Dr. Creasy’s Blog

In Homer’s Iliad, Zeus comments, “men are the most pitiful of all creatures, for they die and they know they die.” Gods never die. No matter what, at the end of the day gods go home; they are eternal. How, then, can a god understand a man? How can a god know our fears, our trials, our sufferings and our doubts? How can a god feel what we feel? How can a god empathize with the human condition? How can a god have the capacity for heroism, when he has nothing to lose? The answer is: he can’t.

Only with the incarnation—with God becoming man—can God know what we know, feel what we feel and truly understand us. Only with the incarnation can God have the capacity for heroism, a heroism expressed in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. In the Lord Jesus Christ, God put on a face, stepped into the world and lived among us, as one of us. As John tells us in the prologue to his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . and the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1: 1, 14).

That is the genius of Christianity.

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Christmas is just around the corner, and as I’ve stressed throughout Advent, Christmas is a time to remember God taking our humanity in the person of Jesus Christ and living among us, a time to welcome him anew into our lives.

Here in southern California the shopping malls began hawking their “holiday” fare shortly after Halloween, intensifying their “ho, ho, ho” advertising on “Black Friday,” and cranking up the volume with each Advent candle lit. In every shopping mall Santas appeared: fat ones, skinny ones; old ones, young ones; some with laughably goofy beards and polyester suits; and others with genuine white whiskers and velvet outfits. For most of America, Christmas is not about Christ coming into the world; it is about buying stuff. And Santa is the pitchman.

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In the Western Church, Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, and it can occur anytime between November 28 and December 3. This year (2021) Advent begins on Sunday, November 28th, and it marks the beginning of the Christian liturgical year. “Advent” is from the Latin, adventus, which means, “coming.” It launches four weeks of anticipation, waiting for Christmas and the celebration of Jesus’ birth.

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The Gospels give us a great deal of information about Jesus, but I’m often asked if there is any mention of Jesus outside of the Bible. The answer is: very little.

During the first century after Jesus’ death, the world took little notice of what it considered to be a minor Jewish sect. For the most part, Jewish and Hellenistic writers completely ignored both Jesus and Christianity. Here is a representative selection of the little that does exist.

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Throughout Church history Mary has been honored as the first person to say “yes” to Christ; the first person to place her faith in him; and the first person to live out her faith in a lifetime of devotion to her son.

The Bible has much to say about Mary and her role in God’s plan for the salvation of the human family; the theme runs through Scripture like an azure thread. After the fall in Genesis 3, God says to the serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15). The oldest Jewish interpretation of this passage (3rd century B.C.) sees the serpent as symbolic of Satan and looks for a victory over him in King Messiah (Targum Neofiti and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan). The New Testament also takes this passage in a messianic sense (Romans 16:20, Hebrews 2:14 and Revelation 12), as do the early church fathers, beginning with Justin (ca. A.D. 160) and Irenaeus (ca A.D. 180).

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Not satisfied with my original course on the Gospel according to Matthew, I am re-writing and re-recording it for the Logos Bible Study “Course Catalogue”. I’m currently writing Lesson #8, one of four lessons on the “Sermon on the Mount.” The “Sermon on the Mount” is a simply structured, brilliant work of a master teacher. It is built in four parts: 1) a memorable introduction, 2) six propositions that exceed the Law, 3) six concrete actions that implement the Law; and 4) a call to action. Part three—six concrete actions that implement the Law—begins with Jesus discussing the three pillars of devotional Judaism: almsgiving, prayer and fasting.

Discussing prayer, Jesus says:

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As many of your know, I’m something of a bibliophile, a lover of books. I have had many rare books in my library, including a number of Medieval manuscripts and one of my favorites (given to me by my wife, Lynette, in the 1980s), a pamphlet printed in Edinburgh, c. 1799, titled: A Dreadful Example for Wicked Husbands, or the Virtuous Wife in Distress. That one is framed, and it hangs on the wall in my study!

I’ve written a blog on “The Canon of Scripture, Part 1,” which has as its frontispiece a photo of the Gutenberg Bible, c. 1455, the first large-scale book printed in England on a movable-type press, and one of only twelve surviving copies printed on vellum.

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The story of king David is my favorite story in Scripture both to read and to teach, so I’d like to take this opportunity to say a few words about it as a follow up on “Ambiguity Abounds,” my previous blog.

In King David, the Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel, Jonathan Kirsch observes:

At the heart of the Book of Samuel, where the story of David is first told, we find a work of genius that anticipates the romantic lyricism and tragic grandeur of Shakespeare, the political wile of Machiavelli, and the modern psychological insight of Freud. And, just as much as Shakespeare or Machiavelli or Freud, the frank depiction of David in the pages of the Bible has defined what it means to be a human being: King David is “a symbol of the complexity and ambiguity of human experience itself.”

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As a narrative, the past portrayed in the “primeval” chapters of Genesis gives way to an uncertain, turbulent future; a past consisting of myth, legend and folklore gives way to a future lived out in the gritty reality of tents, sheep and shepherds and the tensions between husbands and wives, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters; the epic scope of creation gives way to the minutiae of spousal jealousies, sibling rivalries, simmering envy and tribal warfare. Appropriately, the studied symmetry, the formal language and the repetitive rhetorical patterns of the “primeval” chapters give way in the “historical” chapters to a more flexible narrative style, engaging dialogue and intricate character development accomplished through deliberate ambiguity, narrative gaps and clever word play.

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In “The Canon of Scripture, Part 1” we learned how a religious canon develops and how the books in it became viewed as “sacred writings.” Now, in “The Canon of Scripture, Part 2,” we’ll learn how the individual books of Scripture entered into the canon.

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In my last two blogs I discussed my personal journey in reading the Bible and how eventually I came to teach it at UCLA in a course titled, “The English Bible as Literature.” I then went on to discuss how the Bible came to be written, focusing in particular on the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. In this blog, I’d like to move on from reading and writing the Bible to how the books we have in the Bible came to be there in the first place; that is, to how the canon of Scripture was formed.

It’s a fascinating story.

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In my previous blog I chronicled my personal journey in reading the Bible and in teaching it. In today’s blog I’d like to focus on writing the Bible. How did the Bible come to be written? Who wrote it? How was it written? And when? These are excellent questions, and they deserve thoughtful answers. The answers vary, however, for each book of the Bible has its own unique textual history, sometimes simple, sometimes complex. St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, for example, has a relatively simple history, while The Book of Job could reduce any textual scholar to a quivering mass of tears.

Let me illustrate how the Bible came to be written…

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Many of our Logos students have asked me how, as a university literature professor, I began teaching the Bible. Here’s the story.

When I began my Ph.D. studies at UCLA in 1977, I focused on late medieval English literature, particularly the 1450-1550 period. It is a fascinating era that introduced profound changes, not only in art and literature, but also in Western civilization as a whole.

The decade of the 1450s saw the introduction of the movable-type printing press by Johannes Guttenberg, fundamentally changing the way society disseminates information. Prior to this time, written works were hand-copied by scribes, a lengthy, tedious and expensive process; after the 1450s, written works could be printed in hundreds of copies in a matter of days for relatively little cost. By the 1590s, William Caxton introduced printing into England, and his successors, such as Wynkyn de Worde and Richard Pynson, produced a flood of works in his wake.

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Question:

In Matthew 12: 31 (and the parallels in Mark 3: 29 and Luke 12: 10) Jesus says: “And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” Jesus died that our sins might be forgiven—all of them. So just what is this blasphemy against the Holy Spirit that will not be forgiven?

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Question: Could you clarify your understanding of the Holy Spirit?

Answer:

I’d be happy to, but please bear in mind that this is my understanding of the person and work off the Holy Spirit, as I understand it from Scripture.

The three persons of the godhead (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) are on every page of Scripture, but in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament), God the Father takes center stage, while the Son and the Holy Spirit are more in the background; in the gospels, God the Son takes center stage; and beginning in the Acts of the Apostles, God the Holy Spirit takes center stage, and he remains there throughout the rest of Scripture. Indeed, it is God the Holy Spirit who is driving the action, even today.

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Job is a good and righteous man. God is just. Yet, Job suffers terribly. Why?

That’s the perennial question, isn’t it? If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, and if God is a just and loving god, how could he allow good and innocent people to suffer? Any parent who loses a child; any husband or wife who loses a spouse in a senseless, violent traffic accident; any friend who watches a loved one waste away with a horrible illness, must ask: Why? And that’s the question Job poses . . . over and over again. All three of Job’s friends address it: Eliphaz, with the voice of experience; Bildad, with the voice of tradition; and Zophar, with the voice of religion. All three friends agree that suffering comes from God, that God is just; therefore, Job must be guilty. Yet, Job insists that he is innocent; therefore, God must be unjust. But none take the next step in the syllogism: suffering comes from God; God is just; Job is innocent. That alternative is unthinkable.

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In Part 1 of this “Genealogy of Jesus” blog, we compared Jesus’ genealogy reported in Matthew 1: 1-16 with that reported in Luke 3: 23-38, and we noted the differences. Seemingly, Matthew traces Jesus’ genealogy from Abraham to Jesus through Joseph’s lineage, establishing his legal claim to the Davidic kingship, while Luke seemingly traces Jesus’ genealogy in reverse order from Adam through Jesus via Mary’s lineage, establishing his biological link to the Davidic line. But reconciling the two is fraught with difficulties. One possible solution is the introduction of several levirate marriages within Jesus’ genealogy.

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The genealogy of Jesus plays a prominent role in both Matthew and Luke. Matthew, written by a Jew for a Jewish audience, functions like a swinging door between the Old and New Testaments, swinging backward into the Old, drawing up threads of prophecy, and pulling them up into the New. Appropriately, then, the gospel of Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus, starting with Abraham, father of the Jews, and ending with “Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” (Matthew 1: 1-16). Luke, written by a gentile for a gentile audience, places Jesus’ genealogy in chapter three, just after he is baptized and immediately after “a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased’” (Luke 3: 22). Luke begins his genealogy by saying, “Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry.

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I’ve written two previous blogs on St. Paul, one on speculating whether St. Paul was married and one on the logistics of St. Paul’s missionary journeys. Today, I’d like to step back and take a look at St. Paul himself, exploring the background of this remarkable Apostle.

When St. Paul is arrested in Jerusalem in A.D. 57, charged with inciting a riot and mistakenly identified as an Egyptian terrorist, he replies indignantly: “I am Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city” (Acts 21: 39). Egyptian terrorist, indeed! Later, when he is about to be flogged, St. Paul asserts his Roman citizenship in no uncertain terms, prompting an exchange with the Roman commander:

“Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” “Yes, I am,” [Paul] answered. Then the commander said, “I had to pay a big price for my citizenship.”

“But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied.

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During my nearly thirty years on the UCLA English Department faculty, I held “Office Hours” every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, 1:00 – 3:00. It was a time when my students could drop by to discuss their classes, assignments or simply sit and talk about life.

I loved those “Office Hours”!

So, when we launched the NEW Logos Bible Study website, I wanted to build in “Office Hours” for my current Logos students, every Tuesday and Thursday, 11:00 AM – Noon. It’s a personal time allowing us to get to know each other.

Several students drop by each week on Zoom, and this Thursday, our discussion led to a question about “Lilith,” a cryptic character in Scripture, only mentioned once in Isaiah, associated with the fall of the nation Edom, a traditional enemy of Israel…

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