This is the third and last part of my article about The Exodus: Fact or Fiction? You can read the first and the second parts elsewhere on my blog. Click on the links to go there.

Splitting the Red Sea and going through it

The volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini in Greece could have had more effects than the Ten Plagues. According to the Bible, Egypt was in a total state of chaos after the Ten Plagues and the Semites were to blame for it. Pharaoh sent them away, into the desert, but regretted the decision soon after he made it. With a huge army he followed them in order to lead them back into the country. At the Reed Sea the people of Israel saw the Egyptian troops closing in and started to curse Moses. Everybody knows what happened next. But did that really happen or is it just a good story?

According to scientists, it is possible, but again, the proof is a far stretch. Some scientists belief that the (by now well known) eruption on Santorini created a host of after-effects on a large scale. The same volcano on the same island became active again in the 1940s. It caused a unique natural phenomenon to happen near the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea.

The fishermen on Crete saw the sea retreating in the evening hours, it went so fast that the fish leaped up from the — now dry — sea bed. The fishermen were too terrified to go out to get the fish. Which is a good thing, because shortly after the sea returned with a lot of force and everything looked like nothing happened.

Scientists calculated that the eruption 3500 years ago must have been about 3000 times as strong as the 1940s eruption. Using the data from the last eruption, they calculated that a tidal wave of about 60 metres (or 200 feet) high moved to the Southeast. It could very well be that this tidal wave made the Reed Sea fall dry, let the Israelites through and killed the Egyptians pursuing them. The Israelites made inscriptions near the ‘Graves of the Jews’ in Sarbut-el-Khadem where they mentioned this as well.

Concluding thoughts

To some people this is great. Everything they ever believed in can be proven by science. To them it’s another indication the Bible has to be read literally, so literal that every word is the Word of God in the most literal way. Everything in the Bible will be proven by science at one point in the future, but they knew it all along. Another group of people would argue that it’s not necessary at all to see the Hand of God acting in this. After all, wasn’t it just proven to be nothing more than a series of natural phenomena that took place in a convenient time?

Even those who don’t necessarily want to cling to science or a most literal interpretation of the Bible can argue that the ‘evidence’ provided is in favour of their way of reading the Bible. For example, let me think of a very libertarian way of explaining the stuff happening:

In Amenhotep IV’s Egypt things weren’t going like he wanted to. There was political instability, because a Semite tribe called the Hyksos was pressing the borders, which also had a negative impact on the economy. Those blasted Israelites were a pain because they didn’t want to assimilate totally in Egyptian culture and the coming of there Hyksos Semite brothers didn’t make that any easier for the Egyptians.

The Ipuwer Papyrus also mentions this: the farmers don’t know what to expect. Is there a new war on the horizon? In the Southern districts people stopped paying taxes, others stopped sowing wheat. At one point, the Israelites may have thought the time was ripe for an up rise and they were waiting for something to happen in order to take advantage of the situation.

That moment arrived when the fallout (in the most literal sense of the word) of the Santorini eruption arrived in Egypt. They probably thought their God would have answered their prayers and fled out of the country, to the Northeast. A tidal wave made the Reed Sea fall dry, the Israelites seized the opportunity to go through it, because they were eager enough to flee the pursuing army.

After they were out of reach of the Egyptians they started to tell the story to their children again, and again. Of course they wouldn’t tell that they escaped in a rather cowardly way, but instead they made the Israelites look heroic and great. Even God was on their side. With Him at their side, why would one be afraid of those mighty Egyptians?

To some this makes a lot more sense than version we find in Exodus. That, they say is of course Israelite propaganda and of course it’s a myth, even though the core elements could be real historical events. That’s what myths and legends are: heroic and epic tales based on half-forgotten historical events of ancient times.

In other words, you can use ‘scientific evidence’ in the same way some people use the Bible. You can make it ‘say’ everything you want, depending on the context you provide. Scientific research papers suffer in that regard the same fate as Bible stories. Without any form of text-tradition they are bound to start living their own lives. The problem with everything, even pure historical and scientific facts is that they are interpreted in a given context. And we, people, do the interpretation. Some of us are not aware of that, they really think that the ‘facts’ show the truth. Or that bombarding other people with Scriptural Proof shows the other person truth. It does not. It only shows what you THINK it says. If I think something else, it doesn’t ‘say’ anything.

I don’t feel an urge to ‘prove’ anything to anyone when it concerns my faith. Faith is, errm… faith. Something I believe to be true. That makes it personal. I know what my relationship with Jesus is, I don’t need science for that. Therefore I don’t care for science and scientific evidence in favour for or against religion. They are two different worlds. To me, science is what I do to understand the world around me and to solve practical questions. It makes the material world comprehensible. Faith on the other hand helps me to understand the non-material side of life. It gives me a moral standard to live to, it helps me to love my neighbour and be a better person. I don’t want my religion to be rational and scientific nor do I want my science use to shovel down my faith through other people’s throats. Jesus says: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Some people may start to believe because they are presented with the evidence, but believing with your heart has nothing to do with the evidence you process rationally. Believing isn’t rational to begin with. I believe, but not because I saw. I just started believing without seeing. I don’t understand that either, but I am just happy I do.

Bibliography

• Montgomery, A. (2001). A Chronological Model for the Bible: Part I: The Exodus, Joshua and Judges. Link visited on 05/07/2002, 10:49.
• Bruins, H.J. & Plicht, J. van der (1996). The Exodus Enigma. In: Nature vol. 382 (juli 1996), p. 212-213. (more info)
• Rohl, P. (1995). Pharaos and Kings: a Biblical Quest. New York: Crown Publishers, p. 271 en 278.
• Stanley, D.J. & Sheng, H. (1986). Volcanic shards from Santorini (Upper Minoan Ash) in the Nile Delta, Egypt. In: Nature vol. 320 (april 1986), p. 733-735. (more info)

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[11] The original Hebrew talks about the “Reed Sea” and not about “Red Sea”. The Red Sea is a rather modern name for that body of water near Israel. It is pretty improbable that the ancient Jews used that name. The “Reed Sea” can be any large lake in the Nile Delta region. Biblical historians think that the current Lake Ballah, that’s about 50 km / 31 miles North of the Bitter Lakes is the Reed Sea mentioned in Exodus. For more information on this topic, visit this link.
[12] John 20:29 (NRSV).

This article is the second part of a series of three articles on Exodus. Find the first part here.

Evidence for the Ten Plagues to be historical facts

It’s quite possible that Amenemhat IV kicked the Semites out of the country, but that’s not something one would do without grave reasons. The Semites were cheap labourers, maybe even slaves. It would have grave consequences for the nation’s economy and political stability to kick large numbers of people out. Normally one wouldn’t do that except when forced to do so.

If Amenemhat IV indeed decided that the Semites had to leave the country, he probably has weighed the consequences. Something must have happened that forced him to evict the Semites. What kind of dreadful event could that have been?

According to the Bible God Himself forced Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go by means of the Ten Plagues. For a sceptic like me that’s hardly a convincing story. The combination of the Ten Plagues is so bizarre that’s hardly possible to believe these are real historical events. But IF Amenemhat IV really was pharaoh of Egypt when the people of Israel left the country and he either forced them to leave or was unable to prevent them leaving, there could be a tiny amount of truth in the Ten Plagues. But what caused them other then the ‘Hand of God’? Or to phrase it in a more orthodox way: What did God really do to the Egyptians that made them so terrified that they expelled the Jews? We all know God uses the forces of nature to make things happen, so it might be interesting to see if we can figure out what could have happened.

Nobody had a real clue for ages. The first clue came from a completely unexpected angle: in april 1986 Stanley en Sheng of the Smithsonian Institute published an article in the well-known scientific journal Nature about them finding volcanic ashes in the Eastern Nile Delta. These ashes came from the Greek volcanic island Santorini, situated about 800 kilometres (or about 500 miles) North East of Egypt. It’s not any kind of ash, but the so called ‘Upper Minoan Ash’, which comes from the biggest volcanic eruption ever recorded in ancient history. And according to Stanley and Sheng, this discovery has great significance:

‘This discovery of Upper Minoan glass shards extends considerably the zone of confirmed ash fall to the southeast of Santorini, and serves as evidence of a major natural phenomenon affect Egypt during the reign of Pharaos in the Eighteenth Dynasty. It is quite possible that this ash-fall event may have given rise to texts pertaining to darkening of the sky and veiling of the Sun in early historic records.’ (Stanley & Sheng, 1986).

Readers who are paying close attention have probably noticed an oddity already. Stanley and Sheng talk about an event during the reign of the Pharaos in the 18th dynasty, not the 12th. This has to do with the fact that historians who study the history of ancient Egypt use the division of that history in 30 dynasties according to Josephus and also his dating. The trouble is, that Josephus isn’t really a reliable ancient historian. The 30 dynasties may be correctly categorised, but the dating maybe something entirely different.
There are other time tables present that have another division and different dates, one of them is the dating method of Montgomery. He uses multiple sources combined to categorise Egyptian history more precisely. (Montgomery, 2001). I refer to him in my bibliography, because a whole discourse of his method would not make this article more readable. In short: when you use his dating method, you do end up with the 12th dynasty in about the correct time period.

I found another article that cited Stanley and Sheng, from 1996. This 1996 article publishes results of a radiocarbon dating of grains dat in Middle Bronze Age Jericho. This was the time that Jericho was completely destroyed and burned to the ground .

Why would researches dating grains from Middle Bronze Age Jericho in Israel have an interest in volcanic glass shards in the Nile Delta? It turned out that the grains found had the same age as the ash found on Crete and that Nile Delta. Bruins en Van Der Plicht (the authors) noticed:

‘This time difference is rather striking, as it could fit the desert period of 40 years separating the Exodus from the destruction of Jericho, mentioned in ancient Hebrew texts.’ (Bruins & Van Der Plicht, 1996).

In itself this proves exactly nothing, because it hardly tells us anything about any of the Ten Plagues. But there’s more. In the 1980s people in the United States witnessed an extraordinary volcanic eruption of Mt. St. Helen. Coincidentally, Mt. St. Helen is of exactly the same type as the volcano on the little island of Santorini. Moreover, the events happening after the volcanic eruption looked awfully similar to a number of the Plagues described in the Bible. A frog plague, gigantic hail storms, death of huge numbers of cattle, skin irritation (sores) and a choking darkness. Cause of these event: the chemical composition of the volcanic ashes. It’s not ‘hard evidence’, but there’s a possibility that the Plagues that struck Egypt were caused by the volcanic ashes from Santorini. An ancient Egyptian document, the Ipuwer Papyrus, mentions another natural phenomenon: the waters of the River Nile turned red, like human blood. It’s undrinkable and the wheat growing at the banks of the river died. (Montgomery, 2001).

So the circumstantial evidence is in favour of the Ten Plagues. With all data combined you can make an educated guess that the events depicted in the Bible could very well be the result of that catastrophic volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini. But again, the attentive reader would have counted only seven plagues, not ten. So what about the midges, the mosquitos and the death of the firstborns? The first two of those three plagues are plagues that happen on a regular basis in the Nile Delta: it’s humid and hot there, conditions which are perfect for midges and mosquitos to thrive. Those plagues could have happened there any time. Them occurring in combination with the others would have made them more frightening then they otherwise would have been. Only the plague of the death of the firstborns remains a mystery so far.

It’s not that people didn’t try to explain that. The most common explanation is that most (wealthy) Egyptians lived in houses made of stone, which would have collapsed in an earthquake following the volcanic eruption in Santorini. It is possible, of course, but it cannot be proven in any scientific way. We weren’t there at the time it happened. But still, it’s impressive after all that nine out of ten plagues can be explained by the use of natural phenomena. And that doesn’t diminish the Biblical account of it. Christians don’t believe God is like a Big Magician making things magically happen. Usually miracles are established by the use of natural laws and phenomena. It’s the timing and combination of events that makes those events miraculous to Christians.

Bibliography

• Montgomery, A. (2001). A Chronological Model for the Bible: Part I: The Exodus, Joshua and Judges. Link visited on 05/07/2002, 10:49 AM.
• Bruins, H.J. & Plicht, J. van der (1996). The Exodus Enigma. In: Nature vol. 382 (July 1996), p. 212-213. (more info)
• Rohl, P. (1995). Pharaos and Kings: a Biblical Quest. New York: Crown Publishers, p. 271 en 278.
• Stanley, D.J. & Sheng, H. (1986). Volcanic shards from Santorini (Upper Minoan Ash) in the Nile Delta, Egypt. In: Nature vol. 320 (april 1986), p. 733-735. (more info)

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[9] This is a way to date objects. The isotope decays at a fixed rate, so when you compare the amount of C₁₄ left over with the normal amount, you know exactly how old an object is. More information on the technique can be found here.
[10] Bruins, H.J. & Plicht, J. van der (1996). The Exodus Enigma. In Nature vol. 382 (July 1996), p. 212-213. .

This article appeared earlier in Dutch (in 2002) in a periodical issued by the Reformed Students Association (GSV) in Groningen, Netherlands. Later I decided to put it out on my weblog in Dutch, because a lot of people thought it was a good article and a good read. I now translated it to English to make it available for a wider audience. I want to stress the fact I am NOT a theologian now, nor was I back in 2002 when I wrote it. I also wrote it as a Reformed Presbyterian student, NOT as a Catholic. This means that this article doesn’t necessarily reflects Catholic theology.

Back in 2002, I decided to write the article as a reaction in a running discussion on the ‘historicity of the Bible’. At the one hand you had people who believed in a ‘biblical/legalistic way’ that everything that is written down in the Bible equals Truth in the most literal sense, the Bible has to taken very literally. Other people, at the other hand, were of the opinion that the Bible is a book of people who tried to make sense of the world. Stories are not to be taken literally, but have merely a symbolic meaning. In between those sides there were also the people at the university being very critical at anything that is remotely attached to religion, having the sceptical attitude “if it cannot be proven to be true, it’s false.”

In this article I try to reach out to all those people, by addressing the issue from multiple sides. I want to show they are all a bit right, but they could be all a bit wrong also.

Introduction

The book of Exodus is a strange thing. A lot of really weird thing happen in the story, and it’s not hard to see why it’s really tough to take the stories being told for historical stories. They are way too fantastic to just accept them as historical facts. I remember I read the stories for the first time back when I still was an Atheist. I wanted to have read the Bible to be able to tell Christians I read the book and that I knew where they were referring to. And of course, like any book, you start at the beginning. If it’s really true that God gives us the Bible so we may believe in Him, He also tries hard to make that as difficult possible. I am a Reformed Presbyterian now, but I still have a bit of Atheist attitude left, I guess, because my faith isn’t big enough to accept everything that’s written in the Bible as something that happened exactly as the Bible tells us. For me it’s the gist of the stories that matters, not the way it has been written down. I really don’t care whether this happened for real or not. It’s not important to my faith.

A while ago, Discovery Channel aired a documentary called “Who was Moses?”, in which they ‘proved’ that Moses was a ‘real historical figure’ and the Ten Plagues were ‘real historical facts’. It sparked my curiosity, because it’s interesting enough to a Christian, but the sceptic still living inside me warned me it was proven the ‘Discovery Channel Way’. Which means exactly nothing. What they do at Discovery Channel is a lot of guessing and making assumptions. Later in the program, the assumptions made at the beginning magically turn into their ‘facts’. They are big in the speculation business. The sceptic in me wasn’t convinced, but because they claimed to have ‘hard scientific facts’ by referring to articles in the scientific journal Nature and interviewing people working at the Smithsonian Institute I realised there may be something real to the story. And since I have unlimited access to scientific journals and other sources as a university student, I scheduled a library trip lasting one afternoon to find as much information I could find about this topic.

I have to admit that digging in scientific journals, looking at references to find more articles, borrow books people haven’t borrowed in ages feels like being a detective. It’s a lot of fun! I indeed found the article in Nature they were referring to, and a few more as well. Of course, using the references, gives access to a lot more information. I also tried the Internet, but that’s less straight forward then looking into verified scientific forces. I knew Internet sources aren’t always reliable, but you would be imagined to see what kind of ridiculous conspiracy theories exist on this topic. I decided to only use articles that state sources and give a bibliography at the end of the article, hoping to sift out most junk this way.

In the first part of this article, I want to find out what the identity of the pharaoh mentioned in Exodus is. If the story in the Bible is historically correct, we have to rule out Ramses II, because we know where he was buried, we know how he died and his mummy is on display in a museum in Cairo, Egypt. People who drown and are swept away by the sea usually aren’t found back, not even pharaohs. Everybody assumes the pharaoh mentioned in the Bible has to be Ramses II, but the Bible itself never mentions a name, so it can be someone else as well. There are other candidates as well, and with the use of sources and archaeological excavations we can make other educated guesses.
In the second part deals with the question whether the Ten Plagues are historical facts or myth, meant to be a metaphor for something different, like references in the New Testament  and the baptismal form of our Church suggests? I will conclude with my own conclusions and some critical remarks.

Identifying Exodus’ Pharaoh

Exodus continues where Genesis left off. The beginning of the book tells us the situation of the Jewish people in the time of Moses’ birth. So, in order to get proper context, we need to find out when in the World History this story takes place. In the Bible and in archeological excavations there are some clues to be found.

Joseph was a ‘Vice Royal’ in Egypt. If Joseph is a real historical person, there should be Egyptian sources referring to him. A Vice Royal isn’t exactly a random person. But it starts to become problematic to find that out. The Jews call him Joseph, but probably the Egyptians knew him under another name. And it is kind of tricky to find out which vice royal matches Joseph’s life story. But when doing the matching, there’s actually a candidate that has a life that looks an awful lot like Joseph’s. His Egyptian name is Mentuhotep, vice royal to pharaoh Sesostris I. He has a lot of impressive titles:

‘Vizier, Chief Judge, Overseer of the Double Granary, Chief Treasurer, Governor of the Royal Castle, Wearer of the Royal Seal, Chief of all the Works of the King, Hereditary Prince, Pilot of the People, Giver of Good, Sustaining Alive the People, Count, Sole Companion, Favourite of the King’ (Montgomery, 2001 quoted from Courville, 1977).

In Ameni’s tomb, there are stories about the things Mentuhotep did, like distributing food to the people without favouring one person over another. It’s perfectly possible this is indeed Joseph. Sesostris I is a pharaoh from the early 12th dynasty, succeeded by Sesostris III and Amenemhat IV. A hundred years later, Mentuhotep was forgotten: ‘Over 100 years later, in the reign of Sesostris III, Mentuhotep’s figure was defaced, so that his memory was dishonoured (Montgomery, 2001; quoted from Courville, 1977). This reminds me of this verse taken from Exodus: “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” Exodus’ pharaoh would than be Amenemhat IV, who indeed drowned and was succeeded by his sister.

There are more clues that Amenemhat IV, pharaoh from the late 12th dynasty of the Middle Kingdom might be our guy. First, there’s the Ipuwer Papyrus document, which scholars dated early 12th dynasty based on hieroglyphs and language. It describes events that also are being described in Exodus.

Second, the archeologist Bietak did some excavations near Tell ed-Daba which is situated close to the little town of Qantir in the Fekus district. According to Bietak, he excavated the city of Rameses that’s being mentioned in Exodus. In ancient times, the Fekus district was known as Kessan to the Greeks and as Goshen to the Israelites. The top layers of the excavation site were thought to be Hyksos, but under that layer they found traces of Semites, or in other words: the Jews. These Semites showed traced of advanced rates of assimilation of Egyptian culture. An analysis of the graves gave a surprising outcome: at the end of the occupation by the Semites they found more graves of women then from men and the number of infant graves were exceptionally high: 65% . Another exceptional find were the numbers of shallow mass graves, a typical reaction to ancient nations to plagues. (Rohl, 1995).

Centuries before that, other excavations were done by Niebuhr in 1761 near Sarbut-el-Khadem. The local Beduins call this place ‘Turbet es Yahoud’, which means ‘the Jewish graves’. Forster re-investigated this site in 1862 again and publicised photos and translations of the inscriptions he found. The inscriptions describe how the people went through the Reed Sea and how the pharaoh drowned in it. Moses and Miriam’s names are mentioned and there’s an inscription with the name of pharaoh Amenemhat IV. This way, there’s a really good chance that Exodus’ pharaoh indeed was Amenemhat IV. We have archeological excavations near Tell ed-Daba (also known as Rameses or Raämses) and in Sarbut-el-Khadem and we also have the Ipuwer Papyrus giving additional clues.

There is, however, a problem with dating the Exodus this early, because we haven’t looked at the differences in the historical timeline when this should have happened. Not everybody agrees on the dates during which certain pharaohs ruled. I will discuss that in the next part of this series. I decided to divide the 2002 article in three parts, to avoid blog posts becoming way too long (and thus unreadable).

Bibliography

• Montgomery, A. (2001). A Chronological Model for the Bible: Part I: The Exodus, Joshua and Judges. Link visited site on 05/07/2002, 10:49 AM.
• Bruins, H.J. & Plicht, J. van der (1996). The Exodus Enigma. In: Nature vol. 382 (July 1996), p. 212-213. (more info)
• Rohl, P. (1995). Pharaohs and Kings: a Biblical Quest. New York: Crown Publishers, p. 271 en 278.
• Stanley, D.J. & Sheng, H. (1986). Volcanic shards from Santorini (Upper Minoan Ash) in the Nile Delta, Egypt. In: Nature vol. 320 (april 1986), p. 733-735. (more info)

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[1] 1 Cor 10, 1-6.
[2] Translation of the Form used in the Reformed Churches (liberated) in the Netherlands.
[3] Gen 41, 46-57.
[4] This is another vice royal who died during the reign of Sesostris I, See also this link
[5] Ex. 1,8 (Revised Standard Version)
[6] The history of ancient Egypt is divided in 30 dynasties by the ancient historian Josephus. The Middle Kingdom Period exists of the 12th-14th dynasties and according to (Montgomery, 2001) the corresponding date should be 1800-1083 B.C.
[7] Ex. 1, 11; the name of the city Rameses (Raämses) suggests that this city was built during the reign of Ramses II, but the excavations made by Bietak shows this cannot be the case. Is widely known that using names in ancient history isn’t always a good move, because names of places and people change over time, and people could tell old stories of places and use newer names to make clear which place they mean. The use of this name could mean that the story was written down in a time that the place’s name would be Rameses, but not that it was called like that when the story takes place.
[8] Ex 1, 15-21. .

The main differences between Protestantism (Calvinism) and Catholicism concerning the Bible

When comparing the Bible in Protestant and Catholic churches, one notices that the number of books in both versions differs. Why is that? Why do Protestants have fewer books? In this article I will give a more in-depth explanation than the one given in “A Journey into the Land of the Spirit” episode 1. There I explained that the origins of the differences lie in Church history.

Protestants try to be ‘as original as possible’ by using books translated from Hebrew, originating in Palestine, (the so-called Masoretic texts) whereas Catholics follow the Tradition, i.e., they use the books that were used by the Christians in the Roman Empire, based on the Greek Septuagint. First I will give a brief overview of Church history starting from the early beginnings until about 500 A.D., followed by a brief explanation of the Reformation (1521 and later). I will try to uncover the discussion points and influences that led to the re-investigation of Christianity’s origins and the decisions being made as a result of that investigation. After doing so I will summarise both the Roman Catholic rationale for these choices as well as the Reformed rationale. I will conclude with my own point of view.

History of the Early Church
Most people are familiar with the Bible like it is known now, but the Bible was different in the very beginning. The first Christians had books they regarded to as Scripture, but these books were only what we think now of the Old Testament. The newer books, beginning with the Gospels, were added centuries later. The reason for doing so lies in the Tradition and the need to defend the true teachings against heresies. The first church fathers studied the Scriptures (Old Testament), and used a lot of the Apostles’ quotations to clarify it’s meaning.

In this the beginnings of the tradition can be seen. To the Apostolic Fathers, Tradition wasn’t the opposite of Scripture, but rather acted as a guideline about how to read the Scriptures. Clement, Justin, and Polycarp show in their writings how Christ taught the Scriptures to his Apostles; the Apostles in turn taught them their knowledge they got from Christ. The Tradition according to Polycarp was ‘The word transmitted from the beginning’. He didn’t use the word ‘Tradition,’ but you can feel he’s referring to the thing we call Tradition now in his writings. In other words: Tradition isn’t an ‘invention’ of the Church; the notion existed from the very beginning.

Later, Tertullian and Irenaeus talked about a ‘living tradition of teachings within the Church’. Irenaeus especially wrote a lot about this tradition to counter the notion of an ‘esoteric’ and ’secret’ knowledge that these Gnostics alone would have had access to. According to the Gnostics, Jesus and the Apostles knew about secrets and only a small number of people had access to these secrets. Irenaeus showed that indeed Jesus taught everything to the Apostles, but the Apostles in their turn taught everything to their disciples. There was a ‘living tradition’ within the Church already and that tradition didn’t mention their ’secret knowledge’. Therefore their Gnosis never has been part of the Church’s teachings and they would have no proof that their teachings existed before. Irenaeus, on the other hand, did have that proof in the writings and teachings of the older Church Fathers. These kinds of disputes led to the birth of the Canon as we know it. Athanasius mentioned all books in a letter written in 367; Tertullian used the term ‘Apostolica traditio’ for the first time in this respect.

When reading Tertullian’s writings, one can see that he equates Tradition to ‘regula fidei’ (Rule of Faith). The same can be found in Irenaeus’ writings; he mentions the ‘Canon of Truth’. Both Church Fathers mean the same thing: You should read Scripture as a unit. When you end up with a ‘new doctrine’, chances are big you are ignoring the ‘regula fidei’. This was exactly what the heretics (Gnostics) were doing. Their threat faded away between the third and fourth century A.D. In the same time period the Church was able to organise itself better and become the leading religion in the Roman Empire. This was possible because of the persecutions stopping. As a result from challenges from outside the Church, Tradition became more important, because without it, it’s possible to make the Bible ‘say’ virtually anything you would like. For Athanasius, Clemens, and their disciples, Tradition was deeply anchored in Scripture.

In the first paragraph I explained that Calvinists want to be original; to be authentic as possible. And here is where the difference relates to. A Catholic Bible has more books then a Protestant Bible. When both are compared, you can notice that the New Testament in both versions is exactly the same, but the Old Testament differs. What the Protestants did was taking the Masoretic text of the Tanakh and make that their Old Testament. They claim this is the original Jewish text that Jesus was referring to. Also, they point at the Council of Jamnia where the Canon of the Tanakh was set to only the books we now find in the Tanakh.
To summarise it, the whole reasoning of Protestants relates back to authenticity. The reason the deuterocanonicals (the Protestants call them apocrypha) weren’t included is, according to modern Calvinists, that these books aren’t Judaistic sources, but a product of Hellenistic Judaism. The books were included in the Greek translation of the Tanakh for Jews living in Alexandra (Egypt), who lost their ability to read the original Hebrew text.

Exegesis
According to Irenaeus, the Bible is able to explain itself when read as a unity. In Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies) he explains that one should compare Scripture with Scripture. The Scripture’s message is twofold: In the Old Testament prophets announce Christ’s coming and the New Testament contains the writings of the Apostles, people who lived and worked together with Christ. They were taught by Christ and passed Christ’s teachings to their own students (Polycarp, Phil 6,3).

Therefore, the Old Testament is, when interpreted the right way, a Christian book. The way it is being interpreted isn’t new; the Old Church Fathers used the same methods Judaism had been using centuries before. In Chapter 7 of his Second Letter (2 Clement), Clement of Rome stresses how important obedience is to the elders in a congregation. Their task is to preserve the faith and keep it pure. They pass it on exactly like they have been taught it. They should also be obedient to the Church in general and the bishops in particular. As the Church matured, several ways of exegesis were distinguished, and next week’s podcast will cover that topic.

Calvinist Protestants also point to the importance of the principle of ‘comparing scripture with scripture’. In fact, it’s the foundation of all Calvinist exegesis. The way it is implement differs a bit. What they mean is that one piece of Scripture can never contradict another piece of Scripture. If you have a theory, all pieces of Scripture have to support it, if they don’t your theory is faulty. If you think you know what one piece of Scripture means, there cannot be another piece of Scripture with an opposite meaning. Therefore, Bible study needs to be thorough and all theories need to be checked with the Bible using this method.

Conclusion
When reading early Church history and comparing the actual writings of the Apostolic Fathers in their historic context with the different streams in current Christianity, it struck me how much the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church have stayed the same. In their Catechism they summarise the way of teaching the Bible in very much the same way as I did in this article. Everything is really straightforward. The next thing is always a logical consequence of a previous step. I didn’t expect that.

In the Reformed Church where I have been baptised you can find a similar approach; however the Tradition isn’t explicitly present in the foreground. It’s not coincidental that a lot of Reformed people are unaware of its existence. You really have to ask ministers and read theologians like John Calvin to find out about it. And here is also where some cracks in my foundation start to appear. While preparing for this podcast I read through both rationales to check if I would phrase everything correctly. I had no special stance on this matter because I never really thought about it. And now there’s something nagging me. We have left out pieces of Scripture that should have stayed in, the reasons of removing them are faulty. There’s no other way to phrase this.

The problem is this: we want to be authentic, be sure to use the same texts the first Christians used. The first Christians didn’t have a New Testament, so we look at the Old Testament they were using. And it isn’t the Old Testament we are using right now. When looking at the activities of the Council of Jamnia mentioned above, there’s no way it would have had any authority to the first Christians. First, it was a JEWISH council, not a Christian. They did close the Canon of the Old Testament, but they did say something else on that Council. I quote Wikipedia on this:

The inclusion of a curse on the “Minim”. (..) According to the Jewish Encyclopedia article on Min: “In passages referring to the Christian period, “minim” usually indicates the Judæo-Christians, the Gnostics, and the Nazarenes, who often conversed with the Rabbis on the unity of God, creation, resurrection, and similar subjects. In some passages, indeed, it is used even for “Christian”; but it is possible that in such cases it is a substitution for the word “Nozeri,” which was the usual term for ‘Christian’… On the invitation of Gamaliel II., Samuel ha-Ḳaṭan composed a prayer against the minim which was inserted in the “Eighteen Benedictions”; it is called “Birkat ha-Minim” and forms the twelfth benediction; but instead of the original “Nozerim” … the present text has “wela-malshinim” (=”and to the informers”). The cause of this change in the text was probably, the accusation brought by the Church Fathers against the Jews of cursing all the Christians under the name of the Nazarenes.”

I simply cannot imagine that a the earliest Christians, who were persecuted by the Jews and the Roman Empire, would have listened to this Council that cursed them. This doesn’t make sense at all. I therefore cannot believe that’s the reason why the earliest Christians would be against Hellenism, since most of them were Greeks themselves, Gentiles. As church history shows, they indeed weren’t using the Masoretic Texts but the Septuagint (the Greek text). I asked my minister and his response was that the Hellenistic Greeks had no other translation but would have used the Masoretic texts if they could.

But this is an odd answer too. We’re talking about the Word of God, the Holy Scripture, if authenticity would have been an issue back then, they would have made sure they got a good translation. And even the Apostles used the Septuagint, at least they quote from it, so apparently they didn’t bother as much about it as the Reformators did. It’s just not right, it’s not straightforward, it does not make sense, so therefore we are probably wrong on this and should admit that. It’s not about getting our way, it’s about the Truth. Who cares if the Catholics got this right if it’s the Truth?

Current developments in the Reformed Church (at least here in the Netherlands) show why it is important to stress the Tradition more and more. A lot of people are ignorant and fall easily for deviant teachings of sects and other religious groups, who superficially seem to be strictly Biblical. On closer inspection you discover lots of their doctrines are refurbished old heresies like Montanism and Donatism. To me it’s like history repeating itself. One of the reasons these developments aren’t affecting the Roman Catholic Church so much is the protective shield of the Tradition. Protestants can actually learn from this and get their defences into place before it’s too late.
I also know that most Protestants see a formal way of incorporating Tradition as something Papist and object to it because of that. It hurts me to see my own church crumbling like it does now, but on the other hand it also shows me something is wrong at the basis of that church, because God promised to preserve His Church. Could this and all the schisms happening currently (the last one was in 2004) mean that I am in fact not inside His church but outside?

References

• Kelly, J.N.D. (2004). Early Christian Doctrines. Prince Press: Peabody (MA). Chapters 1-3
• McGrath, Alister. (1997) Christelijke theologie. Kampen: Uitgeverij Kok. This is a Dutch translation of Christian Theology (© 1994 Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers (English)).
• Athanasius (367) From the thirty-ninth Letter of Holy Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, on the Paschal festival (English Translation on http://www.ccel.org)
• Irenaeus of Lyon, (± 180) Adversus Haereses English Translation on http://www.ccel.org)
• Clement of Rome (± 130-160). 2 Clement English Translation on http://www.ccel.org)
• Polycarp (±110-140) Letter to the Philippians English Translation on http://www.ccel.org)

Although I’m a new Catholic, it’s not a new thing for me to do some kind of fasting during Lent. The Protestant churches I’m familiar with also do some kind of fasting, but that’s more something people individually choose for, it’s not a Protestant tradition, but a tradition a lot of Protestant people came up with in the past few years. A lot of Protestants make a ‘mistake’ though: they will also fast on Sundays, but that’s not what Catholics do. A Sunday is by its very nature a Feast Day, a day of rejoicing, although we are dialing back the rejoicing a bit during Lent: altar triptych is folded up, covering the painings at the inside, there are no flowers.
The Presbyterian Church I’m coming from has no liturgical year and people have very vague concepts on liturgy. More and more people in the Presbyterian churches think it’s a nice gesture to celebrate the Lord’s Supper on Good Friday, where in the Catholic Church this is the only day there is no Eucharist, hence no communion. The altar gets dismantled and Christ is completely absent during that day: the sanctuary lights won’t be burning. Catholics can receive Communion every day of the year, whenever they want, but NOT on Good Friday

Usually I don’t eat meat during Lent, last year I was forced to live a very modest life, because I was low on money. Therefore I wasn’t eating meat all year along, and I tried to be extra modest by eating vegan. This wasn’t working because replacement foods were extremely expensive. This way I wouldn’t be able to meet my goal of saving up the money I wouldn’t spend during Lent on food to the World Food Programme. This year I changed my goal and will try to eat modest meals with no festive elements like dessert, artificial sweetening, no alcohol, expensive fresh fish, no meat and no imported exotic luxury items like oranges, lemons, clementines and bananas. It means I need to be getting very creative with my cooking because I usually use one of those items as an ingredient in my meals. What did people eat before the introduction of potatoes and Asian cuisine?

I am rediscovering ancient recipes, way back people in Eurasia ate lentils. And lentils are coming back, I see them in the supermarkt more often. They aren’t really expensive. I bought a pound of lentils and didn’t know what to do with them, until Fr. Roderick came with ‘Biblical Lentil Soup’. It’s referring back to the story about Jacob and Esau, where Esau sold his first born-rights to Jacob over a bowl of lentil soup. So that stuff should be very tasty! This is the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 finely chopped onion
• some olive oil
• 250 grams red lentils (that’s about half a pound)
• a can of peeled tomatoes (400 grams / ± 16 oz.)
• one liter (or ± 34 oz.) of stock (vegetable or chicken stock)
• dried Italian herbs, salt, pepper

Directions:

It’s very simple: fry the the onion in some olive oil for about one minute until the pieces become a bit transparant, pour in a liter of boiling water, the vegetable stock cubes. After the cubes are dissolved, add the lentils, the tomatoes and the herbs. Cook for 20 until 25 minutes on a small fire. When it’s finished, add some pepper and salt to taste. That’s everything and it’s almost for free!

Link:

• Fr. Roderick’s recipe on the SQPN forums