Secure In God

SECURE IN GOD

Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up to a raised place where he sat, his disciples gathered around him, and addressed them, teaching:

“Spiritual rejects are secure in God because the kingdom of the heavens is already theirs.

Those devastated by loss are secure in God because they will receive comfort.

The oppressed landless poor are secure in God because they will inherit the land.

Those starved of justice are secure in God because they will be fully satisfied.

Those who compassionately forgive are secure in God because they will be compassionately forgiven.

The clean of heart are secure in God because he is the one they will see.

Those who restore shalom are secure in God because they will be called his children.

Those persecuted for following God’s way are secure in him because the kingdom of the heavens is already theirs.”

Blessed English Translations

The Beatitudes are so called because each one starts with a Greek word, Makarios, which was rendered Beati in Latin and, most commonly, Blessed in English. That being the case you might expect that the underlying word used by Matthew would have something to do with blessings, or with being blessed. Nope. Makarios, the word Matthew uses, is unrelated to the Greek words for either.

A lot of commentaries on the Beatitudes tie themselves in knots attempting to explain why people who are clearly have not been blessed are described by Jesus as being so. They are missing the point. Others treat Jesus' words as if they are a list of things we have to do or be in order to be blessed by God: legalistic nonsense! You'd think there were enough rules and regulations in the Old Testament for anyone (613 is, I believe, the traditional count) without adding more (and Jesus is explicit, later in the sermon, that the Law stands as it is: no adding or taking away from it).

A few English translations render makarios as 'happy' instead of 'blessed'. That too is another word entirely. So what does makarios mean?

Originally makarios simply meant 'free from daily cares or worries' - which has an obvious link with later on in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says:

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ... But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

But words in all languages are living things, with multiple meanings and implications, and makarios found itself being used in a conventional formula:-

• "Makarios is the family man with his children" - because they were both his security for old age and the security of his line for future generations.
• "Makarios is the rich man with his wealth" - because that protects against hard times when they come.
• "Makarios are the pious on their inward well-being" - because that allows them to face future vicissitudes with equanimity.
• "Makarios are the religious on their experience of God" - who will presumably ensure their future.

The link to the original meaning is reasonably clear for these, but then the meaning developed a bit further to become something more like 'congratulations' - for a new child, for a profitable business deal, for progress on piety or religion, and so on.

The other link in the chain to the Beatitudes comes with the adaptation of that formula to the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) where it is used (especially in the Psalms) about the peace and security which comes from doing things God's way:

• Makarios is the nation whose God is the Lord; the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance (Psalm 33:12).
• Makarios is the man whose hope is in the name of the Lord (Psalm 40:4).
• Makarios is the man who thinks on the poor and needy: the Lord shall deliver him in an evil day (Psalm 41:1).
• O Lord of hosts, Makarios is the man that trusts in you (Psalm 84:12).
• Makarios are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times (Psalm 106:3).
• Makarios are all they that fear the Lord; who walk in his ways. You shall eat the labours of your hands: makarios are you, and it shall be well with you. Your wife shall be as a fruitful vine on the sides of your house: your children as young olive-plants round about your table. (Psalm 128:1-3).

That final one is a bit longer but gives a nice parallel to the earlier Greek example of the family man and his children.

So the meaning of makarios is somewhere in the range from 'free from care and worry', through 'secure for the future' and 'secure in God' to 'congratulations' (on securing your future).

There is at least one English translation which uses 'congratulations' for the Beatitudes; personally I feel uncomfortable congratulating people on their devastating loss or crushing oppression, however secure their future in God might be.

There is clearly no simple single English word which reflects exactly the resonances of makarios in Matthew's original - never mind Jesus' probable underlying Hebrew word ‘eshrê. So, pre-empting some future posts discussing other parts of the Beatitudes, I am currently inclined to go with 'secure in God', along the lines of:-

• Secure in God are the spiritually poor, because they are already part of God's kingdom.
• Secure in God are those who have suffered devastating loss, because they will be comforted. 
• Secure in God are the crushed and oppressed, especially the landless poor, because they will inherit the land.

and so on.

In the end the Beatitudes are about bringing hope to the apparently hopeless and a future in God to those who feel they have no future.

A final thought: it's the Feast of St Brigit in a couple of days; if you click on the picture above, or on this link, it will take you to a poem called Brigit's Feast, which seems appropriate in a discussion on the Sermon on the Mount.

It's All Greek To Me

I had an interesting conversation today with a lady who seemed convinced that if she can only know the Greek original of a word in Scripture then understanding what it says is easy.

The context was the story of Jesus' crucifixion, where we had just heard a version read out which spoke of Jesus being crucified between two 'revolutionaries' rather than 'thieves', as in the King James translation, or 'robbers'/'bandits' as used in most modern versions of the story.

So which translation is 'true'?

Well, the original Greek is lestes, which my big book of words tells me means "robber, highwayman, bandit, revolutionary'. Which covers pretty much all of the modern translations. One point being that simple one-to-one translations between languages and cultures hardly ever exist.

Fortunately my book of words also gives context and background - which is why I use it.

Lestes generally refers to one who robs with violence, as opposed to a kleptes, who would typically be a thief who steals by stealth. One complication is that being a lestes doesn't necessarily imply being dishonest or illegal: a soldier was legally entitled to seize plunder whilst performing his duties, in so doing he would be a lestes.

But the big confusion comes from the rabbis of the day calling zealots 'lestes' - the zealots were violent anti-Roman (and by implication anti-collaborator) freedom fighters ... or terrorists.

Crucifixion was a deliberately horrific way of torturing a person to death, used by the Romans as a way of imposing their control over a region. It was used to 'discourage the others' on people who the Romans really didn't want anyone to emulate: especially rebels.

So, 'robbers' would be a simplistically literal rendering of the Greek word used. But at this time and in this context it is much more likely that the word meant 'rebels' or (more clumsily) 'revolutionaries'.

Can I back this up from the Bible itself? Actually, in this case, yes: John 18:40 tells us that Barabbas was a leptes, whilst Mark 15:7 expands on this to tell us that Barabbas was amongst the rebels in prison for murder committed during an insurrection. So here we do indeed have a violent rebel described as a leptes.

Why might this matter? One point is that when it comes to the Bible the question 'is this translation of the passage  true?' is the wrong question: a better question is 'does this translation help me see the truth in this Bible passage?'

Jesus was crucified between two rebels because the authorities of the day saw the things he said and did as rebellion. Even though Jesus had no army and harmed nobody they saw him as a threat against their world order, just as much as armed revolutionaries were.

When Jesus rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sent his Spirit to empower his followers the authorities and powers of the day carried on trying to stamp them out by force ... and carried on failing. It turned out that the power of Jesus, working in peace, was far greater and more long lasting than the violent might of the religious and secular rulers combined.

Today, some groups claiming to follow Jesus have actually turned into those religious and secular authorities, still trying to stamp out followers of the Son Of Man; whilst other groups turn to the ways of Barabbas and the other men of violence, seeking to change the world through force and terror, but just perpetuating hatred and injustice.

Yet Jesus is still here, amongst those at the bottom of the heap. Still changing the world, still setting people free, even on a Good Friday when it all looks really grim.

Seventy Disciples Or Seventy-Two?

Last Sunday at St John's we tried to get the congregation seeing (and feeling) a Bible passage from the inside, as it were, by getting them all to take part. The results were remarkable and illustrated just how much power there is in Scripture if you take the time to go deeper than the abstract religious stuff. But that's not my point today.

The passage we used was from Luke's Gospel, in the New Living Translation, and began:

The Lord now chose seventy-two other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places he planned to visit.

Straightforward enough, one might think, except that we've been seeing this passage quite a lot during our Partnership for Missional Church initiative, but usually in the New Revised Standard Version where it begins:

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.

Spot the difference.

On Sunday nobody mentioned this - they were too busy being struck by the contrasting experiences of welcome, exclusion and judgement which come later in the passage - but it certainly struck me as being odd: how can two modern translations of the Bible differ on something so simple? So I did some research.

The short answer seems to be that the original written by Luke probably said seventy-two, but that seventy makes more sense.

Translators don't have access to Luke's original, of course, so they have to work from copies of copies. The people who made these copies were incredibly accurate, but over centuries changes and 'corrections' did creep in. The earliest copies we have of this passage say 'seventy-two', but later on someone seems to have 'corrected' that to 'seventy' and copies of this 'corrected' version went on to be very influential in early English Bible translations.

So now we have a situation where translations which prioritise faithfulness to the original, such as the NLT, say there were seventy-two disciples sent out, whereas those which prioritise faithfulness to tradition, such as the NRSV, say there were seventy.

Problem solved? Not really: it just moves the question on to why anybody ever thought 'seventy' was a correction in the first place? Which takes us to the book of Genesis.

In chapter 10 of Genesis you get a passage known as the 'Table of Nations', where Noah is presented as the father of all the different races and people groups in the world. In the earliest Hebrew versions of this we have found there are seventy names in this list. However, in the main Greek version, called the Septuagint and translated two or three centuries before Luke was born, there are two extra names, making seventy-two. If I tell you that Luke's Gospel, like the rest of the New Testament, was written in Greek and tended to quote from the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Scriptures, you can probably see where this is going.

The odds are that Luke was trying to make a point in this story about the disciples who were sent out representing all of the races of mankind, not just one or two. This sort of inclusiveness is an important theme in Luke's writing. So he uses a number which his readers would have recognised as referencing the Old Testament list of all the peoples of the world: seventy-two.

But later translators of the Old Testament used the Hebrew as their primary source so they ended up with just seventy races in the Table of Nations list - breaking the connection. Therefore they 'corrected' Luke to restore the likely point of the number in the first place.

So which number is best today? To be honest, hardly anybody in churches today knows their Old Testament well enough to recognise the point of either, so it doesn't really make a lot of difference.

Today we tend to think that numbers are all about counting, so we are more inclined to ask something along the lines of "how many were there really?" This would have seemed a very odd question back then, but does tend to bother us today.

The short answer, of course, is that we don't know. A longer answer might be that if Jesus was wanting to make the point he would have used the number from the Hebrew Scriptures: seventy. But for Luke the correct translation of that into Greek - meaning for meaning - would then be seventy-two. So working on pure likelihoods: seventy is probably the correct count of disciples, seventy-two is probably the correct literal translation of Luke, and seventy with a footnote back to Genesis 10 would probably be the truest meaning-for-meaning translation: I don't think any of them do that!

So, is there a less technical point to all this Bible geekiness? Actually I can think of three:

1. The mission of the church includes everybody, irrespective of race, gender or all the other things that normally divide us;
2. Have sympathy with Bible translators: it is a far more difficult job than we imagine;
3. If you're given to quoting the Bible at people, always do so with extreme humility: there's a lot more to Scripture than we can possibly grasp, and our understanding is bound to be less than God's. The flip side of this is that if someone quotes Scripture at you, especially if they do so in a judgemental way, treat their words with caution: their understanding is also far less than God's, and if they are being judgemental then they don't even understand the very basics of Scriptural teaching:

"Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself"

On which (slightly judgemental) note I wish you grace and peace in the days ahead, and every blessing for you and yours.