Tag Archives: michael licona

February 13, 2026

Augustine: Conversion to Confessions, by Robin Lane Fox, A Review, Part Two

By Clarke Morledge

Robin Lane Fox is one of the world’s preeminent historians of the classical world. A few years ago, I read his The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian, which I would recommend reading, if you want an in-depth epic history of that cultural time period. I kept turning back to Fox’s work on a trip to visit friends in Sicily, back in 2022. I was in Sicily for only a few days, but I visited both the Valley of Temples and Syracuse, two ancient sites from the classical world which Fox covered in his book.

Having an interest in Saint Augustine, I grabbed a copy of Fox’s Augustine: Conversion to Confessions, and finished reading it not too long ago. Though captivated by Fox’s story of the classical world, I was curious to know of his take on Augustine, considering the fact that Fox is a professed atheist, with little interest in Christianity aside from scholarship. I was bracing myself for some occasional crudities in Fox’s writing style. To be sure, Fox is as entertaining as he is erudite. In describing Augustine’s pre-Christian life as a follower of the Persian philosopher, Mani, Fox whimsically and colorfully concludes:

Manichaeism is the only world religion to have believed in the redemptive power of farts (Fox, p. 180).

Here is the second of a two-part blog series covering Robin Lane Fox’s book, which examines roughly the first half of Augustine’s remarkable life. We pick up the story after Augustine returns to North Africa. A few years earlier, Augustine had become a Christian, under the preaching of bishop Ambrose in Milan. In North Africa, Augustine’s career as a rhetorician had started to gain him an audience when he debated opponents of the historically orthodox Christian church. In this latter part of Fox’s work, we learn more about how Augustine read, and at times, misread, certain passages of the Bible…. and why…. glimpsing into how such readings/misreadings have reverberated throughout later Christian history, particularly in the West.

Robin Lane Fox’s Augustine: Conversion to Confessions examines roughly the first half of the great Christian saint’s life, leading up the Augustine’s most famous written work, Confessions.

 

Augustine as a Parish Priest

Augustine had survived becoming a priest in 391, after having only received baptism four years earlier. Augustine’s career as a churchman was now in full swing. This was ten years after the second great ecumenical council met, the Council of Constantinople (381), where the Nicene Creed, which was originally drafted in 325, was finally completed. By the end of the decade, Augustine is thought to have finished his most well-known work, the Confessions.

Among the other great church leaders Augustine corresponded with, Augustine wrote Jerome, the polyglot ascetic scholar a few years older than Augustine, who was working on a new translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, from the Hebrew where it was warranted, into Latin. Augustine quarreled with Jerome primarily over two subjects. First, Augustine was not in favor of Jerome’s efforts to translate the Old Testament directly from Hebrew, preferring the Greek Septuagint instead, the primary Old Testament translation used by Greek-speaking Christians. Augustine was concerned that various Latin translators had difficulty trying to render the Hebrew into Latin accurately, and Augustine wondered if Jerome would make the same kinds of errors. Jerome, who certainly knew the ancient languages much better, was not impressed with Augustine’s objection.

Augustine also was concerned with Jerome’s interpretation of Galatians 2:11-21, where Paul in his anger rebuked Peter. Peter had refused table fellowship with Gentile believers, preferring to eat only with Jewish Christians, an act which infuriated Paul.

Jerome was persuaded that Paul was merely pretending to be angry with Peter. Jerome did not find an “angry Paul” to be consistent with his image of a pious Paul at such odds with Peter. Jerome supposed that Paul employed a display of  an “angry Paul” in order to teach to the Galatians a theological point. Augustine, on the other hand, believed that Jerome’s view suggested that Paul was being deceptive, and that this was unbecoming to think that this form of lying could be found within the text of God’s Word (Fox, p. 667ff).

Augustine’s engagement with Jerome on this helped to spark what would become Augustine’s last book he wrote as a priest, On Lying. The Bible has several incidents whereby people lie, but then are praised for their deception. Fox notes that in Exodus, the Egypt midwives told lies in order to protect newborn sons of the Hebrews, and yet God caused them to prosper (Fox, p. 653). Rahab in the Book of Joshua lies to her fellow Jericho people, telling them that the Hebrew spies left a long time ago, all while they hid in her house, and yet Rahab is praised as a hero of faith in Hebrews 11:31.  In John 7:8-10, Jesus himself says to his brothers that he was not going up to the festival, but later on he went anyway in private.

Fox observes that Augustine believed that “if lies and pretence are once admitted in the scriptures, they will spread far and wide. Like destructive moths or worms, he now says, they will consume whole chests of clothing until nothing but shreds remain” (Fox, p. 757).  But considering that Augustine acknowledged that even Jesus did not tell the whole truth to his disciples, Augustine reread his text and found it “thorny,” and so never published it with his other works (Fox, p. 653). Augustine was perhaps right to call out Jerome on his peculiar view of Paul’s dispute with Peter in Galatians, but even Augustine never felt completely satisfied with his own answer to Jerome on the question of deception in Scripture.

Augustine was continuously wrestling with other challenges he found within the text of Scripture. Until 395, Augustine had pretty much accepted the common view based on the Book of Revelation that a one thousand reign of Christ on earth will follow Christ’s return, prior to God’s final judgment. Christians today would call this view of the future “premillennialism,” that the return of Christ will precede an earthly millennial kingdom. However, Augustine changed his mind on this, believing that there would be no such earthly millennial period. This millennial period was more figurative, and that the peace and rest a believer would experience would be delayed until after God’s final judgment (Fox, p. 670). This gave birth to the idea that the reign of Christ, symbolized by the millennium, was actually the age of the church, a view typically known today as “amillennialism.”

Augustine also wrestled with how to interpret God’s hatred of Esau and love for Jacob in Romans 9. Originally, Augustine believed that God simply foreknew whether Esau and Jacob would freely choose faith. But Augustine came to reject this interpretation, thinking that this still made salvation dependent to a certain degree on human effort, something that went contrary to his understanding of the workings of God’s grace (Fox, p. 675). Yet Fox acknowledges that Paul’s treatment of Esau and Jacob in Romans 9 had to deal with the calling of Israel and the Gentiles. It had nothing to do with Esau and Jacob as individuals and their relationship to Adam and the fall. Fox believes that Augustine misread Paul in Romans 9, as Augustine was preoccupied with questions about grace and human freewill, in his wrestling with his Manichee past (Fox, p. 678). A number of believing Christian scholars today concur with Fox’s conclusion.

 

Augustine as the Bishop of Hippo

Bishop Valerius saw that Augustine was more than quite capable in his rhetorical skills, and Valerius had become quite elderly and needed someone to succeed him. So he had Augustine promoted to bishop as well there in Hippo in 396. Less than a year later, Augustine began working on his most famous and influential literary work, Confessions.

The Confessions of Saint Augustine serve as the terminus for Fox’s biographical narrative of Augustine’s life. In the Confessions, Augustine admits of his sins which had kept him from knowing God. Much of the Confessions is an exploration into the deeper meaning behind one of Augustine’s most memorable quotes:

“Great You are, O Lord, and greatly to be praised… You have made us so as to turn to You and our heart is restless until it finds rest in You” (Quoted in Fox, p, 710-711).

In the Confessions, Augustine finds deeper meanings found within the opening chapters of Genesis.  For example, whereas the text of Scripture teaches that humans are to “be fruitful and multiply,” this was difficult for someone like Augustine who was now committed to his celibate ideals. Instead, he interprets Genesis on this point to command that one should “multiply” fruitful meanings while pondering on Scripture (Fox, p. 740).  Instead of holding to the help of Mani, the “Paraclete,” his former mentor, to reveal the meaning of the Scriptures, he holds to “the true Holy Spirit,” in discerning the “allegorical meanings in the text” (Fox, p. 748).

Augustine continued to be troubled by Manichaean attempts to dismiss what was considered to be rather crude statements found in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. As a result, Augustine continued to accept Ambrose of Milan’s allegorical method of interpretation as a satisfying apologetic for Christianity.  But such allegorical readings have had their downsides, as in Augustine’s belief that the closure of a gate in Jerusalem spoken of by the prophet Ezekiel symbolized the perpetual virginity of Mary.

 

Augustine as a Biblical Interpreter

Fox points out that Augustine had a habit of overreading certain allegorical interpretations into biblical texts in ways that strain at credulity. Augustine took the “tunics of skins” (Genesis 3:21) which Adam and Eve were given after the fall in the garden to symbolize human mortality. When Genesis 1:1 says that: “In the beginning, God made heaven and earth,” Augustine read this as saying that this “in the beginning” should be read as “in Christ” (Fox, p. 543).

But such allegorical and other misreadings were not entirely his fault. The Latin translations of the Bible Augustine were depending on were flawed at certain points. Psalm 4:8 reads like this in many modern translations:

“In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety” (ESV).

Yet in Augustine’s Latin translation, it read as:

“In peace in ‘it itself‘ I will go to sleep and take my slumber. You, O lord, set me in hope.”

The phrase “it itself” was a Latin mistranslation of a Hebrew word often omitted in modern translations to simply mean “at once” (the Lexham English Bible being a notable exception which includes the phrase: “In peace I will lie down and sleep at once“).  But Augustine took the Latin rendering to be a reference to God, to make it read as “In peace, in God I will go to sleep and take my slumber.” Augustine uses this interpretation of the Latin mistranslation to mean “God” some 1700 times in his writings.

This just goes to show you that simple, inconsequential misreadings of the Bible can have a ripple effect in how we read the Bible. Let that be lesson for all of us who read and take the Bible seriously!

Furthermore, the last word of the verse in Augustine’s Latin, “hope,” was yet another Latin mistranslation of a Hebrew word preserved in our modern translations as “safety.”  “Hope” and “safety” can have overlapping meanings, but the two concepts are not identical. Fox comments that if Jerome, who undertook a major effort to produce an authoritative Latin version of the Bible, the Vulgate, had read Augustine’s commentary, “he would have acidly dismissed it as based on a Latin translator’s cluster of errors” (Fox, p. 458-459).

The three lusts, an important part of Augustine’s theology of sin, are described in 1 John 2:16:

“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” (NASB).

The Greek word translated as “boastful,” in the third lust, was mistranslated in Augustine’s Latin Bible as “curiosity.”  But Augustine’s Latin better fit the three lusts which delayed his own conversion: “the pleasure of the flesh, misplaced curiosity and worldly ambition.”

Augustine was certainly “curious” in his sinful misdeeds, but to be “curious” is not the same as to be “boastful.”

Another example of Augustine working with poor Latin translations of the Bible is found in Romans 7:24-25a. In an modern translation like the ESV, we read:

“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

However, in Augustine’s Latin translation, which Augustine never bothered to check in Greek because his knowledge of Greek was so poor, the “thanks” at the beginning of verse 25 was rendered “grace,” as in the “grace of God through Jesus Christ” would deliver him from this body of death (Fox, p. 557). This was a case of the right teaching derived from the wrong verse.

 

Sandro Botticelli, Sant’ Agostino nello studio (Saint Augustine in the studio), Fresco, Chiesa di San Salvatore in Ognissanti, Florence.

 

Augustine’s Misstep on Original Sin

The most egregious example is from Augustine’s Latin mistranslation of Romans 5:12, which has led other interpreters astray as well. In certain modern translations, like the ESV, the text correctly reads:

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—”

Correctly translated, “death” is the subject of the phrase “death spread to all men because all sinned.”

Augustine’s Latin version which he used mistook the “because” to be “in whom.” In this mistranslation, the subject is misplaced and thought to be a reference to the “one man,” namely Adam, “in whom all sinned“:

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men in whom all sinned—”

This gives the wrong impression that not only do we inherit a proclivity towards sin, due to Adam’s example, we are also declared guilty of Adam’s sin. Augustine’s dispute against Pelagius depended a lot on this notion of imputed guilt, not simply a proclivity towards sinful actions, being bestowed on all humans following Adam. Not only are we responsible for our own sin, we are also made responsible for Adam’s sin, a misinterpretation of the Bible which has been passed down through the ages (Fox, pp. 667, 677).

When coupled with Augustine’s belief about the sacraments, in his dispute with the Donatists, Augustine’s doctrine of original guilt has cast a shadow over the Western church.  The Donatists had made it a habit to rebaptize orthodox Catholics who had received their original baptism from a discredited priest. Since the Bible taught that there is only one baptism (Ephesians 4:4-6), to be rebaptized by anyone was considered a grave sin.

Anyone growing up in a Christian tradition where infant baptism is normally practiced will surely wrestle with this if they encounter friends who hold to the doctrine of “believer’s baptism;” that is, baptism should only be administered to someone who has made a profession of faith, which therefore excludes infants from being candidates for baptism. This issue can trouble the conscience of a believer, whether or not any teaching on “baptismal regeneration” is in view.

Augustine’s response was that the moral disposition of the priest performing baptism could not invalidate the sacrament of baptism, assuming the baptism was done correctly: if it was administered by water, if it was performed in a Trinitarian matter of being baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and if it was done with the intention of performing the sacrament.

So if a Donatist were to baptize someone, who had not been baptized before, and that person was received back into the orthodox Catholic church, that person need not undergo a rebaptism. It was the act of baptism that mattered, not the one administering the baptism, which corresponds to the Latin formula: ex opere operato. However, in conjunction with the doctrine of original sin/guilt, as Augustine understood it, this meant that any unbaptized child would effectively be damned if that child died before they received baptism. For Augustine, baptism was considered to be the means by which grace was given to the person, a fundamental idea in Augustine’s theology of sacraments, which eventually became a flashpoint in the 16th century dispute between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Augustine developed much of his doctrine of grace in his later years with his dispute with Pelagius. However, since the dispute with Pelagius came after writing of the Confessions, Fox does not explore this in Augustine: Conversion to Confessions.

 

Critical Reflection on Fox’s Augustine: Conversion to Confessions

Veteran evangelical scholar Gerald Bray assesses Fox’s work on Augustine in a manner similar to how I portray it in my own blogging about the book:

Lane Fox knows an enormous amount about the ancient world and brings his vast learning to bear in an eloquent and fascinating way. Digression is his strength, as whole chapters are taken up with studies of Manichaeism, Neo-Platonism, and the like. These descriptions are worth the price of the book.

In reading Fox’s Augustine: Conversions to Confessions, you will discover a wealth of information about the ancient world, a treasure that has helped to get me hooked on learning more about ancient history. This is spectacular. Nevertheless, Bray concludes that Fox’s work on this first half of Augustine’s life is not without fault:

But it’s when we come to the heart of the matter that Lane Fox lets us down most. His account of Augustine’s conversion contains an extended examination of the possible meaning of “tolle lege,” which led Augustine to take up Paul’s letter to the Romans. This is followed by an equally lengthy examination of the possible meanings of the text that moved his heart to turn to Christ. In the end, he concludes Augustine got it all wrong but remained convinced God had spoken to him anyway. His life was turned around, but only by mistake!

I read that section of Fox’s narrative and walked away from it like Bray has done. Fox offers some cogent critiques of Augustine’s interpretations of the Bible, but not all of his critiques work as well. As a committed non-believer, Robin Lane Fox’s presentation of Christianity as articulated by Augustine in his Confessions is vulnerable to critique.

For example, Fox claims that Augustine “evades the word ‘all’” in 1 Timothy 2:3-4, which says that “God our Saviour… wills that all men should be saved.” For Augustine, this “all” means “many” or “all sorts,” as in “all kinds” of people will be saved (Fox, p. 674).

Presumably, Fox’s assertion that when Augustine “evades the word ‘all’,” Fox means that the plain reading of 1 Timothy 2:3-4 is teaching a doctrine of universal salvation, a doctrine that Augustine does not accept. After all, Augustine was one of the most influential of the church fathers to teach the doctrine of eternal conscious torment. In Augustine’s mind, the experience of an eternal hell was not simply a psychological or sociological kind of torment, but it was a physical one as well. As New Testament scholar Paula Fredriksen says in her epic work, Augustine and the Jews, reviewed elsewhere on Veracity, Augustine actually envisioned that the number of the saved within the whole of humanity would actually be very few.

But leaving aside those weightier concerns about the ultimate fate of non-believers, Augustine’s interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:3-4 is not necessarily an evasion as Fox argues, as other contemporary commentators suggest that Augustine might be at least somewhat correct here, even if the text itself is not entirely clear. Many translations today take the forceful edge off of God being the one who “wills” that all individuals be saved and indicate that it is God’s “desire” that all individuals be saved, a less deterministic posture. Here is how the ESV renders the passage:

This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Fox’s assumptions about what the Bible actually teaches does not end there. Fox dismisses the story of creation as told in Genesis is “untrue,” from the viewpoint of modern science (Fox, p. 224). Fox claims that the Old Testament “predicted nothing about Christianity” (Fox, p. 228). Fox adds that “critical readers nowadays recognize no such harmony in the Gospels,” which reconciles the differences between those Gospels (Fox, p. 270).

These claims are no surprise as coming from an author who in 1991 wrote the book, The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, where the publisher’s description of the book says Fox :

“….introduces us to a Bible that came late to monotheism, propounded a jumble of conflicting laws, and whose authors wrote under assumed name.”

 

Robin Lane Fox: Historian vs. Biblical Interpreter

While Fox, as an historian, has read enough biblical studies to offer some various fair and accurate critiques of Augustine, he apparently has not read enough to address some of these more broad-minded claims he makes against historic orthodox Christian faith in general. The evolutionary model of an Old Testament that morphs from polytheism into monotheism over time falls short when compared to the careful analysis of how progressive revelation actually works in the Bible. Scholarship on the Book of Leviticus, and other priestly material in the Old Testament, over the last fifty years, demonstrates a type of coherency of laws that is often missed by casual readers of the Bible.  And finally, various claims made about forgeries existing in our New Testament have been met with resistance by other capable scholars.

This should suffice to say, that not all biblical scholars engaged in historical criticism come to the same conclusions Fox finds so compelling, as readers of the Veracity blog will know (see particularly the review of Jesus Contradicted, by Michael Licona). Augustine sought to harmonize discrepancies which he acknowledged existed in the Bible. But as New Testament scholar Michael Licona has shown, Augustine saw some limits to common harmonization techniques. When Augustine ran into such difficulties, he would look for a deeper spiritual meaning found within the text of Scripture.

For example, according to Michael Licona, Augustine recognized a discrepancy between Mark’s version of Jesus’ baptism and Matthew’s version of Jesus’ baptism. When the voice from heaven speaks, Mark 1:11 reads:

And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” (ESV)

Yet in Matthew, the same verse reads (Mathew 3:17):

And behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (ESV)

It is as though in Mark the voice is speaking to Jesus himself, whereas in Matthew the voice is speaking to the crowd that was listening in.

A persistent harmonizer might conclude that the voice said both of these statements, once to Jesus and then once to the crowds, or vice-versa. But Augustine thought that this was a more improbable way to interpret the text, and taking harmonization way too far. For some might be tempted to say that the entire narrative about Jesus’ baptism happened multiple times. However, such a judgment would be far fetched, as the Gospels consistently portray Jesus’ baptism as a once in time event.

Instead, Augustine concluded that perhaps Mark is giving us a verbatim account of what was said, whereas Matthew is reframing the heavenly speech in order to instruct the crowds, suggesting a more spiritual dimension. The meaning of what the text is saying is preserved across the Gospels, regardless of how the Gospel author articulates the exact verbiage of the voice. Augustine’s approach to this text offers an improvement over his typical Ambrosian tendency to look for an allegorical interpretation, when faced with such difficulties.

As Augustine put it in his Harmony of the Gospels, the Gospel authors intentionally introduced such differences, while preserving the meaning:

…. At the same time, while preserving the sense intact, they use different modes of expression in reproducing the terms of the voice which came from heaven.

While Augustine at times shook off a strict kind of harmonization as unnecessary, he nevertheless found the Gospels to be compatible with one another, sharing the same essential message, even with a more nuanced understanding of what constitutes “harmony.” This would go against Fox’s inclination towards skepticism, which suggests that there is “no such harmony” between the Gospels.

While I do not share in Dr. Fox’s ultimate conclusions regarding Christianity, I still find him to be a compelling and fascinating writer. I have the Kindle version of Augustine: Conversions to Confessions, but I was primarily engaged in the Audible version, read by Michael Page. On a long road trip to Indiana last year, Augustine: Conversions to Confessions,  clocking in at 25 1/2 hours, made for a good companion that kept me alert the whole way.

It remains to be seen whether or not Robin Lane Fox will continue with another book examining the life of Augustine following the Confessions. Augustine was roughly 43 years old when he worked on the Confessions. He would go on to live another 33 years of service as a Christian bishop in Hippo, until his death. After enjoying Augustine: Conversions to Confessions, I hope that Dr. Fox might continue on and complete this biography of this extraordinary and influential Christian leader and thinker of the early church.

For other Veracity blog posts about Augustine, see the following:

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Witnesses

November 8, 2024

Did Pilate Really Wash His Hands to Seal Jesus’ Fate?

By Clarke Morledge

Who was ultimately responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion? Theologically, all of us as humans have played a role in the death of Jesus, while believers in Christ mercifully receive its atoning benefits. But historically speaking, was it Pilate or the Jewish leaders who consigned Jesus to die on the cross? This is a thorny question which requires a careful answer.

Ecce Homo (“Behold the Man”), Antonio Ciseri’s depiction of Pilate presenting a scourged Jesus to the people of Jerusalem. It took Ciseri twenty years, from 1871 to 1891, to complete the painting (from Wikipedia)

Pilate’s Hands Washing: From Mick Jagger to a Cathedral in Regensburg, Germany

The Rolling Stones lead singer, Mick Jagger, imprinted a passage from the Christian New Testament on the minds of a generation, when in 1968 he first sang “Sympathy For The Devil,” as a personification of Satan:

“And I was ’round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made (expletive) sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate”

What was the washing of Pilate’s hands all about? In Matthew 27:1-2, the Jewish chief priests and elders judged that Jesus should be put to death, but they sent him to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea anyway. Later in Matthew 27:24-26 we read of the aftermath of Pilate’s interview with Jesus:

So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!” Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified.

All four of the Gospels note that Pilate had a role in Jesus’ crucifixion, but there are some differences in how Pilate is portrayed. What is peculiar about this passage in Matthew is that none of the other three Gospels record the incident of Pilate washing his hands. Neither do the other Gospels tell of the specific response of the people, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

Was Matthew putting the blame for Jesus’ crucifixion on the Jews? Or is something else going on here?

On a trip to Europe my wife and I took in 2022, I was stunned to see so much historical evidence of antisemitic sentiment preserved in what was once the very heart of Christendom, central Europe. In Regensburg, Germany stands a great cathedral, where one side looks over the remains of what once was the city’s only Jewish synagogue. Prior to becoming an Anabaptist in the early 16th century, Balthasar Hubmaier, who was then a firebrand medieval priest at that cathedral, preached a pogrom against Regensburg’s Jewish population, leading to the expulsion of Regensburg’s Jews and the destruction of their synagogue. Regensburg’s Jews had been labeled as “Christ-killers,” whereby the blame for Jesus’ death had shifted from Pilate to the Jews, and the label got stuck there.

A memorial to the destroyed old synagogue stands in its place now, overshadowed by the towers of Regensburg’s St. Peter’s Cathedral. On the side of the church is engraved a “Judensau,” an image of several Jews sucking from the teats of a female pig, a disgusting vilification of Judaism.  I do not even want to post an image of this on this blog post! Some 48 towns across Germany have “Judensau” engravings on their Christian churches, dating back to medieval times. Why were church authorities so willing to allow such degrading carvings on their cathedrals?

Some have tried to have these Judensau engravings removed. But I am in a sense grateful that they are still around, as it helped to convince me that antisemitism is real, deeply embedded in the psyche of many, and we should leave reminders of the past around in order to educate younger generations.

Walking around the streets of Regensburg, and other European cities, like Prague and Munich, and seeing the evidence of centuries of antisemitic propaganda advertised by those claiming to be Christians was quite a shock to me. How could so many people call themselves Christians and do such repulsive things towards Jewish people?

That question haunted me as I wandered the streets of Regensburg.

When I reviewed two books on Veracity a few years ago, Augustine and the Jews, by Paula Fredriksen (a convert herself from Roman Catholicism to Judaism), and Future Israel: Why Christian Anti-Judaism Must Be Challenged, by Australian evangelical bible scholar, Barry E. Horner, I felt a lot of discomfort reading about the history of antisemitic acts perpetrated by so-called “Christians.” I got another taste of that discomfort in reading When A Jew Rules the World, by Bible prophecy teacher Joel Richardson, showing that some of my heroes in the early church voiced a kind of anti-Jewish sentiment at times in some sermons. But that visit to Europe two years ago convinced me that the history of antisemitism was worse than I had previously thought.

This blog post goes on multiple rabbit trails, but I want to address several issues:

  • Answering the charge by critics that the New Testament is antisemitic.
  • Thinking about why the Gospel of Matthew portrays Pontius Pilate the way Matthew does.
  • Showing how the Gospels use Greco-Roman compositional devices to frame their narratives.
  • Comparing modern compositional devices with the way first century literature like the Gospels were written.
  • Making the case that a nuanced understanding of biblical inerrancy increases our confidence in the Bible.
  • How Christian “Fan Fiction” has shaped the way we have thought about Pontius Pilate down through the ages.
  • Christians have been both “Bullies” and “Saints” in church history, and why it is important to wrestle with this.

Christians should be able to share the Gospel with our Jewish friends without stepping on mines filled with anti-Jewish prejudice. Journey with me on this exploration of Christian apologetics through the lens of church history!

Bullies and Saints: An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Christian History, by John Dickson, explores many of the good contributions of Christianity to the world, while also casting a light on a number of the more unsightly episodes of church history, that as a Christian I would rather forget. Celebrating the goodness of the Gospel’s impact on society while simultaneously acknowledging failures of the church along the way is vitally important, in a day when many in Western culture are skeptical about the value of organized Christianity.

Continue reading

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Apologetics

July 5, 2024

Jesus, Contradicted, by Michael Licona. A Veracity Book Review.

By Clarke Morledge

Have you ever been troubled by what might appear to be contradictions between the four Gospel accounts? If so, then Dr. Michael Licona’s Jesus, Contradicted will help you to tame the doubts in your mind, and have a fresh look at the trustworthiness and reliability of the Bible.

I know because I have been there. Having not grown up in an evangelical church, I never heard of the concept of “biblical inerrancy” until my years in college in the 1980s. Growing up in a liberal mainline church instead, the Bible only had a secondary role in spiritual formation. As a teenager though, I read through all of the New Testament (except for Revelation), and I was wrestling through the things I read in the Bible. One of the first things I noticed is that there are differences between the four Gospels and how they report various speeches and events.

The idea that there were differences in the Gospels really did not bother me. If anything, the differences in the Gospels only intrigued me to look more closely at the New Testament. As Christian apologist and former cold-case detective J. Warner Wallace has said, the very fact that the Gospels DO have differences lends credibility to the authenticity of their accounts. For if all four Gospels said exactly the same thing, this would be evidence of collusion, which would raise suspicions about the integrity of the New Testament. Instead, because there were opportunities to smooth out the differences and the Gospel writers did not do so, this gives us greater confidence in the truthfulness of the Christian story.

But apparently, not every Christian is convinced that having differences in the Gospel is a good thing. Some argue that we should do whatever we can to harmonize the Gospels, even if some of those harmonizations come across as unconvincing, embarrassingly ad-hoc, otherwise severely strained.

Mike Licona, a New Testament scholar, is one of most able defenders of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, having debated Bart Ehrman, the world’s most well-known skeptic, on several occasions. Now, Michael Licona is arguing for a more robust view of biblical inerrancy, in Jesus, Contradicted: : Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently

 

My Faith Crisis Over Inerrancy

Michael Licona, author of Jesus, Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently, has struck a chord with me. But I need to set up the story a bit more before I offer a review of this new book.

In the mid-1970’s, Harold Lindsell, who had been a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, had popularized an idea to try to resolve the apparent contradictions in the various accounts of Peter’s denials of Jesus, on the night Jesus was handed over to the authorities to face trial and eventually to be crucified. Mark 14:72 and Luke 22:61 has Jesus saying that a cock would crow twice after Peter denies Jesus three times. But in Matthew 26:74-75 and John 18:27, a cock crows once after Peter denied Jesus three times. Matthew has Jesus predicting one cock crow, while John says nothing about Jesus predicting anything about a cock crowing.

Lindsell’s solution was to say that Peter denied Jesus a total of six times: three times before the first cock crowed, and then three more times before the second cock crowed. Other strict inerrantists arrive at similar conclusions, arguing that Jesus’ differing prophecies in all four Gospels must align together in all incidental details.

While this type of harmonization sort of “works,” it still really confused me. After all, all four Gospels explicitly state that Peter denied Jesus three times, not six times as Lindsell’s “inerrantist” interpretation suggested. I reasoned that if this type of convoluted logic is required to make sense of “biblical inerrancy,” then I simply could not accept it. I really wanted the Bible to be “inerrant,” but as a mathematics major in college I just could not force my mind to accept the idea that 3 equals 6.

I pretty much shoved the idea off of my mind, visiting it every once in a while, but I just could not get past the problem. It was not until I read Five Views of Biblical Inerrancy ( introduced and reviewed here on Veracity,) a multi-views book highlighting the perspectives of five different biblical scholars holding separate and distinct definitions of what constituted “biblical inerrancy,” that I finally had some peace about the matter. Not every proponent of “biblical inerrancy” holds to the rather strict version championed by Harold Lindsell.

This was quite a relief. I could now hold to a version of “biblical inerrancy.” My problem was that I still was not sure what that version of “biblical inerrancy” really looked like.

A few years ago, I got a copy of Michael Licona’s book Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?, oriented towards scholars, to try to help me. So far, I have only gotten part of the way through it until Dr. Licona came out with a shorter, more accessible revision of the book this year, Jesus Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently. I am so glad I read this new book!

Jesus, Contradicted: Why The Gospels Tell The Same Story Differently, by Michael Licona, offers a more evidenced-based approach to handling differences in the Gospels, without resorting to tortured harmonization efforts concerning incidental details.

Continue reading

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Apologetics, The Gospels

March 23, 2024

How Many Donkeys Did Jesus Ride on Palm Sunday?

By Clarke Morledge

A common objection to the Bible raised by critics is that the Gospel accounts contradict one another. A most famous example is Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem, celebrated in many churches with children waving palm branches on Palm Sunday. While parents enjoy watching their kids fanning themselves with palm branches, wandering around the church sanctuary, such celebration obscures a very troubling passage common to all four of our Gospels.

How many donkeys did Jesus ride into Jerusalem? Perhaps much of the answer to this comes down to how well we understand what each Gospel writer was purposely trying to do.

 

A look at the various parallel passages reveals the problem. Here is Matthew 21:1-11 (ESV):

1 Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will send them at once.” 4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying,

5 “Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king is coming to you,
    humble, and mounted on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”

6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them.7 They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. 8 Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” 10 And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” 11 And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”

Some will derisively look at this passage and suggest that it is really bizarre and funny to think that Jesus tried to ride two animals at once, a donkey and a colt (a young donkey), as though trying to perform some circus trick. Riding one donkey might be hard enough, but straddling yourself across two donkeys simultaneously would be a feat that even the Messiah might find difficult to perform!

But that is only part of the problem. Compare Matthew with Mark’s version of the story (Mark 11:1-10 ESV):

11 Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples 2 and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it.3 If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.’” 4 And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. 5 And some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” 6 And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go. 7 And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it.8 And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields.9 And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! 10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!”

In Mark’s version, there is only one animal mentioned, a colt (a young donkey), as opposed to two animals in Matthew’s version. Both Luke’s version (Luke 19:28-38 ESV) and John’s version (John 12:12-15 ESV) only mention one donkey as well.

So, what is the deal with Matthew, with Jesus riding two animals, as opposed to one mentioned by the other Gospel writers?

One possible way of answering this objection is to note a detail highlighted above in verse 7 of Matthew’s version:

They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them.

Notice how the text says that cloaks were placed on the two animals, and that Jesus “sat on them.” What is the “them?” A natural reading suggests a reference to the cloaks, and not the two animals. The cloaks were spread across the two animals, side by side to the other. Jesus could have easily seated himself on one donkey, on top of the set of cloaks spread out between the two donkeys. So, to think that the Bible is in error here because of how ridiculous it would have been for Jesus to ride two animals at the same time, can be easily addressed.

But what about the difference in number, between two animals (per Matthew) and one animal (per Mark, Luke and John)? It could simply be that Mark, Luke, and John only focused the spotlight in their narratives on the one donkey, and purposefully left out the second donkey as not being crucial for the telling of their respective stories. Presumably, Matthew could have included the second donkey, being the mother of the young colt which Jesus rode, as the mother would have provided the young colt some confidence in performing his task of parading Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem.

New Testament Bible scholar, Michael Licona, in his Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?, suggests that this literary technique of spotlighting was a common rhetorical, compositional device used in certain varieties of Greco-Roman literature (Licona, p. 131-32). First century authors would use spotlighting to focus their attention on certain details deemed to be important, while ignoring others.

YouTube apologist, Michael Jones, at Inspiring Philosophy, has a useful video explaining how all of this works with this supposed Bible contradiction:

While I think Michael’s solution is surely a viable one, I can understand why some critics may not be so easily convinced. Is there possibly a better, more plausible explanation for what is going on here?

Much of what we think about how certain Bible discrepancies can be resolved comes down to our understanding of biblical inerrancy.  Someone who holds to what might be considered as a rather strict form of inerrancy, will be drawn to the solution that there were indeed two donkeys present at Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry,” according to Matthew, instead of one, whereby the second donkey was ignored by the other three Gospel evangelists. However, a more nuanced form of inerrancy will pay more attention to the intention of each author in telling their respective stories in the way that each one did.

Notice that in Matthew’s version of the story, he makes it a point to connect the story of the two donkeys with a prophecy, highlighted in Matthew’s verse 5, going back to Zechariah 9:9 (and partly also to Isaiah 62:11).

“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king is coming to you,
    humble, and mounted on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”

Interestingly, neither Mark nor Luke make any reference back to the Zechariah prophecy. Mark and Luke simply describe the acquisition of the donkey and Jesus’ riding the donkey scenes, with no reference to the Old Testament.

Matthew, on the other hand, wants the reader to know that the donkey episode is a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Most scholars today believe that Mark’s Gospel was written first, and that Matthew most probably had a copy of Mark’s Gospel in hand when he wrote his Gospel.  Matthew adds the detail about the second donkey to highlight the fulfillment of prophecy that Mark (and Luke) ignore.

But we have a different problem when it comes to comparing this to John’s story. John’s very brief version mentions the Zechariah 9:9 prophecy, but John still only mentions a single donkey, and not two (John 12:12-15 ESV):

12 The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” 14 And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,

15 “Fear not, daughter of Zion;
behold, your king is coming,
    sitting on a donkey’s colt!”

Some scholars suggest that Matthew made a mistake in interpreting Zechariah. John takes the last two lines of Zechariah’s prophecy, and folds them into one statement, that of “sitting on a donkey’s colt,” showing that both of these lines from Zechariah are speaking of but one donkey, and not two. An example of  such critical scholarship can be found in what the Harper Collins Study Bible says for Zechariah 9:9, Matthew’s understanding “fails to take into consideration the parallelism of the Hebrew poetry (donkey is equivalent to colt) when it has Jesus riding on two donkeys at once.” 

But this is not the most charitable way of reading Matthew’s text, nor does it acknowledge the fact that Jewish interpreters of the Old Testament in Jesus’ day did not have a univocal understanding of every passage which they read. As it turns out, there were two different interpretive traditions concerning Zechariah 9:9 among Second Temple Jews in Jesus’ day, and the Christian New Testament testifies to this reality (even the Inspiring Philosophy video notes this). Notice the difference in how a translation like the ESV has Matthew, in Matthew 21:5,  quoting Zechariah 9:9:

“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king is coming to you,
    humble, and mounted on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”

And in how the NIV translation quotes it:

“Say to Daughter Zion,
    ‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
    and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”

The ESV omits the “and” in the last phrase, suggesting that the “donkey” in the immediately preceding phrase is repeated again in the “colt” of the last phrase, suggesting that only one donkey is being discussed here. The NIV includes the “and” in the last phrase, suggesting that the “donkey,” and the “colt“; that is, the young (foal) of a donkey are in mind here, suggesting two donkeys, presumably a young donkey and his mother.

So, what are we dealing with here: one or two donkeys? That all depends on which interpretive tradition in Second Temple Judaism you follow. It would appear that Matthew is intending to address those who follow the “two donkey” tradition, whereas John is intending to address those who follow the “one donkey” tradition.

It is not that a certain evangelist (or evangelists) does/do not care about historical accuracy to the “n’th” degree, but rather they care more about crafting a reasonably historical narrative that meets their distinctly different intended purposes.

This may sound a bit confusing, but the point is that Matthew and John are addressing two different audiences, each audience following a different interpretive tradition concerning the prophecy in Zechariah.  Mark and Luke, on the other hand, have no interest in connecting the donkey story with Old Testament prophecy, as the prophecy connection did not serve the intended purpose of either Gospel writer, as least not enough to mention it.  In other words, our Gospel writers as a group are trying to cover all of the bases, serving different audiences.

Matthew could be more concerned with trying to convince readers with a “two donkey” mindset that Jesus was indeed fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy, and less concerned about whether or not one or two donkeys were part of the story. Matthew probably was well aware that at least Mark’s Gospel assumed “one donkey” to be evidence of prophecy fulfillment, but that Matthew wanted to make sure that those who held to a “two donkey” view would realize that Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry” was indeed a fulfillment of prophecy as well. We really do not have enough evidence to figure that detail out with exact, technical precision.

Ultimately, whether we have two donkeys or just one donkey, Matthew and John are convinced that Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry” on Palm Sunday in Jerusalem fulfills prophecy. Furthermore, all of our four evangelists note that at least one donkey is involved in the historical narrative.

While this solution does not neatly solve the problem of two or one donkey(s), it tries to respect the intended purpose of each Gospel writer, acknowledging that there might be very good, but yet very different intended purposes being served by each evangelist. In other words, we are not dealing with a question of “who is in error here?,” but rather, we are dealing with the fact that each Gospel writer is doing what they are doing on purpose.  Reading the text of each Gospel more carefully can help us to discern the intended purpose of each author, which in many ways is much more important than trying to establish a neat, easily harmonized, strict sequence of events.

Most Christians never bother to read parallel passages in the Gospels. This is unfortunate, as many skeptics of the Bible point to inconsistencies between such parallel passages, as part of their justification for rejecting the reliability of the Bible. It would behoove believers to make an effort to study parallel passages, in order to think through why different authors in Scripture have their differences! One can study such differences without necessarily abandoning the divinely inspired nature of all of Scripture. In fact, such study can help us to better appreciate the underlying motives of each author, as an aid to better understanding each text.

The ultimately takeaway for all Christians (and skeptics!) who study this Palm Sunday set of passages in the Bible is that Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem in a humble way, while simultaneously announcing that Jesus is the true King. The events which followed on that fateful week, that of Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection, show to the whole world that Jesus is indeed the King of Kings.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Apologetics, The Gospels

July 10, 2020

Is the Death of Judas Iscariot a Bible Contradiction?

By Clarke Morledge

Critics of the Bible will often point out discrepancies between different Scriptural accounts to be evidence of contradictions in the Bible. A classic case involves differences between Matthew’s account and Luke’s account of the death of Judas Iscariot. In a 2019 debate, critical scholar Bart Ehrman presses the contradiction claim against evangelical Bible scholar, Peter Williams.

Peter Williams’ explanation of what might have happened, in reconciling these accounts, parallels the answer given by Answers in Genesis’ Georgia Purdom. While the standard Williams/Purdom explanation does have a measure of plausibility, I must admit that Bart Ehrman has a point here. Given enough range of possibilities, you can pretty much resolve just about any contradiction.

But some attempts to harmonize the text do not always convince everyone. In Matthew, Judas hangs himself before any mention of the purchase of a field. In Luke-Acts, Judas dies in the field, after he had just bought the field. It is possible that Judas acquired the field, in some manner, before hanging himself, and then afterwards, the chief priests repurchased the field. But the events still seem a bit disconnected. Furthermore, it seems strange that Luke would not have reminded his readers that Judas had hung himself.

I would not want to totally dismiss the Williams/Purdom explanation, but it does border on being ad hoc. Might there be a better resolution to this discrepancy, that has better explanatory power? I think there is, but you have to think a bit “out of the box” to get there.

New Testament scholar Michael Licona has written about the use of compositional devices, that were commonly characteristic of the Greco-Roman bios genre, typical of 1st century literature. Some of those compositional devices would not sound typical for modern readers, particularly those compositional devices that have a more metaphorical understanding behind them. But if we consider the Gospels as examples of such bios literary genre, this might resolve the Judas death discrepancy more satisfactorily. Licona’s critics have accused him of undermining biblical inerrancy, but it is ironically more likely that the supposed defenders of a more strict view of inerrancy, have made it more difficult for the Bible to be defended.

YouTube apologist Michael Jones, a.k.a. Inspiring Philosophy, brings Licona’s insights to bear on the death of Judas conundrum. In the days of King David, Ahithophel deserted David and plotted against the king, in support of Absalom. But when Ahithophel realized that the plot against David would fail, he hung himself (see 2 Samuel 17, especially verse 23). It is possible that Matthew might have used the hanging of Ahithophel as a metaphorical way of saying that Judas was yet another Ahithophel.

This would have been consistent with the practice of Greco-Roman bios to use figures of speech, that may not be obvious to the modern reader. In other words, perhaps Judas did not actually hang himself, but he could have committed suicide in a manner more like it is described by Luke, early in the Book of Acts. This idea is supported by evidence in the Gospel of John, where John alludes to Judas’ betrayal as being like the betrayal of Ahithophel (Psalm 41:9; John 13:18).

If you liked that video, you should review some of the hundred(s) of other YouTube videos at Inspiring Philosophy, that addresses supposed “Bible contradictions.” Michael Jones is one of the new brilliant “Young Apologists” (my way of saying it), that some are calling the “Apologetics Empire.”

New Testament scholar Michael Licona goes at it himself from a slightly different angle, suggesting that Matthew is actually describing a hanging here, and that it is Luke instead who is using a figure of speech, of Judas “falling headlong,” as a metaphorical way of saying that Judas’ career was “going downhill” at that point.

What I would conclude here is that there are a variety of possible resolutions to this classic Bible discrepancy, but that allowing for the use of metaphor and figure of speech, where something has been traditionally interpreted in a non-metaphorical sense, might actually be a better, more plausible and even probable way to resolve such difficulties.

Any thoughts Veracity readers?

 

 

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Apologetics