What was Jesus reading?

I ask my friends from time to time what they are reading lately. It is a great way to hear about good books and learn a bit more about my friends. Therefore, I think it is a good exercise to ask this of Jesus, 

What was Jesus read on his 'free time'?

Surprisingly I think the Gospels record for us many hints and even clear references to what Jesus read, even if we exclude the times he specifically said he was quoting from a certain Old Testament prophet. For example, Jesus was eating at the house of a Pharisee when, 

   ⁷ "... he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. ⁸"When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; ⁹and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place.¹⁰But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. ¹¹For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." "  Luke 14:7-11

While reading in Proverbs yesterday I was reminded of the fact that Jesus is directly applying the following proverb: 

⁶  "Do not put yourself forward in the king's presence

       or stand in the place of the great;

⁷  for it is better to be told, 'Come up here,'

       than to be put lower in the presence of a noble."  - Proverbs 25:6-7

when he gave his parable. 


Further on in chapter 25 we can see that Jesus uses another proverb to teach wisdom, 

²¹  "If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat;

       and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink;

²²  for you will heap coals of fire on their heads,

       and the LORD will reward you. " Proverbs 25:21-22 

I think that there is too much similarity between this proverb and the following teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, 

 ²⁷ "But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt." Luke 6:27-29 

to not at least consider that Jesus was drawing from this proverb. 


In conclusion, Jesus read the book of Proverbs --- probably spent much time reading and meditating in this book. I'd like to revisit this question in the future and look a bit more about what other kinds of reading material Jesus most liked to talk about. Maybe we will see something interesting and thought provoking. 


Why didn't Jesus rely so much on previously written material? Why wasn't he more "original"? 


Would the Original Audience recognize that he was drawing from Proverbs? How would they respond to making that connection? 

Biblical Archeology

I am really interested in Biblical Archeology. I started a separate blog a while ago to post articles related to Biblical Archeology but closed it after one post because I found a few other blogs that were doing a much better job than I could ever. I would like to share with you one that I check frequently. I "found" this blog/current events page from this organization called Associates for Biblical Research (don't know anything else about them). If anyone else is also interested in this topic please recommend any other good blogs about biblical archeology as a comment below. 

What are chiasms?

Finally, visiting one of the original themes and interests of this blog: Chiasms found in the Bible. I guess the first post needs to explain a bit about what they are so we can all be on the same page. (Here is another short article explaining chiasms)


What are Chiasms?
A chiasm is a literary structure used in many ancient writings. It is a way of structuring poetry and narratives such that multiple segments pivot around a climax point(s). 


Specifically, a chiasm consists of pairs of segments mirrored across a climax (C). Each pair of segments has one segment positioned before (A, B) and one after (A', B') the climax; as well both are spaced at an equal distance from the climax. The pair of segments contain a significant similarity in content, emotion or theme. A short chiasm of only one pair can randomly occur without the author intending to use the structure, but the more pairs that you observe shows a higher probability that the author intended to use literary structure.


The best way to understand this structure is by giving an example. Where C is the climax segment and A-A' and B-B' are the segment pairs. 

A 

    B 

        C 

    B'

A'

The pivot may be an actual segment itself such as the previous example or it may exist between mirrored segments as in the following segment.

A 

    B 

        C 

        C' 

    B' 

A'


Lets use an example from Jonah to see how observe a chiasm in the text:

"I called to the LORD out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the sea, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, 'I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again upon your holy temple?' The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O LORD my God. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple." Jonah 2:2-7

There is clear poetic structure, but I think there is a bit more structure here, 


A I called to the LORD out of my distress, and he answered me; 
    B out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.
        C You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the sea, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.
            D  Then I said, 'I am driven away from your sight;
            D' how shall I look again upon your holy temple?'
        C' The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever;
     B' yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O LORD my God.
A' As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.

Can you see how the mirrored segments are similar in theme and content? There are many other examples that are easier to see, but I tried to give one that I had found that wouldn't be a repeat of others that I found online. Do a search and find some more examples to get a better idea. 


It is an interesting exercise to look for in the text but is their any other purpose? What are the author's intentions in using this structure? Does this give us any extended meaning? Is it a code?

Why don't we have any more Apostles?

I think that when most Christians refer an "apostle" they are thinking of the Twelve called by Jesus or maybe Paul and James. Many believe that they were a gift for the early Church but now there are no apostles. 

Apostle simply means "one who is sent." Paul introduces himself as an apostle on many occasions in the introductions of his epistles (Romans 1:1, 1Corinthians 1:1, etc). 

"Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle ..." Romans 1:1

When was Paul called? 

"But the Lord said to him, 'Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel.' " Acts 9:15 

"While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.' Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off." Acts 13:2 

 It sounds like Paul calls himself an apostle because he was sent out of proclaim the gospel. So is there a real difference between an apostle and a missionary? Doesn't look like it to me. So then why do we say missionary instead of apostle? Missionary is not a word found in the bible. 

Universe a closed or open system?

In Carl Sagan's now classic book (and later turned TV series) titled Cosmos he opens with the following lines, 

"The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be." -Carl Sagan

 Sagan later states his intention in this documentary.

"We wish to pursue truth no matter where it leads, but to find the truth we need imagination and skeptism both. We will not be afraid to speculate but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact ..."

Unfortunately, Sagan was never true to his word as he never distinguished his opening statement as speculation as opposed to fact. The statement that 'The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be' is "speculation". Where are the facts to support this idea?


Francis A. Schaeffer in his book He is There and He is not Silent, points out this common unquestioned presupposition held by many. 

"This brings us to a very basic question. Is the biblical position intellectually possible? Is it possible to have intellectual integrity while holding to the position of verbalized, propositional revelation? I would answer this: It is not possible if you hold the presupposition of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. "

A closed system encapsulates Sagan's statement because he is assuming that there is nothing outside of the cosmos and all that has effect on the cosmos is contained within the cosmos. The best definition of a closed system (as I understand it anyways) is: A physical system on which no outside influences act; closed so that nothing gets in or out of the system and nothing from the outside of the system can influence the system's observable behavior or properties. The only difference between Sagan's beliefs and a closed cosmos is that a closed cosmos does not exclude the existence of things existing outside of the cosmos, but only that those things don't have any effect on the cosmos. For our purposes the two concepts have the same observable result of us. 


Schaeffer goes on to say, 

"If you do, any idea of revelation becomes nonsense. It is not only that there are problems, in such a case, but that it becomes absolute nonsense if you really believe in the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, namely, that everything is a machine. ... If I am completely committed, without question, to the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, then whether I express myself in philosophical or religious terms, propositional, verbalized revelation - knowledge that man has from God - is a totally unthinkable concept. This is because by definition everything is a machine, so naturally there is no knowledge from the outside - from God."

This is a simple point, if you believe that the universe is a closed system then there is no logical place for the existence of the supernatural (supernatural: something that exists outside of the system and influences the system). Again, this is because one has defined the universe in such a way that it is an impossibility to have anything outside of it. Is this a fair assumption?  Is the universe really a closed system?

But then how do we go about answering this question?


Schaeffer seems to think that there is evidence to support the universe being an "limited" (open) system. 

"...if you are going to hold to the uniformity of natural causes in the closed system, against all the evidence (and I do insist it is against the evidence), then you will never, never be able to consider the other presupposition which began modern science in the first place: the uniformity of natural causes in a limited system, open to the reordering by God and by man."

In an earlier part of the book Schaeffer explains this claim about the presupposition which began modern science. [This is not necessarily the "evidence" that Schaeffer is referring to. I would be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on what this evidence it that Schaeffer is referring to - please comment on this post]. Schaeffer revisits this point again a few paragraphs after the above quotation in the following, 

"From the Christian viewpoint, we must come back and grasp really deeply what Oppenheimer and Whitehead have said about the birth of modern science. May I remind you of a point I made in an earlier chapter. Whitehead and Oppenheimer said modern science could not have been born except in the milieu of Christianity. Why? In the area of biblical Chrisitianity, Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Francis Bacon - all these men, up to Newton and Faraday - understood that there was a universe there because God made it. And they believed, as Whitehead has so beautifully said, that because God was a reasonable God one could discover the truth of the universe by reason. So modern science was born. The Greeks had almost all the facts that the early scientists had, but it never turned into a science like modern science. This came, as Whitehead said, out of the fact that these men really were sure that the truth of the universe could be pursued in reason because it had been made by a reasonable God."

 "It was because the infinite-personal God who exists - not just an abstraction - made things together, that the early scientists had courage to expect to find out the explanation of the universe. The God who is there made the universe, with things together, in relationships. Indeed, the whole area of science turns upon the fact that he has made a world in which things are made to stand together, that there are relationships between things."

Schaeffer points out earlier in the book that J. Robert Oppenheimer and Alfred North Whitehead are both scientists but neither of them are Christians themselves. 


I have often wondered about how it is that the laws governing the universe are simple enough for us to understand. Why aren't they more complicated? Most people don't think math and science are simple, but the fact that we understand many of the rules and are able to apply them universally tell us that they are simple enough in comparison. (What if Newtonian physics were as complicated as Quantum physics, would anyone have been able intellectually wrestle their way to understanding in one lifetime?)

Back to the main question I was trying to ask: Is the universe a closed or open system? And what is the evidence for either way?

The Trinity: 1+1+1=1???

Many people are confused about the Christian concept of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I have heard that some Muslims mistakenly believe that the Trinity consists of the Father, Son and Mother Mary! This is not entirely their fault since unfortunately the Catholic church in general places too much emphasis on the mother of Christ.

The Trinity is not an easy topic to discuss. The word "Trinity" is not found in the bible, and the concept is not explicitly explained, instead we find this paradox to be well documented through Jesus' own testimony of himself, the testimony of the apostles and we even see hints in the Old Testament. Many others will do a much better job at digging deep into the gritty details of the topic. I would check out this blog as a good place to start for more articles and information on the Trinity.

This clip from a talk by Ravi Zacharias helped me a lot.

It shouldn't seem foreign to us that an infinite God is difficult to define. Our own physical world (which God created) has some very difficult phenomenon to define. For instance, the nature of light has been a highly debated subject. Physicists over the past several centuries have conducted experiments and developed theories about the nature of light, some suggesting that light is a particle and others suggesting that light is a wave. In physics we know this as wave-particle duality. If these sort of paradoxes exist in the finite physical world then we can rest a little more easily if an infinite, creator God asks us to believe paradoxes about His nature.

Religion is a crutch for the weak

How would Jesus respond to such a comment?


The Pharisees derided Jesus for spending time with tax collectors and sinners.

 "²⁹ Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table^j with them. ³⁰The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" ³¹Jesus answered, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; ³²I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance." Luke 5:29-32

 Jesus basically answers the Pharisees with the same response, but he uses a person (physician) instead of an inanimate object (crutch). He is implying that he is the physician and that sinners (the sick) need his help.


I think that Jesus would agree with the "Religion is a crutch for the weak" comment because he really said it first. Jesus is the crutch or the doctor that lame and sick people need.


The passage from Luke shows that Jesus asks the pharisees to decide in their own hearts if they think they are among the righteous or among the sinners when he says,

"³²I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance." Luke 5:32

He both gives information of the purpose of his ministry as well as allows his listeners to interpret who the categories of "sinners" and "righteous" belong to, instead of just saying "them" and "you". Jesus is hoping that his listeners will reanalyze their presuppositions and come to the truth that all his listeners are included within the category of "sinners".


Jesus would ask the same question after agreeing with the "religion is a crutch" comment. Asking something like,

"Are you among the weak or among the strong?"