Born to Win Podcast - with Ronald L. Dart

If there is one concept that is central to Christian teaching along with creation and redemption, it is the fall of man. The concept may be integral to the Christian faith, but it often isn’t really understood. From this all-too-brief story in Genesis (and some later comments in the Bible) a surprising number of beliefs have arisen to resolve some of its unanswered questions.Was it inevitable? Did God know it was going to happen? What were the real consequences of these first human sins—for men, women, and the entire Earth? All of this is very simple, of course, until you start trying to explain the details and depends in large measure on the philosophy you’ve developed from reconciling other questions about life.Now, there are three ways of looking at the fall of man. So open up your Bibles to Genesis and let’s take another look at this essential story.

I told you so. Months ago, I told my audience that Christians were making a big mistake when they allowed themselves to be characterized as Christian Right, or Christian Left. There are those who believe that Jesus was a conservative. Others believe he was a liberal. Neither group understands the first thing about Jesus. I warned my audience that getting locked up with one political party, block or movement allows the Christians and their agenda to be dismissed.Now this sounds like a revolutionary idea, but it is Christianity 101—the basics. We are a people apart, a holy people. We can fight the culture wars, but it has to be fought as individuals, not as a political bloc. We are not really an army in this world, we are infiltrators. We have a message and a witness, and it is that message that is our business.

I want to pose yet another mystery about the four Gospel accounts: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But before I can do that, we need to consider some things. We're allowed, in studying the testimony of these men, to consider their objectives and their circumstances as far as we can determine them. We're assisted in this task by the testimony of a legion of expert witnesses—we call them scholars.Now, if you're sitting on the jury in a murder trial, the prosecuting attorney is going to put the police detective on the stand, show him a revolver, and ask him questions about it. Here he is going about establishing a chain of evidence. But he is also going to call expert witnesses in ballistics, forensics, and so on. In our little analogy, these are the scholars.Our legal system assumes that ordinary guys and gals like you and me—with no special training of any kind—can listen to all this, decide who is telling the truth, and come to a decision beyond a reasonable doubt. We actually have to assume, in a way, that something like this goes on in biblical studies—that you and I are able to examine the evidence, hear from the experts, and draw our conclusions. So here we are, sitting on a jury talking about the Book of Matthew—whether it is true, right, and valid. But before we consult our experts, let's establish some ground rules.

If the word of God is water, the history of Man is like a vast desert, with a spring here and there. You would think, that being the case, that we would all find ourselves clustered around that spring all the time. We would live next to that spring. We would be desperate to be close to it. In fact, Man, for some strange reason, wants to scatter himself across the sand and not really be close to it. The truth is that the word of God is precious, and yet to us it is almost common, ordinary. And certainly I can feel safe in saying that you and I take it for granted.1 Samuel 3:1—the beginning of Samuel's ministry (for at that time his ministry to the Lord was pretty simple; he was a child). His job was to fetch and carry for the high priest Eli and the others. It says The word of Jehovah was precious in those days, there was no open vision. The word of God was precious. You have to understand that, at this point in time, there was no Bible as you and I know it. There were the five books of Moses, but they were not readily available to the people; they were in the tabernacle. In fact, the originals of all that were in the Ark of the Covenant (although I'm sure documents other than those were available). But apart from that, the existence of the five books of Moses, and perhaps a little written history here and there of Man's encounters with God, there was nothing that you could call holy writ or the Scriptures or a Bible such as you are familiar with having a Bible. The fact is that the word of God is truly rare. It is unusual for God Almighty to talk to Man. The occasions when he does so are few and far between, and the number of words he uses in the process of communicating with Man are few and very carefully chosen.

I had a friend some time ago who loved to argue the Bible, and whenever we got to a certain point, he would say Well, the Bible says what it means and it means what it says. Of course, he usually fell back on that statement when his point was weak. And he didn’t really believe it—not the way he intended it to be taken—because he was kind of suggesting that when it suited him the Bible was to be taken literally, and when it didn’t suit him then it didn’t necessarily have to be. But in fact we all interpret the Bible as we read it, and that is exactly what God intends for us to do. Now I will admit it is not always that simple, but you are allowed to bring common sense to the table and ask yourself how Jesus intended us to take his meaning? I will give you an example.I used to teach Bible in college, and I often enjoyed dropping a pop quiz on the students. One of my questions, which was related to the assignment that was to be read that particular day was Cite the scripture from today’s reading that shows Jesus did not always intend us to take him literally. Now, you don’t have the reading assignment they did. But if you have read the New Testament, can you think of something Jesus said that should easily demonstrate that he doesn’t always intend you to take him literally? Well, here’s the answer I was looking for from the class, and you might be surprised how many of them missed it, even though they had just read it, theoretically, in the past few days.And if your right eye causes you to offend, pluck it out, and cast it from you: for it is better for you that one of your members should perish, and not that your whole body should be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to offend, cut it off, and cast it from you: for it is better for you that one of your members should perish, and not that your whole body should be cast into hell.Matthew 5:29–30 KJ2000Now most sound-minded people reading that passage will know immediately that if my right hand does something wrong, it was not at the volition of the hand. My hand does not have its own brain. If you got caught shoplifting there’s no point in blaming your hand. Everybody knows that it was your brain that gave you the instructions and it is your head that should be cut off (but of course not). And here is a useful lesson to take with you: Anytime a passage of scripture seems to turn off into the absurd, it is figurative and not be taken literally. The absurdity illustrates it. Now, did Jesus say what he meant and did he mean what he said? Well, yes, but maybe he didn’t say what you thought he said.

The Book of Acts sits in a pivotal position in the New Testament. The early Church fathers tended to speak of the New Testament in terms of Gospels and Epistles, but Acts fits in a different category altogether. The Gospels anticipate the Church, while the Epistles presuppose the church. Only Acts tells the story of the propagation of the faith and the development of the church.There is a surprising amount of detail in the book, much of which the casual reader will pass over without even noticing. But candidates for advanced degrees in biblical studies have to write about something, and so they mine the pages of the book looking for clues like an English detective.You may have noticed, for example, that there are passages in Acts where Luke is present as participant and observer, while in other places he is not. These are called the we passages. Luke was not present or a witness to many of the events he records. It poses no problem, because he was obviously very close to Paul and gleaned the stories from him (sometimes, no doubt, in long conversations while shipboard). Let’s take, for example, the narrative of a journey in Acts 16.

The Gospel according to John is a very special book. If you ask me to explain why, I would have a hard time telling you. It is the fourth Gospel, but some scholars think it may have been written first. Actually, there is no hard data on this. So you can safely read the four Gospels and decide for yourself. In fact, that is probably a useful exercise for a Bible reader. It will cause you to pay more careful attention to the details—and that is a good thing.This Gospel was written by a very real person, universally recognized as the Apostle John, the author of the three Epistles of John, and his other familiar work: the Book of Revelation. Years ago, when I was studying New Testament Greek, my final exam was to translate 1st John. It was a curious experience. I had to do the translation without referring to lexicon or Bible. The hardest part was not simply repeating the familiar King James versionAfter having done that, when I next read the Gospel of John, it was startling to recognize the same style—even in English. You can’t always identify a writer’s style, but you can quickly spot differences that make it clear who did not write it. One of the more striking things about John’s Gospel is the prologue. If you read the prologue of Luke’s Gospel and then read John, the difference is really quite dramatic. So let’s begin with John 1:1.

We take the reading of histories for granted, and it is hard to realize that most people haven’t got a clue what it takes to actually write a history. People call Herodotus the Father of History. He composed his writings in the fifth-century BC, and is considered the first historian in the true sense of the word. His work consisted of istoriai (enquiries)—which you don’t have to be a linguist to recognize as the origin of our word history.When we come to the New Testament, we encounter the first Christian historian. His name is Luke, and his work consists of the Gospel that bears his name and the Book of Acts. He is the only one of the Gospels to deal with the very beginnings of the faith. He alone set out to provide a continuous record, and this affects the order of events as he records them.It is curious that it never occurred to these fellows to sign their work. I think there may be two reason why they didn’t title their work in their own name. One, they didn’t think that they were the important thing. Christ was the focus. Two, everyone knew who wrote it—the signature was superfluous. In Luke’s case there was another reason. He was obviously known by the person the work was written for. It is not an anonymous document. It is quite personal. For example, let’s listen to the way Luke starts this account.

Among the earliest Christians, Mark did not command the attention of the Fathers. According to Everett Harrison, they placed Matthew and Luke in the most prominent positions. But Harrison also notes that in modern times Mark has surged to the fore, the place of chief consideration, among the first three Gospels.I think there are two factors at work here. For one, the early Fathers found a lot more meat in Luke and Matthew than they found in Mark. And after all, Matthew was an apostle and Mark was not. But there is another reason. A rule of scholarship is publish or perish, and in this quest scholars sometimes find things that were never really lost.The earliest historical recognition of Mark comes from one Papias, who was Bishop of Hierapolis and wrote right after the turn of the first century. Let’s begin by reading what he quotes the enigmatic John the Presbyter as saying about the origins of the Gospel of Mark.

When I was a lot younger, I was associated with a church that was, hands down, the most Bible-reading group of people I have ever known. With all of the faults of that generation and its leadership, they had a passion for the Bible. And if I may say so, if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here doing what I am doing.And here we are, in a generation where Bible study doesn’t seem to be valued like it once was. All the great leaders of our founding and succeeding generations were Bible reading men, even when the Bible was honored in the breach.The Bible was variously interpreted, but it was nevertheless the final authority for belief and practice. Now, something entirely different seems to be that authority. What seems singularly unfortunate is the obvious fact that even Christians no longer read the Bible regularly. Where have we gone astray? And what can we do about it?

When you pick up the Bible to begin reading the New Testament, you will commonly start with Matthew. It may come as a surprise to you to learn that the Gospel itself makes no claim as to authorship. But all the early Christian traditions ascribe it to Matthew. As we can see in Matthew 9, this is the man who was a tax collector before becoming a disciple of Jesus.Many scholars think that Matthew had Mark’s writings in hand when he wrote his account, but I don’t think so. I think what he had was the oral gospel that the church had been repeating for 30 years. And it is altogether probable that he did not even know Mark had written a gospel.It is hard for us in the 20th century to understand the role and power of memorization in first-century Jewish culture. And Matthew surely wrote from within that culture. You can feel it as you read it. This is evident in what is, to me, one of the greatest passages in Matthew—one that dominates the book in many ways and comes down to the basics of the way a man of God should live. It is the Sermon on the Mount.

There is little to learn from the order in which the books of the New Testament are presented in the Bibles we have today. There is no evidence that there is an inspired order. And there is little understanding to be gained from a chronological order—even if we could be certain of it. Why?There are two reasons in particular. The four gospels are intended each to stand alone as independent witnesses. They do not depend on one another to tell the story. Therefore, while their dates may be of importance to scholars, they offer us little regarding meaning. And when folks like us sit down to read the Bible, our primary question is, What does it mean?The rest of the books, mainly epistles, are incidental. That is to say they arose out of local and temporal necessity—they were provoked by events. If, for example, the Corinthian church had not been such a pain in the neck, or if Paul had been present in Corinth when the problems arose, the letters would probably never have been written. So each of the books of the New Testament has its own story to tell, its own testimony to offer. But that raises another question, commonly called the Synoptic Problem.

The New Testament is really an amazing set of documents. It is only logical to ask how it got written in the first place. We have already talked about how it was transmitted to us, how they were copied, how the texts were scattered all over the Middle East, and how textual critics study them to try to find out what the original text really looked like. But we left open the question of its original composition until now.One of the best ways of getting at this is to take a look at what things looked like—what was happening—in the earliest days of the Christian church. Jesus Christ had died, been buried, rose from the dead, and appeared to his disciples. One can forget that there was about 40 days that he was with them after his resurrection from the dead. He had a lot to tell them in that period of time.The person who really gives us the most complete picture of this, I think, is Luke, with what he sets down in a book that was an intended to be a continuation of his account in the Gospel of Luke, and written for a gentleman called Theophilus. Let’s begin by taking a look at the first chapters of that treatise: the Book of Acts.

The New Testament is really a miracle in every way. We now know that most of the books that form our New Testament were written in a short period between AD 50 and the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. I often ponder why this is so. It gives the impression that, in the earliest years of the Christian faith, a lot of them expected Christ to come back in their own lifetime. If so, what’s the point of writing things down if there wouldn’t be anyone there to read it? At some point, however, they realized that would not be the case and recorded what they had witnessed for posterityBut, in the process of copying these accounts, several manuscript traditions with slight variations of wording, spelling, grammar, etc. were created. How could simply copying a few pages of text (text which the copyist believed was worth copying correctly) cause these discrepancies? Let me give you a few illustrations of these differences, their causes, and how scholars deal with them. We will then see that, while it is a lot of work, it is not particularly difficult to pull together a good, clean text to translate from.But why did God allow it to be done this way? In my opinion, it was done to maintain the independence of the witnesses. Because you can’t start out with a belief that the Bible is trustworthy based on nothing but faith. You may be able to do that, but the Bible has to stand examination by those who don’t have faith and can come to have faith because they read it. These folks need evidence that the Bible is not merely the contrivance of a group of men. So, we are provided with a set of witnesses. We are provided with their testimony, and we have to decide if we believe them or not.

What did the First Christians believe about the Old Testament? I might as well have asked what they believed about the Bible because, as the faith developed, the Old Testament was all the written word they had. Jesus himself laid the groundwork for a uniquely Christian understanding of the Scriptures.Consider, for example, one fundamental difference between Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees believed that God gave the law to Moses in two forms: oral and written. That is, that Moses got the written law (including the Ten Commandments) and then he got the Oral Law to go with it. This Oral Law was passed on to Joshua who received it and passed it on to the next generation, who in turn, received it and passed it on. Thus they believed that what they received from the earlier generation of Rabbis was what God told Moses on Sinai. The record of the oral law today is found in the Talmud.The Sadducees believed no such thing. They believed that the written law was the only law that carried divine authority. I think Moses comes down on that side of the issue, because he said plainly that he wrote down everything God told him. You may wonder where this expression, Oral Law came from, for it is not found in the New Testament, nor the Old, for that matter. The New Testament writers knew about it, of course, but declined to refer to it in those terms. Rather, they called it the traditions of the elders. Let's look at several instances where these traditions were challenged.

When you think about it, it is a logical question. Why didn’t Jesus write his own book? For that matter, why didn’t an angel hand the prophets a golden plate with prophecies written by the hand of God himself? (The Ten Commandments, after all, were written with the finger of God on tables of stone—God can write.)There is no reason why Jesus could not have written his story, so we are left to ponder why he did not. There is a reason, and it turns out to be of profound importance in dealing with that collection of books we call the New Testament.In the first place, biblical law places great importance on witnesses. Just as in our constitution, no man could be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. And that due process included witnesses to the cause of action against a man. No man could be deprived of his life for murder without at least two witnesses to the crime. Then there is a very practical reason why Jesus did not write his own book, and he stated it in his own words. We’ll find them in John, chapter 5.

It is of some interest that the New Testament church soldiered on for some 20 years before anyone wrote down anything that has remained for us to look at. (The fact that transitory papyrus was often used as a writing medium certainly didn’t help.)So, looking at your Bible, what is your best guess as to which of the New Testament books was written first? Matthew, perhaps? (It is the first one listed, after all.) No. As odd as it seems, the first of all the New Testament documents that we have is Paul’s letter to the Galatians, written 20 years after Christ’s resurrection.It is hard to explain exactly why this was so. One reason may have been the early Christians’ expectation of the imminent return of Christ. (I think we can safely conclude that none of them imagined that they would be read 2,000 years into the future.) And so the first Gospel to be written wouldn’t appear for another 10 years after Paul’s letters to the Galatians and the Thessalonians. You can place all four of the Gospels between AD 60 and 70. And if we look at what was occurring during this period, we may begin to understand why they were finally written down.

When you sit down to read the New Testament, you encounter a strange cast of characters. I say strange—but only strange to us. The New Testament writers didn’t bother to explain, because all these characters were well known to their initial audience.If I may digress, it is important to keep in mind that the New Testament was written with contemporary readers in mind. They were either writing letters or recording their testimony for people they knew, to a people they understood, and in a language they could all use to communicate.There is no reason to think that the men who wrote those books were thinking about readers in another language—2,000 years later. This poses a difficulty, but it is hardly insurmountable. It just requires a little attention. For example, your have these folks called Pharisees who seem to play such a large role in opposition to Jesus. Who are these people, and what did they stand for? What about the Sadducees? To really understand the events of the New Testament, you need to understand the religious and political environment in which they took place.

Imagine that you are in a room, all by yourself. No one else is there. No one else is supposed to be there. You are in the process of carrying out a rather simple task, but one that requires you to pay attention to what you are doing. All you have to do is carefully replenish the incense burning on a small altar.Then, with no fanfare, no warning, no noise, there is suddenly a man standing there just to the right of that small altar. One minute he isn’t there, and the next minute he is. All of us know what it is like to have someone creep up one us when we didn’t know they were there. It can make you nearly jump out of your skin.That is precisely where a man named Zechariah found himself one day. He was a priest. He was in the temple alone. No one else should have been anywhere near, but suddenly there was a man standing there. The book says he was startled and gripped with fear. I would certainly think so. And what is especially remarkable about this particular event is that nothing like this had happened in the past 400 years.

I forget where I first saw the book title, How to Read the Bible, but I recall a certain, what shall we say, amusement. I thought, Find a comfortable chair, open the book and read. I think there may be a dozen books in print with that title, but a short review by the features editor of First Things was very useful in understanding what at least one of the authors was driving at. The article was titled The Bible Inside and Out by R.R. Reno.Professor Reno noted that To this day, modern biblical scholars ignore all interpreters of the Bible except other modern biblical scholars. I had noticed that, but had never put my finger on it. What caught his interest was the book by James L. Kugel How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now.In the world of modern biblical study, Kugel rose to rarified heights, becoming Starr Professor of Hebrew at Harvard (a position he recently left to live and teach in Jerusalem). But he never really worked as a normal biblical critic in the modern mode. Early on he cultivated an expertise in the old readers of the Bible, the interpreters who were so crucial in the origins of Judaism and Christianity.Immersed in the work of early interpreters, Kugel noticed a strange feature of modern biblical study. The critics today seem to have a great appetite for any new piece of evidence or striking theoretical insight that promises a fresh approach to the Bible.One could say quite literally that no stone has been left unturned. Except one: To this day, modern biblical scholars ignore all interpreters of the Bible except other modern biblical scholars.[…] James Kugel identifies four assumptions that all ancient readers implicitly adopted, none of which find welcome in the modern approach.I want to pull out and examine these four assumptions, because they really do relate to how one reads the Bible.Read the First Things article here.