Latin America is the only major area of the world in which the Protestant church is growing at a much faster rate than the population—this in spite of the fact that the demographic explosion in Latin America is the most rapid in the world. The population is increasing at the rate of some 2.6 per cent while the Protestant community is moving at 15.8 per cent.

But in spite of this highly encouraging set of statistics, many Christian workers in Latin America are deeply concerned about the future of the Church. In a recent meeting of some 300 evangelical leaders from all over Latin America at Huampaní, Peru, 54 per cent of those attending were missionaries. Although Latin Americans chaired most of the sessions, missionaries were still quite obviously pulling the important strings behind the scenes.

Where is our top-flight Latin American Protestant leadership? Or, more specifically, what have we been doing to provide theological training for those nationals who can and will do the same jobs of administration and teaching that missionaries have been handling for six decades?

The historic denominations have been hard at work on this problem for a long time, and their labors have borne fruit. Graduates of seminaries such as Union of Buenos Aires (Methodist, Presbyterian, Disciples, and others); Union of Matanzas, Cuba (Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal); Union of Río Piedras, Puerto Rico (American Baptist Convention, Methodist, Presbyterian, and others); and the Presbyterian Seminary of Campinas, Brazil, have taken doctorates in the United States and Europe and are now in positions of high responsibility in their own churches and seminaries. In fact the teaching and administrative staffs of these seminaries are largely made up of Latin Americans.

While the traditional denominations deserve the highest praise for what they have accomplished in the field of theological education, this does not mean that the job is done. The fact remains that the overwhelming majority of Latin American Protestants belong to the non-historic groups, including the faith missions and the newer denominations such as the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Free Methodists, and Pentecostals. Of the estimated ten million members of the Protestant community, at least one-third are affiliated with the Pentecostal denominations alone.

The only seminary that the non-historic groups have produced which attains the academic excellence of the four already mentioned is the Bible Seminary in San José, Costa Rica, founded by the Latin America Mission. But this in comparison to the others is not a mature work, since the administration and the bulk of the teaching responsibilities are still in the hands of missionaries from the United States. As a matter of fact, the men from the Bible Seminary who are now going abroad for their doctorates are not Latin Americans, but missionaries.

We of the non-historic groups have made outstanding progress in evangelism, in literature, in Bible translation, and in radio-television. We have done well in building multitudes of churches—but unfortunately we have been too little interested in building the Church. Our interest in theological education has been largely limited to providing pastors and evangelists for our local congregations, and therefore we traditionally have concentrated on Bible institutes. This has been an essential factor in the rapid growth of the Protestant work, and it is not my intention to slight the Bible-institute level of training in the least. We have done a good job with these institutes and have trained a large and competent force of national pastors for our churches. But our error has been to stop there.

The old cliché that “we missionaries are trying to work ourselves out of a job” has become sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal in the light of the little we have done to train nationals to take over as mission administrators or Bible-institute directors. In fact, we should confess that we have been guilty of a related and very parochial attitude that has done much to stunt the growth of the Church—that of considering promising and gifted young Christians as “our workers,” and failing to encourage them to go outside the fold of our own limited group for higher training because “they might be lost to the work.” The work referred to, of course, is “our work”—not that of the church of Jesus Christ.

There are some clear reasons why the non-historic groups have fallen short of providing training on the seminary level. For one, most of the missionaries themselves have not had more than a Bible-institute training, and therefore have neither the desire nor the preparation necessary to take nationals any higher. But the difference in the academic level of Latin American and Anglo-Saxon theological schools should be noted at this point. To an Anglo-Saxon entrance into a Bible institute presupposes high-school graduation; to a Latin only grammar school, three to six years. Latin American seminaries are on the university rather than the postgraduate level; they require only secondary school instead of university graduation for admission.

A second reason might be called “evangelistic myopia.” In the passion to get souls saved there has been too little interest in what the Church will do for leadership ten, fifteen, or twenty years from now. Missionaries have been content to train national evangelists with little thought of training those nationals who in turn would be able to train their own evangelists.

This shortsightedness is tragically reflected in the missionary giving of the home churches. Disproportionate emphasis is placed on the personal support of what someone has called “the dear, homebred missionary,” with slight concern for projects and causes, such as theological education, which are more impersonal but often at the same time more strategic.

In the third place, the very independent nature of the non-historic groups has put them at a disadvantage. Every mission has seemed to feel it necessary to set up its own program of theological education with no regard for what its neighbors are doing. In Bolivia, for example, there are some 20 Bible institutes and seminaries to serve a Christian community of perhaps 30,000. Now, especially in this day when the non-historic groups are waking up to the need of providing seminary training for their national workers, an important cue should be taken from the denominations: without interdenominational cooperation the job in all probability will never be done.

It is no coincidence that of the five top seminaries mentioned above, three are union efforts. Practically none of our faith missions, other than the Latin America Mission, has the personnel, the funds, the experience, or even the potential student body to tackle a seminary-level educational program on its own. Up to now there has been some talk and some experimentation, but very meager results in terms of actual cooperation in this vital field. Unfortunately it looks as if instead of pooling our resources to establish some key first-class institutions, we are going to see too many watered-down seminaries springing up in several Latin American republics during the next few years. It would be a dramatic step forward if somehow this trend could be arrested and, better yet, reversed.

The final reason for lack of achievement by the non-historic groups has been their failure to provide a suitable framework into which to integrate well-educated national workers. Despite all our talk about an “indigenous church” we have little to show for our efforts. With the rise in educational levels in Latin America and the coming of age of a second generation of Protestants, we face the new situation in which an important element of our Christian community will have secondary-school preparation and will be ready for further study.

Many gifted young men will have to choose between seminary and university. Whether it be a spiritual approach to the problem let someone else judge, but we find the young men asking: “Should I become a lawyer or a doctor and take my place as a well-paid and respected member of my community, or should I go to seminary and resolve myself to peon’s wages and status as a second-rate citizen?” Leaving pious platitudes to one side, this is an extremely difficult decision, and if a young man chooses law instead of the ministry, we have only ourselves to blame for our failure to provide a framework in which professionally trained nationals could approach the affluent living standard that missionaries as well as other members of the expanding Latin American middle class now enjoy.

A corollary to this is the need for scholarships for graduate study abroad. The best offered in Latin America at the present time is a Th.B. But many Latins are fully capable of work at the Th.M. or Th.D. level. The old-line denominations have figured this item into their budgets and are reaping great dividends from it. We cannot afford to continue to lag behind. Not only must we provide seminary training; we also must encourage the nationals to go just as far as their intellectual potentialities can carry them. Because of our failure in this area there already has been some painful shifting of top national workers from the non-historic groups to the older denominations.

When seen in the light of the explosive political situation in Latin America today, this problem takes on a terrifying urgency. The day of the Anglo-Saxon missionary, as his work is presently conceived, may be rapidly coming to a close. We who today are responsible for the welfare of the Latin American Church must also be prepared to stand judgment for its condition 20 years from now.

We cannot afford to rest until we have caught up to our age in providing theological education for our Latin brethren. To do so in the time remaining will mean an all-out push both by us who are on the field and by those who stand behind us in the homeland. We need a new vision for the task, faithful and believing prayer, a self-effacing willingness to cooperate with one another, and unprecedented financial aid for buildings, libraries, scholarships, and salaries. Perhaps most of all we need a dedicated corps of new missionary workers who have the academic and theological training necessary to help us get the job done.

The Bolivian Indian Mission

Cochabamba, Bolivia

More and more, even in places where least expected, signs are appearing with the announcement, “Open on Sundays.” To such an extent has the traditional Sabbath been exploited and commercialized that stores which still remain closed on Sundays are finding it necessary to display signs informing the public of this.

The secularization of the Sabbath day is cause for nation-wide alarm. The competitive operation of taverns, theaters, and commercialized amusements on the Lord’s Day has long been a problem to the spiritual forces of our country. And now we are witnessing a vast acceleration of this encroachment on the part of chain groceries and a variety of other stores, besides automobile agencies, real estate operation, and other enterprises, which previously have been at least neutral in the struggle to preserve the soul of our nation.

Sabbath observance is the center of gravity for the spiritual and moral life of a nation. A Sabbath-observing people, coming regularly under the illumination, stimulation, and discipline of the Word of God, give God a chance to do his best for them, in them, and through them. Such a people develop convictions and maintain standards of purity and godliness not otherwise to be attained. That which undermines Sabbath observance undermines the spiritual convictions and the moral behavior of a people.

It is in the Lord’s house, on the Lord’s day, with the Lord’s people, that a man is most likely to see himself as he is and to hear the call of God to higher ground. Thus bad men often become good, and good men become better. Unfortunately, the person who does not observe the Sabbath is generally leaving undone just about everything else that is expected of a Christian, such as praying, giving, witnessing, and living a consecrated life.

The family pew solves many problems before they arise, and is a major safeguard of the family hearth. Juvenile delinquency is reported to fall most heavily on Saturdays and Sundays. F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover has noted for years, along with judges all across the country, that Sabbath observance and juvenile delinquency do not go together. But broken Sabbaths, broken homes, and broken hearts fall into a pattern which has become all too familiar.

“Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.” This fourth commandment, like the rest of the Decalogue, has in it the wisdom and benevolence of Almighty God. The benighted peoples of the earth have no Sabbath; with the establishment of the biblical Sabbath and its observance, their darkness would soon be dispelled. Enlightened peoples, when they neglect or abandon the Sabbath, are turning their backs to the light and heading toward the jungle.

Nations which have officially abolished the Sabbath have returned to the seven-day week in sheer self-defense, to safeguard their physical and material well-being. France, revolting against Christianity after the Revolution, established the ten-day week in 1793 but returned to the seven-day week in 1806. Russia likewise abolished the Sabbath after the Bolshevik Revolution and established a five-day week, then a six-day week, but she restored the seven-day week in 1940. The seven-day week makes a natural cycle, like the musical scale of seven notes, and seems to fit the rhythm of the universe.

Probably the breaking of no other commandment is so directly avenged in terms of mental and physical complications and breakdowns as the law of the Sabbath. Experimentation has demonstrated that even machinery functions more efficiently with suitable rest periods. The familiar comment of industrial giant Henry Ford deserves thoughtful consideration: “We would have had our Model A car in production six months earlier if I had forbidden my engineers to work on Sunday.”

“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” Christ made allowance, within the spirit of the law, for works of mercy and of necessity, and for taking care of the occasional “ox in the ditch.” But the moral responsibility of unnecessary Sabbath violation is not to be lightly regarded. Immeasurably greater is the moral responsibility of coaxing others away from Sabbath observance to the marts of trade. Still more serious is the policy of denying to employees the possibility of observing the Sabbath and taking care of their spiritual needs and responsibilities. Inevitably, the Sunday opening of stores means the Sunday closing of churches, as far as the employee is concerned. And this the divine economy does not countenance. The ultimate in human wisdom is to note which way God is moving, and to fall in step.

With sickening monotony, the statistics on all forms of evil are rising from year to year. Human devices and legislative panaceas have failed to arrest this trend, which corresponds to the progressive undermining of the holy Sabbath. Too largely the Sabbath day has been reduced from a holy day of spiritual replenishment, instruction, and correction, to a mere holiday for pleasure seeking or to just another day of merchandising. The obvious need is not for some new solution but for a nationwide reemphasis upon true Sabbath observance. Only thus can we build up those spiritual resources which are the true strength of a nation. It is already late, but not too late. Sabbath observance must not be allowed to become obsolete!—Dr. CHARLES W. KOLLER, President Emeritus, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.

NO, I HAVEN’T BEEN at church lately—but

—I’m tremendously interested really

—there’s such a draught in my pew

—I always listen to the hymns on the wireless

—of course I always keep in touch

—I’m frightened I’ll start coughing

—everyone says the sermons have been good

—I really must go one of these days

—you see, my family like a long lie in bed

—I once won a prize at Sunday school

—there’s hardly a soul I know at church

—I must go when the weather improves

—the man comes with the papers about eleven

—I do think it’s frightfully important

—since my aunt died, I can’t face it somehow

—I was just saying to my friend it is time I went

—won’t you wait and have tea? The kettle’s on.

—J.W.G.M.

in Life and Work (Church of Scotland magazine).

To some members of the Christian world it is a matter for surprise that so strong an evangelical contribution should be made by the Anglican communion. There are, of course, reasons for this surprise. Particularly since the rise of the Oxford Movement, many practices have given Episcopal churches more of a Roman than a Protestant look, and there have been far too many prominent leaders whose personal opinions bear little resemblance to the established positions of their communion. Indeed, agitation to make the communion different from what it has been seems to be the mark of the twentieth-century ecclesiastic.

Nevertheless, there should be no real surprise at the presence of a more genuinely evangelical element. It is part of a long and powerful tradition which goes back through the leaders of the Evangelical Revival to the Puritans of the seventeenth century, and ultimately to the great Anglican reformers of the sixteenth. It is not an eccentric factor; it belongs to the very essence of the communion. Its members, far from being halfhearted churchmen, are among the most consistently faithful of all Anglicans. Its charter is the Anglican Confession, which was adopted by Convocation in 1563 and which, in spite of evasion, relegation to small print, and in some cases open opposition, still remains the basic doctrinal statement of the Church of England and its churches.

The Thirty-Eight Articles as they then were—the thirty-ninth was added a few years later (1570)—are clearly Reformed, and therefore evangelical, in their acceptance of the supreme authority of Holy Scripture (Article 6). They maintain that there is nothing which must be believed for salvation other than what is found in the 66 canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. While the church and the ministry have their own authority, this is subsidiary. Nothing can stand alongside the written Word of God in matters of eternal significance. On this basis, the constant potential of evangelical awakening is no surprise.

The Articles are also Reformed, and therefore evangelical, in their understanding of justification (Articles 11–14). By Christ alone, and therefore by faith alone, is no less a basic doctrine of the Anglican than of the Lutheran or Calvinist. Works have their own place, but it is not their office to justify before God. The heart of the Gospel is God’s free forgiveness by virtue of the reconciling work of Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection. Where the evangelical message rings out in Anglican pulpits, it is in terms of the classical declaration of faith, not in opposition to it.

Again, the Articles are Reformed, and therefore evangelical, in their sacramental teaching (Articles 25–28). If they avoid the bare symbolism of extremists, they are based on a rejection of medieval teachings concerning sacrifice, the real presence, and automatic efficacy. Positively, their statements are in substantial accord with the Reformed tradition enshrined in the confessions of Calvin and Bullinger. It is true that in 1563 the distinctive “ubiquitarian” tenet of the Lutherans was not yet flatly rejected, but this came shortly afterwards with the inclusion of the final article (Article 29). Evangelical use of baptism and the Lord’s Supper reflects neither alien intrusion into true Anglicanism, nor willful departure from it. It is a simple continuation of Prayer Book practice on the basis of confessional understanding.

The evangelical element persists in the Anglican communion because there are within the church ministers and laity who are ready to take the Articles seriously as the confession of their church. In England itself all clergy profess allegiance to the Articles, not once but many times. They do this publicly, before their congregations. But so far as doctrinal utterances and preaching are concerned, this often seems to be little more than a formality. For evangelicals, however, it is no formality. The verities expressed in the Articles are the essential verities of the Gospel which must be the confession of any true church of Jesus Christ. Acceptance of the Articles is acceptance of the Gospel. It is confession not merely of the faith of the Anglican communion, but of the faith once delivered to the saints. If there is place for revision in detail, there is none for hesitation as to essential content.

The evangelical element persists because there are ministers and people who see no reason for evasions, mental reservations, or fundamental tensions in their relation to the Articles. It is a significant fact that those who are so anxious to depreciate, to relativize, or to change the Articles are not evangelicals. Evangelicals have no fear of the 1604 canons, which declare to be de facto excommunicate all preachers—be they ever so eminent—who teach contrary to the Articles. They have no fear of the Laudian declaration, which insists—originally against extremer Puritans—that the Articles are to be taken only in their literal and grammatical sense. If they recognize that new developments may demand new statements and that not even the best confessions have the infallibility of Scripture, they are in no frenzy to discard or to amend.

Finally, the evangelical element persists because there are those who are convinced that from the time of the Reformation, the fellowship and ministry of the Anglican communion have been primarily with churches of the Reformation. They have no implacable hostility to Roman Catholicism, but they recognize that the Anglican Articles are incompatible with the unreformed Romanism, not merely of the Middle Ages, but also of the post-Tridentine period. They admire the loyalty of the Eastern Orthodox churches to the cardinal truths defined by early councils, but they cannot be content with a frozen orthodoxy which has nothing to offer in the face of new problems and which stifles evangelical vitality. They are not ashamed of the distinctive order of ministry and liturgy which their church has maintained in exercise of its relative authority, but they see in this no obstacle to the fellowship with other Protestant bodies which prevailed in the Reformation and post-Reformation period. They recognize that the Articles place them ineluctably among those whose task is to attest to the essential Gospel rediscovered at the Reformation.

In a church which has the Articles as its confession, it would in fact be surprising if there were no evangelical element. For here in the confession is the power of evangelical truth and life. Here in the confession is the dogmatic stratum on which, under the Spirit, there is the abiding hope of evangelical renewal.

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

Valedictory

Sorry to interrupt, but I must be going. The ides of March have come; this, by painful count, is Communication No. 162 from Eutychus, and it’s time for a change. My inclination is to loiter a bit, hat and doorknob in hand, but the Eutychus image seems to call for a more abrupt departure, by another exit.

I need only insist, in tribute to the astonishing patience of the editor and my kin, that I wasn’t pushed.

My successor, Eutychus II, will make the windowsill fully pseudonymous once more, which is a Good Thing. You will understand the attractiveness of a pseudonym to a man called Clowney. Now that I must relinquish it, perhaps I should have my name legally changed.… Why not Edmund P. Kennedy?

Should I leave a note pinned to the windowsill for the next occupant? He won’t need my two embroidered pillows: “Well begun is half done” and “All’s well that ends well.” He doubtless knows already that only the middle of a column can be expected to write itself.

I could enclose a list of choice targets for his “lover’s quarrel with the church” (the phrase is Robert Frost’s epitaph rendered in Ecclesian). But, then, he will have his own way of dealing with Mrs. Fixture in the Sunday school or Dr. Eugene Ivy in the manse. The ambitious pseudo-surveys conducted by Eutychus Associates are his at the stroke of a pen.

A note won’t be necessary. A greeting card will do: a card to encourage Eutychus II to keep his balance, for Eutychus’ windowsill seems narrow at times. Between profane mockery and pretentious sobriety, there is a whole new world, but somehow we have difficulty finding even sitting-room.

My greeting to Eutychus is one that I know he will understand. It is the sign of the laughter of grace. It forms the coda for all service of Christ: not a bang or a whimper, but a shout of joy.

On the card I shall write, ISAAC.

One Great Peril

Your editorial in the February 1 issue … states the case with reference to the atheists in very strong terms.… I believe we are in great danger of the American heritage disappearing. The almighty secular state without moral absolutes and a transcendent judgment is one great peril of the hour.…

The National Presbyterian Church

Washington, D. C.

Re the editorial “What About the Atheists?”: I believe the challenge of James Russell Lowell still holds. He said, “When the microscopic search of skepticism, which has haunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society and has found a place on this planet, ten miles square, where a decent man can live in decency, comfort and security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted; a place where age is reverenced, womanhood defended, and human life held in due regard; where skepticism can find such a place ten miles square on the globe where the gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way and laid the foundations and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the skeptical literati to move thither and ventilate their views. But so long as these men are dependent upon the religion they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate a little before they seek to rob the Christian of his hope and humanity of its Saviour.”

The Rector’s Roost

Fair Haven, N. Y.

William F. Albright

In the January 18th issue Dr. W. F. Albright commented that he was unable to accept any of Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon’s “three successive decipherments” of Minoan Linear A. It is misleading to speak of “three decipherments.” In the course of deciphering any ancient language there are always many trials and many “false starts” before the solution is achieved. And even when that point is reached, there are some critics who will never acknowledge it. The late Michael Ventris worked for many years on the assumption that Linear B was Etruscan until he was confronted by conclusive evidence that it was in fact a very early form of Greek. His brilliant decipherment of Linear B is accepted now by the majority of classical scholars. Yet there are still some, such as Dr. A. J. Beattie of Edinburgh and Dr. E. Grumach of Berlin, who remain totally unconvinced by his evidence.

In Gordon’s case it would be more correct to speak of “three stages” in his progress toward a solution of the riddle of Minoan Linear A. In an article in Antiquity, Vol. 31 (1957), entitled “Notes on Minoan Linear A” he first proposed that the language was “a Semitic dialect from the shores of the East Mediterranean.” At this point he did not attempt to define more precisely its classification within the Semitic family of languages.

Later in the same year in another article in the same journal he took the next step. On the basis of many lexical identifications and a few syntactical observations (the conjunction u seemed to point to an East Semitic identification) Gordon tentatively proposed that the tablets were written in Accadian, the lingua franca of the Near East in the mid-second millennium B.C.

Up to this point evidence had been largely isolated lexical items with only a few syntactical clues. When early in 1962 he came upon an entire sentence of a dedicatory inscription incised on a stone altar with pure West Semitic vocabulary and syntax, it is to his credit that Gordon quickly retracted his earlier, tentative identification of the language.

Meanwhile his conclusions regarding the earliest stages of the Minoan language were receiving corroboration from simultaneous work on the later stages of the language of the Minoans, the in triguing Eteocretan inscriptions composed in a hitherto unrecognizable language written in Greek uncials. Gordon found that these latter inscriptions were also composed in a West Semitic language! The two astounding discoveries were presented together at the Spring meeting of the American Oriental Society and published in the July issue of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies.

Gordon’s treatment of Minoan grammar is scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of Orientalia, and further evidence from a sixth century B.C. Eteocretan-Greek bilingual will appear in a coming issue of the journal of Semitic Studies. We would venture to prophesy in words similar to those penned by Dr. Albright in a 1946 review article of Gordon’s Ugaritic Grammar that his future work on Minoan grammar and texts will be of greater lasting significance for O. T. and Homeric Greek research than any dozen assorted recent commentaries taken together.

Department of Mediterranean Studies

Brandeis University

Waltham, Mass.

Dr. Albright’s phenomenal scholarship together with his sincerity and candor of mind have caused many to look to him for leadership in research. Bible-believing Christians may be grateful that he has not advocated the views of some of the more liberal critics.

Serious objection, however, must be raised against the position which, as an “empirical historian,” he espouses (cf. From The Stone Age to Christianity, 1957 ed., pp. 390, 399). First, what ultimate authority is there to validate this viewpoint? Does it not assume the ultimacy of the human mind as capable of judging in such matters? Is it not, therefore, diametrically opposed to genuine Christian theism? Second, logically this position allows for the views of radical scholars as well as for those of Dr. Albright. It is only by a happy inconsistency that, having adopted this standpoint, Dr. Albright does not go as far as others. For this inconsistency we are grateful, but we wish Dr. Albright would examine the basis upon which he stands as an “empirical historian.” Indeed, we would sincerely say to him, Cum talis sis, utinam noster esses.

Westminster Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

All of us are indebted to Professor Albright and to CHRISTIANITY TODAY for the exceedingly interesting interview.… Those of us who have been working with Cyrus H. Gordon feel that in addition to Albright’s concise remarks some further points may be made.

When asked what he thought of Gordon’s statement that the decipherment of Linear A was “more important to historians than the Dead Sea Scrolls” (news release, April 4, 1962), Albright replied that: (a) he could not accept Gordon’s decipherment; (b) the Dead Sea Scrolls surpassed all other discoveries for biblical studies. It should be noted that:

1. Gordon himself has stressed the importance of the Scrolls: “While Ugarit is revolutionizing the problem of Old Testament origins, the Dead Sea Scrolls are doing the same for the New Testament” (Adventures in the Nearest East, 1957, p. 11).

The Scrolls are indeed important. But it may be asked: Important for what? and important in what respects?

2. Gordon has said: “The numerous Old Testament documents found at Qumran are of importance for the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible” (The Reconstructionist, May 4, 1956, p. 10). “Normative Judaism in Greco-Roman Palestine can explain some, but not all, of the background of the New Testament; the sectarian Jewish background (of Qumran) is also of great significance” (p. 11).

3. Albright similarly said in his introduction to From the Stone Age to Christianity, 1957, p. 1, “There have also been some utterly unexpected discoveries, such as that of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which revolutionize our knowledge of the text of the Old Testament and of the Jewish background, time of composition, and historical position of the New Testament.”

4. Two pages further Albright added: “My approach to the Hellenistic and New Testament periods remains the same in all fundamentals, though the Dead Sea Scrolls have revolutionized details” (italics ours). So also Miller Burrows of Yale declared: “For myself I must go farther and confess that, after studying the Dead Sea Scrolls for seven years, I do not find my understanding of the New Testament substantially affected. Its Jewish background is clearer and better understood, but its meaning has neither been changed nor significantly clarified” (The Dead Sea Scrolls, 1955, p. 343).

To summarize, the Scrolls are most important particularly for Old Testament textual study and for New Testament backgrounds, not so much in essentials but in details.

For readers who are not familiar with the terms, we might explain that: “Linear A is a syllabic script that was used by the Minoans of Crete from 1750 to 1450 B.C. Linear B which uses many of the same symbols as the former, nonetheless represents a different language. It was used from 1450 to about 1100 B.C. Eteocretan, which employs Greek letters, was used by remnants of the original Minoan population until at least 300 B.C.” (cf. further my article on the subject in the August, 1962, issue of Eternity).

5. Albright clearly recognized the importance of Linear B. In the same introduction to “From the Stone Age …” he said: “The most striking advance in decipherment is without doubt the decoding of the Minoan-Mycenaean Linear B script.… To the surprise of most scholars it turns out that the language of these tablets … was an early form of Classical Greek” (p. 5).

6. Before the decipherment of Linear B, the Bronze Age of Greece was not illuminated by any contemporary records. Professor Palmer of Oxford hailed Ventris’ feat as “a turning point in the study of the Late Bronze Age of the Aegean (that is 1550–1100 B.C.).”

7. Thus if we are to grant Gordon’s decipherment of Linear A-Eteocretan as Semitic—along with a growing number of outstanding scholars at home and abroad—we must admit that this development is as revolutionary if not more so than the decipherment of Linear B. Indeed the decipherment of Linear A gives us an altogether new understanding of the intertwining early roots of Western civilization.

8. What this would then show is that the early phase of Greek civilization was built on an essentially Semitic Minoan civilization. This leads to the observation, in Gordon’s own words, “that Greek and Hebrew civilisations are parallel structures built upon the same East Mediterranean foundation” (p. 9 of his latest book, Before the Bible, recently published by Harper, in which he sets forth in detail the evidence for this thesis; Arnold J. Toynbee in his review of this book in the London Observer, December 16, 1962, fully accepts Gordon’s historical reconstruction).

We may conclude that both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the decipherments of Linear A and Linear B are of outstanding importance: The Scrolls, on the one hand, contribute to biblical studies with a wealth of details in a more direct fashion; the decipherments, on the other hand, affect classical and biblical studies of the second millennium B.C. with more radical implications.

Department of Mediterranean Studies

Brandeis University

Waltham, Mass.

Dr. Albright’s statement regarding “authentic mysteries” still leaves me unsure of his attitude. Granted that biblical miracles are usually not “the kind of truth that an archaeologist can validate,” did they actually occur as recorded? The Feeding of the Five Thousand is recorded in all four Gospels as a “work” of Jesus, witnessed by a great multitude, many of whom were without spiritual discernment; but “they ate of the loaves and were filled.” Does Dr. Albright accept this miracle as an actual event, regardless of archaeology? When he says, “God is just as active … in the world as ever,” does he mean that such miracles as are recorded in the Scriptures have occurred in post-apostolic times and are occurring today?

Wayne, Pa.

Separation Of Covenants

I’ve just read the editorial (“The Winds of the Spirit”) in the January 4 issue and am delighted with it.…

My basic concern, apart from destroying the false legend about early America, was to emphasize the creative power of the great revivals and call for a new burst of evangelical strength (you are quite right that “culture-religion” is as much a curse of the liberal wing, historically speaking, as it is of the radical right). My own ancestors came to Massachusetts very early—1620, 1639, 1659—and the only section that wasn’t here before 1700 was the Huguenot line from which I got my name. All of them came for religious reasons so I’m quite aware, having been raised on it, of the devotion of some of the early settlers. The fact remains, however, that the colonists as a whole were unchurched and came for other reasons. The “Half-Way Covenant” was a concession to economic and political reality, and there were plenty of other examples in the colonial period of the fact that the facts of life were working against the high ideals of the early fathers. We should give them every honor where honor is due, but I think we need to avoid delusions as to what the masses of the people believed or didn’t believe.

I don’t think that we have a “wall of separation,” or have ever had it, or that it is necessarily a good thing if we should. This is what irritates me so, in the dogmatic secularism of Mr. Justice Black—which I think is just as contrary to good American principles as the romantic nonsense of Mr. Edwin Walker. What the first amendment raised up was the separation of the political covenant from the religious covenants, that is, a principle of religious voluntaryism. This we should affirm and strengthen.

To strengthen it means to strengthen the principle of religious liberty, but more than that to strengthen the voluntary support of the churches which makes this workable.

The Chicago Theological Seminary

Chicago, Ill.

Brother Daniel’S Exclusion

The ruling of the highest tribunal of Israel in the case of “Brother Daniel” (Editorial, Jan. 4 issue) brought to a focal point a series of anti-Christian attacks … here in our own land as well as in Israel.…

Why should a Jew who believes in Christ not be eligible to all the rights and privileges to which any other Jew is entitled? The answer … reads more like an excuse or an evasion. By adopting Christianity, the judges ruled, “Brother Daniel” has severed all his ties with the Jewish people. On what ground could they have based such a decision?… “Brother Daniel” came of Jewish stock.… I am sure that the judges … do not really believe that some baptismal water or some recitation of certain words is so potent as to magically transmute a person of one race into that of another. And “Brother Daniel” denied ever having severed his connection with the Jewish people. Biologically there was no change in Daniel, and so the only change involved was certain conceptions of religion for which he could be charged.…

One of the judges said that the nation cannot forget the persecution which Christendom has meted out against the Jewish people. They cannot forget this because the leaders have hammered into the Jewish brain the fiction that Christianity has been responsible for all the suffering of the Jews through all the ages.… It is extremely difficult to grasp why the intelligentsia of Israel should perpetuate such ludicrous falsehoods. There they have free libraries where history books can give the true facts which the leaders in the ghettos withheld from the people. Even the New Testament is no longer taboo in Israel. Everyone has access to it.…

Why keep on reminding the people about the horrors of the Inquisition, for instance? The Inquisition was no more Christian than it was Jewish. It burned more Christians (even bishops) who fell into its hands, than Jews. Most of the Jews whom it killed were converted Jews who, according to the ruling of the Israeli court … were not Jews at all. We might add here that the Inquisition was not based on … the New Testament, but on the teachings of the Old Testament with its laws of rooting out heretics.…

Why should Jews hold every Christian today … responsible for deeds of which he is altogether innocent? Is it not only because of the false conception that all people confessing one faith are responsible for each other’s deeds? Who more than the Jews should know how wicked such an idea is? Have they not experienced horrible tribulation because malevolent people have accused and punished them for deeds which some Jews, somewhere, sometime have done or were supposed to have done?

… The greatest crime ever perpetrated against the Jewish people was the slaughter of 6 million Jews by the Germans. Yet, the State of Israel has already established cordial relations with the German people.… It seems to be easier to overlook and forgive the Nazi crimes because it is not so easy to ascribe them to Christianity, although some Jewish fanatics attribute even these horrors to Christianity because (as I read recently in one of the American Jewish publications) “these butchers were nurtured in Christian homes”.…

The State of Israel came into being with the help of Christians. There was little if any help from non-Christian countries or individuals; and up to date the State has been kept intact only with the help of Christians.… Only Christians who believe in the Bible as the Word of God also believe that the Jews have a right to possess the Land of Israel. Non-Christians consider the Jews as usurpers in Israel, and feel that the dispossessed Arabs should be assisted in regaining their land.…

These are facts well known to many of the important leaders of Israel, but … they are pressured by a small minority of obscurants who … are gaining more and more power and pushing the people back into medievalism: (1) by forcing upon the majority laws which they detest; (2) by indoctrinating hate and contempt against the civilized world which is identical with the “Christian World.”

May the Lord bless the leaders of Israel and grant them grace and courage to lead their people to reconciliation with God and mankind.

President

International Board of Jewish Missions

Atlanta, Ga.

I must confess that I am a little surprised at your reaction to the Israeli High Court decision regarding Father Daniel.…

I suspect some of the reaction in the Christian community regarding this decision springs from a theological view of the continuity between Judaism and Christianity which Jews do not share. Because of my close, fruitful, and gratifying relationship with Christians, I have a sympathetic understanding of their views, … but I believe that a sympathetic effort should also be made on the Christian side to appreciate the widely held view that a Jew who converts to Christianity has disassociated himself from the Jewish people.

I would agree with you that the situation was different in the first century; I am sure we would not agree about the reasons for this.

Interreligious Affairs Department

The American Jewish Committee

New York, N. Y.

I am writing you in response to your comments on the recent important Israeli Court decision concerning Father Daniel which raises “the provocative question—‘who is a Jew?’ ” I certainly recognize your right to your opinion and to your interpretation, but I trust that you also recognize the possibility of other views, and if not agreeing, will at least try to understand. I cannot help but feel that your conclusion: “the Hebrew-Christian is twice rejected: he is disowned because he is a Christian, and on this ground is viewed further as legally not a first-rate Jew”—does a gross injustice to the entire controversy. (I can certainly understand from your theological position why you would want to maintain a unity between the term Jew and Christian but what is at stake here from a Jewish view is the realization that the terms Jew and Christian are mutually exclusive.) The issue in the Israeli Court decision is as follows:

1. Orthodox religious law takes the position that essentially, “once a Jew always a Jew”; even the apostate remains a Jew on the basis of the hope that at some stage in his life he may see the error of his ways and return to his true faith.

2. It is true that a non-orthodox Jew does not have equal religious status as yet, but there are signs of the beginnings of a liberal Jewish movement in Israel, which indicate that it is only a matter of time before this equality is achieved. The Israeli Court decision, contrary to Orthodox law, is a sign, of this trend.

Whereas the Orthodox religious Jew could conceivably accept Father Daniel under the broadest definition of “who is a Jew?,” for non-orthodox such a definition is not conceivable. The Reform and Conservative Jew would stress that the term Jew is meaningful not as a mere identity tag, but because it stands for a specific ever-evolving religious spirit and heritage. When one becomes a Christian (whatever he was at birth) he enters a separate religious heritage. The Israeli Court was simply making this clear. Father Daniel has every right to enter Israel as any other Christian would enter.… This was all the decision meant to accomplish.

Jewish Chaplain

Sepulveda Veterans Administration Hospital

Sepulveda, Calif.

The verdict of the Israeli Court and its motivation is unfair, unreasonable, and arbitrary. It is based chiefly on prejudice against Christianity and on religious fanaticism. Christianity is as much an offspring of biblical Judaism. No one should be denied his national status merely because he chooses this or the other form of Judaism.

The implication of the verdict is that any Jew, regardless of the fact that he may deny God or scoff at all the laws of rabbinic Judaism, is, in the eyes of the Court, still a Jew, but a God-fearing, upright man like Father Daniel, born of Jewish parents, who has shown his devotion to his Jewish kinsmen by risking his own life to save theirs—such a man “desecrates the concept of Jew,” just because he believes in Jesus who was also a Son of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!

Just before the decision of the court, in a personal letter, Father Daniel stated: “I believe in the fairness and objectivity of the Judges of Israel.” We did also.…

VICTOR BUKSBAZEN

Philadelphia, Pa.

Philadelphia, Pa.

New York, N. Y.

• All are associated with the Hebrew Christian Alliance of America.—ED.

The Israel Law of Citizenship makes provision for those who wish to become citizens of Israel to do so on the basis of three years of residence in the country, not necessarily continuous residence but over the period of the previous five years. I understand that Brother Daniel, to whose case before the Israel Supreme Court you refer, has applied for naturalization as an Israel citizen under the Law of Citizenship. It is therefore quite incorrect to state … that the Israel High Court denied citizenship to Father Daniel.

First Secretary

Embassy of Israel

Washington, D. C.

• CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S editorial stressed that though a Jew Father Daniel was denied citizenship under the Israeli Law of Return, because he is a Christian Jew. He has since applied for, but has not yet received, naturalization under the Israeli Law of Citizenship.—ED.

ABRAHAM: Say, have you fellows heard about this Jesus of Nazareth?

ISAAC: Who hasn’t? I just came from Galilee. That’s all they talk about up there.

ABRAHAM: Did you actually hear him?

ISAAC: No, but our caravan passed within sight of him. We could see a big crowd on a hillside. I asked my camel driver what the excitement was, and he said Jesus of Nazareth was teaching. I would have stopped and listened, but I was down on the program for the opening prayer here and just couldn’t.

JACOB: I’ve got a classmate who lives in Capernaum. He’s heard Jesus several times, both in the street and synagogue. He’s eloquent, but does present a real problem. He’s a lot better speaker than any priest or rabbi around, although he’s a carpenter by trade.

ISAAC: So I’ve heard. It is strange.

ABRAHAM: What I can’t understand is why so many people fall for him. One man told me of a sermon he preached to a couple hundred disciples up on some mountain top. Already they are calling it “The Sermon on the Mount.” I understand it was a hodge-podge of illustrations, ancient Jewish sayings beautifully spoken but not original, and some advice of his own. No organization or form or real content.

ISAAC: Yes, I’ve heard the same criticism from men I respect. They say he just tells stories without any explanation sometimes. And you can’t pin him down. When you ask him a question he doesn’t give a straight answer. He either tells a story or asks you a question back.

ABRAHAM: Some people told me the other day they heard him tell three fables and then he just walked off. They were about a lost coin, a lost sheep, and a wastrel second son. And yet, people go for miles to hear the man.

JACOB: Well, whatever his faults, he must have something. He really packs them in.

ISAAC: Packs them out, you mean. He’s taking a lot more people out of synagogue and the Temple than he’s taking in. His congregations are all out on some hillside or in some back alley.

JACOB: I understand his own friends in Nazareth tried to kill him the first time he read from the Scripture in the synagogue there. If that’s true, I don’t blame him for preaching out-of-doors.

ABRAHAM: I don’t object so much to his methods as to his following. Most of them are uneducated—rabble more or less. They can be swayed easily by any demagogue. Practically none of the priests are going for him. You can judge a man pretty well by the kind of following he has. I think Jesus is dangerous. At least he will be if he gets out of hand.

JACOB: Perhaps, Abraham, but he hasn’t attacked the law in any way. His group are better Jews than the average. In fact, most of them live better than the law.

ABRAHAM: Well, yes and no. From what I hear he’s teaching them to live by the law of love. Sounds good. But what will the results be? The 300 rules we have will soon be superseded by a vague, meaningless emotion or feeling. People will lose their sense of direction. They need to be told what to do. Then they’re sure of themselves. They need inner assurance. This man’s giving them too much freedom for the good of the law and, in the long run, for their own inner satisfaction.

JACOB: But, Abraham, if they’re fulfilling the law in every requirement how can you fear he’ll destroy the law?

ABRAHAM: Just wait. You’re young, Jacob. If this Jesus got control of things, all the laws and customs we consider sacred would have a hard time.

ISAAC: I’m inclined to agree, Abraham. The man himself is a good man, but I’m afraid he stands for something destructive.

ABRAHAM: Another thing. He has no respect for authority. Remember, he’s only thirty-three years old. But let me tell you something that happened only last week. Three priests from the Temple here, all good friends of mine, went to investigate him. They wanted to ask him some questions. They got up to Galilee, found him, and what do you think he was doing? Talking to a bunch of children. Hundreds of them. He took each child on his lap, asked its name, placed his hand on its head, and blessed it. Why, his own disciples got sore. They rebuked him and pointed out the Temple delegation. He kept right on with the children, saying something about “forbidding them not.” My three friends had to wait so long to speak to him they missed the caravan for Jerusalem and had to wait over another day. That just shows you how much respect he has for the religious leaders of our nation.

JACOB: True, it was a foolish thing. He hurt their pride so much they’ll now do anything to destroy him. I’ll bet they turned in some report.

ISAAC: The meeting’s getting under way again. Let’s hurry and get a back seat.…

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’Sstaff of correspondents rings the globe, but does not include coverage of the world of demons. This inside report of activities in the regions below comes from the Rev. Graham R. Hodges, a Watertown, New York, minister, who somehow has gotten inside information about their strategy.

On the facing page Mr. Hodges contributes a second essay which imaginatively sketches a conversation in the religious hierarchy of New Testatment times.—ED.

Scene: Briefing room in Hades

HEAD DEVIL: We’ll now hear from the commander of the Division of Councils-Conventions-Conferences, whose work will be all-important in the sixties. Gentlemen, General Concern.

GENERAL CONCERN: (clearing his throat deeply) Before I begin I want to pay some overdue recognition and introduce to you two of my assistants who have burned the midnight brimstone these past few months—Major Address and Private Lukewarm. Actually, they’ve done most of the work while I just sat back. (applause as the two stand)

I do want to say, as our chief has indicated, that the sixties have started out in high gear in our CCC division of the Church. We are proud to report a 219 per cent increase of church meetings, with a 150 per cent average increase in national and international gatherings since 1955. We look forward to the day when the repeater delegates and employed staff will either be attending or going or returning to or from a meeting. Wash-and-wear shirts, suits, and underwear now make even a brief trip home unnecessary.

HEAD DEVIL: You might mention, General Concern, how the jet age helps.

GENERAL CONCERN: Indeed, sir. A bit of background. In the old slow days of railroad and steamship travel delegates could reflect and plan or even read advance reports as they journeyed to an occasional meeting. Jet planes eliminate any time for thought, thus making for completely planned sessions. Jets have made possible even what you might call “advance minutes” of the meeting delegates attend. Upon registration they are given a complete set of minutes containing all business, motions, secondings, and votes of the sessions they are to attend. This saves endless time and enables many a delegate who should be attending another meeting in a distant part of the nation or world to reboard his plane after initialing his “o.k.” on the advance minutes.

ALL: Hear! Hear!

HEAD DEVIL: General, I am sure they would be interested in our new specialist, Technical Sergeant Fraze Maker.

GENERAL CONCERN: Pardon me sir, I was coming to him. Sergeant Fraze Maker, seated on my right, comes from the advertising world and heads our ever busy phrase-coining department. Because of mass media, theological phrases which formerly lasted for a decade or two are now used up within several years. The constant demand for religious phrases in lectures, periodicals, and books grows heavier each year. As you know, a phrase well turned and oft repeated becomes a perfect substitute for action, especially when used in resolutions and formal policy statements. Sergeant, if you wish you may say a word about your important work.

SERGEANT FRAZE MAKER: As the General has said, the demand for catchy phrases gets heavier each year. If a scholar can turn out a fetching phrase and get it attached to his name, he’s a made man. When one gets worn out we give him another. It looks hard, but really isn’t. We’ve got some experts who used to work for greeting-card companies and soap-company advertisers.

GENERAL CONCERN: Thank you, Sergeant Fraze Maker. I must not overlook the work of Major Vestments and Colonel Protocol, who succeed more than a few times in completely taking over religious conferences, crowding out the most important business. For example, Colonel Protocol has increased the time devoted to Fraternal Greetings in a major religious gathering from ten minutes in 1940 to three hours in 1961. (applause)

HEAD DEVIL: Could you speak of Major Address’ work, General?

GENERAL CONCERN: Major Address, as you know, directs the all-important job of increasing the number and length of history-making religious speeches. We have working with us the natural inclinations of each speech-maker who is certain that his address is the most important one of the whole session and should be given adequate time. Again, we would like to report success, (applause)

HEAD DEVIL: General, as your entire staff must leave soon for an important gathering, could you remark briefly on Diversionary Funds and Diverted Attention efforts?

GENERAL CONCERN: Yes. Not the least result of the vastly increased amount of money spent on religious gatherings is the mission money diverted from its original purpose. Naturally it is hard to trace, but the final effect is lessened support for mission work.

As for Diverted Attention, which might be called the best result of all our work, we feel that local churchmen more and more regard the press reportings of religious gatherings the real work of the Church. Not what happens locally, but nationally, is the thing. Thus, the actual battlefront of the Church, namely, the local church, becomes a mere news outlet instead of news maker. But I must hurry, gentlemen, as I must see that the various jet planes converging on Rome and Geneva all get there safely. Their passengers are precious to us, and their briefcases are packed tight with policy speeches and original phrases, some never heard before. (applause)

The session breaks up.

END

Those of us who read our New Testaments beginning with the four Gospels need to remember that current scholarship finds in the Epistles the earliest writings preserved in the New Testament. Accordingly its consideration of the birth of Jesus starts with Paul’s references thereto: Galatians 4:4; Romans 1:3, 4 and 8:3, and Philippians 2:5–11.

In Galatians four, Paul is talking about our redemption from the bondage of the law and its curse into the freedom of the sons of God. Here he says that God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law that he might redeem those under the law. Thus he teaches the Divine Fatherhood and the human motherhood. He mentions neither a divine mother nor a human father.

Sonship By The Spirit

He declares, moreover, that our sonship is wrought by “the Spirit of His Son” and uses as an allegory the two sons of Abraham, one born according to the flesh, the other born under the promise “after the Spirit” (vss. 6, 22–31). In this context, the phrase the Spirit of His Son reaches its full implication only on the assumption that the Spirit acted in his most eminent way in God’s sending forth his Son born of a woman, of which action even his mighty works in making us sons of the Father and in Isaac’s being born according to God’s promise are but partial analogies.¹Likewise John 1:13 (cf. 3:3–8) seems to be built upon the same analogy of the Virgin Birth of Jesus. Furthermore, several of the fathers, including Irenaeus and Tertullian, whose writings were earlier than any extant manuscript of this part of John, used texts which carry this verse in the singular, thus: “in the Name of Him who was born not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man but of God.” This reading is accepted by such scholars as C. C. Torrey and O. Cullman.

Again in the context, in Galatians 4:6 (cf. Rom. 8:15), Paul states that God’s sending the Spirit of his Son into our hearts enables us to cry “Abba, Father.” Now the fact that this word also occurs in Mark 14:36, which in its definitive written form is dated later than Galatians, does not prove that Mark fabricated this as part of a Gethsemane legend to justify Paul’s theology. So able a scholar as J. Jeremias accepts this as Jesus’ own word which Paul quotes. But if the Apostle cites a word from Jesus, may he not in the same context have in mind that event by which he who already had a divine Father received also a human mother, which same event was later recorded in detail by Matthew and by Luke?

In Romans 8:3 Paul stresses the wonder of the fact that God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to deal adequately with the awful reality of sin. In Romans 1:3, 4 the Gospel concerns God’s Son, who is of the seed of David according to the flesh, but the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of Holiness. Ignatius (Smyr. 1:1, Eph. 18), understands Paul’s contrast here between the seed of David according to the flesh and the Son of God according to the Spirit as carrying with it as its necessary presupposition “born of a virgin,” even as Matthew, Luke, and the Creed unite conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary. It should also be kept in mind that in Romans 1:4 the divine side of Christ is designated in a mighty manner by the Resurrection from the dead, even as on the same miraculous note of the Resurrection Paul begins the Epistle to the Galatians. Both when he is quoting the primitive kerygma (as in Rom. 1:3, 4 and 1 Cor. 15:4, 5) and when he is writing without reference to that tradition (Gal. 1:1), he glories in the supernatural resurrection of Christ.

In Philippians 2:5–11 Paul cites a hymn or a creed from the primitive kerygma. According to this summary, a preexisting Divine Person was born in the likeness of men. He who was fundamentally in the form of God took the form of a servant. He did not like Adam grasp after equality with God but emptied or poured out himself unto death (cf. Isa. 53:12) for others. This presentation of him as an Eternal Person ought to alert us to the realization that Paul and the primitive disciples he is quoting did not think of our Lord’s birth in the same way as they did of the births of temporal persons. The stupendous miracle of the Incarnation here proclaimed implies a presupposition on the part of Paul and his precursors which is only adequately accounted for in that physical miracle of His birth found in Matthew and in Luke. Three years after his conversion, Paul conferred with “James, the brother of the Lord” (Gal. 1:19). Certainly Luke shared with Paul the fruits of his research into the beginnings of Christianity. And his account of the Virgin Birth makes intelligible how the Jesus whom Paul preached had only a Divine Father and only a human mother.

Sinless Life And Sinless Birth

Likewise the permanent dwelling in Christ of all the fullness of the Godhead in a bodily way (Col. 2:9) is highly congruent with his being conceived of the Holy Spirit (cf. Athanasius, contr. Arian, III.26.29–31). The plan of God provided that as Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners by his sinless life of obedience even unto death (1 Tim. 1:15; Rom. 5:19; Phil. 2:8), so the Holy Spirit averted from the virgin’s conceiving of Him the sin which marks sexual conception (Ps. 51:5). Thus being raised for our justification (Rom. 4:25), when he is made unto us righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30), God imputes unto us or clothes us with the wholly spotless garment of his righteousness.

Of course, if one approaches the subject on a purely naturalistic premise, then the Virgin Birth could not have occurred and the hypothesis of a legend to fit Paul’s Gospel may be the most reasonable assumption. But Paul is not anti-supernaturalistic when it comes to the things of Jesus Christ. He entered the Christian life by a supernatural encounter with the risen Lord Jesus, he glorified in the power of His resurrection, he lived in the blessed hope of His parousia. Accordingly, there is nothing in Paul’s Epistles, Gospel, or life which warrants the assumption that a legend must be constructed by Matthew and Luke to account for his teachings. Rather it is more in accord with Paul’s affirmations, his citations of the primitive kerygma, and his presuppositions to assume that he, like Luke, received from the first disciples and held as a fact the Virgin Birth of Jesus.

Probable Cause For Silence

If one wishes to go into the question as to why Paul and Mark do not explicitly mention the Virgin Birth, we are left to our surmises. And yet believing extrapolation is more likely to be in accord with the primitive community of faith than is naturalistic conjecture. It is probable that the primitive narrative and the passages speaking of the birth of Jesus which Paul cites from the primitive kerygma make no explicit mention of the Virgin Birth in order to protect Mary during her lifetime. The first and third Gospels were presumably written after her death. The inept way in which the opening of Mark refers to Isaiah, according to the critical text ascribing to Isaiah passages which are cited from Malachi and from Isaiah, could mean that he also had other passages from Isaiah in mind, such as 7:14, which is used in Matthew 1:23. When the Resurrection was proclaimed the unbelieving council of priests and elders paid the soldiers to say that the disciples stole the body of Jesus (Matt. 28:11–15). An imperial rescript from the middle of the first century has been discovered at Nazareth decreeing death for anyone who steals a corpse. This could well have been used by Herod in his execution of James and his plan to execute Peter (Acts 12:1–3). The third member of the inner circle was John. As a result of these acts inspired by the animosity of unbelieving Jews, the disciples may well have asked John to leave Jerusalem with Mary, whom Jesus had committed to his care. And in the same connection they could well have determined to keep even more complete silence on the Virgin Birth lest that lead to Mary’s death, as the proclamation of the Resurrection had led to the death of James.

END

Three of the Twelve Tribes are described as seafaring people in early biblical times. Judges 5:17 chides Dan for dwelling in ships, and Asher for its maritime habitat. Genesis 49:13 depicts Zebulun as nautical in Sidonian style. To be sure, Israel was destined to become less sea-minded as time went on (with notable exceptions such as Solomon’s reign), but 25 per cent of the Tribes were sea people according to the biblical text itself.

For reasons that we need not delve into now, scholarship tends to be geared to the tacit assumption that Old Testament Palestine (unlike Roman Palestine) was not a Mediterranean country. Yet the Mediterranean factor in the Old Testament is comparable in magnitude with the Mesopotamian and Egyptian factors. Therein lies the most important aspect of Old Testament research in the foreseeable future.

The only way I know to pursue biblical studies is to take the text on its own terms against the background of authentic collateral information from the world of the Bible. I am not in the least concerned with schools of thought or with the theories of influential scholars.

Genesis 10 charts for us the geographic and ethnic horizons of the Hebrews. In addition to the Asiatic and African Near East, it definitely includes the Aegean and the Greek world. The islanders embrace the Caphtorim of Crete and the Kittim of Cyprus.

The Caphtorians of Palestine include the Philistines (e.g., Amos 9:7) who appear in the Bible as linguistically Semitized. In fact the distinct implication of Scripture is that even the earliest waves of Philistines (to say nothing of the last large wave around 1200 B.C.) were already Semitized. The Philistine King of Gerar in the days of Abraham and Isaac bears the pure Hebrew name of Abimelech. Moreover, Hebrews and Philistines never require the service of interpreters for intercommunication. The Bible mentions interpreters for communication with Egyptians or Mesopotamians but never with the Philistines of Caphtor, for the simple reason that a language closely akin to biblical Hebrew had long been the main language of Minoan Crete.

It is no surprise then to find that the Minoan inscriptions are in a Semitic language resembling Hebrew. When it first crossed my mind that this might be the case, I cannot say. But it is a matter of record that in my Ugaritic Handbook (p. 204) published in 1947, I cautiously asked concerning Ugaritic literature, which is quite close to the Hebrew: “And who can at present prove or deny that such an unknown quantity as Caphtor influenced Ugaritic literarily?”

In 1947, Minoan script was a dark mystery. But a young English amateur, Michael Ventris, was brooding over it. He was destined to achieve success in deciphering the later form of the script called “Linear B.” He had been completely wrong in surmising that it was related to Etruscan. But he searched relentlessly for the truth, and realized that his Etruscan hypothesis had led him to a dead end because it was false. Then he assumed that the language of the Linear B texts of Crete and southern Greece was Greek. This guess—so self-evident in retrospect—was right, and from that moment his efforts were crowned with success. Ventris’ phonetic values for the signs of Linear B Greek were in the main applicable to the earlier language of Linear A Minoan, as was evident from proper names appearing in both sets of inscriptions. The fact that such names as “George” or “Maurice” occur in both French and English texts shows that while the two languages are different, the values of the letters are more or less the same in French and English. The same holds for Greek Linear B and Minoan Linear A.

In 1956 when Ventris and Chadwick published their Documents in Mycenaean Greek, I was enabled to make the decisive step toward the decipherment of Minoan. A Linear A Minoan tablet consisting of pictures of pots with their special names spelled out over them captured my attention. Three out of five of the legible pot-names were good Semitic: su-pu, su-pa-la, and ka-ro-pa looked sufficiently like the Semitic pot-names written consonantally as SP, SPL, and KRP to encourage me to pursue the possibility that Minoan was Semitic. The word for “all” was ku-lo, the same as Semitic kull, “all.” Two correctly identified Semitic words (u, “and,” and ku-ni-su, “emmer wheat”) known in East Semitic induced me to stress the East Semitic affinities of Minoan. This turned out to be mistaken because both words are also West Semitic, if one knows where to find them off the beaten path in West Semitic.

Toward the end of 1961, an edition of the Minoan texts appeared with new photographs and hand-drawn copies. A cult object dedicated to the chief god of the Minoans (with the good West Semitic name Yasha-shalam, “he who gives shalom or peace”) contained the typically West Semitic words le, “to,” ki, “so that,” and qiryat, “city.” The text reads “To Yashashalam—so that the city may thrive” in unmistakable West Semitic that any intermediate student of Hebrew should be able to follow without difficulty.

Now that I had pinpointed the character of Minoan—as not merely Semitic as I had maintained from the start, but specifically as Northwest Semitic closely related to Phoenician and Hebrew—things moved swiftly. Early in 1962, I tackled four Eteocretan inscriptions written in Greek letters between the fifth and third centuries B.C. in the pre-Greek language of Crete. Scholars had gotten exactly nowhere with Eteocretan because they never asked the right question: Could it be Semitic? But since everyone was right in assuming that Eteocretan was the descendant of Minoan, and since I knew that Minoan was Northwest Semitic, I had the answer. Three texts from the Cretan town of Praisos turned out to be funerary. Invocations, in the name of the deceased, to the future passerby appeared in these texts; for example nas iro u kl es, “the people of his city or any man” (in slightly Hebraized form nash iro u kol ish) and et me u mar krk o kl es u es, “with whosoever he be—lord of a fortress or any man at all” (in slightly Hebraized form et mi hu mar krak o kol ish u ish). Now it is a fact that most people have difficulty in recognizing familiar words expressed in different symbols. Personally I feel that a normally bright undergraduate at the end of his first semester of Hebrew-l ought to be able to see anything as simple as this. I doubt that any professional Hebraist lacks the knowledge to see this. But I have abundant reason to conclude that many a Hebraist lacks the mental flexibility to grasp these simple facts. It is for this reason that in my first articles on these new developments, I welcomed “particularly young Semitists, into a new and challenging field” (Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 21, 1962, p. 210). This does not mean that none of the veteran scholars will see the light. The elder statesman of German Old Testament scholars—Otto Eissfeldt—was quick to see that I was right in establishing the Northwest Semitic character of Minoan. But anyone who has followed Eissfeldt’s publications, showing his keen awareness of Phoenician influence, will not be surprised. The leading Czech Old Testament authority—Stanislaus Segert—was equally fast in catching on. Moreover, he is fortunate to be among academic colleagues in Prague who are prepared for the new developments by the great Bedrich Hrozny, who deciphered Hittite.

Falsehood is a blind alley, whereas truth opens a thousand doors and is sooner or later confirmed in many ways. In October, 1962, a bilingual from Dreros, Crete, reconfirmed what was already crystal clear. The Dreros bilingual repeats the same text in Eteocretan and Greek. Someone makes a dedication “to his mother,” (tai) matri tai a (wtou) in the dialectal Greek corresponding to lmo in the dialectal Semitic. For those who know only the classical languages, te(i) metri te(i) autou and l-immo should ring the bell. The text of this bilingual—like all of my material—is in press.

There are still more texts—including a bilingual from Cyprus—that bear on the problem, but I have told enough to make matters clear to any open-minded student of Hebrew and Greek who prefers to follow facts rather than some academic party line.

Effect On Biblical Studies

The Minoan and Eteocretan (and in all probability also the Eteo-Cypriote) inscriptions will change the course of Hebrew linguistics. But more than this, the effect of the new development on the study of the Bible will be profound. Let us see what is involved:

The decipherment of Minoan confirms a fact that was recognized long ago by individual scholars such as Victor Bérard and Raymond Weill (to mention only two), but these scholars were shouted down and discredited by the exponents of compartmentalization. The essential truth is stated in Genesis 10: the cradle of our civilization was One World and not a compartmentalized Near East. But run-of-the-mill minds cannot grasp great and simple truths. Everything must be fragmentized for them into pieces small enough for them to comprehend. In 1894 a German savant named K. J. Beloch—with vast knowledge and a small soul—propounded the doctrine that there could be no Semitic influence on early Greece, and that even when the Greek sources tell us of the Phoenician impact on early Greece, the ancient Greek authors were in error.

Beloch won the day. In fact his influence can still be felt, in spite of the mounting evidence to the contrary. Greek tradition tells us quite definitely that Minos, King of Crete, was the son of a Phoenician princess Europa; that Europa’s brother, Cadmos, conquered Thebes and introduced the art of writing; that the Danaoi (as the ancient Greeks are often called) were descendants of the Semite Danaos who conquered southern Greece; that Phoenicians occupied the islands of Thera, Thassos, Cythera, and so on. I could lengthen the testimony of the ancient Greek authors to the effect that the Phoenicians were a major factor in what became the Greek world, but it is unnecessary. Many scholars sensed the real situation. M. P. Nilsson (Homer and Mycenae, 1933, p. 131) stated, “It is, however, a fairly common opinion that the Phoenicians of Homer are in reality the Minoans.” Well, it turns out that the discarded “common opinion” was right. The salient fact to remember is that prior to 1500 B.C. the entire East Mediterranean—islands and mainland shores—was dominated by the same Phoenician-type sea-traders. Throughout the Middle Minoan period and down to the fifteenth century (i.e., from about 2000–1450 B.C.) the hub of that culture was Crete Only later was it forced to center itself on Phoenician cities such as Sidon and Tyre on the Syro-Palestinian coast.

A Common Denominator

What emerges from this panorama of history is the fact that Hebrew and Greek civilizations arose on different segments of the same Semitic-dominated East Mediterranean order. Palestine remained Semitic. The Aegean became Greek. But both had been part of the same cultural sphere before Priam ruled Troy and before Moses led his people to freedom. This means that early Hebrew and Greek literatures have a common denominator and should be used to illuminate each other.

How much the modern West is an outgrowth of the ancient East Mediterranean is reflected at every turn. We have a seven-day week with roots in the East Mediterranean. Where it first started is hard to say, but the Mesopotamians reflect seven-day time spans in their early literature such as the Gilgamesh Epic. Ugaritic literature—written before the Trojan War and the Age of Moses—has seven-day periods built into it. Greece and Israel got the seven-day reckoning from the same East Mediterranean milieu. We of the West have inherited it simultaneously from Israel and from pagan Europe. The Greco-Roman heritage lingers on in the pagan names of Sunday, Monday, and Saturday—named after the Sun, Moon, and Saturn. From Genesis we get the same seven-day system, but with a difference: the institution of the Sabbath.

If we compare Israel of the Age of the Literary Prophets with Periclean Athens, of course they appear poles apart. But not so if we go back to the days when Israel and Greece were closer to their common origins. Achilles and Samson had careers within a century of the year 1100 B.C. in different segments of the same East Mediterranean milieu. Achilles was no more a Greek philosopher than Samson was a Hebrew prophet. Both were fighting leaders in the same general heroic age. Their social climate had much in common. Both of them caused the death of many men by their common pattern of conduct. Achilles’ wrath over a woman taken away from him did not subside until he had sent many brave souls into Hades. When Samson’s wife was taken away from him (Judges 15:1, 2) he went into a rage that was not assuaged until he had smitten many a Philistine hip on thigh (15:6–8). Neither Achilles nor Samson had the middle-class virtue of cooperation. Both were heroes who would stand alone against the world. Even Samson’s long hair followed the same mode as fostered by his contemporaries, the long-haired Achaeans of Achilles.

Ancient Greek tradition saw in the Iliad and Odyssey the two halves of the same great Homeric epic. By the time the critics got through with it, not only did the Iliad and Odyssey represent entirely different stages of civilization, but each was chopped into different sources corresponding more or less to the J, E, D, and P of Pentateuchal criticism. For instance, the marvelously constructed story of the Odyssey was broken into three separate, originally different compositions: the story of Odysseus’ return, the story of Telemachus’ search, and the story of Penelope at home in Ithaca. The combining of three allegedly different documents into the finest narrative poem ever written was explained as the work of a compiler.

The arguments of the critics looked good. After all, the Iliad deals with a fighting aristocracy; the Odyssey is the tale of coming home to a plantation. The society of the Iliad is heroic; the society of the Odyssey was said to belong to a different age with more sedentary pursuits. Actually, however, both epics reflect the same society: the Iliad, during military operations; the Odyssey, between wars. This is precisely what we find in Scripture when we compare the books of Judges and Ruth. In Judges we see the warring aristocracy of Israel during campaigns. In Ruth we see the agricultural pursuits on the warlord’s plantation between campaigns. The story unfolded “in the days when the Judges ruled” Israel (Ruth 1:1). Boaz is rightly called a warlord (gibbor hayil in Ruth 2:1). Between campaigns he administered his large estate. The upper class in heroic Israel as well as in heroic Greece enjoyed large farms in exchange for military service.

New Confidence In The Record

It is possible that our grandparents found the truth in such matters through simple faith. Since Ruth opens with the statement “it came to pass when the Judges were judging,” they asked no questions and had no further problems. Students of my generation, however, studied Scripture in a different atmosphere. For my teachers, the narrative in Ruth had little to do with the period of the Judges, and for them the opening verse was meant only to mislead. But new developments tend to inspire confidence in the traditions.

The scene on the Shield of Achilles described in book 18 of the Iliad is a single artistic composition. Its two main subscenes are a city at peace and a city at war. Life was envisaged as divided between war and peace (though the latter is more accurately defined as the time between wars) corresponding to the Iliad (or Judges) on the one hand, and the Odyssey (or Ruth) on the other. In addition the Shield has still further detail. Its description opens and closes with the cosmos: the sun, the moon and the stars, and the cosmic river, Oceanos. It tells of agriculture, herding, and sacrifice. In the city at peace litigation is going on, as well as a wedding. In other words, a single composition included war and peace, the structure of the universe, social and legal institutions, modes of producing the means of subsistence, sacrifice, and so on.

With this background let us turn to the Pentateuch. Traditional Judaism, from remote antiquity, never doubted that the Five Books of Moses formed one perfect opus. The critics, however, came along and asked how the Pentateuch could be a single work, when it deals with the universe, law, agriculture, herding, hunting, sacrifice, social institutions, war and peace. The Shield of Achilles answers the question: life is made up of just such elements. The Pentateuch, being the perfect book, told the ancient Hebrew all he had to know about the universe, history, human relations, religion—in short, everything essential. I cannot think of a book that has fulfilled its momentous mission so grandly. It teaches us that all men are brothers and created in the image of God. It embraces the Ten Commandments and the Covenant. It gives us not only law but the highest ethical and moral principles, including the precept to love one’s neighbor as oneself. It imposes on us the duty to meditate on God’s words day and night, and to teach them diligently to our children. Of course, parts of the Pentateuch stem from earlier material. The text itself tells us so (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Nov. 23, 1959, p. 133). But the kind of mentality that can see only a jumble of parts in a great unity is unworthy of so precious a heritage.

Objections may be raised to what I have just written. Some may say: But Deuteronomy is in a completely different style from the earlier books. The Hebrews called Deuteronomy “The Repetition of the Law” (Deuteronomy 17:18), which might perhaps be rendered more intelligibly as “The Recapitulation of the Law.” Similarly the last book of the Homeric epic (the twenty-fourth book of the Odyssey), before bringing the story to a close, gives a recapitulation including the Iliad in direct discourse, told by famous participants in the Trojan War. This is pretty much what we find in Deuteronomy: as the story of Moses is concluded, we have, in the form of direct discourse spoken by Moses, the recapitulation of the Law. Much that is new is added; much is repeated (e.g., the Ten Commandments). The thing to note is that the style of the Bible world calls for a summation or, to use the Hebrew phrase, a Mishne ha-Torah, “Repetition of the Law.” To put things differently: the recapitulation we find in the Mosaic and Homeric books confirms the antiquity of each other’s style. That these early Greek and Hebrew classics differ in content and spirit is too obvious to require exposition here, but that they reflect the same East Mediterranean common denominator at many a turn should be equally clear by now.

The Law of Moses embraces a sharp reaction against East Mediterranean religion. The Pentateuch repeatedly tells us not to do what the surrounding nations do. While all the nations practiced idolatry, the Pentateuch strictly forbids it. The cult of the bull (including that of the young bull) was widespread throughout the area. It was entrenched in Egypt (note the Apis cult) and Ugarit (where El is called “The Bull”), but nowhere more than in Minoan Crete, where the bull played a tremendous role in the life of the people.

The family of Moses, as well as the Hebrews in general, had been involved in bull-worship. When Israel sinned she tended to lapse back into the paganism from which she was gradually emerging. No sooner did Moses turn his back than Israel fashioned and worshiped the golden calf (actually “young bull”) under Aaron’s personal supervision. When the Northern Kingdom of Israel went astray, the golden calf was worshiped at Bethel and Dan (1 Kings 12:28, 29). The cult at Dan was set up by Jonathan, the son of Gershom, who was in turn the son of Moses (see Judges 18:30, where the scribes have inserted a raised N in the Hebrew text to alter the name of Moses to Manasseh). Gershom the son of Moses is well known from the Pentateuchal narratives (e.g., Exodus 2:22). The fact is that Moses, who gave historical monotheism to the world and taught future generations to shun idolatry, was unable to control his own brother, let alone his own grandson, from worshiping the golden calf. The Mediterranean aspect of Old Testament studies explains why of all idols, Israel repeatedly lapsed into the worship of the young bull. It was deep-seated.

The ancient connections between Israel and Greece were well recognized by the Greeks and Jews down into Greco-Roman times. Arius, King of Sparta, stated that his people possessed written records showing that Spartans and Jews shared a common ancestor (1 Maccabees 12:21). Josephus assures us that the Jews of his day also had documents confirming the statement of Arius. This claim (affirmed by Greek and Jew alike) may be explained because the Greeks as “Danaoi” claimed descent from Danaos, who was equated with Dan in the minds of both peoples. The Semitic identification of Danaos, and the sea-connection of the Danites, prevent us from brushing aside the traditions of I Maccabees and Josephus as foundationless.

Tacitus goes so far as to pass on a tradition current in his day that the Jews came from Crete via Northeast Africa (Histories 5:2) and that some of the Jewish institutions (specifically the Sabbath) were of Idaean (i.e., Cretan) origin (Histories 5:4).

The reader who wants more information about the Mediterranean common denominator underlying Greece and Israel can find it in my book Before the Bible.

On The Dead Sea Scrolls

Another important aspect of biblical study is the field of the Dead Sea Scrolls—especially those from Qumran. They provide new texts giving us first-hand insight to a Jewish sect in Palestine during the ministry of Jesus. They also shed important light on the lower criticism of the Old Testament, illuminating such matters as spelling, grammar, and variant wording. For Old Testament study, I would say that the Scrolls have the limitations imposed by the fact that they all come from after the close of Old Testament times. For the Intertestamental period, they are of direct importance. For New Testament, they are valuable for background, but they do not change our basic understanding of the New Testament books.

The decipherment of Minoan is of a more fundamental order, not because of the character of the texts themselves but because they bridge the worlds of Israel and Hellas from before the emergence of historic Israel (i.e., Israel as reflected in the Pentateuch) and of historic Greece (i.e., as portrayed in Homer). Indeed the Semitic character of Minoan is touching off a drastic reappraisal of Hebrew and Greek origins and, by the same token, a rewriting of the origins of Western culture. I would say that nothing in the Scrolls is as important as the Minoan bridge that brings Homer and Bible to bear on each other.

Homer And The Scriptures

Homeric literature deals with a warring aristocracy belonging to the kingly class. Rules of succession were flexible, but kingship was open only to members of the ruling class. Despite social differences between heroic Israel and Greece, many basic features are shared in common. It thus turns out that in the narratives of heroic Israel (as in Homer), the only people who count are those of the kingly class. The same holds for the two epics of Ugarit: both Kret and Daniel are rulers. In Israel, Abraham and Sarah are not only the progenitors of a people; they are the founders of a royal line. The divine promise to Abraham includes the significant detail that kings shall issue forth from him (Genesis 17:6). Moreover, Sarah is the mother of kings in accordance with God’s promise (Genesis 17:16). The royal aspect of the patriarchal narratives was brought to the fore by collateral information from Homer.

It is current academic doctrine that the Judges were elevated to the position of rulers by inspiration alone. By bringing the character of Homeric society to bear on the problem, it has become quite clear that the Judges always came from the ruling class, at least on their father’s side. Inspiration to rule could elevate those on the lowest rungs of the ladder of the aristocracy, but it never descended on those whose fathers came from lower classes in the heroic age. Jephthah may have been the son of a socially low woman, but through his father, Gilead, he was a gibbor hayil: a member of the warlord class (Judges 11:1).

No one ever questioned the Jewishness of Jesus. His opponents, however, did question his right to be King of the Jews. The first chapter of the New Testament, therefore, deals with the genealogy of Jesus, to establish the legitimacy of his kingly office. It would be interesting for New Testament scholars to probe the possibility that tracing Jesus through David all the way back to Abraham was prompted by the desire to trace him back not so much to the first Jew, but to the first king of the Jews. The Septuagint of Genesis 23:6 designates to Abraham the term basileus, “king,” which is the royal title applied to Jesus in the Greek Gospels.

Arnold Toynbee in reviewing Before the Bible agrees that my “demolition of the previous partition wall between Greek and Hebrew studies will endure” (London Observer, Dec. 16, 1962). He also notes that “these partition walls are built of intellectual rubble, but the rubble is compacted with prejudice, and this is as hard as the best cement ever used by Roman architects.”

A learned Talmudist (Professor Zeitlin) specializing precisely in the period of the Scrolls considers the Scrolls to be a hoax, even as an erudite Hellenist (Professor Beattie) has seen fit to deny the validity of Ventris’ decipherment of Linear B. If Professor Albright (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Jan. 18, 1963, p. 359) wishes to follow in their footsteps and be an opponent of the decipherment of Minoan and Eteocretan, he may do so at the peril of his reputation for critical judgment in the Old Testament field.

This is not the first time he has been wrong about my work. He did everything he could to prevent my writing the Ugaritic Grammar. In reviewing the book, however, he showed a bigness of spirit that all of us admire. Professor Albright admitted in print that he had been wrong in discouraging me and magnanimously paid my work the following tribute: “Gordon’s Ugaritic Grammar is of greater lasting importance for OT research than any dozen assorted recent commentaries taken together” (Journal of Biblical Literature, 60, 1941, pp. 438 f.).

The well-known maxim of G. E. Lessing, that the “accidental truths of history can never be the proof of the necessary truths of reason,” had a clearly negative bearing upon the total question of revelation. The obvious fact that Christianity rests upon events which occurred in time and space served to put it into sharp antithesis to any form of religion which claimed to rest upon, and to confine itself to, truths independent of historical facts. The rationalism of Lessing’s day has, of course, fallen into discredit; but the central fallacy of his argument has been retained by forms of thought which are not directly related to rationalism.

Forms of “Christian” thought which disallow the validity of the Christian revelation-claim are finding themselves involved in fresh ways with the question of the relevance of historical fact for their systems. These forms share with the rationalism of the eighteenth century a quest for integrity, no less than a desire for some form of “universality.” Total creedlessness has proved to be unsatisfactory, while reason itself has been subjected to the most rigid criticism. History itself has been treated with increasing caution, particularly at the point of the alleged possibility of completely objective history.

Movements in biblical criticism have sought, in varying degrees, to reduce the narratives of the biblical record to terms of a purely natural form of historical events. The success of these attempts has proved to be less spectacular than critics of fifty years ago would have dreamed. So long as the narratives were accorded historical integrity at all, they had a remarkable vitality, a remarkable ability to reassert themselves in the midst of critical denials.

It needs to be noted that historicism itself has not been called into question by much of critical scholarship, but only certain types of historicism. In general, the pages of historical narrative which deal with usual and “natural” events have occasioned little concern. It has been the historical documents which purport to tell of supernatural and “saving” events which have compelled many theologians to take a long and jaundiced look. In the light of this, Lessing’s dictum with reference to “accidental” or contingent “truths of history” calls forth the observation that it is not the contingent and the relational in history per se which is held to be irrelevant to religious truth, but rather certain kinds of contingent events.

It was when Christians began to emphasize the historical reality of events which lay so far outside of the commonly accepted pattern of the “natural” as to suggest that they issued from a special and unusual form of divine activity that the several advocates of modern forms of rationalism became concerned. In connection with the method of much of contemporary biblical interpretation, Otto A. Piper suggests that “a great deal of modern interpretation of the Gospels still follows the pattern of eighteenth century rationalism” (Theology Today, XIX, 3, 327).

This is another way of saying that modern scholars have assumed for themselves the ability to know a priori the quality of the necessary (and perhaps absolute) truths of religion, and thus to be able to sit in infallible judgment upon the “accidental” truths of biblical history. Methodologies at this point will vary. Lessing held Jesus to be a human being, but one who possessed the faculty of reason in a superlative measure. Thus his teaching was regarded by this eighteenth-century thinker as marking a new high level in man’s approximation of the truth. Events recorded in Scripture, however, which would seem to support a view of His supernatural origin or divine person were held to be simply irrelevant.

This same motif of irrelevancy is applied to the contingent events recorded in Holy Writ which seem beyond the usual operation of the world of nature by the interpretative school headed by Rudolph Bultmann. To this scholar and his followers. Modern Man becomes the measure for the thinkability of a given historically-recorded event. That which lies beyond the ken of his usual experience is then regarded as without meaning for him, and hence irrelevant for our time.

Yet another application of the principle of reason’s ability to decide the validity or non-validity of the contingent events of history which lie beyond the quality-scope of the usual and the natural is that of the “kerygma-type” of interpretation, by which it is held that it is only a message which can possibly be relevant for Modern Man. This message is held to be derivable from a historical reductionism, by which only existential factors are recognized as meaningful. Applied to the Christian faith, this frequently narrows the range of the possibly-relevant to one pivotal event in the career of the Church—usually the Incarnation or the Resurrection.

Yet another contemporary treatment of the contingent events described in the Four Gospels is that centering in the assertion that they contain, not history as it is usually understood, but Heilsgeschichte, or saving history. This motif is a modern construct, which in its pure form asserts that the application of the usual positive norm of time has no place in the interpretation of “holy history,” whose movement is upon a plane quite different from that of positive history.

A final attempt to deal with the relation of positive history to theology is taking shape in the form of a “commitment theology” which begins with a retreat from all forms of rational footing, including a reliance upon historical facts. It holds, then, that the final and unassailable ground upon which the Protestant must place his feet is that of an irrational commitment, an abdication of rational responsibility for content of religious faith. The only intellectual commitment which is relevant is a commitment to the methodology of criticism, which “hopes against hope” that this will take him beyond reason and beyond history to something ultimate. It is difficult to distinguish between this and historical nihilism.

Beware The Vices Of Preaching!

Let’s be difficult, preacher-brothers! Your tart, if paradoxical, rejoinder is, “That’s easy.” But perhaps we are not thinking of the same thing. What is harder than to catch ourselves in those pulpit vices that mar our preaching? “Be willing to ‘unlearn,’ and especially to cure yourself of noticeable faults,” urged Dr. James Black in The Mystery of Preaching.

Easy? One wonders if the man who says it has seriously tried.

Our inventory of these “noticeable faults” will be restricted to those that fall under the head of sermon delivery. Perhaps another time we can tackle those which are linked more particularly with the preacher’s personality or with the organization of the sermon.

Chief among the mischief-makers are, quite obviously, the Speech Culprits.

1. Poor volume control. Speaking too softly is an imposition on the courtesy of the hearers, while speaking too loudly is an affront to their dignity. The aim should be (assuming normal hearing) to make every person present hear every word uttered. Experienced speakers have found it helpful, when speaking to a large congregation in an assembly room to which they are unaccustomed, to fix attention on some person among those farthest away from the pulpit and so address him that he will hear without strain. The opposite of “too soft” is just plain “too loud.” “Scream no more” was John Wesley’s pithy, peremptory counsel to one of his younger preachers. Few preachers worth their salt can proclaim the Gospel without an elevation of voice, but this scarcely justifies a verbal version of assault and battery on the congregation. Noise is not to be equated with anointing. Unction yields to no exact measurement in decibels. One small but important point often overlooked: it is slightly maddening to a congregation when the preacher lets his voice drop low at the end of his sentences. The sentence-ending should be handled with change of pitch, not an extreme change of volume.

2. Slovenly enunciation. We in the United States are notorious for this defect of speech, and far too often our ministers rise little, if at all, above the prevailing cultural level. Let the preacher put himself to this test: “How do I actually pronounce the phrase ‘months and months’?” Most of us, most of the time, will be found saying it “munsenmunse,” all run together in an atrociously unarticulated mumble! My own experience, especially that which has come through conversation with the hard-of hearing, fully confirms James Black’s contention that “it is not loudness so much as good articulation that makes a speaker heard.” Needless to say, no one has any orchids to offer to the pedantic brother who has swung to the opposite extreme, and, like some telephone operators, pronounces “three” as if it were spelled “tha-ree” and “nine” as if it deserved an additional syllable, “nine-a.”

3. Faulty pitch and pace. Wesley, in a fascinating and perceptive passage, warns his younger ministers against getting stuck with a “tone” in their preaching. The several tones against which he inveighs include the “womanish, squeaking tone,” the “singing or canting tone,” the “high, swelling, theatrical tone,” and (who has not heard it?) “an odd, whimsical, whining tone.” The answer to all of this is, of course, the practice of modulation. The trained voice of the speaker, no less than that of the singer, is capable of organ-like control. It is difficult, I believe, to improve on this advice: speak naturally, with a variety of pitch and pace that will alike keep the voice of the preacher and the ears of the listeners from tiring. At all costs, shun a monotone.

Add now to the speech culprits the Gesture Goblins If pulpit gesturing is an art, it yields to no rule of thumb. I heard Billy Sunday and I heard George Truett. Those who have had a like experience will know how complete was the disparity between them at this point. Sunday could be dervish-like—wildly uninhibited. Truett was more often statuesque. The gesture to be avoided is the meaningless one, or the artificial one (borrowed from some other preacher), or the excessively theatrical one (“excessive” meaning that there is neither mood nor situation to justify the exorbitant piece of acting). Obviously, the purely “manneristic” movement of the hands should be guarded against carefully. Here the gowned brethren have an advantage over the ungowned: they are not seen nervously fingering a watch-chain or (more often in the old days of cutaways) sending their roving hands feelingly over their not infrequently ample abdomens. Let preachers remember that visible details have strange power over listeners. The hand can be friend or foe to sermonic effectiveness.

And, finally, a word about the Redundancy Snares. For example, it is pointless to say, “Let me illustrate this.” Proceed with the illustration. If it is worth shucks it will be seen for what it is. Don’t begin preaching with an apology. If you are ill prepared, trust God’s mercy to help you make the best of it. Let God and the people judge in the end how poor or peerless the sermon was. Rarely say, “And now in conclusion,” and never say it twice! It is that sort of guile that has incited some cynic to define an optimist as “a man who reaches for his hat when the preacher says, ‘Now in conclusion.’ ” Be a life-long student of economy with words. Wordiness is usually the sign of shallowness.

Prayer is indispensable to the making of a preacher. But so is the verbal pruning knife!

PAUL S. REES

He that hath sent me is with me; he hath not left me alone; I do always the things that are pleasing to him (John 8:29; read vv. 12–36).

In a brief phrase our Lord sets up the perfect ideal for a man’s life. He makes the stupendous claim that he himself has lived up to this ideal, and that he has done so because of his relation to the Father. So he sets up the loftiest ideal for any believer today: “I do always the things that are pleasing to God.” This ideal has much to do with four notes in the music of Jesus’ life.

I. Spirituality, a term that needs redemption from abuse. To our Lord spirituality means, not asceticism, but the sort of heart purity that ever sees God, and gladly responds to his holy will. If somewhat like him you have like purity of heart, you see God everywhere: in the flower that blooms, in the march of history, in the sorrows of men, above the darkness of the blackest cloud; and you know that he is on the field when he is most invisible.

II. Subjection, a contrasting note in the music of our Lord’s daily life. Many a would-be great man boasts: “I thank God I am my own master.” Because such men have ignored the Kingship of God, we have all the wreckage and ruin that blights our poor earth today. But as a believer when you next face a difficult dispensation of God’s dealing look him in the face and exclaim: “Hallelujah!”

III. Sympathy, when our Lord faces a crowd, or a person in distress. Why? Because he is right with God, right with men, one by one, and right with himself. In Christ-like sympathy lies the way to the settlement of every problem in this world. Ah, believe me, our sorrows are more felt up in heaven than here on earth. In Christ we behold the perfect sympathy of the One who ever did what was pleasing to God.

IV. Strength. We think of his weakness and frailty, but there never was anyone so mighty as our Lord. Hear him say: “I am King for I have faced the enemies of mankind—sin and sorrow, ignorance and death—and my foot is upon the neck of every evil. All authority is given unto me.”

Ah, my brother, here is the pattern for you. Here is the ideal. How can you fulfill it? Let the Apostle answer: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” If by the power of the Spirit Christ is in you, he will keep you ever aware of God’s nearness. From hour to hour he will take your will, blend it with his own, and then remove all that ever makes it hard to say, “God’s will be done.”—From The World’s Great Sermons, Funk & Wagnalls, 1908, X.

The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour (Acts 5:30, 31a; read vv. 17–32).

The resurrection of Christ is a miracle, far beyond all the other Gospel miracles. What concerns us now is the meaning of this miracle. From the Bible the answer comes again and again: The resurrection of Christ is the creative act of God, a new revelation of his living power. From this resurrection fact spring three new hopes today.

I. A New Hope for the Believer, the hope of a resurrection to a new quality of life. This is what Paul kept preaching: “Do not hold the Resurrection far off, as a fact for some future hour when God shall call forth the dead. See in it a fact with power for today.” This lesson Paul learned on the Damascus road: the assurance of a risen life here and now. For this new life, Christ-created and Christ-governed, the world is looking today; it is life that comes to the believer through the Resurrection Gospel.

II. A New Hope for the Church. I need not describe what we see today at home and abroad: in Russia and elsewhere, chaos and dread. The hope for the Church still rests in God, and the power he has revealed in the Risen Christ. The faith that makes believers mighty is not an artificial creation of our own fancy; it is the response to the vision of God’s power in the resurrection of his Son.

Is anything too hard for such a Risen Lord? Is it beyond the power of the Church to meet victoriously any evil, however deeply entrenched? Power to engage in any crusade, no matter how stupendous? Is anything God wills beyond the resources of the Church for which he lives in Christ, raised from the dead and now exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour?

III. A New Hope for the World. Who can fitly describe the world as he beholds it today? In Russia and elsewhere moral confusion abounds, with many a cause for alarm. But why do we in the Church not look up to God? What does the Resurrection say to such a world as this? Does it not declare that in God there is power? Now that we seem to have reached the end of our resources, we are only at the beginning of our resources in him whom God raised from the dead and exalted to be a Prince and Saviour.

That is what we need today. He can save us only as we accept His rule. When Jacob Boehm, the Christian mystic, was dying, his ears were attuned to the harmonies of heaven. “Open the windows,” he whispered with his last breath, “and let in more of that music!” What music? That of the Easter hope.—From The Victory of God, London, 1921.

Let not your heart by troubled.… I go to prepare a place for you … that where I am, there ye may be also (John 14:1–3; read vv. 1–31).

The Introduction has to do with the most beloved chapter in God’s Book, and with the Saviour’s answers to our perennial question about what lies beyond.

I. The Confidence that Life Follows Death. Not a sunset, but a sunrise! Some day we are going to exchange the frail tents in which we live for the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Heaven is a place, not a state of mind. Somewhere in God’s wonder world there is a place that Jesus calls the Father’s house, into which we are to go and see him, to be with him and with those whom we have loved and lost a while.

II. The Freedom from Earthly Shackles. Heaven is but another name for home. When death comes it is passing out of one room called “life” into a larger abiding place called “eternity,” which is the Father’s house. In it are many abiding places. In this life many of us keep moving from place to place, but yonder there is an abiding place. Our life here is marred by our shortcomings and choked ideals, frustrated ambitions and thwarted plans. There we shall be free from all the handicaps that characterize us here.

Yonder we shall catch up with reality, and be free from earthly shackles. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.” Here we learn that death releases us, and that the joy of creating and serving, of loving and lifting, goes on with us into the land that is fairer than day.

III. The Opportunity for a Wider Ministry. A life awaits us in which there shall be an unfolding of all our best powers and possibilities. Here we struggle for knowledge, purity, and happiness. There we shall know as we are known, be pure as He is pure, with contentment and satisfaction and blessedness, through seeing the King face to face, and being reunited with those we have loved and lost a while.

When the enraged people of France put to death Louis XVII, there was left a little boy who would have become Louis XVIII. Him they put in prison. As the lad grew older, evil companions would suggest some vicious thought or vulgar word. He would stand at full height and say: “No, I will not think that. I cannot say that. I was born to be a king!”

That is the thought I leave with you. You cannot spend your life on trivialities, on collecting material substance. You were born to be a king. If you listen softly Jesus will say: “Let not your heart be troubled.… In my Father’s house are many mansions.… I go to prepare a place for you.… I will come again and receive you unto myself.”—From The Mighty Saviour, Abingdon Press. 1952, pp. 141–54.

Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept (1 Cor. 15:20).

Note that word “now”! Every Lord’s Day reminds us anew that the Cross was not the end of the Gospel, but soon led to a glorious beginning, for which we all thank God today, and shall do so evermore.

I. The Resurrection of Christ Vindicates the Cross to All Eternity. After the brutal show of sin on Calvary, holy men rested on their Sabbath Day. What else could they do but wait on their God? In a sense that agelong warfare of sin against God still goes on. But the Resurrection shows us once for all that the final victory rests with God.

II. The Resurrection Reveals the Suffering of the Cross as the Pathway to Glory. Here in this world is something vastly worse than suffering. This is the inability to see above the suffering, the refusal to see that anything glorious lies beyond. Beyond the darkness of Good Friday the dying Redeemer beheld the brightness of Easter Morn, and the remainder of the New Testament throbs with the same Christian hope. So do the church of Christ and the heart of every believer in Christ today.

III. The Resurrection Means that God’s Final Word Is a Word of Life. What we believe about the Cross and the Resurrection depends on what we believe about Christ. On the cross and in his resurrection glory Christ is our perfect, sinless Representative. Because he lives, we too shall live. We may now have a sense of being lost in a wilderness of hatred and fear. But we can follow Christ with confidence, because by faith we have seen beyond the blackness of Good Friday to the brightness of Easter Day.

Christ is risen! Hallelujah! Therefore we have no fear of committing ourselves to the darkness. By faith we can walk the way of the Cross because by faith we have seen beyond the Cross.—From Beneath the Cross of Jesus, Abingdon Press, c. 1961, pp. 82–92.