Chapter 20: Counterfeit History. When I was in my early 30s, about the only Christian works I read besides the scriptures were commentaries and similar reference works. I believed practically every word that commentators wrote. They seemed to know so much about what was happening behind the scenes in the New Testament church. It seemed there had been an abundance of Jewish and Christian writings from the first century that shed tremendous light on the Bible.
Eventually, I decided to read those same writings for myself instead of always having to rely on others for this information. So I eagerly began digging to see where I could purchase some of these first-century writings that revealed so much about what was happening in the New Testament churches. And that's when I discovered the big secret. The big secret. The big secret is that such first-century writings that reveal so much about first-century Judaism and Christianity simply don't exist.
I was utterly shocked when I discovered this. The commentators seemed to know so much about what was happening behind the scenes in the apostolic age. Surely they don't make all of that up. But yes, indeed, that is the very thing they do. Let me give you some examples of what I'm talking about. John Calvin invented this behind-the-scenes look at what was happening in the first-century church.
A conjecture is drawn with some appearance of probability that women who had beautiful hair were accustomed to uncover their heads for the purpose of showing off their beauty. It is not therefore without good reason that Paul, as a remedy for this vice, sets before them the opposite idea, that they be regarded as remarkable for unseemliness rather than for what is an incentive to lust. So according to Calvin, the Corinthian sisters were uncovering their heads to show off their beautiful hair.
At least Calvin admits that this is a conjecture. But William Burkitt, a popular commentator of the early 1700s, provides a very different inside story of what was happening in Corinth. This was a fantastical imitation of the she-priests and prophetesses of the Gentiles when they served their idols, and particularly when they sacrificed to Bacchus, who used to have their faces uncovered, their hair disheveled, hanging at its full length round about their ears.
Now, the Corinthian women, in imitation of these heathen women, for the female sex, is very fond and exceedingly prone to follow the fashion, cast off their veils, uncovered their faces, and dishonored their heads. So now we're told that the problem in Corinth was that the Christian women were wanting to imitate the pagan prophetesses. This time, do we have the real story? Not according to the famous commentators Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown.
In their commentary published in 1871, they gave us a different inside story. The Corinthian women, on the grounds of the abolition of distinction of sexes in Christ, claimed equality with the male sex, and overstepping the bounds of propriety, came forward to pray and prophesy without the customary head covering of females. So now we're told that what was really happening in Corinth was that the women were claiming social equality with men. Other commentators quickly adopted this view.
For example, the 1942 work entitled Commentary on the Whole Bible repeats this claim. Now, Saint Paul himself taught that there can be no male and female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3, written either shortly before or shortly after 1 Corinthians. By this, he meant that salvation is offered to all alike, all are alike in spiritual position. But these women had taken such teaching to mean that all social subordination to men was all done away.
So first, the problem was that the Corinthian women wanted to show off their beautiful hair. Then the problem was that the sisters of Corinth were wanting to imitate the pagan prophetesses. Next, the problem was the Corinthian sisters were early feminists claiming the same authoritative rights in the congregation as men. Somehow, the real story keeps changing. But that's not surprising. As I said, my experience has been that the background history given by commentators is nearly always made up.
After all, how can someone living nearly 2,000 years later in a different part of the world possibly know what was going on in the first-century Corinthian church? The passage in 1 Corinthians 11 tells us nothing whatsoever about why Paul had to remind the Corinthians of the church-wide practice. I think we can reasonably infer that either men were praying with covered heads or women were praying with uncovered heads or both. But that's the most the passage itself reveals.
The commentators give the impression that they have access to some additional Christian writings from the time of Paul that reveal what really was going on. But no such writing exists. There is nothing. The only helpful Christian writings we have are those of the early church written after the deaths of the apostles. What we learned from their writings is that the New Testament commandment on the head covering was practiced throughout the entire Christian world in all countries and cultures.
It wasn't something peculiar to Corinth. Second, we learned that the head covering was some type of cloth covering, the style of which differed among various cultures. The covering was not long hair, as some persons have tried to argue in modern times. However, the early Christian writers don't purport to know what the background events had been in the first-century Corinthian church, even though such writers lived only a century or so later.
Yet our modern commentators, living nearly 2,000 years later, profess to know exactly what was going on in the first-century Corinthian church. Writings of the rabbis. A new trend in modern times is to create background information for the New Testament by referring to things said in rabbinical literature.
Modern commentators give the impression that they have a wealth of inside knowledge on what the rabbis were teaching in Jesus' day, and that this knowledge throws a significant light on Jesus' teachings and actions. But the truth of the matter is that no such writings exist from the first century. We do have a handful of Jewish writings from the first century, but they are not rabbinical writings, and they shed little light on Jesus' teaching.
The three primary Jewish sources we have from the first century are Josephus, Philo, and the sectarian writings of the Essenes. Josephus. Josephus was a first-century Jewish historian who provides us with valuable historical information about the Jewish political scene in the first century and the centuries immediately preceding it. He tells us about the Jewish war with Rome and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. He also gives a brief description of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes.
Finally, he tells about the martyrdom of James, the brother of Jesus. All information is extremely valuable. However, there is nothing in Josephus that tells anything about church life in the first century or about the teachings of the rabbis. The behind-the-scenes Jewish information in the commentaries doesn't come from Josephus. Philo. Philo was an Alexandrian Jew who lived at the same time as Jesus, although their two paths never crossed.
Philo was a well-educated man, highly respected in the Jewish community at Alexandria. But he also was a thoroughly Hellenized Jew. In his writings, he interprets much of the Old Testament allegorically to make it better fit with Greek thought. As far as shedding any light on the New Testament, his writings are essentially worthless. The Qumran community. The sectarian writings of the Qumran community, which have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, are of even less help than Josephus and Philo.
That's because the Qumran sectarians, who were probably Essenes, had separated themselves from normal Jewish life and had created an isolated commune in the region of the Dead Sea. Their writings consist primarily of apocalyptic works and specialized rules for their community. To our knowledge, neither Jesus nor his apostles had any interaction with these people. There must be some mistake.
I can't blame you if you're thinking to yourself, "David, surely you're mistaken about this." There have to be a lot more relevant first-century Jewish writings than that. After all, there's all the rabbinical writings to which the commentators keep referring. Well, you don't have to take my word for it. Go and diligently search for these missing writings. See for yourself if you can find any relevant Jewish first-century writings beyond the three I've mentioned.
But what about the Jewish rabbinical writings we hear so much about? The truth is that we have no rabbinical writings from the first century. The earliest rabbinical writings we have are contained in the Mishnah, but it was not written in the first century. Rather, it dates from the beginning of the third century. The Mishnah is a collection of various rabbinical interpretations of specific commandments in the law, such as the Sabbath.
It includes interpretations that were purportedly handed down orally from scribes who lived in the first century. The examples I used at the beginning of this book about how the scribes interpreted the law come from the Mishnah. We don't know for certain that those specific interpretations were being taught in Jesus' day, but they fit the description Jesus gave of the scribes' teaching. That is, they strained out the gnat and swallowed the camel.
The Mishnah also reveals that the rabbis had conflicting teachings and interpretations on almost every area of the law. In the third century AD, a supplement to the Mishnah was compiled, known as the Tosefta. It is very similar in form to the Mishnah. Although the Mishnah and Tosefta are available today, surprisingly, the so-called inside information we find in commentaries rarely, if ever, comes from the Mishnah or Tosefta. The Talmud. The major, influential rabbinical work of all time is the Talmud.
However, it was not written down until about AD 500. The Talmud consists of the Mishnah plus all of the rabbinical commentary on the Mishnah, made between the years AD 200 to 500. So the Talmud is of little value in shedding any light on the beliefs and practices of Jews in the first century. It's only a record of rabbinical discussions and teachings as they were remembered 400 years after the close of the New Testament.
It would be quite dishonest for commentators to quote the Talmud as though it represents Jewish beliefs and practices in the first century, for it reflects rabbinical thoughts centuries after the New Testament was written. And like the Mishnah, the Talmud contains contradictory opinions between various rabbis. Yet once again, the supposed Jewish inside information of Christian commentators is rarely even based on something in the Talmud.
It's either something the commentator snatched from a medieval rabbinical source, such as a prayer book, or in most cases, it's something they've made up. Commentators make up things not only about Jewish beliefs and practices, but about Roman and Greek practices as well. I realize that what I'm saying may be hard to believe, so let me give you a few examples.