrypha, and another option
called “Old and New Testament (Gen—Mal, Matt—Rev),” which searches the Protestant OT
and the NT but not the Apocrypha. Click on the option called “Apocrypha,” and Logos
immediately initiates another search within the new parameters. Notice that the first result is
now from 1 Maccabees.
Other Resources on the Apocrypha

Although some of the books in the Apocrypha were written in Hebrew or Aramaic and later
translated into Greek, others were originally written in Greek. All of these books were
preserved by the Greek church in the Septuagint. If you type “Interlinear Sept” in the
Command box, it brings up a menu of options. Choose the one, “Open The Lexham Greek-
English Interlinear Septuagint.” This should now open to 1 Maccabees 1, since that was
where our OT resource was open to. Here, if you are interested, is the Greek with other
information concerning the lemma and the morphology below it and with the English
translation at the bottom. This resource can also be used for books such as Genesis and
Exodus, of course.
Now go back to the Command box, and type in “apocrypha.” Choose the option, “Open
Apocrypha of the Old Testament.” This opens a specialist work by R. H. Charles that includes
the Apocrypha and an introduction to each book. If you read the introduction section to 1
Maccabees, you’ll see that it confirms and expands upon what Dr. Bock said about this book
in his lectures. Now go back to the Command box, and again type in “apocrypha.” This time,
choose the option “Open Commentary on the Apocrypha of the Old Testament,” and a
commentary on the books by R. H. Charles will appear.
Finally, let us link these books together. Go to the triangle at the bottom right corner of
the Book icon on the Apocrypha and click on it, and from the menu, choose the option, “Link
set: A.” Now go to the same triangle by the Book icon on the “Commentary on the
Apocrypha,” and click on it. Again, we choose the option, “Link set: A.” Then, as we read
the text of the Apocrypha on one side of the screen, we can see the verse-by-verse
commentary on the other side of the screen.
SEGMENT 64
Using Notes to Study the

Pseudepigrapha
Learning Objectives
• Access and study any text in the Pseudepigrapha
• Create a note file and attach notes to verse references
• Change the color or shape of the note indicator to sort your notes
Introduction to the Pseudepigrapha

In the lesson, Dr. Bock cites the Psalms of Solomon in order to show the concept that many
Jews in the first century had of what the Messiah would do. In a later lesson, Dr. Bock cites
the Book of Enoch to give further background to the NT. Both the Psalms of Solomon and
the Book of Enoch are part of the Pseudepigrapha, another work that you own in Logos. This
video will show you how to make the most of this important resource.
Setting Up a Pseudepigrapha Study Layout

Type “Pseudepigrapha” in the Command box, and select the option “Open Pseudepigrapha
of the Old Testament,” dragging and dropping this onto the left-hand side of the screen. Place
your cursor on the inverted triangle next to the Book icon, and open up the Panel menu. Select
“Show table of contents.”
Many of the books listed here—including the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Enoch, the
Assumption of Moses, and Pirke Aboth—are frequently cited in NT commentaries. The
Pseudepigrapha are Jewish works that never became part of the canon in the Protestant,
Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox churches but which frequently provide important background
information.
Click on “The Psalms of Solomon,” and an introduction to the book appears. It begins,
“The Psalms of Solomon are a collection of eighteen Psalms which were written, according
the theory (see below) now generally accepted, in the middle of the first century BC.” This
agrees with what Dr. Bock said in his lecture, and you can read the introduction further to
learn more about the topic if you wish. For now, go to the reference box and type “Ps
Solomon 17,” and press Enter. This gives us the entire psalm that Dr. Bock quoted from.
Now we’re going to link up the Pseudepigrapha with a commentary on the
Pseudepigrapha. First, open up the Panel menu, and click off “Show table of contents.” Open
up the Panel menu again, and choose “Link set: A.” Now go to the Command box, type
“Pseudepigrapha,” and select the option “Open Commentary on the Pseudepigrapha of the
Old Testament,” dragging and dropping it into the right-hand part of the screen. Open up the
Panel menu of this new resource, and choose “Link set: A.” Then, as you scroll down the
text of Psalm of Solomon 17, the accompanying commentary scrolls with it. Now you’re
ready to study the Pseudepigrapha.
Creating a Note Document

We can enhance the value of our Pseudepigrapha resource by adding notes to it. First, click
on the Documents tab near the top left of the screen, and from the menu, choose “Notes.”
This will open up an untitled Note document overlaying the Pseudepigrapha text. Click in
the box labeled “Untitled Notes,” and type in the title “Pseudepigrapha” in the box instead.
Now we have our Note document and are ready to add a note.
Now click back on the Pseudepigrapha text, and scroll down to verse 23. Highlight the
first word in the verse, “Behold,” and right-click on it. In the right-hand menu, there are two
options identically labeled “Reference Psalms of Solomon 17:23.” Choose the bottom one of
these, and then go to the bottom of the menu and choose “Add a note to ‘Pseudepigrapha.’ ”
This brings up our Pseudepigrapha Note document with a small yellow square icon to the
right of it, which reads, in blue letters, the verse reference, “Psalms of Solomon 17:23.”
Now go to the long rectangular box below this, and type “Dr. Bock discusses this section
of the Psalm.” Now click back to the Pseudepigrapha text, and notice that a square yellow
icon has been added to verse 23 in both the “Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament” and the
commentary on it. This is because we chose the bottom option, labeled “Reference Psalms
of Solomon 17:23.” If we had chosen the top option, we would have the note only in the
resource that we highlighted, not in any other resource referencing the same verse. When we
put our cursor on the yellow icon, we can read the note we created.
Now go to the reference box of the Pseudepigrapha and type in “en 37,” and press Enter.
Both the Pseudepigrapha and the accompanying commentary jump to 1 Enoch 37. Select the
first three words in verse 1, “The second vision,” and right-click. Again, choose the lower
option, labeled “Reference 1 Enoch 37.1,” and then choose “Add a note to
‘Pseudepigrapha.’ ” This time, in the long, rectangular box, type “Dr. Bock discusses 1 Enoch
37–71, otherwise known as the Similitudes of Enoch, and its significance for understanding
Jesus as the Son of Man.”
Changing the Note Indicators

Finally, let’s click on the yellow icon in 1 Enoch 37:1 in the Pseudepigrapha, and it takes us
to the Pseudepigrapha Note document. If you click on one of the yellow icons within the
Note document, you will see another menu that allows you to change the color of the icon to
a different color or a different shape.
You could use yellow squares for notes regarding Dr. Bock’s lectures in NT211, red
squares for notes concerning another professor’s lectures, triangles for notes concerning
Bible dictionaries that mention the Pseudepigrapha, circles for your own personal notes, or
whatever scheme you wish. Adding appropriate notes is one of the best ways to integrate
what you learn in the lectures straight into the Pseudepigrapha and any other of the primary
resources in your Logos library.
SEGMENT 65
Using the Topic Guide to Study the

Sabbath
Learning Objectives
• Use the Topic Guide to learn more about the Sabbath
• Use the Bible Facts report to learn about events concerning the Sabbath
• Save a Topic Guide
Introduction
In this lesson, Dr. Bock discusses the importance of the Sabbath for the Jewish community
as part of the necessary background to understand the Sabbath controversies between Jesus
and the Pharisees recorded in the Gospels. In this video, we will create a report on the Sabbath
by using the Topic Guide, which contains a variety of analytical tools to aid our research on
the subject.
Using the Topic Guide

We’ll begin by clicking on the Guides menu at the top of the screen and then choosing “Topic
Guide.” We’ll now type the word “Sabbath” into the Reference box and click on the blue
button at the right-hand side of the box. This should generate a report with the following
sections: Sabbath, Topic, Related Verses, Illustrations, Media Resources, Biblical People,
Biblical Places, Biblical Things, and Biblical Events.
We’ll come back to the section labeled “Sabbath” later. Let’s open up the second section,
named “Topic.” This displays blue hyperlinks to articles on the Sabbath in our Bible
encyclopedias. The order it displays them in is the order in which we’ve prioritized Bible
encyclopedias in our library. I have the Lexham Bible Dictionary at the top, and if I press on
the top blue hyperlink named “Sabbath,” the relevant article appears on the other side of the
screen. And you can do this for other Bible encyclopedias as well.
At the bottom right corner of the Topic section, there’s a tab that says “Notes.” Go ahead
and click on this tab. A box appears that you can add your own notes to. I’m going to type
“Lexham Bible Dictionary article is quite substantive.”
Now let’s close up this section and open up the Related Verses section. This displays
what Logos considers the key verses related to the Sabbath fully written out. Then, under a
subheading of “See Also,” it gives just the verse references to many other verses discussing
the Sabbath. If I place my cursor over one of these, the text of the verse appears in my
prioritized version in a small box below. Or I could click on a verse and open up my
prioritized Bible to that verse. Also, I could add a note to this section of the Topic Guide.
Let’s move on to another section.
Using the Bible Events Section of a Topic Guide

Not all of the sections are relevant for every topic. For example, the Biblical People, Biblical
Places, and Biblical Things sections are empty for the Topic Guide on Sabbath but would
contain information about certain other topics. Let’s open the section, “Biblical Events.” It
lists four events in blue hyperlinks. We could look at any of these, but the one mentioned in
the lesson by Dr. Bock was “The disciples pick wheat on the Sabbath.” So click on that one,
and a floating window appears titled “Bible Facts | The disciples pick wheat on the Sabbath.”
On the left-hand side of the window, there’s a brief description of the event: “Jesus’
disciples picked wheat on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees complained. Jesus appealed to
David’s precedent.” This is followed by sections on Dictionaries, Mentioned In, Participants,
Setting, and Important Things. If we open the Participants section, this contains blue
hyperlinks to the Biblical People reports on Disciples, Jesus, and Pharisees asking for a sign.
If we open the Setting section, it contains a blue hyperlink to the Biblical Places report on
Galilee. If we open the Important Things section, it contains Biblical Places reports on
Grainfield and Head of grain.
If we now look at the main screen, we’ll see that there are titles for earlier periods in
Israel’s history, such as Patriarchal period and the Exodus from Egypt, but that the Life of
Jesus is expanded into several subsections. This is because the event we are studying occurs
during the life of Jesus. If we scroll down, using the scroll bar on the right side of the floating
window, we’ll see more specifically that the event of “The disciples pick wheat on the
Sabbath” is one of the three events in “Jesus acts on the Sabbath,” which is part of “Jesus’
Galilean ministry,” which is part of “Jesus’ ministry.” This timeline is helpful in putting Bible
events into their historical context.
Saving a Topic Guide

Suppose that we had added notes to several sections of the Guide and that we wanted to save
this. First, close up all the open sections. It is a good general rule that you should keep open
only the sections that you are immediately using. Next, open the top section, named
“Sabbath.” You’ll see a thin box in which you will put the title of the Guide and a larger box
below in which you can add some further notes. I’m going to call this guide “My Guide,”
and I’m going to add the note, “Lexham Bible Dictionary article is extensive, and the
[Biblical] Events section includes the Sabbath controversies associated with Jesus.”
Now I’m going to exit the Guide. If I now click on “Guides,” a menu appears that includes
“My Guide” as a Topic Guide with the reference “Sabbath.” If I drag it onto the screen, the
Topic Guide report on Sabbath appears with all the notes that I have added to it saved for
further use.
SEGMENT 66
Using Bible Harmonies to Compare

Gospel Accounts
Learning Objectives
• Display all the Bible harmonies in your library
• Use Synopsis of the Four Gospels to compare Gospel accounts
• Add notes to the Bible harmonies
Introduction
In the lesson, Dr. Bock discusses the triumphal entry of Jesus, an event which he notes is
recorded in all four Gospels. In this video, we’ll show you how best to study these four
accounts side by side.
Displaying Bible Harmonies in Your Library

Right-click on the Book icon in the top right corner, and select the option, “Open in a floating
window.” To the right of the long, thin rectangular box is a field of blue letters saying either
“Entire Library” or the name of one of your collections. To the right of that is another icon
in blue followed by a small inverted triangle. Click on the triangle, and choose “Details
view.”
On the next row down, there should be headings such as “Title,” “Author,” etc. If “Type”
is one of these headings, go ahead and click on it. If not, click anywhere in that row, and a
menu should appear in which certain headings have check marks beside them. Put a check
mark by “Type.” Then click on the heading, “Type.” The Library will now display the various
resources you own according to type. Click on the row labeled “Bible Harmony,” and all
your Bible harmonies are displayed.
Two very useful OT harmonies are A Harmony of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles and
Synopsis of the Old Testament. Two very helpful harmonies in the Epistles are Jude-2 Peter
Parallels and Parallel Passages in the Pastoral Epistles. But we’re going to study a passage
in the Gospels, and so we’re going to choose Synopsis of the Four Gospels by Kurt Aland,
which probably has the highest scholarly reputation among the different harmonies of the
Gospels.
Using Synopsis of the Four Gospels

Drag and drop the Synopsis of the Four Gospels to take up the full screen. Type “Luke 19:28”
in the Reference box and press Enter, and then the passage on the triumphal entry discussed
by Dr. Bock appears. To the right of the Reference box, it tells you which translation is being
used in your Synopsis.
To change that translation, click on the inverted triangle beside it, and a menu appears at
the top of which it says “Search In” followed by another box. In this box, type in the
abbreviation of the Bible version you want. For example, type in “UBS4,” and the UBS
Greek NT appears. Click on the triangle again, type in “ESV” in the “Search In” box and
press Enter, and the ESV appears. You can compare the Gospel accounts in whatever version
you choose.
You should use the harmonies both to observe what all the Gospel accounts include and
to learn the special emphasis and distinctions of the individual writers. For example, observe
that all four accounts include the quotation from Psa 118:[26]: “Blessed is he who comes in
the name of the Lord.”
Adding Notes to Bible Harmonies

In an earlier video, we discussed how to create a Notes document, and have previously
created a Note Document called “New Testament Notes.” If I click on the Documents tab, a
menu appears which includes “New Testament Notes,” which I’ll drag and drop into the full
screen. You will usually want to use the full screen for your Bible harmonies because they
compare passages side by side.
Now return to the Synopsis of the Four Gospels. Logos does not let you put notes directly
in Bible harmonies, but there is an excellent work-around. Click on the number “9” in Matt
21:9, and it opens your prioritized Bible to Matt 21:9. Then select the text, “Blessed is he
who comes in the name of the Lord.” Right-click on the selected text, and choose “Reference
Matthew 21:9.” Then choose “Add a note to ‘New Testament Notes.’ ” In the box below the
yellow square and “Matthew 21:9” in blue letters, I’ll write “All four Gospels quote Psalm
118:24.”
Return again to the Synopsis of the Four Gospels, and see that there is a yellow square
before Matt 21:1–9. If I put my cursor over the yellow square, the text of my note and the
title of the Notes document appears in a pop-up box.
Here’s another observation. The church celebrates the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday,
but only John records that it was palm branches that the crowd waved in John 12:13. Click
on the “13” in John 12:13, and Logos takes you to John 12:13 in your prioritized Bible. Select
the phrase “palm trees,” right-click in the selected text, and choose the option, “Add a note
to ‘New Testament Notes.’ ” Write in the box, “Only John mentions that it was palm branches
the crowd waved. It must be John’s account that gave rise to the term ‘Palm Sunday.’ ”
Switch again to the Synopsis, and another yellow square has appeared, this time before
John 12:12–19. And placing your cursor over it brings up the note in a pop-up. Another useful
thing to do is to add notes linking the passages to the course lectures that discuss them. You
could click on “28” in Luke 19:28–40 and add a note that Dr. Bock discussed this passage in
this lesson.
Changing the Note Indicators

Also, as mentioned in a previous video, you could change the color and shape of your Note
icons by simply clicking on the pertinent icon in your Notes document and selecting a
different color and/or shape from the menu. Perhaps notes connecting with Dr. Bock’s
lectures appear as yellow squares, notes about the features that the Gospel accounts have in
common appear as purple circles, and notes making observations about one account’s unique
characteristics appear as red stars.
If you use your Bible harmonies to observe what the parallel passages have in common
and what is unique to each account, and if you record those observations in notes that are
attached to your prioritized Bible, they will show up also in your Bible harmony, and you
can use that research as you later prepare a sermon or a Bible study.
SEGMENT 67
Searching and Highlighting the Early
Church Fathers
Learning Objectives
• Perform a Basic search in the Early Church Fathers or any series you own
• Read and highlight what Eusebius said concerning the authorship of the Gospels
• Navigate through your highlights and notes in a resource
Introduction
In his discussion of who wrote the Gospels, Dr. Bock referred to the testimony of Papias as
recorded by the church father and historian Eusebius. In this video, you will learn how to
find, read, and highlight the passage in Eusebius cited by Dr. Bock and discover how to
navigate your resources by the highlights it added.
Searching the Church Fathers

We begin by running a Basic search, so click on the Search icon, and then make sure that
“Basic” is the mode of search selected by clicking on the word “Basic,” if necessary. Just
above the search box, it should read something like “Search All Text in Entire Library,” with
“All Text” and “Entire Library” written in blue letters.
Click on the phrase “Entire Library,” and this will pull up a menu that gives you the
option to limit your search to any collection or series that you own in Logos. Scroll down the
menu, and you will eventually see the Series labeled Early Church Fathers (Protestant
Edition). This is a superb series of 37 volumes of writings of church fathers from the first
seven centuries. Click on this series, and the search will now read “Search All Text in Early
Church Fathers (Protestant Edition).” The ability to search specifically in either a collection
or a series greatly enhances the value of the Basic search.
Now type “Papias” in the Find box, and press Enter. Logos will display your library
results in one of three ways: Ranked, By Title, or By Count. We want “Ranked.” By the
right-hand margin of the tile we see the number of results in the various articles—some 73
in the first article and only 6 in the next ranked article. So let’s click on the blue hyperlink,
“Chapter XXXIX,” on the top-ranked article, and this opens up chapter 39 of book 3 of the
Church History of Eusebius.
Highlighting the Church Fathers

The whole chapter can be read in less than 10 minutes, but we are going to scroll down to
paragraph 4. This contains the quote mentioned by Dr. Bock concerning Papias’ reverence
for the oral testimony transmitted from the apostles. We’re now going to highlight this quote.
Click on “Tools,” and from the menu, choose “Highlighting,” and this will open a narrow
panel on the left-hand side. This panel contains four palettes: Solid Colors, Emphasis
Markup, Highlighter Pens, and Inductive. Go to the palette labeled “Highlighter Pens,” and
open it up if necessary.
I am first going to create a shortcut key to the Yellow Highlighter. I place my cursor over
where it says “Yellow Highlighter,” and a circle with an inverted triangle appears. Click on
this circle, and from the menu, click on another inverted triangle labeled “Shortcut key.”
Scroll down and choose “Y” because it is easy to remember for “Yellow Highlighter.”
We are ready to highlight the quotes of Papias mentioned by Dr. Bock in this course. In
paragaraph 4, select the quote: “For I did not think that what was to be gotten from the books
would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice.” Simply press “Y”
and click elsewhere on the screen, and the quote has the Yellow Highlighter pen added to it.
In fact, having created this shortcut key, I don’t even need the Highlighting tool on screen,
so let’s close it. Now let’s scroll down to paragraph 15, which Dr. Bock discusses in another
lesson concerning the authorship of the Gospel of Mark. From this paragraph, select the
quote, “Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not
indeed in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ.” Press “Y”
and click elsewhere on the screen, and the quote has the Yellow Highlighter pen added to it.
Similarly, in a later lesson, Dr. Bock discusses paragraph 16 concerning the Gospel of
Matthew, and I can highlight that passage also.
Navigating by Highlights or Notes

We have now highlighted in one chapter of Eusebius quotes from three of Dr. Bock’s
lectures. You may wish to create other shortcut keys such as “U” for “Red Underline” or “G”
for “Green Highlighter.” You may also decide to create a Notes document for the Church
Fathers, just as we did for the Apocrypha, and add notes to this crucial chapter. If you
highlight and add notes to the various books in Logos, you will make them even more useful
when you revisit them.
For example, suppose you opened up Eusebius’ history at a later time and wanted to find
the areas where you had put highlights and notes. All you have to do is go to the locator bar
at the top of the resource and look for what is written just to the left of the up and down
arrows on the right of the panel. It will usually say “Article” and have an inverted triangle
next to it. Click on the triangle, and select “Annotation” from the menu. As you hit the up
arrow, it will take you back to the previous highlight or note. And as you hit the down arrow,
it will take you to the next highlight or note.
So in this video, we have seen how to search in a series, how to highlight a passage in the
Church Fathers mentioned in three separate lectures by Dr. Bock, and how to navigate your
sources by annotations such as highlights and notes.
SEGMENT 68
Creating a Clippings Document of
Gnostic Writings
Learning Objectives
• Analyze the gnostic writings in the Nag Hammadi library
• Create a Clippings document and add clips from the Nag Hammadi library
• Create a bibliography from a Clippings document
Introduction to the Nag Hammadi Library

In this lesson, Dr. Bock discusses the gospel of Thomas, a holy book for the gnostics that
contains 114 purported sayings of Jesus. Also, in a later lesson, Dr. Bock discusses the
gnostic version of the creation story as preserved in the Apocryphon of John. The gospel of
Thomas, the Apocryphon of John, and many other gnostic works are contained in the Nag
Hammadi library, which is papyri over 1,500 years old discovered in the Egyptian desert in
1945. In this video, I will show you how to use your Logos version of these heretical but
informative texts.
Type “Nag” in the Command box, and select “Open the Nag Hammadi Library in
English.” Now open up the Resource menu, and select “Table of Contents.” Notice that many
of the books are heretical gospels (the gospel of Truth, gospel of Philip, gospel of Thomas)
or Apocalypses (Apocalypse of James, of Adam, of Peter, etc). These are partly of the same
genre as the NT Gospels and the Apocalypse of John, but with radically different content.
Then there are works giving the gnostic doctrine of creation such as the Apocryphon of John
and On the Origin of the World.
Creating a Clippings Document

Open the gospel of Thomas from the table of contents. It will first give you an introduction
by Helmut Koester which is similar to what Dr. Bock said in his lecture. This intro notes that
many sayings in the gospel of Thomas have parallels to the NT Gospels. Let’s skip to the
translation. If we scroll down the gospel of Thomas to saying (9), we notice that this is very
similar to the parable of the sower in Matt 13. We might need this quote for a latter paper or
sermon, so we can create a Clippings document in which to store it.
Adding a Clipping
Click on the Documents tab at the top of the screen, and from the menu, select “Clippings.”
In the Clippings document that appears, click in the box labeled “Untitled Clippings,” and
type “Gnostic Clippings.” Select all the text in saying (9), right-click in the selected text, and
from the context menu, choose “Add a clipping to ‘Gnostic Clippings.’ ” The selected text
appears right in your clipping file.
If you click on the bottom right corner of the clipping, it flips over and gives you the
bibliographical details of your clipping in your preferred citation style. Notice that various
citation styles—such as APA, MLA, and Turabian—appear above in blue letters, and if you
click on one of them, it changes to that style.
Let’s add another clipping. Click on “The Apocryphon of John” in the table of contents,
and then click on “Translation,” also in the table of contents. Scroll down to part 2, just after
verse 30, to the paragraph that begins, “He [is the] invisible [Spirit].” Select the entire
paragraph, right-click in the selected text, and from the context menu, choose “Add a
Clipping to ‘Gnostic Clippings.’ ”
Adding Notes to Clippings

Let’s make this clipping even more useful by flipping it back on the front and adding a note
from Dr. Bock’s lecture to it. Click on the small box labeled “Notes,” and write, “Dr. Bock
discusses the gnostic understanding of God and creation in lesson 35.” Then continue to add
Clippings from some of the other passages in Apocryphon of John that are mentioned in this
lecture. You’ve now created a Clippings document that has stored your research material on
gnosticism.
Creating a Bibliography from a Clippings Document

Suppose that, at some point later, you were writing a paper on gnosticism. You can copy and
paste from the “Gnostic Clippings” document straight into your paper, and you can use the
bibliographic information on the back of each clipping for your footnotes. What I want to
show you now is how your Clippings documents can also speed up the writing of the
bibliography at the end of your paper.
Click on the Documents tab at the top of the screen, and from the menu, choose
“Bibliography.” Click in the box labeled “Untitled Bibliography” and write “Gnosticism
Bibliography,” and then press Enter. Now click on the Add button next to the Bibliography
icon, and from the menu, choose “a clippings document.” Select “Gnostic Clippings,” and a
bibliography of everything in your Clippings document is created.
Now you can click on the Sort button next to the Add button to make sure that all your
clippings are in the appropriate order. You should also realize that this method of creating a
bibliography includes the notes that you attached to your clippings. This may be fine for an
annotated bibliography, but if your research paper is meant to have a regular unannotated
bibliography, you need to remove these notes.
Clippings documents are an excellent way of preserving your research for sermons and
are even better as an aid in writing papers.
SEGMENT 69
Using Interlinears to Explore a Verse in
the Original Language
Learning Objectives
• Use a Greek-English interlinear Bible
• Use a Hebrew-English interlinear Bible
Introduction
In the lesson, Dr. Bock discusses the wording of a crucial text, Psa 110:1, in both the Hebrew
Bible and the Greek Septuagint version. You may not be able to read Hebrew or Greek, but
Logos can help you understand what the original text is saying through resources known as
interlinear Bibles.
Using a Hebrew-English Interlinear

In the Command box, type “Hebrew Interlinear,” then drag and drop “The Lexham Hebrew-
English Interlinear Bible” in the right-hand portion of the screen. Then type “Psalm 110” in
the reference box. Lots of information will probably appear, but we only need part of it. Go
to the word “Display” at the top center of the tile, and click on it. A menu appears, and I want
you to check off every box apart from Inline, Manuscript, Manuscript (Transliterated), and
English Literal Translation.
Hebrew reads from right to left, which is why the verse numbers are at the right of the
screen. The first Hebrew word is pronounced “ledawid” and means “of David”; the second
Hebrew word is pronounced “mizmor” and means “a psalm.” In Hebrew, the superscription
to a psalm is part of the psalm itself.
Now look at the fourth word. This is the tetragramatton—the four letters Y-H-W-H that
spell out God’s personal name. The next word, ladoni, which means “to my lord,” is a
completely different word from Yahweh, which is the point Dr. Bock was making in his
lecture about this verse, which is often translated as “The LORD said to my Lord.”
Using a Greek-English Interlinear

Now type “Septuagint Interlinear” in the Command box, and then drag and drop “The
Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint” into the left-hand side of the screen. In the
reference box, it will say “Psalm 109:1,” but Psa 109 in the Septuagint is the same as Psa 110
in the Hebrew and the English. We can go to the Display menu again and make sure that just
Inline, Manuscript, Manuscript (Transliterated), and English Literal Translation are checked.
If at some point you wish to open a NT interlinear, I would opt for “The Lexham Greek-
English Interlinear New Testament: SBL Edition.” Then I would check precisely the same
boxes—i.e. Inline, Manuscript, Manuscript (Transliterated), Greek Lemma (Transliterated),
and English Literal Translation.
You should now have three lines of text, reading from left to right. The third line begins,
“By David, a psalm.” This is just the heading of the psalm. It continues, “spoke The Lord—
to Lord, my,” which in English would be “The Lord spoke to my Lord.” Note that the Greek
words above “Lord” in each case are variants of the same word, kyrios. This is the point that
Dr. Bock makes in the lesson—namely, that the Septuagint uses the same word “Lord” for
two completely different Hebrew words, creating an ambiguity, and that most English
translations do likewise.
Additional Grammar Tools

Using an interlinear can help you consult the original text without learning Greek or Hebrew.
But if you decide that you want to learn one of these languages, Logos has the resources to
help you. I’m going to open my library in a floating window, and you see that it’s arranged
in folders according to type. If I open the Grammar folder, there are 14 resources: seven
Greek grammars, five Hebrew grammars, one Aramaic grammar, and one Latin grammar.
Beginning Biblical Hebrew by Mark Futato and Kairos: A Beginning Greek Grammar by
Fredrick Long are both excellent for learning Hebrew and Greek, respectively. There are also
more advanced grammars for those who have already had some training in these languages.
Whether you have no interest in learning Greek or Hebrew but want to understand what
a particular text says, or you want to learn the language, or [you] have a basic knowledge but
need advanced grammars, Logos has the resources to help you.
SEGMENT 70
Using Different Greek Lexicons
Learning Objectives
• Open up a Greek lexicon from an English Bible
• Use lexicons to see the usage of Greek words in the NT and other literature
• Know the strengths of the various Greek lexicons for different purposes
Introduction
In the lecture, Dr. Bock discussed the significance of the event of Pentecost described in Acts
2. One way of doing further research on this subject is to use your Greek lexicons to find out
more about how crucial Greek words in this passage, such as the word for “Pentecost” itself,
are used in the NT.
Opening up Lexicons from the Right-Click Menu

First, I am going to open my preferred Bible to Acts 2. In the Command box, I’ll simply type
“Open ESV to Acts 2,” and it gives me the option, “Open English Standard Version to Acts
2:1–47.” I’ll now drag and drop this option to the left-hand portion of the screen.
The word “Pentecost” occurs in Acts 2:1. Simply right-click on the word “Pentecost,”
and on the right-hand menu there will be two options beginning with the word “Lemma.”
The top one is followed by what looks like an “o” but is actually the Greek letter omicron, a
form of the Greek word for “the.” The option lower down, [also] called “Lemma,” is followed
by a longer Greek word, which happens to be the Greek word for Pentecost. Most of the time,
if you right-click on a word, you’ll see a pop-up window.
Choose this option, and on the left-hand side you will have a menu of new options,
including opening up a Bible Word Study and doing a Morphological search on the Greek
word. Scroll down to the bottom, and you will see the option to open any of the five different
Greek lexicons, the lexicons that you prioritized in your library.
Using the BDAG Greek Lexicon

Open A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature.
This is almost certainly the best specialist lexicon on the NT that covers every word occurring
in the Greek NT. It is commonly known as BDAG, after its authors, Bauer, Danker, Arndt,
and Gingrich.
This [article] gives a good amount of information in condensed form. The word literally
means “fiftieth” and is found that way in Greek sources such as Hyperides, but in specialized
use came to mean “the fiftieth day after Passover.” There is a bracket that contains an equal
sign, followed by a Hebrew expression, followed by “feast of weeks,” followed by “Dt
16:10.” This means that Pentecost is equivalent to the Hebrew chag shavu’oth, which means
“Feast of Weeks,” as discussed in Deut 16:10.
BDAG is an excellent resource, but its information is densely packed, and you need to
read it carefully. But Logos can help you because if you put your cursor on a Bible reference
or a reference to Josephus, Philo, or the church fathers in a BDAG article, the actual text will
pop up on the screen.
For example, put your cursor over “Tob 2:1,”and a box appears, saying, “Then during the
reign of Esarhaddon I returned home, and my wife Anna and my son Tobias were restored
to me. At our festival of Pentecost, which is the sacred festival of weeks, a good dinner was
prepared for me and I reclined to eat.” That is in Tobit 2:1 in the NRSV. This verse shows us
clearly that Greek-speaking Jews referred to the Festival of Weeks as the Festival of
Pentecost. So BDAG gives us further information on how the Greek word “Pentecost”
(πεντηκοστή; pentēkostē) is used in the NT.
Using the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament

Let’s close up BDAG and return to Acts 2 in the ESV. Right-click on the word “Pentecost”
again, and once more, choose the option marked “Lemma” followed by a long Greek word.
This time, we’ll scroll down and choose “The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.”
In print form, the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament runs to 10 massive volumes.
Unlike BDAG, it does not cover every Greek word in the NT, only the theologically
significant ones. But those articles it does cover are often dozens of pages long.
It has a slightly longer discussion than BDAG of the “Profane Use”—i.e., the basic
meaning of Greek literature and everyday speech. It also has a much longer discussion of the
OT and Jewish Pentecost. Here, too, the Logos version of TDNT is more user-friendly than
the print version. For example, if we place a cursor over “Philo Decal., 160,” we can read
what Philo says about the Pentecost in section 160 of his work, “The Decalogue.” Scrolling
down, we see sections of “The Date of the Feast,” “Pentecost as a Harvest Festival,”
“Pentecost as a Festival of the Giving of the Law at Sinai,” and finally, “πεντηκοστή
[pentēkostē] in the New Testament” and “πεντηκοστή [pentēkostē] in the Early Church.”
Now, TDNT is written for Bible scholars, and it does not provide a transliteration for the
Greek or Hebrew expressions it uses. However, most of these expressions are followed by
either a Bible verse reference or a reference to another resource that you have in Logos in
English translation, and by putting your cursor over these references, you will find that most
of the time, you will know what it is talking about. For extensive research on an important
Greek word in the NT, this is a valuable resource.
Using the Theological Lexicon of the New Testament

Let’s now close up TDNT and return once more to Acts 2 in the ESV. This time we’re going
to scroll down to verses 16–21, which contain the passage from Joel that Peter cited on the
day of Pentecost and which Dr. Bock discussed in his lecture.
This time, right-click on the word “flesh” in verse 17, and choose “Lemma” in the right-
hand column. Then scroll down in the left-hand column, and choose “Theological Lexicon
of the New Testament.”
The first thing that we notice is that, apart from the title of the article, all the Greek words
are transliterated into English letters, and the same is true for Hebrew words. Immediately,
we find that the Greek word for flesh is pronounced “sarx” and that it is related to the Greek
words “sarkikos” and “sarkinos,” meaning “of the flesh, carnal.”
In general, the Theological Lexicon of the New Testament and its companion, the
Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, are easier for most people to use. If we scroll
down, we find that there is quite a bit of information on the classical background, the OT
background, and the usage in the NT of sarx. At the end, there are shorter sections on the
adjectives sarkikos and sarkinos. This lexicon and the Theological Lexicon of the Old
Testament don’t cover every word but are excellent for the articles that they do have. I
recommend putting these among your prioritized lexicons along with BDAG and TDNT.
Conclusion
With Logos Bible Software, when reading an English Bible, you are only three clicks away
from opening any of your five prioritized Greek lexicons, and there is a lexicon that suits
every different type of study.
SEGMENT 71
Using Clause Search to Find References

to the Holy Spirit
Learning Objectives
After this section, you should be able to
• Perform a Clause search for a person
• Limit the Clause search to Luke-Acts
• Create a passage list from search results
Introduction
In this lesson, Dr. Bock discusses the vitally important topic of the Holy Spirit. In this video,
I will show you how to search for all the occasions in which the person of the Holy Spirit is
mentioned by whatever term, whether “the Spirit,” “the Spirit of God,” “him,” or “Helper.”
Performing a Clause Search

Click on the Search button to open a search window, and this time, from the menu of search
types, choose “Clause.” Above the search box, there should be two fields in blue letters. The
first one probably reads “Entire Bible,” and the second one will read either the “Lexham
Hebrew Bible” or “The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition.”
Clause searches work by searching the original languages, which means either the
Lexham Hebrew Bible for the OT or The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition for the NT. We
are searching the NT, so we need to make sure “The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition” is
selected.
You should also see some search helps showing you how, for example, to search for all
clauses that mention both a particular person and a particular place. We want to search for
all clauses in which the person of the Holy Spirit is mentioned anywhere in the clause. The
search help shows us that we need to type “person:” followed by the name of the person. In
the search box, then, type “person:Holy.” The menu gives us three options: “person:Holy
Spirit,” “person:A holy person” and “person:God (Holy One).” We need to choose
“person:Holy Spirit” and then press Enter.
Displaying the Results

This gives a list of over 300 results, all written in Greek. To display these results in English
also, go to where “Add Versions” is written in blue letters above the search results. Click on
this, and a small box appears. In the box, type “ ESV” or whatever your preferred English
Bible is, and press Enter. The results are now displayed in parallel columns with the Greek
on the left and the English on the right. Notice that many of the English passages do not have
the precise phrase “Holy Spirit” but have “Spirit of God,” “Spirit of your Father,” “the
Spirit,” or just “he” or any other phrases that scholars at Logos have tagged as referring in
context to the person of the Holy Spirit.
Limiting the Clause Search

Now click on the first field of blue letters, saying “Entire Bible.” It gives you a menu with a
subhead, “Common Divisions,” under which are options such as the “Gospels” and the
“Pauline Epistles.” Because Dr. Bock spoke about the centrality of the Holy Spirit in Luke
and Acts, we’re going to choose the option “Luke-Acts,” which contains these two books.
As soon as you select it, a new Clause search is performed, finding every reference to the
Holy Spirit in either Luke or Acts. We have over 80 results here in just Luke and Acts. By
scrolling down this list, you will see the verses discussed by Dr. Bock in his summary of this
message in Luke-Acts and others which expand upon it.
Creating a Passage List

Now suppose that you wanted to save the results of this Clause search as a list of verses you
could look up at a later time, perhaps when you are preparing a Bible study. Simply click on
the inverted triangle to the right of the Search icon, which looks like a magnifying glass.
Then, from the menu, click on the option, “Save as Passage List.” This will create a passage
list titled “person:Holy Spirit in SBLGNT,” and again, the verses are initially saved in Greek.
In the box below the title, there will also be the letters “SBLGNT.” Click in that box and
type the abbreviation of your preferred Bible, such as ESV, and hit Enter. The results are now
displayed in that version. You should now rename this passage list as “person:Holy Spirit in
Luke-Acts ESV” so that you know exactly what it is. This document is now saved.
Additional Clause Searches

If you want, you could create other Clause searches which look just for where the Holy Spirit
is the subject of the clause or limit the search to John 14–17, where Jesus expounds upon the
Paraclete, the Comforter, as discussed also by Dr. Bock.
Clause searches are very powerful. Because Logos has employed people to do extensive
tagging, you can search for all references to a person no matter what the specific phrase
referring to that person is. You can limit your search to the person as subject or object, you
can limit your search to a group of books of the Bible (or even chapters), and you can quickly
save the results as a passage list for easy reference later.1
1
Bock, D. L. (2014). NT211 Introducing the Gospels and Acts: Their
Background, Nature, and Purpose. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Gospels and Act

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NT211

Introducing the Gospels and Acts:

Lexham Press, 2014

Copyright 2014 Lexham Press

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

Logos Mobile Education

Recommended Base Package

Introducing the Speaker and the Course

Background to the New Testament

Cultural Scripts in the Bible

Activities, Guides and Tools

The Nature of Judaism

Special Calendar and Days

Activities, Guides and Tools

Alexander the Great

The Life of Alexander the Great

Rebellion and Death

The Lasting Influence of Greek Culture

Activities, Guides and Tools

Hellenization and First Maccabees

Hellenization According to 1 Maccabees

First Maccabees 1:1–5

First Maccabees 1:10–15

Compromise and Resistance

Activities, Guides and Tools

Jewish Responses to Hellenism

The Qumran Community

Activities, Guides and Tools

The Temple Story

First Maccabees and Antiochus Epiphanes

Defiling the Temple

Making One People

Outlawing Jewish Traditions

Activities, Guides and Tools

The Start of the Maccabean War

The King Challenges Mattathias

Reclaiming the Temple

Activities, Guides and Tools

The Impact of Hellenism and the War on

The Reaction to the Temple Story

Reclaiming Religious Rights

Pursuing Faithfulness to the Law

Hope for the Golden Age

Activities, Guides and Tools

The Beginning of Roman Rule

The Demise of the Hasmonean Dynasty

Controversy from the Start

Rome and Messianic Hope

Jesus and Messianic Expectations

Activities, Guides and Tools

Psalms of Solomon 17:23–39

Activities, Guides and Tools

The Ministry of Jesus

What Got Jesus into Trouble?

Activities, Guides and Tools

Forgiving Sins: The Healing of the

An Overview of the Controversies

In Mark and Luke

Forgiveness and The Prayer of Nabonidus

The Son of Man

Activities, Guides and Tools

Messing with the Sabbath

The Sabbath in Jewish Tradition