I love this meme, which comically demonstrates the importance of proper punctuation.  Intended, of course, was “Rachael Ray finds inspiration in cooking, her family, and her dog.”  For all I know, this meme has photoshopped out the punctuation for comic effect.  But without those commas, this cover announces a horror show!  On Facebook, I captioned this picture “Punctuation saves lives!”

But what about written languages–including our biblical languages!–which lack punctuation?  How are such confusions avoided?  The short answer is that, frequently, they are not.  Generally, the reader has to rely on context cues to the intended meaning of an ambiguous passage.

Which leads us to the Gospel for this second Sunday of Advent, Matthew 3:1-12, concerning John the Baptist.  In all four Gospels, John is introduced by a quotation from Isaiah.  In the recent Updated Edition of the NRSV, Matthew 3:3 reads,

This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God” (Isaiah 40:3, NRSVUE).

You see the problem.  Where should the comma go?  Does Isaiah refer to a voice crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” or does the voice cry, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord”?  Does the text of Isaiah give us any way to resolve this ambiguity?

Matthew (like Mark before him) is quoting directly from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of Jewish Scripture that was the Bible of the earliest church.  Although later Greek texts do use punctuation and capital letters to enable the reader to distinguish sentences and phrases, the original text did not–indeed, often there was not even a space between words!

For the gospel writers, there would not have been any clear indication of where the break belonged–and in any case, motivated as they were to find texts foreshadowing and interpreting Jesus’ life and work, we can certainly understand why they would read Isaiah 40:3 as referring to John the Baptist, “a voice crying in the wilderness.”

Mark, likely the first Gospel writer and so the first one to make this connection, actually conflates Isaiah 40:3 with another text:

The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, God’s Son, happened just as it was written about in the prophecy of Isaiah:

Coming back to Isaiah 40:3 in the Hebrew text: originally, written Hebrew recorded only the consonants, and lacked any system of punctuation.  However, a system of marks above and below the line developed in the scribal tradition, and was used by the scribes (called “Masoretes”) to record what they heard when the text was read aloud.  This included not only the vowel sounds (indicated by marks called “pointing;” these marks are still used, sparsely, in modern Hebrew), but also rising and falling inflections and pauses (indicated by accent marks)–even, some think, musical tones for chanting!

As this chart (from Choon Leong Seow, A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew, Revised Edition [Nashville: Abingdon, 1995], 65) shows, the accent marks are divided into conjunctive accents, which link a word to the word following, and disjunctive accents, which mark a break–acting like commas, semicolons, and periods in English.

The most common Hebrew accent, called the zaqeph qaton, is essentially a Masoretic comma. In the Masoretic text of Isaiah 40:3, the verb qore’ (“cry, call out”) is marked with a zaqeph qaton, showing that the Masoretes heard a break here.  In the printed text of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, the standard critical text of the Hebrew Bible, this disjunction is emphasized even more by a line break: qol qore’ (“A voice cries”) has a line to itself, while bammidbar (“In the wilderness”) opens the line following.  Even without those explicit markings, however, context clues would lead us to this reading.

Isaiah 40– 55 is addressed to exiles (Isa 45:11– 13), who now anticipate a return home— specifically, from Babylon (see 43:14; 48:20).  Jerusalem and the villages of Judah are described as abandoned ruins (44:24– 26).  Sarcastic reference is made to specific Babylonian rites, such as the cult processional of Bel Marduk patron god of Babylon and his son Nebo, scribe of the gods (46:1– 2); and the magical practice of astrological divination (47:12– 13).  Second Isaiah, as  Isaiah 40–55 is commonly called, can be dated to the mid- sixth century, shortly before the fall of Babylon—and about 150 years after Isaiah of Jerusalem.

An important theme in these chapters is the promise of a second exodus. Just as in the first exodus God delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt, so in this new exodus, God delivers the people from the bondage of exile in Babylon. Indeed, recollection of Israel’s deliverance through the Red Sea in the first exodus is supplanted by the new thing that God will now do:

The Gospel writers, by identifying John the Baptist as “The voice of one crying in the wilderness,” read Isaiah 40:3 differently than the Hebrew scribes who have given us the text back of our Old Testament.  From the best evidence, it appears that those scribes have accurately communicated the intent of Second Isaiah. Does this matter?  Only, I would suggest, if we insist on retrojecting the Gospel reading into the Hebrew Bible.  We can recognize Second Isaiah’s distinctive message and purpose, and still recognize that the purpose of this text in its historical setting does not exhaust its meaning.

Within Christian Scripture, this passage expressing God’s gracious concern and providential care of the Babylonian exiles has come to express God’s gracious concern and providential care in other ways, too.  By sending John the Baptist, God showed God’s care for Jesus, providing for him a support, and perhaps a mentor.

But John also, as Gruenewald’s altarpiece at Isenheim concretely proclaims, points us to Christ, and models for us in this Advent season the path to Christian maturity and to faithful witness: Illum oportet crescere, me autem minui (“He must increase; I must decrease”).

If you are a fan of the television quiz show “Jeopardy,” a fellow Bible wonk, or just a person of faith on social media, chances are that you are aware of the recent flap over a “Final Jeopardy” answer in the recent Tournament of Champions.

Heading into Final Jeopardy!, Professors’ Tournament winner [Sam] Buttrey led with $14,800, with He at $13,200, and super-champ Amy Schneider trailing with $2,400. The final clue under the category “The New Testament” read: “Paul’s letter to them is the New Testament epistle with the most Old Testament quotations.”

Schneider’s answer, “Who are The Hebrews,” was deemed correct by host Ken Jennings, while Buttrey’s “Who are The Romans” was considered incorrect. Meanwhile, He answered incorrectly with “Philippiaes,” but after Buttrey’s wager, he ended up with enough earnings to win the episode.

Some fans were not happy with this outcome, as there is much debate over who wrote the biblical texts, including parts of The New Testament. As noted on the Jeopardy Fan website, there are “conflicting sources as to whether Romans or Hebrews contains more quotations. Secondly, there’s the more pressing question of authorship—specifically of Hebrews. There’s no dispute that Paul wrote Romans.”

To say that there “is much debate over who wrote the biblical texts” is true, but not really relevant to the authorship of Hebrews.  Our New Testament contains thirteen letters attributed to Paul in the Greek text: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon.  Indeed, the first word in all of these books is “Paul”!  But Hebrews is not one of them.  That book is anonymous: Hebrews never claims Pauline authorship, and indeed does not even sound like Paul.

The authorship of Hebrews was debated even in antiquity: Origen (185-254 CE) famously wrote, “God alone knows who wrote Hebrews.”  Still, in the King James Version, this book is titled, “The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews”–a double error (carelessly repeated by the editors of the “Jeopardy” team as well).  Even the Evangelical NIV does not follow the KJV here, but titles the book simply as “Hebrews.”  Hebrews not only is not by Paul, but also is not an epistle: the book only superficially resembles a letter in its close, where it also mentions Paul’s friend Timothy (Heb 13:23-25).  Rather, Hebrews is a sermon on selected Old Testament passages: the book contains 32 citations from the Hebrew Bible, including ten from the Psalms, particularly Psalm 110.  Accordingly, Hebrews refers to itself (Heb 13:22) as logou tes parakleseos: a “word of exhortation” (NRSV) or “message of encouragement” (CEB).

By the fourth century, Christian teachers such as Jerome and Augustine were ascribing this book to Paul–hence, the title in the KJV.  Quite probably, Hebrews came to be attributed to Paul in the tradition because of that epistle-like conclusion mentioning Timothy, because it was anonymous, and because, without it, there would be thirteen letters of Paul–an inauspicious and unfortunate number!  Of those thirteen, Paul’s authorship of Romans, the bulk of 1 Corinthians (1 Corinthians 14:33b-36 is almost certainly a later expansion, as it conflicts with Paul’s statements about women elsewhere, even in this same book [see 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 ]), 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon is unquestioned.   But since in the ancient world, writing in the name of a well-known and respected teacher was common (Plato’s Dialogues, attributed by him to his teacher Socrates, are a famous non-biblical example), it is no surprise to find examples of this phenomenon in the New Testament as well.

Those letters attributed to, but likely not written by, Paul are called Deuteropauline Epistles.  Very few scholars accept Paul’s authorship of 1 and 2 Timothy or Titus (letters very similar in style to one another but unlike Paul’s certainly authentic writings, commonly called, collectively, the Pastoral Epistles), or of 2 Thessalonians (although I believe that Paul may have written this one!)  Paul’s authorship of Colossians and Ephesians can be, and is, debated, although most scholars hold that they are different enough from Paul’s theology, vocabulary and style elsewhere that Paul likely did not write them. 

The authorship of Hebrews, however, and its identification as a letter are (the unsupported claims of Augustine and Jerome not withstanding) non-controversial: despite the title page of this book in the KJV, Hebrews is not an epistle, and was not written by Paul.  This time, clearly, “Jeopardy” got it wrong.

The lectionary readings for Sunday seem to present two radically different visions of the future—and contrary to common presumptions, the positive one is from the Old Testament!

Isaiah 65:17-25 presents a vision of transformation and healing: a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem, without sorrow or sickness or fear, in which

Wolf and lamb will graze together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
    but the snake—its food will be dust.
They won’t hurt or destroy at any place on my holy mountain,
    says the LORD (Isa 65:25).

It is a return to the natural paradise described in Genesis 1:29-30:

Then God said, “I now give to you all the plants on the earth that yield seeds and all the trees whose fruit produces its seeds within it. These will be your food. To all wildlife, to all the birds in the sky, and to everything crawling on the ground—to everything that breathes—I give all the green grasses for food.” And that’s what happened.

Jesus’ words in Luke 21:5-19, however, are a grim warning of natural and social collapse, of a time of suffering and persecution when

You will be betrayed by your parents, brothers and sisters, relatives, and friends. They will execute some of you. Everyone will hate you because of my name (Lk 21:16-17).

However, as a consideration of the broader context of each passage reveals, these are not two different visions of the future, but two sides of the same end-time vision.  The “new heaven and new earth” of Isaiah’s vision requires that the present reality be cleared away; the new Jerusalem is necessary because of the corruption, injustice and sheer disappointment inherent in the “old” Jerusalem.

So too, the culmination of natural and political violence in Jesus’ vision is the inauguration of a new reality: “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory”(Luke 21:27, NRSVUE; quoting from Daniel 7:13-14).

Jewish New Testament scholar Geza Vermes noted that Jesus’ teaching regarding the end was typical Jewish apocalypticism with a twist: fervent, imminent expectation of the endtime, joined to an absolute refusal to specify dates and times!  So, Jesus warns,

“Watch out that you aren’t deceived. Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I’m the one!’ and ‘It’s time!’ Don’t follow them” (Luke 21:8).

Jesus words were a rebuke to end-time prophets of his  own day–as well as a needed riposte to those in our own who confidently claim knowledge of God’s future!  Jesus’ teaching will result in a lifestyle of perpetual expectation:

“Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36, NRVSUE)

Jesus places an intriguing face on the hard times to come upon his followers: “This will provide you with an opportunity to testify” (Luke 21:13)!  In that witness, we are given an extraordinary promise: we need not be afraid, for Jesus himself will PROVIDE our testimony: “I’ll give you words and wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to counter or contradict” (Luke 21:15).

It is important not to take this too far: this does not mean that we should go into the world, or into the pulpit, unprepared!  Still, it certainly does mean that we need not be anxious—we can enjoy our ministry, even in the midst of struggle and pain.

Our church still lives, and must minister, in places of need, trouble, struggle. How are we to respond?  We could despair—give up on our search for peace and justice on this side of glory.  Or, we can remember, as texts today affirm, that there is no birth without birth pangs, no Easter without Good Friday: that God is present precisely in the midst of our world, working to accomplish God’s purpose. We can see, in our struggle, an opportunity to testify to the presence and transforming power of Christ!

Knowing that the culmination of history is in God’s hands, and not our own, enables us face the future with confidence.  As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said “The texture of our universe is one where there is no question at all but that good and laughter and justice will prevail.”

Archbishop Tutu is exactly right: our ministry can be, indeed must be, not only a ministry of goodness and justice, but a ministry of joy. May the spirit of the living God fill you, friend, and may Christ’s peace be channeled through you in your ministry.  May you love, and laugh, much! And in the times of trial that will certainly come, may God grant you the strength to square your shoulders and say, “Well, this will give me an opportunity to testify.”