August 14, 2026

The Septuagint: What It Is and Why It Matters

By Clarke Morledge

Even people who only go to church around Easter and particularly Christmas probably know this story. Joseph is betrothed to Mary, and he soon discovers that Mary is pregnant…. and they are not even married yet.

Was there another man in the picture? Someone Joseph does not know about? Either way, Joseph as a betrothed man was in a pickle.[1]

The scandal of Mary’s pregnancy is “pregnant” with meaning. Old Greek translations of the Old Testament, which were familiar to the earliest Christians, help us to solve the mystery.

 

It will look sketchy for Joseph’s reputation if the baby is born less than nine months after the wedding. It looks even worse for Mary. Joseph was thinking that perhaps the best thing for everyone would be for him to divorce Mary quietly.

Then an angel appears to him in a dream, telling Joseph to chill out, for all of this had been foretold by the prophet Isaiah, hundreds of years before:

“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall call his name Immanuel” (Matthew 1:23, quoting Isaiah 7:14).

Along with other passages, such as Galatians 4:4, this is where Christians get the idea of the Virgin Birth from.

But the story behind the story is even trickier than it sounds. If you go back and read what Matthew is quoting, Isaiah 7:14, most Bible translations say pretty much the same thing: “The virgin shall conceive.”

We get the idea. Mary was a virgin when she became pregnant with Jesus. It was a divine miracle that happened.[2]

But if you read some other Bible translations, such as the NRSVue, there is a startling difference in Isaiah 7:14:

“Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel“.

The “virgin” is no longer a “virgin.” She is simply a “young woman.” Well, it is possible for a “young woman” to be a “virgin.” But why is there a difference?[3]

The answer, in a nutshell, has to do with something called the “Septuagint.” Most Christians have probably heard about the(?) “Septuagint,” but only have some vague idea as to what it is or was.

Unpacking what the Septuagint is risks oversimplification. At the most basic level, the “Septuagint” is known as an ancient Bible translation, much like something like the NIV, the NRSVue, the ESV, or some other English translation. But in the case of the “Septuagint“, it was a Greek translation of the Old Testament, originally written in Hebrew, and it was effectively “the Bible” of the earliest Christians, before there was a “New Testament.”

Already, the term “Septuagint” has become this rather slippery thing. So, what is this “Septuagint” all about…. and what does it have to do with the “Virgin Birth?”

 

The Septuagint: What It Is and Why It Matters, by Greg Lanier and William A. Ross gives the reader a solid introduction to the Old Greek translation of the Bible, which was effectively the Bible of the early church. However, even this designation can be misleading, as the real story behind the Septuagint is more complex and interesting than it initially sounds.

 

What Is A Septuagint?

Greg Lanier and William Ross have written an introduction to the subject: The Septuagint: What It Is and Why It Matters. Lanier’s and Ross’ fascinating book dives into the mystery of the “Septuagint,” so that you have a better idea of what is going on when you sit down and study the Bible, or at least, make better sense of what the whole controversy regarding the “Virgin Birth” story told at Christmas is all about.

The biggest chunk of the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, the ancient language of the Jewish people. After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E.,  Masoretic Jewish families eventually rose up within a few hundred years to effectively maintain the Hebrew Bible over the centuries, as Jews were scattered all across the Mediterranean and elsewhere. Today, we owe a huge debt to these Masoretic Jews for preserving the Old Testament in Hebrew. But much like the story of the rise and fall of Latin in Europe, Jewish communities were not always consistent adherents to their ancient language.

Prior to the time of Jesus, when Alexander the Great came along, in the 4th century BCE, the story of the Bible got quite a bit more interesting. When Alexander the Great conquered an immense part of the then known world, the lasting legacy of Alexander’s rise to power was the spread of the Greek language. In the centuries leading up to Christ’s birth, Greek had become the lingua franca, the language of trade in the ancient world of the eastern Mediterranean, much like how English functions today as the global language of trade.

The most famous city associated with Alexander the Great was a highly active port city on the coast of the Mediterranean in Egypt, Alexandria. In those centuries leading up to Christ’s birth, a large Jewish community settled in and around Alexandria, and up river along the Nile, as far south as an island in the river, named Elephantine.

A complete record is difficult to come by, but some historians say that there were perhaps a million, if not more, Jews living in Egypt during the earthly life of Jesus. Some say that the Jewish community in Egypt even dwarfed the size of the Jewish community that settled in and around Jerusalem, in Israel.

As a result, this large group of Jews in Egypt began to lose familiarity with their ancient Hebrew language. There was a huge need to have a translation of the Hebrew Bible into their common language, Greek. The so-called “Septuagint” filled that need.

The story of the Septuagint goes back to the Letter of Aristeas, though most scholars today highly question the historical accuracy of the letter. Nevertheless, some of the underlying ideas from the Letter of Aristeas ring true.

In the Letter of Aristeas, it documents a request made by Alexandrian Greek royal officials to find a way to get a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible placed into the great library of Alexandria, perhaps the largest repository of books in the ancient world. In exchange for returning a group of Jewish prisoners of war, the high priest of the Jerusalem Temple was asked to send six scholars from each of the twelve tribes of Israel to come to Egypt to do the translation work. These seventy-two scholars lived on an island off of the coast of Egypt, independently from one another while they did their work. When the work was completed, they ended up with seventy-two exact copies, word-for-word of the Hebrew Bible now in Greek. It was deemed as a miracle of God.

Right off the top, there are problems with this story. First, the word “Septuagint” is derived from the Latin word for “seventy,” which in Roman numerals is “LXX.” Clearly, “seventy” is not the same as “seventy-two.” Furthermore, it was not the entire Hebrew Bible which was translated at this point. Rather it was the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, which were translated.

The rest of the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek later. But the term “Septuagint” is often associated with the entire Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, which did constitute “the Bible” for the earliest Christians, before the New Testament was completed and canonized. Scholars today generally call this the “Greek Old Testament,” but in common usage, the “Septuagint” or “LXX” has become the default term for this Greek Old Testament.

How Many Septuagints?

It is probably better to speak of multiple “Septuagints” as opposed to just one, but as Lanier and Ross say, we are probably just stuck with the terminology of “Septuagint” in the singular. Several efforts were made to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek over several centuries before the birth of Jesus. Not only that, but several other texts originally written in Greek were also added to the Septuagint collection. Most of these texts became controversial in Christian history, as they lacked an original Hebrew source.

Among Protestants, these “Greek-only” texts are generally known as the “Apocrypha,” whereas in Roman Catholicism, these texts are known as being “Deutero-canonical,” meaning “second canon.” The Eastern Orthodox tradition has an even more expansive collection, depending on what branch of Eastern Orthodoxy you are talking about.

On top of that we have various translations of the Old Testament into Greek from Jewish scholars like Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, on into the early Christian era. For example, in the second century, we find Christians citing the Book of Daniel as translated by Theodotion. One of Christianity’s earliest scholars, Origen of Alexandria, sought to make sense of all of these various forms of the Septuagint, in how the Hebrew was translated into Greek. Origen’s Hexapla sought to compare the major instances of these Greek translations, to figure out how well they drew from the Hebrew Scriptures.

As the Jewish and Christian movements began to spread apart, so did the overlap between the two communities regarding the status of the Septuagint start to fragment. In the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., rabbinic Judaism began to distance itself from the Greek Old Testament, as this was thought to be the Bible of the Christians. Instead, the Jews looked more towards a smaller canon of Scripture, the original Old Testament texts written in Hebrew. This “parting of the ways” between Jews and Christians had an impact on how Christians viewed the canon of the Old Testament.

The issue for the Christian community really came to a head in the early 5th century, when a series of letters were exchanged between the two biggest Christian intellectual voices of the day: Jerome and Augustine.

Battle Between Two Titans: Jerome Versus Augustine

Jerome was working on a translation of the Bible into Latin, but he preferred to only translate from the original Hebrew, following the pattern which the Jews had set. As a result, Jerome held to a lower view of the Septuagint, as it was only a translation itself, and for many books of the Septuagint, there were no Hebrew sources readily available behind these books, the Apocrypha or Deutero-canonical.

Augustine fired back his letters to Jerome, in defense of the Septuagint. Jerome felt the heat, as he went ahead and included numerous books from these “Greek-only” texts into his Latin Bible translation, the Vulgate, anyway. Augustine, on the other hand, while championing the Septuagint, was ironically not a skilled Greek reader. Augustine’s native tongue was Latin, and he knew little if any Hebrew, thus lacking the linguistic breadth of knowledge which Jerome had. It was an argument which would continue on well after the deaths of Augustine and Jerome.

In the 16th century in the Christian West, the debate ratcheted up to the point that the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent formally argued in favor of Augustine’s position, that of acknowledging the so-called “Apocrypha,” including texts like Judith, Tobit, 1 and 2 Maccabees, etc. as at least having the status of “Deutero-canonical“. The Protestants, in turn, had taken the more restrictive approach, opting in favor of Jerome’s position, which is why Protestant Bibles today look the way they are, regarding the Old Testament.

Lanier and Ross suggest that the role of the Apocrypha or Deutero-canon has a parallel with something like the literature of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth stories. Any fan of Tolkien will tell you that the definitive canon of Tolkien’s works would include The Hobbit, and the three books which make up The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

However, what does one do with The Silmarillion, the extended material which Tolkien began to write, but was only completed by the editorial work of Tolkien’s son, Christopher. Die-hard fans of Tolkien will tell you that you can not fully grasp the story of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings without having The Silmarillion as a background. Lanier and Ross also bring up the analogy of the “Director’s Cut,” regarding certain DVD versions of classic movies, to describe the Septuagint’s contributions to the Hebrew Bible (Lanier and Ross, p. 127).

Moses by Michelangelo, at the Church of San Pietro, in Vincoli, in Rome, Italy. Check out the horns on Moses’ head!! I took this photo from our trip to Rome in October, 2018.

 

Why Should I Care About the Septuagint?….  (Where Did Moses Get Those Horns??)

As Lanier and Ross note, there are several reasons why the Septuagint matters for Christians today. First, the Septuagint helps us to understand some of the ambiguities we find in understanding the Hebrew text, and how they should be best interpreted.

For example, in Exodus 34:29-30, when Moses comes down from Mt. Sinai, the Hebrew text uses a rare Hebrew word derived from “horn” to describe what Moses looked like, describing the luminescence of his face. This led some Renaissance artists to depict Moses as having horns on his head as he came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. But the Septuagint translates this obscure Hebrew word as “glorify,” to describe what happened to Moses (Lanier and Ross, pp. 118-119). The ESV translation renders this word from the verb “to shine.”

The lesson here should be straight-forward. When Moses descends from Mt. Sinai, he is not physically growing horns out of his head. There is one place in the Bible where this obscure Hebrew word, “qa-ran,” really means “horn.” In Psalm 69:31, we read: “This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs.” But that is not the meaning of the word in Exodus 34:29-30, because the context is different.

Instead, this obscure Hebrew word which is associated with “horn” has a wider range of meaning, which can appeal to certain kinds of metaphors. The use of a “horn,” as in “blowing a horn,” signifies that someone is in the presence of strength, majesty, and divine connection. The Septuagint translator picked up on this and translated the Hebrew as “glorify” instead of just “horn,” which illuminates the meaning intended by the ambiguous Hebrew terminology. Therefore, we are not talking about some kind of divine miracle whereby horns appear mysterious ex nihilo out of Moses’ head.

We do not need to invent a miracle and place it into the storyline of the text if there is no warrant for it. Rather, the meaning is closer to what is found in something like the ESV translation: “Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.”

Secondly, the Septuagint helps us to better understand how the writers of the New Testament made use of the Old Testament. More times than not, the New Testament quotes from a Greek translation of the Old Testament rather than from the Hebrew. As Lanier and Ross put it: “For such students of the Bible, the mysterious ‘Septuagint’ becomes a kind of portal to a whole new world ” (Lanier and Ross, p. 131).

However, it is important not to oversimplify the idea that the Septuagint was “the Bible” of the early church, as such a statement, while broadly true, can be misleading. For example, the ordering of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament differs between the Hebrew text, as well as various versions of the Greek translations of the Hebrew, which even differ from one another.

Is the order of the Ten Commandments (partially) to read as not to commit murder, adultery, or steal in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5? Or do you go with the Septuagint version of Exodus, as not to commit adultery, steal, or murder, or the Septuagint version of Deuteronomy not to commit adultery, murder, or steal?  You can get a flavor of this by looking at how different passages of the New Testament partially list out the order of the Ten Commandments, as in Matt. 19:18; Mark 10:19; Luke 18:20; Rom. 13:9; James 2:11.

Another example Lanier and Ross cite (p. 137) is when different Greek versions of the New Testament are used to quote from Daniel:

‘For instance, Matthew 26:64 describes the “Son of Man” coming “on [Gk. epi] the clouds,” reflecting the Old Greek of Daniel 7:13—while Luke 21:27 reads, “in [Gk. en] the clouds,” reflecting the tradition of Theodotion.’

One Greek “Septuagint” translation has the word “on” whereas Theodotion’s “Septuagint” translation has the word “in,” resulting in a slight change of meaning. While “the Septuagint” offers different readings at times, the basic tenor of the Greek translation efforts holds together rather well. But there were times that reading different Greek “Septuagints” can make for slightly different understandings of the text, when digging deep into the details.

In other words, no one in the first century of Christianity was walking around with a single copy of “the Septuagint” that they picked up from Barnes and Nobles bookstore tucked under their arm. Just as Christians today might use multiple translations of the Bible today in English to gain a better understanding of the text, the earliest Christians did so as well.

 

Codex Sinaiticus, includes the earliest complete copy of the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Old Testament used by the early church (credit: bible archaeology.org)

 

The Septuagint and Biblical Inerrancy: Requires Some Nuance

Understanding the role of the Septuagint can help in discussions about biblical inerrancy. For example, in Acts 7:14, Luke quotes Genesis 46.27 to say that when Joseph was assisting his brothers during the famine, Joseph sent for “seventy-five” of his family to come to Egypt. But in the Hebrew, Genesis 46:27 says “seventy,” not “seventy-five.” Does this indicate an error in the Bible?

One popular way to deal with this is to say that it was Stephen, in his speech in Acts 7, who was mistaken regarding the number of Israelites Joseph summoned from Israel. Nevertheless, Luke accurately and faithfully records Stephen’s speech, thereby guarding inerrancy. Stephen was wrong, but it was what Luke wrote down that matters, and Luke is without an error.

Well, sort of. I get this popular way of handling this difficulty, but I still am a bit cautious. This way of defending biblical inerrancy seems a little like cheating to me.

Lanier and Ross point to a better solution, namely that Stephen by way of Luke was following the Old Greek translation of the Genesis 46:27, and not the Hebrew. They say that there were different methods of counting Jacob’s descendants, and that the Hebrew and Old Greek version followed these different methods (Lanier and Ross, p. 151). In other words, along with Genesis 46:27, Stephen and Luke are both right, but in different ways, by following different counting methods to reach their respective conclusions.

 

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint

This brings up a point that further upholds the importance of the Septuagint, and that is the relationship between Old Greek traditions with the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in a cave in the 1940s, has revolutionized the study of the Bible in our day. As it turns out, in numerous places, the Dead Sea Scrolls align more with the Septuagint readings than the Hebrew reading preserved in the Masoretic Hebrew texts. What is so important about this connection is that the Dead Sea Scrolls predate our earliest copies of the Hebrew Masoretic tradition by about one thousand years!

Let us jump back to the previous passage to see how this works. The Septuagint (or “Old Greek“) version of Genesis 46:27 reads:

“And the sons of Joseph who were born to him in the land of Egypt were nine persons; all the persons of the house of Jacob who entered into Egypt were seventy-five.”

But we see the same reading in various Dead Sea Scroll documents, such as 4QExodb (4Q13) and 4QExoda (4Q1). All read “seventy-five.”

This in contrast with the Masoretic reading of just “seventy,” which interestingly is preserved in yet a different Dead Sea Scroll document, 4QpaleoGen-Exod (4Q11), which also reads as “seventy.”  This demonstrates that both the “seventy” and “seventy-five” readings were preserved in Old Testament documents before the arrival of the Christian New Testament.

 

“Adoration of the Shepherds,” by Gerard van Honthorst, 1622. (credit Wikipedia: The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202)

 

Back to the Virgin Birth: How the New Testament Uses the Old Testament

Let us circle back to where we started.

Underneath the Jerome versus Augustine controversy was the very heart of the matter; that is, the use of the Greek translations of the Old Testament by the New Testament authors themselves to make their case for Christianity. The Septuagint does differ in numerous places from the original Hebrew text. Returning back to the famous prophecy from Isaiah about the birth of the Messiah can help to illustrate the point.

Not too long ago, I listened to Eastern Orthodox priest and scholar Father Stephen De Young making an interesting claim about Matthew’s use of Isaiah 7:14, which affirms the Virgin Birth of Jesus. In Matthew 1:23, the Gospel writer is quoting from the Septuagint version of Isaiah 7:14, and not the Masoretic Hebrew version of Isaiah 7:14, the latter which uses the Hebrew word “almah” to refer to the woman who would conceive and bear a child. A translation like the NRSVue follows the Hebrew reading, and not the Greek reading. The Hebrew word “almah” simply means “a young woman,” and not necessarily a “virgin.”

However, the Septuagint uses the Greek word “parthenos” which is typically translated as “virgin.” At first glance, it looks as though most English Bible translations today tend to “cheat” a bit when translating Isaiah 7:14, as normally such translations follow the Hebrew Masoretic and not the Septugaint. But when it comes to Isaiah 7:14, you typically find the word “virgin” and not the phrase “a young woman.”

But when English Bible translations do this, are they really “cheating?”

Stephen De Young suggests a provocative explanation as to what is taking place in this verse. He contends that while the word “parthenos” did have the meaning of “virgin” in the first century, when the Gospel of Matthew was written, “parthenos” originally had the meaning of “a young woman” a few centuries earlier when Isaiah was first translated into Greek, thus mirroring the mean of the Hebrew word “almah.” But in the providence of God, the meaning of the word “parthenos” changed over time, such that by the first century C.E., the meaning of “virgin” for “parthenos” had become normative. As evidence, De Young argues that by the second century C.E., the word “parthenos” was also used to refer to a male who was a virgin, and not simply “a young woman.”

Not every English Bible translation does this, but if you look carefully in a Bible translation’s footnotes, they will often put a note saying “Septuagint” or “LXX” to indicate when the translator diverges from the Masoretic Hebrew.[4]

There is no ominous conspiracy here to “change” the meaning of the Bible. Instead, it is a judicious use of good scholarship to give you a Bible which you can better understand.

The Authority of the Septuagint?

The final question which Lanier and Ross raise in their book of less than 200 pages is about the nature of the authority of the Septuagint for Christians: Does the Septuagint have some kind of authority for the Christian, in their study of the Bible?  Two basic schools of thought have dominated the Christian world for centuries in this debate. One approach has been to favor the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, as found in the Masoretic textual tradition used by the ancient Jewish community. Some in this school tend to dismiss the Septuagint translators as clumsy or prone to error. Lanier and Ross would argue that this is a mistake, as they make the case that the Septuagint translators were quite competent in doing their work.

The other approach favors the Greek version of the Old Testament, which has prompted some extreme defenders to claim that the Jews purposefully altered the Masoretic tradition in order to eliminate Christian readings of the Old Testament. Lanier and Ross do not favor this approach either.

Given the fact that the New Testament writers, when quoting from the Old Testament, were sometimes users of the Hebrew, but who mostly favored Greek versions of the text should suggest that a more robust way to think about the Septuagint lies somewhere between the two extremes. This should also encourage some exegetical humility among Christians today who try to make sense of difficult passages of Scripture whereby we do not have complete agreement between the Hebrew and the Greek.

Lanier and Ross are hesitant to conclude that the Septuagint has normative authority for Christians today. That spot is reserved for the Hebrew Bible. But the Septuagint can be used like any good English Bible translation today, to help to clarify meaning. This “Old Greek” translation of the Hebrew served that purpose for the earliest Christians, including the authors of our New Testament.

This might sit uncomfortably among those who think that we should have some fixed text for what we know as “the Bible,” as though the Bible somehow dropped down out of the sky. Yet the Bible is what it is, and whatever we think of something like “inerrancy,” in that “inerrancy” must take into account the actual data of what we have in our Bible. It would simply be wrong to try to impose some kind of modern understanding of “authority” onto these ancient texts of Scripture.[5]

As a result, Lanier and Ross conclude that the Septuagint possesses derivative authority, much like our best English translations of the Bible today. The Septuagint’s authority is “downstream from its normative text.” The way they put it is this:

…the New Testament authors, in reaching a Greek world, prioritized the faithful communication of the meaning of an Old Testament source text higher than punctilious adherence to a set (Hebrew) wording (Lanier and Ross, p. 186).

The meaning of the text takes priority over the exact words, which is a nuanced way of how to think about the Bible. Kudos go to Lanier and Ross for giving readers a helpful introduction to such a perplexing, yet important topic.[6] [7]

Several years ago, I read and reviewed Timothy Michael Laws’ When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible. It was this book that made me realize what the Septuagint was with respect to Christianity, broadly speaking. Laws’ book focuses more on the history of the Septuagint, whereas this book, The Septuagint: What It Is and Why It Matters, by Greg Lanier and William Ross, gives you the history along with a perspective of what Bible scholars have to say about why the Septuagint matters for studying the Bible.  Lanier’s and Ross’ book is the perfect introduction for anyone who wants understand what their Bible is all about.

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ADDENDUM: Lanier’s and Ross’ book brought out so many tantalizing tidbits, but I did not want to clutter the main body of the blog post with all of them. For the curious, check out some of the rabbit trail notes (below) I gained from reading this book, referenced in the main text of the blog post …..

Notes

[1] As early as the second century in the history of Christianity, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth was a scandal. Some early critics of Christianity, like the second century pagan Celsus, say that Mary was impregnated by a Roman soldier named Pantera. There is debate among scholars as to how this story originated and how Celsus was informed about it. But the basic idea is that when the Romans sacked and burned the city of Sepphoris, which was within walking distance of Nazareth, in Galilee, Pantera was presumably among the Roman troops who must have encountered Mary, who was from nearby Nazareth. After the death of Herod, which according to the standard chronology was in 4 BCE (scholars debate about the date of Herod’s death), there was a Jewish revolt. Syrian governor Publius Quinctilius Varus sent an army to crush the revolt, burn the city, and ended up selling its inhabitants into slavery.  Back to text

[2] In other words, there is no guy named Pantera in the picture….. Attacks on the Virgin Birth by skeptics are not only based on a denial of the supernatural, they also take aim against the inerrancy of the Bible. Sadly, some well-meaning Christian apologetics distort what we can confidently say about the inspiration of the Bible, and its relation to inerrancy. As I have argued before, there are different definitions of biblical “inerrancy,” and we should be careful not to get too hung up on trying to demand a kind of technical precision from the text which was not within the intended purpose of the original author.  Furthermore, understanding how the New Testament uses the Old Testament should encourage us to take a step back and look at the larger picture of how prophecy in the Bible actually works, instead of trying to use popular ideas about “300 prophecies” being fulfilled by Jesus as some kind of miracle of mathematical improbability.  Is the coming of Jesus really about beating the mathematical odds of getting certain predictions right, or is it more about veiling the truth about the coming of the Messiah in a way that would catch the powers of darkness off-guard? The latter is a more defensible approach to Scripture.  Back to text

[3] The first Bible translation in English to do what the NRSVue does was its predecessor, the RSV, back in the late 1940s and 1950s. Some people got really upset about this. I wrote about this in a Veracity blog post a few years ago. Back to text

[4] The YouTube video clip from Father Stephen De Young was taken from a longer video stream, which has timestamps. … .In the ESV (English Standard Version), there are  several other well-known examples of the Septuagint taking precedence over the Masoretic reading:      Genesis 4:8: The ESV adds the phrase “Let us go out to the field” following the Septuagint and other ancient texts (where the Masoretic Text lacks the phrase). 1 Samuel 1:24: The ESV translates “a three-year-old bull” (with the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls) instead of the Masoretic Text’s “three bullocks“. 1 Samuel 14:1: The ESV includes missing text—”has not the Lord anointed you…“—which is preserved in the Septuagint but missing from the Hebrew. Deuteronomy 32:8: The ESV translates “sons of God” alongside the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls, diverging from the traditional Masoretic reading of “sons of Israel“. Back to text

[5] This suggests that we would do well to realize that the New Testament does things with the Old Testament which do not often fit within our modern expectations of an “inerrant” text, due to its reliance on a Septuagint, “Old Greek” tradition, but that this should in no way diminish its authority. Sometimes the New Testament follows the Hebrew text and not the Septuagint reading, as when Matthew 2:15 quotes the Hebrew “my son” of Hosea 11:1, but not the Old Greek, which is rendered as “my children.”  Contrast with Psalm 95:7-11, where the New Testament follows the Old Greek, with words like “rebellion” and “testing,” unlike the Hebrew, which has words like “Meribah” and “Massah.” The New Testament even appeals to Jewish tradition not found in the Hebrew text, and not even in any know Septuagint text, as when 2 Timothy 3:8 mentions the Egyptian magicians Jannes and Jambres, and yet we have no mention of them in Exodus. Eastern Orthodox priest Father Stephen De Young gives several other examples. Back to text

[6] This understanding of “derivative authority” is significant in how certain key texts in the Hebrew Bible were handled by Septuagint translators, as a means of settling debates concerning biblical interpretation. For example follow this rabbit trail:

 Psalm 82:1-8, when reading it in the Hebrew has often lended itself to be about a critique of Israelite judges, referred to as “gods” in Psalm 82:1,6 ,  who judge unwisely. This is different from the Septuagint reading which suggests that the “gods” of Psalm 82:1,6 are really divine beings, members of God’s divine council.  These “gods” were created by the uncreated Yahweh, so they do not stand on par with Yahweh, but they are still divine beings. Psalm 82 is significant in that Jesus refers to it in John 10:34-35, as a defense of his divinity. Since the New Testament authors tend to favor the Septuagint readings of Old Testament texts over Hebrew readings, it would make sense to say that Jesus in John 10:34-35 is referring himself as the unique “Son of God,” a clear defense of his divinity, a view favored by the late Michael Heiser.  (Heiser is not alone in his conclusion).

In the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 109, Heiser argues that the reference to “gods” here in John 10 as mere humans actually undermines the force of Jesus’ argument. For if the reference to “gods” in John 10 were to describe mere humans, as the Jewish leaders were, it would be as though Jesus is saying something like, “Well, if you Jewish leaders, who are mere humans, can call yourselves ‘gods,” then why can I not do the same?“

In contrast, Heiser makes the argument that Jesus is classified himself as a divine being, just as Psalm 82 declares. In other words, Jesus is not soft-pedaling an earlier claim that he as the Son is one with the Father (John 10:30). Rather, Jesus is not backing down!  Some scholars observe that Jesus is indeed quoting from the Septuagint version of Psalm 82 as opposed to the Hebrew reading (see John Beasley-Murray, Word Biblical Commentary on John, p. 640-641). The ESV translation of Psalm 82:1-8 lends itself to more naturally follow the Septuagint understanding of the Psalm 82, whereas the NASB 1995 follows a more Hebrew reading. It is important to note that the NASB revision in 2020 has been altered to follow the Septuagint reading.

Ironically, the notes in the ESV Study Bible favor the human judges interpretation of John 10:34-35, despite how the translation of Psalm 82 actually reads in that translation.  D.A. Carson rejects both the divine council reading, via the Septuagint, as well as the human judges reading, but instead prefers the view that Jesus’ reference to Psalm 82 in John 10 is to the receiving of the Law by the Israelites at Sinai. Carson holds this based mostly on v. 35 where Jesus says: “If he called them gods to whom the word of God came,” which for him recalls the Sinai context. Granted, there are rabbinical traditions which acknowledge this interpretation, something which in my reading of Michael Heiser, Heiser does not address.  But it could equally be said that the psalmist in Psalm 82 also received the word of God, just as much as those at Sinai did as well. Ironically, Carson admits that the use of “to whom the word of God came” is not an unusual theme throughout the whole Old Testament, as “most naturally [it is] to be understood as those to whom the message was spoken, and is frequently so used in the OT prophets, especially in Jer and Ezek)” (Carson, p. 643). Furthermore, there is no description of those at Sinai being referenced as “gods,” whereas the text is explicit about referencing “gods” in Psalm 82. In rejecting the divine council view, Carson pushes back by saying “the Fourth Gospel fails to mention angels or Melchizedek” (Carson, Pillar Commentary: Gospel of John, p. 398). However, the force of Carson’s counter-argument is lost in that the Gospel of John never elsewhere identifies the term “gods” with any mere human beings.

Interestingly, John Piper accepts Michael Heiser’s thesis that the “gods” of Psalm 82 are indeed divine beings (contra Carson). Like Heiser, Piper reads Psalm 82:7 to indicate that these “gods” are not human beings, as the verse says these “gods” will “die like men.” For if humans were indeed in view, it would make no sense for these “gods” to “die like men” if they are already men, and not gods. But it would make perfect sense for the Psalmist to say that these divine beings, who are presumably immortal, who also fall under God’s judgment, will become mortal like human beings as part of their punishment. Yet Piper’s position is that these divine beings are lesser “gods” than Yahweh. Therefore, in Piper’s view, Jesus’ reference to Psalm 82 is to deflect the conversation by suggesting that Jesus’ divine claim is not something that should necessarily lead to the charge of blasphemy, as one can be considered a “god” without being identified strictly as Yahweh, who stands above all of the other “gods.” By giving his hearers a theological puzzle to consider among themselves, Jesus is enabled to escape his accusers (John 10:39). This sort of works, except that in John 10:38, Jesus repeats the divine claim he made earlier in John 10:30. Furthermore, it would be odd for Jesus to use a passage of Scripture in order to confuse his listeners, in order to divert attention away from himself, in order to make his escape.

However, in contrast to both Carson and Piper, Heiser’s point is not simply that Jesus is making a divine claim in John 10:34-35. The claim is more concrete than that. Rather, Jesus is making the claim that his role in the divine council is one of executing judgment against the supernatural powers that are in rebellion to Yahweh. For Psalm 82 is all about a pronouncement of judgment against the “gods” who have failed to obey the will of Yahweh. By referencing Psalm 82 in John 10:34-35, Jesus is announcing the day of judgment is coming that he is the “Enforcer” of this judgment (See Heiser’s scholarly paper defending his view, along with Heiser’s powerpoint slides).  Not only is the coming of Jesus the coming of God into the world, it is a divine coming intent upon exercising judgment against those spiritual forces which are in rebellion to Yahweh. Contrast this with what the ESV Study Notes have for John 10:34-35:  “John 10:34 Jesus’ point in quoting Ps. 82:6 is that if human judges (Ps. 82:2–4) can in some sense be called gods (in light of their role as representatives of God), this designation is even more appropriate for the one who truly is the Son of God (John 10:33, 35–36).”

The ESV Study Notes have this for Psalm 82:  “Ps. 82:6 You are gods. John 10:34–35 tells how Jesus cited this text in a debate (see note on Ps. 82:1) to deflect criticism for calling himself the Son of God. Since the title “Son of God” is sometimes a designation of David’s heir (see note on 2:7), Jesus is probably inviting his audience to reflect more deeply on its implications. sons of the Most High. If these are Gentile rulers, they serve the purposes of God, who is the highest of all powers. This may suggest that Israelite rulers are especially in view, since Deut. 14:1calls God’s people his “sons” (i.e., the whole people is God’s “son,” cf. Ps. 80:15; and the members are each “sons”). In this latter case, the injustice is even more reprehensible since it defies the gracious covenant of God.”  

Which interpretation is the more convincing? …..  I have written on Veracity several book reviews that the Hebrew Bible have readings in them that are quite ambiguous, partly due to the flexibility of the Hebrew language itself, and its high dependence on literary context to determine its meaning, more so than Koine Greek (the language of the New Testament) and even English. Lanier and Ross make a good argument that the Septuagint should play a more significant role in clarifying the ambiguities we find in the Hebrew Bible. My point here in this example of Psalm 82 and John 10 is to say while there is evidence from both sides of the debate to support either side, the derivative authority of the Septuagint plays a role in this debate which is often not discussed, which in my view should tip the scales more towards Heiser’s view than Carson’s (and to a lesser extent, Piper’s). Back to text

[7] Handel’s Messiah has a famous quote from Isaiah 9:6 which I have heard dozens of times sung and performed. However, except for some vague allusions, the New Testament never quotes from Isaiah 9:6. The Hebrew text found in the ESV translation reads these famous words which Handel popularized:

“For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
    and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” 

The original context for Isaiah 9:6 is in reference to King Hezekiah, one of the few “good kings” in ancient Israel history, with divine sounding names.  The Jewish Study Bible comments on this verse:

“The Mighty God … ruler”: This long sentence is the throne name of the royal child. Semitic names often consist of sentences that describe God; thus the name Isaiah in Heb means “The Lord saves”; Hezekiah, “The Lord strengthens”; in Akkadian, the name of the Babylonian king Merodach-baladan (Isa. 39.1) means “the god Marduk has provided an heir.” These names do not describe that person who holds them but the god whom the parents worship. Similarly, the name given to the child in this v. does not describe that child or attribute divinity to him, but describes God’s actions. (Berlin, Adele; Brettler, Marc Zvi. The Jewish Study Bible: Second Edition (p. 900). (Function). Kindle Edition).

So, it makes sense for Handel to see a connection between Isaiah 9:6 and the divine identity of Jesus. But why did no New Testament author reference Isaiah 9:6, for such a positive affirmation of Jesus’ divinity?  If you compare this Hebrew version with the Septuagint reading, a possible explanation might emerge:

“Because a child was born for us, a son also given to us, whose sovereignty was upon his shoulder, and he is named Messenger of Great Counsel, for I will bring peace upon the rulers, peace and health to him.” ()

It is evident that the superlatives used to describe Hezekiah, for the original context, and Jesus, for the New Testament context, lack the more explicit divine kind of connotations. A YouTube video done by a skeptic suggests that this difference between the Hebrew text and the Septuagint casts some doubt on the credibility of the New Testament. Yet I am not persuaded. Rather, this shows that the New Testament authors followed standard Jewish interpretive practices of the day in reading their ancient texts, in ways that aligned with their gift of Holy Spirit inspiration. Unfortunately, too many Christians remain unaware as to how these New Testament authors made use of the Old Testament, and what the role was for the Septuagint in reading and interpreting the Old Testament, in ways that made sense to them in their historical, Second Temple Judaic context. Back to text

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July 31, 2026

Did the Father Turn His Face Away From Jesus on the Cross?

By Clarke Morledge

How much do we really think about the songs we sing in church?

There is a popular Christian worship song which I have sung for years, which I admittedly have not thought too much about until recently. Written by Stuart Townend about 30 years ago, “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” begins with this verse:

How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure,
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure.
How great the pain of searing loss –
The Father turns His face away,
As wounds which mar the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory.

There is one line in that verse which really puzzles me now: “The Father turns His face away.” What is that all about?

As I first started to think about it, I mused that it might mean that the Father was so filled with grief about his Son dying on the cross that he could not bear to look upon the sight of seeing Jesus suffer like that.  The line before it gives me a clue: “How great the pain of searing loss.”

Perhaps that is what Stuart Townend had in mind.

I am quite fine with interpreting this line in the song this way. When my mother was nearing her death about 11 years ago, extended family members of mine, who loved my mother very much, would not come to visit my mom once she was nearing being put on hospice. One cousin told me that she could not bear to see my mother suffer in her final days, as the cancer of glioblastoma slowly took away her humanity day-after-day, as she was loaded up with morphine.

My mom still recognized me up until the last day or two before she died, but during those last few weeks, she hardly knew who anyone else was. My mom was always the gracious “Southern lady,” offering hospitality to everyone she met. But the cancer had robbed that zest for life, and the morphine had dulled her senses. That was tough for members of my extended family who knew my mom for years, so I get it.

But is this what it really means to say that “The Father turns His face away?”

 

 

 

The “Father Can Not Look Upon Sin, So the Father Turns His Face Away from Jesus” Logic

There is another, more common explanation as to why the line “The Father turns His face away” is in Townsend’s song. Taken at face value, this other explanation seems straight-forward. Yet frankly, this explanation should trouble us, as it can give us a wrong understanding of God’s character.  There is more to it as one dives more deeply into the Bible.

In this view, “The Father turns His face away” is in reference to Jesus’ cry of dereliction on the cross:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34; Matt 27:46).

Admittedly, once you read that, it may seem quite obvious. Jesus, as God’s Son, feels abandoned by the Father. After all, as an expression of Jesus’ humanity, it is quite natural for any human to have a sense of desperation at such a moment.

But what does this say about the perspective of the Father? This is where a common theological assumption has stirred up significant debate:  So why does Jesus feel abandoned?

Explanation: Because the sin of the whole world is laid upon Jesus, and God the Father can not look upon sin. So, God the Father turns his face away from Jesus.

This makes sense. Right?

Not so fast.

Well, there is more going here than what meets the eye. This passage of the Bible has been controversial for centuries. Yet it all comes down to how the Gospel writers use the Old Testament, particularly Psalm 22, to reveal the truth about the heart of God.

Jesus’ cry of dereliction has puzzled lay readers of the Bible and scholars alike. At the beginning of the 20th century, the German biblical scholar Albert Schweitzer would broadly take Jesus’ cry of dereliction on the cross as a sign that the mission of Jesus had failed. Jesus had predicted that God the Father would intervene before Jesus’ death by bringing about the end of the world, pronouncing judgment on Israel for Jewish disobedience and bringing calamity on the Roman empire. Instead, Jesus was left alone to die on the cross.

Albert Schweitzer, one of the 20th century’s most influential liberal Christians, was struck by this. Schweitzer took this to mean that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet, who only realized at the very end of his life that the promised cataclysmic end of the world would not come, and that God the Father had abandoned him. Alas, though Schweitzer was a great biblical scholar, even he misunderstood the significance of Psalm 22 for understanding this cry of dereliction.

Perhaps a better explanation is a simpler one. The Gospel writers want to point our attention to Psalm 22, which is where this line comes from. Not only that, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” is the first verse of Psalm 22. The idea of numbering the psalms only began once the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, roughly about the time of Christ and a few centuries prior to that. It is not clear as to when the psalm numbering actually caught on across the Second Temple Judaism audience of Jesus’ day. So until the idea of a “Psalm 22” actually caught on, you typically referenced a particular psalm by citing the first line of that psalm.

Pretty simple.

But that is just the beginning as to why this idea — namely, of the Father turning his face away from the Son bearing the load of sin on the cross, because the Father can not look upon sin, — can be terribly misleading.

New Testament scholar Jason Staples has a great blog post on his Substack, which explains what is really going on with how Psalm 22 ties into the crucifixion narrative, so I will just summarize his research here. Psalm 22 is attributed to King David, written hundreds of years before Jesus roamed about Israel, about someone who undergoes great affliction. A careful read through Psalm 22 reveals a number of parallels we find in the Gospels:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
    and by night, but I find no rest (Psalm 22:1-2; the first verse clearly quoted in Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46).

All who see me mock me;
    they make mouths at me; they wag their heads (Psalm 22:7; alluded to in Matthew 27:39 and Mark 15:29).

My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
    you lay me in the dust of death (Psalm 22:15; alluded to in John 19:28, when Jesus says, “I thirst“).

They divide my garments among them,
    and for my clothing they cast lots (Psalm 22:18; alluded to in (John 19:23–24; Matthew 27:35; Mark 15:24; Luke 23:34).

All the ends of the earth shall remember
    and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
    shall worship before you (Psalm 22:27; does this not remind you of the Great Commission, Matthew 28:18-20?).

But when you read Mark’s version of the Gospel, it stands out more clearly as to what is going on with the references to Psalm 22. In Mark’s Gospel, the disciples of Jesus are typically portrayed as being relatively clueless regarding what Jesus is all about.

Here is a sample of verses, which according to Jason Staples, shows just how clueless  the disciples were:

Jesus: “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees.”
Disciples: “And they began to discuss with one another that they had no bread.” (Mark 8:15–16)

Jesus: “The son of man is handed over to men, and they will kill him, and when he has been killed, he will rise three days later.”
Disciples: “But they did not understand this saying, and they were afraid to ask him.” They then proceeded to argue about which of them was the greatest. (Mark 9:31–34)

James and John: “Grant that we may sit, one on your right and one on your left, in your glory.”
Jesus: “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?”
James and John: “We are able.”
Jesus: “You will drink the cup that I drink … but to sit on my right or on my left is not mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

The Gospel of Mark is filled with irony, so much that it is quite evident that while the disciples seem really clueless as to who Jesus really was, the reader instead is clued into understanding Jesus’ true identity as God’s Son, whose mission included dying for our sins.

But here is where the irony of Mark’s Gospel shines most clearly. Whereas Stuart Townsend’s song suggests that the “The Father turns His face away,” a look at Psalm 22 indicates just the exact opposite.

Did you catch that?

Psalm 22 shows that this common idea of the Father turning away from looking upon Jesus, because the Father can not look upon sin, is misleading. In fact, it means the very opposite.

Right after the psalmist writes about the garments being divided and those who were casting lots for the afflicted one’s clothing in verse 18, in verse 19 the afflicted one offers a prayer in response to all that is happening to him:

But you, O Lord, do not be far off!
    O you my help, come quickly to my aid!

Then later we read this, arriving at the “punch line”:

I will tell of your name to my brothers;
    in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
You who fear the Lord, praise him!
    All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him,
    and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
For he has not despised or abhorred
    the affliction of the afflicted,
and he has not hidden his face from him,
    but has heard, when he cried to him (Psalm 22:22-24)

That next to the last line in verse 24 should startle the reader: God “has not hidden his face from” the one who is afflicted.

Wait a minute… I thought…. Huh???…..

This line is shocking.

In contrast with the claim that “The Father turns His face away,” Psalm 22 indicates that just the opposite is true. God the Father has not turned his face away from Jesus.

In Jesus’ affliction, God the Father has not turned away from the Son. Rather, the Father looks upon the Son with love, mercy, and compassion. Instead of rejecting the Son, the Father extends the tenderness of the divine towards Jesus. The desperation of Jesus, as one who was fully divine and fully human, upon the cross is quite real, but the reason why Jesus experiences such desperation can be easily misunderstood.

To think that the cry of dereliction uttered by Jesus on the cross shows that God’s hatred of us as sinners has been transferred to Jesus, by Jesus taking our sin upon himself, such that God now hates Jesus, is to read something into the text that is not there. It completely misses the irony that the Gospel of Mark is trying to show us, in that while it might appear that the Father has forsaken the Son, just the opposite has taken place.

God hates our sin. God does not hate us. God loves us. God hates that our sin has gotten in the way, and so God has found a way through Jesus to deal with sin, so that we might be reconciled to God.

If there was any doubt as to the significance of Psalm 22, the psalm itself ends in verse 31:

they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
    that he has done it.

Is it merely a coincidence that John 19:30 records the last words of Jesus as “It is finished?”

Hardly.

Rather, the lesson for us, for those of us who are believers, who identify with the work of Christ on the cross, as the perfect expression of God’s love for us, is that we can remain confident that God the Father has not turned his face away from us. God has not allowed his legitimate anger towards our sin to keep him from showering us with his grace. God’s hatred is towards our sin, and not towards us. We may indeed abandon God at times (because our sin), and there are surely times where we might feel abandoned by God (when we have been sinned against).  However, the Gospel story announces this: God has not and will never abandon us.

God turns away from our sin, as our sin turns us away from God. But God never turns away from us.

This is truly Good News!! Is it not??

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July 17, 2026

Why Should the Death of Someone 2,000 Years Ago Matter to Me Today? (The Atonement, by Jeremy Treat. A Brief Review)

By Clarke Morledge

The question stopped me in my tracks….

Back when I was a college student, I worked as an usher at a movie theater over the summer break. It was a hot, muggy July night, as I recall. Business was slow.  A friend of mine walked in and we started chatting.

My friend had grown up in church, but he blurted out this question which has stuck with me all these years later:

“Clarke, why should the death of someone 2,000 years ago matter to me today?“

I had been an active follower of Christ for several years at that time, but I was stunned by the question. As Christians, we often take for granted the thought that “Jesus died for our sins” as being vitally important, and evidently self-explanatory. But as the conversation continued I realized that I really did not have a very good answer to give.

The death of a wandering Jewish preacher in the Middle East back in the first century seems so remote and unconnected from my life as an American nearly 2,000 years later. Those worlds appear to be so far apart, particularly in our day when Artificial Intelligence is transforming our world, persistent mental health issues plague so many people, families in the midst of crisis try to make ends meet, and media reports of never ending wars all over the globe numb us. What made it even more bothersome was that this friend of mine had grown up going to church all of his life, and he did not know a good answer either.

So, does the death of Jesus, many, many years ago, in a distant culture, really matter? If so, how?

Jeremy Treat’s The Atonement: An Introduction is a concise, accessible theological examination of what the death of Christ means, for the forgiveness of sins. A perfect book for anyone, lay person or scholar, who needs a good explanation for why the death of a Jewish carpenter some 2,000 years ago is relevant to you and me today.

 

At moments like these, I wish I had a book like Jeremy Treat’s The Atonement: An Introduction available to hand to someone. At first, Treat’s book might seem daunting, as it is part of Crossway’s “Short Studies in Systematic Theology.” But it really is not. The book is short and accessible, less than 200 pages. I read it as an audiobook in about 4 hours. It is perfect for college students, pastors, and other lay people alike.

The topic of Jeremy Treat’s book, The Atonement, is one that sparks a lot of conversation. The early church never came up with a formal statement as to the particular meaning of Christ’s death on the cross. The Nicene-Constantinople Creed, the great ecumenical creed of the early church, is pretty brief on the subject:

….For us humans and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and was incarnate… ….For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried….,

….I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins…

As far as exactly how those ideas like the crucifixion, heaven, and the forgiveness of sins are exactly connected together, nothing is explained. But the mystery has inspired many pages of theology to be written over the centuries, with competing theories articulated to try to figure this all out.

Over the next few months, here on Veracity, I hope to bring out some of this theological discussion, interacting with a number of Scriptural texts and a few books which have attempted to make sense of one of the most intriguing questions anyone could ever think about.

But for now, I would like to start with Jeremy Treat’s excellent introduction to the topic. How would you answer the question?

Why should the death of Jesus some 2,000 years ago matter to someone today?

Jeremy Treat is a pastor for preaching at a church in California, and an adjunct professor of theology at Biola University. I am sure Treat runs into questions like this all of the time with his students.

The answer Jeremy Treat gives is reasonably thorough without being overwhelming. It is not overly technical, but it is theologically rich. Here is Jeremy Treat’s main idea: the death of Christ is the central act of God’s work to accomplish salvation for all of humanity, part of what Christians call the doctrine of atonement.

William Tyndale, who interestingly published the first mechanically printed New Testament into English, exactly 500 years ago from this present year (2026), coined the English word “atonement” to translate a difficult Hebrew word from the Old Testament. Tyndale’s idea of “atonement” comes from piecing together a phrase “at-one-ment.” Essentially, Jesus’ death on the cross 2,000 years sought to reconcile humanity to God, making us “at-one” with God.

Christians all believe that “Jesus died for our sins,” but unpacking that simple statement is really not that simple. For Jeremy Treat, the death of Christ is God’s multi-dimensional work done by God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, within the story of the Kingdom of God being revealed to the world.

The concept of substitution is at the heart of the cross, as substitution holds all of these various dimensions together, which theologians debate about. The cross is about forgiveness. The cross is also about victory over sin, death, and evil. The cross is also about renewal. The cross reconciles us not only to God but to each other as well. Substitution connects all of these themes together. As to substitution, this is all about Jesus dying in our place for our sins. As Treat puts it:

“Our society is aching for atonement. How can we deal with our guilt and shame? How can we be set free from our past? How can all that is wrong be made right? The assumption in these questions is that we can atone for our sins. But the message of Christianity is not about what we ought to do for God but what God has done for us. The good news is that God has sent his Son, empowered by the Spirit, to atone for our sins and make right all that our sin has made wrong. And the gospel goes far beyond merely “making amends” (which is how the word “atonement” is often used today). Through the sacrificial death of Christ, forgiveness, freedom, healing, and restoration are available not only for broken people but for all of creation. This is good news” (Treat, The Atonement, p. 14)

 

One of the most memorably moments in world history.  But what does it mean for people living in the 21st century?

 

Critics of Christianity might want us to think that atonement is some kind of antiquated and even barbaric notion, but everyday life and even the big issues of our day would suggest otherwise. Everytime I have mistakenly cut someone off in traffic while driving, raised my voice with my wife, or loaned something out to a friend and they never pay me back, I fall back on the language of atonement, and you probably do, too. When bombs are inadvertently dropped on schools filled with elementary aged children, when millions of pounds of discarded plastics in our garbage threaten sea life in our oceans, earthquakes shake shoddily built high-story apartment buildings to the ground, along with thousands with them, and mass shooters kill innocent bystanders, we process concepts of atonement in our minds, whether we are aware of it or not.

Jeremy Treat offers a theological framework for dealing with all of this stuff. Treat’s primary dialogue partners in thinking through atonement are the 4th century North African church father, Athanasius, the 19th century Dutch theologian, Herman Bavinck, and the 20th century British pastor-theologian, John R. W. Stott. Having cut my teeth in thinking about the atonement from John Stott’s masterful work, The Cross of Christ, I resonated with Treat throughout this excellent work of deep yet accessible theology. Even better, Treat takes the same framework Stott was known for and distills it down into a concise work that can be read over a couple of afternoons, making a rich theology accessible to a new generation.

There are quite a number of theories out there that try to make sense of the atoning work of Christ; such as, penal substitution, moral influence, and “Christus Victor”. Jeremy Treat does not go into any rigorous analysis of the virtues and vices of each theory as compared to the others. He prefers to think in terms of “dimensions” of atonement as opposed to “theories.” Treat is thankfully allergic to an over-simplified reductionism, while also rejecting a cafeteria approach whereby we can merely pick and choose from different dimensions which we may like or dislike. Instead, Treat sees value in the many dimensions of atonement, and how they effectively integrate together. He offers concise definitions of twenty of these various dimensions, including propitiation, healing, and adoption. I would consider Treat’s view of atonement as a kaleidoscope approach, whereby looking through the prism at different angles, you can see different dimensions which color a rich and practical theology, a most helpful way of thinking about the meaning of the cross of Christ.

For example, in his chapter on the “Coherence of Atonement,” Treat comments on Romans 3:23-25:

“Paul uses three different metaphors from three different realms of society to explain the meaning of Christ’s death. But again, he is not saying the same thing in three different ways. He is drawing from different conceptual worlds to explain different, yet mutually enriching dimensions of what Christ accomplished. ‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified (law-court), by his grace as a gift, through the redemption (marketplace) that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation (temple) by his blood to be received by faith’.“

Treat also considers unhelpful ways to think about atonement. For example, some preachers use the analogy of a train speeding down a train track, where a group of children are playing, and if not stopped the train will probably hit and kill the children. But there is a rail switch between the moving train and the children, which if triggered, can send the train down a different track and spare the lives of the children. A rail switch operator has the opportunity to flip the switch and save the day. However, standing on that other train track is the son of the rail switch operator, playing by himself. The father makes a split second decision, flipping the switch, whereby the train almost instantly kills his son, but spare the lives of the other children.

While the analogy does articulate the concept of substitution, whereby the son stands in the place of the other children, giving up his life to die in order to spare the life of the others, the analogy unhelpfully distorts the Christian view of atonement. For one thing, the fate of the son is not tied together with the fate of the father, whereas in a biblical view of the atonement, the Father and the Son, through the Holy Spirit, work in concert together to save humanity. Furthermore, the analogy stresses a kind of utilitarian solution to an ethical dilemma; that is, a sacrifice of the one for the many, and ignores God’s purpose to have a family by seeking reconciliation among a people divided against one another and alienated from their Creator.

Some Christians, when thinking about Isaiah 53, a key text for atonement theology, appear to have no problem thinking that it is somehow okay for God the Father to “crush” the Son, thereby putting God the Father and God the Son somehow in conflict with one another. Thankfully, Jeremy Treat is careful enough to say that while the Suffering Servant; that is, the Son, was indeed “crushed” in Isaiah 53:10, Treat does not say that it was “God” who “crushed” the Suffering Servant. It might appear at first glance that God did crush the Suffering Servant, but a closer look tells a far more compelling story (something to be explained further in a future blog post). Wrath is not a distinct attribute of God, but rather it is a consequence of God’s love and holiness, in response to human sin.

Some preachers make use of a famous ethical dilemma in moral philosophy, the so-called “Trolley Problem,” as a way of describing God’s reasoning for the atoning work of Christ on the cross. Jeremy Treat believes this to be a faulty illustration to use in trying to explain the meaning of Christ’s death.

 

Treat’s book on The Atonement is not meant to be exhaustive. It is but an introduction, after all. So, if you are looking for an exegetically rigorous text which sorts out all of the nuances of the debates about particular bible passages regarding atonement, then The Atonement: An Introduction is not the book you will want to read. Or, if you want to parse through all of the philosophical controversies surrounding atonement theology, you would be better looking off elsewhere. But if you want an easy to read, broad yet modestly brief look at the question as to why the death of someone 2,000 years ago might matter to you, then Jeremy Treat’s The Atonement: An Introduction is the perfect book. I came away from the book strengthened in my faith.

So, I return back to the starting question: Does the death of Jesus some 2,000 years ago matter to me today, and if so, how?

I left work that hot summer night, working through my mind as to how to answer my friend’s question. I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning, reading my Bible, still puzzled. If only I had a copy of Jeremy Treat’s The Atonement: An Introduction available to me back then, I probably would have slept better that night.

Over the next few months, stick around the Veracity blog if you want to explore with me more about this all important question.

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July 3, 2026

Jews vs. Rome: By Barry Strauss, A Review (Why the Middle East Conflict Never Seems to End)

By Clarke Morledge

Just a few weeks ago, President Trump announced a cessation of hostilities with Iran, however tenuous it appears, a conflict having an existential impact upon the modern nation state of Israel and threats upon other Middle Eastern nations as well. But the story goes back a long, long, way….

In 63 BCE, the Roman general Pompey (not to be confused with the city in Italy, Pompei, and its famous volcano) laid siege to the city of Jerusalem. Following the collapse of competing and aging Greek empires, the Ptolemaic in Egypt and the Seleucid in Syria, Rome took advantage of the power vacuum and took an interest in the ancient land of the Bible.

Pompey, a religious outsider to the Jews, after defeating some Jewish resistance, entered the Jewish Temple and even walked into the Holy of Holies, thus desecrating it. Interestingly, Pompey did not take anything. Instead, he ordered that the Temple rituals be continued, as he claimed victory over the city. A little over a century earlier, the Maccabean revolt had shaken off the shackles of their Greek overlords. but now that period of Jewish self-rule came to an end, with Pompey’s conquest of the holy city. Nevertheless, the Romans did not destroy the Jews as a people or their Temple. What then was Pompey’s objective in taking Jerusalem?

Neither the Old nor the New Testament tell us about this remarkable turn of events. Rarely do Christians hear about this in evangelical churches. But this story of Pompey sets up the narrative which stands at the center of controversy over Jesus of Nazareth, who would be born just a few decades later.

The Romans and Jews were at odds with one another. To the Jews, the Romans were idolaters, worshipping many gods. To the Romans, the Jews were peculiar in their religious practices. Yet the Romans wanted to maintain some control over Judea, as Rome detected a growing threat rising in the East. The Parthian empire, whose power was centered in modern-day Iran, challenged that of Rome.

As the Romans grew to prominence, they kept bumping into their Parthian neighbors in the East, and the two did not get along well. The relatively small Jewish nation had become sandwiched between these two great empires. Though Rome now had control of Judea, it was not without some difficulty. For there were still Jews living in the East in Parthian territory, remnants of those who stayed mostly east of the Euphrates, and did not return back to the area of Jerusalem following the decline of Babylon.

Rome needed Judea as a buffer against the Parthians. But they did not want to alienate the native Jewish population of Judea such that it would raise sympathies with those Jews still living in Parthian lands. For those eastern Jews might enlist with the Parthians to push back against Rome.

 

Barry Strauss’ Jews Vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellions Against the World’s Mightiest Empire, tells the story of the ancient conflict between the Jews and the Roman Empire.  Not only does Strauss’ book give us essential background material for understanding the Bible, it helps us understand the complexity of current events in the Middle East.

 

Historian Barry Strauss outlines this background material in his Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire, which tells the tale of tensions between these two peoples, between Pompey’s arrival in Jerusalem in 63 BCE, and the ultimate destruction of Jewish nation in the land of Judea, through Emperor Hadrian’s crushing of the Bar Kokhba revolt, in the 130’s CE. The first century of the Christian movement is smack dab in the middle of it all, and yet you hardly hear much about this in many evangelical churches.

In our New Testament, Christians read about a bunch of people all named “Herod.” When first reading the New Testament, it is easy to think there was this one person named Herod who kept popping up all of the time throughout the stories of the Gospels. It can be difficult to track with the “Who’s Who” of the Herods. The New Testament itself barely tells us much about who these people really were, and how they got to be the Herods of the New Testament.

The Romans were in a quandary about what to do with Judea following Pompey’s victory. The Romans were hesitant to bring in a pagan Roman to rule a people with such strange religious habits and beliefs, such as male circumcision, eating a restricted food diet, and worshipping only one God. But within a few years, the first Herod, Herod the Great, emerged as the client ruler of choice for the Romans. Through Herod, an Idumean and not really a full Jew (though he tried to position himself as one), the Romans found someone who could look after Rome’s interests in Judea without provoking intervention from the Parthians off to the east.

In some ways, Barry Strauss likens Herod the Great to having a particular “Donald Trump” transactional quality, that of celebrating the art of the “deal.” Herod believed that he could make a deal between Rome and the Jews, where both sides could get something that they wanted, though not everything, and still both Romans and Jews can somehow live in peace together, even if it was a fragile peace.

Herod was a builder, who constructed a deep-water port in Caesarea, along the Mediterranean, as well as greatly enhancing the architecture and grandeur of the Jerusalem Temple. These marvels were attempts to show Rome and the Jews that he was on both of “their” sides. Herod was also extremely paranoid and ruthless. The Gospel of Matthew lets New Testament readers know of this reputation through the Massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem.

After Herod’s death, around the time of Christ’s birth, Herod’s realm was divided into three pieces, one piece given to three of his sons. The New Testament tells us about Herod Antipas ruling up in Galilee, who stayed in power for a number of years. But then there was Herod’s other son, Herod Archelaus, who ruled over Judea, after he traveled to petition Rome for the right to rule in Jerusalem, following his father’s death. Mathew 2:22 gives the reader a sense that this Herod was just as ruthless as his father.

Unfortunately for Herod Archelaus, while he had his father’s ruthlessness, he did not have enough tactfulness to know when too much was too much. By 6 A.D. (CE), he was recalled by Rome, as complaints by the Jews were made against Archelaus. This led the Romans to finally bring in leadership from the outside, bringing the land of Judea under direct Roman control. The most famous of these leaders was Pontius Pilate.

Pilate had his run-ins with the Jews, but it was nothing compared to the crisis precipitated by Gessius Florus, the Roman governor appointed by the infamous Emperor Nero to rule in Judea during the years 64-66 CE. When Gessius raided the Jerusalem Temple for cash, this instigated an uprising among the Jews. Josephus, the Jewish military leader who turned traitor during the Great Jewish Revolt, blamed Gessius for the start of the conflict, which eventually led to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE by the Romans.

Josephus remains our best source for this period, though Strauss is careful enough to acknowledge that Josephus would at times fudge the facts to make himself look better. But the record that Josephus leaves provides a detailed tale of how the Jews, in seeking to defend against the Romans, were in many ways more at war with one another. Much of the conflict among the Jews were between those who believed that Rome should be resisted at all costs, whereas other more moderate Jews believed that Jewish resistance to Rome was futile.

Ultimately, the latter group proved to be right, as the Romans led by the future emperor Titus destroyed Jerusalem and left the Temple in ruins. This was followed up by the dramatic siege by the Romans of the mountain fortress by the Dead Sea, Masada, of the last of the Jewish rebels. However, though Josephus leaves us the most detail regarding the tragedy of the Great Jewish Revolt, the outcomes of two later revolts caused more death and destruction across a much wider area.

Arch of Titus

Temple plunder depicted on the Arch of Titus, Rome, a must-see artifact at the entrance to the Roman Forum, which my wife and I visited in 2018.  Titus brought back thousands of defeated Jews as slaves to Rome, after he defeated Jerusalem and destroyed its Temple in 70 A.D.

 

The Jewish Diaspora revolt, sometimes known as Second Jewish-Roman War, or the Kitos War, from about 116-118 CE, mainly involved the Jews in and around Alexandria, Egypt, the area which supplied a vast majority of food for Rome. Tensions between these Alexandrian Jews and the Romans in Egypt erupted, soon after Rome went to war against the Parthians. Thousands of both Jews and Romans died in the conflict, with Rome eventually gaining the upper hand.

Then finally, there was the Bar Kokhba revolt of 135 CE, sometimes called the Third Jewish-Roman war, led by the messianic leader Simon Bar Kokhba against the pagan Emperor Hadrian, who decisively defeated the Jews. Hadrian had renamed Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, placing a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount, and even renamed Judea as Palestine, which even today is taken by some Jews as a slur. The cost was certainly heavy for the Romans, but the greatest loss was for the Jews, who were effectively exiled again from much of their homeland, by the end of 135 CE.

Nevertheless, as Strauss paints it, it was the Jews who survived in the long run, while Rome ultimately failed. The Jews lost their Temple, the core element of their faith, but in the wake of the Temple’s destruction, and finally with the defeat of Bar Kokhba, the surviving Jews basically found a way to reinvent Judaism, retaining an embrace of the Law of Moses, without a Temple at its center. Furthermore, the Jews were able to do so, living as a minority in a culture dominated by those who were not like them in their beliefs and practices.

Strauss’ Jews vs. Rome weaves a fascinating story of those three great Jewish revolts, and the consequences which followed. Having this story in mind sheds a lot of light on the background for the New Testament, and the world in which figures like Jesus, Paul, and the other early disciples of Jesus lived.

One particular story stands out to me regarding the time of Jesus in Galilee. Roughly about the time that Jesus was born, there was a city, Sepphoris, just a few miles from Jesus’ boyhood home of Nazareth, which had undergone a revolt against Herodian rule. But the Romans came in and destroyed the city, taking the inhabitants off to become enslaved. A new population, more friendly to the Romans, occupied the remains of the city, which was rebuilt during the early years of Jesus. Unfortunately, the New Testament never mentions Sepphoris, despite its proximity and walking distance from Nazareth. Some historians speculate that Jesus may have accompanied his carpenter father to help rebuild that city.

Strauss’ work also helps us understand what is going on in Israel today, particularly in view of the crisis of the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas, and Israel’s aggressive response in Gaza for over two years, including military conflicts in southern Lebanon and with Iran. In a 2025 YouTube short video of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister comments about his reading of Barry Strauss’ book, and why he desired to read the book. Netanyahu responded with, “Well we lost that one, and we have to win the next one.” The video pops every now and then on YouTube, but at times the video has been taken down. The last version I know about is linked here.

Veracity blogger, on-site, at the Roman Forum, in 2018, where the “pagan” culture of Rome reigned supreme, until the story of the Crucified and Resurrected One superseded it. On the opposite side of the Roman Forum, at the entrance, stands the Arch of Titus, which depicts the defeat of Jerusalem, in 70 A.D., which among the Jewish people was pretty much the equivalent to the “9-11” attack in the United States, for Americans.

 

What is so eerie about reading Jews vs. Rome is how relevant Strauss’ book is to current events. Not too long after reading Strauss’ book, the United States and Israel made pre-emptive strikes against the Iranian Shiite regime, in late February, 2026. While the war has been greatly debated in the United States, as to its legitimacy, it would appear that for the Israelis, there is less controversy (though clearly not everyone in Israel agrees with Netanyahu). One can read from Netanyahu’s comments about Jews vs. Rome, that Netanyahu believes that Israel today can not afford to make the same mistakes made some 2,000 years ago. Israel’s foreign policy understands that the Shiite regime in Iran is the rough equivalent to first century Rome. I will leave it to the news commentators and political analysts, who know better than I do, as to what Netanyahu has been thinking, and if he has been right or not.

My primary takeaway from Jews vs. Rome is historical, in how the story of this ancient conflict can help us to better comprehend the historical context of the Bible. Understanding the conflict between Rome and Jews helps Christians to better understand why so many of Jesus’ followers were hoping him to be a military and political Messiah, who would rise up against Rome, and remove the Romans from the land. The period of the Jews versus Rome conflict represents the zenith of apocalyptic writings and thinking among the Jews. The Jews were expecting a messianic figure to come, bring an end to the current world order, and start something new, with the liberation of Israel as the focal point. However, in the case of the early Christian movement, that did not turn out exactly the way many Jews were anticipating. The announcement of the coming Kingdom of God by Jesus of Nazareth took on a completely different dimension, one that would forever change the trajectory of human history.

Many thanks go to Barry Strauss for giving the reader an enthralling account of the conflict, which became the fertile ground from which the Christian faith took hold in the world, some twenty centuries ago. The fact that the situation regarding the fate of ancient Israel stills holds immense narrative power should tell us why the conflict in the Middle East seems like it is never ending.

Want more details about the book? Listen to historian Victor Davis Hanson’s interview with Barry Strauss.

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June 19, 2026

Counteract, by Greg Harris. A Brief Review. A Message of Hope for Those Who Are Strangers

By Clarke Morledge

Greg Harris is a friend of mine. My wife and I were in a small group Bible study with Greg and his wife Kim for a couple of years in our church. Greg is pretty soft spoken, so you would never know that he is the executive director of Counteract International, a ministry to incarcerated youth in Central America, unless you pressed him to talk about his story.

In his recent book, Counteract: Walking Alongside Incarcerated Youth in Central America from Prison to Purpose, author Greg Harris tells stories of how Counteract staff in countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras go to Central American detention centers to offer vocational training, counseling, and above all, Christian hope, to a population of young people who have been largely abandoned due to poverty and neglect.

 

 

Hopelessness Among Central American Youth

The explosive growth of gangs in Central America is a notorious social problem, which seems distant to most North Americans.  But we do see the fallout in our society, as many young people and families fleeing violence over the past few decades have made their way as immigrants into the United States, either legally or illegally. Extreme poverty has forced countless young people to experience alienation in their homes, neglect and even abuse by their parents, part of a spiraling breakdown of families which repeats generation after generation.

Even in my own relatively quiet town of Williamsburg, Virginia, where Greg and Kim Harris also live, gang violence is not that far away. A few months ago a teenage boy was shot and killed in a neighborhood across town from where I live, resulting from gang violence.

Gangs function as alternatives to biological family and Christian community. Where biological and even church families fail to provide a structured, supportive, and safe environment for kids to flourish, they will turn to gangs who offer a promise of protection and sense of importance and value. Unfortunately, the promises that gangs offer are only a counterfeit, however appealing they might appear in times of crisis.

The effects of gang violence in Central America are staggering. Several countries in Central America have had some of the largest murder rates in the world. Honduras, for example, had 37.6 homicides per 100,000 people as of 2021. The number of homicides per person  in Latin America is roughly five times higher than in North America.

However, there is some good news recently as some trends appear to be reversing, but problems still persist, just in different ways.  El Salvador was known for having the worst murder rate in the world, roughly 106 per 100,000 in 2015,  roughly one murder per hour. Nearly ten years later, after the government started to aggressively crack down on gangs, that rate has dropped dramatically to 1.3 per 100,000 in 2025, making El Salvador one of the safest countries in the world. But the shift has come at a cost, with El Salvador having one of highest incarceration rates, about 1.6% of the population. What does one do with all of those young people in prison?

Counteract, originally named as “Orphan Helpers,” was started by a Virginia realtor, Greg Garrett, back in 2000. As a Christian businessman, Garrett wanted to know how he could help “the least of these,” quoting the words of Jesus in the New Testament. Over time, some Central American governments began to close orphanages, and so Counteract began to shift their mission purpose to meet the greatest, growing need. Since then, Counteract has focused its mission on training and sending staff into the prisons and detention centers in order to walk alongside troubled youth who experience very little hope, who tend to distrust the larger society around them.

Greg Harris, and his co-author Francisco “Pancho” Molina, tell the story ably well in Counteract: Walking Alongside Incarcerated Youth in Central America from Prison to Purpose. One of the most moving stories Greg and Pancho tell in the book comes from the COVID lockdown, when the detention centers decided to lockdown their facilities in certain areas for 21 days, where no one, including guards and other administrative personnel, could leave their respective centers for that entire time period.

Counteract staff had been told that this policy would apply to them as well: No more visits during the day, and then returning home for the night. Once you entered the detention facility, you were pretty much in there with everyone else. It was a difficult decision, as Counteract staff typically have families of their own outside of the detention center walls to take care of. Yet sacrificially, all of the Counteract staff decided to commit to the 21 day isolation policy, and stay with their incarcerated kids. These Counteract staff knew that over 90% of their job was simply to show up and be there for these kids, who had no hope otherwise.

Counteract’s Mission to “Love Thy Stranger”

Greg’s book had been out for a few months, so I finally got around to reading it this spring. I am glad I did.

About the time I read Greg’s book, I heard of another book written and released by atheist and skeptic bible scholar, Bart Ehrman, Love Thy Stranger. Ehrman grew up as a Christian, but has since walked away from the faith, while retaining his interest in the scholarly study of early Christianity. As an historian, the remarkable theme which Ehrman chronicles is that the Christian movement brought something unique into the history of humanity which was not present before the time of Christ.

Whereas most cultures have believed that one should take care of friends and family in need, caring for strangers was not part of that social ethic. Yet the New Testament stood that kind of cloistered social ethic on its head by expanding the concept of “love thy neighbor,” a phrase many know from the Hebrew Bible. In Christianity, particularly through the Gospels and the writings of the Apostle Paul, the idea of “neighbor” includes not just family and friends, but also strangers in need. For example, Ehrman observes that the entire history of “hospitals” grew out of the Christian tradition. Therefore, it should not be a surprise to find Christians in El Salvador making their way as counselors into prisons to befriend mistrusted, isolated youth.

Today, when many distrust Christianity as being something not so good for the world, it is encouraging to hear a non-believing historian acknowledge that the Christian faith introduced to human history the idea of caring for people who are strangers to you. Christianity changed the moral conscience of the West.

Ehrman’s conclusion is ironic as an atheist: “thank God for Christianity.” For atheists who have no divine transcendent metanarrative to appeal to, the best they can do is to borrow from the ethical dimension of Christianity to guide them.

What Greg Harris writes about in Counteract is the perfect expression of “love thy stranger.” While young people who get mixed up in gangs are often treated as strangers who are to be forgotten, ignored, or else marginalized from society, Counteract International offers a positive witness to the gospel message that gives hope to those who otherwise have no hope.

Greg’s book is a short read, less than 200 pages. It will stimulate you to engage in a ministry where Christians can truly become the hands and feet of Christ, offering hope to the hopeless. Through Counteract International, followers of Jesus are finding ways to connect with young people in the prison system in Central America, making friends out of strangers. I generally do not tear up when reading a book, but I teared up when reading this one.

If you want to invest in a Christian ministry doing high-quality work to care for those “strangers” hidden away in prisons, investing in the ministry of Counteract International, which Greg Harris writes about in his book, will extend that message of hope to those who feel hopeless. That message of hope actually works to change lives, which should encourage us in a day when so many negative aspects about our world can bring us down. I highly recommend Counteract: Walking Alongside Incarcerated Youth in Central America from Prison to Purpose for everyone.

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