Don’t miss Dr Craig Evans live at The Faith Explained Conference on September 27. Cardinal Thomas Collins will also speak, so grab your tickets here while you still can! Check out Dr Evans’ response to Bart Ehrman in this YouTube clip.
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Thomas Cardinal Collins will headline The Faith Explained Conference on Sept 27, along with Dr. Craig Evans. Get your tickets right here:
Cardinal Collins is a phenomenal speaker with a rare gift for opening the Scriptures. Check out this clip from the Cardinal’s phenomenal Lectio Devina series on the Gospel of Mark below. See you on Sept 27!
One axiom in biblical studies that needs to go away forever is the so-called “Messianic secret”. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this references in articles, commentaries, and sermons. What is the “Messianic secret”, you ask? It’s the idea floated by some Gospel scholars (especially of Mark and the other Synoptics) that Jesus was trying to keep his identity as Messiah a secret. This is allegedly why he doesn’t want people who he has healed to spread the news about him, and why he doesn’t allow demons to tell people who he really is, either (We just talked about that last item yesterday).
This is absolute nonsense! As Dr. Craig Evans, one of the best biblical scholars on the planet, is so fond of pointing out, Jesus is the Messiah and knows it. He wants others to know it, too. Today’s Gospel reading (Mark 1:29-39) sheds some light on the issue. In the Galilee of Jesus’ day, multitudes of people were sick at any given time. There were also a ton of people who suffered from demonic possession. And here comes Jesus: a one-man, walking, free health-care clinic. Obamacare, eat your heart out! This Mark 1 passage tells us that Jesus spent practically the entire night healing people and casting out demons. The demand for is services is insatiable. This is why Jesus announces the next morning that he and the Apostles need to move on to the next towns, to preach the Good News of the Gospel. This is also, by the way, why Jesus often preached from boats, while the crowd on the shore listened. If he had allowed the crowd to get near him, there never would have been a sermon, because everyone would have been pressing in for a healing – “all who touched him were made well”.
The healings, as great as they are, can actually get in the way of what Jesus came to accomplish: to preach the message of the Kingdom. No doubt, he proclaims it in both word and deed, and the deeds are the proof of the message, if you will. In this way, exorcisms are an even more clear proof of the establishment of the Kingdom of God and the destruction of Satan’s kingdom. But we have to start with the preached Word. Even if Jesus brings someone back from the dead, like Lazarus, it’s only temporary. Lazarus would die again. He was only resuscitated, not resurrected, like Jesus would be, never to die again. Saving souls is most important. Saving bodies is only #2, although Jesus wants to save both, and will ultimately save the bodies of all of God’s friends at the general resurrection. But for now, there’s a danger, in all the excitement about his healings, that the message Jesus is bringing is getting lost in all the excitement.
First things first.
Over the next while, I’ll be sharing some things I learned on my recent study trip to Israel this past summer. As well as taking a course taught by my program supervisor, the world-famous Dr. Craig Evans, I also had the chance to travel around “the land” with the good professor and another grad student, Greg Monette. The three of us worked on an archaeological dig at Mt. Zion (more on that later), and met with scholars and archaeologists at universities and at other digs, like the impressive project at Magdala.
For starters, I’d like to talk about the Tel Dan inscription, which we saw at the very impressive Israel Museum in Jerusalem. This important archaeological discovery, an inscription referring to King David, was found during the 1993-94 excavations at Tel Dan (in modern-day northern Israel). Some scholars had argued in the past that King David, his son Solomon, and indeed 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. These critics alleged that David did not preside over a kingdom that originated circa the 10th century BCE, as the Bible states. They further contended that there would be no possible way people of that time would have been literate enough to record the chronicles of the period. Archaeology, however, has firmly put these critics in their place.
The inscription at Tel Dan seems to have been commissioned by the King of Syria, and dates to the 9th century BCE. Written in Aramaic, it refers to the “House of David”. The Syrian King is essentially boasting about how his army defeated that of the the legendary House of David. Why would he do that if no such person as David, and no such kingdom existed? Clearly, this is good evidence – written in stone, no less – of the existence of a Davidic line of kings.
Skeptics have also denied David’s vast kingdom, contending that David was nothing more than a local, tribal chief. The fact that the Tel Dan inscription is from northern Israel (near today’s disputed Syria-Israel border), far from the Davidic dynasty’s headquarters in Judea and Jerusalem, would seem to mitigate against that assertion. As well, excavations in the oldest part of the city of Jerusalem have uncovered a vast, centralized, government complex. Artefacts within have been dated to the 10th century BCE, the era of David and Solomon.
When Saint Paul wrote (quoting an early creedal statement of the Church), that Jesus “was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:4), what scriptures were in mind? For that matter, when Jesus himself predicted his suffering, death, burial, and Resurrection “on the third day” (cf. Mark 8:31; Matthew 16:21; Luke 9:22), did he believe he would be fulfilling any particular passage? Dr. Craig Evans seems to think so.
In his book (co-authored with N.T. Wright) “Jesus: The Final Days”, Evans notes that Hosea 6 (which just happens to be the Old Testament Mass reading today) may be in the background here, especially verse 2: “He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will raise us up, to live in his presence” (RSV). Evans notes that the translation of this verse in the Aramaic Targum (which Jesus, as a native speaker of Aramaic, would have probably been quite familiar with) has a unique emphasis: “He will revive us in the days of consolations that will come; on the day of the resurrection of the dead he will raise us up and we shall live before him” (Aramaic differences italicized). As Evans puts it, “The coherence of Jesus’ words with the Aramaic tradition is striking” (p. 13). It is hard to escape the conclusion that Jesus not only predicted not only his death, but also his Resurrection, seeing both as fulfilling scripture.
The new movie, The Rite, #1 at the North American box office this past weekend, once again reveals Hollywood’s fascination with exorcism. 1973’s The Exorcist began this trend in earnest, with 2005’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose a more recent example. All three movies are at least in part based on actual cases.
Whenever a movie like this appears on the scene, interest in real-life exorcisms begins to spike. It is therefore necessary to ask, “Did Jesus himself perform exorcisms?”
It may surprise some readers of the Gospels to learn that there were many exorcists who abounded in Jesus’ day. The Lord himself acknowledged this when he asked the Pharisees, “by whom do your sons cast them (demons) out?” (Matthew 12:27). According to the Jewish historian Josephus, exorcists needed: 1) A formula from Solomon to be incanted, along with 2) A piece of wood (called “bunk” or “the bunk stick”), which had a scent from the Barras root (see Josephus, JW 7.6.3; Ant. 8.2.5, 46-49).
The exorcist would use the bunk stick to draw the demon out of the nose (the ancients believed spirits would enter/exit a person via the nostrils). Heck, the person would probably sneeze (due to the scent of the Barras root), and the exorcist would say, “Look, there goes the demon!” Hmm…I wonder if that’s why people say, “God bless you” when someone sneezes!
On a more serious note, the reason why Jewish exorcists used incantations from Solomon was because, as Dr. Craig A. Evans points out in his magisterial commentary on Mark, “The tradition of Solomon as exorcist par excellence was widespread in late antiquity. The tradition began in 1 Kings 4:29-34 and was enhanced in later traditions such as Wisdom 7:17-21 and the Testament of Solomon. As ‘son of David’ (Mark 10:47, 48), Jesus would have been expected in some circles to effect cures paralleling those effected by David’s famous son Solomon” (Evans, Mark 8:27-16:20, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 34b, p. 49).
Jesus was, in fact, well known as an exorcist. The Gospels are littered with references to this, and no serious scholar of the matter doubts it. But what made Jesus’ exorcisms much more impressive than that of others in his time was the manner by which Jesus performed them. He had no need of rigmarole, incantations, the Barras root, or any other “bunk’, if you’ll pardon the pun. He simply says to the demons, in effect, “Shut up, and get out!”
And they went into Capernaum; and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching! With authority he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee (Mark 1:21-28).
Many wonder why Jesus would command silence from the demon, considering it correctly identified Jesus as “the Holy One of God”. Part of the answer lies in the fact that as the Messiah, Jesus did not want acclamation from demons – that is, he doesn’t want to use them as his P.R. team! Also, given the tense political situation of the time and the possible danger to Jesus’ life that a premature public announcement of his messiahship could bring (other, false messianic claimants of the day were executed as political threats to Rome), silence was prudent for the moment. As seen in the exorcism films, exorcisms also involve a power struggle around the issue of names. Knowing someone’s name implies having some sort of power over them. Hence, the exorcist attempts to get the demon to give up its name. This is also why the demon in the aforementioned incident was attempting to make known Jesus’ true identity. Of course, Jesus silences the evil spirit, but it is always fascinating to note that, while demons do recognize Jesus’ true identity and must obey him, human beings often do not.
Should we be worried about the presence of the demonic in our own day? As C.S. Lewis once put it, in The Screwtape Letters, there are two errors we can fall into, like ditches on either side of the road: “One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased with both errors”.