General Introduction

IN ONE SENSE THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK IS INCORRECT. Very little of what is included in this work, outside of the Gospels, is a "saying" of anyone. The title, in fact, is taken from John's Gospel, where Jesus' ministry was recorded as a series of sayings. In John 6:60, responding to one such saying, his disciples observe, "This is a hard teaching ["hard saying" KJV]. Who can accept it?" From this verse came the title of the original work in this series, F. F. Bruce's The Hard Sayings of Jesus. Even though the literature under consideration in this volume lies mostly outside the Gospels, the title is still applicable.

Hard Sayings of the Old Testament

All too often people tell me (Walter Kaiser) they have tried to read through the Old Testament but find too much of it hard to understand. Despite their good intentions, many have abandoned the project out of sheer frustration, discouragement or puzzlement. It is not surprising that so many people find the Bible difficult, for our culture has lost contact with the Old Testament. Thus the book remains a closed document and often is treated as an artifact of our primitive origins.

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth! The Old Testament contains some of the most fascinating and dramatic portions of the entire Bible. Furthermore, if we decide its message is irrelevant to our generation, we are misled by our own false assumptions.

Following our Lord's example, we should take up the Old Testament once again, confident that not even one passage will pass away until all have been fulfilled (Mt 5:18). In fact, the Old Testament is so relevant that our Lord warned that anyone who breaks the least Old Testament commandment, or teaches others to do so, will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven! That ought to give us pause!

The discussion here of Old Testament passages is a response to the cries of thousands of laity (and "tell it not in Gath," clergy as well!). I have tried to answer some of the more difficult sayings which fall into two categories: sayings for which no explanation appears to be given and sayings which seem to contradict other portions of Scripture. Admittedly, the choice of particular hard sayings is somewhat arbitrary and reflects my own experience addressing students' questions for the past thirty years.

Why should we contemplate hard sayings at all? The obvious answer is that scores of serious readers want to understand the difficult issues in Scripture. Besides this, by wrestling with Scripture, we can sharpen our attention to the details in all of our Lord's Word. Thus the more intently and patiently we examine the text, the more handsome the dividends to our spiritual growth.

It was the famous Bishop Whately who commented,

The seeming contradictions in scripture are too numerous not to be the result of design; and doubtless were designed, not as mere difficulties to try our faith and patience, but as furnishing the most suitable mode of introduction that could have been devised by mutually explaining and modifying and limiting or extending one another's meaning. (On Difficulties in the Writings of St. Paul, Essay VII, sec. 4)

Instructions thus conveyed are evidently more striking and more likely to arouse attention; and thus, from the very circumstance that they call for careful reflection, more likely to make a lasting impression.

Disagreements within Scripture also supply strong incidental proof that there was no collusion among the sacred writers. The variations, instead, go a long way toward establishing the credibility of both the writers and their texts.

These hard sayings also may be viewed as a test of our commitment to Christ. Difficult passages can be handy excuses for begging off and following the Savior no longer. Our Lord spoke in parables for just this reason: so that some who thought they saw, perceived and heard would actually miss seeing, perceiving and hearing (Mk 4:12). Indeed, the apparent harshness and obscurity of some of our Lord's sayings rid him of followers who were unwilling to be taught or were halfhearted in their search (Jn 6:66). They were not willing to look beyond the surface of the issues.

The matter remains where Butler in his famous Analogy left it: These hard sayings afford "opportunity to an unfair mind for explaining away and deceitfully hiding from itself that evidence which it might see" (Analogy, Part II, ch. vi). For those who seek an occasion to cavil at difficulties, the opportunity is hereby offered in these hard sayings.

There is nothing wrong or unspiritual, of course, about doubting--so long as one continues to search for a resolution. But there are some who, as John W. Haley put it so well,

cherish a cavilling spirit, who are bent upon misapprehending the truth, and urging captious and frivolous objections [and who] find in the inspired volume difficulties and disagreements which would seem to have been designed as stumbling-stones for those which "stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed" [1 Pet 2:8]. Upon the wilful votaries of error God sends "strong delusion, that they should believe a lie" [2 Thess 2:11], that they might work out their own condemnation and ruin. (An Examination of the Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, Andover, Mass., 1874, p. 40)

Before we launch into the hard sayings, perhaps it would be helpful to review some of the background studies on the nature, origin and reasons for biblical discrepancies.

Any observant Bible reader who compares statements of the Old Testament with those of the New Testament, statements of different writers within either Testament, or even at times different passages within the same book will notice that there are apparent discrepancies. These statements, taken at face value, seem to contradict one another.

The Christian church has held over the centuries that there is an essential unity of the Holy Scriptures, that they form a divine library that is consistent and unified in its approach and teaching. Alas, however, as the scope of lay readership and the depth of scholarship have increased, an ever-increasing supply of alleged discrepancies and hard sayings has demanded attention.

Why are there so many discrepancies and difficulties? There are a great number of sources to which we can trace them: errors of copyists in the manuscripts that have been handed down to us; the practice of using multiple names for the same person or place; the practice of using different methods for calculating official years, lengths of regencies and events; the special scope and purpose of individual authors, which sometimes led them to arrange their material topically rather than chronologically; and differences in the position from which an event or object was described and employed by the various writers.

All of these factors, and more, have had a profound influence on the material. Of course, to those who participated in the events and times these factors were less of a barrier than they are to us. Our distance from the times and culture exacerbates the difficulty. Specific issues might be mentioned here as illustrations of the wider field of difficulties. For example, the present Hebrew text of 1 Samuel 13:1 is a classic illustration of an early copyist's error that has continued to be unsolved to the present day. Literally, the Hebrew text reads: "Saul was a year old [`son of a year' in Hebrew] when he began to reign and two years he reigned over Israel." It is clear that the writer is following the custom of recording the monarch's age when he took office, along with the total number of years that he reigned. But it is also clear that the numbers have been lost and that this omission is older than the Greek Septuagint translation, made in the third century B.C. So far the Dead Sea Scrolls and all other ancient manuscripts have left us without a clue as to what the text should read.

The selectivity of the writers, in accord with their purposes in writing, can be illustrated from the genealogy that appears in Exodus 6:13-27. Instead of listing all twelve sons of Jacob, the writer is content to treat Reuben (v. 14), Simeon (v. 15) and Levi (vv. 16-25). Here he stops, even though he has listed only the first three sons of Jacob, because the sons of Levi, and particularly his descendants Moses and Aaron, are his special interest. So he does not proceed further.

In treating some of these issues, I have chosen not to focus on points of tension that arise from such factual elements as time, history, culture and science. Instead, I have listened for points of tension in doctrine and ethics within the books or between authors of the Bible. I have included a few illustrations of difficulties having to do with facts, but my main emphasis is on theological and ethical questions.

Hard Sayings of Jesus

Many of those who listened to Jesus during his public ministry found some of his sayings "hard" and said so. Many of those who read his sayings today, or hear them read in church, also find them hard, but do not always think it fitting to say so.

Our Lord's sayings were all of a piece with his actions and with his way of life in general. The fewer preconceptions we bring from outside to the reading of the Gospels, the more clearly shall we see him as he really was. It is all too easy to believe in a Jesus who is largely a construction of our own imagination--an inoffensive person whom no one would really trouble to crucify. But the Jesus whom we meet in the Gospels, far from being an inoffensive person, gave offense right and left. Even his loyal followers found him, at times, thoroughly disconcerting. He upset all established notions of religious propriety. He spoke of God in terms of intimacy which sounded like blasphemy. He seemed to enjoy the most questionable company. He set out with open eyes on a road which, in the view of "sensible" people, was bound to lead to disaster.

But in those who were not put off by him he created a passionate love and allegiance which death could not destroy. They knew that in him they had found the way of acceptance, peace of conscience, life that was life indeed. More than that: in him they came to know God himself in a new way; here was the life of God being lived out in a real human life and communicating itself through him to them. And there are many people today who meet Jesus, not in Galilee and Judaea but in the Gospel record, and become similarly aware of his powerful attractiveness, entering into the same experience as those who made a positive response to him when he was on earth.

One reason for the complaint that Jesus' sayings were hard was that he made his hearers think. For some people, thinking is a difficult and uncomfortable exercise, especially when it involves the critical reappraisal of firmly held prejudices and convictions, or the challenging of the current consensus of opinion. Any utterance, therefore, which invites them to engage in this kind of thinking is a hard saying. Many of Jesus' sayings were hard in this sense. They suggested that it would be good to reconsider things that every reasonable person accepted. In a world where the race was to the swift and the battle to the strong, where the prizes of life went to the pushers and the go-getters, it was preposterous to congratulate the unassertive types and tell them that they would inherit the earth or, better still, possess the kingdom of heaven. Perhaps the Beatitudes were, and are, the hardest of Jesus' sayings.

For the Western world today the hardness of many of Jesus' sayings is all the greater because we live in a different culture from that in which they were uttered and speak a different language from his. He appears to have spoken Aramaic for the most part, but with few exceptions his Aramaic words have not been preserved. His words have come down to us in a translation, and that translation--the Greek of the Gospels--has to be retranslated into our own language. But when the linguistic problems have been resolved as far as possible and we are confronted by his words in what is called a "dynamically equivalent" version--that is, a version which aims at producing the same effect in us as the original words produced in their first hearers--the removal of one sort of difficulty may result in the raising of another.

For to us there are two kinds of hard saying: there are some which are hard to understand, and there are some which are only too easy to understand. When sayings of Jesus which are hard in the former sense are explained in dynamically equivalent terms, then they are likely to become hard in the latter sense. Mark Twain spoke for many when he said that the things in the Bible that bothered him were not those that he did not understand but those that he did understand. This is particularly true of the sayings of Jesus. The better we understand them, the harder they are to take. (Perhaps, similarly, this is why some religious people show such hostility to modern versions of the Bible: these versions make the meaning plain, and the plain meaning is unacceptable.)

If in the following pages I (F. F. Bruce) explain the hard sayings of Jesus in such a way as to make them more acceptable, less challenging, then the probability is that the explanation is wrong. Jesus did no t go about mouthing pious platitudes; had he done so, he would not have made as many enemies as he did. "The common people heard him gladly," we are told--more gladly, at any rate, than members of the religious establishment did--but even among the common people many were disillusioned when he turned out not to be the kind of leader they hoped he would be.

The view of the interrelatedness of the Synoptic Gospels taken in this work does not greatly affect the exposition of the hard sayings, but it will be as well to state briefly here what that view is. It is that the Gospel of Mark provided Matthew and Luke with one of their major sources; that Matthew and Luke shared another common source, an arrangement of sayings of Jesus set in a brief narrative framework (not unlike the arrangement of the prophetic books of the Old Testament); and that each of the Synoptic Evangelists had access also to sources of information not used by the others. (The material common to Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark is conventionally labeled Q. The teaching peculiar to Matthew is labeled M; that peculiar to Luke is labeled L.) It helps at times to see how one Evangelist understood his predecessor by recasting or amplifying his wording.

Some of the sayings appear in different contexts in different Gospels. On this it is often said that Jesus must not be thought incapable of repeating himself. This is freely conceded: he may well have used a pithy saying on a variety of occasions. There is no reason to suppose that he said "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" or "Many are called, but few are chosen" once only. But there are occasions when a saying, indicated by comparative study to have been spoken in one particular set of circumstances, is assigned to different contexts by different Evangelists or different sources. There are other principles of arrangement than the purely chronological: one writer may group a number of sayings together because they deal with the same subject matter or have the same literary form; another, because they have a common keyword (like the sayings about fire and salt in Mark 9:43-50).

Where there is reason to think that an Evangelist has placed a saying in a topical rather than a chronological setting, it can be interesting to try to decide what its chronological setting in the ministry of Jesus probably was. For example, it has been suggested that the saying "You are Peter," which Matthew (alone of the Synoptic Evangelists) includes in the report of Jesus' interchange with the disciples at Caesarea Philippi (see comment on Mt 16:18-19), may have belonged chronologically to another occasion, such as Jesus' appearance to Peter in resurrection. Even more speculative is the interpretation of some of the sayings as words of Jesus spoken not during his public ministry but later, through the mouth of a prophet in the early church. It has been thought best in this work not to engage in such speculation but to treat the sayings primarily in the contexts provided for them by the Evangelists.

Again, this does not seem to be the place for an enquiry into the question whether the sayings examined are authentic sayings of Jesus or not. To help students in answering such a question some scholars have formulated "criteria of authenticity" for application to the sayings recorded in the Gospels. One scholar, who attached great importance to these criteria, told me a few years ago that he had concluded that among all the sayings ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels, only six, or at most eight, could be accepted as undoubtedly his. The reader of this work will realize that it is written from a less skeptical viewpoint than that. Let this be said, however: the fact that a saying is hard is no ground for suspecting that Jesus did not say it. On the contrary, the harder it is, the more likely it is to be genuine.

The second volume of the Encyclopaedia Biblica, published in 1901, contained a long and important entry on "Gospels" by a Swiss scholar, P. W. Schmiedel. In the course of this he listed a number of sayings of Jesus and other passages which, to his mind, ran so much counter to the conception of Jesus which quickly became conventional in the church that no one could be thought to have invented them. He therefore regarded their authenticity as beyond dispute and proposed to treat them as "the foundation-pillars for a truly scientific life of Jesus." Several of them will come up for inspection in the following pages, for whether in Schmiedel's sense or otherwise, they are certainly hard sayings.

In the interpretation of the sayings quoted I am, of course, indebted to many other interpreters. Some acknowledgment of my indebtedness is made in the following pages. There is one interpreter, however, to whom I am conscious of a special debt: that is the late Professor T. W. Manson, particularly in respect of his two works The Teaching of Jesus and The Sayings of Jesus. From the latter of these works I take leave to borrow words which will supply a fitting conclusion to my introductory remarks:

It will simplify the discussion if we admit the truth at the outset: that the teaching of Jesus is difficult and unacceptable because it runs counter to those elements in human nature which the twentieth century has in common with the first--such things as laziness, greed, the love of pleasure, the instinct to hit back and the like. The teaching as a whole shows that Jesus w as well aware of this and recognized that here and nowhere else lay the obstacle that had to be surmounted.

Hard Sayings of Paul

The theme for my (Manfred Brauch) contribution to this book is contained in 2 Peter 3:15-16. Here we are told that the apostle Paul's writings, which speak everywhere of our Lord's gracious and patient work leading to our salvation, have in them "some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." Several basic insights emerge from this text which provide an important starting point for my explanations.

First, it is clear that Paul's writings, which come roughly from the period A.D. 50-65, had already begun to circulate rather widely. Second Peter 3:16 refers to "all his letters." Since Paul wrote to churches and individuals across the Greco-Roman empire--from Rome in the West to Galatia in the East--some years must have elapsed for Paul's letters to have become known, distributed and read throughout the churches. Perhaps several decades had elapsed since Paul penned his epistles.

Second, Paul's letters had already attained quite a measure of authority. Though it is doubtful that Paul's writings were at this time already seen on a par with sacred Scriptures (that is, our Old Testament, which was early Christianity's Bible), the reference to "the other Scriptures" certainly indicates that the writings of Christ's apostle to the Gentiles are seen as an extension of the authoritative Word both of the Lord who meets us in the Old Testament and of Christ, the Lord of the church.

Third, Peter's reference to "hard sayings" in Paul's letters shows that, as early as sometime in the second half of the first century, Christians in the churches had a difficult time accepting or understanding or properly applying certain of Paul's sayings. Now if this was true within the first few decades subsequent to the writing of Paul's letters, how much more is that likely the case for us, who are removed from Paul's time not only by the passing of about two thousand years, but also by such important aspects of human experience as history and culture and language. If it was possible back then to misunderstand or even twist the meaning of certain of Paul's sayings, it is very likely that this possibility is even greater for us.

A leading continental scholar of the last century, Adolf von Harnack, once said that the only one who ever really understood Paul was the second-century heretic Marcion, but that even he misunderstood Paul. Harnack's point was that Marcion clearly grasped the radical nature of Paul's gospel--namely, that salvation comes by God's grace, not by obedience to the Law--but that Marcion's rejection of the Old Testament on the basis of Paul's gospel represented a misunderstanding of Paul.

Thus, from the very early years of Christians' use of Paul's letters, the possibility of either understanding or misunderstanding, of either proper or improper use, have been ever-present realities. For us Christians today, this fact ought to give both humility and hope. There may be times when, after careful and thorough study of a text, we should in all humility acknowledge that we simply cannot grasp the meaning or know definitely what the writer intends the reader to grasp. But there is always also the hope that careful study--always under the guidance of the Spirit--will lead us to a hearing of the hard sayings in such a way that God's Word can do its work in our lives.

The selection of hard sayings of Paul emerges from my experience as a Christian, a student and a teacher. In personal study, in work with college and seminary students, and in countless discussions with Christians in churches and non-Christians in the academy, these texts have again and again emerged as "problem texts." Some thoroughly confuse readers or create unresolved tension between the meaning of one text and another. Others seem obscure or unclear. Still others lead to different misunderstandings. And a few appear to be so out of character with the overall meaning and intention of the gospel that they meet with opposition or outright rejection, even by some who are deeply committed to the authority of the Bible for Christian faith and life.

It is my hope to make a positive contribution in the continuing effort to provide a clearer understanding of some of the hard sayings of the epistle literature.

Understanding and Interpreting Paul's Epistles

The reading and study of any writing, if it is to be faithful to the author's purpose, must take seriously at least three things: (1) the nature of the writing itself, (2) the purpose for which it was written and (3) the situation or context out of which it was written. Failure to observe these matters is more likely than not to lead to misunderstanding or misinterpretation.

In this section I (Manfred Brauch) will discuss the matters of nature, purpose and situation, giving particular attention to principles of biblical interpretation which will assist in the study of Paul's epistles.

But before we begin we must also recognize that every interpreter of Scripture, including me, comes to the text with certain assumptions about the material to be studied. I want you to know before we begin what my assumptions are.

In approaching the hard sayings of Paul, I write self-consciously from within the evangelical tradition of theology, personal faith and commitment. I write from a perspective that cherishes this heritage's deep and central commitment to the Bible as the ultimate criterion for our understanding and application of God's self-revelation, which finds its ultimate expression in the Incarnation. The fundamental affirmation of evangelical faith with regard to the Bible is that we have in this word of God's gracious self-disclosure an authentic, reliable record of God's truth and purposes which, when responded to in faith, leads to restored relationships with God and our fellow human beings. Scripture--including these hard sayings--is our authoritative, infallible guide for faith and life.

Having stated this presupposition, which is at its core an affirmation of faith, I must immediately admit that such a commitment does not in and of itself determine the interpretation of any scriptural text. What it does do is set a tone and provide limits. It means that if you share that assumption with me, we approach the texts, recognizing that they are more than the result of human thought and theological reflection--that they emerge from the ministry and teaching of Christ's commissioned apostles, who were led and inspired by the Spirit of Christ in their ministry of writing.

This assumption about the Bible also means that we cannot simply bypass, ignore or reject texts which may be difficult to reconcile with other aspects of Scripture or whose meaning or instruction we find difficult to accept. Our starting point obligates us to take such sayings with utmost seriousness, seeking to understand what they mean, why they were written, and what implications for our faith and life they have.

Such an obligation brings us directly into the arena of biblical hermeneutics, or interpretation, where persons who are equally committed to the assumptions about the inspiration and authority of the Bible stated above often come to different conclusions. The extent of such differences can be greatly reduced when we come to the hermeneutical task with equal commitment to take seriously the three items mentioned above: the nature of the writings, the situations out of which they were written, and the purposes for which they were written. To these matters we shall now turn.

The Nature and Purpose of Scripture. When we are concerned with the nature and purpose of the biblical text, we are immediately confronted with the issue of its authority, with its character as the Word of God. How are we to understand this authoritative character in light of the fact that the biblical record consists of the writings of a great variety of persons in different historical periods in response to a host of events and situations and experiences?

To answer this question we need to be faithful to the intention of Scripture and take with utmost seriousness the fact that God's final, ultimate form of self-disclosure is the Incarnation.

In 2 Timothy 3:15-17 Paul speaks clearly about the nature of Scripture and its purpose: "You have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

It is divine inspiration that gives to the Bible its authoritative character. And that inspiration, while clearly enunciated in 2 Timothy, is implicitly affirmed throughout the New and Old Testaments by the use of such formulas as "God has said" or "the Holy Spirit spoke" (2 Cor 6:16; Acts 1:16). God and Scripture were so intimately linked that "what Scripture says" and "what God says" could be equated (Rom 9:17; Gal 3:8). Jesus' use of and attitude toward the Old Testament strongly confirms this sense of Scripture's divine origin and content (see, for example, Mt 5:17-18; Jn 10:35). It is also clear from the New Testament that the words of Jesus and the witness of Jesus' apostles share the same inspiration and authority of the Old Testament (see, for example, Jn 10:25; 12:49; 1 Cor 2:13; 1 Thess 2:13; Heb 3:7).

That the Bible claims inspiration is evident then. But what is its intention? What is God's purpose for it? To make us wise for salvation, says Paul, and for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness (2 Tim 3:15- 16).

The biblical writings were written "to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope" (Rom 15:4). This redemptive purpose of inspired Scripture is also the point of John 20:31: "These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."

The Acts 8 story of Philip's encounter with the Ethiopian is also instructive here. The understanding and interpretation of the Isaiah passage have one purpose: "Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus" (v. 35). That is the "what for," the purpose. Jesus did not recommend the Bible as a book of divinely given facts about things in general (science, history, anthropology, cosmology). Rather, he pointed to the Old Testament and said: "These are the Scriptures that testify about me" (Jn 5:39). If our study of Scripture is isolated from these explicit purposes, our attempts to understand the hard sayings may prove futile.

The fact that the writers of our biblical documents were inspired does not mean that they were stripped of their limitations in knowledge, memory or language as specific human beings in certain periods of history. The presence of this human reality in Scripture has been acknowledged throughout the church's history. From Origen through Augustine to the Reformers and beyond, the reality of God's accommodation in Scripture to human weakness and limitation has been affirmed. The condescension of a nurse or a schoolmaster to the limitation of children has been used as an analogy. God stooped down to us and spoke the language of the recipients so that we might hear and understand him.

And we must recognize that it is precisely some of these accommodations to human limitations which make some of Paul's and other biblical writers' words difficult for us to understand, even while we continue to recognize the full authority of their words. Just as Jesus was fully human and yet fully divine--subject to human limitations and yet without sin--so Scripture, while manifesting many of the limitations of its human character, is yet fully God's authoritative Word to us.

While the paradoxical mystery of this juxtaposition of both the human and the divine--in the Incarnation of the living Word and in the written Word--defies final explication, the Gospel of Luke provides us with a key toward understanding. Luke presents Jesus as "conceived by the Spirit" and endowed with the Spirit at his baptism; as the one who, "full of the Spirit," is "led by the Spirit" into the wilderness; as the one who inaugurates his ministry "in the power of the Spirit" (Lk 1--4). For Luke the presence and power of the Spirit mediate the divine reality of Jesus in and through the human limitations. It is the Spirit who makes the incarnate Jesus' human words and actions effective. In his words and actions, God speaks and acts. Such an understanding of the Incarnation, when applied to Scripture, underlines its full humanity (with all that this implies regarding the presence of limitation) and its full divinity (with all that this implies about its authority). The hearing and believing of the divine authority, in and through the fully human, is made possible by the Spirit.

Recognizing both (1) the purpose for which the writers were inspired and (2) the limiting human form and context within which their inspiration took place is frequently an important key in understanding Paul's hard sayings.

The Context of Biblical Texts. Beyond this general understanding of the nature and purpose of the Bible, the specific situations of particular biblical documents have an important bearing on our interpretation and understanding. Though it is necessary to keep this fact in mind regarding each biblical book, the "situational nature" of the Epistles is especially noteworthy.

The Epistles are occasional documents, that is, they were written for specific occasions in the life of Christian congregations or individuals. They respond to questions which have been communicated to the writer (1 and 2 Thess), deal with problems in the church (1 Cor), carry on a debate with a false understanding of the gospel (Gal), nurture hope in a time of persecution (1 Pet) and seek to provide guidance for a pastor in a situation where false teachings and speculative mythology are threatening the integrity of the gospel and the stability of Christian community (1 and 2 Tim).

In addition to these unique needs which called forth the writing of the Epistles, the historical and cultural contexts of the recipients must also be recognized as factors which bear on our interpretation. Thus, when Paul addresses himself to the place of women in the worship of the church in Corinth and calls for certain restrictions, it is important to ask "Why does he give those instructions?" and to recognize that the cultural-religious environment in Corinth may have made these restrictions necessary in that particular situation, whereas in other situations such restrictions were not called for. Or when we read in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 that women are to "learn in quietness" and that they are not permitted "to teach or to have authority over a man," it is of critical importance to recognize that one of the major problems in Timothy's pastoral context was the presence of heretical teachings and mystical speculations, most likely perpetuated by leading women in that particular congregation. For in other early church settings, women were clearly involved in leadership, as well as in teaching and preaching functions.

The consideration of context probably introduces the most difficult issue in the whole task of interpretation: How can we discern between that which is culturally or historically conditioned and that which is transcultural or transhistorical? When is an apostolic instruction an inspired, authoritative word for a particular context in an early church setting and applicable only to that situation, and when is an inspired, authoritative instruction an absolute norm for any and all situations and contexts from the early church to this present day?

The effort to discern between those things which are culturally and historically relative and those which are transcendent is in actuality engaged in by all Christians, in one way or another. At issue is only whether such discernment results from our likes and dislikes, our own cultural conditioning and prejudices, or whether it is the application of a clear principle that emerges from a proper understanding of the nature and purpose of Scripture.

Take, for example, the issue of head coverings. Most Christians have concluded that the "head covering" enjoined upon women during worship in the church in Corinth (1 Cor 11) is culturally relative, and its inspired authority is limited to that historical situation. Many of these same Christians have concluded, at the same time, that Paul's instruction to these women to be silent in worship (1 Cor 14) is not culturally relative and is an authoritative word for all Christian women in all contexts of worship, both then and now.

On what basis is this distinction made? Arbitrariness in this critical and necessary area of biblical interpretation can to some extent be avoided when we recognize that there are different types of texts, and that these differences provide us with clues to discerning that which is relative to the situation and that which is authoritative for all time.

In an article in Essays on New Testament Christianity, S. Scott Bartchy gathers texts which deal directly or indirectly with the place and role of women in the ministry of Jesus and the early church into three broad categories: (1) normative (or instructive) texts, (2) descriptive texts and (3) problematic (or corrective) texts. These categories are extremely helpful for purposes of our discussion.

Instructive texts are those which declare the way things ought to be among the followers of Christ. They declare the vision or intention of the gospel without reference to particular problem situations. As such they transcend the contexts in which they are uttered and are normative for both individual and corporate Christian existence. The citation of Joel 2:28-32 in Peter's Pentecost speech (Acts 2:17-21), stating that the Spirit of God was given to both men and women for proclaiming the good news, is such a text.

Descriptive texts describe practices or actions in the early churches without any commentary. The sense conveyed in such texts is that what is described is perfectly acceptable or normal. The writer does not question the practice but rather seems to assume it as appropriate. Thus Luke, in Acts 18:24-26, tells us that both Priscilla and Aquila instructed the learned Apollos in the Christian faith, and in Acts 21:9 mentions that the evangelist Philip had four daughters who were engaged in the prophetic ministry of the church. Women's participation in ministry seems not to have been unusual.

Corrective texts are those which clearly deal with special situations or problems or misunderstandings in the Christian communities which are addressed. Here it is particularly important to understand as much as possible the situation which made the corrective, authoritative, apostolic word necessary for that situation. The problem of heretical teaching, addressed in 1 Timothy, is such a situation. Paul's instruction about the silence of women must be seen in this light. What we must guard against is the temptation to universalize instructions whose primary or exclusive focus was on the situation addressed.

An important dimension of this threefold classification for the interpretation and understanding of a good number of our hard sayings is the matter of their interrelationships. If a corrective text's admonition reflects the vision of the gospel articulated in instructive texts and is further confirmed by descriptive texts, then the particular teaching would undoubtedly be authoritative for the whole church in all times. On the other hand, if an apostolic word addressed to a particular setting does not conform to the way things ought to be (as revealed in instructive texts) and the way things normally are (as revealed in descriptive texts), then the inspired, authoritative word may very well be intended to deal exclusively with a specific problem and thus be limited to that and similar problems.

The foregoing reflections on the nature, purpose and context of biblical texts provide the parameters within which we will explore the hard sayings of Paul. For readers interested in further and more comprehensive study of the issues in biblical interpretation, I highly recommend the book How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1982) by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart.

Other Hard Sayings of the New Testament

Though not all the texts for which I (Peter Davids) will offer explanations are in the strict sense "sayings," they are "hard" for three different reasons. Some of them are hard because we do not understand them. In many cases they can be clarified simply by adding some background information. In other cases (such as some of the material in Revelation), scholars are unsure of the author's real meaning, so we can only make the best informed guess possible. In such situations dogmatism is ruled out. But any way we look at it both of these categories are the easiest of the hard sayings. Either they can be figured out or they cannot. When they are explained, no problem remains. Those that remain unexplained should serve to increase our humility about interpreting Scripture. We do not yet know all that those writers did. If we accept this proposition, we can set aside these problems.

Another group of hard sayings is doctrinally hard. That is, the saying appears to contradict some other teaching of Scripture or clashes with doctrine that Christians have held for years. The disciples' comment in John 6:60 was made about a saying such as this. Since we as Christians hold our beliefs about the teaching of Scripture deeply and sincerely, we struggle with anything that appears to threaten them. At times it is possible to explain such Scriptures and leave the doctrines intact. Perhaps we are just misunderstanding the scriptural author, and when we understand what he really meant, we can see that there is no conflict. I suspect that the explanation of James 2:24 fits this category. But at other times a real conflict exists between what the author meant and our own doctrinal understanding. This is the real test. Will Scripture be allowed to correct our doctrine, or is our doctrine the grid through which we will insist on understanding Scripture? Either Scripture or our doctrinal understanding is the Word of God. When they conflict, we find out which one we have actually accepted as our final authority.

The hard sayings in the third category are not actually hard to understand. Rather, they are hard because we do not like what they say. They are hard to obey, and we would rather they meant something else than they do. James 4:4 and 1 John 2:15 may be in this category for some people. This book will be of relatively little help with this type, except to assure each reader that the scriptural author does mean exactly what was feared. The issue remains as to whether or not the reader will obey the Scripture. When it comes to obedience, a book cannot help. Each individual reader must decide. Thus, such sayings are in one sense the hardest of all, for we struggle with them most on the personal level.

What, then, is the goal of my writing? It is to understand Scripture, especially some of the more obscure passages. By this I mean understanding what the original author intended to communicate when he wrote the words. That is, the author of each book of Scripture had something in mind when he selected the words to use in writing. My assumption is that these words, when understood within his cultural context, accurately represent what he wanted to communicate. In fact, it is a good working assumption that what an average Christian reader in the first-century context in which that book of Scripture was written would have understood by the words fairly represents what the author intended to communicate. And this is what the church has accepted as the Word of God.

The problem is that we are not first-century readers. None of us speaks Koine Greek (the language of the New Testament) fluently. Unlike most of the authors we are discussing, few of us are Jews. None of us are first-century Jews from the eastern Mediterranean world. We have not read the same books or had the same cultural experiences as the authors of Scripture had. We speak a different language.

Even our experience of the church is different. We know a world in which most churches are buildings with rows of pews and a platform of some type in the front upon which ministers of some description stand to lead worship. The authors of Scripture knew a church that met in groups of no more than sixty or so in private homes, usually at night. They sat around a table for a common meal something like a potluck supper, although for them it was the Lord's Supper. There was no such thing as ordination in our modern sense nor a difference between clergy and people. Leadership was quite fluid. Those who could lead were leaders. Furthermore, we know a church that is split into many different denominations and traditions. In the early period there was only one church, although it contained a lot of variety, even among the house churches in a given city.

We carry our Bibles into church, or take them out of the pews. The Scriptures in the early church (the Old Testament, if they could afford it, and perhaps late in the New Testament period some copies of a Gospel or two or some letters of Paul) were stored in a chest in someone's house and read aloud during meetings by one of the few members who could read. Finally, we know a church that looks back on 2000 years of history and stresses the fact that God has spoken in the Scriptures. They knew a church whose only history was the Old Testament and stories (even eyewitness accounts) about Jesus. What animated them was a common experience of the Holy Spirit and through him the living presence of Jesus in their midst. There was a dynamism (and often a risk) that even the liveliest of our groups has probably not fully captured.

With all of these differences, interpreting Scripture becomes the job of getting back into that ancient world and then understanding how it correlates with our world. To do so we will have to listen to the Old Testament and the sayings of Jesus that the authors we are dealing with certainly knew. We will also have to consult some of the works written by Jews in the period between 400 B.C. and A.D. 100, the intertestamental literature (much of it strange to our ears), which will show what first-century Jews, including the authors of Scripture, thought about various topics. In fact, one of our hard sayings, that in Jude, comes up precisely because Jude quotes some of this literature. Finally we will have to attempt to understand the culture and historical situation, for that, too, will be part of the author's understanding and something that he shares with his readers. This will enable us to translate not just the words but also the ideas of Scripture into our language.

The last stage of interpretation, however, is that of moving from the world of the New Testament into our modern world. Here we will have to be cautious. Some of the discussions and arguments Christians have had over the centuries were not issues in the first century. The New Testament authors will have nothing to say about such concerns. They may refuse to answer our questions. In other cases we may have to discover the principle that informs the author's reasoning and apply it to our modern situation. But in most of the cases the real danger is in jumping too quickly into the modern situation. If we have not taken the time to grasp fully what the author of Scripture was trying to say, we will distort his message when we move into our modern period. But if we fully grasp it, we will be able to see where it applies, although it may apply in a different place than we thought at first.

The study of Scripture is an adventure, for the God who spoke still speaks. One of his ways of speaking to us is through Scripture as we take the time and trouble to study, understand and meditate on it. It is my hope that as we explore these passages each reader will discover the power of the Scripture again as the Holy Spirit makes it alive within him or her.

The History of Hard Sayings

What has been written in this volume on the various discrepancies in the Bible stands in a long tradition of discussion on this topic. Among the early church fathers, Eusebius, Chrysostom, Augustine and Theodoret devoted whole treatises, or parts thereof, to this subject.

The subject apparently dropped out of favor from the latter part of the fifth to the beginning of the sixteenth century A.D. There are almost no extant works that can be cited on this subject for that period of time. However, the Reformation gave a whole new impetus to the study of the Bible, as well as to this subject. John W. Haley, in his magisterial 1874 work entitled An Examination of the Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, was able to cite forty-two works from the Reformation or post-Reformation era dealing with this topic (pp. 437- 42).

For example, a 1527 Latin work by Andreas Althamer went through sixteen editions and dealt with some 160 alleged discrepancies. Joannes Thaddaeus and Thomas Man put out a 1662 London publication with the title The Reconciler of the Bible Inlarged [sic], in which more than three thousand contradictions throughout the Old and New Testaments were fully and plainly reconciled. This work counted each discrepancy twice, for their earlier editions only had 1,050 cases. Furthermore, complained Haley, he included "a multitude of trivial discrepancies, and omit[ted] many of the more important [ones]."

Oliver St. John Cooper's Four Hundred Texts of Holy Scripture with their corresponding passages explained included only fifty-seven instances of disagreement in this 1791 London publication.

Coming to relatively more recent times, Samuel Davidson's Sacred Hermeneutics, Developed and Applied included 115 apparent contradictions from pages 516-611 in the 1843 Edinburgh text. In the last forty years, the most notable contributions to this subject have been the following. In 1950, George W. DeHoff wrote Alleged Bible Contradictions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker). He dealt with the subject by taking pairs of apparently opposing texts, which he grouped under the topics of systematic theology, ethics and historical facts. This work was followed in 1951 by the reissue of John W. Haley's 1874 text An Examination of the Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible (Nashville: B. C. Goodpasture). This was perhaps the most complete array of brief explanations of discrepancies; they were arranged under the divisions of doctrinal, ethical and historical discrepancies. A detailed first section treated the origin, design and results of the difficulties alleged to be found in the Bible.

In 1952 Martin Ralph De Haan published his 508 Answers to Bible Questions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan). It included a mixture of doctrinal, factual and interpretive questions.

J. Carter Swaim contributed Answers to Your Questions About the Bible in 1965 (New York: Vanguard). Most of his text dealt with questions of fact rather than interpretation. Later, in 1972, F. F. Bruce published a volume entitled Answers to Questions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan). With only thirty-eight pages dealing with questions from the Old Testament, this work was divided into questions about Scripture passages and other matters related to the faith. In 1979, Robert H. Mounce contributed a book with a similar title, Answers to Questions About the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker). His book had an unusually complete table of contents and dealt with a rather large number of difficulties for such a fairly brief work.

Paul R. Van Gorder added a text in 1980 called Since You Asked (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Radio Bible Class). He organized his book alphabetically by topic and included a scriptural and topical index that gave a quick overview of the areas covered.

Gleason L. Archer produced a large tome in 1982 entitled Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan). His arrangement followed the order of the biblical books as they appear in the canon. It included a mixture of issues such as authorship of the biblical books, critical objections to some of the books and alleged contradictions and problematical interpretations.

The first in the Hard Sayings series appeared in 1983. F. F. Bruce wrote The Hard Sayings of Jesus (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press). He took up seventy sayings of Jesus that were considered "hard" either because we cannot handily interpret them or because they seem so easy to interpret that their application is puzzling.

In 1987 David C. Downing published What You Know Might Not Be So: 220 Misinterpretations of Bible Texts Explained (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker). Downing concentrated mainly on the confusion that exists between biblical passages and extrabiblical literature, myths and popular religions.

The history of this discussion is filled with the names of the great biblical scholars. Our generation, and the next, must also continue to grapple with these texts for the very reasons already outlined: to understand the Scriptures better and to increase our commitment to Christ.

• How to Use This Book
• Who Wrote What (About the Authors of This Book)
• General Introduction
• How Do We Know Who Wrote the Bible?
• Does Archaeology Support Bible History?
• Why Doesn't the New Testament Always Quote the Old Testament Accurately?
• OT Verse Samples
• NT Verse Samples