Obstacle 5 continued: God making Jesus both KYRION and CHRISTON in Acts 2:36 is cosmic

IF YOU THINK, like I do, that "Lord" belongs to a previous generation of Christianity, what are the appropriate titles for our "Lord" Jesus? Is there a one-size-fits-all? In my post on Kyrios in Mark, we made the astonishing discovery that Mark did not make a strong connection between Kyrios and Jesus, just a small handful of passing references. Now, that was a surprise! As a result, a non-systematised methodology for translating this title in Mark was proposed.

Today, I want to move on from the gospels for a moment to examine a rather important passage reported by Luke in Acts.

So let's read Acts 2:34-36 in my adapted ESV translation, leaving KYRION untranslated for now:

For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, "'GOD said to Your Highness, "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool."' Let all the house of Israel, therefore, know for certain that God has made him both KYRION and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."

Acts 2:34‭-‬36 ESV

I gave some solid reasons in my post on Mark for adopting more royal and exalted terminology here when Mark used the Psalm quote in his colt-borrowing scene. I continue to find these reasons compelling, although they aren't without difficulty here if we still have lingering ideas that systematised translation for KYRIOS might still really be the best way to go. If that were the case, it really would be difficult to have God "making Jesus His Highness". Since our job is to unpack multiple layerings and expand the contextual nuances with Kyrios, it might be more helpful to move away from static titles. Here, the ESV like other translations sees "Kyrion" and "Christon" and probably doesn't think too much of it. These are simply translated "Lord" and "Christ". Bingo! 

But there is another way to go about this that can help modern readers not lose sight of the context of this passage, with Peter addressing these Greek-speaking Jews.

In this all-important context, Luke has Peter citing King David, in which Jesus is shown to be connected to David but also superior over him - ironically via a misunderstanding introduced by Mark, whom Luke had read. As in Mark, David is said to be addressing another King as "my Kyrios". Luke makes a similar point then to Mark in this new context. But what of that next bit, that Luke has Peter adding, that God has made Jesus both KYRION and CHRISTON? 

Let's look at Christ first - as we will see they are deeply connected. In the Septuagint, the term "Christos" is already firmly established. Saul is even described that way, and David wouldn't harm him because Saul was Yahweh's anointed king, his Christos (1 Sam 26:9 LXX, χριστὸν κυρίου). This anointing then passed, of course, to David, the new Christos (although with overlap, see 1 Sam 16:6,13). Thus the reign and the divine anointing are already naturally part and parcel in Jewish thinking.

Modern readers then should not be put off nor distracted by having their attention focussed on the action of God in exalting Christ more than the more static titles through which these actions may at one time have been communicated. Thus for Acts 2:36, we should be open to the possibility of:

Let all the house of Israel, therefore, know for certain that this Jesus [our Master] whom you crucified is the one God anointed and crowned to rule as KING.

Readers of this context might be surprised to see the early extent of this rule. Unlike David, Jesus flew through the sky to be sat at God's right hand, reigning in a divine capacity, which for a Jew is utterly unprecedented. Hence "KING" = Cosmic King. His Royal Highness has indeed ascended to as *High* a function as imaginable. Greeks already had a word for this in their naturally blended worldview between the divine and mortal realms: apotheosis. I think this Hellenised view is accepted into Christianity by some of its most influential interpreters, like Irenaeus Athanasius and Thomas Aquinas, but is even evidenced as an acceptable idea in the New Testament (see 2 Peter 1:4 and John 10:34-36). This, however, paradoxically superseded apotheosis. That's the impossible logic you get when you place Judaism and Hellenism in the same ring and think they are actually still boxing each other.

Careful, however, for although this supreme usage here in early Acts has now been provided, that does not mean by any stretch of the imagination that Kyrios now functions in any systematised way, ditching, so to speak, the previous layers and nuances or conveniently forgetting that the narratives in the gospel & Acts accounts are not influenced by events and correspondence preceding their penning, like visions of the resurrected Jesus and Paul's letters. Slaves continue to call their home-owners Kyrios, even Jewish ones. Even Jewish-Christian ones, probably. Context must and will continue to be the golden rule for understanding and translating the Kyrios-ship in question.

This translational care that I am advocating is why I place in the square brackets Peter's relationship with his Master. This inclusion would permit a fantastic semantic bridge between 2 of the key layers of Jesus' authority, being a personal Master to his disciples and God's cosmic KING SIMULTANEOUSLY. That was the power of Kyrios. We don't have a word that does that today.

ESV adaptations taken from ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Image taken from http://thejustmeasure.ca

It all started with **B A P T I S M** (4): The Star Points To Another Who Points To Another

IF ANY FIRST-century historical individual could be credited with the largest pressure on the primitive Jewish Christians to adopt a form of trinitarian thinking, it would be the wilderness apocalyptic preacher known as "John the Baptist". It sounds kind of whacky, but it's true! Let's take a moment to recap our Journey thus far, in this the last of four instalments into John the Baptist, and why I reach this conclusion.

In Part 1, I just wanted to get straight to the point and offered 9 bullets that reconstruct how John's ministry was necessarily contrasted with Jesus' baptism with the Holy Spirit, and concluded: This trinitarian saying [trinitarian baptismal formula] was said over converts by Jewish Christians in the latter half of the first century as a part of their baptism rites, and the confusion was at last resolved. This mutation of Judaism had astarted to vocalise, ritualise and (although they did not know it) immortalise its "Triune Hub".

In Part 2, I wanted to demonstrate how significant John the Baptist was from a non-Christian source, the Jewish historian Josephus. Here John receives as much attention from Josephus as Jesus. He is understood to have had massive influence such that even that God himself would overturn Herod's army in vengeance against the execution of his beloved prophet, John.

In Part 3, I took on the problem of the date of John's death, which is problematic if you cross the gospels' chronology with that of Josephus, but also a good angle from which to look at how the portrayal may have developed over the later stages of the first century. Here I present, gospel author by gospel author, the portrayal of John the Baptist, noting first in Mark the basic events and assumed death of John and Luke's expanded version which includes John's own birth narrative alongside Jesus'. Then we saw that Matthew almost seems to take on the challenge against the Josephus chronology, integrating narrative that explicitly informs Jesus of John's tragic demise. Finally, we saw in John's gospel that the author simply allows Jesus to "steal the show", allowing John to slip from view once he has served his purpose to point to the light.

What I failed to note in looking at Matthew (and regular readers will know I have a special relationship with Matthew!), is the relevance of the date of Antiquities, where Josephus describes John's ministry and death. It was written no later than 94 AD, but possibly earlier. Given all the other late indicators I am seeing for Matthew, I would suggest that this over-emphasis on Jesus' interaction with John's death is a firm contribution to a composition date of Matthew around the 90s close to John. It obviously contributes to the strong consensus that composition by the disciple Matthew is very unlikely.

Another thing we didn't do was look at the passages in Acts that refer to him. We'll not lose too much time on them individually now, as there are actually 9 of them, but they really do consistently echo what we have been saying all along: the contrast between the two main first-century Jewish figures, and that John points to Jesus. For that to mean something big so much decades later, can only mean that John's ministry continued to make a huge splash in Judea and beyond for decades.

Thus, regardless of when John really died, John's memory is dedicated to being that of a star player that nonetheless pointed to the hero and saviour of all, Jesus Christ, the inaugurator of the new Eschatological Age of the Spirit! It is with these ideas in mind that I called this last part: The Star Points To Another Who Points To Another.

Thank you for following the journey, blessings.

For reference, those 9 bullets again, followed by all New Testament references to John.

• John's impact was really very big indeed and his renown mid-first-century may have been comparable with Jesus', see for example Apollos' of Alexandria's familiarity with his ministry in Acts chapter 18 and Paul's encounter with 12 disciples in Ephesus in the following chapter.
• A clear historical relationship connects these major first-century Jewish players of John and Jesus; some credible scholars, have Jesus first being John's disciple before starting his own movement.
• We have no texts of any followers of John.
• For Jesus followers, Jesus has to be bigger and better than John. If John was great, and Jesus much greater than him. This could only have contributed to his final exalted status.
• Contrary to popular Christian apologetics, killing a leader does not necessarily kill off the sect he started unless he is resurrected. John is solid proof of that. 
• John and Jesus are firmly differentiated on the following grounds:
• the Christ was more successfully understood to have really been raised back to life, unlike the rumours that surrounded a resurrection for John, 
• John's humility seems genuine and may indeed have heralded the coming Messiah, turning down offers of honour, recognition and prestige (which ironically had the opposite effect), while Jesus combined humility and the messiahship,
• Jesus baptised with the Holy Spirit; John baptised with water.
• Since both martyrs were hugely influential baptisers and their ministries overlapped, their baptisms (and order of death) were at times confused.
• Someone, somewhere, decided: enough is enough and came up with the threefold baptismal formula to clear it up once and for all. This may have been the author of Matthew's gospel, (whom I strongly believe wrote later than Luke and Acts, which bear witness to the confusion), or it may have been the author of the part of the Didache that also contains the baptism formula. Since both those sources are Jewish, that someone was almost certainly a strongly Jewish Christian (leader). 
• Conclusion: This trinitarian saying was said over converts by Jewish Christians in the latter half of the first century as a part of their baptism rites, and the confusion was at last resolved. This mutation of Judaism had started to vocalise, ritualise and (although they did not know it) immortalise its "Triune Hub".

New Testament References

Asterisked *Lord… in one French translation: DARBY [Updated Sept 2021]

Yesterday we saw how one European translation of the New Testament makes (in at least one key instance, Mark 12:29) an effort to disambiguate the usages of Kyrios (Lord) in the New Testament. The way this Spanish translation achieved this was by capitalising the Spanish word for Lord, SEÑOR, **in the New Testament**. I also stressed that context has quite a lot to say for the way in which a word was intended and understood. Taking the name "Isis" was one good example for context. Another was a fictional example of disambiguation via grammatical absence of article of a mayor, who so associated himself with his title that he became known as simply "Mayor".

After discovering the La Biblia de las Américas translation, I was also intrigued by the French Darby attempt. What they have done here is recognise that some of the Greek of the New Testament is clearly (or unambiguously) referring to the divine Name of Yahweh, via the construction of the Greek translation Kyrios. The manifestation of this recognition is a very subtle-yet-noticeable asterisk: *Seigneur. When the French-speaking reader sees *Seigneur in the Darby translation, the point is that there is a connection to be made in the reader's mind with the Old Testament's l'Eternel. On that point, I think we can add that French is a particularly interesting translation language of the Bible as it so consistently distinguishes "l'Eternel" (albeit mainly arthrous) from "Seigneur" in the New Testament (thus far I have checked Bible du Semeur (BDS), Ostervald (OST), Martin (MAR), Darby (DRB), Annotée Neuchâtel (BAN), Segond 21 (SG21), Nouvelle Edition de Genève (NEG1979) and Louis Segond (LSG) - all are in 100% agreement on this distinction). Thus for reasons of context (e.g. a New Testament author explicitly quoting an Old Testament text), or for strong grammatical reasons (the Angel of Kyrios, aka the Angel of the Lord), the French Darby translation is able to asterisk 123 instances of "Seigneur", contained within 117 verses. You can see these here: https://1drv.ms/w/s!Agz-dG3ANZ9UhpUjB1xlLeCgv52XPw?e=i0kYVs 

There is plenty to commend in this effort. A translation that seeks to be simple and "consistent" can save itself a lot of time and probably controversy by simply translating every single instance of Kyrios by "Lord" and hoping that if there is any context available, that the reader will pick up on this, perhaps helped along by the Holy Spirit. But I am sorry to say that this is nonsense. For example, how many Christians realise that nowhere in the Bible does the Hebrew, or the Greek translation of the Hebrew, say "my Yahweh", "our Yahweh" or "your Yahweh", or in their translations "my LORD", "our LORD" or "your LORD"? Or that we don't SHOUT "LORD"? Also to note that Jesus is "our Lord"? These issues are quickly confused in believers' minds - or certainly were in my mind.

The problem is for the braver translations seeking to go down this harder path (those that leave clues as to New Testament referencing the divine Name) that there are instances where it is less clear. Larry Hurtado has published an essay on the ambiguity in Acts that you can consult online about this, and it seems certain that this was quite quickly ambiguous for the later manuscript copyists (although I would be hesitant to say it was ambiguous for the writer of Acts). These copyists would sometimes add or remove articles in order to attempt to clarify what seemed uncertain to them, so the sheer fact that they would seek to do this in the earliest centuries underlines two key points I think we should wake up to:

1. Disambiguation IS important
2. The issue of article or no article IS significant.

It's not just me harping on about this!

So I would probably agree with most of the French Darby asterisks, but at the same time remain confused as to why other occurrences don't also merit the signal- I selected a few to illustrate this in red in the above-linked overview of all Darby asterisking. Obviously, I was not surprised that my arguments around 2 Corinthians 3:16-18 were not represented here. However, you may recall that my research in Psalms led me to post about New Testament usage of παρὰ κυρίου (from + anarthrous genitive of Lord). Four of those six occurrences are also asterisked by French Darby: Mat 21:42, Mark 12:11, Luke 1:45, 2 Peter 2:11. As I made clear in that post, of the two remaining instances of παρὰ κυρίου - I am confident about the divine Name reference in 2Ti 1:18 (i.e. if applying the Darby solution, Seigneur should be asterisked in 2 Timothy 1:18). The final less clear reference was Ephesians 6:8, which I admitted needed more work.

Thanks for your interest!

Blurring the edges of identity, deliberate, non-literal, effective

‘Who are you, Lord?’ Saul asked.‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. 

Acts 9:6 (NIV)

There is an understanding among believers that Jesus so identifies with his church that he himself is persecuted, feels his followers' pain, and so on. Our hands are also his hands in this world (see Matthew 25:40). However, these hands and identity association are, I firmly believe, non-literal (in the same way we can read stacks of biblical passages, including Jesus saying to the Father "into your hands I commit my spirit"). But at the same time they are real, powerful ways of changing the way we think and act, which is a correct goal. Jesus still has literal, resurrected hands, so my hands, as his follower, cannot be his hands in the same way that his hands are his hands (John 20:27). This technique is applied to make a strong and effective point and realise change.

This idea is also connected with Christ's usage of hyperbole to drive home ideas in mega-strong images and wording so that people will properly think about deeper changes, change the way they think, and finally, change the way they act. If I had time I would love to dive into some and then ask some questions of Christian interpretation. I may need to make the time, since interpretation is what my paper is all about!

Acts 2 and the quest for the tri-personal God

My survey is making good progress and the results continue to intrigue me. It generally makes little sense revealing them as I go along as the  whole point is to try and appraise the big picture. However, as an exception, this evening, I want to peek into Acts Chapter 2, which many believers like me have heard a lot. This is mainstream, often-visited Scripture, if you know what I mean.

Remember that my project is to identify texts that seem to pave the way for something that will culminate in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed of 381, where the Father, Son and Spirit are all equally God, consubstantial and co-eternal. Where I get (or others have gotten) any whiff of that possibility, the passage gets noted according to a whole bunch of different criteria. I call these texts "suggestive". On the other hand, where I come across those kinds of texts that seem very alien to those fourth century descriptions of God, I note those also; I call these "dissuasive". Acts 2 is one of the most dissuasive chapters of the New Testament I have come across thus far. Here it is with my bolding:

22‘Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. 23This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. 24But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. ....

30But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. 31Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. 32God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. 33Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear....

36‘Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.’

This is a highly dissuasive passage. I have a feeling Acts is going to be quite a dissuasive book actually.

[FYI I am no longer working on the on-line version of my survey as it is considerably slower than using offline tools, apologies]