Learn to Read New Testament Greek by David Alan Black
In 2018 I decided I wanted to learn Greek and picked up this book and began to teach myself using this book and the short video lectures available at Daily Dose of Greek. I was doing ok, but when I got to chapter six and did the translation exercises I failed. So I studied the chapter a bit more, and tried again. The result: failure. I had missed something huge and I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Defeated I decided to take a break.
A few years later I thought to myself I’ve always been terrible at learning languages, I need to prove I can learn a language before I try Greek again. Around this time I had also fallen in love with Korean food and culture and decided I would really press my abilities by attempting to learn what is considered one of the languages for native English speakers to learn: Korean. I made pretty good progress on this and successfully finished two books worth of Korean learning. So I wondered if it was time to retry my attempt at learning Greek.
In order for me to try again, I really wanted flashcards that were designed to go with this book. Making them myself was annoying and time consuming. Plus I didn’t know for sure what information should be on the flashcards. I hadn’t been able to find any flashcards for Black four years ago, but I dug around on the internet and got lucky and found some. I downloaded the files and printed out the first six chapters worth. I determined I would try to do a chapter a day until I was caught up to where I had left off and began the process on May 1st.
A couple days in, I was digging around for more resources and found Dr. Black has a YouTube channel where he has posted full lectures on each chapter of this book. I immediately started watching these as I went along so as to reinforce what I was learning. As the lectures unfolded I learned that the videos were from him teaching a six week course through the book and I thought, that seems like an ambitious goal, and I would like to aim for doing it in six weeks as well. But also, the first week was all review for me, and flew by with easy. So when I got to week two I decided I would keep the pace of six or seven chapters a week as long as my retention remained high.
With great perseverance and many hours looking at flashcards, I was able to get through all 26 chapters of this book in 27 days. I won’t pretend that I’m an expert on the content, but I made passable translations all the way through and can now read decent sized chunks off of any page of my Greek New Testament.
I have a long way to go, but this book, Dr. Black’s lectures, and premade flashcards got me through the hard process of learning Greek with great ease. The videos aren’t perfect, there are chapters that are skipped, many times you get a lovely closeup of a student’s face when you really want to see the chalkboard, and some odd cultural Christian takes that aren’t necessary or helpful in teaching Greek. But overall the combo of these tools made the process easy and profitable.
Some of the things that make this book good for this kind of approach is that Black has distilled everything you need to know into the most concise form. The result is a book that is nearly half the size as other intro to Greek books. I like his system and will continue to use as I grow my understanding of Greek.
The Septuagint What It Is and Why It Matters by Gregory R. Lanier and William A. Ross
Lanier and Ross have written an excellent, easily read intro into what the Septuagint is and why it matters. The book is broken into two parts: 1) What is the Septuagint and 2) Why Does it Matter? In exploring this topic you will find your understanding of translation decisions will grow and you’ll see just how important the Septuagint is to both our understanding of the Old Testament and the New Testament. This intro is well cited and presents all kinds of problems that are still in need of scholars to address today.
Part 1: What is the Septuagint
Most people know very little, if anything, about the Septuagint. Many that do know about it are aware that it translates to mean seventy and have heard the story of about seventy-two scholars who translated the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) into Greek in seventy days. Some addon that these seventy-two scholars were put in seventy-two different rooms and all came out with the exact same translation. This is little more than a story. Never in all of history could you get ten people (much less seventy-two) to separately write the exact same translation of any text. Translation is a complex task that has many different and valid approaches that result in many different possible variations in the result.
What is believed to be true about this fabled story is that the Library of Alexandria wanted to add a copy of the Hebrew Bible to its great collections of works. It commissioned Jewish Scholars to come and translate the work for them into Greek giving access to it to the common person. There exists a letter that speaks of this commission called the Letter of Aristeas that says only the Pentateuch (Torah) was translated. Those translators would have made multiple copies of their work. Some, no doubt, burned when the Library fell, but others were brought back to Israel and dispersed to other scholars who would make more copies.
As true as this story may or not be, it is still not a good summary of what the Septuagint is. The work of translating the Tanakh into Greek was done by many people over a period of some three hundred years. Some of them translated only a chapter or a book while others translated much larger sections. The result today is that the Septuagint is a conglomeration of different translations that helps us peer back into the past and develop a more accurate understanding of what earlier copies of the Tanakh said.
Some of these translators did a word-for-word translation striving to translate every single instance of a word to the same word in Greek. Sometimes attempts were made to make a more readable translation opting for smoothness rather than word for word, but more often the translators wanted to preserve as best as possible the original word order and emphasis. The same translation decisions are made today by modern translation teams. The big difference is that modern translation teams work to translate the whole Bible at once in a much shorter period of time (certainly not centuries!).
Almost as soon as translations of the Tanakh were made into Greek the process of revision and alteration began. Scholars worked to improve the translations as best they could.
Part 2: Why Does it Matter?
The primary text used to translate the Tanakh is the Massoretic text, a document written in Hebrew, which dates to the 11th century AD. The Septuagint and related Greek translations of the Tanakh predate the Massoretic text by centuries. Incorporating them into our study allows us to see a more full and accurate picture of what the Bible says.
There are several issues with the Massoretic text that the Septuagint helps highlight and correct for. Some of these discrepancies are minor involving just a word swap, but others involve large passages added or missing from one text or the other.
Another reason the Septuagint helps is it provides insight into how Jews pre-Christ translated certain Hebrew words. For example, the words translated as without form and void from Hebrew (Genesis 1:2) are debated. But we can look at ancient Septuagint translators give us their insight as being “invisible and uncompleted” (pg 119).
Another example is how “I AM WHO I AM” is translated in Exodus 3:14. The Greek translates it as “I am the one who is” which helps us see the concept of the self-existence of God in ancient Jewish tradition. Various other names for God are translated in ways that help us see the reverence and meaning of these words.
There is also an aspect of their translations that personifies many of the Hebrew passages showing the belief in a messianic ideology.
Probably the most compelling reason the Septuagint is important is the extent to which it relates to New Testament events. It is often said that the Septuagint was the Bible of Jesus. And we see how true that is in how some New Testament quotes are word for word from the Septuagint and some quotes come from the Apocrypha which, while not held to be Scripture, was often stored with the Hebrew Bible.
Closing Thoughts
Overall this book is very easy to read. You do not need to be able to read Hebrew or Greek to read this little intro. All the words they reference are transliterated so you can sound them out and easily identify them if needed. You get a pretty broad overview of the Septuagint and the issues related to it and the other textual traditions from which our English Bibles derive. I think anyone wanting a brief primer into this topic or translation issues, in general, would benefit from this short read.
Overall I give this book 4 stars.
Up Next: Learn to Read New Testament Greek by David Alan Black
One of the first topics Silva covers is the importance of Etymology. Some words have a supposed etymology that has no basis in reality & others have an ancient etymology that is not relevant to today’s meaning (ex. “nice” comes from the Latin word for imbecile & no one even knowing that origin is trying to say anything other than nice). But there are some words were the etymology is super important, so we need to maintain balance in our translation. This means that the translator of Scripture must be careful in their word choice. Just because a word meant one thing two hundred years before your work was written, doesn’t mean it still means that today. Another example of that in English today would be the word “gay.” Novels written a hundred years ago use that word very differently than novels written today.
Another vital piece that can help us understand the meaning of Scripture is the LXX. It’s the first known translation of the Hebrew Tanakh (aka Old Testament) and it’s translated into Greek. This is a vital piece of text to study and a confusing one. Many different translators were used so the methodology from one book to the next may vary strongly. Looking at the way Hebrew was translated is not reliable as some words were done literally and others figuratively. It is unclear if the New Testament writers bases their quotations on the LXX. In some areas it seems to be a word for word quote (as evidenced by some strange translation choices in the LXX), but in other instances it is definitely not the source of their quotes.
The discerning translator can use the LXX to better understand both Hebrew and Greek, but again must show great caution in doing so.
One of the most powerful points Silva makes is pointing out the difference between words in different languages. In English to you eat soup, but in Spanish you drink it. But they don’t mean to drink it like we think of it, they’re still eating it. So there’s a cultural emphasis on these words that’s more subtle. In English we care about the mode of consumption, whereas in Spanish the words have more to do with the consistency of the food (you also “drink” ice cream). When you look at this concept compared to the Bible there are some other words that stand out. The word we translate “hand” means the area from the elbow to the tips of the fingers, but in English the hand is from the wrist to the tips of the fingers. Similar problems arise with things like “day” and “night” and all kinds of other concepts and words.
When we today say “the Bible is clear” or “I don’t need a theologian to understand the Bible” we’re overstating things a bit. Sure the Bible is written so that all can understand it, but some concepts get lost in the language translation, others in the cultural dissimilarities, and others in our biases and traditions. A thorough understanding of a passage is possible, but it does require wrestling not just with a basic understanding on language and culture, but a deep one.
Walking away from this book gave me a much deeper appreciation for the complexity and depth of Scripture. My desire to the learn the biblical languages grew and to spend time reading it as it was written. This thin little book gives even the language neophyte a basic understanding of the complexities and difficulties that even scholars fall into in reading the text.
I’m reminded of a time I heard a sermon on a New Testament passage and the pastor said this section of Scripture is poetic in the original language. Curious I went up to him and asked him what he meant by it, and he said it rhymes. In Greek the words have a finite number of endings that are chose based on the number of things involved and the voice of the passage – rhyming is a natural effect of the language for this reason and is not considered a factor in if something is poetic. The pastor had fallen into a simple trap, he’s learned to read it and as he did he heard the sounds and recognized similar endings and assumed English poetry rules on this ancient dead language. It’s an easy mistake, and gives us ample reason to be careful and cautious as we approach Scripture.
All together, I found this book very enlightening. I definitely was of the mindset before reading this that “the Bible is clear” and largely I think that’s true, some pastors have pointed to Psalm 19:7-9 to make this point. BUT as clear as Scripture is, the fact that we’re drinking its rich waters through the lens of a translator and absent much of the culture muddies the waters. What we see in our English Bibles is a useful tool, but not the whole picture.
First of all this is a scholarly work. It’s well cited and researched and very in depth. This is the kind of book that will make you want to fact check things and conveniently the sources to fact check are cited right there on the page.
Second of all the main point of this book is to challenge our view that the Samaritan woman is a sexual sinner. It is often preached that the reason the Samaritan woman had so many husbands is that she was sexually promiscuous, but this story isn’t backed by Scripture. Jesus had no problem calling people sinners, but in this passage, not once does he do so. While he does point out that she’s been married multiple times, there’s no hint of calling her out because of it. It’s more stated as a fact.
Additionally, if she was the outcast we’ve been led to believe she is, why did the town so quickly listen to her and come to hear more from Jesus? Why don’t we hear them murmuring about how Jesus would come to a promiscuous women before he came to them?
Once you remove her supposed sexual sin from the narrative, the meaning and power of the story changes drastically. Instead of an incompetent woman prone to sexual promiscuity, we find an intelligent debater who talks to Jesus about serious matters of faith. It is this line of thinking that Dr. Reeder draws out in her book. And her thoughts in this matter are deep, profound, and worthy of consideration. Anyone preaching or teaching on this passage would do well to read through this book and consider the implications.
There is no way to read the facts Dr. Reeder sets out, the context of the story, and the details within it and continue to tell the story the same way we’ve always heard it. The Samaritan woman was no prostitute or sexual sinner. She lived in a time where women were greatly devalued and marriage was a thing arranged by families to gain political and financial capital.
Dr. Reeder draws out many historical interpretations of this passage and shows us that from the very earliest days of the church there were church fathers who did not believe she was an adulterer and that God cares for the lowly and protects the weak, just like this woman.
There are some things in the book that I don’t believe she developed well enough. Perhaps if I spent more time looking at her citations, I would be more moved by the argument, but as it stands there are times she points to the historical records and says “this was a common thing back then and accepted in society.” I have no doubt that those statements are true, but being accepted in society doesn’t mean they’re accepted within the religious community. You can be a Jew by lineage and not a Jew by faith. For example, just because it was acceptable for Jews to have sex once engaged (but not married to) their spouse, does not mean that religious Jews would feel the same way.
But whatever complaints I might have about the book are overshadowed by the overwhelming facts and research that went into shattering the perspective we’ve been taught that this woman was a sexual sinner and not the intelligent and spiritually curious woman the story projects.
Top Quotes
Take, for instance, biblical representations of God. Many metaphors come from nature (God is a rock or a fire). Others reflect masculine images like fathers, kings, or shepherds. But the Bible also portrays God as a woman giving birth, a mother avenging her cubs, and a woman cleaning her whole house to find a lost coin (Is 42:14, Hos 13:8, Lk 15:8-10). If we ignore these representations of God, we stunt our own knowledge of God. In the process, we make it more difficult to recognize the image of God in women.
Page 8
I have repeatedly heard that God never refers to himself with feminine descriptions and thus we should never do that too. Seeing this brief list shows that the premise of that argument is false. While we can all agree that God is neither male nor female, we can also rest assured that metaphors used to describe God take both genders and the forms of inanimate objects. We should not let gender get in the way of our describing God as accurately as possible in the metaphors we use.
We can see God describe himself as a nurturing mother raising children (Hosea 11:3-4), an eagle watching over her eggs (Deuteronomy 32:11-12), the God who gives birth to you (Deuteronomy 32:18), the mother who comforts her children (Isaiah 66:13), a mother hen (Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34), and so many more. God had no gender and is not offended to be described as having one or the other. He himself describes his compassion and care as feminine love and his hatred as a man going to war.
This concept is super important for women. In the biblical counseling movement we’ve seen many women struggle to relate to God because they’ve been taught that God identifies solely as male. Showing them that God does relate to women and they have things in common with him allows them an easier time trusting and loving God.
Early purity movements centered on changing men’s behavior to protect women. Today though, from adolescence onwards men hear that they are driven by physical desire and pleasure. The minimal expectation for their self-control is out weighed by the sexual objectification of women, who are simultaneously identified as inferior, weaker, and subordinate. As such, women are not taught how to say no. Instead of protecting women, purity movements endanger women.
Page 90
This has been something I’ve been grappling with for a few years. My own sexual desire consumed me for a long time, and only several years into my marriage did I begin to realize that it was largely steeped in a miseducation from purity culture.
The goal of purity culture started out as all things do, with good intentions. It aimed to curb the mistreatment of women by teaching men discipline and self-control. But over time it was corrupted and taught men that women, especially wives, can’t say no to their sexual advances. They’ve neglected to teach men to use self control, discipline, and biblical meditation to master their sexual desires. That teaching has been replaced with the lie that men can’t control their eyes and impulses and women need to wear the right clothes, talk the right way, and behave right in order for their lustful desires to be kept in check. Both genders have been greatly been harmed by this deceit.
DeMuth’s fictional retelling of the story provides the Samaritan woman with a life history of abuse, divorce, and sexual slavery. While poverty led to the woman’s immoral life, DeMuth also suggests that past abuse may have affected her ability to connect emotionally with her husbands. As is the case for many survivors, DeMuth’s Samaritan woman internalized the abuse in a deep sense of shame.
Page 94
One of the more modern perspectives taken on the Samaritan woman’s story is that far from being a sexual sinner herself, she was the victim of severe sexual abuse. This perspective turns the narrative on its head.
The church at large has only recently begun to understand how deeply damaging abuse is and to a further extent how emotionally damaging that is to the victim. If it’s true that the Samaritan woman was a sex slave, her ability to respond well to her husbands would be greatly impeded, and an ignorant or obstinate man would only make it worse. I’ve seen men who don’t understand and don’t try to understand the pain their wife has gone through in being raped result in them trying to force their wife to repeat the same sexual acts that were forced upon her in that dark hour. That kind of sinful obliviousness further destroys the victim. She was already brought low through the abuse done to her, but the person she’s supposed to trust most in the world repeating those acts upon her violates all remaining trust she has and alienates her from him.
There’s no good way to wrap up this review after such a heartrending and evil thought. My best attempt is to say that we must be careful when reading these stories in Scripture. There is culture, context, and harsh realities that are easy for us to sugar coat and turn into picturesque fantasies. But the truth is the Bible is a history book full of evils and goods and we must carefully dissect not only what our translations read, but also the surrounding facts and what God wants us to learn from it.
There are no easy answers, just a lifetime of seeking God.
A friend gave us a gift card for Barnes & Noble and so my wife and I decided to make an event of it. With Covid still raging, we planned a date night that involved some high-end take out fried chicken and followed that up with a trip to the book store. We ate our chicken in the great outdoors, and masked up to find some new bookly treasures.
We spent some time looking for a book that would interest us, and I kept finding book after book with great cover art, and sub par content. It took some time, but I finally decided I wanted something with fantasy magic and found this book. The back didn’t say much:
In the Raverran Empire, magic is scarce and those born with power are strictly controlled-taken as children and conscripted into the Falcon army.
Zaira has grown up on the streets to avoid this fate, hiding her mage mark and thieving to survive. But hers is a rare and dangerous magic, one that threatens the entire Empire.
Lady Amalia Cornaro was never meant to be a Falconer. Heiress and scholar, she was born into a treacherous world of political machinations. But fate has bound the heir and the mage.
War looms on the horizon. A single spark could turn the city into a pyre.
I actually only read the middle two paragraphs and decided it was interesting enough to give a go.
Right off the bat you’re introduced to a somewhat rebellious young woman sneaking about to get what she wants, and she encounters a dangerous situation, another young woman being attacked by a group of thugs.
These two women end up being the most prominent characters in the story and their lives become intertwined. They end up leaving their home town and traveling to another city in an effort to easy political tensions and find a horde of children that had been kidnapped. But neither of them is particularly skilled in diplomacy and they end up getting in a lot of trouble along the way.
The story gets a bit contentious with an underling plot of how mages are slaves in this society, their magic bound to serve the will of the government. This undercurrent was not only an undertone of the book, but expressly discussed and contrasted with the neighboring country that is ruled by mages. This topic was uncomfortable at times, but the author left the reader with the impression that our main character would be working toward the freedom of mages going forward and that result would likely be in a future book.
Overall I give this book 5 stars.
The Defiant Heir by Melissa Caruso
Tensions are high on the border and it seems inevitable that war will ensue. Our heroin must make alliances and quickly if war is to be averted.
And Amalia does just that, she stumbles into a courtship with a powerful mage and gets herself invited to the meeting where war will be decided. There she has a chance to plead her case and attempt to stop a war that would destroy her home.
Her courtship with Kathe is one of the most fun elements of the entire series. He is a man of intrigue and games. He will not speak straightforwardly, but would rather speak in riddles and be told riddles to see the intellect of others and his own truly shine.
Throughout the book you’re see drama, hidden agendas, betrayals, and manner of twists and turns. The magic will enthrall you and the politics intrigue you and you’ll find yourself rooting for certain events to unfold.
In this book we get to see a lot more of how the magic between the Raverran Empire and Vaskandar differ and how in truth, both kingdoms have slaves. Overall this was a thrilling tale and prompted me to buy the third and final book in the trilogy.
Overall I give this book 4 stars.
The Unbound Empire by Melissa Caruso
We start off with a meeting with the villain from The Tethered Mage meeting with our heroin. He claims to have information vital to the survival of the empire, but he’s been locked in prison for months, how could it possibly be true? Moments later we find him dead… how was he murdered in a locked cell? What secrets did he hold? What plot is Vaskandar planning to destroy the empire?
Our team thinks they’ve laid the best plans to protect the city, the empire, and the warlocks, but they find themselves outsmarted at every turn. They don’t know who they can trust, where to turn or how they could ever beat Ruven.
I have no doubt that if you made it through the first two books, you’ll love this book and be terrified for your favorite characters and eagerly turning each page to see what happens next.
Overall I give this book 4 stars.
Overall I give this series 4 stars.
Cautionary notes: There is some lesbian romance, gruesome war, and repeat depictions of slavery throughout.
Soul Care in the African American Practice by Barbara L. Peacock
This was another book I picked up when IVP Press did their sale back in February. Based on the title, I was hoping for an in-depth dive into the various practices and traditions that African Americans have used to keep their spiritual walks healthy. When the book arrived, I opened it up and scanned the contents and was surprised to see it was a ten-chapter book, with each chapter featuring a different African American spiritual leader. Not what I was expecting, but something worth learning more about for sure.
Unfortunately, as I dove into it I began to see that each of these chapters was far too light and singularly focused to bring much depth to a conversation. I left most chapters feeling like I didn’t learn anything substantial about the luminary discussed or the topic it was meant to bring to light.
Instead of learning about ten different subjects of soul care, I found the book was very repetitive. Five of the ten chapters were on prayer and the rest were on a variety of topics like mediation, detachment, and soul care.
The only common thread in this chapter was a developing biography of the author that felt out of place and distracting. If you want to write a biography, do it! But telling us you’re writing about ten other people and how they did soul care and every paragraph you write about yourself further solidifies how shallow the chapters will be on these ten people.
This biographical thread also included a lot of love for her college of choice, with frequent promotions of it. There was a point at which I was even wondering if this book was meant to be an advertisement for the school
Overall, I found this book disappointing, and the only novel concept for me was Visio Divina, which is a concept she didn’t fully explain, but what I gather is the practice of looking at images about spiritual/biblical things and reflecting on them to see if God reveals anything to you. I’m not sure where I land on the topic, because in my section of Christianity, this kind of sounds simultaneously like idolatry (didn’t we leave Catholicism over things like this) and not different than reading a book of someone’s reflections on Scripture.
While I haven’t come to a cohesive thought on Visio Divina yet, I do look forward to talking with some more artistically inclined Christians than myself to learn from them and see what merit this idea has.
Anxiety: Finding Comfort and Reassurance from God by Skip McDonald
My wife and I picked this book up when the publisher did a Black History Month sale earlier this year. Not having the book in person when making the decision to get it led me to assume this book would be a moderately sized theology book on the subject of anxiety. And as a counselor, I was looking forward to learning more about the topic and being better prepared to help people with that knowledge.
So it was with a mix of disappointment and excitement that I first saw this book and learned it was just a pamphlet. The excitement was there as I turned the pages and found it to be a workbook. Workbooks are always a valued resource in counseling, but there was disappointment too as the length of the book was about 150 pages shorter than expected.
The pamphlet started off strong with a workbook like study on Anxiety based out of Matthew 6 and then moved into another great study on finding comfort based out of Matthew 14. After that though the studies felt more and more disjointed from the title of the book. The remaining topics were prayer, forgiveness, refocusing, rest, strength, and refreshment. All of these things are important, but I didn’t feel like the little intros and the study questions tied most of them together with anxiety well at all.
In the end, there are some great studies here and some mediocre ones. I could see using some, but not all of these chapters for counselees in the future.
Like the first book in The Dispatcher series, this story is an audio exclusive experience by narrator Zachary Quinto (the actor who played Sylar in Heroes and Spock in the Star Trek Reboot). Zachary’s iconic voice brings a great depth to the story and characters really bringing it to life.
The Dispatcher series takes place in the not too distant future where murder is virtually impossible. Anyone who is killed reappears at home unharmed by the experience. Dispatchers are there to make sure deaths are painless, quick, and efficient so that the dying person’s life is spared pain and can quickly return to their lives.
Murder by Other Means explores how murder would still be possible, if more challenging in this quirky and strange world.
The audio experience is double the length of the first book in the series and still very engaging and thought provoking. There are a few scenes I could have done without, but overall still a very enjoyable time.
Lynching is a sinful stain on American history and yet it’s something very few Americans even realize happened. Many that do remember this history think lynching was something done at the end of a rope to punish criminals. And there’s some truth to that recollection, but very limitedly so.
Lynching was a mob tactic to punish the Black race and keep them fearful. Lynching wasn’t done until after the slaves were freed. It wasn’t just done at the end of a rope, but included all kinds of torture and death. It continued past the civil rights movement and into the present day. James Byrd was lynched in 1998 by being chained to a car and dragged to his death. Ahmaud Arbery died just a couple years ago at the hands of several men attempting vigilantly justice.
The victims of these lynchings were often mutilated with knives, beaten by the crowds (including white children) and pieces of their ears and fingers cut off as souvenirs. They were black men, women, and children. Some were guilty of crimes, but the crowds didn’t care if they were guilty at all. Many times if the guilty person could not be found, the first Black they did find would be lynched instead.
Like black men, they [black women] were tortured, beaten and scarred, mutilated and hanged, burned and shot, tarred and feathered, stabbed and dragged, whipped and raped by angry white mobs.
James H. Cone, page 122
Lynchings were often advertised in advance. Photos were taken of the families and the community smiling while black bodies hung or burned in the background. And the next day the paper would publish a story saying a lynching was performed at the hands of persons unknown.
This intolerable evil was performed at the hands of white folks in all of the states (north and south).
James Cone takes this history and shows us how it is very similar to the death of Jesus. He too was killed at the hands of an angry mob.
The cross and the lynching tree are separated by nearly 2,000 years. One is the universal symbol of Christian faith; the other is the quintessential symbol of black oppression in America. Though both are symbols of death, one represents a message of hope and salvation, while the other signifies the negation of that message by white supremacy.
James H. Cone, page xiii
This book explores the history of lynching, how one of the greatest theologians of the time during the height of lynching missed the obvious parallel between the cross and lynching, Martin Luther’s approach to lynching and the cross, and how black women played an important role in stopping lynching.
For all of us that grew up sheltered from the realities of the lynchings of our Black brothers and sisters, this book is a must-read. It gives an overview of lynching and what it was like to grow up under that hatred and fear. And it helps give a glimpse into what they are still experiencing and wrestling with today. It shows the power of the cross in a way that our theological tradition misses, and all the while your stomach will be in knots as you think about the horrors done to our fellow image-bearers in the name of Christ.
Preaching Deliverance to the Captives by Matthew E. Roe
Matthew E. Roe compiled and edited a great set of sermons here to show what the Particular Baptists (that is Calvinists in England) thought about the slave trade.
Each sermon is preceded by a brief biographical sketch of the preacher which is super hand to help you understand where it’s coming from. Each sermon is also followed by contemporaneous reviews of those sermons so you get a feel for what the whole Particular Baptist movement and British Christians thought of these sermons.
Before we talk about these sermons, it is necessary to refresh our minds on how terrible the plight of the African slave was during this season of history.
These men, women, and children were stolen from their homes by various means. Some were wooed with promises of fun and safety, others were kidnapped by rival tribes, or even captured as part of war and sold off to the Europeans.
Many of the Africans, who have been enticed by the Europeans, and have come on board their vessels in confidence, have been detained and carried off. Others have been invited to a conference on the shore. A puncheon of spirits has been opened to entertain them, and as soon as they have drank to intoxication, they have been seized, and forced, in that helpless and unguarded situation, to the ships.
Clarksons’s Essay on Slavery as cited on page 140
Once captured, they would be shackled inhumanely to each other, arm and leg shackled to the next person so that any attempts at movement required perfect cooperation between the two captives. They would be moved onto a boat and held in spaces smaller than a coffin for the entirety of their several-month journey across the sea. The conditions were so improper that it was common for many captives to die along the journey. The sailors would have to check daily for dead bodies and toss them into the sea. It is reported that captives would also die if the storms go too bad and they took on water. since they had no freedom of movement they could not escape and fill their lungs with life-saving air.
Once they arrived at their destination, the humiliation continued. They would be inspected like cattle, naked and fondled to inspect their muscle strength and the hope that they would produce strong offspring. They were purchased without concern for their family and tribe that they had traveled with and known all their lives. It was not uncommon for a slave to arrive at their master’s home not knowing a soul there.
They are submitted to inspection by those who are in want of labourers for their farms, who do not fail to examine and treat them with an inhumanity at which even avarice ought to blush.
Clarksons’s Essay on Slavery as cited on page 144
A common day for a slave involved waking up at 4 am to do all the menial, backbreaking work of preparing the fields. Once sufficiently exhausted by those works, at 9 am, they would be allowed thirty minutes for breakfast which they were to eat in the fields, and then they’d be back to the plow until noon where they would switch gears to searching for hay for the animals. They’d be given an hour or two to collect enough to satisfy the slave masters and then present what they found. Slaves that did not return with enough hay would be whipped fifty stripes, which would cripple them for weeks. They would then have to go about finding food for the horses again and return to their masters at 7 pm for a final showing of what they had found. Failure would again be me with the whip.
And after all that, they could at most acquire, if they were lucky, eight hours of sleep.
Some, for trifling faults, are scourged with cart-whips, ebony brushes, and other instruments of cruelty, till they are incapable of lying down; and many die under their punishments. Others have their ears cut off, their noses slit, their arms and legs chopped off, at the caprice of their cruel masters; and when they are old, they are turned away to starve, or purposely driven to acts of violence, that their masters may be rewarded for taking away their lives.
John Liddon page 190
You’ll see in these pages their articulation of many theologically sound doctrines. You’ll see that we should hear the plight of the oppressed, speak up for them, and do whatever is in our power to do to lessen their burdens just as Scripture commands. You’ll see them condemn those that side idly by as those the Lord will brush off saying “I never knew you.” These abolitionists didn’t stop at just wanting the Africans freed, but argued further that they should be fairly compensated, something that to this day has never happened. And all of these arguments are grounded in Scripture and overflowing with a zeal for God that is frankly lacking in America.
Working together these abolitionists used petitions, pamphlets, the pulpit, and the press to stoke a fire and eventually overturn and the end of a 50 year long campaign.
The Sermons
There are five sermons in total:
1) Slavery Inconsistent with the Spirit of Christianity by Robert Robinson in 1788
The most striking thing for me in reading this first sermon was how each point he makes is echoed in our world today. Every point he brings up for why slavery should end is exactly the same points being made by those who argue for Biblical Justice and benevolence toward our fellow man. Inequality should never be the aim, goal, or accepted practice among Christians.
One point that really stood out to me what that Robert (and all these British Preachers) are arguing for the removal of a sinful practice that isn’t being done inside their borders.
“… and now pure and proper slavery is so effectually done away that a slave or Negro, the instant he lands in England, becomes a freeman…”
Robert Robinson page 46
A few years ago someone told me and my wife that speaking out against police injustice is something we shouldn’t do because all the police in our area are above reproach. I was baffled by the thought, because so often God called prophets in the Bible to preach against the sins in another land (ex Jonah). Here we see that these British Pastors found it their duty and obligation to speak out against the sins that were happening outside their immediate sphere of influence. And without them, it is likely that slavery would have continued.
2) A Sermon on the African Slave Trade by James Dore in 1788
In many ways, James Dore’s sermon and Robert Robinson’s sermons struck the same notes for me. But one thing James Dore did quite well was lay out how the Golden Rule says that we ought to stand up for our fellow man.
The royal law, the great leading maxim of the Gospel, requires you to do to others as you would have them do to you. Are you free? Are you willing to be deprived of your natural rights? Would you leave your native country, and submit to the lash of cruel taskmasters? Then why should that liberty be taken from others, of which you are justly tenacious?
James Dore page 89
3) Compassion the Duty and Dignity of Man by John Beatson in 1798
John Beatson delivers a death blow to the very idea that a Christian can sit by and rest safely in the knowledge that event will unfold as they may, “I had no part in it.” The Christian who sits idly by while evil is afoot is as guilty as the one committing the crime.
It was predicted that Jesus would be crucified, according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God; yet we are informed that by wicked hands he was taken… crucified and slain, and all those who took an active part in accomplishing those predictions are styled his betrayers and murderers. Shall we not, be the Judge of all the earth, be deemed the betrayers and murderers of thousands of inhabitants of Africa?
John Beatson citing Acts 2:23 & 7:52 on page 121
John Beatson ends his sermon with an impassioned plea for the people of God to act in the best interest of the Africans. It is the Christian duty to lay down your lives for the safety, security, and provision of those who have not yet come to Christ.
4) Commerce in the Human Species by Abraham Booth in 1792
Abraham Booth sets forth a direct attack on the idea that slavery is Biblical. He starts off his sermon by ingratiating himself to those who think it is biblical, but acknowledging that there are times and places were slavery may indeed be necessary. But then he attacks that idea throughout the rest of his sermon lavishingly using Scripture to point to each Biblical principle of slavery and showing how those requirements were not being met during Antebellum Slavery.
This sermon was a gold mine of Scripture references and the biblical context of how they should be applied contrasted against the failures of Europeans to live up to that standard.
5) Slavery Inconsistent with True Christianity by John Liddon in 1792
This was easily my most favorite of the five sermons. John Liddon has a way with words and Scripture that drives right at the heart of the matter. In the biography for Liddon, it says not much is known about it, and I am saddened by this as I would love to read more of his sermons. There is no chapter more full of highlights in my copy of this book than this one.
The slave trade is diametrically opposite to the Christian religion: for the Christian religion is founded in justice, it breathes nothing but compassion, and to produce the highest degree of moral excellence and human happiness is its professed end and direct tendency.
John Liddon page 192
John Liddon ignores the common arguments from both sides and dives straight into the heart of the matter. His arguments are clear and well reasoned from Scripture. Each of his points is as salient today as it was then. There is much to take to heart here as we consider rightly how we ought to act toward our fellow man.
Top Quotes
Normally, I break down the quotes with a little blurb from me to put them into context and provide meaning. But there are just too many quotable portions of this book. I leave the quotes as is.
John Liddon argues that: ‘Christianity is a system of compassion. […] No man is to be an indifferent spectator of the sufferings of his fellow man.’
Page 16
‘For most abolitionist Christians, ending the slave trade and evangelising non-Christians were complementary activities.’
John Coffey page 17
It is true we do not witness the various and complicated distresses of the poor Negroes: our midnight slumbers are not disturbed by heart-piercing groans; our public walks are not embittered by the sight of these miserable objects; but their wretchedness is not less real, because we see it not.
James Dore page 88
Consider the genius of your religion: a religion calculated to inspire universal benevolence, by teaching us that all mankind are our brethren; that they stand in the same common relation to God, the universal Parent, and are all equally designed for another state of existence. […] Is it probable that the poor Negroes will cordially embrace Christianity while they view it in such a horrid light in the lives of professed Christians? They cannot read our books, in which genuine Christianity is displayed, but they read the lives of any who assume the venerable Christian name. Action is a universal language, intelligible to all mankind. And how is Christianity disgraced by actions of those, in whom the practice of trading the persons of men has weakened the moral principle, and destroyed every human affection! What ideas must the Negroes form of that system of religion which they naturally suppose, tolerates barbarity?
James Dore page 90
If ever then you mean to spread the Gospel of peace, wipe this stain of infamy [slavery] from the Christian name.
John Beatson page 135
Abolish, then, so infamous, so destructive a commerce. No longer enslave an unoffending people. Inform the inhabitants of Africa that you have done them an injury, that you have violated the law of nations, and that you will no longer persist in such a procedure. Inform the unhappy slaves in the various islands, that the injury you have done them is irreparable, but that you are willing to make every compensation within your power: that you will put them under the protection of equal law, provide means of their instruction in the knowledge of Christianity, and raise them to the enjoyment of freedom, as soon as the circumstances of their case will admit. Thus will the blessing of him that was ready to perish come on you, and you will cause the heart, even of slaves, to sing for joy.
John Beatson citing Job 29:13 on page 135
All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, is another of our Lord’s precepts. This admirably just and comprehensive command requires each of us to treat every man as we might reasonably wish every one to treat us, were the situations and circumstance reversed.
Abraham Booth citing Matthew 7:12 on page 171
It may perhaps be objected: personal slavery, though authorized by the laws of Greece and Rome, and though much practised in the Apostolic times, is nowhere expressly condemned in the New Testament; nay, Christians slaves are exhorted to live peaceable subjection to their own masters. To this it may be replied: nor was the sanguinary despotism of Nero expressly condemned, but the disciples of Christ were commanded to behave peaceably under his government.
Abraham booth page 175
Can it be wondered at that they meet death with joy? […] The greatest wonder is that they have submitted to their sufferings so long. Surely the patience of the Africans must far exceed that of the Europeans!
John Liddon page 191
Christianity is a system of compassion. It breathes nothing else.
John Liddon page 193
Superstition and bigotry might say, as they have said: “but they are not Christians.” It would be a wonder if they were. Of pure Christianity they are totally ignorant. And if they judge the Christian religion by the conduct of those who call themselves Christians, and who are their oppressors, they must suppose it to be of all others the worst religion, to justify such enormities.
John Liddon page 197
The doctrines, the precepts, the spirit of the Christian religion say, “Copy the example of the good Samaritan. Exert all your talents and all your influence to dry up the tears of the Africans, to meliorate the condition of those already enslaved, and to prevent the continuance of the abominable traffic.”
John Liddon page 199
To conclude. The abolition of this trade falls in with the whole genius of the Gospel. The prophets predict it, and it will be bought about by means. Let us be ambitions to be instruments of so good a work, and rest assured of the approbation of our master.
John Liddon page 205
Overall I give this book 5 stars. This book is packed with great theological insight, historical analysis, and astounding compassion. No Christian can read this book without being moved.
This Sporadic Life 