INSTITUTING THE SUNDAY OF THE WORD OF GOD

APOSTOLIC LETTER
ISSUED "MOTU PROPRIO"

BY THE SUPREME PONTIFF

FRANCIS

“APERUIT ILLIS”

INSTITUTING THE
SUNDAY OF THE WORD OF GOD

1. “He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Lk 24:45).  This was one of the final acts of the risen Lord before his Ascension.  Jesus appeared to the assembled disciples, broke bread with them and opened their minds to the understanding of the sacred Scriptures. To them, amid their fear and bewilderment, he unveiled the meaning of the paschal mystery: that in accordance with the Father’s eternal plan he had to suffer and rise from the dead, in order to bring repentance and the forgiveness of sins (cf. Lk 24:26.46-47). He then promised to send the Holy Spirit, who would give them strength to be witnesses of this saving mystery (cf. Lk 24:49).
The relationship between the Risen Lord, the community of believers and sacred Scripture is essential to our identity as Christians. Without the Lord who opens our minds to them, it is impossible to understand the Scriptures in depth. Yet the contrary is equally true: without the Scriptures, the events of the mission of Jesus and of his Church in this world would remain incomprehensible. Hence, Saint Jerome could rightly claim: “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (Commentary on the Book of Isaiah, Prologue: PL 24,17B).
2. At the conclusion of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, I proposed setting aside “a Sunday given over entirely to the word of God, so as to appreciate the inexhaustible riches contained in that constant dialogue between the Lord and his people” (Misericordia et Misera, 7). Devoting a specific Sunday of the liturgical year to the word of God can enable the Church to experience anew how the risen Lord opens up for us the treasury of his word and enables us to proclaim its unfathomable riches before the world. Here, we are reminded of the teaching of Saint Ephrem: “Who is able to understand, Lord, all the richness of even one of your words? There is more that eludes us than what we can understand. We are like the thirsty drinking from a fountain. Your word has as many aspects as the perspectives of those who study it. The Lord has coloured his word with diverse beauties, so that those who study it can contemplate what stirs them. He has hidden in his word all treasures, so that each of us may find a richness in what he or she contemplates” (Commentary on the Diatessaron, 1, 18).
With this Letter, I wish to respond to the many requests I have received from the people of God that the entire Church celebrate, in unity of purpose, a Sunday of the Word of God. It is now common for the Christian community to set aside moments to reflect on the great importance of the word of God for everyday living. The various local Churches have undertaken a wealth of initiatives to make the sacred Scripture more accessible to believers, to increase their gratitude for so great a gift, and to help them to strive daily to embody and bear witness to its teachings.
The Second Vatican Council gave great impulse to the rediscovery of the word of God, thanks to its Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum, a document that deserves to be read and appropriated ever anew. The Constitution clearly expounds the nature of sacred Scripture, its transmission from generation to generation (Chapter II), its divine inspiration (Chapter III) embracing the Old and New Testaments (Chapters IV and V), and the importance of Scripture for the life of the Church (Chapter VI). To advance this teaching, Pope Benedict XVI convoked an Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 2008 on “The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church”, and then issued the Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, whose teaching remains fundamental for our communities.[1] That document emphasizes in particular the performative character of the Word of God, especially in the context of the liturgy, in which its distinctively sacramental character comes to the fore.[2]
It is fitting, then that the life of our people be constantly marked by this decisive relationship with the living word that the Lord never tires of speaking to his Bride, that she may grow in love and faithful witness.
3. Consequently, I hereby declare that the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time is to be devoted to the celebration, study and dissemination of the word of God. This Sunday of the Word of God will thus be a fitting part of that time of the year when we are encouraged to strengthen our bonds with the Jewish people and to pray for Christian unity. This is more than a temporal coincidence: the celebration of the Sunday of the Word of God has ecumenical value, since the Scriptures point out, for those who listen, the path to authentic and firm unity.
The various communities will find their own ways to mark this Sunday with a certain solemnity. It is important, however, that in the Eucharistic celebration the sacred text be enthroned, in order to focus the attention of the assembly on the normative value of God’s word. On this Sunday, it would be particularly appropriate to highlight the proclamation of the word of the Lord and to emphasize in the homily the honour that it is due. Bishops could celebrate the Rite of Installation of Lectors or a similar commissioning of readers, in order to bring out the importance of the proclamation of God’s word in the liturgy. In this regard, renewed efforts should be made to provide members of the faithful with the training needed to be genuine proclaimers of the word, as is already the practice in the case of acolytes or extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion. Pastors can also find ways of giving a Bible, or one of its books, to the entire assembly as a way of showing the importance of learning how to read, appreciate and pray daily with sacred Scripture, especially through the practice of lectio divina.
4. The return of the people of Israel to their homeland after the Babylonian exile was marked by the public reading of the book of the Law. In the book of Nehemiah, the Bible gives us a moving description of that moment. The people assembled in Jerusalem, in the square before the Water Gate, to listen to the Law. They had been scattered in exile, but now they found themselves gathered “as one” around the sacred Scripture (Neh 8:1). The people lent “attentive ears” (Neh 8:3) to the reading of the sacred book, realizing that in its words they would discover the meaning of their lived experience. The reaction to the proclamation of was one of great emotion and tears: “[The Levites] read from the book, from the law of God, clearly; and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, ‘This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep’. For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, ‘Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to him for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength’” (Neh 8:8-10).
These words contain a great teaching. The Bible cannot be just the heritage of some, much less a collection of books for the benefit of a privileged few. It belongs above all to those called to hear its message and to recognize themselves in its words. At times, there can be a tendency to monopolize the sacred text by restricting it to certain circles or to select groups. It cannot be that way. The Bible is the book of the Lord’s people, who, in listening to it, move from dispersion and division towards unity. The word of God unites believers and makes them one people.
5. In this unity born of listening, pastors are primarily responsible for explaining sacred Scripture and helping everyone to understand it. Since it is the people’s book, those called to be ministers of the word must feel an urgent need to make it accessible to their community.
The homily, in particular, has a distinctive function, for it possesses “a quasi-sacramental character” (Evangelii Gaudium, 142). Helping people to enter more deeply into the word of God through simple and suitable language will allow priests themselves to discover the “beauty of the images used by the Lord to encourage the practice of the good” (ibid.). This is a pastoral opportunity that should not be wasted!
For many of our faithful, in fact, this is the only opportunity they have to grasp the beauty of God’s word and to see it applied to their daily lives. Consequently, sufficient time must be devoted to the preparation of the homily. A commentary on the sacred readings cannot be improvised. Those of us who are preachers should not give long, pedantic homilies or wander off into unrelated topics. When we take time to pray and meditate on the sacred text, we can speak from the heart and thus reach the hearts of those who hear us, conveying what is essential and capable of bearing fruit. May we never tire of devoting time and prayer to Scripture, so that it may be received “not as a human word but as what it really is, the word of God” (1 Thess 2:13).
Catechists, too, in their ministry of helping people to grow in their faith, ought to feel an urgent need for personal renewal through familiarity with, and study of, the sacred Scriptures. This will help them foster in their hearers a true dialogue with the word of God.
6. Before encountering his disciples, gathered behind closed doors, and opening their minds to the understanding of the Scriptures (cf. Lk 24:44-45), the risen Lord appeared to two of them on the road to Emmaus from Jerusalem (cf. Lk 24:13-35). Saint Luke’s account notes that this happened on the very day of his resurrection, a Sunday. The two disciples were discussing the recent events concerning Jesus’ passion and death. Their journey was marked by sorrow and disappointment at his tragic death. They had hoped that he would be the Messiah who would set them free, but they found themselves instead confronted with the scandal of the cross. The risen Lord himself gently draws near and walks with them, yet they do not recognize him (cf. v. 16). Along the way, he questions them, and, seeing that they have not grasped the meaning of his passion and death, he exclaims: “O foolish men, and slow of heart” (v. 25). Then, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scriptures” (v.27). Christ is the first exegete! Not only did the Old Testament foretell what he would accomplish, but he himself wished to be faithful to its words, in order to make manifest the one history of salvation whose fulfilment is found in Christ.
7. The Bible, as sacred Scripture, thus speaks of Christ and proclaims him as the one who had to endure suffering and then enter into his glory (cf. v. 26). Not simply a part, but the whole of Scripture speaks of Christ. Apart from the Scriptures, his death and resurrection cannot be rightly understood. That is why one of the most ancient confessions of faith stressed that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas” (1Cor15:3-5). Since the Scriptures everywhere speak of Christ, they enable us to believe that his death and resurrection are not myth but history, and are central to the faith of his disciples.
A profound bond links sacred Scripture and the faith of believers. Since faith comes from hearing, and what is heard is based on the word of Christ (cf. Rom 10:17), believers are bound to listen attentively to the word of the Lord, both in the celebration of the liturgy and in their personal prayer and reflection.
8. The journey that the Risen Lord makes with the disciples of Emmaus ended with a meal. The mysterious wayfarer accepts their insistent request: “Stay with us, for it is almost evening and the day is now far spent” (Lk 24:29). They sit down at table, and Jesus takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it and offers it to them. At that moment, their eyes are opened, and they recognize him (cf. v. 31).
This scene clearly demonstrates the unbreakable bond between sacred Scripture and the Eucharist. As the Second Vatican Council teaches, “the Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures as she has venerated the Lord’s body, in that she never ceases, above all in the sacred liturgy, to partake of the bread of life and to offer it to the faithful from the one table of the word of God and the body of Christ” (Dei Verbum, 21).
Regular reading of sacred Scripture and the celebration of the Eucharist make it possible for us to see ourselves as part of one another. As Christians, we are a single people, making our pilgrim way through history, sustained by the Lord, present in our midst, who speaks to us and nourishes us. A day devoted to the Bible should not be seen as a yearly event but rather a year-long event, for we urgently need to grow in our knowledge and love of the Scriptures and of the risen Lord, who continues to speak his word and to break bread in the community of believers. For this reason, we need to develop a closer relationship with sacred Scripture; otherwise, our hearts will remain cold and our eyes shut, struck as we are by so many forms of blindness.
Sacred Scripture and the sacraments are thus inseparable. When the sacraments are introduced and illumined by God’s word, they become ever more clearly the goal of a process whereby Christ opens our minds and hearts to acknowledge his saving work. We should always keep in mind the teaching found in the Book of Revelation: the Lord is standing at the door and knocking. If anyone should hear his voice and open for him, he will come in and eat with them (cf. 3:20). Christ Jesus is knocking at our door in the words of sacred Scripture. If we hear his voice and open the doors of our minds and hearts, then he will enter our lives and remain ever with us.
9. In the Second Letter to Timothy, which is in some ways his spiritual testament, Saint Paul urges his faithful co-worker to have constant recourse to sacred Scripture. The Apostle is convinced that “all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (3:16). Paul’s exhortation to Timothy is fundamental to the teaching of the conciliar Constitution Dei Verbum on the great theme of biblical inspiration, which emphasizes the Scriptures’ saving purpose, spiritual dimension and inherent incarnational principle.
First, recalling Paul’s encouragement to Timothy, Dei Verbum stresses that “we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures” (No. 11). Since the Scriptures teach with a view to salvation through faith in Christ (cf. 2 Tim 3:15), the truths contained therein are profitable for our salvation. The Bible is not a collection of history books or a chronicle, but is aimed entirely at the integral salvation of the person. The evident historical setting of the books of the Bible should not make us overlook their primary goal, which is our salvation. Everything is directed to this purpose and essential to the very nature of the Bible, which takes shape as a history of salvation in which God speaks and acts in order to encounter all men and women and to save them from evil and death.
To achieve this saving purpose, sacred Scripture, by the working of the Holy Spirit, makes human words written in human fashion become the word of God (cf. Dei Verbum, 12). The role of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures is primordial. Without the work of the Spirit, there would always be a risk of remaining limited to the written text alone. This would open the way to a fundamentalist reading, which needs to be avoided, lest we betray the inspired, dynamic and spiritual character of the sacred text. As the Apostle reminds us: “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6). The Holy Spirit, then, makes sacred Scripture the living word of God, experienced and handed down in the faith of his holy people.
10. The work of the Holy Spirit has to do not only with the formation of sacred Scripture; it is also operative in those who hear the word of God. The words of the Council Fathers are instructive: sacred Scripture is to be “read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit through whom it was written” (Dei Verbum, 12). God’s revelation attains its completion and fullness in Jesus Christ; nonetheless, the Holy Spirit does not cease to act. It would be reductive indeed to restrict the working of the Spirit to the divine inspiration of sacred Scripture and its various human authors. We need to have confidence in the working of the Holy Spirit as he continues in his own way to provide “inspiration” whenever the Church teaches the sacred Scriptures, whenever the Magisterium authentically interprets them (cf. ibid., 10), and whenever each believer makes them the norm of his or her spiritual life. In this sense, we can understand the words spoken by Jesus to his disciples when they told him that they now understood the meaning of his parables: “Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Mt 13:52).
11. Finally, Dei Verbum makes clear that “the words of God, expressed in human language, are in every way like human speech, just as the Word of the eternal Father, in taking upon himself the weak flesh of human beings, also took on their likeness” (No. 13). We can say that the incarnation of the eternal Word gives shape and meaning to the relationship between God’s word and our human language, in all its historical and cultural contingency. This event gives rise to Tradition, which is also God’s word (cf. ibid., 9). We frequently risk separating sacred Scripture and sacred Tradition, without understanding that together they are the one source of Revelation. The written character of the former takes nothing away from its being fully a living word; in the same way, the Church’s living Tradition, which continually hands that word down over the centuries from one generation to the next, possesses that sacred book as the “supreme rule of her faith” (ibid., 21). Moreover, before becoming a written text, the word of God was handed down orally and kept alive by the faith of a people who, in the midst of many others, acknowledged it as their own history and the source of their identity. Biblical faith, then, is based on the living word, not on a book.
12. When sacred Scripture is read in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written, it remains ever new. The Old Testament is never old once it is part of the New, since all has been transformed thanks to the one Spirit who inspired it. The sacred text as a whole serves a prophetic function regarding not the future but the present of whoever is nourished by this word. Jesus himself clearly stated this at the beginning of his ministry: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk 4:21). Those who draw daily nourishment from God’s word become, like Jesus, a contemporary of all those whom they encounter: they are not tempted to fall into sterile nostalgia for the past, or to dream of ethereal utopias yet to come.
Sacred Scripture accomplishes its prophetic work above all in those who listen to it. It proves both sweet and bitter. We are reminded of the words of the prophet Ezekiel when, commanded by the Lord to eat the scroll of the book, he tells us: “It was in my mouth as sweet as honey” (3:3). John the Evangelist too, on the island of Patmos, echoes Ezekiel’s experience of eating the scroll, but goes on to add: “It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter” (Rev 10:10).
The sweetness of God’s word leads us to share it with all those whom we encounter in this life and to proclaim the sure hope that it contains (cf. 1 Pet 3:15-16). Its bitterness, in turn, often comes from our realization of how difficult it is to live that word consistently, or our personal experience of seeing it rejected as meaningless for life. We should never take God’s word for granted, but instead let ourselves be nourished by it, in order to acknowledge and live fully our relationship with him and with our brothers and sisters.
13. Yet another challenge raised by sacred Scripture has to do with love. God’s word constantly reminds us of the merciful love of the Father who calls his children to live in love. The life of Jesus is the full and perfect expression of this divine love, which holds nothing back but offers itself to all without reserve. In the parable of Lazarus, we find a valuable teaching. When both Lazarus and the rich man die, the latter, seeing the poor man Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, asks that Lazarus be sent to his brothers to warn them to love their neighbour, lest they also experience his torment. Abraham’s answer is biting: “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them” (Lk 16:29). To listen to sacred Scripture and then to practise mercy: this is the great challenge before us in life. God’s word has the power to open our eyes and to enable us to renounce a stifling and barren individualism and instead to embark on a new path of sharing and solidarity.
14. One of the most significant moments in Jesus’ relationship with his disciples is found in the account of the Transfiguration. He goes up the mountain with Peter, James and John to pray. The evangelists tell us that as Jesus’ face and clothing became dazzlingly white, two men conversed with him: Moses and Elijah, representing respectively the Law and the Prophets; in other words, sacred Scripture. Peter’s reaction to this sight is one of amazement and joy: “Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah” (Lk 9:33). At that moment a cloud overshadows them, and the disciples are struck with fear.
The Transfiguration reminds us of the Feast of Tabernacles, when Ezra and Nehemiah read the sacred text to the people after their return from exile. At the same time, it foreshadows Jesus’ glory, as a way of preparing the disciples for the scandal of the Passion: that divine glory is also evoked by the cloud enveloping the disciples as a symbol of God’s presence. A similar transfiguration takes place with sacred Scripture, which transcends itself whenever it nourishes the lives of believers. As the Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini reminds us: “In rediscovering the interplay between the different senses of Scripture it becomes essential to grasp thepassage from letter to spirit. This is not an automatic, spontaneous passage; rather, the letter needs to be transcended” (No. 38).
15. Along our path of welcoming God’s word into our hearts, the Mother of the Lord accompanies us. She is the one who was called blessed because she believed in the fulfilment of what the Lord had spoken to her (cf. Lk 1:45). Mary’s own beatitude is prior to all the beatitudes proclaimed by Jesus about the poor and those who mourn, the meek, the peacemakers and those who are persecuted, for it is the necessary condition for every other kind of beatitude. The poor are not blessed because they are poor; they become blessed if, like Mary, they believe in the fulfilment of God’s word. A great disciple and master of sacred Scripture, Saint Augustine, once wrote: “Someone in the midst of the crowd, seized with enthusiasm, cried out: ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you’ and Jesus replied, ‘Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it’. As if to say: My mother, whom you call blessed, is indeed blessed, because she keeps the word of God. Not because in her the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, but because she keeps that same word of God by which she was made and which, in her womb, became flesh” (Tractates on the Gospel of John, 10, 3).
May the Sunday of the Word of God help his people to grow in religious and intimate familiarity with the sacred Scriptures. For as the sacred author taught of old: “This word is very near to you: it is in your mouth and in your heart for your observance” (Dt 30:14).


Given in Rome, at the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, on 30 September 2019, the liturgical Memorial of Saint Jerome, on the inauguration of the 1600th anniversary of his death.

FRANCISCUS

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[1] Cf. AAS 102 (2010), 692-787. [2] “The sacramentality of the word can thus be understood by analogy with the real presence of Christ under the appearances of the consecrated bread and wine.  By approaching the altar and partaking in the Eucharistic banquet we truly share in the body and blood of Christ. The proclamation of God’s word at the celebration entails an acknowledgment that Christ himself is present, that he speaks to us, and that he wishes to be heard”(Verbum Domini, 56).




http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/motu_proprio/documents/papa-francesco-motu-proprio-20190930_aperuit-illis.html

Location and Language of Babel

              

 by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

Now, turning to geographical considerations, “eastward” and “plain of Shinar”, there may be

a pressing need to shift the conventional goal posts. And that is exactly what Anne Habermehl has done in her ground-breaking article, “Where in the World Is the Tower of Babel?”

 

 

 

Language of Babel

 

This heading is not so much concerned about the language, or languages, spoken at ancient Babel, as about a re-consideration of the meaning of the words/phrases particularly of verse 1: “whole world”; “eastward”; “plain of Shinar”.   

Here, as in the Pentecost event of Acts 2, translations might superficially convey the impression of a global event, “whole world” (Genesis 11:1), to be compared with Acts 2:5’s “every nation under heaven”. A pairing of Babel with Pentecost is relevant insofar as the disastrous confusion of languages in the case of the former, owing to the sin of pride (Genesis 11:4, 7-9), is Divinely undone by the miraculous phenomenon of “tongues” at Pentecost (Acts 7:11): “… we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”    

 

 

With the benefit of such a comparison it may be suggested that the confusion of languages was, just as was the Flood, only “local in geographic extent” (for full quote, read on further).

 

The different and contemporaneous Sumerian and Akkadian languages may have been a result.

 

Matt Lynch, however, has a somewhat different take on Babel and Pentecost (2016):

http://theologicalmisc.net/2016/05/pentecost-reversal-babel/

 

Pentecost — A Reversal of Babel?

....

Once, when I was teaching a church class, two people started speaking to each other in German. It made things easier for them because it was their native language. But it didn’t make things easier for Margaret (name changed). With deep frustration she exclaimed, ‘Can we just speak English here!’

 

The experience of linguistic diversity leads many to wish for unity—or rather, homogeneity. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone just spoke normal (i.e., English)?  That desire for intelligibility is understandable, but the desire for that language to be English can also betray ethnocentrism. Especially from where I come in the U.S., which has no national language, the fight to retain English can easily slide into a fear-driven attempt to keep ‘our’ culture and ‘our’ language dominant.

 

Confusion over Babel

 

Yesterday the church celebrated its founding linguistic event—Pentecost—an event that many hail as the definitive reversal of Babel. Whereas at Babel, God confused languages, at Pentecost, God brought people of all languages together and united them. At Babel tongues were confused. At Pentecost, tongues were understood. You get the idea.

However, Pentecost may not be anti-Babel in the way some suppose. For starters, the reversal idea assumes that a unified language was a good idea gone wrong, and that eschatological unity would somehow involve a return to one language—a Spirit language.

 

But Genesis never states that the confusion of languages was a bad thing. The only downside was for the Babelites, who couldn’t finish their Manhattan project. On the positive side, language diversification enabled humanity to get on with the task of ‘filling the earth,’ something they were meant to do but didn’t because of their big hero project. Notice the language in Gen 11:4:

 

Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

 

God had wanted humans to ‘fill the earth’ (Gen 1). Babel was in direct contravention of God’s intended vision of teeming diversity.

At Pentecost, God embraces language diversity. He doesn’t destroy it. So yes, the Spirit reverses the imperial unification of Babylon, but not the multiplication of languages.

 

Empires and Language

 

To see why the preservation of multiplication is important, it’s important to grasp the imperial function of language unification. Joel Green helps us here:

The wickedness of this idolatrous plan [to build Babel] is betrayed in the opening of the Babel story, with its reference to ‘one language’—a metaphor in the ancient Near East for the subjugation and assimilation of conquered peoples by a dominant nation. Linguistic domination is a potent weapon in the imperial arsenal, as people of Luke’s world themselves would have known, living as they did in the wake of the conquest of ‘the world’ by Alexander the Great and the subsequent creation of a single, Greek-speaking linguistic community.[1]

 

By confusing languages God was merciful, not punitive. He already recognized that ‘this is only the beginning of what they will do’ (11:6). Who knows what WMDs the Babelites would’ve created? Middleton writes, ‘Babel thus represents a regressive human attempt to guarantee security by settling in one place and constructing a monolithic empire, with a single language, thus resisting God’s original intent for humanity.’[2]

 

So God gave humanity a push toward its original purpose, to fill the world, cultivate it, build cultures, and grow. Linguistic diversity is a natural outgrowth of this process, and one which the Spirit rubber stamps at Pentecost.

 

Israel & the Nations

 

But before we land on Pentecost, it’s important to look at a few snapshots of Israel’s ‘universal’ vision in Isaiah:

 

In days to come the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. … For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. (Isa 2:2-3)

I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall see my glory… And I will also take some of them as priests and as Levites, says the LORD. … From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the LORD. (Isa 66:18, 21, 23)

 

In the first vision, the nations come to receive instruction from Israel. In the second, they come to worship, and some even becomes priests. They come as nations, with all their diversity of languages (‘nations and tongues’). And, they retain their identity as nations. They neither dissolve into one gigantic Israelite world empire nor isolate themselves completely.

 

Israel’s worship system includes foreigners and receives the nations’ offerings, while the nations receive teaching from Israel.

 

Pentecost—Preservation and Unification

 

When we turn to Pentecost, we see that the Spirit is similarly uninterested in unifying language: ‘Jews … from every nation under heaven … each one heard them speaking in the native language of each’ (Acts 2:5-6).

Things were getting out of hand, so Peter stood up to interpret the event. He did so by drawing on Joel 2, which anticipated a work of the Spirit that obliterated a different sort of division. Here’s Peter quoting from Joel 2:28-29:

 

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. (Acts 2:17-18)

 

The point couldn’t be clearer—the Spirit gave without regard for status, sex, or nationality. In giving, the Spirit unified the people of God (‘tearing down the dividing wall of hostility’ Eph 2:14), but in a way that preserved their cultural diversity. One Spirit, many gifts. One Spirit, many languages. The Spirit doesn’t negate difference, but cultivates and leverages that difference in service of God’s mission toward all nations.

So yes, Pentecost reverses the homogeneity of Babel. And yes, Pentecost reverses any hostility that may have arisen in the wake of linguistic confusion. Yet, the Spirit puts the diversity of cultures (preserved in their languages) on display and empowers each for the proclamation of a de-centered Good News. This was a profoundly anti-imperial move.  The point isn’t that the Spirit speaks one language. Instead, the Spirit speaks your language—no matter who you are. ....

 

Returning now to the subject of geographical extent, for the Flood, for Babel, Rich Deem has written of “The Genesis Flood Why the Bible Says It Must be Local”:

 

“Psalm 104 directly eliminates any possibility of the flood being global (see Psalm 104-9 - Does it refer to the Original Creation or the Flood?). In order to accept a global flood, you must reject Psalm 104 and the inerrancy of the Bible. If you like to solve mysteries on your own, you might want to read the flood account first and find the biblical basis for a local flood.

 

The Bible's other creation passages eliminate the possibility of a global flood

 

The concept of a global Genesis flood can be easily eliminated from a plain reading of Psalm 104,¹ which is known as the "creation psalm." …. The verse that eliminates a global flood follows: "You set a boundary they [the waters] cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth." (Psalm 104:9)¹ Obviously, if the waters never again covered the earth, then the flood must have been local. Psalm 104 is just one of several creation passages that indicate that God prevented the seas from covering the entire earth.² An integration of all flood and creation passages clearly indicates that the Genesis flood was local in geographic extent”.

 

Now, turning to geographico-linguistic considerations re Babel, “eastward” and “plain of Shinar”, there may be a pressing need to shift the conventional goal posts. And that is exactly what Anne Habermehl has done in her ground-breaking article, “Where in the World Is the Tower of Babel?” (https://answersingenesis.org/tower-of-babel/where-in-the-world-is-the-tower-of-babel/), there shifting the geographical focus for the Tower of Babel incident away from southern Iraq (ancient “Sumer”), the customary “Cradle of Civilisation”, to the Khabur region of NE Syria. According to this new view, the biblical “land of Shinar” to whose “plain” men migrated after the Flood (Genesis 11:2), and thought to indicate “Sumer”, is roughly to be identified, instead, as the region of Sinjar (the scene of much fighting in our era).

This is how Anne Habermehl has introduced (summarised) her article:

 

Abstract

 

The biblical story of the Tower of Babel is believed by many to be the record of a real historical event that took place after the worldwide Flood, at a time when the earth’s population still lived together in one place. The enduring archaeological question, therefore, is where the Tower of Babel was built. It is widely considered that Shinar, where the Bible says the Babel event took place, was a territory in south Mesopotamia; and that Babel was located at Babylon. However, an analysis of history, geography, and geology, shows that Shinar cannot have been in the south, but rather was a territory in what is northeastern Syria today; and that the remnants of the Tower must be located in the Upper Khabur River triangle, not far from Tell Brak, which is the missing city of Akkad.

 

An immediate point in Habermehl’s favour is that she has been able to, in her scholarly and well-researched article, provide a fairly compelling identification (namely, Tell Brak) for the lost city of Akkad (Accad), Nimrod’s city (Genesis 10:10), so famous in ancient times, but not identified even to this day.

 

Akkad is generally estimated to have been situated in the environs of modern Baghdad.

 

As to the word, “eastward”, one may have to ask, “eastward” from where?

Various translations of the word, the Hebrew miqqedem (מִקֶּדֶם), are “from the east”, “in the east”. The Ark survivors were last heard of “on the mountains of Ararat [Urartu]”, which is already close to the eastern extremities of the ancient world. It is unlikely that preserved humanity travelled even further “eastwards” (or its variants) than this in search of fertile habitable land.

Hebrew miqqedem also has the meaning “of old [long ago”], which makes more sense to me.

Further, regarding the location of the Tower of Babel, the Septuagint (LXX) Isaiah provides a geographical clue which, whilst conforming with Habermehl’s location of biblical “Shinar”, would not, however, support a conventional location of the land as Sumer, nor anywhere further “eastward”. In Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers we read this intriguing information, regarding Isaiah 10:9: “Is not Calno [Calneh] as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus?” (“... instead of naming Carchemish, gives “Calanè, where the tower [ὁ πύργος] was built ...”):   “…. Is not Calno as Carchemish?—The six names obviously pointed to more recent conquests in which Sargon and his predecessors had exulted. One after another they had fallen. Could Judah hope to escape? (1) Calno, the Calneh of Genesis 10:10, Amos 6:2. That prophet had held up its fate in vain as a warning to Samaria. …. The LXX. version, which instead of naming Carchemish, gives “Calanè, where the tower [ὁ πύργος] was built,” seems to imply a tradition identifying that city with the Tower of Babel of Genesis 11:4. (2) Carchemish. Few cities of the ancient world occupied a more prominent position than this. Its name has been explained as meaning the Tower of Chemosh, and so bears witness to the widespread cultus of the deity whom we meet with in Biblical history as the “abomination of the Moabites” (1 Kings 11:7)”.   Some have even associated the god Chemosh with Ham himself, the son of Noah.

 

This switches the land of the Tower of Babel away from Sumer to the vicinity of Carchemish.

The name, Carchemish, including apparently the meaning of “Tower”, may indicate that this is where the attempted building of the Tower of Babel had been undertaken.

It could not have been in the well-known Babylon of Sumer, which city was begun much later.

Any map of Mesopotamia will show that - whether one believes Noah’s Ark to have landed on Mt. Çudi (Judi) in Kurdistan, or Mt. Ararat in Turkey - ancient Babylon is hundreds of kilometers directly south of both of these places. Various authors have pointed this out. “This somewhat inconvenient geographical fact (for those who believe that the people migrated eastward or westward) is downplayed by those who believe that the Tower was built at the city of Babylon, and requires inventing scenarios that move the people far enough south while still satisfying their perception of this Scripture”. (Anne Habermehl’s article)

 

Sadly, the location of other cities connected with Nimrod in this same Genesis verse (10:10): “The beginning of [Nimrod’s] kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar”, is also a matter of dispute. Some translations even get rid of “Calneh” altogether, by substituting “all of these [i.e., Babel, Erech and Accad] in the land of Shinar”.

Another point in Habermehl’s favour, I think, is that her choice of Sinjar (Shinjar) for “Shinar” is far more linguistically plausible than is “Sumer”.

 

Scholars and historians have been totally confounded by the abrupt rise of the Sumerian culture nearly 6,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. This “sudden civilisation” seemed to appear out of thin air and refused to conform to the popular historical theory of linear development in cultural evolution.

Historian Professor Charles Hapgood squarely faces the issue when he writes that “today we find primitive cultures co-existing with advanced modern society on all continents… We shall now assume that 20,000 years ago while paleolithic peoples held out in Europe, more advanced cultures existed elsewhere on earth.”

 

Likewise the rise of Sumeria has been a major puzzle.

 

Joseph Campbell in The Masks of God writes, “With stunning abruptness… there appears in this little Sumerian mud garden… the whole cultural syndrome that has since constituted the germinal unit of all high civilisations of the world.”

William Irwin Thompson puts it even more succinctly. “Sumer is a poor stoneless place for a neolithic culture to evolve from a peasant community into a full-blown civilisation,” he writes, “but it is a very good place to turn the plains and marshes into irrigated farmlands … In short, Sumer is an ideal place to locate a culture already having the technology necessary for urban life and irrigation agriculture.”

This would indicate that human settlement of Sumer, and the cities and culture that developed from this, had occurred somewhat later than was formerly believed.

 

There is to be considered the possibility that pre-Flood Cain-ites had settled there and that, after the Flood, when Sumer was re-settled, Cain-ite names were re-applied to the cities that now sprang up there. My earlier view had been, in line with others, that cities named after the Cain-ites (Enoch, Irad, Tubal-cain) were identifiable in the names of southern Mesopotamia cities. According to: http://xenohistorian.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/the-babylonian-connection-

 

David Rohl has proposed that both Uruk and Ur were named after Enoch, because their actual Sumerian names were Unuk and Unuki, respectively. Rohl goes on to see a connection between Bad-tibira and Tubal-Cain, because Bad-tibira means “City of the Metal Worker.” Finally, Eridu, which archaeologists and Sumerian historians believe is the oldest city of all, could have been named after Irad (according to Rohl) or Jared (according to Zecharia Sitchin).

 

Cain himself, though, as traditions seem to indicate, settled on the edge of “Seth’s land”. According to what we learned earlier, Cain had not moved far from the vicinity of the Garden of Eden.

 

As already touched upon, NE Syria is also more geographically proximate (than is Sumer) for the descendants of Noah from my point of view (Habermehl is obviously a global Floodist), according to which Noah’s Ark landed upon the mountains of modern Kurdistan (ancient Urartu). It might be expected, then, that humankind would soon find its way into the fertile Khabur region. That this region qualifies as a “plain” is apparent from Habermehl’s description of it (she includes a photograph):

 

“It is difficult to tell from what we know of history exactly where the boundaries of the entire land of Shinar were; indeed, those boundaries may not even have remained precisely the same at different times. However, we will generally describe Shinar as a land including the territory that is located immediately south of the Turkish mountains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This area is almost perfectly flat as far as the eye can see (fig. 2). It surely qualifies as “a plain in the land of Shinar,” as Genesis calls it”.

 

There is yet another most useful upside to Habermehl’s reconstruction; one that she herself has pointed out, and it is not favourable to the documentary theory: “One result of “moving” Babel from south Mesopotamia to the north of Syria is that secular historians will no longer be able to claim that the building of the Tower was merely a story inspired by the ziggurat at Babylon (for example, Parrot 1955, p. 17)”.

 

In fact, with the early Genesis scene shifted right away from Babylonia, then those old arguments according to which the Book of Genesis (e.g., the Flood) had borrowed from Mesopotamian lore will no longer carry any force.

It is well known where the ancient city of Babylon stood. But - and as Habermehl strongly - argues, Babylon and the “Babel” of Genesis 10:10 are not necessarily synonymous.

Habermehl herself does not actually identify the location of Babel. She presumes that it must lie at the approximate centre of the triangle of cities that she has associated with Genesis 10:10.

But might not the LXX be telling us, by substituting the name “Babylon” for “Carchemish”, that the impressive site of Carchemish (modern Jerablus) was itself a Babylon, a Babel? – perhaps in close association with Calneh – in the very region “where the Tower was built”?

 

One unusual French scholar, Fernand Crombette, whose unique and complicated method of translating ancient texts with the aid of Coptic has bemused many, had claimed that Carchemish was where Noah and his sons lived after the Flood, and that its modern name, Jerablus, actually translates as The Naked Man (L‘homme nu), referring to the incident of the drunken Noah (Genesis 9:20-25). Given that the region of Carchemish may have been the suitable place for grape vines: “In Mesopotamia, grapevines could be nurtured only in the north, notably in the region of Carchemish” (P. King, Life in Biblical Israel, p. 98), then Crombette may have got this right. Northern Syria might have been, for this very reason, the first place of choice for migrations after the Flood waters had begun to subside. 

 

That does not necessitate, however, that all human groups, post-Flood, had converged upon the fertile “plain in the land of Shinar”.

 

Carchemish, once excavated by the famed adventurer, T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”), but now currently situated on the boundaries of a war zone, awaits a fuller archaeological effort. “Nicolò Marchetti of Bologna University, who leads the renewed investigations with a joint Italian-Turkish team beginning in 2011, says that, despite the city's historical significance, only 5 percent of the site has been excavated”.

 

I personally should be most interested to find whether further excavational work at the site of Jerablus (Carchemish), or its environs, might yield any evidence of the famous Tower of Babel. 

Significance of sandals in Book of Ruth and Gospels

 

 

 

The meaning of it is wonderfully explained in the context of the Levirate Law in the article, “Whose Sandal Strap I am Not Worthy to Untie”, to be found at:

http://ourladyofwisdom.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/levirate.pdf

 

The book by the prominent Spanish scripture scholar Luis Alonso-Schokel called I Nomi Dell'Amore (The Names of Love) provides a fascinating and spiritually rich look at marriage symbols in the bible. I’d like to offer a brief summary of some of the insights of the chapter from that book entitled "The Levirate."

 

Schokel begins by noticing 5 similar texts from the New Testament all dealing with St. John the Baptist:

Matthew 3:11 he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry

Mark 1:7 After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie

Luke 3:16 he who is mightier than I is coming, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

John 1:27 even he who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.

 

Acts 13:25 after me one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.

Now any text repeated in all of the gospels (and the book of Acts too) must have a grand significance. Most people will see it as illustrating the humility of the Baptist, unworthy to untie the sandals of the Lord, but several internal hints point to a deeper, more profound answer.

Schokel points out three textual clues:

 

1) In John 1:30 the Baptist speaks of Christ as, "This is he of whom I said, `After me comes a man who ranks before me, for he was before me.'" The word translated as "man" here is not the Greek word "anthropos" usually translated as man, instead it is "aner" a word, as Schokel points out, having more of a "sexual" (in the sense of gender) or relational meaning. It isn't man, but "male" (maschio in Italian); a male in relation to a female. The passage would better be translated in English, "After me comes a male who ranks before me." [John the Baptist is the "anthropos" - see John 1:6, 3:27]. Schokel also points out the references in John 1-3 to Isaiah 40-66, esp. chapter 54:1-10, where Yahweh is referred to as the Bridegroom/husband and in the LXX, the "aner")

 

2) At least in the synoptics the word "unworthy" or "unfit" has a juridical sense. That word is "ikanos" while John uses "axios." So it seems to be more of unfitness according to some type of Judaic law, and with the use of "aner" possibly a marital law.

 

3) Looking a few chapters down, we come to the last words of John recorded in the gospel. In responding to questions as to who this Jesus is, he responds, "You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full" (John 3:28-29). John here is challenging Israel's Messianic expectations - they expect their Christ to come as a political leader, or a warrior, or even a prophet like John the Baptist, but John says this is incorrect. He says that the messiah will come as the Bridegroom of his bride Israel; ultimately that Israel has the wrong expectations.

 

So keeping all of this in mind: the repeated reference to untying of sandals, the "maleness" of Christ, the juridical context, and the spousal-messianism John uses to describe the Christ, Schokel (along with the Fathers) exegetes this text in light of the Levirate Law in the Old Testament.

 

The Levirate Law (derived from Latin levir, meaning "a husband's brother") is the name of an ancient custom ordained by Moses, by which, when an Israelite died without issue, his surviving brother was required to marry the widow, so as to continue his brother's family through the son that might be born of that marriage (Gen 38:8; De 25:5-10 ) comp. (Ruth 3:1 4:10) Its object was "to raise up seed to the departed brother."

But if the surviving brother refused (for whatever reason) to marry the widow, a rite called "Halizah" would occur. Deut 25:5-10 describes the Levirate and Halizah:

"If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no offspring, the wife of the dead shall not be married outside the family to a stranger; her husband's brother shall go in to her, and take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her.

And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his brother who is dead, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. And if the man does not wish to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders, and say, `My husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband's brother to me.' Then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak to him: and if he persists, saying, `I do not wish to take her,' then his brother's wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, and pull his sandal off his foot, and spit in his face; and she shall answer and say, `So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother's house.' And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, The house of him that had his sandal pulled off" (Deuteronomy 25:5-10).

The sandal is the key - the sandal is symbolic of he who has the right to marriage. The one who wears the sandal is the Bridegroom. As St. Cyprian said, this is why both Moses (Ex 3:2-6) and Joshua (John 5:13-15) were told by Yaweh that they had to remove their sandals; although they might have been prophets, they were not the one who had the right to marry Israel the Bride. In saying that he is not fit (juridically) to remove the sandal from Jesus' foot he is saying that Jesus is the bridegroom, he is the one who has the right to marriage, not John - even though he came first.

"Even though he came first" - John admits to this, being the precursor of the Messiah-Bridegroom, but he is not the one that will marry the bride (as he is not the Messiah, as some of the Jews had thought). To understand this better (and the entire Levirate process) one must look to the book of Ruth. In it, the widow Ruth is set to marry her "next of kin" via the levirate law, but Boaz arrived first to claim Ruth. It does not matter though, the next of kin has first choice. But he decides to pass up the marriage to Ruth, and gives her to Boaz. And in doing so he "drew off his sandal" (Ruth 4:8). Even though John came first, Jesus is the one with the right to the woman, and he opts for the marriage - and thus does not remove his sandal. John will not be given the chance to take his place.

This interpretation of these passages are not new, as Schokel points out. Several of the Fathers, including Jerome, Cyprian, and Gregory all see the Levirate law being referred to in the passages about John the Baptist. As Jerome writes, "being as that Christ is the Bridegroom, John the Baptist is not merited to untie the laces of the bridegroom's sandal, in order that, according to the law of Moses (as seen with Ruth) his house will not be called "the house of the un-sandaled," [a reference to the refusal to carry on the name of the deceased brother].

So, if John is not the messiah-bridegroom, and is unfit to untie the bridegroom's sandals, as the "friend of the groom" - what is his duty, esp. in the Levirate context? The root of his mission "to prepare the way of the Lord" can be found in Ruth 3:3 when the elders tell Ruth before her wedding to "Wash therefore and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes." John's baptism of repentance is done to prepare the bride for the wedding.

Liturgically, he cleans her from her impurities (see also Ezekiel 16) preparing the bride "that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word" (Ephesians 5:26). To prepare Israel the Bride for her nuptial with Christ her bridegroom is the heart of the Baptist's mission.

Now with all symbolism and typologies, it is hard to "stretch" the analogy too far. But in order to get the full meaning of Christ's fulfillment of the Old Testament, one has to twist symbols around a bit. In order to do understand one other crucial aspect of the Levirate, that of the "deceased" brother, we must be a bit creative, and look at it from a different perspective. Christ marries his bride, consummates his union with her, on the cross (see Eph 5) - but this leads to his death. So he could be seen as the "dead husband." So who will be the "brother" who takes his place in marrying his bride? For the answer we must again turn to the gospel of John.

"When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, 'Woman, behold, your son!' Then he said to the disciple, 'Behold, your mother!' And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home" (John 19:26-27).

Jesus had no other brothers, so he gave his mother to John - and thus in becoming her son, John (and all apostles and Christians likewise) became Jesus' brother. But we cannot forget that on a different level (see Rev 12) Mary is the "icon of the church," the bride - so John as he becomes Jesus' brother, is given to the Church as her bridegroom. Here we have what Schokel says might be seen as the "root of apostolic succession." The Church is passed on from brother/apostle to brother/apostle - yet the bride still keeps the name of her first husband, as Paul writes, "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" (1 Corinthians 1:13). The name of the husband is carried on by the generation of new sons, thus the brother through his preaching of the word, causes the bride to become fruitful. Look to St. Paul (a Jew well versed in the Law) again, "For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers.

For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (1 Corinthians 4:15). The bishops/apostles have their charge to carry on the name of Christ by preaching the gospel and celebrating the sacraments - and in doing so the church/bride becomes church/mother and the Levirate law is thus fulfilled in Jesus Christ.