(My latest for Catholic Ansers Magazine. Enjoy! — Cale)
A few weeks ago, while leading a pilgrimage tour to Israel, I couldn’t wait to bring the group to one of the greatest museums in the world: the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Packed with artifacts from the biblical period, it’s a treasure trove for anyone interested in the material remains of salvation history.
The museum also houses one of the more important archaeological finds of recent years: an artifact that has bolstered our confidence in the veracity of the Old Testament accounts of the kingdom of David, his son Solomon, and their successors.
Biblical “minimalists” had long contended that King David did not actually preside over a kingdom that originated circa the tenth century B.C., as the Bible states. Indeed, these scholars alleged that David, Solomon, and in fact the entire line of Davidic kings chronicled in the Old Testament, are nothing more than fictional characters invented by the writers of the Hebrew scriptures.
In favor of the “minimalist” argument was the lack of any evidence of David’s existence outside the Bible.
But here’s where archaeology came to the rescue. During the 1993-94 excavations at Tel Dan, in northern Israel, a stele (a stone slab bearing an inscription) was unearthed. Made from basalt, a volcanic rock plentiful in the region, it bears an account of a military victory. Scholars have postulated that the inscription commemorates an Aramean king’s defeat of Israelite forces. It may have been commissioned by Hazael or Ben-Hadad III, his son (cf. 2 Kings 10:32, 13:3, 22; 2 Chron. 22:5).
The key line on the monument, the stunning find, is the mention of the “House of David.” There it was, written in stone—independent confirmation of David’s existence and of a line of kings so powerful that defeating armies from this “House” warranted a public brag of sorts on this stele, for all passersby to read and marvel at.
Analysis of the stele dates it to the mid-ninth century BC, right around the time when, according to Scripture, David’s dynasty would have been flourishing. It appears that the stele was broken by the Israelites after they recaptured the area some time later, and was eventually repurposed into building blocks for the city wall.
After this discovery, as chronicled by Craig Evans, the minimalists changed their approach. “Okay, okay,” they admitted, “maybe David existed after all. But he was a nobody. A local tribal chief, at best, certainly not the originator of the vast, Iron-Age kingdom described in the Old Testament.”
At this point, faced with what seems like special pleading, one is tempted to respond like Jerry Seinfeld: “Really? Really?”
But don’t despair—again, archaeology is our friend here.
First of all, if David had been merely a small-time local yokel, what on earth were his descendants doing fighting battles all the way up north, near the modern-day border that separates Israel and Syria, far from his allegedly tiny operation in Jerusalem?
Also, a vast, centralized complex of buildings—in all likelihood, a government compound—has been unearthed in the Old City of Jerusalem, and can be seen on tours today. It’s located in what’s known as the “City of David” and dates to approximately the tenth century B.C.; once more, the time when Scripture says that David and Solomon were establishing their empire. Again, this seems fairly excessive if we’re talking about an insignificant tribal chieftain, but it does fit the biblical narrative of David’s expansive realm.
To this our minimalist might say, “I’ll grant you that David existed, and perhaps he did preside over a significantly large kingdom, but we still can’t trust what the Bible says about him. The people of David’s time would not have been significantly literate enough to record his exploits or those of his descendants”.
This last objection is at least partially answered by—you guessed it—yet another archaeological discovery. In 2008, an ostracon (an inscribed piece of pottery) dating to the tenth century B.C. was disinterred at the ancient fortress city of Khirbet Qeiyafa, which was the only fortified Judahite city during the reigns of David and his predecessor, King Saul (in fact, the Qeiyafa ostracon is the only extant relic that mentions Saul).
The famed French epigrapher Émile Puech regards the inscription as the earliest writing narrating the transition of Israel from a people ruled by judges into a kingdom. It shows that the people living around David’s time were literate, and in fact, more than capable of recording (and passing on) the annals of David’s dynasty, such as we see in the biblical books of Kings and Chronicles.
The Tel Dan stele and the Qeiyafa ostracon are just two examples from the multitude of archaeological discoveries in Israel that have bolstered our understanding of, and in many cases substantiated the reliability of, biblical records of history. Since only roughly five percent of all biblical sites have been excavated to date (which is unbelievable considering how much has already been found), It’s truly exciting to think of how many more such finds may be unearthed in the years to come.
Larry Hurtado’s Statement Regarding His Health
BlogDr. Larry Hurtado, writing on his personal blog:
This is very sad news indeed. Dr. Hurtado is truly a giant among New Testament scholars. His publications on Christian origins are remarkable — of special note are his works explaining how worship of Jesus as divine was not a late development, but indeed reaches back to the dawn of Christianity. He also has some great material on early artifacts of the Faith; specifically, the early Christian manuscripts. Please pray for Dr. Hurtado and his family at this most difficult time.
At the Church of the Multiplication in Israel (Video)
Blog, Pilgrimages, VideoFilmed live on The Faith Explained pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I explain why the Multiplication of the Loaves should be read as a supernatural miracle in Jesus’ career, and how it relates to the daily miracle of the Eucharist. In light of constant doubts, even by high-ranking prelates and scholars in the Church, this is more important than ever. Join us on our next pilgrimage! Reach out here: www.TheFaithExplained.com/contact.
Cardinal Collins on G.K. Chesterton
BlogFun post by Brandon Vogt over at the Word on Fire blog. Brandon is, along with Dale Ahlquist, a driving force behind the 38th Annual Chesterton Conference, and…
Brandon asked Cardinal Collins for an interview about Chesterton’s influence on his life and ministry. Some good stuff here:
And:
Readers of these pages are well aware of our fondness for Cardinal Collins, who has been a huge supporter of The Faith Explained Institute, and speaks at our conferences whenever possible. I just love the fact he was going to take in a Chesterton conference (and probably looking forward to going simply as an attendee). Knowing how generous he is with his time and talents, I’m not at all surprised that once word got out, he agreed to speak and celebrate Mass while there.
James Carroll Misunderstands the New Covenant Priesthood
Blog(My latest for Catholic Answers Magazine.) James Carroll, an ex-priest writing for The Atlantic, recently argued for an abolition of the Catholic priesthood, mostly due to the abuse scandal. He is certainly right that the priesthood in general has its problems, as continuing revelations of abuse and cover-up have shown.
But I want to focus on another assertion Carroll makes: namely, that in the nascent Church, “There was no priesthood yet,” at least not by the time the great Jewish historian Josephus wrote about the early Christians, about sixty years after the first Easter. In other words, Carroll doesn’t see the priesthood as intrinsic to the New Covenant established by Christ.
This view is at loggerheads with that of the Catholic Church—that the priesthood of the New Covenant was established by Jesus himself and is foundational to the Church’s identity as the new Israel. Let’s take a look at one individual mentioned in Scripture who, despite being shrouded in mystery, leaves us an important clue in this regard.
St. Luke, writing in the Acts of the Apostles, introduces us to St. Matthias, who replaced Judas as the twelfth apostle (Acts 1:15-26). In so doing, Luke provides us with some unexpectedly rich apologetic material concerning the New Covenant priesthood, despite the relative obscurity of Matthias himself. He is never mentioned again in the New Testament, although later apocryphal accounts speak of his preaching to the Ethiopians. Both the early Church historian Eusebius and St. Epiphanius believed that Matthias had been one of the original “seventy” disciples of Jesus (cf. Luke 10:1).
As an aside, the fact that Judas had to be replaced at all reinforces the fact that “the Twelve” were an integral part of what Jesus had intended to establish with the New Covenant. Jesus’ selection of twelve apostles clearly evoked the foundational twelve tribes of Israel, which was not lost on his fellow Jews and certainly not on his opponents in the Jewish religious hierarchy. The titulus nailed above our crucified Lord’s head on the cross (cf. Luke 23:38) emphasized the main charge against him: that he claimed to be the “King of the Jews,” the King of Israel.
Israel was originally ruled by judges, not kings, because the Jews recognized God as their true King (in fact, the book of Judges views the people’s desire for a human king as an abomination—see especially 8:22-9:57). It was God who had founded the nation and established its twelve tribes derived from the sons of Jacob, who was renamed “Israel.” Thus, to claim the authority to establish a new (or renewed) Israel, with a new Twelve, is a strong claim to divinity on Jesus’ part.
This new Israel featured a new temple—the Church, a community of “living stones” (1 Pet. 2:5); a new sacrifice—the Eucharist, which in fact is the New Covenant in Jesus’ blood (Luke 22:20); and a new priesthood, celebrating this new sacrifice on a new altar. “We have an altar from which those who serve the tent [the Old Covenant priests, at the Jerusalem Temple] have no right to eat” (Heb. 13:10).
Luke’s two-volume work, comprising his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, is a masterpiece on many historical and theological levels. One of the things Luke does so well is to set the story of Jesus and the Church in continuity with the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament), often in remarkably subtle ways. One of the best examples of this is how Luke presents his account of Matthias’s selection:
A casual reader might assume that the method by which the eleven picked Matthias was a mere game of chance, leaving room for the Holy Spirit to make his sovereign choice. But remember, Luke’s gospel and Acts are a two-volume set, and Luke knows his readers will remember the beginning of the first book and connect it to the opening scenes of his sequel.
In Luke 1, we read about the “annunciation” to Zechariah, the future father of John the Baptist. Why is it that Zechariah, a priest, found himself on duty in the temple the day Gabriel appeared to him? “Now while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, it fell to him by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense” (Luke 1:8–9, emphasis added).
In other words, casting lots was a means of delineating priestly duties in the Old Covenant, and Luke shows that method was used again in selecting Matthias in the New Covenant period. This is something that the first readers of Acts would likely have noticed. The implication is that the office of priesthood is essential to the function of an apostle of Jesus Christ. This dovetails nicely with what Luke’s close companion in ministry, the apostle Paul, notes when he speaks of “the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God” (Rom. 15:15–16, emphasis added).
The New Covenant priesthood, contra James Carroll, was not something the Church “invented” later on; the early Christians saw the apostles (and their successors) from the beginning as sharing in a special way in the priesthood of Jesus Christ. There are many other reasons this is so, far more than we have space to discuss here. But this truth is confirmed in a unique way in Luke’s account of the selection of St. Matthias as an apostle.
Join us for the 2019 Faith Explained Holy Land Pilgrimage!
Blog, PilgrimagesNote: Spaces in our tours tend to sell out quite quickly. If you’d like some more information, please contact us at www.TheFaithExplained.com/Contact, and we will send you all the details. Sign-ups are handled on a first-come, first-served basis — whoever makes their deposit is guaranteed a spot, until we max out. If you live in the Toronto area, there will be an information session you can attend in person tomorrow night (Tuesday, June 4) at 7:30 PM at St Francis DeSales Parish (1001 Ravenscroft Rd, Ajax, Ontario L1T 4X1.
Every Catholic, if possible, should visit the Holy Land at least once in their lifetime. And I want you to be there with us!
I’ll be leading The 2019 Faith Explained Holy Land Pilgrimage November 22—December 2, together with Father Joe Singh, Pastor of St Francis DeSales parish in Ajax, Ontario, and former Pastor of St Justin Martyr Parish, Markham.
Saint Jerome once called the Holy Land the “Fifth Gospel”. Why? Because, when you walk where Jesus walked, and experience the places where he lived, taught, worked miracles, and rose from the dead, the Bible comes alive in amazing ways! From then on, whenever you read it, it’ll be like going from an old, black-and-white TV with fuzzy reception and rabbit ears (remember those?), to a brand-spanking-new, 4K Ultra High-Definition TV with a curved screen and all the bells and whistles!
I’ve had the privilege of visiting and studying in Israel in the past, and even worked on an archaeological dig in Jerusalem two summers in a row. I can tell you that Israel is a gorgeous, utterly modern country that you’ll fall in love with immediately. But most of all, you’ll fall more in love with Jesus and your Catholic faith in a much, much deeper way. Your relationship with the Lord will never be the same.
At the Church of the Visitation in Israel (Video)
Blog, VideoHappy Feast of the Visitation! In this teaching, recorded live at on pilgrimage at the Church of the Visitation in Israel, Cale Clarke, Director of The Faith Explained Institute, explains the significance of the site. Learn how the Gospel writers show how Mary fits into salvation history using typology.
Interested in joining us on our 2019 Faith Explained Holy Land Pilgrimage? Drop us a line at TheFaithExplained.com/contact and we’ll send you the info!
St Peter’s in Joppa (Video)
Blog, VideoJoin us for our next Faith Explained pilgrimage! Message us here: TheFaithExplained.com/contact and we’ll keep you updated.
Easter Evidence from Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Video)
Blog, VideoHappy Easter! Christ is Risen!
Hope you enjoy this video we recently filmed on our recent Faith Explained Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. At the most important Church in the world, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, we briefly consider some of the compelling evidence for Jesus’ Resurrection.
Interested in joining us for our next pilgrimage? Reach out at TheFaithExplained.com/contact, and we will keep you updated with all the latest info on our upcoming tours!
Bible History Set in Stone
Blog(My latest for Catholic Ansers Magazine. Enjoy! — Cale)
A few weeks ago, while leading a pilgrimage tour to Israel, I couldn’t wait to bring the group to one of the greatest museums in the world: the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Packed with artifacts from the biblical period, it’s a treasure trove for anyone interested in the material remains of salvation history.
The museum also houses one of the more important archaeological finds of recent years: an artifact that has bolstered our confidence in the veracity of the Old Testament accounts of the kingdom of David, his son Solomon, and their successors.
Biblical “minimalists” had long contended that King David did not actually preside over a kingdom that originated circa the tenth century B.C., as the Bible states. Indeed, these scholars alleged that David, Solomon, and in fact the entire line of Davidic kings chronicled in the Old Testament, are nothing more than fictional characters invented by the writers of the Hebrew scriptures.
In favor of the “minimalist” argument was the lack of any evidence of David’s existence outside the Bible.
But here’s where archaeology came to the rescue. During the 1993-94 excavations at Tel Dan, in northern Israel, a stele (a stone slab bearing an inscription) was unearthed. Made from basalt, a volcanic rock plentiful in the region, it bears an account of a military victory. Scholars have postulated that the inscription commemorates an Aramean king’s defeat of Israelite forces. It may have been commissioned by Hazael or Ben-Hadad III, his son (cf. 2 Kings 10:32, 13:3, 22; 2 Chron. 22:5).
The key line on the monument, the stunning find, is the mention of the “House of David.” There it was, written in stone—independent confirmation of David’s existence and of a line of kings so powerful that defeating armies from this “House” warranted a public brag of sorts on this stele, for all passersby to read and marvel at.
Analysis of the stele dates it to the mid-ninth century BC, right around the time when, according to Scripture, David’s dynasty would have been flourishing. It appears that the stele was broken by the Israelites after they recaptured the area some time later, and was eventually repurposed into building blocks for the city wall.
After this discovery, as chronicled by Craig Evans, the minimalists changed their approach. “Okay, okay,” they admitted, “maybe David existed after all. But he was a nobody. A local tribal chief, at best, certainly not the originator of the vast, Iron-Age kingdom described in the Old Testament.”
At this point, faced with what seems like special pleading, one is tempted to respond like Jerry Seinfeld: “Really? Really?”
But don’t despair—again, archaeology is our friend here.
First of all, if David had been merely a small-time local yokel, what on earth were his descendants doing fighting battles all the way up north, near the modern-day border that separates Israel and Syria, far from his allegedly tiny operation in Jerusalem?
Also, a vast, centralized complex of buildings—in all likelihood, a government compound—has been unearthed in the Old City of Jerusalem, and can be seen on tours today. It’s located in what’s known as the “City of David” and dates to approximately the tenth century B.C.; once more, the time when Scripture says that David and Solomon were establishing their empire. Again, this seems fairly excessive if we’re talking about an insignificant tribal chieftain, but it does fit the biblical narrative of David’s expansive realm.
To this our minimalist might say, “I’ll grant you that David existed, and perhaps he did preside over a significantly large kingdom, but we still can’t trust what the Bible says about him. The people of David’s time would not have been significantly literate enough to record his exploits or those of his descendants”.
This last objection is at least partially answered by—you guessed it—yet another archaeological discovery. In 2008, an ostracon (an inscribed piece of pottery) dating to the tenth century B.C. was disinterred at the ancient fortress city of Khirbet Qeiyafa, which was the only fortified Judahite city during the reigns of David and his predecessor, King Saul (in fact, the Qeiyafa ostracon is the only extant relic that mentions Saul).
The famed French epigrapher Émile Puech regards the inscription as the earliest writing narrating the transition of Israel from a people ruled by judges into a kingdom. It shows that the people living around David’s time were literate, and in fact, more than capable of recording (and passing on) the annals of David’s dynasty, such as we see in the biblical books of Kings and Chronicles.
The Tel Dan stele and the Qeiyafa ostracon are just two examples from the multitude of archaeological discoveries in Israel that have bolstered our understanding of, and in many cases substantiated the reliability of, biblical records of history. Since only roughly five percent of all biblical sites have been excavated to date (which is unbelievable considering how much has already been found), It’s truly exciting to think of how many more such finds may be unearthed in the years to come.
Jesus Versus the “Son of God”
BlogHere’s my December article for Catholic Answers Magazine. Merry Christmas!
“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).
The Gospel of Mark doesn’t have an “infancy narrative” about the events surrounding Jesus’ conception and birth as do Matthew and Luke. Rather, Mark begins in a deceptively simple manner with these opening words, known as an incipit.
Almost 2,000 years after these words were originally inscribed on parchment, we tend to read this line and think nothing much of it—perhaps even yawn—because it’s something we’ve heard many times before. And yet with this simple sentence, Mark would have absolutely shocked the entire world, arresting the attention of pious Jews and pagan Romans alike.
With respect to a Jewish audience, it’s easy to see why: in calling Jesus the Christ, Mark signals that he the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. But it’s the term Son of God that would have raised many a Roman eyebrow (remember—Mark’s Gospel was written to the Church at Rome, where he served as the chronicler of Peter’s memoirs of the Lord). Why is that?
Mark has a big problem as he tries to convince Romans that they should commit their lives to Jesus—and the crux of the matter is the cross itself. Who was the most powerful person in the Roman Empire? Why, the emperor himself, obviously. The Roman Caesars were crowned in an elaborate ceremony in which they were draped in a royal purple robe, with great pomp, amidst shouts of “Hail, Caesar!” When a new emperor ascended to the throne, or when Rome scored a great military victory, it was published throughout the empire as “Good News.”
In contrast, the most powerless person in the empire was the victim of crucifixion. This was an ordeal so brutal, so violent, so humiliating, that it was almost never administered to Rome’s own citizens (for whom the comparatively humane act of beheading was the preferred method of execution, as in St. Paul’s case). The contrast between the mighty Caesar and the seemingly defeated Jesus couldn’t have been more stark. This is why one major commentator on Mark calls that Gospel an “apology for the cross.”
We could add to this the many public inscriptions that have been unearthed from Rome’s ruins. These served as a civic catechism of sorts, proclaiming what one was supposed to know and believe as a citizen. And one thing all Romans were expected to assent to was this: not only was the emperor extremely powerful, he was to be considered the divine “son of god.” Here are just a few examples from a much longer list compiled by Craig Evans:
An inscription from Ephesus describes him as “the manifest god from Ares and Aphrodite, and universal savior of human life.” Also, from Carthaea: “The Carthaean people honor the god and emperor and savior of the inhabited world, Gaius Julius Caesar, son of Gaius Caesar” (there are many more such inscriptions from the period).
“Emperor Caesar Augustus, son of god”; “Emperor Caesar (Augustus), god from god”; “Emperor Caesar Augustus, savior and benefactor.” An inscription from Priene celebrates Augustus’s birthday as “the birthday of the god.”
“Emperor Tiberius Caesar Augustus, son of god”; and “Emperor Tiberius Caesar, new Augustus, son of god, Zeus the liberator”.
“Nero Caesar, the lord”; “Nero Claudius Caesar… the savior and benefactor of the inhabited world”; “The good god of the inhabited world, the beginning and existence of all good things”; “the son of the greatest of the gods”; and “Nero, the lord of the whole world”.
So, in light of this exalted view of their emperor, why should citizens of Rome choose to pledge their allegiance to Jesus and not Caesar? Readers or hearers of Mark would no doubt be asking this question as they experienced this Gospel. Well, its account of Jesus’ authoritative teaching about the Kingdom, backed up with powerful exorcisms and healings, would no doubt have made an impression.
But so too would the presence in Mark’s Passion narrative of someone whom we might easily overlook: the figure of the Roman centurion who sees Jesus die.
The centurion, whose ultimate superior is Caesar, the alleged “son of god,” may have been aware of how his fellows had humiliated Jesus in a mock “coronation” replete with purple robe and a crown of thorns, and shouts not of “Hail Caesar” but, “Hail, King of the Jews!” as they beat him mercilessly (Mark 15:16-20). Yet somehow, as he watches Jesus die on the throne of the cross, and witnesses the powerful release of Jesus’ spirit, which tears the temple curtain in two, the centurion is granted the grace to recognize that one far greater than Caesar is here: “Surely this man” — and not Caesar — “is the Son of God” (15:37-39).
This was the very statement—politically perilous and subversive—that Roman Christians had to make their own. A statement about who truly possessed a sovereign claim over the world. Many of them were to stare down the absolute claims and power of the state and pay for it with their lives, as Jesus did. Peter himself, the source behind Mark’s Gospel, would also meet the horrific cross.
As we prepare to celebrate the true “birthday of the God” this Christmas, let us reflect on the kingship Jesus claims over our lives. Having conquered the grave, a foe no earthly ruler, however exalted, has ever defeated, he is worthy of it.