I saw Satan Fall from Heaven…but not sure if I saw it like Isaiah!

I’m currently pursuing new research into popular depictions of the supernatural in video games and today my theological reflections turn me to one of the more tantalizes verses in the Bible. That reflection is on the person of Lucifer, a treasure chest of creative interpretation in video game storylines.

It had been my understanding growing up that the figure of evil Jesus is referring to was the same one found in the Isaiah 14:12. Here, Lucifer, the morning star was cast from heaven and in Luke 10, Jesus appears to be confirming this when he talks about seeing Satan fall from heaven.

Many scholars have wrote off the comparison, saying that the being falling from heaven in Isaiah is a Canaanite deity known as Helel ben Shahar, which was translated by Saint Jerome as “Lucifer.” It is argued that Helel was a Canaanite deity who is the son of Shahar (the dawn) and appears in the sky as a star (or technically the planet Venus). 

The fact of the matter is that nowhere is there any mention of Satan in this OT verse. There are a couple possibilities than as to what may be happening here. First, the writer of Luke (10:18) might have been trying to make a statement about Jesus’ pre-existence. In finding this verse, he includes a first person account put on the lips of Jesus who is witness to the actual event and reinterprets it as the figure of Satan since Helel ben Shahar was not a popular subject during the Inter-Testamental Period. This may speak to an early tradition in the church in which Christian writers were vigorously attempting to prove Jesus through the Old Testament whether by theophanies or prophecy. We have good evidence from the Post-Apostolic Fathers that this was true, and Jesus himself on the road to Emmaus chastens the two men for not believing what was written about him by the prophets.  On the other hand, Jesus’ testament of seeing Satan fall from the heavens may not at all have been an attempt to rework Isaiah 14 and may have referred to something entirely different. Here then, it would lack the apologetic effect that it could have had if it were a reinterpretation of Isaiah 14. But we have to at least allow for that possibility.

Of course, this may have been a primitive scientific attempt to make sense of a cosmic event. While the “morning star” itself is not a shooting star, the movement described in Luke 10:18 as lightning and Isaiah 14:12 as falling may have simply used the impetus to account for the repeating event of  meteorites entering the earth’s atmosphere, which gave rise to the myth.  

What remains interesting is that those who assert Helel and Shahar are Canaanite deities have trouble showing any myth in which this may have occurred, which has led commentators like James Dunn to suggest that the reenactment was most likely the product of early Israelite imagination and not an actual Babylonian mythology carried over into their own texts. I have to admit that this seems like the best gamble until archaeologists have any information otherwise. This of course does not solve whether Jesus was speaking of the event in Isaiah or speaking of something similar. Given however the re-imaginative working of Christian thinkers and the effect of Christian apologetics, I am more persuaded that this was precisely an attempt to do something like that.

What’s All the Fuss About Jesus’ Wife?

Why the Conservative Reaction to the Newly Discovered Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Doesn’t Make Sense

Everybody and his mother in theology land are commenting on the papyrus fragment find of the year. Considered to be Coptic in origin, this small piece, being called “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” by the scholar who brought it to light, Dr. Carol King, consists of seven lines that given the size and lack of context make it impossible to interpret with any real clarity. The pivotal words causing the stir “my wife…” appear to come from the lips of Jesus in the fragment but cannot be fleshed out any further.

So was Jesus married? Conservatives have dogmatically said no. Liberals say it is possible but not on the basis of this fragment alone. What at best might be said is that because scholars agree that it is representative of Coptic Christianity, and most likely to be in the tradition of Gnostic Christianity, the person of Mary has played an interesting role, lending to the notion that she enjoyed some elevated status among the disciples as a prophetess, enlightened one, oracle, etc.  Dr. James McGrath has made the point that in the Nag Hammadi library, Mary is represented as Jesus’ mother, sister, and sometimes companion.

If you don’t accept the legitimacy of the Gnostic gospels, you will not be convinced by this new find. Still most respected scholars recognize Gnosticism as a legitimate early strain of Christianity that eventually succumbed during the time of the Ecumenical Councils and the politicalization of different

bishoprics that exercised control over the churches in their region.

Strangely, it is worth noting that the overblown reaction by some conservative Christian talking heads seems to suggest the defensive attitude with which they operate.

Conservative religious and political commentator, Eric Metaxas, for example, writes in a Facebook post:

 “According to a document in my possession (it’s in book form and has been thoroughly authenticated by thousands of scholars). Jesus actually DID have a wife, and still has one. It refers to her as his Bride. She’s been far from perfect, but He’s utterly committed to her and has vowed never to leave her nor forsake her…His love for her brings tears to my eyes.”

Reading this post brings tears to my eyes, but for different reasons that should be obvious, and I won’t mentioned Eric’s complete inability to understand where and how this text fits into his Christianity or why it is important.

But I find there is absolutely no reason to fuss over this, but for extremely different reasons than someone like Eric.  We’re not going to prove empirically that Jesus was married from a fourth-century fragment. I agree with conservatives on this one. But on the other hand, we’re also not going to prove empirically that Jesus has ONE story to tell. In fact, we can empirically prove that he had MORE than one story to tell! Or at least, to be told about him! We only need to look at the four accepted gospels to show us this. Of course, another problem remains with regard to how much time is needed to tell anyone’s story before the details start drifting into the interpretative reality of the community or scribe that oversees the text. My ability to record accurately will obviously be affected if I am transcribing rather than counting on my recall. The question of whether the Holy Spirit “inspired” as in a word-for-word mimeograph is not a question that can be assessed by history. What we can see however is that, if this is the case, than the Holy Spirit has no problem giving four different accounts of the action.

So while conservatives are relieved that this small fragment falls flat on the grounds of what they suspect is a significant space of hundreds of years between Christ and the words of the papyri, we have to be careful that we don’t create a separate standard for the Biblical witness, in which the Bible itself is somehow more than a popular interpretation that survived the test of time and gained ascendancy. The question of whether the story that has been canonized and told in our Bible is a question of truth that cannot be deduced on the grounds of historical research. That is a matter of faith.

Paul the Apostle and Maimonides on Seeing Through a Glass Darkly

It’s always interesting to discover how Jewish Paul could be. This often is revealed when one immerses himself headlong in other Jewish thinkers. As I have been reading the “Eight Chapters,” Maimonides’ famous introduction to the tractate Pirqei Avot in his Commentary on the Mishnah, I found his discussion of the veils in Chapter Seven particularly enlightening when recalling Paul. In 1 Corinthians 13:12, Paul talks about seeing through a glass darkly, and it is important to note that not only is this not simply an original metaphor, but it is part of a larger rabbinic tradition.

The controversy here in modern times is that the Greek phrase blepomen gar arti di esoptrou en ainigmati in 1 Co. 13:12 may not be the best translation, for which the KJV translates the word esoptron as “glass.”

The associated term found in Jewish literature  אספקלריה (aspaklaria) actually does not originate in the Hebrew, but is a translation of the Latin specularia. It appears to represent a reflective surface, such as that of a polished stone or a mirror. The problem however is that when one finds this in rabbinic literature, there is often no sense of a mirror in which the person looking into it only sees himself. The specularia is found as early as the second century by Judah ben Ilai who noted, “All the prophets had a vision of God as He appeared through nine specula…Moses saw God through one speculum.” The Babylonian Talmud also notes that all the prophets’ visions were obscured by specula. Only Moses saw through a speculum that shines.”

If one understands the function of a mirror, it is hard to see what the rabbi and the Talmud describes functions similarly.  While I grant Maimonides comes centuries after Paul, it is interested to note that the mirror does not give us a clear sense of what Maimonides sees represented either. For Maimonides at least, the context comes with regard to Moses seeing God in the Torah through a diaphanous veil. In Exodus 33: 18-23, God tells Moses he cannot look on him directly, and therefore he is only given a glimpse of his back. Moses is of course greater than anyone before or after him in Maimonides’ view and the concept of the veil is synonymous with human vices that prevent us from the true ethical perfection necessary to know God (it’s just that Moses veil was “thinner” than anyone else’s).  

Maimonides calls this veil sefaqlaria (from the Arabic translation). For both Paul (see 1 Corinthians 13) and Maimonides (Eight Chapters, Chapter 7 and The Guide to for the Perplexed, Chapter 54), this passage and the surrounding subject matter have to do with how one knows God and what is and is not permissible in that knowing due to one’s epistemological limits. The greatest difference being here is that where both diminish the role of the prophet (who for Maimonides is of greater value than even the pious or holy man), where Maimonides holds up Moses, Paul ignores the rabbinical tradition that elevates Moses’ place in this context in his own letter to focus on the limits that prevent us all.