The Great Commission or the Great Suggestion?

On 17 February 201418 February 2014 By Daniel B. WallaceIn Bible Translation, Contemporary Issues, Early Christianity, Exegesis, Greek Grammar, New Testament Studies, Theology37 Comments

I don’t know the source, but I suspect it is from a Christian magazine article written in the last 75 years. My guess is that this idea would have found fertile soil during the Great Depression (when funds were definitely low and excuses for lack of action could be high; for a parallel, see Jas 2.1-13). There’s a myth foisted on the Christian public about the meaning of the Great Commission (Matt 28.19-20). It goes something like this: “In the Greek, the word translated ‘Go’ is really a participle and it literally means, ‘as you are going.’ But the words ‘make disciples’ are an imperative in Greek. That’s the only imperative in these two verses. Therefore, the Great Commission is not a command to go; rather, it is a command to make disciples as you are going, or make disciples along the way.” The exposition based on this understanding of the Greek text then attempts to salve the consciences of the congregation, permitting them to do nothing about the lost if it at all means going out of their way.

There are two major problems with this treatment of Matt 28.19-20. First, it is a misunderstanding of the Greek. Second, it is a misunderstanding of the historical context. This blog will deal with the first issue.

As for the Greek, it is true that the word translated ‘go’ is a participle. But it is not a present participle, which is the one that would be required if the meaning were ‘as you are going.’ It is an aorist participle, πορευθέντες (poreuthentes). As such, it hardly means ‘as you are going’ or ‘while you are going.’ The basic idea would be ‘after you have gone,’ and as such would presuppose that one would have gone forth before making disciples. But in collocation with certain kinds of verbs this basic meaning is altered. When an aorist participle is followed by an aorist imperative in narrative literature, it almost invariably piggy-backs on the force of the imperative. That is, it is translated like an imperative because the author is trying to communicate a command.

A great illustration of this is found in Matt 2.13-14: “‘Get up and take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to look for the child to kill him.’ Then he got up and took the child and his mother during the night, and fled to Egypt.” In v. 13, “Get up and take” is a translation of an aorist participle followed by an aorist imperative. That the reader is to understand that this was a dual command is seen in the fact that Joseph got up during the night and fled to Egypt. The urgency was not in taking Jesus and Mary only; it was in getting up quickly, then taking the child and his mother out of Bethlehem.

The construction in which the participle and verb combine so that the participle borrows from the mood of the main verb is known as attendant circumstance.

With the same participle as is found in Matt 28.19, we see this idea repeated elsewhere in Matthew. Here are all of the passages in Matthew of the aorist participle of poreuomai followed by an aorist imperative (each time the translation of the participle is italicized):

Matt 2.8: “Go and look carefully for the child.”
Matt 9.13: “Go and learn what this means.”
Matt 11.4: “Go and tell John what you hear and see.”
Matt 17.27: “Go to the lake and throw out a hook”
Matt 28.7: “Go quickly and tell his disciples”
Matt 28.19: “Go and make disciples”

Matthew 9.13 even has both the same participle and the same imperative as Matt 28.19. What you will notice is that in every instance the main idea is what the imperative says (look carefully, learn, tell John, throw out a hook, tell his disciples). But the participle is never to be taken in a casual sense of ‘as you are going.’

However, when the present participle of poreuomai is used, the idea of ‘as you are going’ is indeed found. Here are all the references in Matthew (with the translation of the participle in italics):

Matt 10.7: “As you go, preach this message”
Matt 11.7: “While they were going away, Jesus began…”
Matt 28.11: “While they were going, some of the guard went into the city…”

Check any English translation. They should all tell the same story. If Matthew had wanted to say ‘as you are going, make disciples’ he would have used the present participle of poreuomai instead of the aorist. In every other instance when the aorist participle is followed by an imperative in Matthew, the force of the participle is a command. However, you should also notice that the command to go is a necessary prerequisite for fulfilling the main injunction in the sentence. It cannot be dispensed with, but neither is it the main point. This is why Greek uses the participle instead of two imperatives: the second imperative is almost invariably the main point, while the aorist participle is the necessary prerequisite. For example, Peter could not throw a hook in the lake until he went to the lake (Matt 17.27); the women could not tell Jesus’ disciples that he had been raised from the dead until they went (Matt 28.7). How does this relate to the Great Commission? Essentially, it means that the apostles must go before they could make disciples.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that grammar is inconsequential! Matthew’s grammar paints a picture and urges an action, and we seriously err if we neglect what our Lord is really teaching at the end of this Gospel.

To learn more about the relevance of Greek grammar for the proper understanding of the New Testament, you might want to get a hold of my book, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Zondervan, 1996).

Five Major Issues facing the Christian Faith Today: the Hugh Hewitt Show

On 15 February 201418 February 2014 By Daniel B. WallaceIn Bible Translation, Contemporary Issues, Early Christianity, New Testament Studies, Theology9 Comments

I was in southern California today (14 February 2014), interviewed by Hugh Hewitt about five major issues facing the Christian faith. The show aired on over 120 stations. Hewitt is known as a conservative political pundit (and a law professor, among other things), and occasionally dips into religious issues. One can hear the interview by clicking on the audio link below. The issues we discussed were (1) How do we know that the Bible we have in our hands today is what the apostles in the first century and the prophets before them actually wrote? (2) Is God good? The new atheism has changed their attack point from the veracity of the Christian faith to the ethics of the Christian God. (3) Did the ancient church muzzle the canon? Did Constantine really dictate what books would go in the New Testament? (4) What does the Bible teach about homosexuality and is it even a viable position? (5) Don’t the discrepancies in the Bible show that it is just a human book and not from God at all?

For responses to these questions, you’ll just have to listen to the show!

First Time to India

On 13 January 201414 January 2014 By Daniel B. WallaceIn Bible Translation, Contemporary Issues, Textual Criticsim, Theology, Uncategorized11 Comments

14 Jan 2014

I was asked by the Asia Christian Academy’s Evangelical Theological Seminary to teach some doctoral students on textual criticism for a week in January 2014. I jumped at the opportunity—in part because this would be my first trip to India, and in part because I was pretty sure these students had not had much instruction in textual criticism. Since there are no known Greek NT manuscripts in India, I had not gone before. (I did urge the students I taught to be on the lookout for them though!)

I flew out of Dallas on Friday, 3 January. The first plane was a Boeing 777. Very nice plane, going all the way to Frankfurt. Then, the real treat happened: I flew on a new 787 to Doha, Qatar. First time on one of those. Spacious, beautiful, functional. I was put in business class, which was a very rare luxury for me. There is no first class on the 787—just business and coach. I cannot imagine what first class would have been like; business class is that good. Fully reclining seats, wood-paneled storage compartments (several of them), 19” TV with zillions of movies to choose from (didn’t watch any), gourmet meals (and Rothschild cabernet and Brut champagne, among many others), plenty of privacy (you can put up a wall between yourself and the person ‘next’ to you [actually, about three feet away, already with a divider half way up]). Pampering by the attendants (with close to a 1:2 ratio, staff to customers!). Unbelievable. When we arrived in Doha, the captain apologized for the delay. We were all of five minutes late. The earlier flight, from Dallas to Frankfurt (not Qatar Airlines), took off two hours late. I had to hoof it through the Frankfurt airport to get to my connection.

When I arrived in Doha, I got to go directly to the brand new business lounge. Superb food everywhere, and free. At least, so it looked. Didn’t have time to linger. A state-of-the-art video game room. Showers. Expansive area for seating, with a view of the night sky and silhouette of the impressive, sky-scraped downtown. I had heard that Doha Airport was poorly planned, with few chairs and somewhat inhospitable. That was not my experience at all. But I had little time to enjoy it, and had to get to the gate almost immediately.

The flight from Doha to Bangalore was also on a 787. Both planes were Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners. Short flight this time, only 3.5 hours. Curiously, a few minutes before we landed, the flight attendants walked down the aisles with canisters that they sprayed high in the air. Another flight attendant was sitting up front in her jump seat, coughing up a lung. It smelled like the bug bombs that you set off in your house when the cockroaches have taken over your kitchen. The girls walked down the aisles, smiling the whole way, as if they were Vanna White hawking some goods. Surreal. My flight attendant said that the Indian government required the passengers to be subjected to a pesticide spray. (Got the same treatment when I left Bangalore on January 11.) Again, the pilot apologized for the delay: four minutes late this time.

When we touched down in Bangalore International Airport, I had now visited my 35^th country. And I underwent another new-to-me experience at the airport: All of us leaving the airport, after going through customs, also went through a metal detector en route to collect our baggage. It seemed strange to have metal detectors for exiting passengers. And the security personnel also took it as a joke: the alarm went off on virtually everyone (including me), yet only a handful of people were checked (not including me).

I arrived at the airport at 4 AM. A driver picked me up and drove me to the president’s home where I would be staying for the week. As it turned out, I never saw any of India in the daylight except for the campus. I guess I need to go back to see the country someday!

The school is located just outside Bangalore, near the southern tip of India. Bangalore is one of the largest cities in the world. Sitting on 50 acres are a school (K–12) and a seminary (offering both master’s and doctoral degrees). The facilities are almost self-sufficient: they have a variety of crops growing at the compound, they collect rain water and purify it for drinking as well as having four deep wells, and they even use cow dung to create methane gas which they cook with! There is a small hospital, pharmacy, and general store on the campus, too. Quite an operation. The cost for an education is remarkably inexpensive: $800 per year, which includes tuition, room, and board. And the education the students receive is very good. Compare that to a decent degree in the States: $800 will cover two units, or roughly one-seventh of the tuition costs for a semester, with no room and board in the mix. Of course, the per capita income in India is just over $2000 a year. I found out that some students were coming from quite a distance, and it could take up to three weeks to get here. They would have to pay up to four months’ salary to be here for the week. Two students didn’t make it till the last day. We in the West often have no idea how fortunate we are!

I slept nine hours Saturday night and was refreshed. Monday morning, while I was eating breakfast with the president (Dr. Joy George, a Dallas Seminary alumnus) and his guests, I was told that I needed to get ready for chapel since I would be the chapel speaker today. This was news to me. (I found out later that this is the Indian way: outsiders are often called upon to speak at the drop of a hat.) So, I prepared the message mentally while taking my shower.

My ten 75-minute doctoral-level lectures ended up averaging almost two hours each. The Q&A took up a lot of time, but in light of the extreme sacrifices these students made to be there I couldn’t very well quit early on them. I was determined to say yes to all extra speaking engagements requested of me, as well as not miss any class unless I was on my deathbed.

Every noon meal we would eat in the cafeteria. I must confess: I am not a fan of Indian food. Not by a long shot. But eating it in India, in this place, was different. I actually found it to my liking. Two of the school’s main ingredients in their curry were ginger and garlic, not to mention the ubiquitous chili pepper. Indians do not get stomach cancer. The food is so hot that it kills off any bugs that dare call your tummy home. I suspect ulcers are another story.

Taking showers required some planning. I was in a nice-sized guest room with its own air conditioner. The remote did not have fresh batteries, which meant that the AC was either on at one temperature or off—whenever I remembered to turn it off. I would wake up at around 7, and fire up the water heater above the shower head. Go back to bed for 30 minutes, then go into the bathroom and shave with cold water (only one faucet, cold water only). While I was shaving I would turn the hot water for the shower on full blast, which meant that it drizzled out (perhaps that’s an exaggeration). Zero pressure, impossible to take a shower this way. The water would fill up half of a plastic bucket. Then, I would scoop up water as needed and pour it on my body parts, soap, rinse, repeat. The routine was not bad at all, but it wasn’t the Ritz.

One of the things I have a major phobia about is snakes. India has cobras, which can do some serious damage. And they have King Cobras, which can kill an elephant. The campus had not seen a King Cobra for awhile; I took a measure of comfort in that. I was told to bring a flashlight for walking around the campus at night, since that’s when the snakes would come out. Mine was powerful with new batteries. I didn’t want to take any chances. On Thursday night, a King Cobra had climbed up the outside wall of one of the homes and was trying to get into a child’s bedroom! When I learned about that, I decided not to sleep again till I would board the plane on Saturday morning.

Thursday night I enjoyed dinner with a former student of mine, Dr. Andrew Spurgeon. After dinner, a neighbor brought over some King Chili (a.k.a. Ghost Pepper) for me to sample. King Chili is known as one of the hottest spices in the world. The Nagaland tribes had used it to clean the heads after such were removed from unwilling bodies. Thus, it had the dual purpose of being a “condiment and an industrial solvent” (The Smithsonian Magazine). The main ingredient of the King Chili is Capsaicin; one of its uses is in a grenade to be tossed by the police at rioters. This worked well in Kashmir. Peppers are measured by Scoville Heat Units, or SHU. A jalapeño registers 4000 SHU. This means that it takes 4000 parts water to one part jalapeño juice before it can’t be tasted. The Bhut Jolokia (or King Chili) registers between 500,000 and 1.5 million SHU, or 125 to 375 times hotter than a jalapeño! The pepper was a sauce with bites of beef in it (I think the beef was from the cow that had been slain that morning). I was instructed to put a little bit of beef on a bed of rice. I could also add the sauce directly, but that would be way too hot. So, in my great wisdom, I poured some sauce on the rice as well and took a good-sized bite of sauce-dripped rice. I liked it! I ate the plateful then got seconds. My host told me that this batch was especially hot—the hottest that his neighbor had ever cooked up. I’m thinking of making a T-shirt that says, “I ate King Chili in India and survived…” and on the back “…barely!”

On Friday after I spoke in chapel, the school had a ground-breaking ceremony for the new library—a 30,000 foot three-story building. I had the great honor, along with David Fletcher (the man who invited me to speak at the school), of shoveling the first spade of dirt. First time for me to be involved in a ground-breaking ceremony. And, of course, I was asked to give a little speech afterward.

When I saw the library, though, my heart sank. Many textbooks were worn out, probably because too many students couldn’t afford to buy them and thus they relied on the library’s copies instead. I was amazed at the intelligent questions the students asked during my lectures in light of this impoverished Bibliothek. I have committed to giving the library several books. I know they will be put to good use. I figured that to be a small part of the evangelization of India is simply good stewardship. If you are interested in doing the same, please let me know.

Friday night I spoke in the auditorium before a public audience of about 400 people. This was the only lecture I gave in which the power did not go out. The school has a back-up generator for such occasions, and they need to use it several times every day.

The doctoral students gave me two gifts on Friday—first, an ornate wooden baton-like column called the Ashoka Column. It’s a replica of the emblem of India, with four lions on top of the column and other sundry animals and designs below. Second, a gold watch! The real deal from an Indian watchmaker, Titan. I could hardly believe that these students, who are in deep poverty, pooled their meager resources to get me these gifts.

The most important—and most treasured—comment I received from faculty and students was that more than learning about textual criticism, they learned to fall more deeply in love with their Lord. I was hoping that this is what they would get out of my week with them! All in all, my first trip to India was a thought-provoking, even life-changing, adventure. I don’t expect it to be my last.

Reading through the Greek New Testament

On 29 December 2013 By Daniel B. WallaceIn Bible Translation, Exegesis, Greek Grammar, New Testament Studies50 Comments

Students of the Greek New Testament are often at a loss on how to begin reading the text. After a year of Koine Greek, they may decide to tackle Hebrews, and promptly get discouraged at the prospect of ever being able to read the NT in the original tongue. This Reading List is designed to help students coming out of first-year Greek especially, but may be useful for more advanced students as well.

This list is organized along two lines: (1) easiest to most difficult, and (2) approximately ten chapter segments which bear some semblance of unity (e.g., either literary [pastorals] or historical [James-Galatians]). These two principles are sometimes in conflict.

The best way to read through the NT so as to increase your reading proficiency is to translate each chapter three times. As a rule of thumb, you should translate no less than one whole chapter and no more than about ten chapters at a time (the longer chapters in the Gospels may require breaking them up into more manageable sizes). Every time you translate, employ the “revolving door” principle. That is, rotate some chapters in and rotate some out. Thus, for example, if you try to translate through the NT in one year, you could translate one new chapter a day, but a total of three chapters a day. (See end of this list for how to get through the NT in one month!)

For example: Day 1: Matthew 1. Day 2: Matthew 1–2. Day 3: Matt 1–3. Day 4: Matt 2–4. Day 5: Matt 3–5, etc. Each chapter would get translated three times in the year and two would be near-immediate reinforcements.

One approach to mark your progress is to do this: underline a chapter the first time you go through it, circle it then second time, and cross it out (‘X’) when you’ve translated it three times.

1. JOHN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 [Group 1]

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 [Group 2]

2. 1 JOHN 1 2 3 4 5

3. 2 JOHN 1

4. 3 JOHN 1

5. PHILEMON 1 [Group 3]

6. REVELATION 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 [Group 4]

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 [Group 5]

7. 1 THESS 1 2 3 4 5

8. 2 THESS 1 2 3 [Group 6]

9. PHILIPPIANS 1 2 3 4

10. MARK 1 2 3 4 5 6 [Group 7]

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 [Group 8]

11. MATTHEW 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 [Group 9]

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 [Group 10]

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 [Group 11]

12. ROMANS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 [Group 12]

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 [Group 13]

13. EPHESIANS 1 2 3 4 5 6

14. COLOSSIANS 1 2 3 4 [Group 14]

15. GALATIANS 1 2 3 4 5 6

16. JAMES 1 2 3 4 5 [Group 15]

17. 1 COR 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 [Group 16]

11 12 13 14 15 16

18. 2 COR 1 2 3 4 [Group 17]

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 [Group 18]

19. 1 TIMOTHY 1 2 3 4 5 6

20. 2 TIMOTHY 1 2 3 4

21. TITUS 1 2 3 [Group 19]

22. 1 PETER 1 2 3 4 5

23. 2 PETER 1 2 3

24. JUDE 1 [Group 20]

25. LUKE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 [Group 21]

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 [Group 22]

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 [Group 23]

26. ACTS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 [Group 24]

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 [Group 25]

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 [Group 26]

27. HEBREWS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 [Group 27]

8 9 10 11 12 13 [Group 28]

N.B. The reading assignments are broken up into twenty-eight segments of approximately ten chapters each (some as short as 6–8 chapters, one as long as 13). If one were to translate one group of chapters a day, he/she could get through the entire NT in one month. (This of course is not for the faint-hearted; doctoral students getting ready for comps may wish to do this though.) For the rest of us mortals, translating one new chapter a day, with two review chapters, will take 260 days to translate the whole NT. Taking weekends off, you can get through the whole NT in a year. A suggested way to attack the reading is DAILY to read one segment with the help of Burer and Miller’s New Reader’s Lexicon, marking with a blue highlighter any words whose glosses you are not familiar with, AND review the previous segment without Burer-Miller (as much as possible). Any words that are still forgettable should be highlighted with yellow (the result will be green). (Alternatively, you could simply check off those words that you know; any words without a check are the ones to concentrate on.) By the time you get through each chapter a third time, most of the vocabulary should be fairly familiar with only occasional glances as Burer-Miller. For those with some expertise in reading, the time it should take to get through each segment (i.e., approximately 10 chapters) should be between two and five hours daily.

This document is also attached as a PDF, allowing you to have a hard copy that you could check off as you go through each chapter.

For the hard copy click the link below:

NT Greek Reading List

Wax Drippings and Favorite Passages

On 14 September 201314 September 2013 By Daniel B. WallaceIn Bible Translation, CSNTM, Early Christianity, Exegesis, Textual Criticsim, Theology10 Comments

When the only access that students of the New Testament had to most images of manuscripts was through poor-quality microfilms, interpretation of the data was rather limited. The staff at the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster, which boasts about 90% of all NT MSS on microfilm, instructed student collators not to try to decipher the marginalia because such were virtually impossible to read. Just the text, please. And even with the text, the students had to guess at quite a bit of the letters and words because of blurred images. Below is an illustration of the kind of images they had to work with (this is codex 2813, photographed by INTF in 1989).

Codex 2813 Microfilm Image

With digital photography, much more data can be seen and interpreted. This includes erasures, different colored ink (including the next-to-impossible-to-see-in-microfilm red and gold), smaller font, ornamentation, prickings (which are used to locate a MS’s scriptorium and age), etc. In addition, wax drippings are visible.

As innocuous as the wax drippings might seem, Henry Sanders, the editor of the editio princeps of Codex Washingtonianus, used them to show what pages were frequently on display. The reason, he argued, is that visitors would often read the pages with a candle, and less-than-careful lectors would inadvertently allow wax to drip from it onto the page.

Sanders’s comment, based on an examination of the actual MS, may have implications that go beyond codex W. With some caveats, it seems that wax drippings can be used to show what passages were favorites. If one were to examine the wax drippings seen in digital images of, say, a twelfth-century minuscule, he or she might be able to determine which passages were favorites from the twelfth century on. Of course, this kind of work would be needed to be done for a good number of manuscripts because an individual MS might be rather idiosyncratic—much the way codex W seemed to be (in that the wax drippings there, according to Sanders, only showed what passages were put on display, not what passages were otherwise favorites of readers). Lectionaries would probably be the least significant for interpreting wax drippings since they were regularly used in church services and the lector would of necessity be reading through the entire lectionary cycle, year after year. And when wax candles were used as opposed to oil lamps to read these MSS needs to be factored in as well. But MSS that were meant for study, personal use, or were otherwise not used much in public worship could contain many secrets of bygone generations of Christians.

I will offer two illustrations, one hypothetical and the other actual. John 3.16 is a favorite verse of American evangelicals today. It has even shown up on placards held by a crazed football fan wearing a multi-color afro, who would stand up in the end zone after a team scored, making sure that the TV cameras would capture the image.

The Gospel on the Simpsons

But was this text that well known and that well loved in ancient and medieval times? A look at digital images of MSS might reveal the answer. Of course, in order to make one’s case, a look at the entire MS’s images would be needed to see which pages had the most wax drippings. Another caveat: if the text on a given page was reworked, scraped, or had extensive marginalia, that might be the reason for extra wax drippings, produced in this case by the scribe him/herself.

An actual illustration can be seen in codex 61, also known as Codex Montfortianus. This is the MS that was produced by a scribe in Oxford named (F)roy in 1520, which included the comma Johanneum (the Trinitarian formula at 1 John 5.7) that made its way into Erasmus’s third edition of the NT (1522). Now housed at Trinity College, Dublin, it is reported to have almost naturally fallen open to 1 John 5 because of the frequent consulting of this passage by researchers over the years. The MS nowadays is no longer available for direct consultation, but the library has produced some adequate digital images of it. And the page which contains the comma has more wax drippings by far than any other. It is also significantly dirtier than any other page, due to the constant handling of the page.

Codex 61: Two Pages before 1 John 5

Codex 61 at 1 John 5

The Comma Johanneum in Codex 61

In the least, examining the wax drippings of digital images in continuous text MSS century by century and production-location by production-location (when known) could produce some interesting results. As these begin to be examined, certain guidelines should emerge on how to interpret the data. The necessary caveats may temper otherwise robust claims, but these should not keep students from examining the data.