The Vision (11.27.15): Thomas Watson: Christians as Soldiers, Pilgrims, and Beggars

Image:  Fall scene in North Garden, Virginia.

In 1654 the Puritan pastor Thomas Watson published a devotional work titled The Art of Divine Contentment, an extended meditation on Philippians 4:11:  “I have learned in whatever state I am, therewith to be content.”

In one section of this work, Watson urges his readers to ponder three postures or conditions they hold while in the world:

We are in a military condition; we are soldiers (2 Timothy 2:3).  Now, a soldier is content with anything.  Though he does not have his stately house, his rich furniture, his soft bed, or his full table, yet he does not complain.  He can lie in straw as well as in down.  He does not mind his lodging, but his thoughts run upon dividing the spoil and the garland of honor that shall be upon his head…..

We are in a sojourning condition; we are pilgrims and travelers.  A man who is in a strange country is content with any diet or custom; he is glad for anything.  Though he does not have that respect or attention that he looks for at home, and though he is not capable of the privileges and immunities of that place, yet he is content.  He knows that when he comes into his own country he has lands to inherit and shall live there having honor and respect…..

We are in a mendicant position; we are beggars.  We beg at heaven’s gate.  “Give us this day our daily bread.”  We live upon God’s alms; therefore we must be content with anything.  A beggar must not pick or choose; he is content with the refuse.  Oh, why do you murmur, you who are a beggar and are fed out of the alms-basket of God’s providence! [Soli Deo Gloria edition, 2001:  pp. 119-120].

As we enjoy the holiday season, may the Lord give us a spirit of contentedness whatever our external circumstances, as we consider that in this life we are soldiers, pilgrims, and beggars.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

Hebrews and the Pauline Letter Collections

Image:  The subscription of Hebrews in Codex Alexandrinus:  To the Hebrews, written from Rome [pros hebraious egraphe apo romes] 

I am preaching through Hebrews on Sunday mornings at CRBC, and I am continuing to contemplate the question of its connection to Paul and the Pauline corpus.  There is an intersection here with my interests in the questions of text, canon, and preservation.

In this regard I have recently been helped by reading David Trobisch’s Paul’s Letter Collection (Augsburg Fortress, 1994; Quiet Waters, 2001) and by starting to work my way through Harry Y. Gamble’s Books and Readers in the Early Church (Yale University Press, 1995).  Both works discuss how Paul’s letters were collected as a distinct group by Christians at a very early stage. I am not in agreement with the final conclusions of either of these works on Paul’s letters, but I am thankful for the information and insights both books provide.

Trobisch  notes how early Christians collected and circulated the NT books in four major groups or collections:  the four Gospels, Acts and the Catholic Epistles, Paul’s Epistles, and Revelation.  Of 779 early Greek manuscripts he surveyed only 59 had a complete NT [no doubt more manuscripts are available today than when Trobisch wrote this work, but new finds would likely only follow and confirm this pattern].  271 had Paul’s letters added to Acts and the general epistles.  213 had only Paul’s letters.  Most of the earliest copies of Paul’s letters were not found in complete NT manuscripts but in collections like these.  Here is a modification of a table Trobisch provides on p. 12:

TABLE ONE:  PAUL’S LETTERS IN GREEK MANUSCRIPTS

Contents	Number of Greek Manuscripts
ap	271
p	213
eap	149
apr	76
eapr	59
pr	6
ep	5
Total:	779

Key for TABLE ONE:

e = Gospels

a = Acts + general epistles

p = Paul’s letters

r = Revelation

Here also is another table adapted from Trobish (see p. 20) and Gamble (see pp. 59-60, especially for Marcion, column 5) on the order of Paul’s letters in some of the earliest manuscripts (or reconstructed manuscripts in the case of Marcion, column 5) with some notes following on the columns:

TABLE TWO:  THE ORDER OF PAUL’S LETTERS IN GREEK MANUSCRIPTS

(1) Majority Early Order for Paul’s letters in NT [cf. Sinaiticus, A, B, C]	(2) G,F	(3) D	(4) P46	(5) Marcion	(6) Majority Later Order for Paul’s letters in NT
Romans	Romans	Romans	Romans (from 5:17)	Galatians	Romans
1 Corinthians	1 Corinthians	1 Corinthians	Hebrews	1 Corinthians	1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians	2 Corinthians	2 Corinthians	1 Corinthians	2 Corinthians	2 Corinthians
Galatians	Galatians	Galatians	2 Corinthians	Romans	Galatians
Ephesians	Ephesians	Ephesians	Ephesians	1 Thessalonians	Ephesians
Philippians	Philippians	Colossians	Galatians	2 Thessalonians	Philippians
Colossians	Colossians	Philippians	Philippians	Laodiceans (Ephesians?)	Colossians
1 Thessalonians	1 Thessalonians	1 Thessalonians	Colossians	Colossians	1 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians	2 Thessalonians	2 Thessalonians	1 Thessalonians (to 5:28)	Philippians	2 Thessalonians
Hebrews				Philemon
1 Timothy	1 Timothy	1 Timothy			1 Timothy
2 Timothy	2 Timothy	2 Timothy			2 Timothy
Titus	Titus	Titus			Titus
Philemon	Philemon	Philemon			Philemon
		[Catalogus Claromantanus] Hebrews			Hebrews

Notes on columns in TABLE TWO:

(1)  In the “Majority Early Order” of manuscripts which originally contained the entire NT, including the oldest uncial manuscripts of the NT (Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Ephraemi Rescriptus), Hebrews is included among the Pauline letters and placed after 1-2 Thessalonians and before the “personal” letters (1-2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon).  This is also the order followed in the Robinson/Pierpont Byzantine Greek NT (2005).

(2)  Codices Boernarianus (G) and Augiensis (F) are collections of Paul’s letters only.  They are noteworthy for the fact that that they do not include Hebrews.

(3)  Codex Claromontanus (D) contains Paul’s letters only.  It is noteworthy for the fact that Colossians comes before Philippians.  It apparently originally ended at Philemon and was followed by three blank pages.  Later, a Latin list of the canonical books was copied there (called the Catalogus Claromontanus).   After this Hebrews appears.  See Trobisch's discussion, p. 13.

(4)  Papyrus 46 is the oldest known collection of Paul’s letters (dated to c. A. D. 200).  The beginning and ending are missing (begins at Romans 5:17 and ends at 1 Thessalonians 5:28).  Hebrews appears after Romans and before 1-2 Corinthians.  It also has Ephesians before Galatians.

(5)  Gamble reconstructs Marcion’s ten letter Pauline corpus based on descriptions in Tertullian (adv. Marc., 5) and Epiphanius (Pan.9.4, 11.8, 12) and argues that this order reflects an ancient Pauline corpus with letters to seven churches ordered by length (Corinthians, Romans, Ephesians, Thessalonians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians-Philemon) (see pp. 59-60, 272, n. 73).  Hebrews and the Pastoral Epistles are not included in Marcion.  Gamble’s “seven church hypothesis” is pure speculation, given the evidence.  It is not supported by any existing manuscript of Paul’s letters, and it fails to consider Hebrews as a Pauline epistle, something Marcion apparently rejected, but which seemed to be assumed by most early collectors of Paul’s writings.

(6) What Trobisch calls “the Authorized Byzantine Version” (pp. 4-5) reflected in the Greek manuscripts copied from the eleventh century forward (and comprising 85 percent of all extant Greek manuscripts) uses what became the standard canonical order for Paul’s letters in the NT.  This was the order followed by the Textus Receptus and reflected in the vernacular translations made from it in the Reformation and post-Reformation period.

Conclusions:

Paul’s letters began to circulate as a distinct collection at a very early stage in early Christianity (cf. especially 2 Peter 3:15-16 which indicates Paul’s letters were both circulating and acknowledged as “Scripture [graphe]” even before the completion of the NT canon).

The book of Hebrews was included at a very early stage in the collection of Paul’s letters.  This inclusion was controversial and not supported by all.  The strength of this early tradition, however, gives credence to the proposal of Pauline authorship of Hebrews that cannot be overlooked.

JTR

The Vision (11.20.15): A New Master

Image:  Leaf raking at CRBC last Saturday (11.14.15)

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God (Romans 1:1).

 Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men (1 Corinthians 7:23).

One of the frequent titles that the inspired NT authors use to describe themselves is “servant” (so Paul in Rom 1:1; Gal 1:10; Titus 1:10; James in James 1:1; Peter in 1 Peter 2:1; and Jude in Jude 1:1).  The Greek word rendered “servant” in these passages is doulos.  It is perhaps better rendered as “slave.”  A Christian is a slave of Christ.  Related to this term designating believers is the title of Lord (kurios) or “master” to refer to Christ.

Slavery in the ancient world was a different institution than that which existed in the American South.  In the ancient world, slaves could not only serve in menial tasks but also in positions of authority as managers, physicians, and teachers.  Many came into slavery as the result of war.  A person could also sell himself into slavery to settle debts.   Some could actually improve their circumstances in life by becoming slaves, provided they had a master who would be kind and generous.  In the right circumstances, some slaves could also save enough money to purchase their freedom.

In a book on the life and teaching of the apostle Paul, Anthony C. Thiselton provides this helpful discussion:

What did being a slave imply in the world of Paul’s day?  At one extreme, a slave was regarded as a ‘thing’ (Latin, res), or as a property.  Many slave owners or ‘lords’ were harsh and treated their slaves ruthlessly as their personal property, to do with as they wished.  At the other extreme, however, many Stoics, ‘God-fearers,’ and other ‘good’ pagans could be humane, and employ literate or numerate slaves to manage their estates or their businesses while they indulged in city-politics, personal pleasures, or other interests.  If a slave had a ‘good’ master, slavery could be attractive.  It was possible to rise high, and to earn enough pocket money to begin life again as an honoured freedman or freedwoman, perhaps in one’s thirties.  For this reason some who fell on hard times sold themselves into slavery, alongside prisoners captured in war, or people who had committed crimes.  Everything depended on who the lord or master would be.  If they were fortunate, the master’s name and reputation would guarantee them a better status or  higher security against thieves and kidnappers than ever they could have had as poor freemen, left to rely on their own resources.

Paul sees Christ as the most generous, loving, and kind of all masters or lords at whose disposal it was possible to be.  With Christ as his Lord, a Christian no longer worried about himself.  Even if he were to die, his wife and children would remain the responsibility of his Lord….  Coming to faith means being freed from unwanted bondage to evil powers beyond one’s control, to enter into ‘belonging’ to Jesus Christ…. (The Living Paul, pp. 38-39).

May we understand that we now belong to Christ.  He is our good and faithful master who is able to provide for us beyond all that we can ask or imagine.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

Notes on the Pauline Subscriptions

Image:  The ending of 2 Corinthians in Erasmus' NT (1516) with subscription in Greek and Latin.

I’ve been looking recently at the subscriptions to the Pauline epistles which are appended at the close of each letter (including Hebrews).  These subscriptions provide various bits of information like where the letters were written, the recipients, and the messengers who carried them.  Here is a listing of the subscriptions as they appear in the KJV, with some references to internal evidence in the text:

Pauline letter	Traditional subscriptions (as in KJV)	Internal evidence
Romans	Written to the Romans from Corinthus, and sent by Phebe servant of the church at Cenchrea.	Romans 16:1-2
1 Corinthians	The first epistle to the Corinthians was written from Philippi by Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus and Timotheus.	1 Corinthians 1:16; 16:8 (from Ephesus?), 15, 17
2 Corinthians	The second epistle to the Corinthians was written from Philippi. a city of Macedonia, by Titus and Lucas.	2 Corinthians 1:16; 2:13; 7:5-7, 13-14; 8:1, 6, 16, 18, 23; 9:2, 4; 11:9; 12:18
Galatians	Unto the Galatians written from Rome.
Ephesians	To the Ephesians written from Rome, by Tychicus.	Ephesians 6:21
Philippians	To the Philippians written from Rome, by Epaphroditus	Philippians 1:7, 13-14, 16; 2:25; 4:18, 22
Colossians	Written from Rome to the Colossians by Tychicus and Onesimus.	Colossians 4:3, 7, 18; cf. Philemon
1 Thessalonians	The first epistle to the Thessalonians was written from Athens.	Cf. Acts 17
2 Thessalonians	The second epistle to the Thessalonians was written from Athens	Cf. Acts 17
1 Timothy	The first to Timothy was written from Laodicea, which is the chiefest city of Phrygia Pacatiana.	Colossians 2:1; 4:13, 15, 16; Revelation 1:11
2 Timothy	The second epistle unto Timotheus, ordained the first bishop of the church of the Ephesians, was written from Rome, when Paul was brought before Nero the second time	2 Timothy 4:6-8, 9-18
Titus	It was written to Titus, ordained the first bishop of the church of the Cretians, from Nicopolis of Macedonia.	Titus 1:5, 12; 3:12
Philemon	Written from Rome to Philemon, by Onesimus a servant.	Philemon 1:10-12, 23
Hebrews	Written to the Hebrews from Italy, by Timothy.	Hebrews 10:34; 13:23-24

Here are some notes from my study:

1.  These subscriptions are included for each of the Pauline epistles (Hebrews included), but no such appendices accompany the General Epistles (James, 1-2 Peter, 1-2-3 John, Jude).  According to the textual apparatus of the modern critical text, the General Epistles were often preceded with brief inscriptions.  The inclusion of a subscription for Hebrews (and its lack of an inscription) in the traditional text indicates that it was considered part of the Pauline corpus.

2.  These subscriptions were included in Erasmus’ Textus Receptus (1516) and then appeared in various Reformation translations, including the Geneva Bible (1560, 1599) and the King James Version (1611).

3.  Subscriptions appeared in ancient Greek manuscripts in various and often abbreviated forms.  Example:  The subscription “To the Galatians [pros Galatas]” appears after Galatians 6:18 in the codices Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and the original hand of Vaticanus, among others.  The subscription as in the traditional text “To the Galatians, written from Rome [pros Galatas egraphe apo Romes]” appears in the first corrector of Vaticanus, 0278, 1739, 1881, and the Majority of extant manuscripts.  The subscriptions appearing in Erasmus’ TR reflect the Majority Text tradition.

4.  The subscriptions to the Pauline epistles have generally come to be omitted from modern editions of the Greek New Testament.  The textual evidence for the subscriptions is omitted from the apparatus in the 28^th edition of the N-A Greek NT (though it appears in the 27^th edition).  The subscriptions are, however, discussed in Metzger’s A Textual Commentary on The Greek New Testament (1971, 1994).  The subscriptions are not included in the Hodges/Farstad The Greek NT According to the Majority Text, Second Ed. (1985) nor in the Robinson/Pierpont The New Testament in the Original Greek:  Byzantine Textform (2005).  They are also not included in the Trinitarian Bible Society’s print edition of the TR (based on Scrivener’s Greek NT, 1894, 1902).

 

5.  The subscriptions to the Pauline epistles are omitted in many modern reprintings of the King James Version, including the texts of the The King James Study Bible (Thomas Nelson, 1988), the Holman KJV Study Bible (2012), and The Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible (2014). See Malcolm Watt’s article “Subscriptions to the Epistles,”  Quarterly Record, No. 587 (April-June 2009):  pp. 13-14.  Watts concludes that the subscriptions are not part of the inspired text and the information they contain is not reliable.

6.  Questions:  Can an argument be made for the propriety of the inclusion of the subscriptions as part of the traditional text of the NT?  Can the historical information in the subscriptions be defended?  What impact do the subscriptions [whether one accepts them as an inspired part of the traditional text or merely as an ancient testimony to church tradition] have on our understanding of the various interpretive issues relating to the NT (e.g., regarding the authorship of Hebrews)?

JTR

Search and Known # 3: How many sons did Abraham have?

Image:  Pedro Orrente's "The Sacrifice of Isaac" (c. 1616)

Ethan McG. has posted Searched and Known # 3, an ongoing apologetics series in which we respond to various supposed contradictions in the Bible noted in the Skeptic's Annotated Bible.

This episode responds to the challenge; How many sons did Abraham have?  The apparent contradiction:  Genesis 22:2, 12, 16 and Hebrews 11:17 describe Isaac as Abraham's only son, but other passages say he had more than one son.  He had Ishmael by Hagar, Sarah's handmaid (Gen 16:15) and he had six sons by Keturah (Gen 25:1-2).  So, Abraham had eight sons and not one.

The response:  The Bible can refer to Isaac as Abraham's only son, because he was Abraham's only son by Sarah, the only son of promise through whom the covenant would continue and through whom the promise to Abraham would be fulfilled (Gen 3:1-3).  It is from the line of Isaac that Jesus would come.  Paul can refer to Jesus as "the seed of Abraham" (Gal 3:16) and describe all believers, whether Jew or Gentile, as the spiritual seed of Abraham (Gal 3:29).

JTR 

The Vision (11.12.15): But exhort one another daily

Here are some notes from last Sunday’s sermon on Hebrews 3:7-13:

Hebrews 3:13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

Psalm 95:7 For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice, 8 Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:

“But exhort one another daily….”  The call here is for mutual exhortation or mutual admonition.  The same verb is used later in Hebrews, probably with regard to those who had stopped attending the Lord’s Day meetings of the church:

Hebrews 10:25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

Compare:

Proverbs 27:17:  Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.

Notice also the frequency.  Exhortation is encouraged not “annually” or “monthly” or “weekly [each Sunday]” but “daily.”  Compare:

Luke 9:23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

Where can we get daily mutual admonition? From husbands and wives in Christian marriages, from interactions in Christian homes, from Christian neighbors, from Christian friends, from reading Christian authors (living and dead), and, in this internet age, from listening to sound Christian sermons and teachings online.

Matthew Poole notes that what is addressed here is the Christian’s private duties to be continually stirring up, persuading, and encouraging perseverance in the Christian religion and putting away an evil heart, but, he adds, it also refers to public duties, “by the regular ministration of the word and ordinances of the whole society of Christians, as they are personally obliged to it, being members of one another.”

Finally the inspired author brings it back to Psalm 95.  Engage in mutual exhortation, “while it is to day, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.”

Don’t be like those rebellious Israelites of old who wandered forty years in the wilderness.  Do not become hardened to the things of God.  Do not allow yourself to be deceived by sin.  Sin rarely looks wrong.  It deceives us by making itself look right.

Let us exhort one another daily.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle