Descendants of Abraham, and rocks.

Matthew 3.9, Luke 3.8B.

Sometimes Matthew and Luke match one another word-for-word, or nearly word-for-word. ’Cause the authors of these gospels got their data from the same source, and since it’s not in Mark, it’s not Mark. Is it another gospel?—one we no longer have a copy of? Yes.

It’s a gospel that’s been lost to history… but not really, because Matthew and Luke may very well have quoted it in its entirety, so the ancient Christians didn’t see any point in keeping it. We don’t know whether it’s a narrative gospel like the ones in the New Testament, and it probably wasn’t; it was likely a list of Jesus-sayings like we find in the Gospel of Thomas. Scholars call it Q, from the German word Quelle/“source.”

Anyway, this teaching of John the baptist is one of those Q sayings:

Matthew 3.9 KWL

“Don’t presume to tell yourselves,²

‘We have a father in Abraham.’

I tell you² God can raise up children for Abraham

from these rocks.”

Luke 3.8 KWL

8B“Don’t start to tell yourselves,²

‘We have a father in Abraham.’

I tell you² God can raise up children for Abraham

from these rocks.”

John said it to those religious folks who came to check him out, but had no intention of repenting, ’cause they presumed they had nothing to repent. And of course they did. John immediately zeroed in on it in the words right before this saying: “So produce the worthy fruit of repentance!” Mt 3.8, Lk 3.8 They had little to no good fruit, and God’s people should have abundant good fruit.

And then he told them this bit about not just taking it for granted they were descendants of Abraham ben Terah. And this statement has confused Christians for millennia. The usual way it’s been taught, is by presuming the Jews of John’s day believed they were saved simply by being Jews; by being God’s chosen people.

And while Christians might say John’s right—that no, they’re not saved by simply by being Jews—that’s actually not what a lot of Christians actually believe. You know all those Christians who think it’s perfectly fine for present-day Israelis to do hateful things to the Palestinians? To drive ’em out of their towns so they can move in, to bomb Gaza into oblivion, to invade Lebanon with the hope of expanding Israel’s borders? And American Christians give ’em a free pass because they think it’s fulfilling End Times prophecies, and never you mind about the murdering and raping. “All Israel will be saved,” Ro 11.26 they insist, so if you don’t wanna get on God’s bad side during the End Times, shut up and support Israel. No matter how evil their leaders and soldiers behave.

American hypocrisy aside, let’s get into whether this is the correct way to understand John’s words. (Spoiler: It’s not.)

The Judean senate.

Today, a senate is the upper house of a bicameral legislature. When the American states redid their constitutions in 1775, they patterned their state government like the British Parliament: A lower house for the commoners, and an upper house for the upper class, like the House of Lords. Americans don’t have nobles, but we do have an upper class, and that’s what the states expected their upper houses to consist of: Aristocrats. Appointed—not elected—by the governor or lower house, meant to represent the interests of those who owned a lot of property and wealth in the state.

Exactly like the senate of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, which is what those states usually named their upper houses.

Over the years, American senates became more democratic. No more appointments (except to fill a vacancy); popular elections. Less about giving aristocrats a say in the government (they got money; they’ll always have a say), and more a check and balance against the lower house. Anybody can now be elected senator, and needn't be rich.

Thus gradually the meaning of “senate” changed, which is why any article or talk about senates has to include this introduction. Senates before the United States were unelected oligarchies. The wealthiest bunched together, and made decisions for the whole country. As, they believed, was their right; they owned it. They paid for it. Their families founded the country. Their ancestors had been senators for generations; senatorial rank was their birthright.

Ancient Judea also had a senate. After the Achæmenid Empire (i.e. the Persian Empire) let Jews return to their homeland, they organized the elders into a governing council, loosely based on the 70 elders of Israel in Moses’s day. Ex 24.1 By the first century this συνέδριον/synédrion (Greek for “seated together,” which the Mishnah translated סנהדריןsanhédrin) consisted of 71 people: Seventy elders of Judea, supposedly representing the great Judean families; plus the head priest, its נָשִׂיא/naši, “chief,” nowadays translated “president.”

Over time, and exposure to the Roman senate, this council gradually became a Judean senate, likewise consisting of all the wealthy, noble families of Judea. Americans regularly mix it up with our government bodies, and overlay democratic ideas upon it, and that’d be wrong. Or they’ll claim people got into this sanhédrin by merit: They’ll point to Gamaliel bar Gamaliel Ac 5.34 a great Pharisee rabbi and one of Paul’s instructors, Ac 22.3 and figure he was a member because he was such an outstanding scholar… and no, that’s not why. He was there because his family was wealthy; wealthy enough to have their son study the Law all day instead of farming or bricklaying or tentmaking. All of them were there because they were wealthy. It was an unelected oligarchy. Just like the Roman senate.

Elijah proposes a contest.

1 Kings 18.20-24.

Upon finally reappearing to Ahab ben Omri, king of Ephraim, Elijah instructed the king to gather 850 of his Baalist prophets, plus the people of Israel, at Mt. Karmél. I have no idea how many of Ahab’s subjects actually showed up for this; absolute monarch or not, some of ’em may have found the trip impossible. But enough of them showed.

Tradition has it the people climbed Mt. Karmél, ’cause ritual sacrifices (of all religions) were customarily done on high places. On the summit you’ll see the various monuments to Elijah. But I don’t think they had to climb to the top; in fact they just needed to be at a location where Elijah could stand slightly above them to be seen and heard.

First thing Elijah did was berate them for their paganism:

1 Kings 18.20-21 KWL

20Ahab reached out to all Israel’s descendants,

and gathered the prophets at Mt. Karmél.

21Elijah approached all the people

and said, “For how long

must you² stagger on two unequal stilts?

If YHWH is your god, follow him!

If Baal, follow him!”

The people answered him not a single word.

Verse 21 literally means “on two branches,” and a number of commentators imagine the Hebrews would’ve used such branches as crutches… and it somehow wouldn’t have worked. I’ve used crutches before, and if you don’t adjust them to the same height, it’s awkward but they still work. The Septuagint isn’t much help; it’s translated, “How long will you walk on both your upper legs?” Elijah’s talking about something which doesn’t work. If you used these branches as peglegs they wouldn’t work so well. Stilts too.

Now, other translations treat this saying as an idiom meaning two opinions, which is why the KJV has, “How long halt ye between two opinions?” And maybe that’s more accurate. But if Elijah was using an idiom, sometimes it’s best to translate it with another idiom: “How long are you people gonna sit on the fence?”

But this didn’t impress the Israelis. They’d been hearing such things from every prophet of the LORD who came out of the chute: “God doesn’t like idolatry. Stop worshipping other gods. Baal is nasty; get away from him. Repent. Follow the Law.” Blah blah blah. They’d tuned it out years ago.

As far as the Israelis were concerned, they had no motivation or reason to turn to the LORD. The king and queen were enthusiastic Baalists, so there’s a strong political motivation to get into their religion. There was also the common public perception that the LORD was a mountain god, a desert god, and an Egypt-smiting god… but for weather and crops, you wanted Baal-Hadad, who wielded the lightning bolts.

Plus the LORD had all these extra rules. Wearing special clothes, eating special foods, following special rituals, stuff about land management and economics which helped out the poor… whereas Baal had little to no rules. And ritual sex with temple prostitutes.

If you want a religion which definitely appeals to the selfish and horny, Baalism’s for you. So when Elijah got up and gave the same speech as usual, it didn’t win him any converts. They’d been staggering on two stilts, but staying up, which was good enough for them. Hebrew festivals one week, Baalist feasts the next.

Same as pagans in the United States, who happily celebrate Christmas and Easter along with the Christians, but when their pagan friends invite them to a Diwali festival, they’ll happily check that out too. It’s so open-minded and “spiritual” of ’em! Never mind how really it’s just superficial—they won’t pick a religion and stick with it. It’s all about what entertains ’em more. As usual, it’s selfishness.

Thy word have I hid in mine heart. [Ps 119.11]

Psalm 119.11 KJV

Thy word have I hid in mine heart,

that I might not sin against thee.

 

When I was a kid I memorized this verse. Helped a lot that musician Dan Whittemore has a song about it, which he played at our church, and I still own a cassette of that album. Years later I discovered a hymn which also has it as its chorus; one of my professors loved to sing it in chapel for us, once a semester. (Brilliant guy, lovable character, but terrible singing voice. He sounded like Chewbacca from Star Wars. Still, God listens to the heart, not the vocal cords.)

In context this verse comes from Psalm 119, the longest psalm (and chapter) in the bible. It’s a massive acrostic. It starts with eight verses which each begin with א/alef, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet; then the next eight verses begin with the next letter, ב/bet, and so on through the whole alphabet. Only the 1949 Knox Bible (a Roman Catholic translation of the Vulgate, in which Psalm 119 is numbered 118), kept it an acrostic.

Psalm 119 is dedicated to the Law of Moses, and how great and useful it is. It’s a psalm Christians tend to skip. We quote this verse, and a few other memorable verses like it, and ignore the rest. It’s because this passion for the Law… honestly, bugs Christians a little. Too many dispensationalists among us think the Law was nullified by Jesus, so we can ignore it, except for maybe the 10 commandments, plus that one command against homosexuality. We figure grace cancels out the rest. So reading Psalm 119 weirds Christians out, because we look at the psalmist’s passionate love for the Law, and we don’t share that love, and think he’s being kinda gross about it.

But verse 19 is fine. It uses the synonym אִמְרָה/imráh, “utterance, speech, word.” And the bible is God’s word, right?—and we revere the bible. So we’re good… so long that we never read the verse in context and find out the psalmist really means the Law.

Prayers we don’t expect answers to.

When I talk about people who don’t expect God to answer, I’m not necessarily speaking of hypocrites. There are those.

Hypocrites would be the people who offer prayers instead of help; those who wish people to be warm and well fed but won’t offer clothes and food. Jm 2.15-16 Or politicians offer “thoughts and prayers” after a mass shooting, instead of writing laws to control guns. I also wonder how often they actually follow up with prayer—and that’s why they never expect God to answer; they never spoke to him in the first place.

Nope, today I mean the people who don’t believe prayer works. They do pray, but they never, ever expect God to answer. Sometimes because they figure God stopped answering once the bible was complete—so from now on, if you have any God-questions, direct ’em towards the bible, not the Almighty.

And sometimes—and probably more often—they claim prayer doesn’t work that way. They say prayer is meant to be unidirectional. The purpose of prayer isn’t to communicate with God; it’s not to ask him anything, or ask him for anything. Those who make requests of God misunderstand its purpose, get their hopes up that God might hear ’em, but only set themselves up for disappointment. Because God’s not gonna answer them. That’s not why we pray.

Okay, so why do we pray? Well, they explain, that’s the religion. We’re told to pray. Christians pray. If you don’t pray, you’re not following the religion. But don’t expect anything out of the prayer itself; expect it out of the obedience. God wants us to pray, so we do; we’re obedient. That’s the point.

So when they pray, they go through all the motions of talking to God. They address God, praise him, lift up people they think God might want to see us lift up, talk about their own personal religious improvement, add a lot of pious-sounding things which God might like to hear, invoke Jesus’s name, and say Amen. For all the world it looks like they talked to God.

But no, not really. It’s entirely ritual. Or, as any reasonable onlooker might conclude, pure hypocrisy.

No, seriously. If we’re going through all the motions of talking to God, but we’re not really talking to God; we’re just going through the motions because we need to fulfill a religious duty, how is it not hypocrisy? And y’might recall the one thing which, in the gospels, pissed off Jesus more than anything, was hypocrisy. Why on earth would hypocrisy, in any form, be a legitimate part of Jesus’s religion?

“You spawn of vipers!”

Matthew 3.7-8, Luke 3.7-8A.

In Mark we only see John the baptist’s appearance, plus the obligatory reference to that Isaiah passage about preparing the Lord’s way and making his paths straight. Is 40.3 In the other synoptic gospels we see the same thing… plus a bit where John rebukes some of the people who aren’t all that repentant; who’ve come to the desert to gawk at him.

Because of the time Matthew and Luke spend on this bit, you might get the wrong idea—that this was all John taught. That his only purpose was to denounce popular Jewish culture for being hypocritical and only worthy of God’s wrath. You’d especially get this wrong idea if your favorite preachers taught this was John’s main purpose—and likewise teach it’s their main purpose. This is how dark Christianity perpetuates itself.

But this is not John’s main purpose, nor his main message. Preparing the Lord’s way does not consist of raging against all the evil and corruption in the world. It’s doing as John usually did: Telling people their sins are forgiven, and baptizing them so they can follow the LORD anew. We Christians are supposed to do this too.

And when the religious snobs come to visit our churches and meetings, and complain we’re not doing it in a manner which pleases them, then we can respond to ’em like John did.

Matthew 3.7-8 KWL

7Seeing many of the Pharisees and Sadducees

coming to his baptism,

John told them, “Spawn of vipers!

Who whispered to you² to flee the coming wrath?

8So produce the worthy fruit of repentance!”

Luke 3.7-8 KWL

7So John said to the crowds

coming out to be baptized by him, “Spawn of vipers!

Who whispered to you² to flee the coming wrath?

8ASo produce the worthy fruit of repentance!”

Christianity is meant to be a lifestyle of repentance. And by “repentance” I don’t mean feeling remorseful and guilty all the time, constantly apologizing for all our past misdeeds, constantly apologizing for others’ many and egregious misdeeds. (I mean, there’s obviously a time to tell American Indians you’re dreadfully sorry for your white ancestors murdering their ancestors, or looking the other way as your ancestors moved onto their stolen land… and a time not to. True of other such atrocities.) Christianity isn’t supposed to be about continuously beating ourselves up for being dirty sinners. Some churches do that, and they’re absolutely wrong to. Properly, repentance is about going the other way. You used to run towards sin; now go the other way. You used to rush towards evildoing and revenge and trolling; now go the other way. You used to embrace insults and trash talk and sarcasm; now go the other way.

Used to, right? If not, maybe you’d better start producing the worthy fruit of repentance.

Ahab meets Elijah.

1 Kings 18.16-20.

Look for a moment at the drought Elijah called down from Ahab ben Omri’s perspective.

Some oddly-dressed prophet from an old tribal religion you don’t practice, shows up and declares the rain will stop till he says otherwise. Then he leaves for parts unknown… and the drought happens. Your god Baal-Hadad, who specializes in weather—his idols even hold a lightning bolt!—can’t undo it. You’re a polytheist—you never believed Elijah’s god isn’t real; he’s just not your favorite. ’Cause the LORD’s worship only involves moral behavior and barbecuing animals, but Baal’s worship includes freaky ritual temple sex, and your wife’s really into it. But it’s kinda obvious the LORD actually does control weather better than the Baals, so you bite the bullet and start looking for Elijah. Hard. But he’s gone. It’s like he was raptured. (Not yet though.)

As you’re sending messengers to every country round about, the wife starts killing the LORD’s prophets—either because the LORD won’t let ’em turn the water back on, or petty revenge. Plus you’ve managed to terrorize your butler into thinking he’s dead meat if he knows anything, but won’t tell. (As it turns out Obadiah does know things. Lots of things.)

And then Elijah just shows up. Just as you’re scrounging for grass to feed what’s left of your dehydrating, hungry herds.

What do you do in this situation? Right: You cut his bloody head off, mount it on a pole, and display it in Samaria for all to see and fear. This is what happens to those who defy their king. It’s what any good tyrant would do.

Yet somehow Elijah manages to mouth off to Ahab a bit, then orders the king—yep, a subject who could command a king to do stuff, and the king obeyed—to bring 850 of his gods’ prophets to כַּרְמֶ֑ל/Kharmél (“fertile garden,” KJV “Carmel”), a limestone mountain range on the Mediterranean coast, near Haifa. In Arabic it’s known as جبل الكرمل/Jabál Mar Ilyás, “Mount Saint Elijah.”

1 Kings 18.16-20 KWL

16Obadiah went to give the message to Ahab,

and told him.

Ahab went to give the message to Elijah.

17When Ahab happened to see Elijah,

Ahab said to him, “Is this you?¹

—making trouble for Israel?”

18Elijah said, “I don’t make trouble for Israel;

that’s you¹ and your¹ father’s house,

by you² abandoning YHWH’s commands

and walking behind the Baals.

19Now, reach out:

Bring me, from all Israel, at Mount Karmél,

450 of Baal’s prophets,

and 400 of Asherah’s prophets

who feed at Jezebel’s table.”

20Ahab reached out to all Israel’s descedants,

and gathered the prophets at Mount Karmél.

“Jezebel’s table” means Jezebel personally financed them. The king and queen of Sidon were automatically the head priests of Baal-Hadad and Asherah, respectively. If Ahab and Jezebel were duplicating this setup in Ephraim, he’d be in charge of Baal’s worship, which’d include the prophets; she’d be in charge of Asherah’s.

Kharmél was 72km away from the prophets’ comfortable home in Samaria, and a bit of a climb. (I took a bus there; that’s the way to go.) And I’m pretty sure the Baalite prophets had no interest in traveling up a mountain just to hear a solitary prophet of the LORD call ’em rude names.

How’d Elijah get away with all this? My guess is after three years of begging Baal to please produce water, any water, Ahab had finally lost patience with his useless god. The LORD knew this, and timed things to correspond with Ahab’s shaken faith. The king was finally open to hearing Elijah out, instead of simply having the prophet drawn and quartered. “Here’s your opportunity,” the Holy Spirit told his prophet; “don’t waste it.” So Elijah didn’t.