Scripture-ish

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

The Dead Sea Scrolls contain much material relevant to the study of the Minor Prophets. There are eight Minor Prophets scrolls from the Dead Sea Scrolls, plus some Minor Prophets scrolls from other locations in the Judean Desert, plus some Dead Sea Scrolls that transmit commentaries on the Minor Prophets.

But what do we mean by “Minor Prophets scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls”? I mean a scroll that exhibits text from the Minor Prophets but not the entirety of the Minor Prophets, not even text from every book of the Minor Prophets. Indeed, there is no Dead Sea Scroll that contains—as part of the preserved portion of a single scroll—text from every one of the Minor Prophets, all twelve. Some of these scrolls may have at one time contained all twelve prophets, most probably didn’t.

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The scholarly article you should read to get up to speed is this one from 2015 by Mika Pajunen and Hanne von Weissenberg.

As you probably know, there were eleven caves around Qumran in which scrolls were discovered in the 1940s and 1950s.

Cave 4 contained 7 scrolls of the Minor Prophets. These were all published by Russell Fuller in DJD 15 (1997).

Cave 5 contained 1 scroll of the Minor Prophets. This one was published in DJD 3 (1962).

Another location, not at Qumran, produced 1 scroll of the Minor Prophets. This location is called Murabba’at, about 15 miles south of Qumran. This scroll was published in DJD 2 (1961).

Moreover, a couple of the fragments from Cave 4 that were published in DJD 15 as part of one of the seven scrolls presented in that volume are now known to be pieces of different scrolls. This applies to two fragments (a Malachi fragment and a Micah fragment). Let’s classify these as two new scrolls.

So now we’re up to 11 scrolls.

There are more scrolls of the Minor Prophets—unprovenanced artifacts, meaning that these scrolls have made their appearance into public view in recent decades (mostly in the 21st century) and in the hands of collectors who have claimed that the fragments ultimately derive from the Qumran caves or some such. Often these fragments are proven to be forgeries, but not always. There is one Minor Prophets fragment in this category, in the Schøyen collection, a fragment of Joel, that is generally recognized (I think) as genuine—or, at least, not yet proven to be a forgery. A few other fragments of the Minor Prophets have been determined to be forgeries (see esp. ## 78, 80, 81 here). I have not yet been able to read this academic article on “Fake Dead Sea Scrolls.”

Now we’ve got 12 scrolls of the Minor Prophets.

Finally, there is 4Q168, published in DJD 5 (1968) under the title “Commentary on Micah (?).” The parenthetical question mark is part of the title. But all that is preserved of this scroll is biblical text, not commentary, and it could be a scroll of Micah, as suggested in DJD 39 (2002), when it is listed as a scroll of the Minor Prophets, with the name “4QMic? (or: 4QpMic?)”; that is, DJD 39 suggests two possibilities: either it is a scroll of Micah (4QMic) or it is a pesher (commentary) on Micah (4QpMic). If it’s a scroll of Micah…

That makes 13 copies of some portion of the Minor Prophets.

But wait, there’s more!

We haven’t talked about the pesharim. Well, I did just mention one possible pesher. Pesher is a Hebrew word that means “commentary” or “interpretation.” Pesharim is the plural form of the noun. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are commentaries—pesharim—for some of the prophetic writings, including Isaiah and Psalms and several of the books of the Minor Prophets: Hosea (2 of these), Micah (1 or 2 of these), Nahum (1), Habakkuk (1), Zephaniah (2), and maybe Malachi (1, if that’s what 4Q253a is)—7–9 commentaries on 5 or 6 of the Minor Prophets. All of the pesharim were published in DJD 5.

Textual Value of These Scrolls

Does all this manuscript evidence for the Minor Prophets help us to arrive at a better text of the Minor Prophets than had been possible before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-twentieth century, when our Hebrew evidence was limited to the Masoretic Text?

No, not really. Here is Emanuel Tov’s evaluation from 2019, for some decades now the world’s leading scholar of the text of the Hebrew Bible.

The ancient Hebrew material from the Judean Desert is valuable but, as a rule, it is not of major importance for identifying presumably original readings. The Murabba‘at scroll is proto-Masoretic, and therefore the number of its divergences from MT is very small. The Qumran scrolls contain mainly secondary readings. (here, p. 130)

This is the general rule when it comes to the Minor Prophets scrolls at Qumran: does not help to reconstruct a better text of the Minor Prophets. There are exceptions, and immediately after articulating the general rule Tov cites a possible exception as the reading “sword” at Habakkuk 1:17. Besides that there are other interesting readings, some of which I’ll mention in a post sometime.

If the Dead Sea Scrolls don’t provide a better text for the Minor Prophets, what is the value of studying them?

One answer: to learn about the development of the collection of the Minor Prophets.

Minor Prophets Scrolls?

Is it right to call the Cave 4 scrolls “Minor Prophets scrolls”? Sorta, but we require nuance. Certainly all of the scrolls identified as “Minor Prophets scrolls” contain biblical text from the Minor Prophets, but none of them contain all 12 of the Minor Prophets, and several of them might not ever have done so. Indeed, several of them currently preserve a single prophet of the Minor Prophets and may originally have done so, as well.

* 4QXIId (4Q79) consists of two small fragments of Hosea 1:6–2:5

* 4QXIIf (4Q81) consists of four fragments of the first chapter of Jonah

* 5QAmos (5Q4) contains only Amos

* There is a stray fragment of Malachi that perhaps formed its own scroll (frg. 35 of 4QXIIc)

* There is a Micah fragment that perhaps formed its own scroll (frg. 5 of 4QXIIf)

* There is a Joel fragment in the Schøyen collection

* And there is the “pesher” (4Q168) that contains only the biblical text of Micah, and therefore was possibly not a pesher but a copy of Micah.

That’s 7 of the 13 (possible) scrolls of the Minor Prophets—more than half—that currently attest only a single prophetic voice.

What about the other six scrolls? Half of them preserve two books each:

* 4QXIIa (4Q76) Malachi, Jonah

* 4QXIIb (4Q77) Zephaniah, Haggai

* 4QXIIe (4Q80) Haggai, Zechariah

Note that everyone seems agreed these days that 4QXIIa features an unfamiliar sequence for the books, in which Malachi is not the last book on the scroll but is followed by something. The original editor, Russell Fuller, suggested that Jonah immediately follows Malachi, but this suggestion has received some pushback. More recently Pajunen and von Weissenberg suggested that Jonah did follow Malachi, but not immediately, but something came between them. At any rate, the scroll attests a previously unknown sequence for the Minor Prophets.

One scroll preserves four books.

* 4QXIIc (4Q78) Hosea, Joel, Amos, Zephaniah

And two scrolls preserve so many of the Minor Prophets—ten apiece—that they probably originally contained the whole collection.

* 4QXIIg (4Q82): Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Zechariah.

* MurXII (Mur88), the copy from Wadi Murabba’at: Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah.

The Hebrew manuscripts with the largest number of attested books of the Twelve are 4QXIIg and MurXII. Manuscript 4QXIIg contains fragmentary remains of ten books. The format of this scroll differs markedly from 4Q76, and it has almost twice as many characters (corrected letter spaces) in an average line as 4Q76, and thirty or more lines per column. Manuscript MurXII has a third more letters on an average line than 4Q76 and thirty-six lines per column. These are manuscripts that may have included all or most of the books of the Twelve, and their material format attests to this. Most of the Qumran manuscripts, however, are much smaller in size, and they probably did not contain all books of the twelve. (Pajunen and von Weissenberg 2015: 750)

The other thing that can be known with certainty is that Malachi was followed by another composition [in 4Q76], but most likely not directly by Jonah. Thus, there is positive evidence for an ancient scroll—one of the earliest textual witnesses—in which Malachi is not the last book in a scroll containing several prophetic books and in which it did not form the conclusion of the Twelve.

Quotations

Besides all this, there are quotations of the Minor Prophets in other Dead Sea Scrolls. If we wanted to do an exhaustive presentation of these quotations, I would start with the lists in this volume by Lange and Weigold—but since it mixes up allusions and quotations, we would have to check each citation to see if it really is a quotation. I am not going to put that effort into the task right now, so let me just point you to a single Dead Sea Scroll, one of the sectarian scrolls, called the Damascus Document, which was found both in the caves at Qumran and in the Cairo Genizah. It is abbreviated CD (Cairo Damascus). There are several biblical quotations in this scroll, including seven from the Minor Prophets. I have detailed these below.

Book-by-Book Breakdown

Here is the breakdown by biblical prophet:

Hosea: 3 scrolls (4QXIIc, 4QXIId, 4QXIIg), plus 2 pesharim, plus one CD quotation (Hos 4:16 in CD col. 1)

Joel: 4 scrolls, (4QXIIc, 4QXIIg, MurXII, Schøyen fragment)

Amos: 4 scrolls (4QXIIc, 4QXIIg, 5QAmos, MurXII), plus two CD quotations (Amos 5:26–27; 9:11 in CD col. 7)

Obadiah: 2 scrolls (4QXIIg, MurXII)

Jonah: 4 scrolls (4QXIIa, 4QXIIf, 4QXIIg, MurXII)

Micah: 4 scrolls (4QXIIf frg. 5, 4QXIIg, 4Q168, MurXII), plus 1 or 2 pesharim, plus two CD quotations (Mic 2:6 in CD col. 4; Mic 7:2 in CD col. 16)

Nahum: 2 scrolls (4QXIIg, MurXII), plus 1 pesher, plus one CD quotation (Nah 1:2 in CD col. 20)

Habakkuk: 2 scrolls (4QXIIg, MurXII), plus 1 pesher

Zephaniah: 4 scrolls (4QXIIb, 4QXIIc, 4QXIIg, MurXII), plus 2 pesharim

Haggai: 3 scrolls (4QXIIb, 4QXIIe, MurXII)

Zechariah: 3 scrolls (4QXIIe, 4QXIIg, MurXII)

Malachi: 2 scrolls (4QXIIa, 4QXIIc frg. 35), plus maybe 1 pesher (4Q253a?), plus one CD quotation (Mal 1:10 in CD col. 6)

There is one book that appears only in the two big scrolls, featuring nowhere else among the Dead Sea Scrolls—except, maybe, in some quotations that I haven’t explored yet: Obadiah. Besides that, both Nahum and Habakkuk appear as biblical books only in the two big scrolls, though these two prophets also each merited a pesher, and Nahum a CD quotation.

The four most prominent Minor Prophets at Qumran seem to be Hosea, Amos, Micah, and Zephaniah.

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Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Love of God

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The medieval Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible are called Masoretic because they contain the Masorah (“tradition”), which includes elements such as the vowel signs and notes and accent marks and, of course, the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible. The best Masoretic manuscripts that survive, and the oldest, are the Aleppo Codex (925 AD) and the Leningrad Codex (1009 AD). It is the latter, the Leningrad Codex, that serves as the base text for the standard edition of the Hebrew Bible, BHS (and its replacement, BHQ).

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Let’s take a look at how these manuscripts treat the Minor Prophets, specifically in terms of the division between the books. As we begin, it’s important to understand that in Jewish tradition—still today, and traceable to ancient times—the Minor Prophets count together as a single book of the Bible. If you ask a Jewish Rabbi today how many books are in the Jewish Bible, he (or she) will answer 24. Those 24 books are the same as the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament, just counted differently. With regard to these counting differences, the Protestant Old Testament reflects ancient Christian tradition that is still maintained in all Christian Bibles, whether Catholic or Orthodox or Protestant or whatever. Christians count the books of the Old Testament differently from Jews. There are five counting differences, and in each case Christians divide where Jews combine.

* Samuel

* Kings

* Chronicles

* Ezra-Nehemiah

* Minor Prophets

The first four of these biblical books are divided into two by Christians but count as a single book for Jews. The last one, the Minor Prophets, counts as twelve for Christians but one for Jews. That’s how you go from 39 books in the Protestant Old Testament to 24 books in the Jewish Bible without omitting any material. The content is the same in both cases, just calculated differently.

But in the case of the Minor Prophets, the individual prophets are also distinct from each other; they are not simply different sections of the same book. And the Masoretic manuscripts show that the Minor Prophets form a single unit or biblical book but also are separate from each other.

Aleppo Codex and Leningrad Codex

There are interesting stories for both of these manuscripts that I won’t go into right now; I’ll provide only basic information. The Aleppo Codex—housed for centuries in a synagogue in Aleppo—is now in Jerusalem and is, unfortunately, incomplete, but most of the Minor Prophets are there. As for the Leningrad Codex, it is housed today in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, as you would expect from the name, and it is a complete manuscript, so it has the honor of being the earliest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, just over a thousand years old. The Aleppo Codex is several decades older, and is generally recognized as the superior manuscript in terms of the quality of its text, but is, alas, lacking nearly 40% of its original text.

Now for some pictures. This first image shows the end of Ezekiel and the beginning of Hosea in the Aleppo Codex.

Most of this page is Ezekiel, but the text of Ezekiel comes to an end in the left column near the top. (Remember, Hebrew is written right to left.) After three lines of the biblical text, there is some smaller writing, also three lines, and then a blank line, and then the text of Hosea starts. The smaller Hebrew writing between the books is a Masoretic note indicating the total number of verses in the book just completed (in this case, Ezekiel). It signals the end of a biblical book. These sorts of notes appear after ever biblical book in a Masoretic manuscript, displaying the number of verses.

It’s the same thing in the Leningrad Codex.

The Masoretic notes at the end of the book of Ezekiel are in the right column (i.e., the first column, reading right to left).

What about between Hosea and Joel? Are there the Masoretic notes for the end of a biblical book? No, there are not. Well, there is a small version of the notes, not the full version—in keeping with the idea that a book of the Minor Prophets is not a full-fledged biblical book but it is more than a mere section of a book.

Hosea comes to an end in the left column, and Joel begins in the same column. Between the two prophets, there are a few Hebrew letters. Here is a close-up of those letters.

The dots above the letters indicate that the letters function as numbers here, and the number represented is 197—the number of verses in Hosea. It’s the same in the Leningrad Codex, except the number is spelled out, like “one hundred ninety seven.” Here’s an image.

But the end of Malachi is treated as more than the end of just Malachi, but also the end of the book of the Twelve.

As it happens, in the Aleppo Codex, the scribe started copying on a page when he had left of Malachi only a few words, so hardly any biblical text needed to be written on the page. In the image above, the larger letters show the end of the text of Malachi, five lines of text, mostly lines with just one word. On the fifth line, there is also a number (with the dots), 55, which is the number of verses in Malachi. After a few blank lines, there is then this note: “The number of verses of the book: one thousand fifty.” The “book” (sepher) in this instance is, of course, the book of the Twelve.

The Leningrad Codex presents things a little differently.

The text of Malachi ends at the second line in the center column. Then comes the Masoretic note indicating the number of verses for Malachi (not in Hebrew numerals but spelled out). Then we do not find the number of verses for the Twelve but rather a whole bunch of notes indicating the number of verses for each book of the Prophets, starting with Joshua, and the sections of those books. You have to flip the page to complete the list, where you find the last book of the Prophets, called Trei Asar (Armaic for 12; see the names listed at the beginning of this wikipedia article), and then the number of verses and sections.

Now, there’s one more manuscript I want to mention, another early Masoretic manuscript, and this one I will present in somewhat more detail.

Cairo Codex of the Prophets

This manuscript, from about the year 1000 AD, contains only the Prophets section of the Hebrew Bible, i.e., the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve. The Cairo Codex is perhaps a little earlier than the Leningrad Codex but not as early as the Aleppo Codex.

Location of the manuscript

The whereabouts of this codex are currently unknown. It was owned for a long time, about a millennium, by the Karaite (non-rabbinic) community in Cairo, Egypt. But the situation for Jews in Egypt became fraught following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The Karaites persevered in Cairo for a few more decades. Scholars and officials were permitted to examine and photograph the codex in the early 1980s in Cairo. But, according to this 2024 article by Nadine Epstein:

Sometime in the mid-1980s, the guardians of the Cairo Codex and the other remaining Karaites left Egypt for Israel. Did they leave their beloved manuscript behind, or take it with them … ? For 30 years, its whereabouts have been uncertain. “It is one of the great mysteries,” says Kurtzer.

And that’s that. No one—officially—knows where it is, though in the last section of her article, Epstein quotes some Israelis who say things that make it sound like they know more than they’re letting on.

But, good news! There is a digital edition available, which makes available black-and-white photos, originally taken (perhaps) in 1926. (I can’t find on the website when the photographs were originally taken, but my 1926 date comes from this article, p. 226, if I’m interpreting it correctly.) The image quality is excellent.

The date of the manuscript

Now, for the date of the manuscript. It is strange that the website for the digital edition takes at face value the colophon in the manuscript which supplies the date 894 or 895; for decades, as even Wikipedia knows, this date has been questioned or even outright rejected.

It was long believed that the earliest dated manuscript with a colophon was the famous Prophets Codex preserved in the Karaite synagogue Moussa Dari’i in Old Cairo, with a colophon stating that the manuscript was written by Moshe ben Asher in 894/5, possibly in Tiberias, but it is now widely accepted that this colophon was copied from an earlier colophon; according to [Malachi] Beit-Arié, the manuscript was copied before 1129–30 (Codices Hebraicis 1:28). (David Stern, p. 226 n. 15)

The book cited by Stern, available here for $425 and reviewed here, is unavailable to me, but a different book by Beit-Arié that contains similar information is available open access (here; see pp. 70–71). according to Beit-Arié, this Prophets Codex should be dated to ca. 1000.

The article by Epstein, linked above, contains further details, with interviews of some major scholars.

“I don’t think somebody changed the Codex; it wasn’t tampered with, it was the original writing of someone who wanted to attach a lot of yichus,” says Beit-Arie, using the Yiddish word for pedigree. “It was a forgery but a genuine forgery.” Stefan Reif, professor emeritus of medieval Hebrew at University of Cambridge, explains it this way: It is as if, in order to preserve the manuscript, someone copied it in its entirety in the 11th century—updating the spelling and punctuation—and included the original colophon as well. “A parallel would be finding a letter written 100 years ago and recopying it in 2016: You copy everything but you correct it and modernize it,” Reif says. “But at the end of the letter is written: ‘This was written in 1916,’ and you copy these words out, too. So it is not really a document accurately dated to 1916, but rather to 2016.”

The Minor Prophets in the Cairo Codex

Let’s take a look at the presentation of the Minor Prophets in this manuscript. But first, for a point of comparison, here is the end of Jeremiah and the beginning of Ezekiel.

An entire column separates the two books, with an interesting symbol at the bottom of that column (the embellished circle). At the top of the column there is a quotation, three words, from Isaiah 55:6, translating to “Seek YHWH while he may be found.” Between this exhortation and the circle, there is the Masoretic note indicating the number of verses in Jeremiah. Ezekiel starts at the top of the left column.

We might say there are four elements that signal the end of a biblical book in this Cairo Codex: the Masoretic note about the number of verses in the book that just ended; the exhortation to seek YHWH; a little ornamentation; and a lot of blank space.

Now here is the end of Ezekiel and the beginning of Hosea.

Here again we have a center column separating the two books, except that the text of Ezekiel carries over into the center column, contained to the right edge of the column, reaching to its bottom. Most of the column contains the book-closing indicators that we previously observed, or similar ones. In the middle of the center column is the boxed phrase, “Seek YHWH while he may be found.” Below that is a diamond shaped symbol, and at the bottom, encircled, is the Masoretic note about the number of verses in Ezekiel. Hosea starts at the top of the left column.

Next, we have the transition between Hosea and Joel.

There is much less fanfare here, though it is clear where one prophet ends and the other begins, near the bottom of the center column. Between them, in a box, is the quotation from Isaiah 55:6, “Seek YHWH while he may be found.” Immediately above that box is the Masoretic note regarding the number of verses in Hosea. Here is a close-up.

Out of the four elements signaling the end of a biblical book that I mentioned earlier, we find two of them here: not the white space and not the ornamentation, but we do have the number of verses and the exhortation to seek YHWH.

There is a slight variation when Joel comes to an end, as we see next.

Here again we have a box with a biblical quotation, and above the box, to the right, is the reference to the number of verses in the book of Joel. The two letters (עג) with dots above them, indicating that there are 73 verses in Joel.

In the box, there is a different quotation, not from Isaiah 55:6 but now from Zephaniah 2:3. That verse contains the imperative, “Seek YHWH, all the humble of the land who do his judgments.” But the words in the box cut off at “all,” so the address, apparently, is to everyone: “Seek YHWH, all,” or maybe “Everyone, seek YHWH.” By the way, it’s a different word for “seek” here as opposed to Isaiah 55:6: בקש (baqash) here and דרש (darash) there. This is not the first time that the words of Zephaniah are used to bring an end to a book in the Cairo Codex; it’s the much more common verse used to end a book in this manuscript, as we are about to see.

It’s the quotation from Zephaniah that appears most frequently after the individual prophets of the Minor Prophets: after Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Haggai, and Zechariah. The quotation from Isaiah 55:6 appears after Hosea, Micah, and Malachi. That reckoning omits Habakkuk, where there is—oddly—no box, no quotation, just the couple Hebrew letters (with the dots over them indicating that they function as numbers) signaling the number of verses in Habakkuk.

By the way, the quotation from Zephaniah also appears at the end of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Isaiah.

Here is what the end of Malachi looks like.

The biblical text comes to an end in the center column, and then in the left column, in the big box, is the Masoretic note indicating the number of verses in the book of the Twelve, and then in the smaller box the quotation from Isaiah 55:6. I don’t see an indication of the number of verses in Malachi by itself.

Conclusion

The Masoretic manuscripts treat the Twelve as a biblical book, and the individual prophets in the Twelve as not a full-fledged biblical book even if more than a mere chapter. It’s the Cairo Codex of the Prophets that comes closest to treating the individual Minor Prophets as full-fledged biblical books, not only indicating the number of verses for each prophet—which also happens in the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex—but also ending each prophet with the command to seek YHWH, either according to Isaiah 55:6 or Zephaniah 2:3, the same practice by which it ends each of the biblical books in the Prophets section.

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In what is perhaps the most famous speech in American history, maybe the greatest speech in American history, the sixteenth president of these United States envisioned “a new birth of freedom.” Let’s consider what he meant, and how it has turned out.

George Whitefield (1714–1770)—who died younger than did Abraham Lincoln, by the way—liked to tell people that they needed new birth. Whitefield was an Anglican clergyman, a Calvinist, a preacher of revivals during the Great Awakening.

One story I’ve heard about him is that when asked why he so frequently preached that people had to be born again, he replied, “Because ye must be born again!” There’s a documentary about him that you can find on YouTube under the title Born Again

Whitefield was right: people do need to be born again—if we take Jesus as any kind of authority.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (John 3:3)

This is what Jesus told Nicodemus. Of course, this Jewish leader, this Pharisee, had trouble understanding what Jesus meant, and often readers—rather unsympathetically—are confused at Nicodemus’ confusion; we are astonished at his astonishment. Nicodemus himself knew that Jesus could not be talking about physical birth, and he himself rules out such an interpretation in the very next verse (John 3:4), but he can’t grasp what Jesus what getting at. Jesus used the bulk of the rest of the chapter to explain.

For us, often the new birth seems so easy. Especially in light of Jesus’ explanation a couple verses later, that the new birth involves “water and spirit,” many readers think of baptism. And baptism is a piece of cake. Just get dunked under water—or, in many Christian traditions, you don’t even need to do that; just a little water on the forehead will do—and it’s all over. Voilà, new birth! Nothing could be easier.

We should pause and reflect.

What about normal birth, or physical birth, or what we might call the first birth? Is physical birth easy? I can report that for a father, it’s pretty easy. But I hear that for the other parties involved, it’s somewhat taxing. For both the baby and the mother, there’s a lot of yelling involved. And even for a father, after the birth, life gets somewhat difficult, no matter how much practice you have. As Jim Gaffigan said, if you want to know what it’s like to have a fourth kid, just imagine you’re drowning, and then someone hands you a baby.

But back to the new birth. Is it as hard as a first birth? Well, there’s usually a lot less screaming involved. Sometimes we tell people how easy the new birth is. Just give your life over to God, apply some water, baddabing, baddaboom, and you’re done. Simple!

Is it that simple?

That’s not the impression made by every (any?) passage in the New Testament when describing the process of becoming a Christian. Ephesians 4 talks about taking off “the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,” and putting on “the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (4:22–24). I think what Paul is talking about here is becoming a Christian, which he likens to changing clothes, stripping yourself of a former manner of life and clothing your self with some new behaviors. I guess you could look at that as another description of an easy process, just like we don’t give much thought to taking off our pajamas and putting on some daytime clothes. But Paul seems to have more in mind; he seems to think this is more difficult than just changing clothes, or that this process of changing clothes is going to necessitate our sustained attention, it’s going to require time and effort. After all, he is writing this letter to people who have already committed themselves to Jesus, people who are baptized, people who are Christians. But he’s telling these Christians to continue putting off the old man and putting on the new man. And he explains further what this looks like in practice.

Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. (Ephesians 4:25–30)

And that’s not all; Paul keeps going, describing the behaviors that the Ephesian Christians need to adopt, the new man that they need to continually put on.

Consider another biblical passage about becoming a Christian, as described, again, by the apostle Paul.

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. (Romans 6:3–6)

Easy enough, right? Just get baptized and you’re dead to sin. Here the old man is not just taken off but crucified. Baddabing, baddaboom, new birth!

Hmm, not quite.

To these Roman Christians whom he has never met, Paul writes about the new birth as a continual process of dying to sin and becoming enslaved to righteousness. It doesn’t sound very easy.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean to say that it takes a lot of work on our part to get God to save us. Nope, we don’t get God to save us. He’s eager to do so. Remember the prodigal son’s father. But the new birth is not merely about salvation. That is the easy part. The harder part is becoming conformed to Christ, putting on the new man. It turns out that the new man is Christ (Gal 3:27), and the process of putting him on is a lifetime project. The new birth is not so easy after all.

Now let’s return to that famous American speech. I’m not sure if the Gettysburg Address really is the most famous American speech; that honor might go to the “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr. (pdf, wikipedia), but that speech by MLK, delivered in 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, began with a reference to the Gettysburg Address, given in 1863. The first few words of King’s speech are “Five score years ago…,” and then he mentions the Emancipation Proclamation.

It’s Lincoln’s speech (wikipedia) that I want to consider for a moment.

It is a short speech, much shorter than the I Have a Dream speech. The entire thing is carved into the left wall of the Lincoln Memorial. Here’s an image.

At the dedication of a cemetery at the location of an extraordinarily bloody battle, part of an extraordinarily bloody war, Lincoln guessed, hoped, “that these dead shall not have died in vain,” but rather “that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.” Given that context, it seems that this new birth of freedom was about as difficult as the new birth that Jesus mentioned to Nicodemus.

Lincoln was not the only person who thought they saw in the American Civil War the hand of God. Check out these familiar words, written by Julia Ward Howe in 1861 (wikipedia).

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the LordHe is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are storedHe has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift swordHis truth is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Julia Ward Howe, a fervent abolitionist, witnessed the bloodletting of the Civil War and thought she was seeing the work of God. “Glory, glory, hallelujah!” Perhaps she was right.

Lincoln thought so, anyway. The Gettysburg Address is a wonderful speech, deservedly famous and revered and often memorized—I hope, still. But it is not my favorite speech by Lincoln. That would be the other one carved in granite in the Lincoln Memorial, the one on the right as you climb the steps, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural (text, wikipedia), delivered March 4, 1865, forty-two days before his assassination.

In this theologically profound speech, I want ponder one passage.

Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether” (Psalm 19:9).

Here Lincoln imagines that the American Civil War will last until atonement is made for the sins of the past. Was he right?

Sometimes later generations pay for the sins of the past.

Think about the fiscal situation of the United States. The current US debt is close to $40 trillion, and the annual budget deficit is in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars. I don’t know what’s going to happen to all that money, but some people think that a later generation is eventually going to have to pay for it. Saddling our children and grandchildren with enormous debt has been a great American tradition for more than a generation, and we’re not about to stop now. We imitate Hezekiah, who responded to Isaiah’s prophecy of doom in a future generation: “Is it not good, if peace and truth be in my days?” (2 Kings 20:19). (Not that we’re enjoying much peace and truth in 2026, but you can’t have everything!)

Or think about climate change. Some people think climate change is real and is caused by humans, other people deny certain elements of that statement. The people that think humans have caused climate change essentially say that later generations are going to pay for the misdeeds of the past and present.

Now, take a look at the Third Commandment.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I YHWH thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:4–6)

“Visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children.” I don’t know exactly what God means by this. I’d like to interpret it in harmony with that statement from Ezekiel, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezek 18:20). Perhaps God meant more than what I’m about to suggest, but I think at least he meant that the misdeeds of the fathers create problems for the children. If you have any experience with foster care, you’ve got examples out the wahzoo of one way that this concept plays out. The national debt might be another, and climate change another.

Abraham Lincoln thought the American Civil War might cause so much death and destruction that it would atone for America’s history of slavery. He was wrong. That atonement continues, as recent years have so clearly demonstrated. The sins of the fathers are visited upon their children, and it’s been longer than the third or fourth generation specified in Scripture. Of course, in part the sin continues. I wonder if it will ever end.

The new birth of freedom wasn’t so easy as Lincoln had hoped.

That is the way of new birth. I’m not disagreeing with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I’m affirming it, and explaining it. New Birth is never an easy process, one and done. Whether or not birth is painful, new birth is always painful, and new birth never stops, until we are finally delivered unto God.

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And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth. (John 9:39–41)

Old Isaac in Genesis 27 was fortunate to be blind. Let me explain.

But first I want to tell you why I read Dracula every year. Well, actually, I don’t read it, I listen to it.

Come October, it starts to feel like Dracula season, and I take a break from podcasts and listen once again to the classic vampire novel. It’s because Dracula is, on the one hand captivating, enthralling, exciting, and on the other hand, a deeply Christian novel. One of the ways the novel provides an escape into fantasy land is that, for the most part, the novel presents clear moral choices; there are bright lines between right and wrong.

That kind of clearly demarcated morality does happen in our world, the real world, but there is also a lot of gray here. There’s not much gray in Dracula, and that is, in some ways, a relief. The character for whom the novel is named is clearly evil, pursuing an evil plan, and stopping him is a good thing. There are some heroes in the book, mostly the men who, about halfway through the novel, have committed themselves to destroying the Count. There are five men, led by Abraham Van Helsing, and one woman, Mina Harker, and they are all brave and virtuous, ready to offer their lives in pursuit of their just goal. There is no ambiguity about whom to root for.

(The novel does not completely lack nuance. In ch. 23, Mina Harker told the assembled men that killing Dracula would be good even for Dracula, and so they should not pursue him out of hate but rather out of love. “That poor soul who has wrought all this misery is the saddest case of all. Just think what will be his joy when he, too, is destroyed in his worser part that his better part may have spiritual immortality. You must be pitiful to him, too, though it may not hold your hands from his destruction.”)

My favorite character is Quincey Morris, and not just because he’s the only American in the novel. He is, in fact, the bravest of all. When he becomes convinced that he knows the right thing to do, he does not hesitate. This characteristic of Mr. Morris is represented well near the end of chapter 24, when the group is discussing what they will do when they find Count Dracula resting in his coffin. Van Helsing says that they will wait for an opportunity when no one is looking, because they need to drive a stake through Dracula’s heart, and that’s not the kind of thing you want people to witness. You don’t want to be accused of murder. But to this counsel of caution from Van Helsing, Quincey Morris responds, in his Texas accent:

I shall not wait for any opportunity. When I see the box I shall open it and destroy the monster, though there were a thousand men looking on, and if I am to be wiped out for it the next moment!

I love that attitude: I am ready to do what is right, come what may! That attitude contrasts so sharply with my own, because I find myself pursuing peace and comfort and avoiding risk. I need to be inspired to lay down my life in the work of God, just as Christ demands.

What Can I Offer?

What is the point of life? There are different ways of saying it, and I myself—in my teaching and preaching—say it in different ways, just as the New Testament does. Sometimes I say that the point of our lives is to be conformed to the image of Jesus (Romans 8:29), and I think that’s a good way of putting it. Or, we could say that, since Jesus calls us to die (Mark 8:35; cf. Gal 2:20), then our entire life is about figuring out how to die for Jesus. Both of those ways of articulating the point of our lives are true and biblical and could be restated like this: we dedicate ourselves to God.

In the past few years we’ve started singing a song at church that I now learn through google was popularized by Brandon Lake, a song called “Gratitude.”

It’s got a section that resonates with me.

I know it’s not muchbut I’ve nothing else fit for a king,except for a heart singing hallelujah.

I definitely feel that. I don’t have anything to give to God, nothing worthy of what he has done for me. All I’ve got is this heart singing hallelujah.

But here’s the thing: the saints have always longed to give more to God than just a worship song; they’ve given their entire lives. The saints have longed for a chance to sacrifice themselves on behalf of Christ, and many of them were granted that opportunity.

For example, in her classic of spirituality called The Story of a Soul, St. Thérèse of Lisieux recalls a trip to Rome that included a visit to the Coliseum, where she kissed the ground.

My heart beat violently as I pressed my lips to the dust once reddened with the blood of the early Christians, and I asked the grace to be a martyr too for Jesus. At the bottom of my heart I felt that I was heard.

—St. Thérèse of Lisieux, describing her visit to the Coliseum in Rome (ch. 6, p. 75)

Thérèse ended up dying at age 24 of tuberculosis; but throughout her memoir she described her own life, lived entirely in dedication to God as a nun, as a type of martyrdom. Indeed, at one point she mentioned that “theologians call a martyrdom” the religious life (ch. 9, p. 123). She knew what it was that Paul meant in Philippians 1:29, when he said that the Christians in Philippi had been granted by God’s grace not only to believe Christ but also to suffer for him.

Isaac

And now we come to Isaac, the overlooked patriarch. But how could he avoid being overlooked? His own father is Abraham, the father of the faithful. We sing songs about father Abraham. The blessing awaiting the faithful who have departed, according to Jesus in Luke 16:22, is to rest in the bosom of Abraham. It’s hard for a son to live up to such a father. And then Isaac’s own son is Jacob, who is, literally, Israel (cf. Gen 32:28), the father of the twelve tribes. It’s easy for such a son to overshadow his father.

What about Isaac? What did he do? The most famous thing he ever did was get born (Gen 21), finally, after Abraham waited decades for a son. Or maybe the most famous thing about Isaac was his near-death experience on Mount Moriah (Gen 22). But, in any case, the well-known stories involving Isaac aren’t really about Isaac at all. Abraham died in Genesis 25, and then it’s Isaac’s time to shine, but immediately the attention of Genesis turns toward the next generation, so that Jacob and Esau, and especially Jacob, dominates the next chapters, until we get to Joseph in the following generation.

Abraham—wow!

Jacob—wow!

Isaac—who?

There’s really just one chapter where Isaac is the star of the show, and that’s Genesis 26, the one where Isaac follows the example of his father Abraham (cf. Gen 20) by lying to Abimelech about his wife, Rebekah, claiming that she is, instead, his sister. Isaac doesn’t even have Abraham’s excuse that he’s married to his half-sister (cf. Gen 20:12). Rebekah is Isaac’s cousin. It’s also interesting that there is no indication in Genesis 26 that anyone had thought about taking Rebekah as a wife, as Pharaoh (Gen 12:15) and Abimelech (Gen 20:2) had done with Sarah. The rest of chapter 26 describes conflict between Isaac and the Philistines in regard to some wells.

Isaac is a hundred years old at the end of chapter 26, which we can calculate based on the information given in the text: Isaac was sixty years old at the birth of his twin sons (25:26), and at the end of chapter 26 those twins are 40 years old (26:34).

Now Isaac thinks he’s about to die. It’s not an unreasonable thought for a man who measures his life in triple digits, but it turns out to be premature. Isaac lives to be 180 years old (35:28). He’s still alive when Jacob returns from Paddan-Aram with two wives and twelve sons (Gen 33), and he seems to live for some years after that. But in Genesis 27, Isaac has already lived a century, and he’s basically blind, and so he thinks the end is near.

Isaac calls his oldest boy, Esau, to offer a blessing on what he thinks is his deathbed. This blessing, according to the biblical text, is obviously very important and even fateful for the one receiving the blessing, but I’m not exactly sure why. I find the power of this blessing a little confusing. It seems to be tapping into something about the culture of the patriarchs, or the culture of ancient Israel, that is not really explained in the Bible. This is not the only time we see such a blessing in Scripture—Jacob himself does it (Gen 48–49)—but it is the first time. I don’t know how common this kind of thing was in the ancient Near East.

In our own day, deathbed wishes sometimes happen. For me, about a year ago my aunt, Anna Lou, called from a hospital bed to tell me goodbye, because she knew she was about to die. She did not offer a blessing, not a formal one, but she told me she loved me and was proud of me.

This blessing from Isaac to his son is something beyond that, something more potent. His wife, Rebekah, obviously thinks the blessing is important—she knows that this is a blessing “before YHWH” (27:7). It sounds like the blessing determines who is the leader in the family; maybe we could compare it to getting the majority share of the inheritance. That’s probably not quite right, because there is something else called the birthright, that Esau has already sold (25:29–34). Maybe we could think of the birthright as the money, and the blessing as control—like a family that owns a company could give one kid the majority of the savings and the other kid the majority ownership of the company.

At any rate, let’s take a look at the blessing.

Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine:

Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee:

be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee:

cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee. (Genesis 27:28–29)

Isaac grants leadership of the family, rule of all the brothers. This is the blessing he thinks he’s giving Esau, but instead he’s giving the blessing to Jacob. He thinks that he’s granting the rule over the family to Esau. After all, Esau is his oldest son, by a minute or two, and he’s the son who has a better relationship with his father. It certainly makes sense that he would want Esau to rule over the family, for Esau’s brothers to serve Esau.

But here’s the thing—God didn’t want Esau to be the leader; he wanted the younger son to be the leader. This is a pattern in Genesis. Isaac himself had benefited from it. His older half-brother Ishmael was not the promised child, and Ishmael, the first-born of Abraham, did not inherit Abraham’s possessions or power. The oldest son of Jacob is Reuben, but Reuben is not the most important or most powerful of Jacob’s sons; in the book of Genesis, that is clearly Joseph, one of the youngest of Jacob’s boys. Later on, the tribe of Judah, Jacob’s fourth son, would inherit the rule.

God didn’t want Esau to be the leader; he wanted the younger son to be the leader.

So, maybe Isaac should have expected that God would have plans for Isaac’s family that did not involve a straightforward primogeniture. But, he really should have known it because God told him, or he told his wife.

And YHWH said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger. (Genesis 25:23)

The biblical text presents this oracle as coming to Rebekah alone, but what are the chances that she told her husband? I bet she told him. Why wouldn’t she? It’s an oracle about their family, an oracle from God. It seems like the kind of thing a wife would tell her husband. Isaac should have known—both from his own life (he’s the younger son) and from this oracle—that God might well want Jacob to have the rule of the family.

But old Isaac, seemingly on his deathbed, was about to bless Esau, not Jacob, with the rule over the family. He was about to subvert God’s will—and he would have, too, had he been able to see well enough to tell his boys apart.

Good thing he was blind.

John 9

Do you recall the story of the blind man in John 9? This man, we are told, had been blind from birth. I don’t think we are ever told the age of the man when Jesus healed him. I often get that confused with other stories: the man healed by Jesus by the pool of water in John 5 had been sick 38 years, and the man lame from birth healed by Peter and John in Acts 3 is over 40 years old (Acts 4:22). But I’m pretty sure we are never told the age of the man blind from birth in John 9.

I am interested in the question that the disciples ask upon encountering this man, and the response from Jesus.

And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. (John 9:2–3)

Do you hear this? This man was born without sight “that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” Now I’m interested in his age again. How old is this guy? I don’t know, except that he’s an adult. He’s not 80, because his parents are still alive, but he’s not 10 either. Let’s say, he’s somewhere between 20–40. He has been blind for decades. He has never seen the sunset, or the faces of his parents, or even his own face. And it’s not because he did anything wrong, and it’s not because his parents did anything wrong. It was so that he might display the works of God.

Jesus’ answer to his disciples reminds me of what he says two chapters later about his friend Lazarus. “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby” (John 11:4). Of course, we remember what happened. Lazarus did die, and spent four days in the tomb, while Jesus dithered. When Jesus finally arrived at the home of Lazarus, Mary and Martha seemed upset with him. But Jesus was right: the sickness that killed Lazarus did not ultimately result in death, because Jesus controls life and death. As he tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Yes, Lazarus died, but death was not the end, and the glory of God was displayed through that sickness.

I am confident that Lazarus and Mary and Martha wanted to display the glory of God in their lives. I am confident that had Jesus asked them, “would you like for the Son of God to be glorified through you,” they would have said, “Absolutely! Sign us up!” But what would they have said if Jesus had told them what it would cost to display the glory of God? I imagine it would have been something like, “Let this cup pass from me, yet not what I will, but what you will.”

What I do know is that Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith, … for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2). I know that Jesus understood what it would take for the glory of God to be manifest in him. He counted the cost. And he barreled ahead.

What of the blind man? How many times had his parents prayed for him, that he would gain his sight? How many times had he prayed, or cried out, “why me?” or “how long?”

What if his parents had been told when he was born, or at age 10, that his blindness was for a special purpose to bring glory to God? What would they have thought?

Or what if God had made an offer to the blind man — you can have your sight now and you can live a normal life, comfortable, just like everyone else. Or you can wait years to get your sight, decades even, and you will get your sight when you meet God in the flesh—and the glory of God and of the Son of God will be manifest in you. You will meet your heart’s desire, indeed, the desire of the nations (Hag 2:7).

Which do you choose?

Let’s Pretend

Let’s imagine a soul in heaven before God has assigned it to a body. Now, listen, I’m probably teaching heresy here: I don’t know that a soul does pre-exist its entrance into a body—in fact, I would guess the opposite, given the story in Genesis 2, of how God created the man out of dirt and then breathed him into him the breath of life. (The Talmud has a concept of pre-existent souls [the guf—see wikipedia], but the pre-existence of souls has been controversial in Christianty, to say the least; it was condemned at the fifth ecumenical council [see here], though the deuterocanonical Wisdom of Solomon seems to presuppose it; see Wisdom 8:19–20.) But you know that verse in Jeremiah 1 where God says, “I knew you before I formed you in the womb”? That’s what I’m imagining, that God knows people before their birth. Paul was a chosen vessel picked out by God for a special purpose (Acts 9:15). I wonder if this blind man was, as well.

He says, “I know it’s not much but I’ve nothing else fit for a king, except for a heart singing hallelujah.”

And God says, “Nope, I want more.”

So imagine with me a soul having a conversation with God. And the soul says to God that he loves God so much, when he takes on a body, when he comes to earth, he just wants to dedicate his life to God’s glory. He says, “I know it’s not much but I’ve nothing else fit for a king, except for a heart singing hallelujah.”

And God says to the soul, “Nope, I want more.”

Stunned, the soul stares back at God. “You want more than that? Uh, but, I’ve nothing else fit for a king.”

And God says: “I want more than a heart singing hallelujah.”

And the soul says: “yeah, yeah, absolutely, but I don’t know what to do. Can you tell me what to do? I want to give you everything. I want to give you my entire being. But I don’t know how. Help me, please.”

And God says, “Well, I don’t need a prophet; I’ve got all the prophets I need. And I don’t need an apostle; those positions have been filled. But I tell you what I have in mind. I am planning on going to earth at some point, in the fullness of time, and when I do, I’m going to heal a blind person. Actually, I’m going to heal multiple blind people, but I’m thinking about one time when I’m going to be healing someone who has never had physical sight because he was born blind. And that story is going to be written down, and people are going to be hearing about it and reading it for generations, centuries, and people will learn a great deal about God, and about life, and about salvation, from this story.”

And the soul says, “Oh, I love that idea. And you want me to be involved? Thank you. I could write the story down.”

God: “No, I’ve already got someone picked out for that. But I do need someone to be the blind guy.”

The Blind Patriarch

The heroes of our faith pray things like this Prayer of Abandonment. Give it a read.

My Father, I abandon myself to you. Make of me what you will. Whatever you make of me,I thank you. I am ready for everythingI accept everything. Provided that your will be done in me, In all your creatures, I desire nothing else, Lord. I put my soul in your hands, I give it to you, Lord, With all the love in my heart, Because I love you, And because it is for me a need of loveTo give myself,To put myself in your hands unreservedly, With infinite trust. For you are my Father!—Charles de Foucauld, Prayer of Abandonment

But what if there is resistance? What if someone is not going to follow through with God’s plans?

Isaac was blind, and that blindness was used by God. Isaac needed to be blind. Had he recognized his son Jacob, he would not have blessed him. He would have stood in the way of God.

I’m going to give Isaac the benefit of the doubt, and assume that had someone asked him whether he wanted to give glory to God with his entire life, he would have said yes. It’s just that Isaac suffered from the same condition that afflicts many of us: we think we know better than God.

Isaac’s story as recorded in Genesis appears to focus on this one event, this blessing Jacob, his younger son. We might even say that it is Isaac’s major purpose in life to give this blessing to Jacob. And he almost blew it. He would have blown it had he been seeing.

Good thing he was blind.

And the reason he was blind—not born blind, but became blind—was that the works of God should be made manifest in him. And in this way, I trust, the greatest desire of Isaac came to fulfillment. Surely this patriarch prayed the same as Charles de Foucauld: “My Father, I abandon myself to you. Make of me what you will.” And God did.

Or we might imagine Isaac praying that prayer that I have sometimes heard in church, the prayer that goes, “If we try to do something against your will, defeat us, O Lord!” If Isaac prayed that prayer, then perhaps he recognized his own good fortune in experiencing one of his prayers answered by God. It had been announced before the birth of his twins that the younger was the chosen vessel, appointed by God for leadership, but Isaac stood opposed to God’s plans. God defeated him.

I won’t tell you what ended up happening with Quincey Morris—you’ll have to read the book. But I will say he proved himself noble. Thérèse of Lisieux asked for the grace to be a martyr for Jesus. She wanted to glorify God with her entire life, since it was God who had given her life and Jesus who had redeemed it.

Do we wish similarly, to give our lives wholly to God? And when given the opportunity—like the blind man, or like the blind patriarch—will we embrace it, or at least trust God to defeat us?

Back in November 2025, I preached a version of these thoughts at the Sherrod Ave. Church of Christ (Florence, Alabama). Here’s the video.

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Three years ago, my dad—Timothy Louis Gallagher—passed away in the hospital in Madisonville, Kentucky. This is the eulogy I delivered at his funeral a few days later (April 28, 2023). Dad was 71 years old.

My dad died this past Monday, April 24. The church sent out the news of his death a little before 2pm. That was the second death announcement the church sent out that day. The first death announcement, sent out 15 minutes earlier, reported that I was the one that had died—which gives me the chance to say that the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Some of you are wondering why I would be telling jokes at a time like this. Others of you are probably thinking, well, that wasn’t much of a joke. But the reason I’m starting my dad’s eulogy with something close to a joke is because I am the son of Tim Gallagher, and if he were giving this speech, he would definitely start with a joke.

That’s something he sometimes did: give speeches. Actually, I haven’t heard him give a speech in a long time, maybe decades. I do remember him giving a speech at the rehearsal dinner the evening before my wedding, so that was 23 years ago. I’m not sure I’ve heard him give a speech since then, but when I was young, I remember him doing it a lot. He was in a group called Toastmasters, and they would get together and give speeches, and critique each other. At least, I think that’s what would happen at their meetings. I never actually went to one. But he wanted to become a good public speaker, he wanted that challenge, and he achieved that. One time he came to my school—I can’t remember if it was West Broadway Elementary or Browning Springs Middle School, but it must have been a DARE program because he came to talk about drugs. He had the kids eating out of his hand.

There are so many things I want to tell you about my dad. I’m not a funeral guy; I don’t get asked to do many funerals. I’ve done a handful over the years, but this is the first funeral I’ve done for someone that I lived with, and I lived with him for 18 years. I’ve got a lot to say about him. And I want to get this right. It’s hard to capture his life in this little speech, this eulogy. I recognize that this is one of the defining moments of my life, that decades from now I will tell people about Tim Gallagher and say that I spoke at his funeral. I will tell them how I spent most of the last week of his life sitting in his hospital room, along with my mom and my sister Elaine and other family members. I will explain how I walked into his hospital room just in time to hear his sister-in-law Anna Lou exclaim, “He’s got his eyes open,” while Elaine said, “I think this is it.” I want people to know that he was the type of father who deserved to have his children gathered around him in his last moments, the type of man whose wife wanted to—and did—spend the last night of his life next to his hospital bed, the type of man who deserves a fitting eulogy. So, yes, I want to get this right.

There are a lot of angles by which to approach my dad’s life, a lot of things to say about the type of person he was, and I know each one of you had your own experiences with him, your own angles of vision on his character.

A lot of you know him as a pharmacist. My dad practiced pharmacy in Madisonville since 1975, just after he graduated from Ole Miss, where he met my mom. He followed her back to her hometown, which became his adopted hometown and his children’s hometown. (Dad was a grew up in Texarkana, Texas.) My parents owned Robards Drug Store throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s, and in that capacity my dad gave some of you jobs. He gave Elaine and me jobs. Elaine eventually figured out that she wanted to follow in my parents’ footsteps and become a pharmacist herself. I pretty soon figured out that I did not want to spend my life working in a pharmacy. Let me say that if my dad was disappointed in my decision not to follow his career path, he did not let on. After my parents sold Robards, they worked at various pharmacies, but Mom mostly worked at Rite Aid and Dad mostly worked at Walmart. He managed the local Walmart pharmacy for a while, and one year he was named the national pharmacy manager of the year for Walmart.

Dad loved being a pharmacist, and two aspects of his character stand out to me in relation to pharmacy. One, he enjoyed working hard. Especially when he owned Robards—well, you can imagine the long hours he kept when he owned his own business. When he bought Robards from Mr. Hatchell, the store was open from something like 8 in the morning until 10 at night. I remember as a little kid going to bed before Dad got off work. He worked hard, and he enjoyed it. Even our vacations were work: no sitting on the beach for us. We went on vacation to get things done, to explore new places and see new sights. The second thing I think about is how he enjoyed interacting with customers, providing help to them. Pharmacy gave him a way of helping people, of being generous. Those of you who were his customers know what I’m talking about. Mom and Dad have routinely given Jodi and me things; they’ve always been ready to help us in any way that they could. I don’t know how many things in our house are gifts from them. On the day he died, Mom gave me his shoes, these Sketchers that I’m wearing which he had bought because you could just slide your foot right into them. The shoes are a little smaller than I’m used to wearing; if I had bought them for myself, I would have gotten a bigger pair. I’m glad to wear them because they were my dad’s, but they’re a little small for me. On the other hand, in terms of his character, his hard work and his generosity, his shoes are much harder to fill.

I said he worked a lot and that often he would come home after I was in bed. But at some point he moved the closing hours up to 6pm so he could spend more time with his family. He was devoted to us, to Elaine and me. Much of my childhood was spent in our backyard with Elaine and Dad, and we were throwing a baseball or softball. It seems like all summer long we were practicing hitting or fielding. He was Elaine’s softball coach for several years. He was devoted to us. He loved us. He wanted to teach us and shape our character. He wasn’t the disciplinarian Mom was, but sometimes he would get in on it. I especially remember that Elaine could get under his skin. I’m talking about the young Elaine. Oh, who am I kidding, I’m talking about Elaine no matter what age. Have you met her? But I especially remember a threat Dad would use on the young Elaine, when we still lived on Arrowhead Drive, and Elaine had a phone line in her room. Elaine would do something defiant, and Dad would yell, “I’m going to rip that phone out of the wall!” He yelled it a lot, but he never actually ripped it out of the wall. I don’t bring that up to talk about my dad’s empty threats, but to show you that he wanted to protect his daughter. He was deeply concerned about us kids. And I know my own kids are thinking, “what does it mean to rip a phone out of a wall? Why was the phone in the wall?” Phones used to be attached to the wall by a cord. We’ll talk about it later.

I will also say that besides Elaine, I don’t remember Dad ever having any trouble out of his other children. Just sayin’.

What else should I tell you about my dad? He loved cooking. Not just cooking, but learning about cooking, about different techniques or different tools or different dishes to prepare. He loved experimenting in the kitchen. In the hours before his death, when we were just waiting on it to happen, Elaine said she didn’t know who she was going to call now for cooking advice. Dad loved reading, and he has encouraged that in his kids and grandkids. He’s bought all of us, I guess, kindles. He loved the Dallas Cowboys, from his home state. He loved UK Basketball from his adopted state. He loved Alabama Football, since he claimed an inheritance in Alabama through me and my family. We’ve lived in Alabama since 2006, and he used that as an excuse to root for—let’s admit it—a superior college football team.

Dad loved my mom. They were married nearly 49 years. They raised their family together, owned a business together, shared a career. They took trips together, vacations to Europe and across America that some of you joined them on. My parents were looking forward to their 70s, retirement life that would allow for more travel and visits with grandkids. Mom will still be able to do that, but without the man who devoted his life to her.

Dad also passed on his faith to his children. When I was growing up, when it came to church, we were a three-times-a-week family. Mom and Dad taught Elaine and me from an early age to be devoted to the life of the church. I also remember my dad offering critiques of the day’s sermon. As he aged, Dad grew less critical of sermons, more—I don’t know—receptive, I guess. Sean, a few weeks ago he told me I had to listen to your sermon because it was one of the best he had ever heard, a sermon on the structure of the Psalter. But Dad also showed me how to live out the teachings of Scripture; the apostle Paul says that “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Rom 13:8). I’ve already talked about Dad’s generosity toward others. Those are big shoes to fill.

I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about what it means to live a good life. As I was driving back and forth in recent days between Madisonville and Alabama, where I live, I listened to this great podcast, four episodes on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Some of you may know that name. Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis in 1945, shortly before the end of WW II, because of his role in a conspiracy to rescue Jews from Germany and assassinate Adolf Hitler. The most amazing moment, I think, in Bonhoeffer’s life was his decision in 1939 to not take the easy way out. He was in New York City for a few weeks as a way of avoiding the suffering that would come with being in Germany, and he decided that he could not avoid suffering if he was going to do anything valuable in life. He returned to Germany to work against the Nazi regime from the inside, and he sacrificed his life in that effort. He was 39 years old when he died.

Bonhoeffer, I think, lived a good life, a valuable life, a life of sacrifice and love. It’s easy to honor his memory because he faced such a dreadful evil and he made a difficult and inspiring choice. Most of us do not face such fateful decisions. Such decisions do not come in every generation. The choice that Bonhoeffer made is not a choice that we ourselves have the option of making. So when there is no Nazi regime for us to oppose, when the ethical choices that we face are not so stark, when we don’t have the option of giving our lives in the cause of opposing an obvious and terrible evil, what does a good life look like? Bonhoeffer’s life was momentous because he was in a momentous situation, but what about the rest of us who are not in such a momentous situation?

We still have the choice, don’t we? We can still choose whether we will exhibit love and sacrifice in our lives. The preacher Fred Craddock once mentioned that a lot of us think that when God demands we give over to him our lives, what that means is that we write a $10,000 check to God all at once. “Here God, this is my life.” But what God usually wants from us is that $10,000 one dollar bill at a time. (I’ve inflated the numbers a bit.) We give over our lives to God in installments. Bonhoeffer gave his $10,000 check all at once. Most of us who don’t face such a choice are forced to give a dollar at a time.

Will we be generous with our time and our money, as our Lord calls on us to be? Will we forgive when we are wronged, as our Lord demands? Will we be full of grace, as God has showered us with grace? Will we treat others better than they treat us? Will we treat them the way we wish they would treat us? These small decisions are what it means to give your life over to God a dollar at a time. And as I think about what that looks like, I think about my dad. He’s left some big shoes to fill.

I’m going to miss a lot of things about my dad, about who he was, previous experiences that I had with him. But mostly what I’m going to miss going forward—the crater that his death creates for me now that I’m in my 40s—is that he won’t be there for my kids. On her Facebook page, my wife, Jodi, linked to my dad’s obituary and described him as my kids’ greatest encourager. Listen, my kids need discipline, they need to be tamed, and my dad wasn’t about to provide any of that. In his 50s and 60s, he was done being a parent, and he had transitioned fully into grandparent mode. When my kids did anything—whether cute or amazing or destructive or whatever—he looked on in awe, smiling and laughing and taking a picture. He thought everything they did was amazing. He accepted them fully, without holding anything back. He was their greatest encourager. And I mourn that he’s no longer there to provide that support, that confidence, that acceptance. But the memories of him, the love he shared with them, will last a lifetime. He’s left some big shoes to fill.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

This essay is the text of a presentation I made on October 2, 2025, at The Light Network Conference, which convened at the Henderson Church of Christ in Henderson, Tennessee. Some of the comments here reflect that context. Other comments have been updated.

You ever go to a grocery store for just an item or two, maybe a place like Aldi, where they don’t have a self-checkout lane, and you just have to wait in the back behind a bunch of people with full carts—and then, oh glory of glories, what happens, but another cashier walks up from the back and opens a register, and we see with the eyes of flesh that the last shall be first? What had been the back of the line becomes now the front of the line, as you move over to another register. If 30 seconds earlier someone had walked into the Aldi with a robe and sandals, you probably would have hardly noticed, but if that person had proclaimed for all to hear, “blessed are you who wait in the back of the line,” you would probably roll your eyes. No, not blessed, cursed. This is no fun at all. I’m not fortunate to be at the back of the line. I’d rather be up closer. And yet, 30 seconds later as you move over to the new grocery line, you realize if you had been further up in the line, if you had not been in the back, you would not have been able to move over to the new line so easily, and someone in the back probably would have gotten ahead of you. Whether you knew it at the time or not, you were, indeed, fortunate to be at the back of the line.

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This is a beatitude—or, to be more specific, I think what I have described in that Aldi check-out line is a reasonably close approximation of the kind of beatitude we have at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke. But these beatitudes that we have in the Gospels are not your typical beatitudes. There is something unexpected about them; the blessing is pronounced on the kind of person that is normally not considered fortunate. Like the person in the back of a check-out line. Often beatitudes outside the Gospels do not have this element of surprise.

So, in general, a beatitude is a wisdom saying, something like a proverb, that highlights someone’s good fortune. Let me give you an example: Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. I’ll stop there, and I’m sure some of you could finish that verse, or even that psalm. It is the first verse of the Psalter. A person is described as occupying a fortunate position, namely, the person who avoids ungodly counsel. Note two things about this beatitude:

* it is not at all surprising; you would expect a person to be considered blessed if that person avoids ungodly counsel. All cultures throughout the world and throughout history would have considered that kind of person fortunate. This is like pronouncing a blessing on the person who gets in the check-out line immediately before the rush.

* the point of the beatitude is to encourage people to recognize this truth, to recognize the fortunate position this person is in. The psalm goes on to describe this person who avoids ungodly counsel as akin to a firmly planted tree, whereas the ungodly themselves are like the chaff blown by the wind. Which would you rather be like, the tree or the chaff? The answer is obvious, and that means you need to avoid ungodly counsel. The function is much like the proverbs.

The first verse of the Psalter is a beatitude, and then many more beatitudes appear throughout the book of Psalms. Let me give you more examples, ten of them, all from the book of Psalms. As I read over these verses, give consideration to the two points I’ve already made: the lack of surprise in these beatitudes, and their proverbial nature.

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man unto whom YHWH imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. (Psalm 32:1–2)

Blessed is he that considereth the poor: YHWH will deliver him in time of trouble.

YHWH will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies. (Psalm 41:1–2)

Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts:

we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple. (Psalm 65:4)

Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee. Selah.

Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them. (Psalm 84:4–5)

YHWH of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee. (Psalm 84:12)

Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O YHWH, in the light of thy countenance. (Psalm 89:15)

Blessed is the man that feareth YHWH, that delighteth greatly in his commandments. (Psalm 112:1)

Blessed are the undefiled in the way,who walk in the law of YHWH.

Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart. (Psalm 119:1–2)

Happy (ashrei, makarios) is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in YHWH his God:

Which made heaven, and earth,the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth forever:

Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. (Psalm 146:5–7)

I have now read nine examples of beatitudes from the Psalter, and here is the tenth, somewhat longer, but still not long. This is the entirety of Psalm 128, one of the Songs of Ascents.

Blessed (ashrei, makarios) is everyone that feareth YHWH; that walketh in his ways.

For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy (ashrei, makarios) shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.

Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.

Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed (barak, eulogeō) that feareth YHWH.

YHWH shall bless (barak, eulogeō) thee out of Zion: and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalemall the days of thy life.

Yea, thou shalt see thy children’s children,and peace upon Israel. (Psalm 128)

Hebrew Words

This last example of a beatitude from the Psalter highlights the issue of terminology and meaning. For in this psalm there are two different words translated “blessed” in the KJV. The psalm was originally written in Hebrew, and the two Hebrew words in play are ashrei (אשרי) and barak (ברך). They mean, I think, two different things. Barak has to do with blessing someone, like when Melchizedek blessed Abram (Gen 14:19), or Jacob blessed Pharaoh (Gen 47:10). Here you are changing the status of someone, putting a blessing on a person that had not been in a blessed position, or, at least, didn’t have the blessing that you then gave them. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the person wasn’t in a fortunate position, but your action of blessing has added good fortune to them. So, for example, maybe you go to church with a rich lady. That rich woman is in a fortunate position. But maybe you send her a very sweet greeting card that touches her and feels her with joy. You have blessed her, moving her into a new position of blessing.

That’s barak. In Psalm 128, “YHWH shall bless (barak) thee out of Zion.”

The second Hebrew word translated “blessed” is ashrei, and it does not indicate movement into a new position, but rather acknowledges a current situation as fortunate. “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.” That’s ashrei. That man is in a blessed position, a fortunate situation. It’s not that he is being blessed by someone else, not even by God. Well, yes, of course, he is being blessed by God, but that’s not what the verse is stressing. It is highlighting that he is in a fortunate position. The first verse of Psalm 128 says “Blessed is everyone that feareth YHWH.” That’s ashrei. Sometimes this word is translated happy, which again emphasizes the state of the person, the position that they’re in, not the position that they’re moving into.

When I was a new father, I brought my 6-month-old baby to church one evening, and a middle-aged father about to be an empty-nester came up to me and made goo-goo noises at my daughter. And he said, “I miss this age.” He did not call me blessed, but that was the implication. What he was thinking was how fortunate I was to be a young man and to have a young child, to be just starting out with a family. He wasn’t able to go back to those days, and he missed them. They were fun, even if hectic. Blessed is the man who is just beginning his family, for he shall have fun, if he pays attention. This middle-aged man at church was not blessing me, but he was saying that I was blessed. He did not give me anything or change my situation at all. But he did pronounce my situation fortunate.

That’s a beatitude. The word “beatitude” comes from Latin, beatitudo. It means “happiness” or “blessedness” or “a blessed condition” or “good fortune.”

Familiar Truths

A lot of times a beatitude is a cliche, but sometimes we need to be reminded of a cliche. The middle-aged man at church who told me how much he missed having young kids in the house was not telling me anything shocking or even mildly surprising. A lot of people express that exact thought frequently, especially church people. But that doesn’t mean that young fathers don’t need to hear it. It is always necessary to be intentional about enjoying the time of life you’re in, rather than getting distracted by all that needs to get done or putting out all the fires that pop up. That’s true of young fathers. They need older fathers to tell them again to enjoy having those babies in the house, to recognize that that time of life comes with joys that can never be experienced again. Even if it’s a cliche, it’s necessary to hear.

Think again about Psalm 1. I’ve mentioned how the opening line is not surprising, and especially in the context of the Bible, we are not surprised to read a blessing pronounced on those who avoid ungodly counsel. Coming across such a verse in the Bible is cliche. Of course the Bible is going to tell us to avoid ungodly counsel. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to hear it. Sometimes the ungodly counsel seems so fun. Sometimes you get so tired of conducting your life according to the godly counsel. You’d just like to do what the ungodly people are doing. You don’t want to be like a tree firmly planted; you’d rather be chaff. There are a lot of people who live their lives as if they are chaff, just blowing from one place to another, never firmly planted, and don’t they make it look fun? Sometimes? If you don’t look too closely? Don’t you just want, sometimes at least, to forgo your responsibilities, to not do what everybody expects? It may be cliche, but, booooy, we need that constant reminder. It is the person who does not walk in ungodly counsel who is fortunate.

Or perhaps we need to hear another part of that beatitude. That verse, Psalm 1:1, has more in it than just a warning against ungodly counsel. How does it go? Let’s see, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.” Now, listen, I think that telling Christians, telling people who are likely to read the Bible, that they should not be sitting in the seat of the scornful is anything but surprising. It’s cliche. It’s expected. It’s the kind of thing we hear a lot, so often that we’ll hardly give that advice a second thought. I say, it’s such expected advice that we’ll hardly give it a second thought. Yeah, yeah, don’t sit in the seat of the scornful. Got it!

Here’s the thing: I think I know some Christians who hear this advice all the time who might need to think about it, who might need to reflect on what it means to sit in the seat of the scornful, who might need to reflect on the implicit curse in Psalm 1 on the scornful, as they are lumped in with the ungodly and compared to chaff. On the one hand, I think there are people in this world who want to be chaff, not rooted, but independent, no responsibilities. But usually that’s not church people. Church people want to be firmly planted. That’s the whole idea of joining a church. You have decided that this is where you’re going to be. Church people don’t want to be chaff. But, on the other hand, in the year 2026, we got some scornful people in this world. There is a competition for the seat of the scornful. People on the radio. Social media personalities. There are entire YouTube channels dedicated to scorn.

Now, let me ask you about politicians. Is your favorite politician someone that you would describe as scornful? Do you delight in his or her scornfulness? Maybe you would tell me that you don’t have a favorite politician—to which I can only say, “Blessed are ye who have no favorite politician!” But what I want to know is, do you like the scorn that your team’s politicians heap on the other team? That’s a large part of what American politics is about these days; it’s about scorn. And church buildings in 2026 are populated by people who delight in scorn. My brethren, these things ought not to be.

It may be cliche, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to hear it, and ask ourselves, how much scorn do I generate? Are there certain topics of conversation where I almost can’t help but fall into scorn? Maybe I need to avoid talking about those topics. Because I want to avoid the seat of the scornful.

Back to Terminology

But we were talking about terminology. As I said, there are two Hebrew words often translated “blessed,” but they have different nuances. Barak is the one I have said moves someone into a new position, gives them a blessing. Ashrei, on the other hand, describes the position that the person is already in. Beatitudes use ashrei, not barak. Beatitudes describe someone’s fortunate situation. The man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, or sitteth in the seat of the scornful? That guy is blessed. He is in a fortunate position.

We might think of the two different Hebrew words as corresponding to two pronunciations of our English word. When we are blessing someone else, moving them into a position of blessing, the Hebrew word is barak, and we can say we have “blessed” (blest) that person. When we are acknowledging that a person is in a fortunate situation, the Hebrew word is ashrei, and we can say that the person is “bless-ed” (two syllables). We wouldn’t say that Jacob bless-ed Pharaoh, but we might recite Psalm 1 as “Bless-ed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.”

Another way to think about beatitudes is with the #Blessed. This morning I googled #Blessed and here are some examples of what the internet gave me. Would you believe that some of them are about football? There’s a school in Louisville called LCA, that put on the Twitter this morning: “#Blessed to have these young men leading LCA into district play,” and the post had pictures of some high school football players. Somebody named Matt Peck put a gif of Homer Simpson talking about sports, and he wrote the comment “Free football on the same night the Cubs win their wild card series? We are truly #Blessed.” Another one, not about football: somebody put up a picture of a sunrise and commented: “Thank you, God, for another beautiful day! #Blessed.” These are all describing the fortunate situation that a person is in, whether fortunate to be witnessing a sunrise, or fortunate to be able to watch football. That’s what the #Blessed is for.

And that’s what ashrei means. We could think about the first verse of the Psalter this way: Not walking in the counsel of the ungodly? #Blessed. It’s a comment about the situation someone is in.

Acknowledgement, Not Promise

I have been stressing this meaning of the Hebrew word ashrei, and therefore the point of a beatitude, because I think some people misunderstand it. So, let me go ahead and say that I am offering my opinion, an opinion that is shared by many scholars, but not nearly all. Some people think that the point of a beatitude is to offer a promise of blessing from God. The man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly will receive blessing from God. Of course, I think it is true that this man will receive blessing from God, but I don’t think that’s what Psalm 1:1 is talking about. Other people do think so; why don’t I think so?

Well, first, I just don’t think that’s what the word ashrei means. To say it again, ashrei describes a state of being. You will sometimes see it translated as “happy,” and I’m sure everyone reading this essay has encountered that translation suggestion for the beatitudes in the Gospels. It’s usually not translated as “happy” in the KJV, but we saw that it was translated that way at Psalm 146:5, “Happy (ashrei, makarios) is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help.” The scholar Ulrich Luz in the Hermeneia commentary on Matthew (2007) says: “these beatitudes are not designed to give comfort by making promises about the next life; they are an authoritative language act that pronounces people happy in the here and now” (1.190). But Luz has already said “the translation ‘happy’ sounds somewhat banal,” and I agree. I don’t like the translation “happy” because it signifies the emotions of the person, and I don’t think that’s what ashrei is doing. Again, ashrei describes a state of being, or the position that someone is in, no matter whether they’re happy about it or not. I prefer the translation “fortunate.” One group of scholars (the Jesus Seminar) has suggested the translation “Congratulations,” which I think captures the meaning well. But at any rate, even though I don’t like the translation “happy,” it does helpfully convey that the beatitude is about the present state of the person, not a promise for the future. The person right now is in a fortunate position deserving of our congratulations.

I also think my understanding of beatitudes—not as a promise but as a description—makes more sense of the beatitudes that we find in Scripture. Let me remind you of Psalm 32.

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man unto whom YHWH imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. (Psalm 32:1–2)

Is this a promise for the future? Does this passage mean that the person will be blessed or that the person is already blessed? Already. Now, of course, the person will be blessed in the future, too, but we know that from our knowledge of Scripture and of God’s ways, not from this particular passage. This passage, Psalm 32:1–2, tells us that a person whose transgression is forgiven is in a fortunate position. It’s a state of being.

Now, it’s true that sometimes you’re in a fortunate position because of the good that will come to you because you’re in that position. Being in the back of a grocery store line is usually not fortunate, but sometimes it is. And we can imagine the people in that line, waiting on the slow check out person, and they all see the new worker clock in and put on their jacket with a name tag and take their place behind the new counter and flip the switch that turns on the light above their cash register. We can imagine the people in the line seeing this whole process and realizing that the people in the back of the line are probably going to check out before them, and they’re already jealous. “I wish I were in the back of the line.” It’s not so much that they value being in the back, but they recognize that it’s fortunate to be in the back because of the benefit about to come to those in the back. The last shall be first.

Here is the beginning of Psalm 41.

Blessed (ashrei) is he that considereth the poor: YHWH will deliver him in time of trouble.

YHWH will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed (ashrei) upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies. (Psalm 41:1–2)

This passage looks like it might be an example of a beatitude that is a promise for the future, that the person that considereth the poor will be blessed by God. Certainly this person will be blessed, and the Psalm says it: “YHWH will deliver him in time of trouble.” But I maintain that the first clause, “Blessed is he that considereth the poor” means not that the person will be blessed but that he is already in a fortunate position. “I consider the poor. #Blessed.” Why does the psalmist think that the one who considers the poor is in a fortunate position? Because the other grocery line is about to open up. You’re in a fortunate position because you are in the position of having God on your side, and only good can result from that.

Greek Words

Enough on that. You’re either convinced or you’re not. You’re probably wondering why I’m talking so much about Hebrew anyway, since we’re supposed to be talking about the Sermon on the Mount, which we have in Greek. So let’s talk about Greek. There are two Greek words for blessing. Actually, there might be a dozen Greek words for “blessing,” but there are two I’m going to talk about right now, and they happen to correspond closely to the two Hebrew words I’ve mentioned. The two Greek words are eulogeo (εὐλογέω) and makarios (μακάριος). Eulogeo corresponds to barak, to bless someone. Makarios corresponds to ashrei, to describe someone’s fortunate position. All the beatitudes in the Bible—I think this is right—all of them use makarios. In the LXX, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, makarios appears dozens of times and it is always a translation of ashrei. In the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus says that the poor in spirit are blessed, he uses the Greek word makarios. Everything I’ve said about the Hebrew word ashrei applies to the Greek word makarios. It does not give a promise for future blessing, it describes a present fortunate position.

By the way, it’s the use of the word makarios that gives an alternative title for beatitudes. Some people call them macarisms.

Outside the Bible

Now, of course, beatitudes or macarisms are not found only in the Bible. Apparently in Greek the oldest beatitudes go back to the mystery religions. This is according to the scholar Hans Dieter Betz in his Hermeneia commentary on the Sermon on the Mount (1995, pp. 97–105). He cites the Homeric Hymn to Demeter as containing this beatitude near the end of the poem (line 480): “Happy (ὄλβιος) is he among humans on earth who has seen these mysteries” (LCL, trans. West). Let me point out two things about this beatitude. First, like all the ones we’ve looked at so far, there is no surprise involved here. It’s not at all unexpected to say that someone who has seen these mysteries is fortunate. Of course they’re fortunate. Second, the Greek word used here is not makarios. I said that all the biblical beatitudes use that word, but not all beatitudes in Greek use it. There are a few other Greek terms that are sometimes used for beatitudes outside the Bible. The term used in the Homeric Hymn here is olbios, for instance. (For other terms used for beatitudes, see TDNT 4.362–70.)

Beatitudes also show up in Second Temple Jewish literature. There’s a list of beatitudes in 2 Enoch 42:6–14 that I won’t review right now. There’s also a list in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a scroll that modern scholars have labeled 4QBeatitudes or 4Q525. In the image below, the arrows point to appearances of the word ashrei in 4QBeatitudes.

Here is a translation of a portion of 4QBeatitudes.

[Blessed is the one who …] with a pure heart and does not slander with his tongue (Ps. 15:3). [first red arrow] Blessed are those who hold fast to its statutes and do not hold fast to the ways of injustice. Ble[ssed] are those who rejoice in it, and do not exult in paths of folly. [second red arrow] Blessed are those who seek it with pure hands, and do not search for it with a deceitful [hea]rt. [third red arrow] Blessed is the man who attains wisdom, and walks in the law of the Most High: establishes his heart in its ways, restrains himself by its corrections, is continually satisfied with its punishments, does not forsake it in the face of [his] trials, at the time of distress he does not abandon it, does not forget it [in the day of] terror, and in the humility of his soul he does not abhor [it.] But he meditates on it continually, and in his trial he reflects [on it, and with al]l his being [he gains understanding] in it…

The term translated “blessed” is ashrei. And notice again that the beatitudes are not very surprising.

It’s the same in Sirach. In the beatitudes at Sirach 14:20 or 25:7–10, there is the use of the Hebrew term ashrei or the Greek term makarios, and there is nothing surprising about the beatitudes. For example, at Sirach 14:20, we read, “Blessed is the person who meditates on wisdom.”

The New Testament

Finally, in the New Testament, we have several beatitudes. The book of Revelation contains seven beatitudes scattered throughout the book (Rev 1:3; 14:13; 16:15; 19:9; 20:6; 22:7, 14). Paul reports the words of Jesus, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35), and the word blessed here is makarios. And let’s pause here briefly to note that this dominical saying is somewhat counterintuitive. You are more fortunate to give away things than to receive things. I have been stressing that beatitudes, even in the Bible, reinforce familiar truths rather than offer any surprise. And I have been laying so much stress on that aspect of beatitudes in order to set up a contrast with the beatitudes of Jesus. His beatitudes, perhaps in Acts 20:35, certainly in the Sermon on the Mount, do not traffic in cliches, do not reinforce familiar truths. Or, for the most part. Maybe we would say that it is a familiar truth to call the peacemakers or the pure in heart fortunate. But not the persecuted. Not the mourners. Not the poor in spirit. Declaring them to be fortunate is intended to surprise, to provoke, and to teach that the values of Christ’s kingdom are often upside down in comparison to the expected values of even religious people in this world.

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I have no experience with speaking in tongues. First of all, though I can read a few languages for academic purposes, I speak only a single language. (I’m not going to tell you which one; you’ll just have to guess.) Secondly, the phenomenon known today as “speaking in tongues” and practiced—encouraged—among charismatic Christians is something completely foreign to me. I’ve never done it and I’ve never even seen it done. I have heard reports from people who have done it, and I have read a little bit about it. This post is not about that practice except tangentially.

Here, we’re talking about the first century, and specifically about the New Testament.

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There are a few passages in the New Testament that mention speaking in tongues.

* Acts 2:4–11

* Acts 10:46

* Acts 19:6

* 1 Corinthians 12–14

Is this really the entire list of New Testament passages on “speaking in tongues”? I would have thought it came up more, especially in Acts. Let’s survey the evidence.

Glōssa in the New Testament

The Greek word for tongue is glōssa (γλῶσσα), which forms in English the first part of the word glossolalia. (The second part, lalia, relates to the Greek word for “speaking,” so glossolalia basically means “tongue speaking,” but I’ll offer a more precise definition in the next section.) Glōssa appears 50x in the New Testament, and by far the most number of times is in 1 Corinthians (21x), all in chapters 12–14, mostly chapter 14. Other than that, it appears as follows:

* Gospels, 4x (twice in Mark, twice in Luke)

* Acts, 6x (4x in ch. 2, and then once each in ch. 10 and ch. 19)

* Epistles other than 1 Corinthians

* Paul, 3x (Rom 3:13; 14:11; Phil 2:11)

* Catholic Epistles, 7x (mostly James, also 1 Peter 3:10; 1 John 3:18)

* Revelation, 8x, always referring to the many nations and peoples and tongues (except for 16:10)

There are plenty of times when glōssa means simply “tongue,” as in the body-part, the organ inside the mouth. Jesus healed a guy’s tongue (Mark 7:32–37) and Zechariah’s tongue was loosened (Luke 1:64) and Dives wanted a drop of water to cool his tongue (Luke 16:24). Sometimes glōssa means “language,” as on Pentecost when the gathered Jews marveled that they heard the apostles “telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God” (Acts 2:11), and in most of its appearances in Revelation.

In the book of Acts, the word glōssa does not appear after Acts 2, except in the two verses already mentioned, 10:46 and 19:6.

So, yes, confirmed! The only passages in the New Testament that mention “speaking in tongues” are the ones listed earlier: three passages in Acts and the discussion in 1 Corinthians.

Except for one interesting verse in your Bible that has been judged—rightly—to be a later addition to the Gospel of Mark. Here’s the verse in the KJV:

And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues (γλώσσαις λαλήσουσιν καιναῖς). (Mark 16:17)

Hmm, “new” tongues. That’s interesting, and this passage—though inauthentic to Mark—should be considered as part of the reception history of the “tongues” phenomenon in the New Testament, and possibly as evidence of early Christian experience. This verse will come up again later in this post.

The Four “Tongues” Passages in the New Testament

A new article in the Journal of Biblical Literature by Joshua H. M. Chan considers the interpretation of these passages and argues against the view that any of them describe glossolalia, arguing instead that some of them describe xenolalia and others naturally acquired languages. I’ll explain what this means in a minute. Let me introduce Chan: he’s affiliated with Oxford University, and I would guess he’s a doctoral student there. The first footnote of this article says that the article itself is based on his masters thesis at Dallas Theological Seminary, under the supervision of Darrell Bock and Joseph Fantin. Here’s Chan’s LinkedIn page, where you can see a picture of him.

Now, to define terms.

glossolalia, i.e., “speaking in tongues,” means making utterances that are unintelligible to (most) other humans. This is the charismatic practice I mentioned earlier. The person who engages in glossolalia says that he or she is speaking an angelic or heavenly language, and this person is enabled to do this by the power of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes an interpreter, also empowered by the Holy Spirit, offers a translation of the heavenly language into a language that humans speak.

xenolalia, speaking in foreign languages, i.e., known human languages—but, here’s the catch: the speaker hasn’t ever studied the language before. Like if you’ve never studied Russian and then all the sudden you’re speaking Russian.

So, which one is the New Testament talking about? I grew up hearing—and this view was reinforced when I was a student at FHU—that all of the “speaking in tongues” passages in the New Testament were describing xenolalia and not glossolalia, and that this interpretation is most clear from Acts 2, which provides the lens for interpreting 1 Corinthians 12–14. And this interpretation would mean that the modern phenomenon of glossolalia is not reproducing anything known from the New Testament. This view still makes most sense to me, and this article by Chan argues similarly.

But apparently it’s not a very common view among biblical scholars.

Scholarship on New Testament “Tongues” Passages

Using Chan’s article for a survey of scholarship, here’s the lay of the land on the scholarly interpretation of those New Testament passages.

1 Corinthians 12–14

According to Chan (at the very beginning of his article), it is pretty rare for biblical scholars to interpret the phenomenon in Corinth as xenolalia. Rather, they interpret it as some sort of glossolalia.

Note these verses.

For those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God; for nobody understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit. (1 Corinthians 14:2)

For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unproductive. (1 Corinthians 14:14)

(Chan, note 85, indicates a forthcoming article in ZNW under the title “The Unintelligible Intelligibility of Tongues: The Early Reception of Glossolalia as Human Languages in 1 Corinthians 14,2.14.”)

Chan divides the glossolalia interpretations into three categories and lists proponents of each.

* ecstatic speech: Johannes Behm (TDNT 1.719–27); Luke Timothy Johnson (ABD 6.596–600); Dunn; Hovenden; Mills; Hiu; Choi.

* angelic tongues: Poirier; Fee; Hays; Conzelmann; Martin; Quesnel.

* voces magicae: Stroud; Nasrallah.

But some people do interpret Paul’s statements in 1 Corinthians about tongues as implying that the phenomenon involves known human languages.

* xenolalia. Tibbs; Forbes; Eurell; Tupamahu; Schottroff; Schreiner.

Acts 2

Here there is still a strong tradition in scholarship to interpret the “tongues” phenomenon as xenolalia, but this interpretation is not universal.

Note this verse:

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. (Acts 2:4)

* xenolalia. Keener is the only scholar named by Chan, but Chan no doubt intends for Keener to represent an entire tradition of scholarship and as a guide to that tradition.

* glossolalia. Scippa; Lüdemann; Horn.

* akolalia (i.e., a miracle of hearing rather than speaking). Hunter. Chan (pp. 139–40) argues (based on Hovenden) against this interpretation, though he can cite in its behalf Gregory of Nazianzus (Oration 41.15) and the Venerable Bede (Comm. Acts 2.6), not to mention more modern scholars besides Hunter: Everts; Dunn; Johnson.

Acts 10:46 and 19:6

Apparently the dominant view of these passages, concerning Cornelius and the twelve disciples in Ephesus that Paul baptized, is that they refer to glossolalia. See Johnson; Menzies; Witherington; Hiu.

Chan’s Argument

It’s the interpretation of the phenomenon in 1 Corinthians as xenolalia that Chan considers new and groundbreaking. To Tupamahu he attributes the insight that patristic interpreters universally regarded it as xenolalia that was happening in Corinth.

But he admits in the footnote (note 7) that the year before Tupamahu’s book was published, Minets published a monograph arguing the opposite, that the early patristic interpreters regarded the Corinthian phenomenon as glossolalia.

Chan pushes back on Minets a bit by citing Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 1.16.78.1) and Origen (Comm. Rom. 1.13.6) as supporting Tupamahu’s argument.

I quote here the statement from Origen, who is commenting on Romans 1:14, where Paul says that he is a debtor to Greeks and barbarians.

At this point is must be asked in what sense the Apostle is a debtor to Greeks and barbarians, to the wise and foolish. For what had he received from them which would cause him to be indebted to them? In my opinion he has become a debtor to the various nations because, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, he had received the ability to speak in the tongues of all the nations, as he himself says, “I speak in more tongues than all of you” (1 Corinthians 14:18). Accordingly, since a person receives the knowledge of tongues not for his own sake but for the sake of those to whom he is supposed to preach, he becomes a debtor to all those, the knowledge of whose language he has received from God. (trans. Scheck 1.85)

Building from Tupamahu’s analysis of 1 Corinthians, Chan argues that Acts 2 depicts xenolalia, whereas Acts 10 and 19 depict people speaking in foreign languages that they naturally know (maybe their native language as opposed to Greek). The new part of Chan’s argument is that last bit, where he’s saying that Acts 10 and 19 depict neither glossolalia nor xenolalia. (It seems, from Chan’s interaction with Tupamahu, that Tupamahu may argue this same thing for Corinthians, that the “speaking in tongues” there was non-miraculous in itself, just speaking in the speaker’s vernacular language. But I might be misreading Chan’s summary of Tupamahu.)

Acts 2

Chan first argues that Acts 2 describes xenolalia rather than glossolalia (pp. 136–42). The most interesting thing here is that he’s able to cite some patristic interpreters for the idea that Acts 2 reverses the curse of Babel, which is a pretty common modern idea. He cites (note 15) Augustine; John Chrysostom; and Jacob of Serugh.

Acts 10 and 19

Here are the relevant verses (NRSV).

The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, 46 for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, 47 “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” (Acts 10:45–47)

When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. (Acts 19:6)

And here’s what Chan concludes (p. 150): “… the plausible context in 10:46 and 19:6 is that the new believers praised and prophesied in languages they already knew, that is, naturally acquired languages.”

Now, how does Chan get there?

First, Chan argues that it is not necessary to interpret these passages as involving unintelligible utterances, i.e., glossolalia (pp. 142–45). He wants to establish that these passages could be plausibly be read as involving known human languages rather than a heavenly language—indeed, Chan regards as more plausible the interpretation that Acts 10 and 19 involve known human languages, on analogy with Acts 2, which Chan thinks more clearly involves known human languages.

What Chan questions is how the speakers in Acts 10 and 19 (not Acts 2) acquired knowledge of these languages. These passages are sometimes interpreted as a “Gentile Pentecost,” but the element that makes the tongue-speaking in Acts 2 definitely Spirit-inspired—the explicit statement that it was enabled by the Spirit that had come upon the gathered community (Acts 2:4)—is missing from Acts 10 and 19 (pp. 145–46).

Next, Chan argues that these two Acts passages might be plausibly read as not involving Spirit-inspired knowledge of languages but merely Spirit-inspired praise in native languages of the speakers.

Acts 10

He points out that Cornelius the centurion belonged to an Italian cohort (Acts 10:1), so he could have spoken Latin or another language unknown to Palestinian Jews like Peter. In other words, if Cornelius started speaking Latin, it would be “speaking in a tongue” from Peter’s perspective. Chan also points out (pp. 147–48) that some manuscripts of Acts qualify the “tongues” spoken by Cornelius and his crew as “new” or “various” or “other” or “their.” This information is not signaled in the standard hand-editions of the Greek New Testament (I checked UBS4 and UBS5 and NA26 and NA28), but it is in Metzger’s older Textual Commentary (not the newer one by Houghton). Here’s what Metzger says about Acts 10:46.

Several Western witnesses qualify “tongues” with one or another adjective; thus itd (Dgr has an erasure at this point) reads praevaricatis linguis, which may presuppose an original Greek reading ποικίλαις (Hilgenfeld), or καιναῖς (Blass), or ἑτέραις (Ropes and A. C. Clark).

This manuscript that Metzger is talking about is Codex Bezae, from the fifth century, a bilingual manuscript with Greek and Latin on facing pages. The Latin text (= itd) has praevaricatis linguis, which looks like it ought to mean “with sinful tongues,” but apparently it means something like “with different tongues.” Unfortunately, as Metzger says, the Greek side of the manuscript (= Dgr) has a lacuna—or, rather, an erasure—here, but assuming it originally matched the Latin text, scholars have guessed at what the Greek originally said, maybe “various” or “new” or “other.”

But, and here’s an important point, we actually have no Greek manuscript evidence for this reading. Bezae would offer Greek manuscript evidence, but the reading is not extant there. And no other Greek manuscript of Acts has the reading “new” or “other” or whatever. Still, some manuscripts in other languages (as in the Latin of Bezae) do have some variation of this reading, suggesting how these scribes interpreted the phenomenon of tongues in the passage.

Chan (and Metzger) point to these other versions as having something like this “new languages” reading at Acts 10:46: Coptic, Syriac (the Peshitta), and another Latin manuscript (61 = CLA 270, the Book of Armagh, which has linguis variis, as you can see in the digital images of the manuscript here, fol. 178[ie 179]r, fourth line from the bottom of the left column—or in the transcription here).

I confirmed all of this evidence through the ECM of Acts, published nearly a decade ago. Moreover, Chan (and Metzger) cites the third-century Latin treatise De Rebaptismate §5 (formerly attributed to Cyprian), which you can see here (p. 50 line 7) that it says that Cornelius and company were speaking linguis suis, “in their languages.”

The modifier “new,” mentioned above in relation to Bezae, is reminiscent of the same term in Mark 16:17 (mentioned earlier). Chan has a little discussion of this term (p. 148), concluding: “Therefore, ‘new tongues’ refers to languages ‘new’ to the speakers/hearers relative to their existing knowledge, not a different ontological kind of ecstatic speech.”

Acts 19

As for Acts 19, Chan argues that Ephesus was a multilingual environment and that the early reception of the episode understood the scene as involving naturally acquired languages.

For the multilingualism of Ephesus, Chan points to the Greek and Latin inscriptions on this gate (see also Livius). He also refers to Herodotus.

Now these Ionians, who possessed the Panionion … use not all the same speech (glōssa) but four different dialects. Miletus lies farthest south among them, and next to it come Myus and Priene; these are settlements in Caria, and they use a common language; Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Clazomenae, Phocaea, all of them being in Lydia, have a language in common which is wholly idfferent from teh speech of the three cities aforementioned. There are yet three Ionian cities, two of them situate on the islands of Samos and Chios, and one, Erythrae, on the mainland; the Chians and Erythraeans speak alike, but the Samians have a language which is their own and none other’s. It is thus seen that there are four fashions of speech (οὗτοι χαρακτῆρες γλώσσης τέσσερες γίνονται). (Herodotus 1.142; LCL)

Now, of course, Herodotus is describing a time about five centuries before Paul visited Ephesus, but still.

As for the reception of Acts 19:6 (p. 150), Chan cites a few Syriac manuscripts, a manuscript of the Vetus Latina, some Vulgate manuscripts, and Ephrem. He’s relying here on the textual commentary by Metzger. (This information is omitted by Houghton, and it is not found in the standard hand-editions.) The ECM of Acts cites only a marginal reading of the seventh-century Harklean Syriac translation. Neither Metzger nor Chan are specific about which Latin manuscripts (Vetus Latina or Vulgate) they have in mind, and the standard (Stuttgart) hand-edition of the Vulgate cites no variant reading, and the major edition of the Vulgate New Testament cites only a single manuscript, labeled p, a.k.a. Codex Perpinianensis (VL54, BNF lat. 321, 12th cent.; check it here at fol. 128v, top left)—which adds at the end of the verse ita ut ipsi sibi interpretarentur, “so that they could interpret for themselves.”

So I don’t know what Latin manuscripts we’re talking about (except for that 12th cent. Vulgate manuscript), though I do trust Metzger to have actually looked at the manuscript (or a facsimile) to make sure—at least as much as I trust any scholar, i.e., not very much; I always like to check for myself. Anyway, according to Metzger, the Western text of Acts has an addition after the word “tongues” in Acts 19:6, an addition attested in the sources already cited (Syriac, Latin, Ephrem). Metzger gives a translation for the addition: “other tongues, and they themselves knew them, which they also interpreted for themselves; and certain also prophesied.”

After exploring Luke’s theology of languages (pp. 150–55), Chan concludes:

The early church was full of cultural and linguistic differences, and the diversity of languages is certainly one major theme that Acts attempts to bring out. [See, e.g., the reference to the diverse languages at Acts 2:9–11; the Lycaonian language at Acts 14:11, and the difficulty that Paul and Barnabas had in communicating with them, Acts 14:18; and the role of languages at Acts 21:37–38; 21:40–22:2.] The fact that Cornelius’s household and the Ephesian twelve used their heart languages, which Peter and Paul did not understand, to magnify God (Acts 10:46) and prophesy (Acts 19:6), highlights the supremacy of the gospel over their language barriers.

So, that’s it, an interesting exploration of an interesting issue, with an interesting proposal, that Cornelius and the Ephesian twelve were not “speaking in tongues” as we think of it (glossolalia), and they were not speaking in real human languages that they did not previously know (xenolalia), but they were speaking in their native languages praise that was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Am I convinced? That’s a strong word. I am convinced that it is a possibility.

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