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.)

Saved by one’s ancestry?

Those of us who’ve actually read the Old Testament are quite aware being Israeli didn’t save anyone. Assyria conquered Ephraim and Babylon conquered Judah. Righteous men like Ezekiel and Daniel had been dragged to Babylon, regardless of their devotion to the LORD, because the wickedness of their king and people had obligated the LORD to remove his hedge of protection from Israel and let their enemies vanquish ’em. Not only did their ethnicity not save them, it made ’em a big red target for their enemies to shoot at.

You know this, I know this… and the first-century Israelis knew this. They were fully aware of their history. Pharisees taught it in synagogue. And if you weren’t Pharisee, you’d pick it up by osmosis from all the Pharisees around who kept talking about it. Because thanks to the Roman occupation, there was a whole lot of debate about whether history was repeating itself—whether the Romans might be yet another conqueror who’d try to destroy them.

The possibility that Israel might once again become so wicked, the LORD would have to withdraw, and leave ’em easy pickings for their enemies, was the whole reason for the synagogue system. When Alexander of Macedon conquered Israel, and the Seleucid Empire which succeeded him decided to Grecianize the country, the Israelis fought back, won, and gave God full credit for the win. Some of ’em decided the only way to keep the nation from backsliding was to create special schools which taught everyone—everyone—the Law. Those were the Pharisees, and their schools are the synagogues.

Only problem with the synagogues in John’s day: The synagogues still taught the Law, but now they also taught how to make loopholes in the Law. And this undermined the whole purpose of the synagogues. Now you have a population which thinks they’re righteous, but they’re a bunch of hypocrites who are no more devout than the pagans. Probably less devout; at least pagans were afraid of their gods.

Anyway, Israelis knew their history, and knew better than to believe being descendants of Abraham would save them. It hadn’t before.

And yet we get Christians who claim no, the Israelis did believe this claptrap. Lemme quote D.A. Carson in the Expositors Bible Commentary, at Matthew 3.8-9.

Yet in the intertestamental period the general use of descent from Abraham, in the context of a rising merit theology, supported the notion that Israel was chosen because it was choice and that the merits of the patriarchs would suffice for their descendants (cf. Carson, Divine Sovereignty, pp. 39ff.).

That’s right; he referenced himself. Scholars can do that, y’know. It means you can get something wrong, then quote yourself so you can get it wrong again.

By “merit theology,” Carson means works righteousness—that you’re saved because you pleased God, either by obeying or demonstrably trusting him. He believed, as many Protestants believe, the Pharisees thought they were saved by good works. Or if not their own, by Abraham’s good works, and the good works of other great Israelis like Moses, David, Elijah, and so forth, who accumulated enough of a storehouse of merit to make God think, “Yeah, I’ll rescue Israel; I kinda owe their ancestors.”

Problem is, the Pharisee writings from that time indicate Israelis knew better—that they were saved by God’s grace. Always had been. While some of them wandered off on the wrong track and thought they were saved by their good deeds—and Paul had to debate these legalists—for the most part they knew they weren’t saved by works. “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Ga 3.6

Which is why they didn’t have any. Which is why John the baptist had to tell them to produce some. Mt 3.8, Lk 3.8

Okay, so if the Israelis knew they weren’t saved by being descended from Abraham, why did John tell them to not presume upon this descent? Because “We have a father in Abraham” didn’t only mean they were physical descendants of Abraham. It also implied they were spiritual descendants of Abraham. Exactly like Paul reminded the Galatians:

Galatians 3.6-9 NRSVue

6Just as Abraham “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” Ge 15.6 7so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. 8And the scripture, foreseeing that God would reckon as righteous the gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the gentiles shall be blessed in you.” Ge 12.3 9For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.

The Sadducees and Pharisees whom John rebuked, were counting on their Abraham-like faith in God to save them. Same as the Christians whom Jesus’s brother James had to rebuke:

James 2.14-17 NRSVue

14What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it? 15If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food 16and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

While these guys might totally trust God to save them, same as Abraham, the problem is they weren’t behaving like Abraham. Abraham trusted God so much, he darn near sacrificed Isaac on an altar. Jm 2.21-24 Did they trust God that much? Nah. Hence their pursuit of loopholes.

What John’s basically telling them, is “Don’t count on your fruitless dead faith to save you.”

What Christians popularly claim John meant was, “Don’t count on your ethnicity to save you.” Because we don’t count on our ethnicity to save us. (Well, the white supremacists among us do, but let’s not go there today.) And since we don’t, we’re doing great, aren’t we? Meanwhile, too many of us have the very same fruitless dead faith as the religious snobs. Not to mention the very same religious snobbery.

Descendants of Abraham from rocks.

All my life I was told John compared descendants to rocks because he was making a pun. In Hebrew, the word for “stone” is אֶבֶן/eben, and the word for “descendant/son” is בֵּן/ben. “God can raise up bením for Abraham out of these ebením. Ha-ha, how clever.

But this presumes John was speaking Hebrew to his audience. Which is mighty unlikely: Hebrew was a dead language by that point in history. Only scribes knew Hebrew, so they could translate the scriptures in synagogue or discuss the fine points of it in the Judean senate. Your average Israeli might know a word or two, but they definitely didn’t speak it; they only spoke Syriac and Greek.

So let’s look at those two languages, ’cause we have ancient copies of the bible in ’em. In the Peshitta, “stones” translates ܟ݁ܺܐܦ݂̈ܶܐ/kifá, and if that word sounds a little familiar, that’s because Jesus based Simon bar Yona’s nickname on it—“Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone.” Jn 1.42 In Greek it’s Κηφᾶς/Kifás, which is the proper way to pronounce Cephas. As for “descendant/son,” it’s still ܒ݁ܢܰ/ben, although Syriac-speakers would more commonly use ܒ݁ܪܶ/bar—as we see when Jesus addresses Simon as “Simon Barjona” Mt 16.17 KJV.

Now for the Greek New Testament: It translates “stones” as λίθων/líthon and “descendant/son” as τέκνα/tékna. The supposed pun doesn’t work in either Syriac or Greek. Only in Hebrew—and it’s a stretch to say John was speaking Hebrew to anyone that day. The idea John was doing some wordplay is a fun one, but it’s not grounded in history. Sorry.

What John was doing, is similar to Jesus’s comment to the people who objected at Palm Sunday about his students making a fuss: If they were silent, the rocks would rejoice instead. Lk 19.40 If people won’t do as God wants, or rejoice at his actions, he could always get nature itself to do it. Rocks have more sense than some people do.

Psalm 96.11-13 NRSVue

11Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;

let the sea roar and all that fills it;

12let the field exult and everything in it.

Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy

13before the LORD, for he is coming,

for he is coming to judge the earth.

He will judge the world with righteousness

and the peoples with his truth.

Rocks have more Abraham-like faith in ’em than any hypocrite. And, for that matter, so do gentiles, whom Jesus’s followers would reach out to in a very few years, and they too would embrace Abraham-like faith in God through Jesus. Faith-filled gentiles make much better “descendants of Abraham” than hypocrites too.