I have no problems with scientists like Venema pursuing a theory as far as one can go with it. No problems with pushing the envelope to the limits of a theory to see if it still holds up. This is good and logical. What I do have a problem with is the globalizing of a theory to explain most everything when in fact it only explains some things. What I especially object to is the notion that ‘science deals with the facts as they are’ and ‘religious opinions’ do not. The notion that science somehow is more in touch with the reality of the material world than say theology is, is not helpful, or for that matter true. So for example when Venema (p. 40) suggests that the ‘very’ few biologists who do not accept evolutionary theory, do not accept it because of prior religious commitments, rather than for ‘scientific reasons’ one is setting up categories and dichotomies in such a way that the conclusion must be ‘religious commitments are apriori and not grounded in the facts’ but wait a minute— science also has apriori commitments.’

For example, science assumes there is an objective world outside the human mind that can be known with reasonably high degrees of certainty through the five human senses. This is a faith assumption, as anyone who has studied Pascal and Descartes knows. Frankly, there are many faith assumptions behind modern science. So let’s drop the pejorative language about ‘a priori faith commitments’ as if science had none of those, and find a better way to have a conversation that does not intimate that somehow theology, once called the queen of the sciences, provides merely religious opinions about the material world. All academic disciplines are based on certain presuppositions and faith assumptions about reality. All of them. And if you are a scientist of Christian faith, you are convinced that there is such a thing as non-material reality which no material analysis could ever explain— I’m referring to God who is spirit, as Jesus says in John 4. One could also talk about angels and demons as well.

Part of the problem goes all the way back to the Enlightenment where material reality and empirical facts were lumped into one category, and theological statements and faith were lumped into another category, which led to the latter being eventually seen as a mere matter of ‘religious opinion’, not grounded in factual reality. The problem with these sorts of pigeon holes is they do a disservice to both science and religion.

Both science and Christianity have faith assumptions and presuppositions and both deal with facts, in the case of Christianity we are talking about historical facts, rather than say chemical or genetic facts. And the historian has exactly the same problem as the geneticist does when it comes to such things, because there are no time machines so that one can travel back to the real origins of things. Just as the geneticist relies on fossil records, so too do historians on other sorts of archaeological data.

So enough with the ‘Christianity needs to conform itself to modern science, or vice versa’ sort of not so subtle forms of discourse. We need to listen hard, understand, and appreciate what truths and facts and faith assumptions have been discovered whether through studying the book of nature, or studying the book of God which he revealed to his people.

Perhaps it will be well if I first state a few personal disclaimers. I have: 1) no problem with the idea that different areas of knowledge require different methodologies to arrive at theories that explain the facts; 2) also no problem with the usual observation that the Bible is not a scientific textbook, it does not teach cosmology, biology, anthropology, geology etc. 3) no problem with the observation that a proper critique of modern science cannot rest solely on pointing out gaps in the fossil record, or the lack of positive evidence for missing link creatures to connect critter A to critter B through evolutionary processes; 4) also no problem with the notion that a species can adapt and change as its environment changes over time, indeed being effected by the environment. In other words, I have no issues with micro-evolution within a species; and finally 5) I have no problem with the notion of a very old earth and a long pre-history before human kind created in God’s image shows up on planet earth. Genesis 1 is a piece of Hebrew poetry that demonstrates the divine origins and design of it all. It does not tell us how long it took to accomplish the process, nor does it fill in all the blanks along the way. In a broad sense, in any case, it comports with evolutionary ideas about human beings being the apex and most complex of all living things.

On the other hand, what is a problem with science is an assumption that one can globalize a scientific theory to be all encompassing, even impinging on areas outside the discipline of genetics, areas such as history and theology. What I mean by that is that the presuppositions of modern science are purely naturalistic or better said materialistic. All things can be explained if we just figure out the natural processes which produced these facts, and then connect the dots.

The problem with this is of course it assumes that God, at least in these spheres, only works by natural processes. It rules out miracles a priori. For example, it takes for granted that when you find common physical features in a whale and in a tetrapod that is a purely land-based creature, there must be a link and a transition between A and B. This leads to the quite proper question– If God is the CEO and director of all creation (not merely the one who fired the starter gun, having provided the raw materials for the human race and other creatures) why in the world could God not simply use some of the same features in two different species of creatures? No reason is given. Why for example is it not possible that God decided fish would have vertebrae and at least front limbs, and so would humans without any necessary connection between these species? These differing types of creatures could have each developed along their own natural lines, but shared some features in common with other species. Genetic similarities do not necessarily lead to the conclusion of genetic connections.

The real problem here is when science impinges on human history, not animal history. The Bible may not teach science, but it certainly teaches some specific things about human history, as we shall see in this review.

D.R. Venema and Scot McKnight, Adam and the Genome, (Brazos, 2017).

On first blush the title of this book suggests an Indie rock band. But seriously, this is a very well researched book on genetics, and Biblical interpretation vis a vis the origins of human life, and whether or not Adam (and Eve) were historical persons. The genetics part of the book by D.R. Venema is a difficult read for those not familiar with genetics, even at the lay person’s level, whereas, Scot McKnight’s half of the book (beginning at p. 93) is quite clear, but in some ways more problematic, from my point of view. Nonetheless, it is written with the sort of style and grace and honesty that we have come to expect in Scot’s books.

If we ask what prompted the book, all is made clearer by statements late in the study on pp. 172-73. The concern is about people losing their faith due to an encounter with science, particularly evolutionary theory, especially perhaps those who have come from more fundamentalist Protestant backgrounds. Scot deals regularly with such students and frames the matter this way: “Here is what is vital for this book: [a] person’s faith was challenged by his realization about evolution and he was forced to make a choice about whether the Bible or evolution was the truest description and understanding of the world. He chose science because the understanding of the Bible was in his view demonstrably wrong. Dennis and I are proposing another alternative: accepting the reality of genetic evidence supporting a theory of evolution along with an understanding of Adam and Eve that is more in turn with the historical context of Genesis.”

In other words, the interpretation of the Word should be adjusted on the basis of the assumed fait accompli of science to demonstrate it has the facts on its side. Neither side of these assumptions, the science or the Biblical interpretation assumptions are without their problems. But I absolutely agree that we need to have a good discussion about this because science is one thing and pseudo-science that denies the geological and genetic evidence for an old earth and ancient human race needs to countered.

p. 615—- The major theme of Romans is the equality of Jew and Gentile before God.
Paul was in Corinth for what he intended to be the last time and was heading to Jerusalem with the collection.

p. 616— Paul asked for two sorts of assistance from the Romans— prayer for safety etc. when he went to Jerusalem, and then traveling assistance when he went on from Rome to Spain. Notice how tactful Paul is in Rom. 1 because the Roman church was not ‘his’. 1.13-15 indicates he didn’t want to just pass through Rome, he wanted to make some impact there as well, some harvest, to proclaim the Gospel there.

p. 617— He is still concern about what the role of the Mosaic Law is in the ‘two dispensations’ or two covenants. In Romans he says nothing about a mission to Jews [oh really, he says the Gospel is for the Jew first in Rom. 1 and nowhere else does he put it quite that way, and 1 Cor. 9 when he says he can be the Jew to the Jew to win some, is not negated by the silence of Galatians on such matters, and in Rom. 9-11 he says he hopes his mission to Gentiles will prompt the conversion of some Jews. Furthermore, he never said in 1 Cor. he was the apostle to the Jews.]. He reiterates his apostleship, his mission is to produce the obedience of the Gentiles, that is his emphasis in Romans 15.18, 1.13 etc because he is writing to a Gentile majority audience in Rome and wants to have some credibility with and assert some authority in relationship to them.

p. 618 n. 1—On the basis of 11.13-14, he thinks Paul is saying he is the only apostle to the Gentiles— THE apostle to them. This conclusion is drawn on the basis that there is no indefinite article in Greek so in the absence of any article Sanders thinks we must insert the definite article, but he admits it is a judgment call.

p. 619— [He wrongly deduces that Rom. 1.3-4 says that Jesus became the Son of God by the resurrection. This is not what the Greek says, it says he was declared or demonstrated to be the Son of God in power by the resurrection. i.e. he was Son of God in weakness before the res. Elsewhere in Paul’s letters, see Gal. 4 he is born the Son of God. So no, we do not see adoptionist ideas about Jesus’ sonship here]

p. 620— Here are the passages Sanders thinks proves that the equality of Jews and gentiles is the main theme of the letter— Rom. 2.9-10,28-29;3.9,22,29;4.11-12;9.24;10.4,12,13;11.32. Most of this is just in Rom. 2-4 not the rest of the letter. This is certainly not the main theme of the letter, though it is an important one. Rather the righteousness theme which we find from stem to stern announced as the theme in 1.16-17 is the main theme.

p. 621— The general argument of Rom. 1-7 is that all are equally condemned and in need of salvation through faith in Jesus. He still holds the view that Paul’s thought runs from solution to plight, in this case from the belief that God intends to provide ONE solution to save the whole universe—faith in Jesus leads to the conclusion that there must have been ONE plight, one problem namely sin that had to be overcome.

p. 622— while Paul’s thought moves from solution back to plight, Romans moves in the opposite direction to show how the common solution is effective even though there is lostness. In Rom. 1-3 sin is defined in the common way as disobedience and bad actions. There is no distinction since all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. Thus he cites Ps. 143.2 and before that Is. 59.7-8 to get him out of the dilemma created by Rom. 2.7 where he suggests that God could grant eternal life to people whose behavior is good enough.

p. 623– Sanders contrasts ‘it is the doers of the Law that will be righteoused’ 2.13 with ‘no human being will be righteoused in his sight’ 3.20. Phil.3.3-11 says Paul was blameless under the law but that it was a worthless accomplishment since res. depends on faith in Jesus. Paul doesn’t establish all are sinners and lost by analyzing human behavior in detail, but rather by quoting proof texts from the OT. [Sanders allows that Rom. 2.6-16 could be a hypothetical possibility which Paul thereafter dismisses].

Being under Sin is the opposite of being in Christ.

p. 624— the practical issue that spreading the Gospel will take a long time and Sanders thinks this is a problem since Paul thinks all will be saved, and yet the time is short until the Parousia. [The real problem here is not Paul’s but Sanders namely: 1] Paul does not think the Parousia is necessarily imminent, and 2) he doesn’t think all will be saved, see the discussion of vessels of wrath who have fit themselves for destruction].

Sanders says that while Rom. 1-3 assumes transgression is universal it is nonetheless optional for each individual person.

p. 625— God’s solution to the problem is stated more fully in 3.24-25 God’s grace, the death of Jesus, and faith provide redemption. He finds it surprising that Paul does not give repentance and forgiveness a larger role, or even appeal for repentance, but there is 2.4 which states God’s kindness is meant to lead to repentance.

p. 626—“If plain ordinary old fashioned repentance coupled with a plea for God’s forgiveness would solve human wickedness, God need not have sent his Son. Thus Paul’s downplaying of repentance, the usual cure for transgression, is determined by his prior conviction that salvation is provided only by Christ.” [It is probably also caused by Paul’s recognition that repentance in itself does not change human nature, and the changing of human nature happens only by new creation. The person who repents is still the same fallen person he was before he repented in terms of his nature, even if he has changed his view of his past sin].

Sanders is right that repentance and forgiveness do operate according to 2 Cor. 2.7-10 and 12.21 within the Christian community, but we are talking about those who are already Christians repenting. He says the verb repent and noun repentance occur in Paul’s letters only in Rom. 2.4, 2 Cor. 7.9,10 and 2 Cor. 12.21.

p. 627— “But for people who had not converted, mere repentance was not enough to reconcile them to God. They needed to convert.”

p. 325– The key words in Paul’s third argument about idol meat etc is in 10.16-22 and the key terms are participation, and participants, the former is koinonia (10.16 twice) in the Greek the latter koinonoi (10.18,20) And the word ‘one’ plays a role. Paul is drawing on Deut. 32.17 (‘they sacrificed to demons and not to God) table of the Lord (drawing on Mal. 1.7.12) not the table of demons (Is. 65.11) and provoking the Lord to jealousy (Deut. 32.21).

p. 326—“In this case Paul quotes a text that denounces idols but does not include the word ‘idol’ in the quotation. He is clearly writing at the level of Jewish experts who would have known that Deut. 32.21 said that idols provoked and exasperated God.” Sanders in n. 17 qualifies by saying he is not comparing Paul to the rabbis, but to other learned Jews like Philo and Josephus who were not rabbis but carried the text around in their head.

p. 327— shows that keyword connection ‘demon’ leads from Deut. 32.17 to Is. 65.11 and table in Is. 65 leads to Malachi’s table of the Lord’. This is mental associations of key words and phrases in Paul’s brain. Not use of a concordance. The phrase ‘provoke to jealousy’ is in an idolatry text, but Paul doesn’t mention the last fact.

p. 328—“Even if Paul had taught his converts to study the Bible, and even if the Church had bought the twenty two or so scrolls, the task of turning through them all, looking for two-word or three-word phrases, would have taken more time than they could give to it. This is what I mean by ‘writing at his own level.’” And of course he can’t cite chapter and verse as there weren’t any, and he rarely gives the name of the Biblical book either.

p. 329—Paul is arguing that union with Christ through the sacraments of baptism and L.S. rules out participation and union with demons and their meals “What we see in these passages (on prostitution and idolatry) is that Paul was developing an appreciation for the power of the argument that Christians are one person with Christ and participate in him through baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These two Christian rites were taking on mystical or sacramental meaning” See 1 Cor. 12.13.

p. 330– Paul then makes a concession in 10.23-30, its o.k. to eat idol meat at home or in someone else’s home, it is just meat, but if the host says it came from the temple, then avoid it for the sake of the pagan’s conscience, the rule is give no offense to Jews or Greeks where you can avoid it. The meal at the pagan house seems to assume both weak and strong Christians are there and you don’t want to cause the scrupulous to stumble or mislead the pagan host. Note the 3 fold division of community— Jew, Greek, and Church of God, with the latter not being a subheading under either. 10.29b-30 Sanders finds puzzling, it may be Paul’s rebuttal to the overly scrupulous wanting to maintain his freedom to a degree. [or he may be quoting the strong again…. And qualifying their freedom].

p. 333—“Thus Paul does not insist that his converts be a completely segregated sect. They could occasionally eat red meat, and they could socialize outside the small Christian circle. He does not mention parades, or games, two of the other main aspects of pagan festivals, but presumably his converts could participate. Similarly, he says nothing at all about attending events [other than not dining in pagan temples] at which there was a token gesture to the gods, such as plays, meeting of the city council, and gathering so the populace. Jews generally accepted these aspects of the pagan world without protest (though I assume without approval either), and so they did not alarm Paul in the way that attending pagan temples did.”

p. 239— There were three types of problems Paul faced in Corinth: 1) other competing leaders; 2) theological problems like res.; 3) behavioral problems.

p. 241– Sanders thinks perhaps Apollos was the polished rhetorician that various Corinthians preferred and he stood in contrast with Paul. 1 Cor. 3.5-17 provides the heart of Paul’s warning against Apollos using 3 metaphors.

p. 242—in 3.12-15 he uses the notion that good deeds will be rewarded but do not save and bad deeds will be punished. This he views Apollos as a suspect builder even a potential destroyer of community. NO. I have applied all this to myself and Apollos (4.6). This just reflects that Paul was worried about Apollos’ influence on the Corinthians (p. 243) but at the end of 1 Cor. 16.12 Apollos is still an ally, as Sanders notes.

p. 244—The tone of the critique of the super apostles in 2 Cor. is very different and there he does not name names. The tone there is sarcastic, involves threats, mock boasts, pleas etc. Sanders says we cannot know if he is referring to the same folk as in 1 Cor. where Peter and the brother of Jesus and Apollos are mentioned directly by name. [I would say yes we can—- Paul names his allies and consigns his opponents to oblivion almost always (see Galatians). The super apostles are definitely not Peter or Apostle or Jesus’ brothers.] 11.4 says these super apostles preach another Gospel but the content is not delineated.

p. 246— One point of continuity between 1 and 2 Cor. is that in both Paul has to defend himself against those who ridicule his speaking ability. In 11.6 he says he is untrained in speech. Sanders suspects there are still problems with comparing him to Apollos in 2 Cor. He then conjectures on the basis of 2 Cor. 3.1 that maybe some Jerusalem apostles had arrived with letters of reference from Jerusalem.

p. 247— Some scholars like Barrett and Kasemann have thought the super and the false apostles were two different groups. [I agree with Sanders that there is only one group of opponents called both false and super apostles.]

p. 248— It is possible that Paul’s opposition in Corinth was Peter, or someone with a letter of reference from Peter, or from another leader in Jerusalem. “we cannot make a firm connection between the opposition in Corinth, [where circumcision never comes up] which did not concern the Jew-Gentile problem, and the opposition in Jerusalem, Antioch and Galatia, which did.” The problem in 1 Cor. is an eloquent speaker, unlikely to be Peter or other Jerusalem apostles, more likely to be Apollos (p. 249). The false apostles had letters of reference, took money and lorded it over the Corinthians. The issues do not link up with what we hear in Galatians.

p. 250– Weird. He says 2 Cor.11.2 where Paul says he feels a divine jealousy for his converts since be betrothed them to Christ. Sanders says this means he is jealous of the success of the false apostles! [Nope.] He then suggests Paul was over-reacting, and asks was there really a lot of money to be gained or prestige from preaching the Gospel?

p. 251— Paul seems to be operating with the assumption that the founder of a congregation has almost exclusive authority over it. He says he would not boast in other’s labors, and that he would not plow in someone else’s field. But Romans suggests that he was willing to be a bit flexible about this principle when it came to himself— Rom. 1.14-15.

pp. 252-54— Sanders discussion of Paul’s boasting especially in 2 Cor. 11. [Totally missing from this discussion is the Greco-Roman discussions about mock boasting meant to shame others, and Plutarch’s discussions of Inoffensive self-praise.]

p. 256— ‘we are weak in Him’ and his power is made perfect in his weakness. “Paul will not make the explicit statement that Christians [in general, not just Paul or apostles] share the suffering and death of Christ until Galatians.” [Of course ,this sort of reading of the development of Paul’s thought depends on the assumption that Galatians is a later letter].

p. 259— He compares Paul’s mention of 3rd heaven= paradise to 2 Enoch where the two are both mentioned but Paradise is viewed as below the 3rd heaven and is seen as an Edenic garden. In any case this ‘I knew a man who had revelations…’ passage reveals Paul as a mystic who had remarkable spiritual experiences. [No, it reveals he was a visionary, like John of Patmos, not like later mystics]. He recommends James Tabor’s dissertation entitled Things Unutterable: Paul’s Ascent to Paradise.

p. 260– 2 Cor. 12.8-9 suggest that Paul actually heard God answer his prayer— ‘my power is made perfect in your weakness’. In some sense Christ possessed him “It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me” Gal. 2.19-20 and similarly 2 Cor. 4.10 and 13.3-4. Occasionally he could declare mysteries (1 Cor. 15; Rom. 11) received probably from a revelation. Indeed, his conversion was caused by God revealing his Son ‘in me’. Gal. 1.16. But he also believed the Spirit was in him and spoke through him (1 Cor. 2.12). Paul’s spiritual gifts and power were a major source of his apostolic authority (p. 261).

pp. 262-63— Certainly Paul could mount powerful arguments, but Sanders thinks 2 Cor. 13.2-4 refers to his spiritual power derived from the indwelling Christ or his visionary experiences, power he could use to produce miracles etc. He could go to Corinth again and demonstrate God’s power, and so his own authority over his converts.

pp. 264-265— He uses the word mystic, but not in the later medieval sense of surrender of self and withdrawal into meditation and increasing otherworldliness. While he does think his converts have remarkable spiritual gifts, he does not think they could all see the Lord, as he had, or that they could become apostles or that they could receive revelations comparable to his. Indeed he thought he so had the mind of Christ and so possessed the Spirit that he could give instructions, laws on marriage etc. that partly supplemented and partly disagreed with those of Christ (2 Cor. 7).[Nope. Paul is quoting not disagreeing with Jesus. Jesus never spoke to the issue of religiously mixed marriages]. But the converts could not give rules to him. This is because Paul had an unusually close union with Christ.

p. 265— When he brags about his weakness that’s one thing. But when he tells them he is not going to tell them something about the content of his revelation, Sanders calls this the rhetorical device similar to pre-iteration, i.e. ‘I am not going to tell you how smart I am. The speaker here says what he claims he is not saying.

Sanders gives a detailed analysis of the three conversion stories in Acts on pp. 94-97 and argues that what accounts for Luke’s insistence of Paul doing things in Jerusalem soon after his conversion is Luke’s Jerusalem-centric character of Luke-Acts. [This argument however doesn’t work very well for Acts since in Acts the orientation is from Jerusalem to the world.] Sanders may be partially right that the reason Luke says the Jews were after Paul in Damascus rather than Aretas is because the Jews are always the opponents in Acts and Luke wants to clear the Roman authorities of opposition to the Way.

p. 98—“Ancient authors were well aware of the difference between truth and fiction, fantasy and reality. They did not however have the ideal of ‘the bare facts’ nor did they idealize ‘the literal truth.’ All ancient historians knew that in order to make a story flow they had to engage in creative writing, and they did it with no hesitation. They described the characters in their stories as doing the things, and especially saying the things that were appropriate to themselves and the overall historical situation….It is equally noteworthy that Luke, like every other ancient author, liked variety, and did not regard inconsistency or even contradiction as a terrible fault.” [See my Acts commentary on the character of Luke’s historical work, as opposed to what Sander’s describes here]

p. 99— Luke’s theory of apostleship was that only the 12 were apostles. But Sanders admits that Paul and Barnabas are called apostles in 14.4,14, though usually they are distinguished from the apostles. He suggests the reason Paul has to defend his apostleship so much is that he lacked some qualification in the minds of others— possibly that he had not been a disciple of Jesus. Sanders also makes much of the notion that Luke has Paul only see a light on Damascus road, not see Jesus, and refers to the subsequent vision of Jesus in Acts 22.18 as something different. He admits that in 1 Cor. 15 Paul distinguishes between the 12 and the apostles, and he sees this as different from Luke. Or at least Paul’s use of the term apostle is broader than Luke’s. Ergo, there were various definitions of apostle— 1 Cor. 15 suggests they all saw the risen Lord, 2 Cor. 8-9 suggests a wider group could be called apostles.

p. 101— In Paul’s view his vision of Jesus counted as a res. appearance. [Now Paul says nothing about having a vision of Jesus. He says that Jesus appeared to him (initiative with Jesus) as he did to others. Two things are said to validate that he is an apostle— Jesus appeared to him, and that he produced converts demonstrates he is an apostle.] Should Paul be said to have converted? Sanders says yes if by convert we mean ‘turn to something/someone new’ but unlike with the Gentiles, Paul is not turning from his previous God, the God of Israel to something else. In other words, 1 Thess. 1.9-10 describes what happened to the Gentiles but not what happened to Paul— but in both cases they turned to Jesus. Epistrepho is the Greek in 1 Thess. 1.9, 2 Cor. 3.16, Gal. 4.9.

p. 102– Sanders has the peculiar view that Romans is Paul’s last surviving letter.

p. 103—Sanders says that Paul indicates in Rom. 1 that he was sent to every kind of Gentile— Greek and non-Greek (barbarian) and that by being successful with them he hoped that he would make Israel jealous and convert some Jews too. Sanders takes the implication to be that the mission of Peter etc. to Jews had been less than successful. In other words, God was doing things in the reverse of the way people usually read the prophets— Jews return first then Gentiles come in. Rom. 15.18 makes clear he was sent to win obedience from the Gentiles.
“His job description was thus apostle to the Gentiles in the Messianic era.” (p. 105).

p. 106— Sanders suggests that Paul only realized the limitation of his ministry, that it was to Gentiles only as a result of the crisis in Jerusalem and a further crisis in Galatia. Earlier on, as he thinks 1 Cor. 9 shows, Paul had sought to convert Jews too.

BEN: Let’s address a difficult issue. You are arguing, rightly in my view, that we must understand the OT in light of its ANE contexts. Fair enough. But what happens when we realize that the OT writers are borrowing ideas and terms from mythological literature in these other cultures. Are we supposed to simply embrace the mythology as if it was reality? For example, as you point out, the ancients thought stars were heavenly beings, the heavenly host, not merely pieces of inanimate matter. We moderns in the scientific era know better. The ancient astrologers were wrong. How does one critically sift the use of ANE concepts in the OT without throwing out the baby with the bathwater so to speak? By this I mean that you want to retain the notion that there are actually ‘elohim’ out there, things we would call angels and demons today. But how does one do that without embracing that whole ancient cosmology?

MIKE: On one level, we only need to embrace the theology of the biblical writers. When they use a text, we need to discern how they are using it and why. That will tell us where they are going theologically. The example you raise about the stars not being divine beings is something we know from general revelation (science). By definition the biblical writers aren’t making scientific claims—they couldn’t since they didn’t have the tools of science. And God knew that. It was God who chose the writers and providentially prepared them to accomplish the task he assigned to them. God knew he wasn’t getting scientists or anyone who could make accurate assessment of the natural world. Once we grasp that pretty obvious fact, we need to ask ourselves whether it makes any sense to have the biblical writers making scientific truth claims in what they wrote. By definition, that’s an absurdity. And so if the Bible isn’t making scientific truth claims, we shouldn’t pretend it does and then get worried when something a writer says or believed about the natural world conflicts with real science. In other words, we don’t need to accept what the writers believed about the natural world because God didn’t ask them to make observations about it that were impossible for them to make and then present that as truth. God knew it wasn’t true, and so the Spirit wouldn’t have them present it as truth. God had his own agenda when he chose humans to produce this thing we call the Bible, and it wasn’t science lessons. His agenda items transcend science, no matter how much scientific knowledge improves—things like who he was, who we are, that we got here by his power, that he is our rightful sovereign, that he loves us, that he didn’t abandon or destroy us when we rebelled, etc. I often bring this up to folks who want to dismiss the Bible on the basis of perceived conflicts with science. I ask them why they judge the Bible negatively for not being what it wasn’t intended to be. Are they angry at their dog for not being a cat? Their grounding assumption makes no sense at all. They usually get the point.

On the other hand, what the biblical writers say about the spiritual world is beyond the tools of science. We cannot coherently use science, for example, to tell us how the heavenly host / council and God relate to each other. Science only gives us truth that the tools of science can measure or ascertain. I’d say we need to embrace what God tells us through his human agents, the writers, in the spiritual realm. The tools of science are inadequate for that. God knew that knowledge of the spiritual realm was beyond the writers and would never be gained through human scientific knowledge over time. So that information must have a divine source, and its evaluation must come through the tools of logical coherence. And I’d say the belief in God and a spiritual world where order exists has stood up pretty well when tested for philosophical and logical coherence.

We also need to guard against assuming that the means of communicating such things has an exact correspondence to literal reality. On one hand, obedience to biblical theology requires that we embrace ideas like God, his divine council, and the existence of a spiritual world, but God was content to let human writers use metaphors and symbolic language. Heaven and hell, for example, are described in geographical or directional terms, but they don’t have literal latitude and longitude. God could have cared less if embodied writers had to use such language—it served the purpose well, to affirm a spiritual realm and an afterlife. It’s the same with council language. To convey the heavenly (spiritual) nature of elohim God chose people who would use celestial language to describe such beings. Why? Because that conveyed they were not by nature terrestrial and earthly. They were from places that humans could neither reach nor live. If God chose people today to describe the spiritual world we’d use different metaphors to communicate the same ideas. But the metaphor and what it conveys don’t overlap 1:1.

BEN: As it turns out, talking about waste is not a waste of time when discussing the crosses in the streets of Pompeii. I take your point about human latrines and private toilets and the baths etc. But as you say carts pulled by animals were allowed in the streets of Pompeii, and it is unconvincing to suggest there wouldn’t be animal dung in the streets when farmers brought their produce to market in town. Yes, there may have been civic slaves with pooper scoopers of some sort, but the notion that the streets could be considered a good locale for a sacred symbolic having apotropaic function seems a stretch knowing what we know about life in an ancient city. The streets frankly were not kept pristinely clean so far as we know. Furthermore, the ancients would have had to be looking for those tiny crosses. It would not take any effort to see public shrines at intersections, but these crosses are a different story.

BRUCE:

I agree with your points about waste in the streets, having made all of them myself in the book, as you note. (Of course, the streets were not channels of oozing waste-sludge either, as popular imagination seems to have them.) But the fact that the streets were not pristinely clean is another good reason why the street crosses cannot have been directional markers to the residences of Pompeii Christians (they often wouldn’t have been visible). Moreover, it is precisely why those street crosses must have had an apotropaic quality.

The street crosses would have been utterly useless as directional markers. Once all the other options are ruled out, the only option left is that these street crosses were apotropaic devises. This was precisely the nature of many apotropaic devises – no one imagined that they needed to be seen by humans to be effective in warding off evil spirits. The ancients believed that things happened in the spiritual realms that the human eye was not privy to. Pompeian Christians would have known that the street crosses were there, and they would have derived psychological benefit from that fact, since an apotropaic device is effective even when it is not visible to the human eye.

For instance, if someone’s winter cloak inadvertently covered her apotropaic bracelet, this did not leave her vulnerable to spiritual invasion; it was not the case that she was exposed until the cloak was adjusted or removed and the apotropaion was once again visible to the suprahuman eye. If a woman wore an apotropaic bracelet, she was thought to be protected, whether or not her cloak happened to cover the apotropaic bracelet.

Similarly, to the ancient mind, suprahuman spirits feasted on sacrificial food that was left for them, even though the human eye could not perceive it; so too, suprahuman spirits could perceive the presence of apotropaic devices even when those devices were not visible to the human eye.

Precisely because the streets were not pristinely clear, the only interpretation of them that does justice to every aspect of their character is the interpretation that sees them as power symbols that align with the petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Deliver us from evil.”

This might be what Stephen Westerholm was getting at when he wrote the following (as cited in chapter 1 of The Crosses of Pompeii): “Jews and non-Jews alike had always been concerned to keep on good terms with the supernatural powers that influenced, or even controlled, their destinies. With such concerns, [the Christian] message found a natural resonance.”

BEN: I think your study has established, beyond reasonable doubt, that there were some Christians in Pompeii prior to the eruption in A.D. 79. I think you also have established that the cross was one of their important symbols, and probably one of the reasons why is apotropaic reasons. But I do doubt that ‘shelter from the storm’ was a main reason people converted to Christianity. After all, many Greco-Roman deities were claimed to offer protection from the evil eye, or evil spirits. This would not be a distinctive feature of Christianity. No, what Christianity offered was real change in a person’s life, the sort of change that the mystery religions may have offered but could not deliver.

The famous Roman satire about The Gourdification of (the Divine) Claudius is telling precisely because it ridicules an essential notion Christians held dearly – real change in human nature by divine work. It also ridicules the imperial cult notion that a human could become a God, but the issue is fundamental change in a human life. I think much depends on how much influence from Judaism guided the thoughts of the early Christians about things like the evil eye, evil spirits, etc. I can understand a Gentile Christian, say who ran the bakery in Pompeii leaving up the ‘hex signs’ of previous renters (after all it was not his place), and adding a cross to the mix, not because he saw it as a more effective warder off of evil, but because he believed Jesus had changed his life for the better, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, and given him the gift of everlasting life. It must be of some importance that Paul doesn’t really discuss demons per se in the undisputed Paulines, except in 1 Corinthians. I don’t think even his Gentile converts were all that worried about evil spirits infiltrating their homes, to judge from the numerous subjects he covers in his letters. How do you respond?

BRUCE:

Well, of course, don’t forget Galatians 3:1, where Paul taps into fear of suprahuman powers when he says, “Oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you with the evil eye” – with the evil eye being such a fearful thing for reasons we have already made clear. Paul subtly links abandonment of the message of the cross with the influence of fearful powers. And it is in the same letter that he mentions “sorcery” as one of the “works of the flesh” – a list he deemed relevant to the Galatian situation, and a list of activities and attitudes that the Spirit of God opposes (5:20).

And of course Paul ends the first half of his letter to Roman Jesus-followers speaking of all the things that will not be able to separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus, including suprahuman entities (8:38-39).

And beyond Paul’s letters, we need to account for the Synoptic Gospels as well. If they have some claim to having been written “for all Christians” in the Greco-Roman world, it is also significant that Jesus’s control of the demonic spirits is not suppressed within the recounting of those narratives. Arguably the evangelists of those Gospels expected that aspect of their narratives to resonate with the worldview of their urban audiences.

But that isn’t to take away from your point that for Paul and other early Christians, the message of the cross stood at the forefront in that process of opposing evil within transformational communities. (This, to repeat the point, is part of the force of Mark’s Gospel in relation to “the second church” of the late first century.) The good news should not be “emptied of its power,” as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:18 when attacking the factionalism of the Corinthian community who were beginning to look like a dysfunctional association of the Greco-Roman world. Clearly, as I have argued in Remember the Poor and elsewhere, Paul imagined the “power” of the good news to be played out in transformational lifestyles within the body of Christ. That transformation of lifestyle is what Paul called upon to serve as his own “letter of recommendation” (2 Corinthians 3) – his calling card, in a sense.

So couldn’t much the same transformational life have been on display within Jesus-groups in Pompeii? Of course it could have. Maybe Paul’s younger associate Jesus-groups in Pompeii? Of course it could have. Maybe Paul’s younger associate John Mark would have loved what he found if he ever ventured into a Pompeian Christian community in the 70s. The problem is that, while Pompeii gives us indicators of Jesus-devotion within its walls, it tells us very little about the character of that devotion in the corporate life of Jesus-devotees.

I think we can surmise three things about them, but each point also leaves us without complete clarity. First, I think some of Pompeian Jesus-devotees saw the cross as a means of protection against malignant forces in a spiritual battle. Were they syncretistic or exclusive in their devotion to Jesus? It’s very hard to say one way or the other.

Second, we can surmise that some Jesus-followers met in a bakery where pagan symbols resided on the walls. Do those symbols indicate a continued allegiance to standard forms of pagan devotion, or are they simply incidental? It is very hard to say one way or another.

Third, we can see from one or two of the artifacts that some saw their Jesus-devotion in relation to Isis-devotion. It is significant in this regard that devotion to the Egyptian deity Isis was catching on like wildfire in Pompeii. Similarities between the benefits offered by Isis and by Jesus Christ are really quite significant. Devotees to Isis expected to receive from her an enhanced life in the present and an animated form of life beyond death. Much the same, phenomenologically speaking, was on offer in the Christian gospel. So when two Christian crosses from Pompeii closely replicate the Ankh of Isis (except without the famous handle of the Ankh, which differentiates the cross and the Ankh), we can see that Jesus-devotees were comparing Jesus Christ to Isis. Did they think that Jesus Christ had usurped Isis and delegitimized her, or did they imagine the two deities in more of a syncretistic or symbiotic fashion? It could have gone either way.

Beyond those three things, we have no evidence about what might have transpired within the corporate life of Pompeii’s Jesus-followers. But since Christian communities were not always very good at living up to the apostolic ideal, perhaps we should not expect too much in this regard from Jesus-devotees in Pompeii, who probably never had an “apostolic visitation,” and who might only have heard “apostolic things” through the grapevine. Paul found the Corinthians filtering the “power” of the cross into typical patterns of Greco-Roman life. If that was the case for the Corinthians (with whom Paul had lived for eighteen months and upon whom he needed to lavish so much discursive attention), how much more might the same have been the case for fledgling communities of Jesus-devotion that did not enjoy the same apostolic encounters and influences?

BEN: In some ways I wish you had discussed earlier in the book, what you lay out at its conclusion, namely the precariousness felt by residents of Pompeii after the earthquake and before the eruption. That in turn, would have helped make your case for the emphasis on the apotropaic function of crosses in a perilous situation. I wondered as well if you might have considered that some Christians fleeing Rome in 49 due to the edict, may have gotten no further than Pompeii. I think you are right that Christians met in homes, and even some slaves will have come to meetings outside where they lived. The situation was more fluid than sometimes imagined. But what I also think is that the evidence from Paul suggests (with folk like Erastus and Phoebe, and fellow guild members like Priscilla and Aquila) that Paul’s strategy at least involved converting some more socially elite persons who could actually host such meetings easily enough in their homes. I’m not convinced by the notion that Christians were overwhelmingly women, slaves, minors, and the poor. I suspect there was a great cross-section of society in early Christianity, and house churches were generally led by the more socially advantaged members of the group, who for one thing could read, were literate. I agree with you that Pompeii should now be seen as a good workshop for us to rethink the social make-up of earliest Christianity. What the evidence suggests is that it was diverse, ethnically, genderwise, socio-economically, educationally, and in terms of tasks that Christians performed as well. Final thoughts about the relationship of trade guilds, say the association of bakers, and early Christian groups?

BRUCE:

The structure of an argument is always a give-and-take situation, with advantages and disadvantages to every possibility. If I had placed the section on Pompeian life between earthquake and eruption earlier in the book, some would have said, “Bad structure; make your main point first, then look to the broader issues and implications.” And that was my take on the matter too.

(By the way, I further explore the precariousness of life in Pompeii between earthquake and eruption in an article, “The Empress, The Goddess, and the Earthquake: Atmospheric Conditions Permitting Public Displays of Jesus-Devotion in Pompeii.” This will be appearing in November 2016 in a book of essays entitled Early Christianity in Pompeian Light, with contributors including Lyn Osiek, Peter Oakes, David Balch, and others.)

I entertained various scenarios regarding the arrival of Jesus-devotion in Pompeii in chapter 15 of The Crosses of Pompeii (and I entertain another one in the “Atmospheric Conditions” article). How Jesus-devotion arrived in Pompeii is an intriguing question, with some fascinating possibilities. We’ll never be able to know the answer to that conundrum with any degree of certainty, obviously, but the more possibilities we consider, the better we’ll be able to rank them in terms of their likelihood.

I hope your readers don’t get the idea from your comments that I think Jesus-devotees were all among the poor. My book Remember the Poor shows how Jesus-devotion fell along a greater socio-economic spectrum than that, and the data collected in The Crosses of Pompeii gives us insight into that spectrum in a specific location. The baker in Pompeii was not among the destitute, for instance. In my mind, I place him at ES5 on my “economy scale,” although I didn’t do that in the book itself. (ES5 is the descriptor for those slightly below the middling groups, but above those at basic subsistence level, ES6, and certainly above those in desperate poverty, ES7.)

Interestingly, a cross that I found very late in the research may have been oriented in relation to yet another bakery in Pompeii; I haven’t been able to study that scenario in any depth, since I discovered that cross only in my final minutes of my last visit to Pompeii (adding only a few sentences about that street cross to The Crosses of Pompeii, which was already with the publisher when the discovery was made). But if that cross operated in relation to yet another bakery, it might well be significant that we have two Pompeian bakers adopting Jesus-devotion. Might an association of Pompeii bakers have been one way in which Jesus-devotion spread within Pompeii?

Along similar lines, I demonstrated how a personal ring worn by a man named Meges included two symbols pertaining to Jesus-devotion. Meges was probably a slave, and his ring would have been used to authorize business transactions on behalf of his master. This would make Meges some kind of manager for his master’s household. People of Meges’s socio-economic profile frequently had certain social freedoms and economic reserves of their own (as I demonstrate in chapter 15). So here we have a slave who had adopted Jesus-devotion, but he was a certain social freedoms and economic reserves of their own (as I demonstrate in chapter 15). So here we have a slave who had adopted Jesus-devotion, but he was a managerial slave rather than a menial slave.

On the other hand, we might have evidence of some Jesus-followers who lived in a rather precarious economic situation. I’m thinking here of the residents of a very small workshop (at location 6.17.22 in Pompeii) who, in all likelihood, were freedpersons. Judging from their tiny workshop and residence, they were most likely simply getting by, with few economic reserves, being economically vulnerable to the slightest downturn in their overall circumstances (i.e., ES6).

Anyway, this is just to say that the artifacts of Jesus-devotion in Pompeii go beyond simply being the only material evidence of “the first urban Christians” (to use Wayne Meeks’s phrase); they also allow us to glimpse the diversity of those who chose to adopt devotion to Jesus Christ in a predominately pro-Roman urban center of the first century.