BEN: Let’s talk about apotropaic symbols, symbols meant to either ward off evil spirits and bad luck, or to encourage good luck to happen at a particular venue, or for particular people. Christians will immediately think of the blood on the lintel in the Exodus, or even the hex signs on barns in Amish country, when they think of warding off bad things. To what degree do you think devout Christians continued to carry forward such practices as they became more and more socialized into the new faith, and to what degree do you think they began to see this as superstition? Think for example about the discussion in Corinth about what would formerly have been seen as actual daemons, but now some were saying— ‘are no gods’. Would you say that Jewish believers were less likely than Gentile ones to continue to practice such superstitions when they became followers of Jesus…. Or do we have little basis for judging such a matter?

BRUCE:

There may have been an array of attitudes toward the use of protective devises among Christians. But one thing is pretty certain: as ancient artifacts and literary evidence testify, it was not uncommon for Christians throughout the pre-modern eras to make use of Christian symbols as apotropaic devices that enhanced their protection against evil spirits.

For instance, I own a Christian ring from the fourth or fifth century that displays the shape of the cross through the use of the ubiquitous “eye” that repels the evil eye (with the evil eye being understood as tapping into the power of evil spirits to disadvantage someone for the benefit of someone else). Was the owner of that protective ring an exception to the norm of Christian attitudes toward apotropaia? I don’t know if we can be sure of the percentages one way or another, but I doubt it.

Notice, though, that we cannot gauge the exclusivity of someone’s Christian devotion simply on the basis of whether he or she made use of Christian symbols as apotropaic devices against evil. It might be that a person of that kind was syncretistic, adding Jesus-devotion to a long list of commitments to various deities.

On the other hand, maybe not. That person might have been exclusively devoted to Jesus Christ and might have foresworn all other deities, while still making use of protective apotropaia.

In this regard, ancient forms of Judeo-Christian monotheism did not entail the denial of the existence of all superhuman forces except for the one God. Ancient Judeo-Christian “monotheism” was not the affirmation that only one suprahuman being exists (as we moderns frequently imagine); instead, ancient Judeo-Christian monotheism was primarily the practice of mono-devotion – that is, devotion to only one deity, even if there were thought to be other suprahuman entities.

Take the apostle Paul, for instance. When discussing idolatry in 1 Corinthians 8-10, Paul commented that “there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as in fact there are many gods and many lords” (1 Cor 8:5), and later he states that he does not want the Corinthians to be “partners with demons” (1 Cor 10:20). The suprahuman world was alive and well for Paul. But he also insisted that “for us there is one God” (8:6). His practice of mono-devotion did not rule out the existence of other suprahuman entities. Of course, I don’t imagine that Paul himself clung to apotropaic devices for protection from those suprahuman entities; but it would not be hard to imagine that newly converted Christians, who had been immersed in pagan ways all their days, may have connected the dots differently than Paul did.

We can’t rule that out even for Jews of the Greco-Roman world who placed their belief in Jesus Christ. Jews often made use of apotropaic symbols along with their pagan neighbors, so again we see that monotheism itself doesn’t rule out the use of apotropaia. An ancient Christian, whether Jewish or gentile, might well have been exclusive in his or her devotion to Jesus Christ and still have seen the need to use Christian symbols to ward off evil.

BEN: On p. 194 you discuss the little white stones between the main paving stones in the streets at Pompeii. My guides have always said these stone reflected the light at night that a traveler would be carrying so they would not stumble and fall, rather like reflective materials on our highways. You don’t mention this theory. What do you think of it?

BRUCE:

Well, I’m a bit dubious about that. Those quarter-sized white marble inserts spaced between paving stones had no real reflective quality to speak of, and probably couldn’t act like little mirrors, which wouldn’t really have augmented the light from lanterns anyway. And the inserts appear only in a very specific location of the town, on a very small stretch of road between the entrance to the temple of Venus and the entrance to the temple of Apollo. If they were precursors to the street light, we would expect white marble inserts to have been placed in the streets throughout the town. But we don’t. So I don’t think the “light reflectors” interpretation has merit. But I’m willing to be proven wrong.

And of course, it should be pointed out to your readers that this issue has really no bearing on the main argument of the book – in case they were wondering how this little issue pertains to the issue of Jesus-devotion in Pompeii.

BEN: One of the topics broached at length in this study is the issue of syncretism. In fact a good deal of what you say reminds me of the interesting study by Ramsay McMullen, one of his last books entitled The Second Church, where, instead of going with the ‘multiple Christianities’ model of Ehrman, he argues instead, and I think rightly for a two levels sort of early Christianity– at the lay level there was considerable syncretism, especially as seen in the funerary practices of ordinary Christians which he documents very well (see also 1 Cor. 15 and the baptism for the dead). At the level of the leadership, and the praxis that went on in the ‘first church’ and well before Constantine, we find a much less broad spectrum of belief and praxis like unto the orthodoxy and orthopraxy advocated by the writers of the NT (as distinguished from say, the Judaizers, the libertines, the syncretists). The voices of the NT do not represent the full spectrum in the early church, but they do represent the official voice, the voice that prevailed even long before Nicaea, while ordinary Christians continued to wear their amulets, worry about untoward spirits and the like. What do you think of this argument, and have you interacted somewhere with McMullen’s case?

BRUCE:

Funny you should mention MacMullen. I have an article coming out later this year entitled “Mark’s Gospel for the Second Church of the Late First Century.” Obviously, for that article I have adopted a strong dose of MacMullen’s argument (although I’m not quite convinced that we can accurately designate “the second church” of the second through fourth centuries as comprising 95% of Christians, as MacMullen does).

The differentiation between what you call “the lay level” and “the leadership” does seem to have been a reality, not only in the years 200-400 that MacMullen outlines, but even in the first century, when there are plenty of indicators that “the second church” was alive and well. It was to “the second church” that “the apostolic voice” (as I like to call it) was frequently addressed – the “apostolic voice” that we hear in the texts of the New Testament and beyond (although even there, the voice was expressed within a spectrum of some diversity).

My essay suggests that Mark’s Gospel fits perfectly into this scenario, as the much-needed “apostolic voice” that sought to correct “the second church” of the late first century. It is easy to interpret the first half of Mark’s Gospel as tapping into the desire for spiritual power and protection of the “second church” but then, in the second half, harnessing that desire in relation to an exclusive devotion to Jesus Christ and a cruciform pattern of discipleship.

It was when the Pompeii pieces of first-century Jesus-devotion fell into place that I came to a new appreciation of Mark’s Gospel. The old adage that Mark’s Gospel links a “theology of glory” to a “theology of the cross” (with a variety of scholarly variations on that theme) came alive with new urgency, in light of what I was finding about Jesus-devotion in Pompeii, where Jesus-devotion seems intricately tied to strategies of protection in a dangerous world. Against this backdrop, Mark’s Gospel is not simply an interesting theological contribution to Christian discourse but is an urgent corrective to the “second church” of the first century – the sort of thing that we might be seeing in Pompeii, and if in Pompeii, no doubt elsewhere as well. (Of course, Mark’s Gospel may well have been doing other things as well, but if it was a text written “for all Christians” [to use Richard Bauckham’s term], the Pompeian data opens up one vista in which see one application of its potential impact in its original setting.)

BEN: Your discussion of the Hebrew +, or Taw, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet used on ossuaries and elsewhere to signify God’s property and the devotion of the person in question is fascinating. (It of course flatly contradicts the Talpiot tomb folks who think that the + symbol must indicate a Christian tomb, even a tomb of Jesus himself, with bones intact.) I wrote you an email asking if you had considered not only the connection between Ezekiel’s mark on the saints and the + and the reference in Rev. 7, but also the possibility that John in Revelation envisions not the + or Taw but the Omega or even Alpha and Omega mark as the one the saints bear (since the alpha and omega is predicated of both the Father and the Son in Revelation). This would contrast quite nicely with the mark of the beast on the Emperor worshippers. What do you think?

BRUCE:

I’m not sure about your idea in particular, but then again, nothing would surprise me in this regard. The first-century world of religious symbolism was extremely rich. Jews and Christians frequently probed deeply into symbolism that they found embedded within Jewish scripture and tradition.

And the more you dig around in the ancient world, the more you recognize that what seems extraordinary to us was not out of the ordinary for people of the past. Some ancient people appreciated theological connections of the most subtle and intricate kinds. I tried to demonstrate this in relation to Luke’s Gospel in my little book, Hearing the Silence, which argues that the Lukan evangelist expected his audience to explore subtle theological connections – both intratextual connections within his narrative and intertextual connections beyond it (especially with reference to Psalm 91).

But pride of place in this regard is the book of Revelation. I often think that anyone interested in exploring the religious imagination of a first-century creative mind needs to start by reading through Richard Bauckham’s book The Climax of Prophecy. It is a fascinating study of that text, demonstrating just how creatively

agile an ancient mind could be in terms of making theological connections between resources within the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Q12.BEN: It seems obvious enough that the Pastorals do call leaders and others to both good service of their fellow Christians, and to not be greedy. You give us various examples from Xenophon and elsewhere about how people sought the priesthood of Artemis for material gain, and I don’t doubt that. For the wealthy that was not always a primary motive, they were more looking for honor and publicity, and performing ‘liturgies’ to increase their honor rating. But there is another side to the Greco-Roman literature, for example what we find in Seneca, Epictetus, and later Stoics like Marcus Aurelius who also speak against greed and being self-serving all the time. My point is, I don’t think it would be seen as totally counter-cultural to attack greed and selfish behavior. There were noble Greeks and Romans who would offer the same critique. But perhaps what you are saying is that this seems to have been an endemic problem with the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, and so this critique would have struck a nerve with some of the more wealthy Christians in Ephesus, who may have assumed it was business as usual, only now with a different religion? I certainly take your point that the one true God is to be seen as the real and ultimate benefactor of all, and the false gods are not, and so in this respect the argument is counter-cultural.

A12.GARY: As we continue this lively dialogue, I agree with your assessment that moral philosophers spoke against self-serving vices like greed. The point I have endeavored to make is that the cultural rules that dictated normatively accepted behavior, that is to say, giving was expected to follow the benefactor model, and that model is abandoned by the author of 1 Timothy in a way that follows the directive that Luke records Jesus gave to the disciples.

With you I concur that “love of honor” marks a leading motivator for the wealthy. Sure! They participated in the benefactor model to get accolades and accompanying perks. What we see in the world of 1 Timothy is the command to abandon it. The benefactor model that was accepted culturally is explicitly prohibited in the Word benefactor model that was accepted culturally is explicitly prohibited in the Word (cf. 1 Tim 6:17). So the command to the rich must be viewed as counter cultural.

Follow the shift: the benefactor model, with all its virtues (celebrated as good by ancient writers) and vices (trumpeted as bad by sources such as those you note) is tossed out altogether! That’s the shift! Why abandon the model? The attitude (high-mindedness) that characterized the rich givers must never be linked to followers of Christ because God does not share glory. No longer are people the ones who provide all things for people to enjoy as the epigraphic evidence claims. The author of 1 Timothy boldly announces God as the source of all of all things.

In exploring the semantic domain of the world of benefaction, like Bruce Winter wisely notes (Seek the Welfare of the City, 26-27), the charge to the rich does read like a benefaction inscription, but sends an entirely different message than promised in inscriptions in the culture. Those inscriptions called them to do acts of beneficence to advance their own honor and get stuff in return. The rich must behave differently to advance God’s honor and to take hold of life as God intends.

There’s yet another distinction between our positions. The moral philosophers saw the world through a polytheistic lens and the teachings in 1 Timothy come from a monotheistic framework. The ancient Greco-Roman mindset had room for many God’s and preserving the honor of the local deity above all others. In this light, moral philosophers differ from the author of 1 Timothy greatly.

Lastly, at least for now, evidence for my final point surfaces in Acts 19. It’s not surprising to me that the locals who serve Artemis cry “foul” against followers of Christ. If the behavior of the followers of Christ was culturally accepted, there would have been no uproar. Their behavior can be demonstrated as obedient to the teachings in 1 Timothy (and the rest of the NT) and the opposite of the voices in the cultural setting from moral philosophers to the poets and historians.

In 2013 Sam Siciliano published ‘The Grimswell Curse’ a precursor, as it turns out to his ‘The White’. The relationship between these two novels is rather like the relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus. There are some differences, but the story lines are also remarkably similar in various respects. In both novels we have a Damsel in distress who needs to be rescued from a rapacious relative, an overbearing aunt of sorts, that wants the girl’s fortune and house etc. The root cause of the problem is in part in both novels ‘the entail’ which regularly left women in the lurch and allowed only men to inherit. Hence, the ‘he married her for her money’ cry was hardly rife in the Victorian era, but in these two tales, things are not as per usual. In this novel again we have Sherlock, and Drs. Henry and Michelle Vernier on the case, and this time going to another God forsaken landscape in boonies— in this case in Dartmoor, famous for the Hound of the Baskersville tale. This novel has no faux Druids in it and no conger eels, instead like in the Baskerville tale it has a monstrous hound, which keeps ripping people’s throats out. But to whom does it belong? And is there really a Grimswell curse? Holmes of course is agnostic about God, and more that dubious about demons and curses and the Devil himself, called ‘Old Scratch’ in this novel (the very term my great uncle from Mississippi used to use). This novel also shares with the White Worm mystery good atmospheric qualities, and it is long on description. and perhaps a little better on plot than the later novel. It is also long on the Harlequin romance factor, in a sort of Victorian vein. One of the better features in this novel however is that it is not so predictable as the other one. There is some misdirect in this novel, and you are left guessing who the ultimate villain is in the tale. One also gets a strong feel for how very alone Victorians who lived in cavernous ancient houses with very few friends or relatives there with them must have felt. As King Arthur once asked ‘What do the simple folk do’ without TV, internet, cell phones, video games, technology of any real sort, modern medicine, and so on. As it turns out, while they could certainly get lonely, they were not like spoiled moderns who complain about boredom all the time. As Holmes would say— ‘boredom is the state of mind for those who lack imagination’. Just so.

I enjoyed this novel, which is a bit shorter than the other one, and a bit less predictable, and so I’ll give it a high B rating. There is murder most foul, damsels in distress, romance and greed, a garish Victorian setting, and of course the deductive powers of Holmes. What more could one want?

Q9.BEN: Gary there is a lot of good detailed work in this book with both the primary and secondary sources, how long did it take you to research and write this book and get it into print?

A9.GARY: 10 years spanning from 2006 to 2015. Here’s a summary of the journey.

(2006) I began my PhD work at Trinity College (Bristol University) looking at riches in 1 Timothy. I was privileged to have Philip Towner serve as my advisor. That same year Towner had just published the NICNT commentary, The Letters to Timothy and Titus. It was about 900 pages. I remember our first meeting. Towner instructed me to spend my first year “mining” his bibliography associated with the texts in 1 Timothy where riches were in view. That led me to engage with a wide array of secondary sources and also introduced me to key primary sources.

(2007) After my first year I described the divided state of scholarship with the term “authorshipwreck” because it seemed like the engagement of scholars orbited primarily around debating views of authorship rather than dynamics within the biblical text. Towner rightly urged me to avoid the issue altogether, which I did, because no one can prove Paul wrote 1 Timothy based on the evidence available to us. I also put forth that debate swirled around rare language, so as I have mentioned in prior posts, he sent me to Yale to meet with Abraham Malherbe. I was to ask him how he unlocked the medical imagery of Paul. What I learned in that meeting would eventually lead me to Ephesiaca.

Dr. Malherbe told me to bring my Greek New Testament, a pen and paper, and a tape recorder to our meeting in his home. In four hours we walked through 1 Timothy in Greek. Every three or four verses he would stop and share how a term or theme appeared in primary sources. I asked him where he got his knowledge. He told me that his daily routine entailed reading some piece of ancient evidence to deepen his knowledge of the world of the New Testament, much like a person reads a daily newspaper. Then he told me, “Gary, if you want to unlock the rare language of 1 Timothy in texts with riches in view, don’t search ancient material. Everybody searches it. Read it and you will find what you are looking for.”

(2008) That sent me on a journey to explore numismatic, epigraphic, literary, and other forms of primary evidence for more than a year. I found the coins fascinating to explore. Then I purchased a set of the ten volumes of Die Inschriften von Ephesos from Austria, and explored the world of the inscriptions. You start learning what a society values by reading what is repeatedly set in stone!

(2009) When I turned to literary evidence, my reading led me to examine various LCL volumes with Ephesian provenance. Ephesiaca was not in the Loeb, so I first read it in Collected Ancient Greek Novels by B.P. Reardon. New Testament scholars had scantly referenced it because from about 1726 (when the editio princeps came into view) it was thought to be a second or third century document. I read Ephesiaca first in English then in Greek on TLG.

I was thrilled to find the elusive term used in 1 Tim 2:9-10 (associated with the prohibited coiffure for women) appeared in the first section of the story. Ephesian women were wearing it to show their piety to the goddess Artemis. I wondered to myself about the dating of this story again. Might this be my contribution? Then I discovered that classical scholar, James O’Sullivan, had demonstrated through composition analysis that Ephesiaca should be dated to the mid-first century CE, rather than the second or third century CE. This placed it around the same timeframe as Luke locates the ministry of the Apostle Paul in Ephesus. Consequently, I determined the formal title for my PhD as “The Teachings on Riches in 1 Timothy in Light of Ephesiaca by Xenophon of Ephesus.”

About this same timeframe, the LCL published Ephesiaca under the title “Anthia and Habrocomes” in Daphnis and Chloe by Longus; Anthia and Habrocomes by Xenophon of Ephesus edited by Jeffrey Henderson (LCL 69; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009). In the introduction to this edition, Henderson affirmed the likeliness of an earlier date. This meant I did not need to use space within my thesis to argue for the dating of Ephesiaca. I would introduce this fresh evidence and use it alongside ancient sources to revisit five texts in 1 Timothy.

(2010) My upgrade viva at Trinity College (Bristol University) went smoothly with Andrew Clarke (Aberdeen) and Robert Dutch (Bristol Baptist College). Both encouraged me to complete this task. Clarke also directed me to an article he had recently written (“Do Not Judge Who Is Worthy and Unworthy: Clement’s Warning Not to Speculate about the Rich Young Man’s Response,” JSNT 31 (2009): 447– 68). He rightly predicted that it contained clues that would help connect my study of 1 Timothy 6:17-19 with the Rich Man in Mark 10.

By this juncture in the journey, I had written the introduction and the first two chapters of the BBRS 11 volume. My introduction contained the raw material from my original survey of literature. The bulk of the work for Chapter One and Chapter Two of BBRS 11 was also done. From this point, I used Ephesiaca to help read 1 Timothy 2:9-10 in the larger literary context of 1 Timothy 2:9-15. I submitted the core content (about 12,000 words) of Chapter Three of the BBRS 11 volume by the end of the year to Philip Towner as well as to my internal advisor, Stephen Finamore (principal of Bristol Baptist) for review.

(2011) What happened next had the potential to derail my entire project. While sitting in the UK preparing to meet with Finamore, I learned via Skype that two biopsies had revealed that wife had breast cancer. She’s really the one to thank for any contribution this volume makes, because she urged me not to pause my research but to finish it regardless of the outcome of her cancer journey. When I sat down with Finamore at a favorite pub, I will never forget his assessment of this submission (Chapter Three). He threw it on the table and exclaimed: “Gary, this is game-changing for 1 Timothy scholarship!” I thanked him and shared about my wife, Jenni. He pledged to support me to see my project to completion with minimal

(2012) If there is gratitude for any shine to this work, I owe that to Towner and Finamore because I spent the entire next year polishing it. Towner urged me to make it perfect because this would be my humble contribution to future readers of 1 Timothy so make it great! He was ruthless in a constructive kind of way. He would recount that he was treating me like Marshall had worked with him. Beyond my wife reading excerpts of the manuscript, only Towner and Finamore knew of this work.

(2013) As the doctoral program at Trinity College (Bristol University) was a 6-8 year programme, it was time to submit early in the year. I interacted with Abraham Malherbe about a month before my final submission, and he was looking forward to reading my work. Then about the time I submitted I learned he had suddenly passed away. Oh how I had wanted to share my thesis with him and get his feedback.

We scheduled my final viva in June with Larry Kreitzer (Oxford) and David Wenham (Trinity College) as my primary and internal examiners. I will never forget their first question in the viva. “Where did you find this?” I proceeded to tell the story I am recounting here. As Kreitzer was an artefactual expert, I appreciated his interaction with my work and his suggestions for publishing, including images of coins to reinforce my argument. Likewise, Wenham affirmed my work. They approved my PhD with typographical errors that I fixed that afternoon.

(2014) I would receive my diploma at the next Academic Awards ceremony slated for February of the following year. Shortly thereafter, my wife hosted a PhD party and Craig Blomberg (NT scholar and friend from my days as VP at Denver Seminary) was among the attendees. Blomberg asked if he could take a copy of my thesis home to read in March. He emailed me in May to declare his enthusiastic support and offered to champion getting it published. Since he was associate editor of the BBRS series, I agreed to release it in that collection. The rest is, as they say, history.

(2015) Blomberg suggested areas to strengthen the thesis, such as Chapter Three where I expanded the view from 1 Timothy 2:9-10 to include 1 Timothy 2:9-15. That required some additional research. I also had to reformat the whole project, and considering it had 880 footnotes, it was not a small undertaking. In the end, BBRS 11 was deemed a clean manuscript by Eisenbrauns, and soon, it was released.

I embarked on this journey to see what Paul wanted Timothy to understand about handling riches to enhance my ability to teach seminary students what God’s Word says about money. I gained that and more by God’s grace.

I pray all future readers of 1 Timothy benefit from the knowledge I gained, especially as it pertains to texts that had been difficult to read and interpret. That’s my story. Thanks for acknowledging the detailed work. It was the fruit of hard work, priceless support from amazing people, and most notably, the grace of God.

(2011) What happened next had the potential to derail my entire project. While sitting in the UK preparing to meet with Finamore, I learned via Skype that two

John Grisham is too well known for his full length legal thrillers to need any introduction, but what is less well known is that he is an excellent short story writer as well, as is demonstrated amply in the seven short stories which comprise Ford County. Some southern writers have proved to be much better at short stories than novels (e.g. O. Henry) and others much better at novels than short stories (e.g. Walker Percy), but Grisham is ambidextrous as a writer, and these stories are just excellent. They are morality plays in miniature with a decided concern for justice, and a wry sense of humor about life’s incongruities and unfairness. The setting for these stories is the same as his first novel, A Time to Kill, which he could hardly get anyone to buy at first— hawking it at book clubs, garden clubs, country clubs, and whatever venue in Mississippi would listen to his spiel. Needless to say, perseverance paid off for this ole Mississippi boy and sometime lawyer turned writer.

For 354 pages one is immersed once again in the life of small town deep South with all its problems and promise, all its petty and pretty ways. Here is the description of these tales on Amazon: “Each story explores different themes-mourning, revenge, justice, acceptance, evolution-but all flirt with the legal profession, the staple of (former attorney) Grisham’s oeuvre. Fans will be excited to settle back into Grisham’s world, and these easily digestible stories don’t disappoint, despite their brevity. Full of strong characters, simple but resonant plot lines, and charming Southern accents, this collection is solid throughout; though his literary aspirations may seem quaint, Grisham succeeds admirably in his crowd-pleasing craft while avoiding pat endings or oversimplifying (perhaps best exemplified in “Michael’s Room,” which finds a lawyer facing the consequences of successfully defending a doctor against a malpractice suit). As always, Grisham balances his lawyerly preoccupations with a deep respect for his undereducated and overlooked characters.”

As a Southerner myself, and one who writes in this genre (see my forthcoming novel Southern Discomfort out in late May, what I really appreciate about Grisham’s stories is that he avoids caricature and type casting in his cast of characters. Yes, there are rogues and roustabouts aplenty, there is ‘trailer trash’ as they call themselves, and southern gentry, but the characters do not always play to type or in predictable ways, and Grisham has a knack for showing the good side of even an unlikable person, and the bad side of even those who are morally upright. Grisham knows small town Southern life all too well, with its gossip, and wheeling an dealing, and racism, and tragedies and triumphs. Like Flannery O’ Connor he can write in a humorous way while unmasking human hubris and follow (see the story called ‘Casino’) and he can write with great empathy (see the story called ‘Michael’s Room’). He certainly subscribes to the notion that it is regularly true that ‘your sins will eventually find you out’ or have to be paid for.

If you’re not sure you’re up for novel length Grisham, here’s an excellent place to start to get the full flavor of his Southern style and wit and wisdom.

Q7.BEN: The discussion of 1 Tim. 3.1-14 is equally interesting. I’m not convinced however that these character descriptions are all that counter-cultural here. Some of them perhaps are, but not all of them, and in particular the one about not being a money-grubber was also a known negative criteria for pursuing the offices of the priesthood in pagan temples including the temple of Artemis. In one sense it is irrelevant that one can find examples of greedy priests, whether pagan or Jewish. These are not examples of the criteria, but violators of the criteria. The NT warns against greedy Christian prophets and teachers as well. Furthermore, the univira epitaph inscriptions about women, and about men being a ‘one woman man’ or vice versa show that Gentiles did highly regard this aspect of faithfulness to one’s spouse, even if many didn’t achieve it. So on the whole, I would say that the ethic of the NT, including in the Pastorals is what Paul says in Phil. 4.8— the culture’s values must be sifted, but some of them can be affirmed, and some will certainly need to be rejected. In short, the ethic is not purely counter-cultural anywhere in the NT. I agree that we don’t have a capitulation to the culture as Dibelius thought was happening, but it also doesn’t involve a complete rejection of it either. How do you respond?

GARY: Where people stumble in reading 1 Tim 3:1-14 is that they wrongly assume just because other posts in antiquity required character traits as qualifications, that it was true with religious posts too. The evidence demonstrates otherwise. The pathway to priestly service in the Ephesian context was not based on character but on noble birth. Let me say it again, because you can’t miss this. All the evidence points to noble birth as the cultural rule, which is why greedy people could ascend to and keep such posts in perpetuity.

Consequently, we would expect to find corrupt money-grubbers in the temple of Artemis. In fact, we do! Additionally, in Ephesiaca, Xenophon of Ephesus offers a fresh testimony of the pious pretenders officiating religious rituals. Further evidence such as the curetes lists (cf. chart on page 112 of my BBRS 11 volume) reveals that wealthy, powerful families held a grip on priestly roles, and various inscriptions attest that they maintained these posts through dedicated service to the temple cult (despite their greed and poor stewardship as their behavior put the fiscal stability of the temple at risk in at least one first century instance).

Just because faithful stewardship and the absence of greed were celebrated in other roles does not mean they were celebrated in qualifications lists linked to religious service. That’s the point of this chapter in my BBRS volume. Again, the evidence associated with this cultural setting points to noble birth as the criteria for appointments to spiritual service, not upright character. In that light, the character-based criteria that come into view in 1 Tim 3:1-14 must be read as counter-cultural when compared to the social and religious norms in the Ephesian setting.

Here is the original form of the article I wrote for CT which appeared in their March 18th issue…….

AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION— Mark 5.21-43

Ben Witherington, III

There are all sorts of miracle stories in the Gospel of Mark—exorcisms (which are common in Mark and completely absent in John), nature miracles such as the feeding of the 5,000, healings of various sorts, and of course raising the dead. In Mark 5.21-43 we are presented with Jesus as both the healer and the raiser of the dead. Both of these miracles are meant to help persons return to normal life and are not used by Jesus to ‘prove’ who he is. We will say more about that shortly.

The story of Jairus and the Jewess in Mark 5.21-43 is a classical example of Mark’s use of the ‘sandwich’ technique of editing, in which he begins one story, inserts a second tale into the middle of telling the first story, and then finishes the first story. Part of the point of this rhetorical technique is to get the listener to consider the relationship between the two stories and what their similarities and differences are. In fact, both stories in this segment of Mark 5 are about women in distress, one an older woman who has had an issue of blood for twelve years, and the other a tale about a girl who had only lived as long as the older woman had been continually bleeding. The older woman had suffered greatly, and presumably had been seen as unclean by those who knew about her malady, whereas the young girl dies during the course of this narrative. The issue of ritual uncleanness is not foregrounded in this passage but it is latent. A woman was considering ritually unclean during her menstrual period, and if one had a continual flow of such blood, one was considered continually unclean. Corpse uncleanness is the sort of ritual impurity Jairus’ daughter would have confronted Jesus with, but Jesus has no concerns about ‘contamination’ in either case. His healing power not only negates but overcomes not merely ritual impurity but the very causes of ritual impurity. Not even death can stop him. In both cases, it is Jesus the healer to the rescue, but in different ways.

The emotional gestalt of both stories is desperation, desperation in an age where medicine was a primitive art, and often ineffective. People died of things we can’t imagine them dying of in the twenty first century. But transcending the fear and peril and desperation there is also the theme of faith and miraculous healing. One of the things that is most interesting about Jesus is that his miracles are always intermittent acts of compassion.

Jesus doesn’t put those mighty acts on his day to day ‘to-do’ list, he is just responding to the needs presented to him as he went around preaching and teaching. Mk. 1.38 tells us, from near the beginning of that Gospel, that Jesus saw his mission as preaching and teaching. This is why he went from place to place, sharing the Good News. But when he was confronted with a physical need, he stopped to heal. What makes the story in Mark 5 so intriguing is that Jesus, on the way to heal one woman, is delayed when he is confronted with the need to help another. It is one miracle tale inside of another, neither of which were part of the original plan for the day, apparently. And ironically, the first miracle which causes the delay, makes the second one appear to come too late.
The relationship between faith and healing is a complex one in the Gospels. Sometimes Jesus heals in response to the faith of a needy person, sometimes he heals before they have faith, sometimes he responds to the faith of others who bring the ill or injured person to Jesus, and sometimes he simply heals with no faith to speak of mentioned in the story. Faith is not a pre-requisite for healing, but there is obviously a positive correlation between faith and healing by which I mean that faith seems to make a person more ready or receptive to the possibility of healing. The opposite of this can be seen in Mk. 6.5-6 where the lack of faith, or better said the willful disbelief was an impediment to Jesus doing healing in his home town.

Notice that in fact Jesus is not satisfied with just any kind of faith. The woman who thinks she can be healed by touching the garment of the magic man needs her faith elevated to a personal level— so Jesus tells her that it was not the touching of the robe of a holy man that healed her, but rather her faith in Jesus’ ability to heal which has rescued her. In this story ‘saved’ means ‘healed’, it does not have its later Christian spiritual connotations. Vs. 30 is one of the most intriguing verses in all the Gospels. It suggests Jesus is a repository of healing power, it is virtually oozing out of him in response to those who reach out to him with even a modicum of belief or faith. Many in the crowd brushed up against Jesus, but only one reached out in faith. Unfortunately we see all too many examples of inadequate types of faith today— for example ‘word of faith’ or ‘name it and claim it’ notions that suggest that if one simply believes sincerely or powerfully enough one can ask anything of God and he is forced to dispense it.

Unfortunately for this approach it is sub-Biblical, and it is simply not true. If we ask for God to give us something that is against his will for our lives, or worse against God’s warnings about things like greed, wealth and the like in the Bible, we cannot “make God an offer he can’t refuse”. God is not a cosmic waiter or genie chanting “your wish is my command”.
But what of the story of Jairus’ daughter, the one Jesus had originally set out to help while she was ill? Tragically, she died during the delay in Jesus’ reaching Jairus’ house. One can only imagine how despondent Jairus and his wife must have become at that moment— there was a remedy in the vicinity, and yet, it seemed it arrived too late. As I said, one of the themes binding the two healing stories together is faith. And so when the tragic news comes to Jairus telling him to not bother Jesus any more since the girl has just died, Jesus says to Jairus “don’t be afraid; just believe” (vs. 36).

Notice that Jesus does not allow anyone into the room where Jairus’ daughter lies dead, except Peter, James and John, and the girl’s parents. Jesus doesn’t use miracles to prove who he is, they are simply acts of compassion. He’s not interested in wowing people into the Kingdom, and in fact you can’t impress people into the Kingdom. Amazement is not the same as faith. There are plenty of places in the Gospels where we are told that the crowds were amazed, but this is distinguished from those who believe. Believing leads to seeing, but the reverse is often not the case.

As for texts like Mk. 2.10-11, they do not demonstrate that Jesus uses miracles to coerce people into faith. In fact, what he says there is that ‘in order that you might believe the Son of Man has the power to forgive sins’ I will help this man regain the ability to walk. In other words, the miracle is subsumed under the heading of the more important matter—believing Jesus can forgive sins. It is not the physical miracle that ‘proves’ who Jesus is. After all, both older prophets like Elijah and later disciples like Peter performed miracles and this did not prove they were the Messiah. No, it is the message of the Good News about repentance, forgiveness, and everlasting life that Jesus says is the focus of his mission.

Notice as well that Jesus refers to the state of the little girl as ‘sleeping’. This was a term used as a euphemism for death by early Jews who believed in resurrection. Death was no more permanent than sleep if you believed in resurrection. It was something you came back from refreshed and renewed. It is not a belief that the dead are snoozing in the afterlife. Notice as well in vs. 39 the laughter when Jesus says the girl is ‘asleep’. This is probably the reaction not of cynical family members but of the hired mourners who were paid a fee to come and mourn the dead and play sad music at the locale where it happened.

The story ends of course with Jesus speaking to the corpse in Aramaic, saying ‘little girl arise’ and then immediately, or as the KJV used to say ‘strait way’ she stood up, began to walk around, and Jesus instructed those present to give her some food, but also gave strict orders to tell no one about what happened. Jesus was not concerned about getting the credit or a reputation of being a wonder worker, he was only concerned about the little girl getting the cure, and he wanted her, as much as possible to go back to her normal life without becoming an object of gossip and gawking.

It has often been noted that one of the major themes of our earliest Gospel, Mark’s Gospel, is the Messianic secret motif. Jesus silences demons and human beings, including even disciples when they speak publicly about who Jesus is. In some cases this seems to be because Jesus wants to define himself on his own terms, and the terms other people are using may be true but are inadequate. Sometimes Jesus doesn’t want a credit reference from a demon! Sometimes it is a matter of timing— Jesus will reveal his identity in his own good time. I suspect the main reason Jesus used the Son of Man language to speak of himself is because it was not the common language used in messianic speculations of that era. Jesus would carve out his own niche and not try to fit into people’s preconceived notions about the Messiah.

This story took on new flesh for me in a dramatic way, when four years ago our thirty two year old precious daughter Christy was suddenly found dead in her apartment only a few days after she had been here in Lexington celebrating my 60th birthday. She was felled by a pulmonary embolism, which no one knew she was in any danger of having. Suddenly, I had that same sinking feeling that Jairus and his wife must have had when I got that shocking midnight call from Durham N.C. that Christy had gone to be with the Lord. Having a child die prematurely is every caring parent’s perpetual nightmare. Part of my grieving and self-therapy was to tell this in a little ebook for CT called ‘When a Daughter Dies’.
But it was not just that I suddenly identified with Jairus. It was that Jesus’ Aramaic words suddenly had a galvanizing effect on me. When people ask me if I am looking forward to going to heaven and being with Christy and my other loved ones when I die, I reply that while that would be great and may well happen (though the Bible says nothing about physical family reunions in heaven), what I’m really looking forward to is when Jesus comes back and raises the dead.

I’m hoping on that Easter sequel day to hear him say these very words once more— ‘Talitha koumi’ to my Christy, so I can once more embrace her and kiss her, and tell her I love her in a direct and tactile encounter. I think there is a good reason why 85% of the discussion of the afterlife in the NT is not about dying and going to heaven, but about resurrection. It’s our final destination and destiny, it’s the future that can really give us hope that one day disease, decay, and death, suffering, sin, and sorrow will be no more. And that’s so much more than disembodied existence in heaven. It’s the final proof that, as Dylan Thomas once said, ‘and death shall have no dominion’.

Q6b.BEN: I also found it puzzling that you found the Eve example not to have anything to do with her instruction, and yet the Genesis story tells us that only Adam received the proper instruction about the tree, and apparently did a lousy job of conveying the one commandment to Eve. In other words, she was deceived because she had not first been properly instructed, which Paul sees as the danger with these elite women he is discussing. Finally, I was puzzled by your reading of 1 Tim. 2.15 where attention has to be paid to the definite article before ‘childbearing’ but ‘the woman will be will be saved through the childbearing (singular). Surely, this is a reference to Mary as being the counter example to Eve, and a reminder that salvation came through Mary’s Son, Mary was obedient to the divine command, unlike Eve. I do admit however that because Artemis was the goddess of child-bearing, there may have been some Gentile women fearful about pregnancy, or the lack thereof, as new Christians because they had forsaken Artemis. If that is what that verse means, than surely it should be translated ‘but the woman will be kept safe through childbearing’ if they remain in the faith and live accordingly. What it surely doesn’t mean is ‘justification by grace through baby-making for Christian women!’ Feel free to respond or rebut these suggestions.

A6b.GARY: Clearly we differ in our interpretation of the Eve example in 1 Tim 2:13-14. Contrary to your statement above, I find the Eve example has everything to do with instructions given to women in this context, and defend my reading of the function of this text with findings with evidence. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

I see the author of 1 Tim carefully and pointedly demythologizing the thinking of women linked to the local heresy, the Artemis / Isis / Diana myth, which promoted that the goddess was the mother / author of all life, and that sin came into the world through man, when alternatively, the Genesis account reveals that man came first and that sin originated with the woman (cf. McCabe’s research on The Legend of Ra and Isis as compared to the Genesis account). In plain terms, Ephesian women, whether among the commoners or the elite, believed and promoted through community engagement in cultic activities (such as those illustrated in Ephesiaca) that the woman came first and that sin came into the world through man. So the function of these two verses is to set straight the thinking of all women in a context that had indoctrinated them to believe this myth.

It makes sense then that I would continue to read verse 15 text in light of evidence from the context and you continue to read it from a different perspective which makes assumptions for whithat I cannot support from the text. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.

I see this as a completion of the instructions to women, effectively removing a barrier to obedience that, in this context, would have likely caused many to turn away from the faith. Fear of death can motivate many to turn away. Luke presents Ephesus as a Gentile city where many have came to faith from deeply-rooted pagan beliefs, at the center of which in this city was service to the goddess, Artemis (cf. Acts 19). In BBRS 11 I highlight literary and epigraphic examples of various cultic rules set forth as law that outlined penalties for failure to maintain

ritual purity. These parameters served to ensure people in this cultural setting honored the gods in general and Artemis supremely. Women who died in the act of childbearing (hence the definite article) were said to have likely failed to honor the goddess of childbearing, who exacted her vengeance. Thus, I see the reading of “to be saved” through the act of childbearing as temporal deliverance, or in your words, they are “kept safe” through the birthing experience.

Simply put, I am offering a plain reading of this text rooted in evidence from the context. The author of 1 Tim 2:13-15 has dealt with other issues such as the decorum and deeds of Ephesian women, whether wealthy or not, and here is demythologizing their thinking and removing the obstacle to obedience, fear of death in the act of childbearing, while calling them to demonstrate their decision to continue in the faith through their counter-cultural actions, that is, a way of living that is the opposite of the teaching and behavior of women enforced by cultic purity rules as law. Women who follow Christ need not fear but persevere in the faith.

Surely, this is a reference to Mary as being the counter example to Eve, and a reminder that salvation came through Mary’s Son, Mary was obedient to the divine command, unlike Eve. I do admit however that because Artemis was the goddess of child-bearing, there may have been some Gentile women fearful about pregnancy, or the lack thereof, as new Christians because they had forsaken Artemis. If that is what that verse means, than surely it should be translated ‘but the woman will be kept safe through childbearing’ if they remain in the faith and live accordingly. What it surely doesn’t mean is ‘justification by grace through baby-making for Christian women!’ Feel free to respond or rebut these suggestions.

function in this text and the context to which it was directed.

Respectfully, I think we differ in reading 1 Tim 2:9-15 because we hold different assumptions about the function and meaning of the language of the text.

Most assume that the prohibition refers to the teaching of the Scriptures in the church assembly, though Marshall notes that the prohibition to teach does not necessarily reflect the content of the teaching. This assumption shapes the interpretation of the text. Those who link the prohibition to women teaching the Scriptures in mixed-gender settings consider the subsequent instructions as prohibiting them to “teach and exercise authority” over men because they believe to do so violates the creation order (2:13–14)…

Those who consider it plausible to read the prohibition as linked to local heresy have presented very interesting findings. McCabe summarizes a variety of possible religious backdrops linked to 1 Tim 2:12–14 that have been posited of late—namely, the Kroegers’ contention that it points to Gnostic or proto-Gnostic mythology glorifying Eve, and Gritz’s research that suggests that the cult of Artemis may be in view. McCabe adds her own theory that the Isis cult not only offers clues that fit the text but that “the Legend of Ra and Isis may provide the cultural background for 1 Tim 2:12–14 that competes with Genesis 3.” Though scholars are divided regarding the religious cults to which the terms of the text point, the current research suggests further exploration may prove helpful.

Whether αὐθεντεῖν is rendered “exercise authority over, instigating violence, or to be the originator of” man becomes a moot point because each expression can be explained in light of this heresy. The Isis myth of the origin of man promoted the idea that Isis had usurped authority from Ra in the Legend of Ra and Isis to become as powerful and great as Ra. She instigated violence in the story by forming a ser- pent that would bite him, resulting in great pain. The Artemis myth alleged that the goddess, the woman, was the author of man. In light of the myths present in the world of Ephesiaca, the injunction to silence “the woman” (singular in 1 Tim 2:12) appears to send a message to young women like An- thia to abandon the myths she would have learned from her childhood.