Literary Function Of Forgiveness In The Plot Of Luke-Acts Narrative

By Jason Valeriano Hallig

[Jason Valeriano Hallig is professor of New Testament and Greek at Alliance Graduate School and Asia Graduate School of Theology—Philippines. He is also senior pastor of the International Christian Fellowship, Taytay Rizal, Philippines.]

Abstract

This article offers an understanding of forgiveness in the plot of Luke-Acts narrative. It uses a thematic approach to Luke’s Gospel narrative to further enrich existing biblical and theological studies on forgiveness through its attention to artistic literary considerations such as events, characters, and parallels. In doing so it sets the biblical doctrine of forgiveness within its narrative milieu in Luke-Acts and its function in the plot and its development. This study shows forgiveness as integral to the narrative as an artistic whole and embedded in the five causal stages of the witness plot in Luke-Acts. Moreover, it livens the twofold thrust of the gospel—salvation and the kingdom. Forgiveness marks the church as the renewed people of God inclusive of both the people of Israel and the nations.

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Scripture is first and foremost a narrative, and forgiveness is part of that narrative. Jeremiah wrote, “ ‘This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” because they will know me from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the Lord. ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more’ ” (Jer 31:33–34).

The biblical idea of forgiveness is rooted in the concept of “covering” from the Hebrew word כָּפַר, which means “to cover,” “to cover over,” or “to overspread.”[1] The same word applies to the Old Testament theology of atonement, which is closely tied to the forgiveness of sins. That is carried over to the New Testament in general and the Gospels in particular, where the Greek word ἄφεσις connotes forgiveness or liberation in the spirit of cover or release.[2] As such, forgiveness is an essential part of the Christian message. There is no gospel where there is no forgiveness. Studies on forgiveness, however, focus on its theological or doctrinal meaning and significance. Little is done on its literary function vis-à-vis the narrative plot of the gospel. Literary considerations of forgiveness are sporadic, if not totally isolated from the biblical narrative in general and the gospel narrative in particular. Most are results of form critical studies on the gospels, with literary studies of forgiveness literally pericopic in nature. This takes it out of its narrative plot context, resulting in an impoverished hermeneutic of forgiveness or a highly embellished theology of forgiveness.

Of the four Gospels, the Gospel of Luke or rather Luke-Acts captures the truth of forgiveness beautifully, powerfully, and most comprehensively.[3] Luke-Acts spells out for its intended or implied readers, whether they are disciples or would-be disciples of Jesus, the reality and necessity of Christian forgiveness, without which there is neither salvation nor the kingdom. The life and task of the Christian, and so of the church, revolves around the truth of forgiveness both in terms of divine grace to all believers and extended grace toward others. Scholars are convinced that forgiveness is at the heart of Lukan discipleship embedded in the gospel Luke narrates. Hence, studies of Luke’s narrative must give attention to the literary function of the theme of forgiveness in its plot. Narrative criticism studies the gospel as a unified whole and also takes into consideration various themes in the gospel narrative and their relationships or literary functions in the development of the plot and characters. Themes cannot be taken in isolation. Doing so does an injustice to the narrative as a whole and to the themes themselves, whose meanings are tied to the narrative.

Forgiveness And The Lukan Plot

The story of Luke-Acts centers on the gospel and its witness. At the time Jesus was born, the angel announced to the shepherds: “I bring you good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10). This announcement is programmatic to the Lukan narrative. It captures the very spirit of the narrative. Luke informs his reader/s that he is writing this gospel to affirm the certainty of the witness story of Jesus and the witness testimony of the church, in and through whom their faith is anchored. The certainty of the good news is not only in its historicity but also in its “order” (1:1–4), demonstrated in the plotting of the narrative as a whole.[4] Tannehill writes, “In a longer narrative the question of proper order becomes more difficult. Unity must be maintained through a series of events by the display of major developments and patterns.”[5] It is in such unity of the whole and likewise unity with his predecessors that the certainty is found.

Ju Hur rightly defines the plot of Luke-Acts as “the way of witness, in seeking and saving God’s people, engendered by Jesus (in the gospel) and his witnesses (in Acts), through the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit in accordance with the plan of God.”[6] This is developed by Luke in his narrative that demonstrates the geographical expansion based on the movement of Jesus’s witness and that of his disciples called to carry on the way of witness. Hur presents five causal stages of Luke’s narrative plot.

I. Beginning (Luke 3:1–4:13): at the Jordan River and/or wilderness in Judea.

II. Development toward the Central Point (Luke 4:14–19:44): from Galilee to Jerusalem.

III. Central Point (Luke 19:45–Acts 2:13): in Jerusalem.

IV. Development toward the End (Acts 2:14–28:13): from Jerusalem, through Judea and Samaria, and towards Rome.

V. Open-Ended Finale (Acts 28:16–31): Rome.[7]

Embedded in the plot is Luke’s narrative emphasis on forgiveness, which furthers his twofold narrative thrust—salvation and the kingdom of God. I will attempt to demonstrate how forgiveness plays an important role or function in the narrative plot and its development in and through the witness story of Jesus and the witness testimony of the church.

The witness plot is introduced with the witness of John the Baptist, who serves as the precursor of Jesus—the Witness himself. The ministry of John is an important narrative sign of the coming of the Messiah and his witness. It serves as a literary signpost so that readers can bridge the gap between the Old Testament and Luke’s story.[8] It points to the promised salvation of God when he shall forgive or cover the sins of his people after the time of national discipline during the exile. While the return to Jerusalem was the beginning, forgiveness shall come at a much later time in and through Jesus the Christ. John’s role in God’s promised salvation is one of preparation. John must announce it to the people and call the people to repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of their sins. But the baptism of water is efficacious only because of its relation to Jesus the Christ. Hence, the importance of John is in his relation to (the unborn) Jesus and his ministry.

The baptism of water John executed foreshadows the work of Jesus as the Christ, who shall baptize the people with the Holy Spirit. With this, the ministry of John is indeed a significant part of the promise. Without him, people would have difficulty recognizing Jesus as the Messiah. But without Jesus, the baptism of John would not have meant anything to the people. The baptism of forgiveness is given reality in and through Jesus Christ.

Forgiveness And The Story Of Jesus

The story of Jesus is the first part of Luke’s narrative. Its narrative function is central and primary to the whole narrative of Luke-Acts. Hur writes, “Jesus is portrayed as the witness par excellence both to God and to himself (Lk. 2.30–35), thus offering himself as the ‘model of prophetic witness’ for his witnesses in Acts, and, at the same time, he becomes the core of the message that his witnesses are (sic) represented proclaiming to the ends of the earth (Acts 1.8; cf. Lk. 24.46–48).”[9] The message is Jesus in and through whom forgiveness shall come to all.

Luke’s narrative presents a well-developed outline of the life and ministry of Jesus: (1) the birth of Jesus, (2) the public ministry of Jesus, and (3) the death and resurrection of Jesus. It has an artistic beginning, a tension-building middle, and a dramatic ending of the story. The theme of forgiveness is rightly embedded in the whole narrative plot, artistically creating the literary dynamism that shapes and develops the story.

The Birth Of Jesus

In addition to John the Baptist’s witness, Luke introduces the witness of Jesus with several other important witnesses who affirmed Jesus’s own witness as the Messiah of God.[10] First is Mary. Luke here shows who Jesus really is and what he would soon do for his people: “You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus” (1:31). Mary’s song (the Magnificat) indicates that the child in her womb fulfills the long-awaited salvation of God for his people.[11] She speaks of God as her savior, and that has come to reality with what the angel Gabriel has revealed to her. God’s election of Mary is itself an act of forgiveness—her being the chosen one already guaranteed divine forgiveness.

This is supported by Zechariah’s song (the Benedictus). Zechariah declares with clarity that God’s salvation would come first and foremost in and through the forgiveness of the sins of the people (1:77). Hence, what Mary declared in the Magnificat as God’s salvation has been given its particular expression in the Benedictus—the forgiveness of sins. Tannehill writes, “The description of God as ‘my savior’ in 1:47 anticipates the emphasis on salvation in Zechariah’s and Simeon’s words (1:69, 71, 77; 2:3), as well as in the angel’s announcement of the birth of a savior (2:11).”[12] John’s baptism of forgiveness is God’s message of salvation in Jesus revealed to righteous characters—Mary and Zechariah. What would soon be announced by John in his public preaching in the wilderness, the forgiveness of sins, will be accomplished by Jesus, the salvation of God’s people. Salvation and forgiveness are interrelated. One is the overarching theme; the other the more specific one. Indeed, forgiveness brings people to salvation. And so the narrative begins with such an artistic announcement through literary songs of salvation with the Magnificat and the Benedictus.

Moreover, both Simeon and Anna speak of the baby Jesus in terms of salvation not only for the people of Israel but also for the Gentile nations: “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” (2:32). The nature of God’s offer of forgiveness is universal. Indeed, the stories of Simeon and Anna add beauty to the universality of the narrative of forgiveness. This is what John proclaimed as prophesied by Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all mankind will see God’s salvation” (3:4–6).

The Public Ministry Of Jesus

The theme of forgiveness is integral to the public life and ministry of Jesus, announced at the opening of his ministry (4:18–19). This is clear in Jesus’s work to “proclaim . . . release to the oppressed.” The word “release” is used in the phrase “release of sins” (usually translated “forgiveness of sins”).[13] There is no freedom where there is no forgiveness. Indeed, Jesus’s ministry revolves around the theme of forgiveness. Tannehill writes,

The task of “proclaiming . . . repentance for release of sins (3:3) remains central throughout Luke-Acts. In Nazareth Jesus indicates that he has been called to “proclaim release” (4:18), and the scenes in 5:17–32 in which Jesus asserts his authority to “release sins” and defends his mission “to call . . . sinners to repentance” (dif. Matthew, Mark) are linked by the narrator to a series of later scenes which keep this important aspect of Jesus’ mission before the reader. In 24:47 the mission of proclaiming “repentance for release of sins” (the same words used of John in 3:3, again dependent on the verb κηρύσσω) is given by the risen Jesus to his followers, and this mission is carried out in Acts.[14]

Luke uses it as a literary device in his presentation of the plot and its development. He did this in and through his artistic characterization of Jesus as healer or miracle doer, disciple-maker, and teacher or preacher. The theme of forgiveness is prevalent in each aspect of Jesus’s ministry, revealing how forgiveness is important to his activities both in words and in deeds. Early on, the story of Jesus and the paralytic (5:17–26) is programmatic of Jesus’s teaching ministry as centered on the proclamation of forgiveness. Jesus sees people as more than sick in need of healing; he sees them as sinners in need of forgiveness. The friends of the paralytic brought the man before Jesus for healing, but, “when Jesus saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven’ ” (5:20). Forgiveness, a literary sign to the character of Jesus, is central to this story, carrying the message of Jesus, and so of Luke’s gospel. Jesus reveals his intention above the expectation of the people. He is the savior more than a healer. As such, forgiveness is not a later development of the ministry of the church—contra Bultmann’s proposal—but is an integral part of the gospel and original to Jesus.[15] Luke’s narrative shows Jesus as one having divine authority in words and in deeds that prove Jesus’s authority to forgive sins.

Such authority of Jesus is further demonstrated in the many miracles Jesus performed before the eyes of the public, including his enemies, who obviously had a problem with it. The religious leaders rejected Jesus on his claim of divine authority, which causes the conflict.[16] But such rejection is negated by Jesus’s further healings and miracles. Later Jesus again uttered words of forgiveness and this time to a sinful woman: “Jesus said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven’ ” (7:48). This time Jesus is offering forgiveness not on behalf of God, but on his own authority, prompting the religious leaders to question him and further intensifying the conflict. This emphasis on forgiveness indicates who Jesus really is—the Son of Man.[17] This divine identity is where the religious leaders began to personally oppose Jesus. It is the causal factor of the opposition or the conflict. Kingsbury writes, “Accordingly, the resolution of Luke’s gospel story of conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities is found in the events associated with Jesus’s crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension.”[18]

Forgiveness is likewise integral to Jesus’s evangelistic or disciple-making ministry. The task of building the kingdom begins with the calling of the disciples. This is demonstrated in calling Levi. The call to discipleship involves the message of forgiveness. Jesus’s association with sinners is already indicative of his ministry of forgiveness.[19] His presence among the “sinners” extended God’s mercy and forgiveness to them. When questioned by the religious leaders, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”, Jesus’s response reveals his willingness to forgive those who respond to his call: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’ ” (5:32). To show that forgiveness is part and parcel of Jesus’s message to people, Luke repeated this theme with Jesus’s words to Zaccheus, “The Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost” (19:9). The connection between salvation and forgiveness is here conspicuous. Salvation means first and foremost the forgiveness of the sins of the people. It is fundamental to salvation. With Zaccheus showing the fruit of repentance, Jesus pronounced salvation to the house of Zaccheus, bringing them into the community of the kingdom.

Jesus’s teaching ministry is likewise replete with teachings on forgiveness. Luke narrates three major incidents where forgiveness is given emphasis: Jesus’s teaching on a plain, 6:17–49; Jesus’s teaching on prayer, 11:1–4; and Jesus’s teaching through parables, chapters 12–19. His ministry extends to everyone who is willing to receive him and listen to his teaching, whether they are apostles, disciples or part of the crowd, or even religious leaders. His ministry is obviously inclusive. He welcomes everyone to his community. Although in context Luke is particularly referring to a Jewish crowd, they narratively represent the nations.[20] The teaching of Jesus on a plain shows that Jesus is not just addressing his disciples but also the crowd. His pronouncement of blessings and woes reflect his balanced teaching ministry. Jesus does not show favoritism, neither favoring his disciples nor condemning the others. Bock writes, “He gives promises for those who enter into grace humbly, while warning of judgment for those who remain callous.”[21] In the ending of the narrative, Jesus will pay the price for his offer of forgiveness to people; the ultimate price of forgiveness is Jesus’s sacrifice of himself at the cross—his death.

The assurance of the efficacy of forgiveness, however, is anchored in willingness to extend forgiveness to others. This is the spirit of Jesus’s teaching on prayer in 11:1–4. Forgiveness must be a way of life for Jesus’s disciples: “Forgive our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” He expects them to forgive and keep on forgiving. His teaching on prayer shows the kind of disciples they must be. Forgiveness indeed begets forgiveness. By this Jesus lays an important foundation of discipleship. The Father’s grace of forgiveness flows freely to his children, who also must extend forgiveness to others. This is echoed by Jesus himself in Matthew’s account of the parable of the unmerciful servant: “I tell you not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matt 18:22, see also Luke 17:1–4). As such forgiveness reflects the character of God in and among his children. Bock points to three other reasons for it:

First, it shows that disciples are aware that they live in an imperfect, fallen world and that they contribute to its imperfection. . . . Second, there is recognition that sin is not only against individuals; it is an act of opposition to God. . . . Third, the recognition of the need for forgiveness reflects a humility that is central to healthy discipleship.[22]

Most of the parables of Jesus demonstrate his emphasis on forgiveness. Parables are his favorite narrative tools to teach people about the kingdom and the values of the kingdom, which he wants his disciples to embody as kingdom people. Luke’s lengthy account of Jesus’s parables shows Luke’s interest in the teachings of Jesus. Again there is a balance in Luke’s presentation. The parables portray both the positive and the negative aspects of the kingdom—receiving and rejecting, finding and losing, saving and condemning, forgiving and judging. There is a strong emphasis on forgiveness. But here forgiveness is more than words of affirmation or even of promise. The parables in chapter 15—the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the lost son all portray God’s acts of forgiveness. Forgiveness is God’s initiative. With Jesus, the Father’s forgiveness is real.

The Death And Resurrection Of Jesus

What is foreshadowed in the beginning and offered and preached in the middle is given substance in the ending of the story of Jesus.

With 19:28 the story moves towards the dramatic ending. This is now Jesus’s ministry in Jerusalem. The conflict announced in the beginning and developed in the middle now comes to its fundamental resolution. How would Jesus be able to substantiate his offer of forgiveness? Corollary questions follow: What certainty would the people have in the words of Jesus that they have been indeed forgiven? How would the disciples of Jesus live forgiveness toward others so as to forgive them seventy times seven?

As Jesus entered Jerusalem, symbolic of the city of the great king, he wept over its ignorance (19:28–44) and its rejection of Christ the king (20:1–26). Johnson writes,

This lament provides an authoritative commentary (by Jesus himself) on the significance of his arrival in the city, and a reminder of important literary themes: Jesus’ arrival is the visitation of God that offers peace; the rejection of the Prophet will lead to destruction; this first rejection is one that is carried out of ignorance (Acts 3:17).[23]

The triumphal entry (19:37–40), the tears of Jesus (19:41–44), and the temple of Israel (19:45–48) all add to the dramatic ending portraying forgiveness despite rejection. The people had no idea of how Jesus was enacting forgiveness for them. He would soon atone for their sins with his own self-sacrifice. Jesus is God’s forgiveness in flesh and blood. He is the peace that Jerusalem needed and waited for so long. He is the peace that would be announced to the ends of the earth. Had Jerusalem known who Jesus is, they would have welcomed him as their king.

How is forgiveness possible? At the Lord’s Supper, sharing table with his disciples, Jesus gave them bread and wine as emblems of his body (“given for you”) and blood (“poured out for you”) in and through which forgiveness shall flow to the people. As the author of Hebrews declares, “For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins” (9:22). Jesus’s death is God’s highest act of forgiveness—the atoning sacrifice for the sins of men and women. God did not just promise forgiveness, he enacted forgiveness in Jesus. Peter had to learn this truth through his own rejection of Christ but was promised forgiveness upon his return: “But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have come back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32).

At the cross, the climax of this dramatic ending, Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of his people: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (23:34). Although out of ignorance, the people were still violating the Son of Man.[24] Rather than condemn them, Jesus took this as an opportunity to forgive them. Through his words and actions, forgiveness is given to the very people who were crucifying him. Not only did he pray for forgiveness, he specifically forgave. When one of the thieves crucified with Jesus asked for forgiveness, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise” (v. 43). Forgiveness is anchored in the act of God in Christ and the humble response of men and women to the person of Christ.

Through Christ’s death—God’s act of atonement, sin is dethroned. The death of his Son is God’s resolution to the problem of sin that has burdened men and women since Adam and Eve. When Jesus dies, forgiveness has come to life.[25] At the cross, forgiveness echoed back to Genesis and gave life to all who believed. Hence, the centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man” (23:47). Forgiveness is an act of righteousness. The righteousness of Christ is the foundation of God’s forgiveness and even ours toward others today. His righteousness covers the unrighteousness of all who believe.

The disciples could not believe what happened, Jesus was dead. They needed the resurrection. They needed to see the Christ. Luke ended his story of Jesus with the resurrection account to show the literary reversal—God’s pivotal act of forgiveness in Jesus. The resurrected Christ took away the disciples’ fears and doubts. He helped them see what Scripture is all about, and then he told them: “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (24:46–47). The story of Jesus ended where it all began—with John the Baptist’s message of repentance and forgiveness. Luke’s narrative indeed presents to us the Christian message of forgiveness—the gospel is a gospel of forgiveness.

Forgiveness And The Story Of The Church

The story of the church continues the story of Jesus.[26] Luke takes the narrative further to include the efficacy of the gospel of Christ in and through the church under the ministry of the Holy Spirit. God’s promised deliverance does not end in Jesus and his messianic ministry. The final goal of the narrative is the actual, historical, universal, and progressive realization of the kingdom of God on earth toward its eschatological reality—the restoration of God’s good creation and the resumption of divine kingship.[27]

Essential to the efficacy of the gospel is the Holy Spirit, who will bring to completion the plan of God in and through the church.[28] The person and ministry of the Holy Spirit are closely tied to the ministry of Christ; hence, in Luke’s narrative plot, the coming of the Spirit is an integral part of the central point, which is not only Christological but also Pneumatological. As such the transcendent character of the central point is embodied by the “Christo-Pneuma” relation—a sub-relation within the economic Trinity, and so the climax of Luke-Acts narrative includes Pentecost, which transitions the witness-plot from Jesus to the church.

The Birth Of The Church

The Pentecost signals a new era in God’s work of redemption.[29] The implied author brings the central story to its climactic plot-axis highlighting the witness of Jesus with his disciples (filled with the Spirit) commissioned to take the witness to the world. Because of the inherent relationship between the events before and after Pentecost, Twelftree observes,

We can see that Luke would not call Pentecost the birth of the Church. For him the origins of the Church is in the call and community of followers of Jesus during his ministry. Perhaps Luke would say that what was born in hope in the ministry of the earthly Jesus was given the ‘breath’ (pneuma) of life and power in the promised coming of the ‘Spirit’ (pneuma). This means that, for Luke, the Church does not occupy a period in history separate from that of Jesus. Rather, the Church was called into existence by him and is a continuation or ongoing expression of his ministry.[30]

At the heart of Pentecost is the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit himself is the causal factor of the life and witness of the church. There is no church without the Holy Spirit. As Jesus was filled by the Holy Spirit in his own witness so would the church be as Christ to the world. The filling of the Holy Spirit marks the church as the people of Christ commissioned to continue God’s work. The Spirit who resurrected Jesus is the same Spirit who now resurrects the people of God. This means that Israel is resurrected but now with a new identity and a mission to carry out.[3

The church is the new Israel, but not ethnically. This is made clearer in the gift of tongues symbolic of the new people representing the new and resurrected humanity.[32] Such is a universal forgiveness extended to all people in and through the church. God through his Son Jesus grants forgiveness to men and women of all nations with the giving of the Holy Spirit. Tannehill writes, “It is possible that the Pentecost scene is meant not only to fulfill John the Baptist’s words about baptism in the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:16; cf. Acts 1:5) but also to suggest that Peter or the church is a successor of John and Jesus in preaching a message of repentance.”[33]

The birth of the church put flesh and blood to the message of forgiveness announced during the birth of Jesus by John and in his public ministry by Jesus himself. This we have seen in the preaching of Peter on that day, where Peter called people to repentance for the forgiveness of their sins. Witherington writes, “It is thus quite correct to stress that in Acts 2 we see repentance (and faith) leading to baptism, the forgiveness of sins, and the reception of the Holy Spirit.”[34] The words of forgiveness in Jesus have now become acts of forgiveness by the Spirit. The Spirit himself is the believers’ covering. Forgiveness is a spiritual act only the people of the Spirit can truly extend to others, and so the church is commissioned to take the message of forgiveness in Jesus to the world as the people of the Spirit. Those who have received the witness of the Spirit receive the witness himself—the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of forgiveness. The new life begins with the Spirit, who incorporates or rather initiates men and women into the community of forgiveness.[35] We know we have been forgiven not only because we have believed in Christ and received the Holy Spirit but also because we have been incorporated into the body of Christ—the Church, which also serves as a narrative sign of forgiveness.

The Witness In Jerusalem

Filled by the Spirit, the disciples embarked on their witness as commissioned by Jesus himself: “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Following Jesus, a programmatic geographic expansion, the witness of the church began, or rather resumed, in Jerusalem.

Although Luke-Acts is primarily addressed to a Gentile congregation, the extension of the gospel to the other nations is rooted in God’s work with Israel and his purpose for them to be light to the nations, and it is fitting that the witness of the church began in Jerusalem, where Jesus himself ended his witness as God’s messiah. Two major events marked the witness in Jerusalem: the witness of Peter and the other disciples (Acts 3:1–5:42) and the witness of Stephen (6:1–8:1). Peter and the other disciples held in their hands the authority to perform miracles in Jesus’s name and also the authority to grant forgiveness in Jesus’s name. Forgiveness is anchored in the authority the disciples had in Jesus’s name. His was the power behind the miracles and the message of forgiveness. Such authority of the disciples was not an arbitrary act of forgiveness; it was anchored in the work of Jesus—his death and resurrection.[36] Their offer or pronouncement of forgiveness was effective only in the name of Jesus and by the Holy Spirit. Jerusalem experienced God and his grace in Jesus anew (4:12). However, despite the authority of the disciples, religious leaders kept themselves aloof from God’s grace of forgiveness in Jesus. The same character group in Luke creates the conflict in Acts.[37] The refusal of the religious authorities to recognize Jesus as the one sent by God for the forgiveness of sins points to the resistibility of grace. There is no forgiveness where there is no faith in Jesus preceded by repentance (5:31–32).

The witness of Stephen likewise highlights forgiveness. Stephen’s defense narrates the biblical story from Abraham to Moses and from Moses to David and Solomon. The narrative describes persistent refusal by Israel to submit to the authority of God.[38] They had rejected servants and prophets whom God had sent for them, and the climax of Israel’s rejection came with the murder of the Righteous One. Stephen’s audience and the readers of Acts are called to break the chain of resistance and rejection. Such a call echoes Stephen’s understanding of the gospel, which offers men and women forgiveness. The intended narrative effect is one of repentance leading to forgiveness. Stephen’s prayer of forgiveness not only demonstrates his own willingness to forgive but also “a clear recognition of the ‘Lord’ as the one with the power to realize forgiveness.”[39] Hence, his speech/message was more of an act of forgiveness than simply words of forgiveness through preaching. Stephen’s life serves as the message to those who still refuse to acknowledge Jesus as the Righteous One. Stephen prayed for the forgiveness of his accusers and murderers, demonstrating the very goal of the plan of God.[40] The Christlike prayer of Stephen shows that no sin or persecution is out of reach of God’s forgiveness.

Witness In Judea And Samaria

The witness in Judea and Samaria involves a number of stories of forgiveness: the story of the Ethiopian eunuch (8:26–40), the story of the conversion of Saul (9:1–31), the stories of Aeneas and Dorcas (9:32–42), and the story of Cornelius (10:1–11:18). Forgiveness is expanded outside Jerusalem to both Jews and Gentiles.

Luke’s narrative ending, the witness to the ends of the earth, now moves to its new geographic expansions. The characters of the stories overlap among Jews, proselytes, and Gentiles. The Ethiopian eunuch ushers Luke’s narrative to its non-Jewish audience under the ministry of a Hellenistic leader or disciple, Philip.[41] The Holy Spirit is the causal character who brings the witness to its new phase.[42] Here we have a minor character—the Ethiopian, an African eunuch, a God-fearing Gentile. The attention to God-fearing men and women in Acts points to the attention given to those who have receptive spirits toward the gospel of forgiveness. At the heart of the story is the prophecy of Isaiah regarding the “servant” and the forgiveness of the people of Israel, which Philip connected to the good news. Philip builds the connection between the promised forgiveness for the people of Israel to God’s offer of forgiveness to the nations in Jesus. The baptism of the eunuch brings us back within the narrative of forgiveness inaugurated by John the Baptist and provided by Jesus through his blood.

A fuller expression of forgiveness in Acts finds its home in the narrative of Saul, the persecutor, who would later become the preacher of forgiveness to the Gentiles. His story is a climax within the Lukan narrative and plays as the causal factor for the witness to the ends of the earth. Tannehill writes, “After Philip carries the word to Samaria and makes the first contact with a representative of peoples at ‘the end of the earth’ (Acts 8), the narrative focuses on a key character in the spread of the mission (Saul) and on key events in the development of a sustained mission to the Gentiles.”[43] Saul/Paul is a central character in the latter part of Acts, with three narrative thrusts in his story: Saul’s encounter with the resurrected Jesus, Saul’s restoration of sight through Ananias, and Saul’s commission to be Jesus’s chosen instrument for the Gentiles. Each narrative thrust demonstrates a divine act of forgiveness not only for a man of sin but also for an enemy of Christ. As such, Christian forgiveness is inclusive and also incisive or transformative.

The stories of Aeneas and Dorcas as literary signposts point to the supernatural character of forgiveness in Acts through the ministry of the apostles in general and Peter in particular. Here Luke parallels the witness of the disciples with the witness of Jesus. Both miracles bring back memories of the narrative of Jesus. The story of Aeneas recalls the time Jesus offered forgiveness to a paralytic because of the faith of his four friends.[44] The story of Dorcas narratively recalls the story of Jesus raising a widow’s son, where it happened that the news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country (Luke 7:17).[45] Miracles here also express divine forgiveness.

The conversion of Cornelius and his house makes forgiveness and grace both ecclesiastical and theological. The church in Jerusalem needs a new perspective on God’s work in Christ by the Holy Spirit among the Gentiles. While they are willing to preach the gospel to the nations, the Jerusalem church is not ready to give equal status to their Gentile counterparts. There remains in the heart of Jewish Christians the exclusivity of their fellowship. Jews and Gentiles do not fellowship together. They do not share tables. Hence, Peter’s action is put to question as “the circumcised believers criticized him” (Acts 11:2). Although the Jerusalem church now possess the Holy Spirit, they still hold their traditions. Yet the conversion of Cornelius leads to the church’s confession that “God has granted even Gentiles repentance unto life” (v. 18).[46] Forgiveness involves acceptance leading to unity and holiness. With this the transformation of the people of God is complete; a new life has dawned.[47] The plot of witness now comes to its fullness with the mission of bringing the good news to the ends of the earth and thereby fulfilling the words of the Law and the Prophets.

Witness To The Ends Of The Earth

The witness to the ends of the earth that began in Jerusalem is the climax of the ending of the Luke-Acts narrative plot. This witness, however, is to be a Jewish-Gentile Christian witness to the ends of the earth. The Holy Spirit set Paul (and Barnabas) apart in Antioch for the work of preaching the gospel to the nations. The narrator characterizes the Spirit as the director of the mission to the Gentiles.[48] That Antiochian believers were the sending church is undoubtedly a narrative sign of the unity of the church. In this way the narrator tells readers that Gentile believers have been given the responsibility of being part of the witness of Christ to the nations. Unity is not only a matter of identity but also a sharing in responsibility. Indeed the witness to the ends of the earth is one responsibility of all believers or churches both Jews and Gentiles.

The witness among the Gentiles centered on the proclamation of Jesus as the fulfillment of the promise given to King David (13:23). Paul emphasizes that it is through Jesus that forgiveness of sins shall be proclaimed to the nations (v. 38). Salvation offers first and foremost the forgiveness of sins of Israel and also the Gentiles who were appointed for eternal life (v. 48). The Gentiles too received miracles as signs of forgiveness in their midst.

The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) marks not only the church’s official acceptance of the Gentiles into the body of Christ—the church, but also the turning point of the witness plot.[49] Christian forgiveness does not require circumcision or any Jewish regulations. That they have received the Holy Spirit is enough for Gentiles to become part of the community of forgiveness. The Holy Spirit is the only assurance of forgiveness (v. 8). Paul’s ministry among Gentiles centers on the preaching of forgiveness to all the nations. Paul’s missionary journeys demonstrate how God’s work of forgiveness has come to its universal proclamation, allowing Gentiles to take part in the covenant God had given to Abraham. While the mission was also faced with challenges, the work was unhindered, gaining more and more men and women from all nations into the kingdom through the powerful preaching of the gospel. Witherington writes, “Luke’s main concern is to leave the reader a reminder about the unstoppable word of God, which no obstacle—not shipwreck, not poisonous snakes, not Roman authorities—could hinder from reaching the heart of the Empire, and the hearts of those who dwelled there.”[50]

Conclusion

The Luke-Acts narrative presents the program and progress of the witness of Jesus and the church. The literary power behind the events of the plot brings the words of the prophets to life: “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jer 31:34). Forgiveness is at the heart of the narrative as one of God’s activities, if not the activity, in and through the witness of Jesus and the church that brings God’s offer of salvation and the kingdom to the people of Israel and the nations.

This study of the literary function of forgiveness in the plot of Luke-Acts narrative enriches Luke’s theology of forgiveness. It develops further three theological concerns. First, God and forgiveness. Forgiveness is portrayed as God’s activity in Jesus by the Holy Spirit. This means that forgiveness is the work of the triune God demonstrating his faithfulness to the people of Israel and the nations. Second, the gospel and forgiveness. There is no gospel where there is no forgiveness. Salvation and the kingdom come to life only through God’s work of forgiveness. To preach Christ is to preach forgiveness. The gospel is indeed a gospel of forgiveness. And third, the church and forgiveness. The new people of God is a people of forgiveness. To be forgiven is to be a part of the church. And to be a part of the church is to forgive. Lack of forgiveness belies the witness of the church.

Furthermore, the story of forgiveness is the very ground of the command to forgive. Forgiveness is more than a personal exercise of cancelling people’s debts or not counting their offenses. It is indeed anchored in God’s redemptive act of forgiveness in Jesus. Hence, as people of forgiveness, we forgive our offenders only in Jesus and as members of his body.

Notes

1. Two other words are also used in relation to forgiveness: נָשָׂא (Gen 4:13; Exod 32:32; Ps 24:18) and סָלַח (Lev 4:20; 5:10, 13). See H. Leroy, ἄφεσις in Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 1 (1990): 181–83.
2. Leroy, ἄφεσις, 181–83. Both the Old Testament and New Testament references point to divine forgiveness in relation to sin/s. Liberation is also conceived as forgiveness.
3. Leroy’s essay sums up forgiveness in the other Gospels.
4. See William S. Kurz, Reading Luke-Acts: Dynamics of Biblical Narrative (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993): 17–19. He notes that Luke arranged the earliest independent stories and the collected sayings of Jesus.
5. Robert C. Tannehill, Luke, Abingdon New Testament Commentaries (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 10.
6. Ju Hur, A Dynamic Reading of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts (London: T&T Clark, 2001), 185–86.
7. Hur, A Dynamic Reading of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts, 192.
8. See Kurz, Reading Luke-Acts: Dynamics of Biblical Narrative, 31–32.
9. Ju, A Dynamic Reading of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts,189.
10. Luke has used character speech in developing his narrative themes. See Karl Allen Kuhn, The Kingdom according to Luke and Acts: A Social, Literary and Theological Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 127–78.
11. Kuhn puts forward the thesis that Luke introduces a distinct ideological context or kerygmatic worldview that guides his audience in understanding the kingdom story. He outlines five primary contours of Luke’s kingdom story: (1) “God Reigns and Brings These Things to Pass,” (2) “Fulfillment of God’s Promises to Save,” (3) “Faithful Response: Believing and Rejoicing in the Good News,” (4) “God’s Visitation of God’s People in Jesus, the Messiah, Divine Son, and Lord,” (5) Reversal. The Kingdom according to Luke and Acts, 130.
12. Robert C. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 32.
13. Tannehill, Luke, 92.
14. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 48–49.
15. Leon Morris, The Gospel according to St. Luke, Tyndale New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 117.
16. Jack Dean Kingsbury believes that “at the heart of this gospel (Luke) plot is the element of conflict.” “The Plot of Luke’s Story of Jesus,” Interpretation 48, no. 4 (1994): 369–78. See also Jack Dean Kingsbury, Conflict in Luke: Jesus, Authorities, Disciples (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991); Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991): 307–8.
17. See Jason Valeriano Hallig, “The Eating Motif and Luke’s Characterization of Jesus as the Son of Man,” Bibliotheca Sacra 173 (2016): 203–18.
18. Kingsbury, “The Plot of Luke’s Story of Jesus,” 377. On how Luke characterizes the religious leaders, see also, Mark Allan Powell, “The Religious Leaders in Luke: A Literary-Critical Study,” Journal of Biblical Literature 109 (1990): 93–110.
19. See Hallig, “The Eating Motif and Luke’s Characterization of Jesus as the Son of Man.”
20. For the difference between “people” and “nations” in Luke, see Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 143.
21. Darrell L. Bock, Luke, vol. 1, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1994), 120.
22. Bock, Luke, 205.
23. Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, 301.
24. For a discussion on the theme of ignorance and misunderstanding in Luke-Acts, see Kurz, Reading Luke-Acts, 149.
25. N. T. Wright comments, “From Luke’s point of view, the resurrection is the moment when Israel’s Messiah ‘comes into his glory,’ so that ‘repentance for the forgiveness of sins’ can now be announced to all the world as the way of life, indeed, as they say in Acts, as The Way.” Wright juxtaposes the cross and the kingdom. How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 246.
26. Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 109; see also Gerhard A. Krodel, Acts (Minnea-polis: Augsburg, 1986), 51.
27. The Holy Spirit in the church is also an eschatological sign. Hur writes, “The future expectation of the outpouring of the Spirit prophesied by Joel is said to be fulfilled on the day of Pentecost and is construed as the eschatological Spirit by replacing the Joel phrase ‘in the last days’ (2.17).” A Dynamic Reading of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts, 228.
28. Hur offers three major functions of the Holy Spirit in the narrative: empowering and guiding cause, verifying cause, and supervising or sustaining cause. A Dynamic Reading of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts, 226–27.
29. This note was missing in the print version.
30. Graham H. Twelftree, People of the Spirit: Exploring Luke’s View of the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 28.
31. On the significance of Pentecost, see the works of J. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit: A Re-examination of the New Testament Teaching on the Gift of the Spirit in Relation to Pentecostalism Today (London: SCM Press, 1970); G. Haya-Prats, L’Espiritu force de L’eglise. Sa nature et son activise d’ apres les Actes des Apotres, trans. J. Romero (Paris: Cerf, 1975); M. Turner, “Luke and the Spirit: Studies in the Significance of Receiving the Spirit in Luke-Acts” (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1980); G. W. H. Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit (London: Longmans, Green, 1951); and R. Menzies, The Development of Early Christian Pneumatology with Special Reference to Luke-Acts (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1991).
32. Along with the other phenomena, “they thus ascribe to God’s Spirit an initiatory role, a function that launched not only the ministry of Jesus but that of testimony to be given about him by commissioned apostles.” Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 236.
33. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Acts, 40; italics added.
34. Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles, 154–55.
35. See Graham H. Twelftree, People of the Spirit: Exploring Luke’s View of the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009).
36. Emphasis on Jesus or the name of Jesus in various speeches reveals the message of the early church, that is, Christological kerygma and the call to repentance leading to forgiveness. Both are included in the persistent elements in the structure of speeches in Acts. Conzelmann lists six elements, 1. An appeal for hearing. 2. Connection between the situation and speech. 3. The body of the speech 4. Christological kerygma 5. Scriptural support 6. Offer of salvation. Hans Conzelmann, Acts of the Apostles (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), xliv.
37. For the conflict with the temple authorities, see Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 59–79; John A. Darr, On Character Building: The Reader and the Rhetoric of Characterization in Luke-Acts (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1992), 116–26.
38. For the climax of the conflict in Jerusalem, see Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 80–101.
39. Marion L. Soards, The Speeches in Acts: Their Content, Context, and Concerns (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 70.
40. Soards, The Speeches in Acts, 70.
41. For a discussion of why scholars hesitate to recognize the identity of the eunuch as a Gentile, see Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 110. Tannehill argues that this encounter with the Ethiopian is not a causal factor in a sequence of events that moves toward the end of the earth. However, for the implied reader, this scene has its causal function foreshadowing the witness to the ends of the earth, which Tannehill clearly recognizes: “The Ethiopian represents those who are at the end of the earth” (109).
42. For a summary of the causal function of the Spirit in the witness in Judea and Samaria, see Hur, A Dynamic Reading of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts, 249.
43. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 113.
44. F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 198.
45. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 126.
46. Martin Dibelius believes that the conversion of Cornelius has a special importance in Acts as decisive evidence of the acceptance of the Gentiles by God. The Book of Acts: Form, Style, and Theology, edited by K. C. Hanson (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 140.
47. Tannehill highlights that the baptism with the Holy Spirit is inclusive. With this experience of Cornelius and his house, the meaning of the experience includes Gentiles too. The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, 144.
48. Hur, A Dynamic Reading of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts, 254.
49. Ernst Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 462.
50. Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles, 815–16.

Diaspora Jewish Freedmen: Stephen’s Deadly Opponents

By Robin G. Thompson

[Robin G. Thompson is a Ph.D. student at Dallas Theological Seminary.]

Abstract

The question of who Stephen’s opponents are in Acts 6:9 involves matters of syntax, historicity, and cultural identity. Attention to these matters leads to the proposal that all of Stephen’s opponents were Diaspora Jewish freedmen who had relocated back to Jerusalem, which sheds light on why they so fiercely opposed Stephen.

* * *

In his second account to Theophilus, Luke traced the proclamation of the gospel and the establishment and growth of the new community of believers that followed in its wake. But almost from the beginning, those who proclaimed this gospel encountered opposition and persecution. And while the persecution began with the temple authorities opposing the apostles (Acts 4:1; 5:17), it turned deadly when Stephen encountered the wrath of his fellow Hellenistic Jews, at least some of whom were from the Synagogue of the Freedmen (6:9). These Jews argued with Stephen, and when they could not refute him, they created false charges, stirred up the crowd, and brought Stephen before the council of the Sanhedrin. Stephen’s speech in response to their allegations infuriated them and resulted in his stoning.

Who were these Jews and why were they so incensed by Stephen’s message? While Luke specifically identified these opponents in Acts 6:9, this verse is notoriously difficult to understand. Commentators see either Jews from one Synagogue of the Freedmen with members from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and Asia, or multiple synagogues representing two or more of these groups. All scholars identify these people as Diaspora Jews. And while commentators explain that freedmen are freed slaves,[1] the identity of this group is then left to the side, with the focus shifting back to the general category of Diaspora Jews. However, Diaspora Jews who had been enslaved and later manumitted by their owners experienced a significantly different life than their fellow Diaspora Jews.

Before manumission, these Jewish slaves would have been bought and sold as property, with no regard for their personhood. Seneca (ca. 4 BC–AD 65) commented, “When you buy a horse, you order its blanket to be removed; you pull off the garments from slaves that are advertised for sale, so that no bodily flaws may escape your notice.”[2] Once they were sold into a household, they had no “independent social existence: they were the absolute property of their masters with no legal rights.”[3] Slaves could be physically punished, and flogging was a common experience. They were physically violated in other ways, too: “enslaved girls, women, boys and young men were frequently sexual targets for their masters.”[4] Slaves were dominated, alienated, and deprived of any dignity or honor. There was a veritable chasm between slave and free. So when Jews who had lived through the scourge of slavery were manumitted by their owners, they could once again embrace their Jewish heritage, practice the Law, and pilgrimage to the temple. In fact, some of these former slaves moved back to Jerusalem, to the people and the temple of Yahweh.

The goal of this article is to determine if the people listed in Acts 6:9 were indeed Diaspora Jewish freedmen, and if so, how the unique social and cultural background of such people might shed light on why they so fiercely opposed Stephen and his message.

The Text

The text of Acts 6:9 contains multiple challenges. First, the syntax of this verse makes it difficult to determine how many synagogues and/or groups of people Luke was indicating. Second, there is a question of historicity. The reference to τῆς συναγωγῆς has sparked an ongoing discussion of whether this is simply a gathering of people or an actual building. If a building, then some scholars charge Luke with anachronism—reading what they see as a post-AD-70 phenomenon back into the time of Jesus and his disciples. Lastly, there is a question of cultural identity. The broader context of Acts 6:9, which begins in 6:1, introduces the Ἑλληνισταί and has prompted much discussion on the identity of these Jews and why they, in particular, opposed Stephen. Answers to questions of syntax, historicity, and cultural identity prepare for the question of how a better understanding of Jewish freedmen might inform understanding of the events that led up to Stephen’s martyrdom.

The Question Of Syntax

The syntax of the phrase τινες τῶν ἐκ τῆς συναγωγῆς τῆς λεγομένης Λιβερτίνων καὶ Κυρηναίων καὶ Ἀλεξανδρέων καὶ τῶν ἀπὸ Κιλικίας καὶ Ἀσίας has been understood in primarily three ways. Some commentators see here one synagogue, the Synagogue of the Freedmen, composed of people from four different areas of the Roman Empire: the cities of Cyrene and Alexandria, and the Roman provinces of Asia and Cilicia. These scholars reason that τῆς συναγωγῆς is singular, Λιβερτίνων (a transliteration of the Latin word for “freedman”[5]) serves as the name of the synagogue, and, since the other four references are to geographical locations, these groups made up the membership of the synagogue.[6] Other scholars understand this verse to reference two synagogues, or at least two distinct groups, due to the repeated τῶν . . . τῶν: the Synagogue of the Freedmen comprised of people from Cyrene and Alexandria, and another group whose members were from Cilicia and Asia.[7] Yet other commentators see five different groups referenced: a group called the Synagogue of the Freedmen, and four additional groups from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and Asia.[8] These last scholars argue that the people from each of these geographical areas would have distinctions determined by their locality, and these distinctions would naturally result in the formation of separate groups.

The syntax of the repeated τῶν does seem to point to two main groups. The cities of Cyrene and Alexandria are in Northern Africa, and the provinces of Cilicia and Asia are both located in Asia Minor, so these two geographical groups make sense. But “the Synagogue of the Freedmen” is obviously not a geographical reference. And as Richard Pervo notes, “ ‘former slaves, Cyrenians, and Alexandrians’ do not seem to make a logical grouping.”[9] So here, as is often the case, syntax alone does not answer the question of who were Stephen’s opponents. Therefore, a clear understanding of “Synagogue of the Freedmen” seems necessary in order to address the question of how many groups Luke was identifying.

The Question Of Historicity

Since Luke wrote of “the Synagogue of the Freedmen” in this verse, the implication is that there was at least one synagogue in the city of Jerusalem during the time of Jesus and his disciples. In fact, Luke mentioned synagogues often in his two volumes—much more often than any other New Testament author.[10] However, some scholars find Luke’s references anachronistic. In the debate among scholars, two primary questions are raised: (1) When and where did the synagogue as an institution originate? and (2) Did synagogues exist prior to AD 70 in Jerusalem while the temple still stood?

The history of the synagogue has undergone great revision in the last fifty years due to the work of archaeologists.[11] In the past, the origin of the synagogue was usually placed either during the Babylonian exile when there was no temple (sixth-century BC)[12] or during the Second Temple period as a reaction to the Hasmonean Revolution (second-century BC).[13] In other words, it was seen as a reaction to a religious crisis.[14] But some scholars are now beginning to question the idea that the synagogue before AD 70 originated and served as a replacement for the temple for Diaspora Jews.

So when did synagogues emerge and why? One issue in the debate is the terminology found on inscriptions and in the literature. The most common terms are συναγωγή and προσευχή with geography tending to determine the usage: προσευχή is regularly used outside Judea and συναγωγή is used inside Judea.[15] But there is disagreement about whether the references are to buildings or simply to a gathering of the community.[16] However, many inscriptions and ruins clearly indicate that a building is in view. The earliest known evidence of a synagogue building is an inscription found in Egypt dedicating a synagogue to Ptolemy III Euergetes (reigned 246-221 BC).[17] There were other προσευχαί built in Egypt in Arsinoe-Crocodilopolis, Schedia, Nitriai, Xenephyris, and Athribis.[18] Levine notes that there are “three major inscriptions from Cyrene, numerous inscriptions from the catacombs of Rome, and at least one of significance from first-century Asia Minor.”[19] These discoveries have led Flesher to conclude that “the synagogue . . . arose in a region without access to the Temple cult (for example, in Egypt) and in a sense comprised a substitute for it.”[20] But the literary sources paint a slightly different picture, one of the Diaspora synagogues keeping close ties with the temple in Jerusalem. These synagogues collected and sent the temple tax to Jerusalem, envoys traveled there to offer sacrifices, and individuals made the pilgrimage for the special feasts.[21] So while these synagogues functioned as community centers in general, with their primary purpose being the reading of Scripture on the Sabbath, they did not serve as a replacement for the temple in Jerusalem.[22]

But is there evidence of synagogues in Judea before AD 70? Archaeologists answer this question in the affirmative. A building at Gamla appears to be the earliest synagogue identified in Palestine, dated to the first century BC.[23] In addition there are buildings identified as synagogues in Masada (first century AD),[24] Herodium (AD 66-71),[25] Qiryat Sefer (early first century AD),[26] and most recently in 2000-2001, Modi’in (first century BC).[27] These structures show that the synagogue and the temple in Jerusalem existed at the same time. But most importantly for Acts 6:9, there is evidence of a synagogue in Jerusalem itself. An inscription found in a cistern on the slope of Ophel, now famously called the Theodotus inscription, details the founding of a synagogue. It reads in part, “Theodotus . . . built the synagogue for the reading of the law and the teaching of the commandments, and also the guest chamber and the upper rooms and the ritual pools of water for accommodating those needing them from abroad.”[28] This inscription is dated before AD 70.[29]

These archaeological discoveries support and augment the literary evidence for the existence of synagogue buildings before AD 70, not only in the Diaspora but also in Palestine. Besides Luke, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John provide references to synagogues in Galilee (Matt. 4:23/Mark 1:39), Nazareth (Matt. 13:54/Mark 6:1-2), and Capernaum (Mark 1:21/John 6:59). Josephus (AD 37–ca. 100) speaks of synagogues in Dora (AD 40-41) and Caesarea (AD 65-66).[30] So both archaeological and literary sources show that Luke’s portrayal of synagogues within Palestine itself during the time of Jesus and of his disciples is historically accurate.

The Question Of Cultural Identity

Stephen is first mentioned as one of seven men appointed to address a complaint raised by the Ἑλληνισταί against the Ἑβραῖοί (Acts 6:1-6). Many commentators identify Stephen as a Ἑλληνιστής himself, as well as the people listed in verse 9 who disputed with him. Later, the Ἑλληνισταί debated with Paul and wanted to kill him also (9:29). So understanding the identity of this group of people who opposed the message of Stephen and Paul is important.

The word Ἑλληνιστής is found only in Acts (6:1; 9:29; 11:20); it does not occur anywhere else in either the New Testament or the Septuagint. The lexical definition of Ἑλληνιστής indicates a person who speaks Greek.[31] A Ἑβραῖος, in this context, is then a Jew who speaks Aramaic/Hebrew.[32] However, by these definitions, Paul could be a Ἑλληνιστής, but he identified himself as a Ἑβραῖος (2 Cor. 11:22, Phil. 3:5).[33] In fact, Paul was from Cilicia, one of the locales mentioned in Acts 6:9. He too was a Diaspora Jew, but he apparently did not identify himself as a Ἑλληνιστής. This led C. D. F. Moule to suggest that the term indicated Jews who spoke Greek but not Aramaic or Hebrew.[34]

Most translations render Ἑλληνιστής in these verses as “Hellenist” (NASB, ESV, NIV, RSV, NKJV). But the term “Hellenist” has a potentially broad connotation. Even as early as the fifth century BC, Isocrates wrote that “the name ‘Hellenes’ [Ἑλλήνων] suggests no longer a race but an intelligence, and that the title ‘Hellenes’ is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share a common blood.”[35] And so C. K. Barrett states, “The question that is left open is the extent to which Ἑλληνισταί had adopted with the Greek language also Greek ways of thinking and habits of life.”[36] And here Barrett offers a wise caution, stating that there would be great variety among the Diaspora Jews.[37] In fact, there was probably great variety among Palestinian Jews, depending upon where they lived (for example, Tiberius versus Jerusalem). As Joseph Gutmann observes, “It is now realized that all the Jews of Greco-Roman antiquity, no matter whether they spoke Aramaic or Greek, were subject to the process of Hellenization.”[38]

Diaspora Jews have often been characterized as more Hellenized than Palestinian Jews, but this characterization may need revision. Andrew Overman asserts that “we must begin to study these tremendously diverse Judaisms according to their locale and region, not according to the broad, and now effectively empty, categories of Diaspora and homeland.”[39] And so while some assume that Diaspora Jews were less scrupulous, having to maneuver life as a minority, the fact that many of them continued to send their temple tax to Jerusalem and even make pilgrimages there speaks of a continued, and costly, commitment.[40] Ben Witherington makes the observation that “Saul [Paul] is proof, if any were needed, that Diaspora Jews, as a group, should never be categorized as necessarily more liberal or broad in their views of things like the temple and Torah.”[41] The “Hellenists” who debated Stephen and then later Paul were apparently Diaspora Jews who had returned to Jerusalem to live.[42] It is understandable that these Jews who used to live away from the temple and among the Gentiles and their gods might be more zealous concerning the Law of Moses and the institution of the temple than even the native Jewish population.

These Ἑλληνισταί then were very likely Jews who spoke primarily Greek and probably little, if any, Aramaic or Hebrew. But what set them apart was their life situation: they were Diaspora Jews who had maintained their distinctives, and their zealousness had compelled them to relocate to Jerusalem.[43] It was their cultural identity that put them at odds with Stephen and his message, though Stephen may have shared this same cultural identity. Maybe that is why he continued to engage them—even to the end.

The Unique Social And Cultural Identity Of Jewish Freedmen

But did Stephen really share the cultural identity of the people listed in Acts 6:9? In that he was probably primarily a Greek-speaking Jew, yes, most likely. Was he a Diaspora Jew? If the assumption that Jews who spoke Greek but not Aramaic or Hebrew were most likely Diaspora Jews, then he may very well have been.[44] Was he a freedman? There is no way of knowing. But at least some of the people listed in Acts 6:9 were apparently freedmen. Who were these freedmen and why does it matter?

To answer this question, the groups listed in this verse must be considered once more. As mentioned previously, Luke wrote of the Synagogue of the Freedmen and then four geographical locations. Some scholars, noting that Λιβερτῖνος is the Roman designation for a freedman, see this group of people as freedmen from Rome or Italy.[45] This would then provide five geographical locations.[46]

However, understanding Λιβερτῖνος to be freedmen from only Rome is an assumption that needs to be examined. Philo (ca. 20 BC–AD 50) spoke of a settlement of Jews in Rome who were brought there as captives and later manumitted.[47] Tacitus (ca. AD 56-118) wrote that four thousand Egyptian and Jewish freedmen of military age were banished to Sardinia (an island off the coast of Italy), while the rest of the Egyptians and Jews were made to leave Italy unless they recanted their religious views.[48] So there is evidence that Jewish slaves and freedmen were in Rome. These Jewish slaves probably came to Rome as a result of Pompey’s defeat of Judea in 63 BC or the siege of Jerusalem by Sosius in 37 BC.[49] In addition, in 4 BC, Varus put down an uprising where two thousand were crucified and many others were taken captive.[50] But were these Jewish captives taken only to Rome? Gideon Fuks comments that “our sources never state specifically that these captives were brought to Rome. On the contrary; on a number of occasions we are led to suppose that Jews were sold into slavery in the markets of non-Jewish Palestine, or in those of Syria and especially Egypt.”[51] J. Albert Harrill explains that “opportunistic markets formed around frontier army camps . . . [and] these ‘camp followers’ (canabae) worked deals with the military to operate wholesale bazaars to auction off the always plentiful war captives.”[52] So while there were multiple conflicts in which Jews were enslaved, many surely ended up, not just in Rome, but scattered across the Roman Empire. With this in mind, it seems very likely that there could be Jewish freedmen from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and Asia.[53]

This analysis suggests then that in Acts 6:9 Luke gave the name of the one synagogue, the Synagogue of the Freedmen, and then listed the various places these freedmen had relocated from.[54] This suggestion that the people arguing with Stephen were not simply those of the Jewish Diaspora, but Jewish freedmen in particular, brings some light on why Jews from these several geographic areas were named together. They had something much deeper in common than locality; they had experienced the scourge of slavery and the restored gift of freedom.

But why would Jewish freedmen as a group have so adamantly opposed Stephen’s message? Little work has been done to explore this question. Harrill touches on these Jewish freedmen in an excursus, as does Keener,[55] but most others simply mention what a libertini is and then return to speaking of the opponents as Diaspora Jews.[56] While the freedmen topic itself is beyond the scope of this article, there are some specifics that bear on the issue at hand.

As has been mentioned, a freedman is a slave who has been manumitted by his owner. Some scholars go on to say that the term “freedman” is also used for a freed slave’s descendants. While the sons of freed slaves were called freedmen before 217 BC, the term after that time referred only to the freed slave.[57] Any child of a freedman who was born after his parent was freed was born as a free person, not a freedman. This is an important clarification. Legally, there was a distinction between a freedman and a freeborn person.[58] There was also social stigma attached to a freedman, for “despite his legal transformation the freedman still possessed his ‘servile ingenium,’ and he would always remain inferior to those untainted by servitude.”[59] A descendant of a freedman would in every way be a freeborn person, with no legal or social disadvantages. So anyone who was not a freedman would not want to be identified as one.[60] But the question arises, if a Jewish freedman returned to live in Jerusalem and was a member of this synagogue, would his descendants continue to attend it even though they themselves were not freedmen? There is no way to know. But if they did, it would indicate that they still closely associated themselves with this group of people.

Another misconception concerning freedmen is that most Roman slaves were eventually manumitted. Some who have studied Roman slavery and manumission have worked to dispel this false idea. Keith Hopkins asserts that “most Roman slaves were freed only by death.”[61] It is important to note that of all the Jews taken in war and enslaved, only a small percentage would have become freedmen. However, some authors have written that owners often manumitted Jewish slaves because they were difficult, due to their religious scruples.[62] But as slaves, Jewish persons would have no right to their religious views and practices. Fuks responds, “We know that Roman masters tended to send such obdurate people to their agricultural estates, where work was much harder and the chance of being manumitted quite slim.”[63] The attitude that in fact appears to have set slaves on the path to manumission is not one of obduracy but of faithfulness to do what the master required.[64]

This raises an important question: What was life like for a Jewish slave? In most regards, slavery was the same, regardless of a person’s origins. Slaves were bought and sold as property.[65] They were “deprived of a past and a future, unable to claim natal family or legitimate offspring.”[66] Slaves could be physically punished, sometimes brutally, without recourse.[67] They could also be branded, tattooed, and shackled.[68] If all this were not enough, slaves were often used sexually by their masters.[69] Slavery would have been, for most, a miserable existence. Publius Syrus (first century BC), a freedman himself, wrote, “It is beautiful to die instead of being degraded as a slave.”[70]

But for a Jew, the experience must have had an extra measure of hardship. Since slaves were property and had no individual rights, a Jewish slave, unless he or she had a particularly benevolent master, could not adhere to the Mosaic Law. While all Diaspora Jews were separated from the temple, in a very practical sense, Jewish slaves were also separated from the Law. So for the very fortunate few who were eventually manumitted by their owners, becoming a freedman must have been particularly significant. No longer under the absolute will of another, they could now worship as they desired. They could follow the Law with no obstacles. And some of these liberated Jews, probably the most devout among them, made the journey back to Jerusalem, to live among the chosen people and worship in the temple of their God. Surely, they more the any other group of Diaspora Jews, coveted the temple and the Law. They had received back what they had lost. So when Stephen began to tell them things that sounded like a threat to the temple and to the Law, it becomes more clear why they so vigorously opposed him.

Conclusion

In Acts 6:9, Luke identifies a group of men who began to argue with Stephen, and these men ultimately orchestrated the events that led to Stephen’s stoning. Luke specified the Synagogue of the Freedmen and four geographical areas. While the Greek in this verse is admittedly ambiguous, an understanding of first-century history and culture leads to more clarity. It is historically possible for a building and community called the Synagogue of the Freedmen to have existed in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus and his disciples. Military defeats suffered by Judea had resulted in many thousands of Jews being taken as war prisoners and sold as slaves—not just in Rome but throughout the Empire. Some of these slaves were eventually manumitted by their owners and granted freedom. Because slavery would have in most cases deprived these Jews of the ability to adhere to the Law, freedom brought a restoration of their religious customs. This background of slavery, manumission, and restored freedom to worship is what these Jews from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and Asia shared. These freedmen surely valued their Jewish heritage and customs more than Diaspora Jews who had never had them entirely taken away. Those who then migrated back to Jerusalem were probably some of the most devout Jews in the city.

These then were Stephen’s opponents—not simply Diaspora Jews, but Diaspora Jews who were freedmen. Luke did not specify what they argued with Stephen about, what in particular they found threatening or offensive. But in his speech before the council, Stephen spoke not only to the council, but to these, his accusers. He repeatedly accused them of being descendants of a disobedient people. When they were slaves, these freedmen could claim no ancestors, their heritage was stripped from them, and they had become simply bodies to be used by their masters. When their freedom was restored, in a sense, so was their heritage. But Stephen was rehearsing the disobedience of these very ancestors. And then he directly accused them: “You people who are stubborn and uncircumcised in hearts and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51). They were stubborn, uncircumcised, resisting God? They who had endured slavery, who had worked hard to earn their masters’ favor, who had become some of the fortunate few to taste freedom again, who had made the effort to return to Jerusalem? How could they be the ones resisting God? But when Stephen said, “Look! I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (7:56), their building fury erupted. They covered their ears in reaction to what they perceived as blasphemy,[71] dragged Stephen out, and silenced him forever. In the most fundamental way, the declaration of Jesus’s resurrection and ascension threatened their concept of God, his Law, and his temple—the God, the Law, and the temple they had worked so hard to return to.

It may not be possible to fully understand why this group of freedmen could not accept that Jesus was the Messiah. But perhaps their reaction is more understandable in light of their background as not just any group of Diaspora Jews but Diaspora Jews from the Synagogue of the Freedmen.

Notes

1. For the sake of simplicity, the terms “freedman” and “freedmen” are used to refer to both male and female freed slaves.
2. Seneca, Epistolae morales, 80.9, trans. Richard M. Gummere, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920), 2:217.
3. Clarice J. Martin, “The Eyes Have It: Slaves in the Communities of Christ-Believers,” in Christian Origins, ed. Richard A. Horsley, A People’s History of Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2005), 228.
4. Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 51.
5. Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., rev. and ed. Frederick W. Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 594.
6. C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, 2 vols., International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 1:323; F. F. Bruce, The Book of the Acts, rev. ed., New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 124; Hans Conzelmann, Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, trans. James Limburg, A. Thomas Kraabel, and Donald H. Juel, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 47; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 358; Ernst Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary, trans. Bernard Nobel and Gerald Shinn (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 271n1; Richard N. Longenecker, “Acts,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Luke-Acts (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 812; and Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 253. Schnabel structures the verse in this way but then makes no decision on how many synagogues may be indicated (Eckhard J. Schnabel, Acts, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012], 342).
7. Stephen K. Catto, Reconstructing the First-Century Synagogue: A Critical Analysis of Current Research, Library of New Testament Studies (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 166; F. J. Foakes-Jackson and Kirsopp Lake, eds., The Beginnings of Christianity: The Acts of the Apostles, vol. 4, English Translation and Commentary, ed. Kirsopp Lake and Henry J. Cadbury (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1965), 66; Howard Clark Kee, “Defining the First-Century C.E. Synagogue,” in Evolution of the Synagogue: Problems and Progress, ed. Howard Clark Kee and Lynn H. Cohick (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999), 17; Richard I. Pervo, Acts: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 167; and Wolfgang Schrage, “συναγωγή,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), 837.
8. Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley, “Synagogue Communities in the Graeco-Roman Cities,” in Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities, ed. John R. Bartlett (London: Routledge, 2002), 71; Martin Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul: Studies in the Earliest History of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983; reprint, Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013), 17; Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 53; and Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135), new English version, rev. and ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and Matthew Black (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979), 2:428.
9. Pervo, Acts, 166.
10. The term συναγωγή is found fifty-six times in the New Testament: Acts–19; Luke–15; Matt.–9; Mark–8; John–2; Rev.–2; and James–1. This search was done using the computer software BibleWorks 9.0.
11. Anders Runesson, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C.E.: A Source Book, Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 6.
12. Rudolf Klein, “Synagogue,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (Detroit: Keter, 2007), 353; A. T. Kraabel, “Unity and Diversity among Diaspora Synagogues,” in Diaspora Jews and Judaism: Essays in Honor of, and in Dialogue with, A. Thomas Kraabel, ed. J. Andrew Overman and Robert S. MacLennan (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992), 29; and Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135), 2:424.
13. Joseph Gutmann, ed., Ancient Synagogues: The State of Research, Brown Judaic Studies (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), x.
14. Joseph Gutmann, “Synagogue Origins: Theories and Facts,” in Ancient Synagogues: The State of Research, 4; and L. I. Levine, “The Nature and Origin of the Palestinian Synagogue Reconsidered,” Journal of Biblical Literature 115, no. 3 (1996): 425.
15. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 127-28; Rainer Riesner, “Synagogues in Jerusalem,” in The Book of Acts in Its Palestinian Setting, ed. Richard Bauckham (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 182, 184; and Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C.E., 170.
16. Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles, 255.
17. Klein, “Synagogue,” 354.
18. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 80.
19. Levine, “The Nature and Origin of the Palestinian Synagogue Reconsidered,” 429.
20. Paul V. M. Flesher, “Palestinian Synagogues before 70 C.E.: A Review of the Evidence,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, Studia Post-Biblica (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1:8.
21. Donald D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period, SBL Dissertation (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999), 487-88; Josephus, Antiquitates judaicae 14.227; 16.164, 168; Philo, Legatio ad Galium 156, 311; De specialibus legibus 1.76-78; and S. Safrai, “Relations between the Diaspora and the Land of Israel,” in The Jewish People in the First Century, ed. S. Safrai and M. Stern (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1974), 1:188-99.
22. Catto, Reconstructing the First-Century Synagogue, 113, 123; Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 3; and Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135), 447.
23. Lester L. Grabbe, “Synagogues in Pre-70 Palestine: A Re-Assessment,” Journal of Theological Studies 39, no. 2 (1988): 406; Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 51; and Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C.E., 33.
24. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 58-59; Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C.E., 55; and James F. Strange, “Ancient Texts, Archaeology as Text, and the Problem of the First-Century Synagogue,” in Evolution of the Synagogue: Problems and Progress, 41.
25. Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C.E., 35; and Strange, “Ancient Texts, Archaeology as Text, and the Problem of the First-Century Synagogue,” 43.
26. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 65-66; and Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C.E., 65.
27. Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C.E., 57.
28. L. Robert, M. N. Tod, and E. Ziebarth, eds., Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Leiden, 1932-1949; reprint, Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1984), 8:170; and Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C.E., 53.
29. Robert, Tod, and Ziebarth, Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, 8:170. Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul, 17; and Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 2:1306-307. Not all scholars accept this dating (Howard Clark Kee, “The Transformation of the Synagogue After 70 C.E.: Its Import for Early Christianity,” New Testament Studies 36, no. 1 [1990]: 7-8).
30. Josephus, Bellum judaicum 2.14.4-5; Antiquitates judaicae 19.6.3. Dates provided in Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 63-64.
31. Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, and Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 319; and H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 536.
32. Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 270; and Liddell, Scott, and Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 467.
33. Graham Harvey, “Synagogues of the Hebrews: ‘Good Jews’ in the Diaspora,” in Jewish Local Patriotism and Self-Identification in the Graeco-Roman Period, ed. Sian Jones and Sarah Pearce, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998), 143; Longenecker, “Acts,” 803; and C. F. D. Moule, “Once More, Who Were the Hellenists?” Expository Times 70, no. 4 (1959): 100.
34. Moule, “Once More, Who Were the Hellenists?” 100.
35. Isocrates, Panegyricus 50, trans. George Norlin, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 1:149.
36. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, 1:308.
37. Ibid., 1:309.
38. Joseph Gutmann, “The Synagogue of Dura-Europos: A Critical Analysis,” in Evolution of the Synagogue: Problems and Progress, 83.
39. J. Andrew Overman and Robert S. MacLennan, Diaspora Jews and Judaism: Essays in Honor of, and in Dialogue with, A. Thomas Kraabel (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992), 77.
40. Philip F. Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 33.
41. Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles, 254.
42. Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul, 12; Keener, Acts, 1260.
43. Darrell L. Bock, Acts, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 272.
44. Keener argues that Stephen’s name itself indicates that he was a Diaspora Jew: “‘Stephen’ was a very common Greek name, but it was rare in Palestine and is never clearly attested for Palestinian Jews” (Keener, Acts, 1281-82).
45. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles, 356; Fitzpatrick-McKinley, “Synagogue Communities in the Graeco-Roman Cities,” 71; Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul, 17; Pervo, Acts, 167n18; Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135), 428n8.
46. Keener suggests five different synagogues. He contends that it is difficult to suppose “that large numbers of Jewish slaves of Roman citizens would have settled in other, non-Jewish Eastern cities before moving here [Jerusalem]” (Keener, Acts, 1302).
47. Philo, Legatio ad Gaium 155.
48. This occurred in AD 19. Tacitus, Annals 2.85.
49. Gideon Fuks, “Where Have All the Freedmen Gone? On an Anomaly in the Jewish Grave Inscriptions from Rome,” Journal of Jewish Studies 36, no. 1 (1985): 25-27; Kraabel, “The Roman Diaspora,” 13; Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 54.
50. Fuks, “Where Have All the Freedmen Gone?” 27; Josephus, Bellum judaicum 2.66-79.
51. Fuks, “Where Have All the Freedmen Gone?” 27.
52. J. Albert Harrill, The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity, Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 32 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 1995), 37.
53. While it is beyond the scope of this article, one way to confirm the presence of Jewish freedmen in these other areas would be to research the funerary inscriptions from these regions. Freedmen in particular engaged in the creation of tombstone inscriptions, and there are large numbers of such inscriptions throughout the Roman Empire (Henrik Mouritsen, The Freedman in the Roman World [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011], 127-28).
54. Harrill comments that “the fact that a synagogue could have been composed entirely or mainly of freedmen/women and their descendants is interesting in itself and parallels the phenomenon of collegia tenuiorum made up soley of liberti” (Harrill, The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity, 61-62).
55. Harrill, The Manumission of Slaves, 56-66, specifically p. 61; and Keener, Acts, 1304-306.
56. See especially Hengel and Keener, who both expertly explore why the Hellenistic Jews would have so strongly opposed Stephen. They come to the same basic conclusion as this article, but they focus on these Jews being simply Diaspora Jews, not Diaspora Jewish freedmen, and so do not consider the implications of this difference (Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul, 1-29). Keener has an excursus on freedmen, but he too returns to speaking of these Jews as Diaspora Jews (Keener, Acts, 1304-310).
57. A. M. Duff, Freedmen in the Early Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928; reprint, Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino, 2007), 50-51; and Evan W. Haley, “Suetonius ‘Claudius’ 24, 1 and the Sons of Freedmen,” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 35, no. 1 (1986): 120-21.
58. Duff, Freedmen in the Early Roman Empire, 36-49; and Mouritsen, The Freedman in the Roman World, 66-119.
59. Mouritsen, The Freedman in the Roman World, 66.
60. Contra Keener who argues that, “although the title might apply strictly to first-generation children of freedpersons . . . , those for whom it was a high-status term might preserve it longer” (Keener, Acts, 1303). He assumes that “freedman” was a high-status term because freedmen were Roman citizens. However, a freedman received citizenship only if his owner/patron was a Roman citizen. And even if the owner/patron was a citizen, the freed slave did not become a Roman citizen if he was freed informally (Matthew J. Perry, Gender, Manumission, and the Roman Freedwoman [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014], 65). In fact, informal manumission may have been the more common and preferred manner of manumission by slave owners (Mouritsen, The Freedman in the Roman World, 189, 238).
61. Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves, Sociological Studies in Roman History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 118; see also Mouritsen, The Freedman in the Roman World, 194.
62. Salo Wittmayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, rev. ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), 1:259; and E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian: A Study in Political Relations (Boston: Brill, 2001), 131.
63. Fuks, “Where Have All the Freedmen Gone?” 30.
64. S. Scott Bartchy, ΜΑΛΛΟΝΧΡΗΣΑΙ: First-Century Slavery and the Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:21, SBL Dissertation (Missoula, MT: Society of Biblical Literature, 1973), 119; Mouritsen, The Freedman in the Roman World, 200, 242; and Susan Treggiari, Roman Freedmen During the Late Republic (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), 15.
65. Philo, Special Laws 2, 8.34; Seneca, Epistles 80.9.
66. Carolyn Osiek, “Family Matters,” in Christian Origins, ed. Richard A. Horsley, A People’s History of Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 1:209.
67. Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum 28.4.16.
68. Richard A. Horsley, “The Slave Systems of Classical Antiquity and Their Reluctant Recognition by Modern Scholars,” Semeia 83-84 (1998): 43.
69. Musonius Rufus, Fragment 12.
70. Publius Syrus, Sententiae 480, trans. J. Albert Harrill, in The Manumission of Slaves, 1.
71. Bock, Acts, 313; Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles, 276.

True Source of Strength - Paul Washer

The Biblical Use Of Marriage To Illustrate Covenantal Relationships

By J. Lanier Burns

[J. Lanier Burns is Research Professor of Theological Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.]

Abstract

This article explores the theme of marriage in the Bible with two foci in mind: theological method for biblical audiences, and Scripture’s use of itself to progressively develop its unified, Christ-centered message with marriage as a foundational paradigm for biblical audiences to understand truth. Investigation begins with prophetic texts that, though negative, clearly explicate Israel’s idolatry with covenantal marriage in the background. A second section looks back at creation for marital ideals “from the beginning.” Finally, the marriage/adultery metaphor is discussed from Revelation 17 through 21 to show that the paradigmatic theme extends from Genesis to the Revelation.

* * *

Introduction

The biblical authors did not have large libraries, nor were they motivated by an endless quest for professional degrees and credentials. Intelligent and wise, they wrestled with God-given revelation and familial traditions rather than exhaustive research on problematic pericopes for prestigious presses. Joseph and Daniel come to mind as outstanding consultants in their respective empires. Their guidance has filled sermons and textbooks, but their own insight came in dreams and visions from God. How did they do theology compared with how I have done it? In reading the Scriptures, I am constantly reminded of their priorities in doctrine that undercut the complexities of modern hermeneutics. I am not saying that we can or should abandon modern methods, but how would biblical authors and audiences have understood the plethora of options, issues, and principles that guide us? If theology is to be understood and developed analogically, then I wish to suggest that marriage (and family) was among the most basic illustrative guidelines for understanding God’s Word.

Second, the reflexive use of the Old Testament in the Old Testament (e.g., the prophetic calls to remember God’s goodness at the Exodus) and in the New Testament (e.g., the catena in Hebrews and the Revelation) suggests that the biblical authors were self-consciously constructing Christ-centered metanarratives. This means that the Bible is unified, progressively developing truth as the authors were carried along by the Holy Spirit. This becomes evident when tracing central themes through the Bible, for example, the marriage theme in Genesis through Revelation. The thematic links do not seem to be a coincidence. This exploration of the biblical teaching on marriage will begin in medias res in Ezekiel 16 and Hosea, because of their vividness and clarity,[1] and will proceed to the creation account of Genesis to expound what is “true from the beginning” about marriage as a prelude to conclusions about the subject in the Revelation.

The Adultery/Marriage Metaphor In Hosea And Ezekiel

Ezekiel 16 is a part of God’s oracles concerning judgment on Jerusalem and Judah for their idolatry, which is couched in an adultery metaphor (chaps. 13-24).[2] It precedes oracles of judgment against the nations (chaps. 25-32). The chapter highlights the love, grace, and justice of God as he “confront[s] Jerusalem with her detestable practices” (v. 1).[3] God noted that her ancestry and birth were in Canaan (16:1-6). Her father was Amorite, and her mother was Hittite.

On her birth day no one looked on her with pity and compassion, so she thrashed about with an uncut cord, unwashed and abandoned.[4] The femaleness of the chapter has been offensive to modern sensibilities. However, city as “female” and “mother” of her populations is a standard ancient Near Eastern portrayal. It had nothing to do with a patriarchal polemic against femaleness.[5] The extended metaphor used the royal city as an analogue for unbelieving Israel, male and female alike. The passage is important because Jerusalem’s wickedness had become proverbial: “Everyone who quotes proverbs will quote this proverb [a saying fixed in popular perception] about you: ‘Like mother, like daughter’ ” (v. 44). She had joined the family of Canaanite fertility cults and exceeded the wickedness of “sister” cities like Samaria and Sodom.[6] “Jerusalem must bear her disgrace and shame” (v. 54), because her sins had given depraved pagans comfort by comparison.[7]

God passed by as Jerusalem lay in her birth blood (v. 6).[8] The emphasis is on grace, since God alone cared. “As you lay there in your blood I said to you, ‘Live,’ ” a narrative expression of grace. God gave her life out of abandonment. He nurtured her to sexual maturity until she was ready for love (vv. 7-8). After his gracious claim and nurturing care, God “passed by” again and noticed that his adopted child was “old enough for love,” so he anthropomorphically spread the corner of his garment over her and covered her nakedness (v. 8). According to custom, the covering symbolized entering into the “covering” of a protective marriage relationship.

The imagery of covering and the importance of marriage for godly Israelites are illustrated in Ruth. In the era of the Judges, a famine drove Elimelech and Naomi from Bethlehem to Moab, where grain and goods were available east of the Dead Sea. Her husband and sons died, and after ten years “Naomi heard that the Lord had come to the aid of his people” (1:6). She had been transformed from Naomi (“pleasant”) to Mara (“bitter”) in afflictions allowed by the Almighty (1:20). In an agrarian society, women with no familial guardians were destitute. The goel provision (Deut. 25:5-6), as in Ruth, took place when a willing relative would marry the widow and prayerfully continue the family. Ruth birthed Obed, grandfather of David in the line of Jesus the Messiah (Ruth 4:18-22; Matt. 1:5-6). Seeing what had happened, Naomi’s friends said, “Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you [Naomi] without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth” (Ruth 4:14-15).

After spreading his garment over Jerusalem, God gave her “a solemn oath and entered into a covenant with her, according to the declaration of the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine” (Ezek. 16:8).[9] He graciously bathed her with water and ointments, and he gave extravagant gifts to her. He clothed her with “costly garments,” whose variegated materials reflected his own tabernacle and his sovereign status (vv. 10, 13). He adorned her with gold, silver, precious jewels, and a “beautiful wedding crown,” making her “renowned for her beauty among the nations” (vv. 12-14). He fed her delicious morsels of flour, honey, and olive oil (v. 13). The passage emphasizes that Israel did nothing to deserve the extravagance of the Lord; it was all of grace. “She became very beautiful and rose to be a queen” (v. 13). Jerusalem’s royal rank was underscored by her multicolored robe (cf. Ps. 45:14) and peerless treasures, “the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth” (cf. Ps. 48:1-2).

Then Ezekiel 16 takes a cataclysmic turn: “But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute” (v. 15).[10] Jerusalem used God’s gifts for her idolatry: the clothes were used to make “gaudy high places” for Asherah worship, the jewelry was recast as male idols, and the food was offered to the idols (vv. 16-19). Even worse was child sacrifice (vv. 20-22; cf. 23:9-12, 37-39), reflecting the fact that the Israelites/Jerusalem had become oblivious to “the days of their youth, when they were naked and bare, kicking about in their blood” (vv. 23, 44-48). Sacrificing a child to the fire for Molech involved slaying the child and then burning its body as a sacrifice to the god. Ahaz was guilty of this (2 Kings 16:3), as was Manasseh (21:6). Jerusalem had become insatiable and bribed her enemies to participate in her prostitution. Patrick Miller comments on the metaphor of prostitution:

Such a metaphor is appropriate in part because of the similarity of the marriage relationship to the covenant relationship. Harlotry as going after lovers outside of and in violation of the relationship of undivided loyalty between husband and wife vividly uncovers the nature of Israel’s sin. That sin is further disclosed by the realization of the role of the sexual dimension in the fertility rites of Canaanite ritual and thus the further appropriateness of the imagery of adultery and harlotry as a way of depicting what Israel had done.[11]

Hence, “ ‘Woe, woe to you, adulterous wife,’ declared the Sovereign Lord” (vv. 23, 32). The outward cult reflected the inward decline of character to the point that her detestable conduct gave comparative comfort to her wicked sisters, Samaria and Sodom (v. 54, cf. 58 and the “mutual disgust” in 23:17-18, 28-29).

In summary, God’s family had been chosen in Abraham, “gestated” in Egypt, led to the promised land by Moses, and organized as a nation in Jerusalem by David and Solomon with royal palace and temple. In Ezekiel’s extended metaphor she had become an adulterous wife, prostituting God’s gracious gifts for idolatrous worship. God as the husband exemplified grace, and his city/people as the wife exemplified infidelity.[12] This shocking imagery of marriage is validated in the equally vivid drama of Hosea.

About a century and a half before Ezekiel, the Lord spoke through Hosea at a time when Israel and Judah were divided. Instead of an extended metaphor as in Ezekiel, God commanded the prophet to marry “an adulterous wife and to have children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord” (1:2-3).[13] Gary Smith has noted:

God instructed Hosea to marry an ‘adulterous wife’ (1:2), an act that has caused great consternation among interpreters. . . . The moral problem involved with this exhortation makes some think that this whole story was just a vision or parable. . . . The plain meaning of these words cannot be easily escaped, however, for Gomer was to symbolize the fact that the land of Israel was full of people who had departed from the Lord and committed adultery by their involvement in the fertility religion of Baalism.[14]

The children of Hosea and Gomer were given “message names,” seemingly unbearable in their negative implications for God’s idolatrous people. Their first child was named Jezreel (“God has sown/planted”). The name was a reminder of judgment, a place that recalled Jehu’s elimination of the Omrid dynasty. In Hosea’s day Jehu’s dynasty was hopelessly corrupted and would be eliminated in another massacre in about thirty years (“soon”). In an indefinite future (“in that day”) the kingdom of Israel would fall to the Assyrians in the valley of Jezreel, which had become a byword for decisive battles. The second child was named רחמה לא (“she will not be shown compassion”), a widely understood allusion to covenantal curses. “Yet I will show compassion to the house of Judah,” God said (1:7). Judah was promised divine deliverance without military power in warfare. This hope apparently referred to God’s miraculous deliverance of Hezekiah from Sennacherib’s army in 701 BC, when 185,000 Assyrians were struck down in a single night (Isa. 36-37). The third child was named לא עמי (“not my people”), with Yahweh as the speaker and Israel as the referent. Israel’s identity was as a covenant nation under the Lord, so now her adulterous ways had severed her special relationship with God under the old order.

The hardness of the narrative is meliorated by a future when Judah and Israel will be reunited in faith and “will be called ‘sons of the living God,’ ” for “great will be the day of Jezreel” (vv. 10-11). Emphatically, “in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ ”[15] The goal of the discipline was repentance rather than destruction.

Hosea 2 continues the hope when brothers “will be my people, and sisters will be God’s loved ones” (2:1). But future descendants are told to rebuke their mother, who was behaving unwifely in unfaithfulness.[16] She, with her children, would be stripped of covenant provision and privilege and shamefully exposed (2:2-3; cf. Ezek. 23:10).[17] As in Ezekiel they would associate the nakedness of the mother/city with her bareness “as on the day she was born” (Hos. 2:3; cf. Jer. 3:2-3; 13:24-27). As did Jerusalem in Ezekiel, Gomer attributes her gifts to her “lovers” until she discovers that adultery is worthless (Hos. 2:7-8). Fertility was the expectation of Baalism, but Israel discovered that the fertility of the land was a gift of Yahweh and that Baal was sterile. As she pursued her lovers in vain, she finally discerned that they had used and abused her, humiliating her by publicly refusing her lewdness and promiscuity (vv. 5-13). “ ‘I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals . . . but me she forgot,’ declares the Lord” (v. 13). At the heart of the indictment was the fact that Israel forgot her Lord.[18] Then at the end of her punishment, she would say, “I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now” (v. 7; cf. Ezek. 23:12).

In Hosea and Ezekiel God will allure her in faithfulness to his covenantal promises, and she will “sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt” (Hos. 2:14-15).[19] “ ‘In that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘you will call me “my husband” [אישׁ]; you will no longer call me “my master” [בעל]. . . . In that day I will make a covenant for them’ ” (vv. 16-18; cf. 6:7, 81; Isa. 2:2-4, 11:6-9; 65:25) and will establish peace and safety in the land. In the future, because of God’s character, Israel’s “marital” relationship with God will be reaffirmed: “I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness and you will acknowledge the Lord” (Hos. 2:19-20).

The language suggests intimacy between partners in the marital covenant and a mutual embrace based on the faithfulness of Israel’s righteous and faithful Lord. The term for betrothal (ארשׂ) is used three times to emphasize the difference of the new covenant, which will not be “like the [old] covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt” (Jer. 31:32). In the new earth, “I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one called ‘Not my loved one’ . . . I will say to those called ‘not my people,’ ‘you are my people’; and they will say ‘You are my God’ ” (Hos. 2:22-23). This is reflected in Revelation 21:3: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God’ ” (cf. Jer. 7:23; 31:33; Zech. 8:8; 13:9; Gen. 17:7; Ezek. 34:30-31; 36:28; 37:27). The statement affirms not only covenantal restitution with a united Israel in faith but also God’s ideals for marriage as a metaphor of his relationship with his people: “I will betroth you to me forever, I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion, I will betroth you in faithfulness” (Hos. 2:19-20). The future realities stand in sharpest contrast to the immoral behaviors in the prophets’ world and ours.

Then Hosea was instructed by the Lord to show love to Gomer in spite of her adulteries to illustrate God’s love for Israel, though they had turned to other gods (3:1). So the prophet went to the market to redeem her from her addictive behavior, with the bridal price as a redemption from her debts. He told her, “You are to live with me for many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you. . . . For the Israelites will live many days in exile . . . but afterward they will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king [the “one leader” of 1:11]. They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days” (v. 4). Here the return from exile becomes a typological preview of an eschatological return “in the last days.”

Ezekiel parallels Hosea in 16:59-63. Israel will be justly disciplined because she “despised my oath by breaking the covenant” (16:59; cf. v. 8 with Hos. 6:7). “Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you . . . and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. . . . So I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the Lord” (Ezek. 16:60-62). What is the covenant that is emphasized in Hosea and Ezekiel? Is it a general notion of God’s marital relation with his people (a marital vow) or is it a particular promise with everlasting implications? Or is it both? Hosea assumes a generalized covenantal tradition as embodied in promises to Abraham, Moses, and David. The covenantal tradition testified to God’s faithfulness and Israel’s waywardness. The covenant in Ezekiel 16:8 is best explained in context as a marital vow, a covenantal commitment of faithfulness to Israel. However, the references to the everlasting covenant “in that day” probably refer to the new covenant in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36.[20] Jeremiah 31:31-33 decrees a new covenant, “which will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them [cf. 3:14] . . . I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts, I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Wolff draws on the last sentence to define the newness of the covenant: “God’s own finger will inscribe the heart—the organ which gives life its direction. . . . God’s Spirit is the pulsating life of this new heart.”[21] All of this is possible because of the forgiveness that is accomplished by the sacrificial death of the bride’s Messiah. The “ ‘days are coming,’ declares the Lord, when Jerusalem will be rebuilt . . . and will never again be uprooted or demolished” (31:40; cf. Rev. 21:1-5). In Ezekiel 36:27-38, “for the sake of his holy name,” the Lord will save his people, regather them to Jerusalem, and forgive them for their uncleanness. The cities and land will flourish “like the garden of Eden” and “they will know that I am the Lord” (v. 38).

In summary, Hosea featured an adulterous marriage in place of Ezekiel’s adulterous city. Idolatry and fornication were inextricably connected in the Old Testament to highlight Israel’s need to have integrity in her covenantal relationship with God. The negative images are forceful reminders of the seriousness of violating marriage between God and his people. Both Hosea and Ezekiel projected future blessing through the new covenant in the last days. The outworking of the covenant is a vindication of the character of God and his commitment to dwell forever with his people, so that “you will know that I am the Sovereign Lord” (Ezek. 23:49).

The Marriage Metaphor In Genesis

The marriage theme in the prophets is graphic and disturbing because of the effects of sin on God’s creation and in his people. But, in the words of Jesus, “It was not this way from the beginning” (Matt. 19:8). What then was the biblical standard for marriage from the beginning? According to Jesus, the Creator ordained marriage between male and female to exemplify his Trinitarian commitment to his people (19:4-6). Genesis 1:26-28 with 2:20-25 contain the biblical ideals of marriage, which are reduced to their foundational aspects: “God said, ‘Let us make humanity in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over all the other creatures in land and sea.’ So God created man in his own image . . . male and female he created them.” Then, in Genesis 2: “But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep . . . and he took one of the man’s ribs [from the center of his being]. . . . Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib . . . and he brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” for she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother [as initiator of covenantal relationship] and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”[22] These ideals are developed in progressive revelation with explicit allusions by Jesus and Paul.

God’s initial statement of order in his new creation places marriage at the core of his will for the earth. The literal meaning of “be fruitful and multiply” is obviously in view for the pre- and post-diluvian genealogies in Genesis 5 and 10. It also applies to the families of the patriarchs in chapter 12 and following. But are there other layers of meaning beneath literal reproduction? The Bible itself exposes these layers as its authors reflect on creation and its culmination with humanity in God’s image.[23] Why does the Bible most often portray our ungendered God in a male role? Why is God so intimately involved in the creation of woman and the inception of marriage? Reproduction in view of later texts like Hosea, Ezekiel, and the Song of Songs analogically refers to “covenant” as God’s initiative of love and grace on behalf of his people. They, in turn, are to respond positively in faith as his covenantal partner. Humanity, in progressive revelation, is portrayed in a female role, exhibiting faith or unbelief, bride or harlot. God’s command in Ezekiel to “live” makes salvation analogous to marriage in the union of grace and faith.

The layers are exposed by terminology that begs for explanation. The plural “us” has been recognized as a crucial element, and it has been variously explained as God’s hosts, a plural of majesty, or as plurality within the Godhead.[24] Granting that the Trinity is not explicitly revealed here, we may note that triunity is an incommunicable attribute of God, who is living, unique, and Trinitarian, and his creation of humanity in his image would seem to suggest humanity as plural as well, as signified by marriage in chapter 2.[25] People are “male and female” in 1:27; therefore, they are social and plural by nature rather than individual in a modern sense. In Genesis 2:15-20 Adam named the lesser creatures, “but for himself no suitable partner/helper was found” (2:20). So God made woman from the center of his being to complement Adam and complete creation. Ross comments on the implication of a complementary partner, “God is usually the one described as the ‘helper’ (Exod. 18:4; Deut. 33:7; 1 Sam. 7:12; Ps. 20:2; 46:1). The word essentially describes one who provides what is lacking in man, who can do what the man alone cannot do.”[26] “This is now,” Adam sang, “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh,” reflecting inward and outward union. Humanity is no longer single but couple, as ordered by and under the Creator. According to Barth, “any other form of the mutual relationship of man and woman alters their relationship to God. And every alteration of their relationship to God is betrayed by the disturbance and reversal of their normal and good mutual relationship.”[27] “Now,” in Barth’s words, “she is I as his thou,” and, I add, he is I as her thou.[28] “For this reason,” Genesis continues, “a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (2:24).[29] Interestingly, the separation from parents, with only an implication of family in the mandate to reproduce, highlights the fact that marriage is the foundation of human societies to come.

The covenant between man and woman in marriage introduces the mystery of God’s relationship with humanity. The God-given marital covenant points “upward” to the mystery of God’s ordained relationship with humanity. The negative was expressed in Ezekiel 16:59. “I will deal with you as you deserve, because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant.” Hosea traces the theme of adultery to Adam’s disobedience: “Like Adam, they [Israel] have broken the covenant” (6:7). Positively, Paul in Ephesians 5:31 refers to the “cleaving” of Genesis 2:24 as “a profound mystery, but [δέ] I am talking about Christ and the church.”[30] Similarly, Genesis suggests that the theological covenant with humanity (and later Israel and the people of faith) is the inner basis of creation that points to its goal. Yahweh is always the Lover, Bridegroom, and Husband of his people. In the words of Isaiah 54:4, “Your Maker is your Husband—the Lord Almighty is his name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, he is called the God of all the earth.” Here Yahweh initiates and preserves relationship with Israel as his wife. The human counterpart has failed miserably, but the grace of the divine “Husband” has kept the covenant promises alive. In a wider context the person is not individual but rather plural to point to our Trinitarian God who has decreed that he will not rule without us as his vice-regents.

Genesis further states, “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (2:25, emphasis added). This first use of “both” points to their completed creation in plurality. They were one flesh under God, without embarrassment or alienation. In Gordon Wenham’s words, “Here, then, we have a clear statement of the divine purpose of marriage: positively, it is for the procreation of children; negatively, it is a rejection of the ancient oriental fertility cults.”[31] Shame is present only when there is disgrace. They apparently did not realize that they could experience anything but unity in marriage. With nothing to hide, they were “right” with God and one another. They were free to be human as masculine and feminine.

The nakedness and shame motif is the comparative fulcrum for the pre- and post-fall narratives. In Genesis 3:7, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked.” They disobeyed and their eyes were opened—not from blindness to sight but rather from naïvete to alienation. They realized a new reality: namely, the consequences of sin for their relationship with God and each other. “The trust of innocence is replaced by the fear of guilt.”[32] The repetition of “both” meant that they were aware of a mutual estrangement in sin. Their alienation from God was marked by their attempt to clothe themselves with inadequate coverings. Adam’s response to God was that he was afraid because he realized that he was naked (v. 10).

Our initial inclination may be that nakedness entails consequent exposure to abuse or exploitation. However, Hosea and Ezekiel point to a more profound meaning. Von Rad notes that, in general, “to appear naked before God was an abomination in ancient Israel. In the cult every form of bodily exposure was carefully guarded against (Exod. 20:26). If shame was the sign more of a disturbance in man’s relation to other men, then fear before God was the sign of a disorder in his relation to his Creator. Fear and shame are henceforth the incurable stigmata of the fall in man.”[33]

Hosea described the effect of sin as the loss of the blessing of God’s gifts: “I will strip her naked and make her as bare as on the day she was born” (2:3; cf. Ezek. 16:2-5). God’s forceful removal of Gomer/Israel’s clothes is attributed in Ezekiel to Israel’s lovers, who in callous revulsion “will strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewelry and leave you naked and bare” (16:39). Thus, “I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers” (Hos. 2:10). Barth concluded, “The awful genius of sin is nowhere more plainly revealed than in the fact that it shames man at the center of his humanity, so that he is necessarily ashamed of his humanity, his masculinity and femininity, before God and men.”[34] In other words, nakedness signified exposure to alienation from God and one another, the intimacy of marriage being transformed into guilt, blame, and ultimately death.[35] A history of heartache would bring tears, sorrow, crying, pain, and death (Rev. 21:4). The order of creation was lost in the chaos of sin; everything that had been created in a harmonious paradise was thrown into an evil absence of romantic ideals. The problem now was a problem of posterity, the “seed of the woman” pointing to a Son who would reconcile God and humanity in fulfillment of God’s stated will for the earth.[36]

In summary, disturbing images in the prophets prompt us to inquire about the marriage ideals behind Israel’s “adultery.” Creation in the image of God involved layers of meaning beneath the mandate to reproduce. Foundationally, the plurality of God is reflected in humanity’s plurality as male and female. In brief, marriage points to the “clothing” of covenant in divine and human relationships. Nakedness after the fall is the barrenness of alienation.

The Adultery/Marriage Metaphor In The Revelation

The familial implication of the marriage analogy extends from the fruitfulness of the image through the promises to the nation as Yahweh’s firstborn son: “Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says: “Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, ‘Let my son go that he may worship me’ ” ’ ” (Exod. 4:22-23). Firstborn as a metaphor means that Israel will inherit God’s promises for the earth. It reemerges with Hosea’s children and points to the Son of David, “the firstborn over all creation” (Col. 1:15), the leader who will unite all of Israel and all believers in himself (Hos. 1:10). The Bible points to the “last days,” when the harlot will die (Rev. 17-18) and the bride of Messiah will live (Rev. 19-21). John’s theology brings the family to the fore as his favored metaphor for the community of faith. In John 1:12 believers gain the right to be called the children of God. In 3:1-11 people must be reborn in the Spirit to be in God’s family, a fact that Israel’s teachers should understand (3:10). The apostle tirelessly instructed his children (τεκνία) toward their maturity in the family (παιδία, 1 John 2:12-14). The former term connotes training, while the latter one points to birthright. They should know that “this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, and even now many antichrists have come” (2:18). Revelation reintroduces unbelieving Israel as an adulteress in chapters 17 and 18 in the imagery of the prophets. Just as the prophets juxtaposed adulterous Israel in lifeless idolatry with the covenantal children of the living God (Hos. 1:10-11), so John compared the fall of the wicked city with the new Jerusalem when “God himself will be with them and be their God” (Rev. 21:3). The chapters are a catena of images and quotations from prophetic oracles against the nations and Israel.[37]

The harlot appears as an imperial city sitting on a global throne of unbelieving “peoples, multitudes, nations and languages” (17:1, 15).[38] The title on her forehead reads, “Mystery / Babylon the Great / The Mother of Prostitutes / and of the Abominations of the Earth” (v. 5).[39] She reigns through seven heads/kings and hills, who are given authority to rule with an eschatological eighth under the sovereignty of the Lamb, who is “Lord of Lords and King of Kings” (vv. 9-14).

The title was on her forehead, signifying identity and allegiance, whether to God (cf. 14:1; 22:4) or to the forces of Satan (cf. 13:16; 20:4): “If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath” (14:9-10). The harlot and the beast are inextricably bound together in eschatological adulteries. The connection of prostitution and political and economic power is deeply embedded in Scripture as evidenced in the prior discussions of Ezekiel and Hosea.[40] In Revelation 17:5 the harlot is “the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth.” Motherhood indicates both source (the birth process) and authority (the promotion of idolatry). Beale correctly infers that “ ‘Mother of the harlots’ also suggests that she relates to harlots in the same way that the beast relates to his heads and horns.”[41]

Also, she “held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries” (17:4). The cup is the deceptively pleasurable receptacle of sin, which will intoxicate the world, making people drunken puppets of evil without rationality or inhibition. In Jeremiah 51:7-8 Babylon was “a gold cup in the Lord’s hand,” deceitfully enticing the nations to temporary prosperity and insecurity: “She made the whole earth drunk. The nations have now gone mad.” Even closer to Revelation 17 is Ezekiel 23, where Oholibah [Jerusalem] drained Oholah’s [Samaria’s] “large and deep” cup and was “filled with drunkenness and sorrow, the cup of ruin and desolation” (vv. 31-33). Her loss of sanity meant that she “was drunk with the blood of saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus” (Rev. 17:6). As Beale observes, “All forms of persecution are included under the portrayal of shed blood (see on 6:4, 9-11; 12:11).”[42] In Ezekiel 22:3-13 Jerusalem’s killing of her own “children” in the chaos of her idolatry made her the laughingstock of the nations. As in Ezekiel the forces of the beast will turn on the harlot, strip her to nakedness, and burn her in fire (Rev. 17:16-17).[43]

These descriptions of “Babylon the Great” are a “mystery,” which calls for “a mind of wisdom” for their comprehension (17:5, 9). The center of Nimrod’s kingdom was in Shinar. An ancient despot, he was an arrogant “hunter before the Lord.” His cities included Babylon and Nineveh and were called “the great city” (Gen. 10:8-12). From that time of post-diluvian development, “Babel” became the biblical center and symbol of worldly power and opposition to God and his people (cf. Rev. 14:8; 17:3). The imagery of arrogant imperialism seems to be based on Daniel 3 and 4, where Nebuchadnezzar set up an enormous idol of himself to be worshipped by “peoples, nations, and men of every language.” It was an imperial symbol of his power and pride, continuing the legacy of titanism in Genesis 11.[44] The king represented the world’s way of attaining power, influence, and prideful deification. Its vice was imprinted by Nebuchadnezzar’s boast in Daniel 4:30, “Is this not the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?” Behind the immorality and oppression was an endemic arrogance (Isa. 13:11, 19; Jer. 50:31-32; cf. Zeph. 2:10-11, 15 for Assyria; Ezek. 28:2-8 for Tyre; and Ps. 10:6). Arrogance surfaces in Revelation 18:7 in the inviolable queen: “In her heart she boasts, ‘I sit as queen; I am not a widow, and I will never mourn.’ ” This boast is strikingly similar to Ezekiel 16:15, “But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. . . .” The self-glorifying “queen” is most explicit in Isaiah 47:5-8, when the “queen of kingdoms” was used by God to discipline his idolatrous people. In response, Babylon was oblivious to her role and claimed to be invincible: “You said, ‘I will continue forever—the eternal queen!’ . . . Listen, you wanton creature, lounging in your security and saying to yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me. I will never be a widow or suffer the loss of children” (vv. 7-8, 10). In other words, she would not lose her imperial status and economic prestige.[45]

In apocalyptic thought “mysteries” were truths to be discerned by revelation to godly wisdom (Rev. 10:7, “just as [God] announced to his servants the prophets”). The forces of the world seemed invincible, so the mystery was the end of global power in self-destructive fragmentation (cf. 17:16). Paul expressed the principle in 1 Corinthians 2:6-8: “We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” Hence, the ironic way that overwhelming power will be weakened and crushed will be through the authority of “the Lamb . . . because he is Lord of lords and King of kings” (Rev. 17:14). The “last will be first,” and God will exalt the humble and humiliate the proud (cf. 1:5-7).

Revelation 17 and 18 involve a collection of doomed cities. Two of these are Rome and Tyre.[46] As Massyngberde Ford emphasizes, “Here, beyond the specific emperors to whom John refers, he sees the whole force of evil in all ages led by individuals whom the world follows and admires.”[47] However, “the great city” comes into sharper focus in Revelation 11:8: “Their [the martyred witnesses] bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.” Ford states, “The great city in vs 8 cannot be other than Jerusalem.”[48] Jerusalem is clearly “the holy city” in the verses that precede; it is Zechariah’s eschatological city in Revelation 11:1-6. She is the object of Messiah’s lament as his opponent and the killer of the prophets (Matt. 23:29-39). The character of the city will become like Sodom and Egypt.[49] The modifiers are prominent in Ezekiel. Sodom was Jerusalem’s younger “sister,” the exemplar of wickedness (16:46-48). Egypt may symbolize persecution of Israel. However, Ezekiel 23 is more apt for the emphasis in the Revelation, when the prophet traces the origin of Jerusalem’s prostitution to Egypt “in its youth” (vv. 3-8, 20). In seeking to be “like the nations,” she “lusted after them and defiled herself with their idols (vv. 23-30).[50]

Finally, mention of “the great city” raises other questions about her identity: “The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth” (Rev. 17:18). The issue is important for this article because it seeks to demonstrate that the harlot/bride imagery is covenantal and that John is bringing the indictments and promises of Israel’s “Husband” from Ezekiel, Hosea, and the major prophets to their eschatological completion. Beale limited himself to a preterist hermeneutic and concluded that the city was a metaphor for the ungodly world in general.[51] The “great city” is for him the ungodly world-city.[52] No doubt, the global extent of the city supports a comprehensive judgment of “the whole force of evil in all ages,” as noted by Ford above. But John’s emphasis on the city seems to suggest more than a metaphor for an evil “spiritual realm.” He had much to say about the world system, but the culminating judgments in Revelation are too detailed for such a generic view of the harlot.[53] Admittedly, Jerusalem in the latter part of the first century is an unlikely choice for the imperial city in the Apocalypse.

Three reasons point to unbelieving Jerusalem as the eschatological city: a futurist perspective, John’s theology about Israel’s persecution of believers, and the literary symmetry of Revelation 17 through 21. First, if one takes the judgment of the harlot as a future event that will fulfill prophetic oracles and Roman typology, then the details can be reconciled with the Old Testament marriage/adultery emphasis, and the certainty of God’s promises are brought into sharp relief. One can discern that the types of Antichrist, whom the world admires, will culminate in the Beast himself, “who will oppose and exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God” (2 Thess. 2:4). Also, it will be a time when “the light of a lamp will never shine in you again. The voice of bridegroom and bride will never be heard in you [the great city] again” (Rev. 18:23).

Second, one of the strangest themes of John’s theology is his portrayal of the continuing hostility of Jerusalem and the Jews to Messiah and his followers.[54] From the Prologue John keynotes the theme that “he [the Word] came to his people, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:11). In 2:13-16 Jesus at the temple “found them selling cattle . . . and others sitting at tables exchanging money.” He drove the sacrifices out and scattered the coins of the money changers with the words, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” The passage parallels the connection between religion and commerce in Revelation 17 and 18.[55] Commerce was a priority among all classes in Jerusalem; even priests and scholars joined the ranks of the merchants. Joachim Jeremias concluded “that foreign trade had a great influence on the holy city, and the temple drew the largest share.”[56] In 6:41-42 and 7:41-44 the Jews grumbled about his divine claims in light of his humble parentage. The hostility reached a high point in 8:42-46, when the Lord accused “Abraham’s children” of belonging to “their father the devil.” “Salvation is from the Jews” (4:22), but “it was better . . . that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish” (11:50). In 9:22, “the Jews had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue” (cf. 12:42; 16:1). “The world” would hate believers as it had hated the Master without reason “to fulfill what was written in their Law” (15:18-19, 25).[57] This reference is important because it identifies “the Jews” with the world as the opponent of believers. Perhaps “the antichrists in the last hour” had a Jewish representation (1 John 2:18), since the liars denied that Jesus is the Christ (v. 22). Finally, in Asia Minor, the church in Smyrna was slandered by “those who say they are Jews but are not, but are a synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9). One may conclude that the Jewish perversions in the prophets had continued to the first century and will resurface at the end of the age to be terminally judged at the return of Messiah. Eschatological Jerusalem, it seems, will incarnate the combined corruptions of world centers in the image of the prophetic oracles.

Third, Revelation 17 and 21 contrast the women and their cities. The notions of harlot and bride reflect their distinctive populations, and “cities” are their concrete, corporate form. Beale connects them with the transtemporal nature of the city: “She [the harlot] is set in contrast with . . . the Lamb’s bride (17:7-8; 21:2, 10) . . . The contrast is also evident from the strikingly identical introductory vision formulas in 17:9 and 21:9-10. The parallel suggests that when the seductive whore with all her false attraction is exposed and judged, then Christ’s bride will be revealed in all her purity and true beauty.”[58]

God declared that he “is making everything new” (21:5). The emphasis is on “new” (καινός) in terms of the passing away of the first heaven and earth. In the “new order” God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” during the eternal blessing of his people (v. 4). It is a transformation in which the blessings of God are unleashed on behalf of his faithful saints; “the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, will come down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (21:2). An angel then carried John “away to a mountain, great and high” and showed him “the bride, the wife of the Lamb . . . the Holy City, Jerusalem” (21:9-10). These images refer to an assembly of saints who have persevered through “Babylon’s” oppression and have overcome in their worthy walk with the Lord (2:4). The bride faithfully held to “the testimony of Jesus” and “made herself ready” for her marriage. She will be graciously dressed in beautiful linen as a gift from God and will be vindicated by God’s judgments on her behalf. Her contrast with the harlot resurfaces Israel’s adultery and promised betrothal in Hosea 2 and Judah’s promiscuity and covenantal promise in Ezekiel 16 (cf. Isa. 54:5-6; 61:10-62:5).

The advent of the bride will establish the promised everlasting covenant in the prophets: “Now the dwelling of God is with men and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (Rev. 21:3). The greatest blessing will be this direct, untroubled fellowship with God forever. In the presence of God in the new order death will be no more. The ideal of a perfect community, a perfect family, will be realized. We have no language to fully express this, because the curse of sin has vitiated relationships between God and people in the first heavens and earth. We can only conclude that marriage is nothing less than a governing metaphor for God’s relationship with his people and their glorious future.

In summary, after the fall marriage and family emerge as important metaphors for the people of faith. Revelation features a harlot, who is “the great city,” the mother of evil forces facing the full wrath of God. Religious, political, and economic powers characterize the idolatrous city “where the Lord was crucified.” A futurist hermeneutic allows a striking literary contrast between the old Jerusalem as the great city and the new Jerusalem as the holy city. In the new creation “the bride” inherits the great blessing of the unhindered presence of God forever.

Conclusion

This article has traced the theme of marriage and its implications for the concepts of home and family as a hermeneutical model that the audiences of the Bible used to understand the truths of revelation. Its scope has limited its focus to marriage, leaving home and family for another discussion. In vivid prophetic texts, idolatry and fornication are inextricably connected to highlight Israel’s need for integrity in her covenantal relationship with God. “From the beginning” marriage involved layers of meaning that were couched in the mandate to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” The plurality of persons in God’s single being was reflected in humanity’s plurality as male and female “in one flesh.” That is, marriage points to the “clothing” of covenant in divine and human relationships. After the fall adultery becomes a metaphor for idolatry and is applied to Israel, who broke her covenantal vows with God. The prophetic “pattern” of judgment and blessing resurfaces in the Revelation, where the great, idolatrous city where the Lord was crucified contrasts strikingly with the Holy City, in which “the bride” will inherit eternal worship and the blessings of God forever.

The marital grid would have been easily accessible, since marriage and the family are presented as the foundation of societies from the creational account. It was not the only model, for subjects like agriculture were important as well. Biblical marriage, however, is supremely important for issues that we face today: unnatural sexuality, gender confusion, moral anarchy, and prolific divorce are on the table. But our concern here is not with contemporary issues per se. I would submit that enlarged themes are more convincing evidences for God’s commitment than proof texts at a time when opponents attack the foundations of the Judeo-Christian convictions about life and world. Girgis, Anderson, and George insightfully argue for essential matters: “Marriage is, of its essence, a comprehensive union. . . . It has long been and remains a personal and social reality, sought and prized by individuals, couples, and whole societies. . . . The health and order of society depend on the rearing of healthy, happy, and well-integrated children. . . . redefining marriage in the public mind bodes ill for the common good.”[59] Prayerfully, marriage as a foundational paradigm for biblical truth can guide our interpretation and communication with clarity to our own generation.

Notes

1. Ezekiel 22-23 contains a similar indictment against the prostitution/idolatry and corruption of Jerusalem. The taunts are even more graphic than chapter 16 (e.g., 23:20). Chapter 23 completes the series of oracles of judgment on Judah and Jerusalem begun in chapter 13. Scripture quotations in this article are from NIV (1984).
2. The form of the oracle consists of an expanded accusation (vv. 3-34) and an announcement of punishment (vv. 35-43). Its conclusion is a message of hope for an everlasting covenant that is couched in the mercy and grace of God that frames the chapter as a whole. In between Yahweh’s initial and eschatological grace lies a chasm of broken covenant in Israel’s career as an “adulterous wife.”
3. John Day, “Ezekiel and the Heart of Idolatry,” Bibliotheca Sacra 164 (January–March 2007): 30. “Through Ezekiel God not only revealed just how deeply seated idolatry is; He also revealed how deeply wrong it is. The steady penchant for idolatry is nothing less than flagrant adultery. This fact shows how God feels about idolatries against Him, who is the believers’ faithful Lover and covenant Husband.”
4. The normal treatment of a newborn baby is described by F. W. G. Masterman, “Hygiene and Disease in Palestine in Modern and in Biblical Times,” Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement (1918): 112-19. The adoption of a newborn child while still “in its amniotic fluid and birth blood” meant that the baby could not be reclaimed by its natural parents (cf. M. Malul, “Adoption of Foundlings in the Bible and Mesopotamian Documents: A Study of Some Legal Metaphors in Ezekiel 16.1-7, ” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 46 [1990]: 97-126).
5. John Taylor, Ezekiel: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1969), 133. Taylor writes, “Although the city of Jerusalem is specifically addressed (2, 3), the parable applies to the whole nation and its history.” This is true, but he does not mention that humanity is portrayed as female in the chapter and the ancient Near East in general, especially in the figurative sense as “city.”
6. Ezekiel 23 indicts Jerusalem (Oholibah = “my tent is in her”) and Samaria (Oholah = “her tent”). They are called “lewd women” (23:44). “Tent” is best interpreted as a reference to sanctuaries in each city that highlights idolatry as the foundational sin that led to their pervasive corruption (cf. 23:30-31).
7. Ralph Alexander, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 6, Isaiah–Ezekiel (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Regency, 1986), 817: “This saying was equivalent to our ‘Like father, like son.’ Jerusalem, Sodom, and Samaria had all been nourished in the perverted religious systems of the land of Canaan.”
8. Julie Galambush notices the contrast between Yahweh’s doubly passing by ((ואעבר in verses 6 and 8 and the double mention of “every passerby” (כל־עובר) in verses 15 and 25, referring first to Canaanite gods and then to foreign nations (Jerusalem in the Book of Ezekiel: The City as Yahweh’s Wife, SBL Dissertation Series [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992], 100-1).
9. The image of marital covenant is the historical reality of Jerusalem’s becoming Israel’s capital (cf. 2 Sam. 5:12). “She became mine” is a declaration of the “marriage” pact.
10. “The lynchpin of this development is her renown and beauty, which featured in v. 14 and now in reverse in v. 15. There is a new independence, a wrongful self-confidence that leads to the transfer of her sexual vigor (vv. 7-8) to the street” (Leslie Allen, Ezekiel 1-19, Word Biblical Commentary [Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994], 239).
11. Patrick Miller Jr., Sin and Judgment in the Prophets, SBL Monographs (Chico: CA: Scholars Press, 1982), 7; cf. Francis Anderson and D. N. Freedman, The Anchor Bible: Hosea (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 323.
12. A helpful summary of the fullness of the metaphor in Ezekiel can be found in Galambush, Jerusalem in Ezekiel, 159-63.
13. Hosea’s marriage has occasioned much discussion. Leon Wood summarizes the options and prefers a literal marriage in which Gomer became a prostitute later (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 7, Daniel-Minor Prophets [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Regency, 1985], 164-67). Douglas Stuart holds that Gomer and the children were a “prostituting woman and children” because they were members of an adulterous nation that cohabited with all sorts of syncretistic doctrines and practices. In his view, the woman in chapter 3 was a new wife who was a prostitute (Hosea–Jonah, Word Biblical Commentary [Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1987], 26-7, 34, 65-8). Stuart notes, “Orthodox Yahwism had become a small minority religion in Israel by Hosea’s time, judging from the consistently discouraging reports of its status in the historical books and the prophets” (ibid., 10).
14. Gary Smith, The NIV Application Commentary: Hosea/Amos/Micah (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 45-46. Stuart adds, “Prostitution is Hosea’s most common metaphor for the covenant infidelity that provoked Yahweh’s wrath against Israel, and the term is used in that sense throughout the book” (Hosea–Jonah, 27).
15. The phrase בני אל חי (“children of the living God”) occurs as such only in Hosea.
16. “God asks the children to bring accusation against their mother in support of his own lawsuit against her. . . . The issue of divorce is at any rate secondary to the main point of the allegory” (Stuart, Hosea, 47).
17. The revulsion over Judah’s lewdness and the stripping of her blessings should be seen as a blending of sexual imagery, political ineptitude, and religious compromise in her alliances with Egypt and Chaldea. Judah’s alliances and concomitant compromises are portrayed as dalliances. Delbert Hillers has shown that being stripped naked like a prostitute is one metaphor for breaking the treaty covenant (Treaty-Curses and the Old Testament Prophets, Biblica et Orientalia [Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1964], esp. 58-59). Jerusalem/Judah was stripped of God’s gifts with no return. “Ezekiel inherited a developed prophetic tradition in which sexual infidelity was used as a metaphor for both Israel’s adoption of Canaanite religion . . . and for political alliances with foreign powers. . . . His blending of both themes is an instance of his frequent dependence on earlier prophecy” (Allen, Ezekiel 1-19, 235). “The hostility of the prophets to such political affiliations was only partly because they regarded them as showing a lack of trust in the protecting power of Yahweh. The main reason was that in any such alliance between a lesser and a greater power, it was normal for the weaker party to take into its religious system the gods and the worship of the stronger as a sign that they were accepting his patronage. So here the religious and political are closely intertwined in the interpretation of the allegory” (Taylor, Ezekiel, 138-39). Cf. J. A. Thompson, “Israel’s ‘Lovers,’ ” Vetus Testamentum 27 (1977): 475-81. Throughout the chapters, the legal metaphor stands with the love parable.
18. On the other hand, in Revelation 16:19 God “will remember Babylon the great and give her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath.”
19. The narrative moves through three stages that are marked by “therefore” (2:6, 9, 13): He would symbolically hedge his people like farm animals; he would sovereignly render the land sterile; and he would entice her back with loving promises. The Valley of Achor, a notorious site of holy war disobedience (Josh. 7) would be transformed into a “gate of hope” (2:15). The versification for Hebrew and English texts differ. This article follows the verses in the English translations. The second half of the oracle is structured around three “in that day” promises (2:16, 18, 21) to describe eschatological realities.
20. Allen cites Renaud in asserting, “Here the evidently new character of the covenant as everlasting suggests the establishment of a new, different covenant: cf. Jer. 31:31-34, which may well underlie this passage” (Ezekiel 1-19, 232, n. 60a).
21. Hans Walter Wolff, Confrontations with Prophets (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 55.
22. Karl Barth describes the passages as “the Magna Carta of humanity” (Church Dogmatics, Vol. III, Pt. 1: The Doctrine of Creation, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. J. W. Edwards, O. Bussey, and H. Knight [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958], 291).
23. Barth argues that the Song of Songs mirrors Genesis 2 as the Shulammite celebrates her lover with “my lover is mine, and I am his” (2:16; cf. 6:3) (ibid., 313). A balanced description of the ideals and disorders of marriage in the Old Testament can be found in Hans Walter Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), chap. 19.
24. The subject concerns our topic only if plurality in the Godhead is a premise for humanity in his image and for covenantal insights. The issues are insightfully summarized by D. J. A. Clines, “The Image of God in Man,” Tyndale Bulletin 19 (1968): 53-104.
25. There has been a tendency to explain the image as a specific aspect or “part” of humanity, such as reason, but Gerhard von Rad cautions, “One will do well to split the physical from the spiritual as little as possible: the whole man is created in God’s image” (Genesis: A Commentary, rev. ed. [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972], 58).
26. Allen Ross, Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of the Book of Genesis (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988), 126.
27. Barth, The Doctrine of Creation, 308. Barth uses the analogia relationis to assert that creation in the image of God is not homo solidarius, but rather homo relationis. Just as God is not the solitary God but the Trinitarian God, humankind in God image was created for genuine mutuality and reciprocity in an I-Thou relationship.
28. Ibid., 309.
29. “This is the language of covenant commitment. Marriage depicts God’s relationship to his people (Hos. 2:14-23; Eph. 5:22-32)” (Bruce Waltke with Cathi Fredericks, Genesis: A Commentary [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001], 90). Physical intercourse reflects the inner union of the couple as “one flesh.”
30. The reader should consult S. F. Miletic, “One Flesh”: Eph. 5:22-24, 5:31, Marriage and the New Creation, Analecta Biblica (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Instituto Biblico, 1988), esp. chap. 5. The biblical ideals from Genesis to Paul must be understood as starkly different from ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern backgrounds. The general pattern was strictly paternalistic and expressed in subordinate terms analogous to master-and-slave. Polyandry and polygyny were attested from earliest recorded history. Demosthenes argued that “companions” were kept for pleasure, concubines for personal service, and wives for producing “legitimate” children. Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics) wrote that women were naturally inferior. Philo justified men’s domination of women with the dichotomy of reason over sensuality. Marriage generally could be terminated with ease; the male simply dismissed his wife by “returning” her to her paternal home. According to Svetlana Renee Papazov, “The Place of Women in the Graeco-Roman World, Part 1,” “Paul’s commands for husbands and wives in Ephesians 5 provided a completely new way to look at marriage: as an earthbound illustration of the spiritual mystery of the union of Christ and His bride—the church” (accessed February 10, 2016, http://enrich-mentjournal.ag.org/201004/201004_ 000_christian_women.cfm, 7).
31. Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville: Nelson Reference, 1987), 33.
32. Ibid., 76.
33. Von Rad, Genesis, 91.
34. Barth, The Doctrine of Creation, 292.
35. Waltke, Genesis, 92: “In the Bible ‘arum usually describes someone stripped of protective clothing and ‘naked’ in the sense of being defenseless, weak, or humiliated (Deut. 28:48; Job 1:21; Isa. 58:7).” According to Ross, “The motif of nakedness, introduced before, obviously stands for more than a lack of covering, in view of the shame and fear that was generated over it. From this event on, all sinners will fear the Lord God when their guilt is uncovered” (Creation and Blessing, 144). Jonathan Magonet, “Themes in Genesis 2-3, ” in A Walk in the Garden: Biblical, Iconographical, and Literary Images of Eden, ed. Paul Morris and Deborah Sawyer, JSOT Supplement (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1992), 43: “The inescapable conclusion from these usages is that the primary significance of the Hebrew ערום, ‘nakedness,’ (in its various forms), is not sexuality at all but a state of defenselessness and helplessness, without possessions or power. For the first time, on seeing themselves through the eyes of God, the two human beings perceive their weakness, frailty, and dependence.”
36. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2006), 157: “We may say that Genesis fosters a messianic expectation, of which this verse is the headwaters.”
37. G. R. Beasley-Murray observes that Johannine theology is “the product of a mind soaked in the Old Testament to a degree to which no other work in the New Testament approximates” (John, 2nd ed., Word Biblical Commentary [Nashville: Nelson, 1999], lxix).
38. The populations as “waters” probably refers to the ocean and its Leviathan, a monster that spreads chaos through the “inhabited earth.”
39. The imagery seems to parody the golden plate on the high priest’s turban that was inscribed with “HOLY TO THE LORD” (Exod. 28:36; 39:30-31). “However, instead of the sacred name upon his brow the ‘priest-harlot’ bears the name Babylon, the mother of harlots and the abominations of the earth, a title illustrating Ezek. 16:43-45 (RSV), where Yahweh speaks of the lewdness of Jerusalem” (J. Massyngberde Ford, Revelation: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, Anchor Bible [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975], 288).
40. The equation of “abominations” (idolatry) and fornication (adultery) is evident in Ezekiel 6:9 and 16:22. Wisdom 14:12 states, “Idols have become . . . a snare to the feet of the unwise . . . for the desire for idols was the beginning of fornication.”
41. G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 859.
42. Ibid., 860.
43. According to Leviticus 21:9, “If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire.” This implies that the harlot imagery concerns the defilement of the sanctuary with appropriate judgment.
44. Daniel 4:11 describes Nebuchadnezzar as “a tree . . . whose top touched the sky; it was visible to the ends of the earth.”
45. The blasphemous aspect of the boast stood in sharp contrast to the eternal claims of invincibility by the Lord in Isaiah 43:11-13. One is also reminded of the worldly complacency of Laodicea: “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked” (Rev. 3:17).
46. For Rome the “seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits” (Rev. 17:9). G. B. Caird stated, “Latin literature is full of references to this well-known feature of Roman topography (Virgil, Geor. ii.535; Aen. Vi.783; Horace, Carm. 7; Ovid, Trist. 1.5.69; Mart. Iv. 64; Cicero, ad Att. Vi.5; cf. Or. Sib. Ii. 18; xiii.45; xiv. 108)” (The Revelation of St. John the Divine, Harper’s New Testament Commentaries [New York; Harper & Row, 1966], 216; cf. George Beasley-Murray, New Century Bible: The Book of Revelation [London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1974], 260-61). The dirge in Revelation 18:12-20 alludes to the lament for Tyre in Ezekiel 27 (cf. Isa. 23:8-9). Revelation 18 is structured by four dirges over the great city’s fall, which are sung by an authoritative angel (vv. 2-3), kings (vv. 9-10), merchants (vv. 15-17), and sailors (vv. 18-20). Finally, a “mighty angel” will throw a large millstone into the sea to symbolize the destruction of the city (vv. 21-24). “Another voice from heaven” summoned “my people” (cf. Hos. 2:1) to flee from the city, because “her sins are piled up to heaven,” ripe for judgment (Rev. 18:4-5; Gen. 11:4; Jer. 50:8-9; 51:6-9), much as the “bricks” of arrogant Babel prompted judgment by the sovereign Creator.
47. Ford, Revelation, 281.
48. Ibid., 180, cf. 285-86. Ford cites a number of sources for the view, including Josephus and sectarian Jewish writings. Beale also acknowledges sources that equate the harlot and Jerusalem, but he discounts them. Jeremiah 22:8-9 is apropos, “People from many nations will pass by this city and will ask one another, ‘Why has the Lord done such a thing to this great city?’ And the answer will be, ‘Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God and have worshiped and served other gods.’ ”
49. Πνευματικῶς has been variously rendered as “figuratively,” “spiritually,” or “allegorically.” Undoubtedly, it means that the great city is not Sodom and Egypt literally. The city’s character is like these centers of wickedness.
50. Ezekiel 16 included Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon in the seduction of Israel as well as surrounding cities and nations.
51. The preterist view seeks to explain the Revelation in terms of the first century and the Roman Empire (cf. Andrew Woods, “Have the Prophecies in Revelation 17-18 about Babylon Been Fulfilled? Part 6,” Bibliotheca Sacra, 170 [April–June 2013]: 194-214).
52. Beale, Revelation, 591-92.
53. David Reimer observes a “blending” of the oracles against Babylon and Judah: “Judgement spoken against Judah is also judgment spoken against Babylon” (The Oracles against Babylon in Jeremiah 50-51: A Horror among the Nations [San Francisco: Mellen Research University, 1993], 257).
54. There are 71 references to “the Jews” in 77 verses in the Gospel; 30 have a neutral meaning or refer to Jewish believers, and 41 depict the Jewish people or their leaders as hostile toward Jesus. The hostility becomes increasingly explicit as the crucifixion approaches. John was without doubt a Jewish believer who earnestly sought the salvation of his kinsmen as Paul did in Romans 9:1-7.
55. Beasley-Murray, John, xxxiii: “It is not clear why Jesus is so emphatic that he will be seized by the Jewish leaders and handed over to death when he goes to Jerusalem. . . . He weeps over the city and declares the impending day of the Lord on the city and its temple and its people.”
56. Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Times of Jesus, trans. F. H. and C. H. Cave (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967), 36.
57. “As has been long been seen, the Jews appear basically as the historically concrete cipher for the kosmos, the human world separated from God and hostile to him” (Martin Hengel, The Johannine Question, trans. John Bowden [London: SCM, 1989], 119).
58. Beale, Revelation, 859.
59. Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson, and Robert George, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense (New York: Encounter, 2012), 6-7.