Dr. Creasy’s Blog

Picture God. What do you see? Perhaps Michelangelo’s Ancient of Days on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, creating Adam with the touch of a finger and bringing him to life. Or perhaps William Blake’s judgmental God banishing Adam from the garden of Eden, a relief etching from 1795, currently on display in London’s Tate Collection.

Turning to scripture, we may envision a trio, God and two angels cloaked as men visiting Abraham beneath the great tree of Mamre, having dinner with him and telling Abraham that Sarah would bear him a son in her old age, as Sarah herself eavesdrops on the conversation from the kitchen.

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Apart from Jesus himself, St. Paul is the most significant personality in the New Testament. But just who was Saul of Tarsus (AKA, St. Paul the Apostle)? Let’s take this opportunity to explore him together.

Saul of Tarsus was one of the most brilliant young men of his generation. Growing up in a wealthy family, receiving a world-class education, and being groomed for leadership at the highest levels of Judaism, Saul became the great persecutor of the emerging Church shortly after Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. On the road to Damascus to round up Christians and have them brought back to Jerusalem for punishment, Saul encounters the risen and glorified Christ … and his life turns upside down.

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Jesus was a master teacher, and his “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5-7 is one of his most memorable teachings. The “Sermon on the Mount” is a perfect example of expository teaching, and it consists of four perfectly balanced sections: 1) the “Beatitudes,” a clever and memorable introduction (5: 2-16); 2) six propositions that exceed the law (5: 17-48); 3) six concrete actions to implement the law (6: 1 – 7: 6); and 4) a dramatic “call to action” (7: 7-29). I’d like to devote this blog to the “Beatitudes,” the opening section of the “Sermon on the Mount.”

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As most of you know, I’ve been teaching scripture for a long time, nearly thirty years on the English Department faculty at UCLA and since 1995 in the community at large when I started Logos Bible Study. My goal has always been to teach verse-by-verse through the entire Bible, Genesis through Revelation, including the Deuterocanonical books (or “Apocrypha”). I’ve done that over a one-year cycle (the “One Year Bible,” which is now a popular Podcast on Spotify); a five-year cycle (which is featured on Audible.com with thousands of 5-star reviews); and a seven-year cycle (which is featured in our “Course Catalogue” on logosbiblestudy.com, twenty-two university-level courses consisting of 450 video lessons, over 20,000 pages of written material, classic art work, satellite imagery maps and hundreds of professional photographs taken onsite in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain and the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas—the world of the Bible.

Mission accomplished . . . well, sort of!

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I was asked by one of our Logos students about Matthew 27: 50-53, four verses that only occur in Matthew:

“Jesus cried out again in a loud voice, and gave up his spirit. And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked, rocks were split, tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming forth from their tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many.”

(27: 50-53)

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As most of you know, I spent nearly thirty years on the English Department faculty at UCLA where I taught, among other things, The English Bible as Literature. During that time I took my UCLA class into the larger community, teaching verse-by-verse through the entire Bible, Genesis through Revelation, in five and seven-year programs. My classes were quite large—300-500 adult students in each—and they were deliberately ecumenical, drawing students from Roman Catholic parishes as well as from a vast array of Protestant denominations throughout southern California and Arizona.

And that’s when trouble began.

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We have just finished our in-depth 25-week course on the Gospel according to Matthew, which is now in the LBS Course Catalogue and available for all of our Logos students to watch. Our next “Featured Course” will be The Story of King David, my favorite story in Scripture, both to read and to teach, so I’d like to take this opportunity to say a few words about it as a prelude to starting the course on July 9, 2022.

In King David, the Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel, Jonathan Kirsch observes:

At the heart of the Book of Samuel, where the story of David is first told, we find a work of genius that anticipates the romantic lyricism and tragic grandeur of Shakespeare, the political wile of Machiavelli, and the modern psychological insight of Freud. And, just as much as Shakespeare or Machiavelli or Freud, the frank depiction of David in the pages of the Bible has defined what it means to be a human being: King David is “a symbol of the complexity and ambiguity of human experience itself.”

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In John 19: 19 we read, “Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.’ Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Hebrew, Latin and Greek.” In The Creator beyond Time and Space (Costa Mesa, CA: Word for Today, 1995), Chuck Missler argues that the Hebrew phrase forms an acrostic, the first letter of each of four Hebrew words spelling YHWH, the tetragrammaton for the name of God. Recognizing this, claims Missler, prompts the chief priests “to protest to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews” (John 19: 21). I had read Missler’s argument years ago, and trusting it, incorporated it into my teaching.

I was wrong.

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In my last blog on Scripture and Tradition, I mentioned that theology is faith . . . thinking. And such faith results from an intensely personal encounter with God, an encounter enabled by God’s freely-given gift of grace. Thus, faith is—in a very real and visceral sense—living out that personal, intimate relationship with God, not on our own, but within community, within the family of God, the Church.

It’s important to understand that our faith is not an isolated, disembodied feeling, but an organic entity that lives and grows, as we ourselves live and grow. Just as there are many ways by which our physical, mental and emotional lives grow, so are there many ways by which our faith grows, two of which are through a proper understanding of Scripture and Tradition, the subjects of the previous blog. Together, Scripture and Tradition comprise the fertile soil in which our Christian lives of faith are rooted, and as we sink our roots ever-deeper into that soil, the fruit that emerges becomes that much sweeter.

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For many Protestants sola scriptura, or “Scripture Alone,” is the guiding principle in understanding and living the Christian life; for Roman Catholics (and many others in the liturgical churches), both Scripture and Tradition carry equal weight. In this blog I’d like to explore the dynamic between the two. For Roman Catholics the proper relationship between the two is best stated in the Vatican II document Dei Verbum, where we read: “Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture . . . both [flow] from the same divine wellspring . . . [forming] one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church” (DV, II, 9-10).

As I begin writing this blog I can’t help but hear Tevye singing the tune “Tradition” in the 1964 musical, Fiddler on the Roof, as I even now hum the song over and over in my head! (Don’t you just hate it when a song gets stuck in your head like that? Aieee!).

But here we go.

The English word “tradition” derives from the Latin noun, traditio, the verb form being tradere, meaning to “hand over,” or perhaps better, to “transmit.” The verb form is important, for “tradition” is not a static thing (a noun), but an ongoing process (a verb).

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As the three spring festivals are intimately related, so are the three autumn festivals. The spring festivals reflect joy in God’s salvation of his people, Israel; the autumn festivals sound a more somber note: they are more reflective, a serious time of seeking forgiveness, of making amends with one’s neighbor and of starting anew.

Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah) (Leviticus 23: 23-25).

Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah) takes up only two verses in the Bible:

The Lord said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites: ‘On the first day of the seventh month [Tishri] you are to have a day of rest, a sacred assembly commemorated with trumpet blasts. Do no work, but present an offering made to the Lord by fire.’”

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With the weekly celebration of the Sabbath as a foundation, this week’s blog now turns to three annual Jewish festivals celebrated in the springtime. Importantly, these festivals are deeply rooted in the agricultural cycle: Passover (Leviticus 23: 5) begins at twilight on the 14th day of the lunar month of Nisan (March/April), the first month of spring and the sowing of seed, and it marks the beginning of new life/Unleavened Bread (Leviticus 23: 6) begins on the next night, the 15th day of Nisan, and it lasts for seven days (in practice, however, the entire eight days is commonly referred to collectively as “Passover”); First Fruits (Leviticus 23: 11) occurs on the day after the Sabbath following Unleavened Bread, and it celebrates the fruitfulness of the land that God has given to the Israelites; and Shavuot (Pentecost) occurs on the 6th day of Sivan (May/June) and it marks the first harvest of wheat.

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As Advent begins the Christian liturgical year, so Rosh Hashanah begins the Jewish new year. This year (2022) Advent begins on Sunday, November 27th; Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset on Sunday, September 25th. As I mentioned in the previous blog, this “liturgical cycle” is the heartbeat of the Jewish community’s relationship with God, and it forms the “DNA” of the Christian liturgical cycle. If we are to be “educated readers of scripture,” it is important that we understand the rhythm of the Jewish religious year; moreover, if we’re to be in a right relationship with our Jewish brothers and sisters, it is important that we understand their lived relationship with God and how that relationship is mirrored in our own Christian lives.

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As many of you know, Christian/Jewish relations is a subject near and dear to my heart, for I have many close personal relationships with Jewish friends and rabbis, both here at home and in my many teaching tours to Israel. On the whole, the Christian Church in general—and the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic church particular—has had a shameful and scandalous history regarding Judaism and the Jews, based (sadly) upon scripture itself. In Matthew’s gospel when Jesus stands before Pilate and a large crowd consisting of the chief priests, Jewish elders and a mob of onlookers, Pilate, having no basis under Roman law to condemn Jesus to death, offers to exchange Jesus for Barabbas, an insurrectionist, one guilty of a capital offense. Pilate asks the crowd, “Which one do you want me to release to you, Barabbas or Jesus, called Messiah?” The crowd shouts, “Barabbas!” Pilate replies, “Then what shall I do with Jesus called Messiah?” The crowd shouts even louder, “Crucify him!”

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I pray the Breviarium Romanum, the Roman Catholic Breviary, or Liturgy of the Hours, a liturgical book that today consists of four volumes, which span the entire liturgical year. They include hymns, prayers, psalms, and readings to be prayed during the five canonical hours of each day: the Office of Readings, Morning Prayer, Daytime Prayer, Evening Prayer and Night Prayer. The two most important or “hinge” Hours are Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. In the liturgical churches praying the Liturgy of the Hours fulfills the scriptural admonition to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18). Right now we are in Volume 2, the “Lenten and Easter Season.” At the back of the volume is a “Poetry Appendix,” and I often turn to it during the day. There you’ll find a poem by Edwin Muir (1887-1959) titled “The Killing,” which I particularly like to ponder during this Lenten season.

I’d like to share it with you in today’s blog, so here it is:

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Today—Ash Wednesday—begins Lent, the start of a forty-day run up to the Easter season. This year (2022) Lent runs from Wednesday, March 2nd through Thursday, April 14th.

The practice of observing Lent dates back to the early fourth century, where the term tessarakoste (“forty days,” similar to pentekoste, “fifty days,” or Pentecost) is first mentioned in the fifth canon of the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325). The term “lent” is an English word introduced during the Middle Ages to denote the forty days leading up to Easter. “Lent” originally meant “spring” (as in the German lenz and the Dutch lente), a period when the hours of daylight begin to lengthen.

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Just who is St. Valentine, festooned with red hearts, cupids and flowers, St. Valentine who stirs such ardor and passionate longing in young hearts?

No one really knows, for sure.The name was quite common in the first centuries of the church, deriving from the Latin, valens (“worthy,” “strong” or “powerful”).At least fourteen Valentines were martyred prior to the Edict of Milan (A.D. 313).In 496 Pope Gelasius I established the Feast of St. Valentine on February 14, but little was known of him even then; he is identified variously as a priest of Rome, a bishop or a martyr in the Roman province of Africa.The most well-known story about St. Valentine appears much later in Jacobus de Voragine’s compilation, Legenda Aurea (1260), in which St. Valentine refuses to deny Christ before the emperor Claudius II (268-270).

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Myth #5 The Israelites worshipped a golden calf in the wilderness.

At the time of Moses, Egypt was a highly advanced civilization, and its theology was as fully developed as Judaism or Christianity is today. Memphis, in the northern part of Egypt, was the political capital of Egypt, while Thebes to the south (modern-day Luxor) was the religious capital. Thebes was the home of magnificent temples dedicated to the Egyptian gods, along with more than 8,000 priests to serve them. One of the best examples of an Egyptian temple is the Temple of Karnak.

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As most of you know, Logos Bible Study is heading for Egypt—“In the Footsteps of the Patriarchs”—on January 16, 2022, our first post-COVID teaching tour. I love Egypt. It’s a fascinating country with a long and storied history and from a biblical perspective, everything—and I mean everything—in Judaism and Christianity has its antecedents in ancient Egypt. But many people have major misconceptions about Egypt . . . in large part due to Hollywood movies!

This 2-part blog aims to set things straight.

Myth #1 Israelite slaves built the pyramids.

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This Sunday, January 2, 2022, marks the Feast of the Epiphany. In Matthew 2: 1-12 we read:

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

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