6/28/22

Whose Standards Are You Living By? by Ken Weliever, The Preacherman

 

https://thepreachersword.com/2020/10/06/whose-standards-are-you-living-by/#more-16792

Whose Standards Are You Living By?

 

David Sargent, minister, and author of Living Water, relates the unusual story of Dennis Lee Curtis.

In 1992, Curtis was arrested for armed robbery in Rapid City, South Dakota. In his wallet, police found a list of rules Curtis had written for himself – guidelines for his robberies. For example, he wrote:

“I will not kill anyone unless I have to.”

“I will take cash and food stamps — no checks.”

“I will not rob mini-marts.”

“If I get chased by cops on foot, I will get away. If chased by vehicle, I will not put the lives of innocent civilians on the line.”

“I will rob only seven months out of the year.”

“I will enjoy robbing from the rich to give to the poor.”

However, the judge before whom Dennis Lee Curtis stood didn’t consult his list of rules. He didn’t say, “Well, at least you live by some values.” No, Curtis was judged by the laws of South Dakota. And convicted as a thief.

While Curtis’ behavior may seem odd, it’s no more different than folks who think they can live by their own standard and God will be pleased.

People often compare themselves to others to judge themselves in a more favorable light. We may look at the things that we don’t do, to feel good about ourselves. I don’t commit murder. I don’t steal. I don’t commit adultery. I don’t get drunk.

Some folks excuse their bad behavior, their sinful habits, or their lack of self-control, by saying, “At least I’m nice to people. I help people. And I care about other people.”

Yet, God isn’t going to judge us on the basis of what we don’t do. Or on a curve system based on the lives of those worse than we are. Or on our own value system.

I’m reminded of Paul’s concern for Israel. He prayed that they might be saved. He wrote that they sought to “establish their own righteousness,” and failed to submit “to the righteousness of God” (Rom. 10:1-3). Our standard of righteousness is not God’s standard. Like Israel of old “all our righteousness are like filthy rags” (Isa. 64;6). We are unclean. And by His standard, everyone has sinned and fallen short of His glory (Rom. 3:23).

When we stand before the Great Judge, he won’t consult our list of rules or our personal value system. Jesus said, “He who rejects Me and does not receive My words, has that which judges him; the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day” (John 12:48).

However, if we are willing to admit our unworthiness, submit to His standard of authority, obey His Word, receive His grace, and accept His offer of salvation through Jesus Christ, we can be saved. We can experience pardon, find peace, feel His power working in our lives, and know His purpose for our lives. (Jn. 3:16; I Jn. 2:2; Eph. 1:-1-10; Rom. 6:23).

While none of us will live perfectly sinless lives, we can clothe ourselves with God’s garments of righteousness. Excel to a higher level of living. And exemplify His holy standard in our lives.

–Ken Weliever, The Preacherman

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible by Justin Rogers, Ph.D.

 

https://apologeticspress.org/the-dead-sea-scrolls-and-the-bible-5741/

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible

From Issue: R&R – November 2019

[EDITOR’S NOTE: AP auxiliary writer Dr. Rogers is the Director of the Graduate School of Theology and Associate Professor of Bible at Freed-Hardeman University. He holds an M.A. in New Testament from Freed-Hardeman University as well as an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Hebraic, Judaic, and Cognate Studies from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.]

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls is widely regarded as the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century. From 1947 to 1956 about 930 scrolls were found in 11 desert caves near Qumran, a site about 12½ miles southeast of Jerusalem. Other discoveries were made in about 11 other sites in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, but no place yielded the number of manuscripts as Qumran. The Qumran scrolls span four centuries, from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D., and are written in four languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabatean, in addition to discovered coins having Latin inscriptions. The Dead Sea Scrolls are important for the Old Testament in at least two major ways: (1) they allow us access to Old Testament manuscripts over 1,000 years older than we previously knew; and (2) they provide information about the formation of the Old Testament canon of Scripture.

The Discovery and Publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The story has been told often.1 A Bedouin shepherd threw a rock into a cave, heard a crash, and discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. This story is not entirely true. First of all, the broken jar and discovery of the cave took place two days before the first scrolls were found. There was not one Bedouin shepherd, but three. One threw the rock, and another entered the cave two days later without the prior knowledge of his partners. The shepherds took only a few scrolls, and they had no idea what they were and how much they were worth. The scrolls removed from what became known as Cave 1 were the “Great Isaiah Scroll” (1QIsaa), the Habakkuk commentary (1QpHab), and the Community Rule (1QS).2 These were slightly damaged in transportation before they could be sold to a dealer of antiquities, and to a Syrian Orthodox monastery.

When the number and value of the scrolls were determined, other caves continued to be looted and their contents sold by the Ta‘amireh tribe to which the shepherds belonged. Once the importance of the scrolls was determined, both scholars and governmental organizations (initially, of Jordan, and later, of Israel) became involved in discovering additional caves and conducting formal excavations. The site of Qumran was excavated in five consecutive seasons under the leadership of Roland De Vaux of the Jerusalem-based École Bibliques (1951-1956). Eventually, 10 more caves were discovered in the area of Qumran, Cave 4 alone yielding fragments of nearly 600 manuscripts.3

The laborious task of deciphering, editing, and publishing the Dead Sea Scrolls is a drama unto itself. The original scholars entrusted with the task of publishing the Scrolls were exclusively Christian, and thus the interests of early researchers tended toward Christian backgrounds and the relationship of the Scrolls to the New Testament. This fact irked many non-Christian scholars, especially the Israelis. With the additions of Israeli scholars Elisha Qimron and Emanuel Tov to the publication team in the 1980s, this problem was rectified, and now scholars from all backgrounds work on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In addition to the racial issues, the early publishing team was small and very slow to do their work. Between 1950 and 1990 only seven of the eventual 40 volumes in Oxford University Press’s Discoveries in the Judean Desert series had been completed. In the 1990s alone, however, 20 additional volumes in this series appeared. There are two reasons for the proliferation in publication: First, Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem became the general editor of the series in late 1990. His appointment followed an anti-Semitism scandal that resulted in then-director John Strugnell of Harvard University being removed from the post. The scandal was provoked by Strugnell’s comments in the Israeli newspaper, Ha-aretz.4

Second, Ben Zion Wachholder of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, with the help of his student, Martin Abegg, produced a nearly complete text of the Scrolls from a previously published concordance.5 With the early use of computer databasing, Abegg was able to reverse-engineer the text of many Scrolls from the concordance. Although their publication was unauthorized both by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Oxford University, all agree their publication broke the hold on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and encouraged scholars to complete the work of official publication.6 Today all of the discovered, decipherable Scrolls have been published, and photographs of many of the Scrolls are available on the Internet.

This article provides two examples. Figure 1 is a photograph of two columns of the Great Isaiah Scroll, featuring Isaiah 53. This scroll is among the best preserved, and is not typical of the discovered manuscripts. Figure 2 is a more typical collection of fragments pieced together by specialists. Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls are, indeed, not so much scrolls as scraps.

Figure 1: The Great Isaiah Scroll ( ISaiah 53) Figure 2: A Portion of the Temle Scoll

The Non-Biblical Manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls

It surprises many people to hear the majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls are non-biblical. Of the approximately 930 scrolls discovered in the Judean desert, only 222 are biblical (i.e., less than 25%). The percentage of biblical scrolls is much higher at Judean desert sites other than Qumran. The biblical texts of Masada, for example, represent 47% of the total number of scrolls discovered.7 We may conclude Jews living in desert communities read many different books, and were not readers of the Bible alone. This does not necessarily mean, however, that secular books were read more than the Bible. In my personal library I have hundreds of books, but my Bibles take up only about a shelf and a half. Most of these books I do not read regularly, but my Bibles are in constant use. A similar situation might have existed for the Dead Sea communities. Still, the non-biblical Scrolls have relevance for how the Old Testament was understood and interpreted by some Jews prior to the time of the New Testament.

In order to better examine the non-biblical Scrolls, further classification is needed. So we shall first discuss works most certainly not written by members of the Qumran community, what Protestants might term “Apocrypha” as well as the so-called “Pseudepigrapha.” Then we shall turn to the “sectarian texts” that were either written by members of the Qumran sect or were formative for their development as a community.

Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

The term “apocrypha” is a Greek plural substantive meaning “things hidden.” The term is borrowed from the Church Fathers who used it frequently to refer to books outside of the canon of Scripture recognized by the church. The term “pseudepigrapha,” by contrast, properly refers to writings “falsely ascribed.” Based on this meaning, the term pseudepigrapha ought to be applied to books such as 1 Enoch (which was not written by the real Enoch), the Wisdom of Solomon (not written by Solomon), and so on. But the collection commonly called Pseudepigrapha now stands for almost any non-canonical book that does not belong to the Old Testament or to the Protestant “Apocrypha.”

Of the Catholic Church’s “deuterocanonicals” (in Protestant terms, “Apocrypha”), the Dead Sea Scrolls preserve five copies of Tobit, three of the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirah (Ecclesiasticus), and one of the so-called Epistle of Jeremiah (not actually written by Jeremiah). The position of the Pseudepigrapha is much better. The mysterious book of 1 Enoch is represented in 12 copies from Qumran, and the book of Jubilees in no less than 13 and possibly as many as 16 copies (depending on whether the fragments represent additional manuscripts). There are also at least five additional compositions related to Jubilees, further attesting its importance. By manuscript count alone, Jubilees is better represented than all but four of the canonical Old Testament books (Psalms, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Genesis). Some scholars have suggested that both 1 Enoch and Jubilees were accepted as canonical Scripture in Qumran. This is certainly possible, although perhaps it is best to leave the question open. Popularity does not require canonicity (see more below).

Sectarian Texts

The Dead Sea Scrolls discovery unveiled many works that were previously unknown. Since they are associated exclusively with the Qumran sect, they are normally called “sectarian.” Indeed, some of these works relate specifically to life in the sectarian community. The most important are the Damascus Document (CD) and the Rule of the Community (1QS), which best inform us about life in the community. Other texts are legal in nature, such as the Temple Scroll (11QT) and miksat ma‘asei ha-Torah (4QMMT), roughly translated “some matters of the Law.” This latter text lists grievances the Qumran community had with the Temple and its officials in Jerusalem.

It will surprise many readers to know that some of the Qumran scrolls were written in “cryptic scripts.” Scholars believe these scripts are, in fact, based on the Hebrew language, but have never deciphered them.8 The original editor of these texts distinguished three different cryptic scripts: “Cryptic A,” “Cryptic B,” and “Cryptic C,” respectively. As far as we know, these cryptic scripts are used nowhere else. But they were in prominent use at Qumran. The leader of the Qumran community (the maskil, or “understanding one”) most likely communicated in Cryptic A himself, which represents no less than 55 manuscripts. Cryptic B is found in two manuscripts, and the text of origin remains undeciphered. Cryptic C is found in only one manuscript. It utilizes the paleo-Hebrew alphabet and five additional letters that cannot be identified. The individual who manages to decipher these cryptic scripts will earn lasting fame in the pantheon of scholarship!

More relevant for the text of the Old Testament and how we got the Bible are two categories of writings: the so-called works of rewritten Bible and the commentaries (pesharim, or “interpretations”). Geza Vermes coined the term “rewritten Bible” to refer to Jewish works written in either Hebrew or Aramaic that paraphrase the Scriptures, and insert their own expansions and interpretations.9 He primarily had in mind the book of Jubilees, the so-called Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen), and Pseudo-Philo’s “Book of Biblical Antiquities.” The former two works were found among the Qumran scrolls.

These works of “rewritten Bible” are interpretive expansions of biblical literature. We learn many details, such as the name of Noah’s wife (“Emzara,” according to Jubilees 4:33), the reason why God chose Abram (he refused to participate in the building of the Tower of Babel, Pseudo-Philo chapter 6), and how Abram convinced Sarai to mislead about being his wife (he dreamt prophetically that she would save him, 1QapGen column 19). There is no indication that any of these expansions are to be accepted as legitimate, but they do teach us the ancient Hebrews were careful and inquisitive readers of the Bible. More importantly for us, the close following of the biblical text confirms that their Scriptures followed the exact story­line as ours. There is no evidence that the Bible has undergone massive changes over time, as some wish to allege. We read essentially the same Bible as they did.

The Old Testament Manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The most celebrated of the Scrolls have been the Old Testament manuscripts. Although some scholars have asserted that fragments of certain New Testament verses can be located, most scholars agree that no New Testament copies, quotations, or fragments exist among the Dead Sea Scrolls.While the Qumran community did in fact exist at the time of Jesus and the Apostles, there is no evidence that any of the Dead Sea Jewish communities were aware of the early Christian movement. This means our discussion of biblical evidence must focus on the Old Testament. We shall begin by discussing the numbers of manuscripts we possess before moving to consider issues relating to the canonicity of the Old Testament.

Biblical Manuscripts by the Numbers

All Judean desert sites show a special respect for the Law of Moses. The Pentateuch represents 87 of the some 200 biblical Qumran scrolls, and 15 of the additional 25 texts discovered outside Qumran are of the Pentateuch.10 In other words, 45% of the total number of texts from the Judean desert are Pentateuchal. The Major Prophets represent 46 additional manuscripts, and the Minor Prophets 10 more. So Prophetic books account for nearly one-quarter of the whole. This leaves 25-30% for the rest of the Old Testament.

The Historical Books did not fare as well, with only 18 copies. To illustrate, just one small fragment about the size of a human hand represents all of 1 and 2 Chronicles, and no copies were identified of the Nehemiah section of Ezra-Nehemiah (which is a single book in Hebrew) or of the book of Esther. The Poetic Books, excluding Psalms, represent 14 manuscripts. But 39 manuscripts of Psalms alone were discovered, 36 of which are from Qumran. Broadly speaking, the popularity and dispersion of biblical scrolls in the Judean Desert matches very closely what we observe among the books quoted in the New Testament.

Among stand-alone books at Qumran, Psalms takes the crown (39 manuscripts), followed by Deuteronomy (33), Genesis (24), Isaiah (22), and Exodus (18). Interestingly, four of these five books were in the “top five list” of books quoted by Jesus: Psalms (11), Deuteronomy (10), Isaiah (8), and Exodus (7). In fact, Table 1 compares the number of Qumran manuscripts with the frequency of explicit quotation in the New Testament. Although books can be used without necessarily being quoted, Table 1 provides an interesting point of comparison.

Biblical Book Judean Desert
Manuscripts
New Testament
Quotations
Psalms 39 69
Deuteronomy 33 32
Genesis 24 24
Isaiah 22 51
Exodus 18 31
Leviticus 17 12
Numbers 11 1
Minor Prophets 10 25
Daniel 8 0
Jeremiah 6 4
Ezekiel 6 0
Job 6 1
1–2 Samuel 4 3
Ruth 4 0
Song of Songs 4 0
Lamentations 4 0
Judges 3 0
1-2 Kings 3 3
Joshua 2 1
Proverbs 2 5
Ecclesiastes 2 0
Ezra 1 0
1-2 Chronicles 1 0
Nehemiah 0 1
Esther 0 0
Table 1: Number of Dead Sea Scrolls by biblical book compared with New Testament quotations by biblical book11

The Biblical Manuscripts and the Old Testament Canon

So far we have discussed mostly facts. But what do these facts mean? It is prudent to remember that absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. In other words, if certain books are missing (such as Esther or Nehemiah) or are poorly represented (such as Chronicles or Ezra) among the Dead Sea Scrolls, we cannot on that basis alone conclude that the Qumran community rejected them from their biblical canon. And the opposite is true: if certain books are well represented among the Dead Sea Scrolls (such as Jubilees or 1 Enoch), we cannot on that basis alone conclude that the Qumran community accepted them into their biblical canon. What books people like to read and what books people consider inspired may, in fact, be different. We know from modern experience that certain books of the Bible are underappreciated and undertaught among Christians. Do we wish to exclude these books from the canon? Of course not. Again, popularity is not the same thing as canonicity.

The truth is that the Dead Sea Scrolls are of limited value in answering Old Testament questions of canonicity. They apparently did not think in those terms, and never addressed the question of which books were in and which ones were out. The better question is to ask what the Qumran sectarians considered authoritative. And in order to answer this question, we must move beyond simply counting manuscripts. We must attempt to understand how the biblical literature was used.

We shall start with the name of “Moses,” which occurs over 150 times in the sectarian manuscripts. All sections of the Pentateuch are quoted and interpreted as inspired literature. This should not surprise us, for the Pentateuch was the most popular portion of the Bible among all Jewish groups at the time of Jesus. But we can go further. The text of the Prophets is equally authoritative. The Pesher Habakkuk is a commentary that takes the book of Habakkuk as an inspired prophecy of the experiences of the Qumran community, and is interpreted clearly in this fashion. Other prophets, such as Isaiah and Ezekiel, are also quoted as authorities. While we cannot regard all of the prophets as equally authoritative based on the way they are quoted (Obadiah, for instance, is never quoted in this way), most of them can be regarded as both inspired and authoritative.

“David,” too, appears frequently as a sacred figure. The Qumran sectarians know the details of his life from Samuel and Chronicles. For example, “David’s actions ascended as the smoke of a sacrifice [before God] except for the blood of Uriah, but God forgave him” (CD 5.5–6). Such high estimation of David’s character explains how the Psalms he wrote would be considered authoritative. And the Psalms are frequently quoted as inspired in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In fact, the Old Testament as a whole can be characterized as “the Law, the Prophets, and David” (4QMMT fr. 14). Since the Hebrew Bible is generally divided into three parts—the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings—this threefold division is extremely important. Jesus’ own division of the Old Testament into “the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms” is very similar (Luke 24:44).

Interestingly, although many books and parts of the Old Testament are quoted as authoritative, to my knowledge Jubilees, 1 Enoch, and none of the other Apocryphal or Pseudepigraphical books found among the Dead Sea Scrolls are quoted in this way. The sectarians may have borrowed language and ideas from these books, and may have been heavily influenced by their teachings, but they did not consider them on par with the books of the Old Testament. If these secondary books were considered in any sense authoritative, they appear never to be quoted as such and thus used as the basis for doctrine. This is telling. We can compare the situation to the role of a preacher in a church. Generations of congregants may know the preacher’s retelling of the Bible better than they know the Bible itself! Yet when asked if they consider their preacher as a voice on par with the authority of Scripture, they would likely reply with an indignant, “Of course not!” Acknowledged authority may well be different from unrealized influence.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Reliability of the Biblical Text

There is no doubt that the Bible has been transmitted faithfully to us through the centuries, and that the Dead Sea Scrolls further help to substantiate that truth. Some biblical apologists, however, have often exaggerated the “confirmation” the Dead Sea Scrolls offer the text of the Old Testament. Such comments are often made on the basis of the Great Isaiah Scroll alone, and are sometimes unwisely connected to a percentage evaluation. For example, I have heard several times, “the Dead Sea Scrolls confirm the text of the Old Testament in 99% of the cases.” Not only is such a figure untrue, this whole line of assertion paints an unrealistic picture of the evidence. First, most of the biblical Scrolls, as we have seen, are extremely fragmentary, and therefore cannot offer us a clear basis of comparison for the Bible as a whole. In fact, the only biblical book to be preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls intact is the Great Isaiah Scroll. Even in the Pentateuch and the Psalms, where the evidence is good, whole sections of the biblical text are completely missing or extremely lacunose. In these cases, the Scrolls cannot confirm anything. And we are speaking here of the best-preserved books. The situation is worse for the other biblical books.

Second, many apologists exaggerate the similarities and ignore the differences between the texts that can be compared. For example, the traditional Hebrew Bible preserved in the two major Medieval manuscripts, the Aleppo and Leningrad Codices, respectively (the so-called Masoretic Text), fixes the height of Goliath as “six cubits and a span” (1 Samuel 17:4). But 4QSama, a Dead Sea Scrolls manuscript dating to the first century B.C., reads in this passage “four cubits and a span.” This means Goliath is about six feet, four inches tall instead of the Masoretic text’s gigantic nine feet, four inches tall. Further, the reading of 4QSama agrees with the translation of the Greek Old Testament, which read “four cubits and a span” well before the time of the Medieval manuscripts. Should we revise the height of Goliath in our Bibles? Most modern translations have chosen either to ignore our oldest Hebrew copy of this portion of Samuel, or to relegate the information to a footnote. Why?

Another example from Samuel can be located in a mysterious passage. The traditional Masoretic text has it as follows: “Then Nahash the Ammonite came up and encamped against Jabesh Gilead; and all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, ‘Make a covenant with us, and we will serve you.’ And Nahash the Ammonite answered them, ‘On this condition I will make a covenant with you, that I may put out all your right eyes, and bring reproach on all Israel’” (1 Samuel 11:1-2, NKJV). Nowhere else in the Bible or in ancient Near Eastern literature do we read eye-gouging as a covenantal condition. This passage is exceedingly strange and impossible to explain. But if we look at the oldest Hebrew copy of Samuel, we gain a bit more clarity.

The NRSV is one of the few modern versions to use the text of 4QSama in their translation of this passage. As a prelude to 1 Samuel 11:1, the NRSV includes the words,

Now Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had been grievously oppressing the Gadites and the Reubenites. He would gouge out the right eye of each of them and would not grant Israel a deliverer. No one was left of the Israelites across the Jordan whose right eye Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had not gouged out. But there were seven thousand men who had escaped from the Ammonites and had entered Jabesh-gilead.

This note, found in the oldest Hebrew manuscript of Samuel, explains two important details. First, it explains the demand for the right eyes of the Reubenites and Gadites. Second, it explains why the men fled to Jabesh-Gilead and why Nahash besieged it. Not only is this reading in the oldest Hebrew copy of Samuel, it actually aids our understanding of the Bible. Yet most modern English translations reject it.

One more example shall suffice. Hebrew poetry is intricately designed in ways that English readers simply cannot appreciate. One of the most complex of their poetic forms is the acrostic poem. The author will compose a coherent poem beginning each line, verse, or stanza with subsequent letters of the Hebrew alphabet from ’aleph totav. Psalm 119 is one of the most famous and indeed one of the most beautiful pieces of literature in world history. Psalm 145 is an acrostic as well. But there is one problem: a verse is missing. Psalm 145 walks through every letter of the Hebrew alphabet with the exception of the letter nun. The Greek Old Testament always had this missing line, but the later Masoretic manuscripts had lost it somewhere along the way. Alas, due to the discovery of 11QPsa, the verse can now be restored: “God is faithful in his words and gracious in all his works.”

Let us pause here to make an important observation: these cases we have been discussing are unusual. In fact, there are relatively few examples of passages that are totally different in the Dead Sea Scrolls than they appear in the Medieval Hebrew manuscripts. And the majority of the passages that are different match some other known version of the Old Testament (usually the Greek translation). This means that the Old Testament has been copied and transmitted with remarkable accuracy. It is not a stretch to say the Hebrew Bible known to Jesus is essentially the same as the one known to us. All of this leads to the conclusion that the Dead Sea Scrolls sometimes complicate, but generally confirm, our knowledge of the Old Testament text.

Conclusion

The Dead Sea Scrolls are important for a number of reasons. First, they shed light on an otherwise known Jewish group. Actually, the people who wrote the Scrolls never refer to themselves as Jews. They are intriguingly vague about their identity. Second, the Scrolls indicate that certain books of the Bible were more popular than others, a conclusion we could draw similarly from the New Testament quotations of the Old Testament.

Third, the use of the Old Testament as an authoritative source for biblical interpretation and personal and community life matches material from the New Testament as well. Finally, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls allows us to access Old Testament manuscripts more than 1,000 years older than we previously possessed. Before the discovery of the Scrolls, the oldest complete manuscript of any Old Testament book dated to the 10th century A.D. To be clear, if Moses wrote the Pentateuch in circa 1400 B.C., then our earliest copy of his complete work in Hebrew dated 2,400 years after it was written! It is with justification that the Dead Sea Scrolls are considered by many the most important biblical archaeological discovery of all time.

Endnotes

1 The scholar who was involved in and who investigated most carefully the discovery of the early scrolls is John C. Trever. His investigation is recorded in his 1965 book, The Untold Story of Qumran (Westwood, N.J.: Revell).

2 A digital interactive copy of these scrolls can be viewed at the following address: http://dss.collections.imj.org.il.

3 A twelfth cave was discovered in 2016, but this cave yielded no manuscripts. The geology of the region has changed greatly over the past 2,000 years, and it is probable that future caves will be discovered.

4 An English language version of the Israeli reporter’s interview of Strugnell was printed in the January/February, 1991 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, (17[1]).

5 The work of Wachholder and Abegg was published in two volumes by the editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review in Hershel Shanks, ed. (1992), A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society).

6 A detailed account of the role of Hebrew Union College may be found in Jason Kalman (2013), Hebrew Union College and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Cincinnati: HUC Press).

7 See Emanuel Tov (2002), “The Biblical Texts from the Judean Desert,” in The Hebrew Bible as Book: The Hebrew Bible and the Judean Desert Discoveries, ed. Edward Herbert and Emanuel Tov (London: The British Library), p. 141.

8 The most recent editor of these texts presents much of his work in Stephen Pfann (2000), Discovery in the Judean Desert (Oxford: Clarendon), 36:515-574.

9 Geza Vermes (1973), Scripture and Tradition in Judaism (Leiden: Brill, second edition).

10 See Emanuel Tov, “The Biblical Texts from the Judean Desert,” p. 141.

11 For the Dead Sea Scrolls, I use the table published in Flint and VanderKam (2002), The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (San Francisco: Harper), p. 150, on whom I depend for much information in this section. For the New Testament quotations, I use the list compiled by Crossway (https://www.crossway.org/blog/2006/03/nt-citations-of-ot/).


Published

FORNICATION AND ADULTERY MORAL ISSUES WE FACE By Dub McClish

 

http://www.oldpaths.com/Archive/McClish/Henry/WardenJr/1938/FORNICATION-AND-ADULTERY.html


FORNICATION AND ADULTERY

MORAL ISSUES WE FACE

By Dub McClish

 

Introduction

In the beginning God created mankind, made them “male and female,” and commanded them to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Gen. 1:27–28). God further inspired Moses to state His intent in this regard: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (2:24). Moses recorded the beginning of their fulfillment of God’s first command to them in simple and straightforward terms: “And the man knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain” (4:1a; cf. v. 25). That Adam “knew” Eve is a reference to their sexual union, the means by which they began the perpetual process of fruitfulness and multiplication of humankind God had ordered.

The foregoing statements make it evident that God created us with sexual instinct and appetite and with the ability to fulfill it. It is no less evident that He expected us to fulfill it. In fact, Adam and Eve could not have obeyed God’s command to reproduce and populate the earth apart from their acting upon this instinct and appetite. God made this instinct extremely strong, surpassed only by that of self-preservation, involving the desire/need for food and drink. In His infinite wisdom, He knew that the sexual appetite must be regulated and controlled for it to be a blessing rather than a curse. God thus ordained the fulfillment of the sexual instinct, but only within His own clearly stated benevolent limitations. Not only is sexual fulfillment therefore not innately sinful, evil, or shameful; when engaged in within God’s limitation for it, it is guiltless, pure, and honorable.

 

God’s Boundary for Sexual Fulfillment

The terms, fornication and adultery, which we will later define more specifically, describe sexual activity outside the boundary God ordained for it. This boundary must therefore be included in any discussion of these terms. Were there no such limitation, there would be no such thing as fornication and adultery, for “…where there is no law, neither is there transgression” (Rom. 4:15). God has issued a dictum on this matter, and, as will become clear, those who ignore, reject, and disobey it become thereby guilty of fornication and/or adultery and subject to the wrath of a holy and just God.

The only sphere of innocent sexual intercourse involves three elements:

1.             It must be between a man and a woman (Gen. 1:27–28; 2:24; Mat. 19:6–9; 1 Cor. 7:2; et al.)

2.             It must be between a man and a woman who are married to each other (1 Cor. 7:2)

3.             It must be between a man and a woman God authorizes to be married (Mat. 19:6)

Jesus stated that these limitations were God’s will in the first century, that they had been so “from the beginning” (Gen. 2:24), and, by implication, that they would always be so:

And he answered and said, Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh? So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder (Mat. 19:4–6).

Jesus employed both fornication and adultery, in the same context:

And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her when she is put away committeth adultery (v. 9).

In a companion statement in His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had previously used these same two terms in discussing marriage and divorce:

But I say unto you, that every one that putteth away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, maketh her an adulteress: and whosoever shall marry her when she is put away committeth adultery (Mat. 5:32).

The two dozen or so loopholes that men have devised in an effort to evade New Testament teaching on marriage, divorce, and remarriage are largely traceable to attempts to justify relationships that involve fornication and/or adultery. Let us now explore the meaning of these terms.

 

Defining the Terms

 

Fornication

Our English word, fornication, derives from the Latin term, fornix or fornicis, meaning an archway or a “vaulted chamber.”1 A building of such description in ancient Rome was a venue for prostitutes and became a euphemism for whoredom or a brothel (Online Etymology). The Greek word rendered “fornication” in the King James and American Standard versions (1901) is porneia (and four cognates). Of the fifty-six times this word-family appears in the New Testament, porneia occurs most frequently (twenty-six times).

Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich define porneia as “prostitution, unchastity, fornication, of every kind of unlawful sexual intercourse” (699). Kittel defines porneia in the New Testament as “all extra-marital and unnatural intercourse” (6:590). Thayer’s definition of porneia is “…illicit sexual intercourse in general” (532). Other Bible versions variously render this term as “sexual immorality” (NKJV), “unchastity” (RSV, TCNT), and “marital unfaithfulness” (NIV). Porneia is obviously a comprehensive term that embraces every sort of sexual union besides that which God has ordained within Scriptural marriage (i.e., sodomy, lesbianism, incest, bestiality, prostitution, adultery).

 

Adultery

Adultery in the English language traces back to the A.D. fourteenth century, when it was brought over from the Latin term, adulterare, meaning to corrupt (Dictionary.com). Adultery translates the Greek noun, moicheia.2 Kittel defines this word simply as “adultery, illicit intercourse” (4:730). While Thayer defines moicheia as “adultery,” he defines the cognate verb, moichao as “to have unlawful intercourse with another’s wife” (417). It is telling that Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich do not define any of this family of Greek terms except by the words, adultery, adulterer, adulteress, commit adultery, and adulterous (527–28), omitting any description of that which constitutes adultery. Their doing so presumes that all English readers will be aware that these terms relate to physical sexual infidelity regarding one’s spouse. W.E. Vine defines the noun, moichos, as denoting one ”who has unlawful intercourse with the spouse of another” (14).

The latter day postulation that adultery refers only to “breaking the covenant” of marriage rather than to any sexual activity is merely a paltry, juvenile attempt to circumvent some of the most plain, literal, and explicit doctrine of the Son of God and His inspired writers regarding marriage, divorce, and remarriage. In spite of this fact, some brethren (e.g., the late John Edwards, Olan Hicks, Truman Scott [instructor at Sunset International Bible Institute], et al.), have touted and/or continue to tout this demonic error. Such preposterous theorizing is born of sheer convenience and flies in the face of history and scholarship, both ancient and modern.

Fornication, then, is a broad term that embraces every form of sexual prohibition and deviance, whatever one’s marital status, while adultery relates particularly to sexual congress of a married person with another person besides one’s own spouse, thus representing a betrayal of one’s marriage vows. While all adultery constitutes fornication, not all fornication is adultery. Fornication may relate to marriage, but adultery particularly does so. Both terms are also used sparingly in a metaphorical sense to describe unfaithfulness to the Christ (e.g., “fornication” [Rev. 2:14; 17:2; et al.]; “adultery” [Mat. 12:39; Jam. 4:4]).

 

The Corinthianized American Culture

When Paul walked into Corinth in about A.D. 51, he entered a city known throughout the civilized world for its moral corruption. A hint of this moral turpitude is evident in his statement in 1 Corinthians 6:9–11:

Or know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, …And such were some of you….

This pagan metropolis was renowned for its temple to the goddess, Aphrodite, allegedly hosting a thousand or more temple prostitutes. From Paul’s description, it was obviously a center of sodomy, as well. Even in an amoral pagan world, Corinth was so distinguished for its debauchery and lewdness that men made a verb of its name. To “Corinthianize” meant to corrupt and debase.

Our great nation has become “Corinthianized” to a substantial degree over the past fifty years. To identify the principal source of this moral declension, we must go back to the 19th century English naturalist, Charles Darwin. His On the Origin of the Species (1859) gave base men an excuse to deny the existence of a Creator to Whom they must give account for their behavior, including their sexual conduct. Darwin’s theories created a new religion whose devotees have prostrated themselves before a new trinity of nature, accident, and vast eons. They could now replicate the “morals” of animals, since, after all, that is all we are—mere advanced apes. The adoption of Darwin’s God-dismissive theories by the immense majority of the scientific community in our nation meant that this God-denying doctrine would find its way into the university curricula and then into public school textbooks at every level. The influence of evolutionary theory on sexual mores has been undeniably powerful and widespread.

Numerous and extensive factors coalesced in the 1960s, causing drastic changes in attitudes toward sexual behavior and producing a well-named “sexual revolution.” Perhaps we may profit by noting some of the more specific factors of this phenomenon.

The influence of Alfred Charles Kinsey can hardly be overemphasized. This biologist “researcher” at Indiana University is credited with being the “father of sexology” (i.e., the study of human sexual behavior). He published his first book on the subject, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, in 1948, and followed it in 1953 with Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Both books soared to the top of the best-seller lists. Only years later was it revealed that he got some of his statistics on sexual responses of little boys from a serial pedophile, whose identity he shielded, allowing him to continue his wicked and criminal activity. He derived his data from more than mere interviews, however. According to Wikipedia:

Kinsey’s sex research went beyond theory and interview to include observation of and participation in sexual activity, including homosexual activity, with co-workers and others.… Kinsey filmed sexual acts which included co-workers in the attic of his home as part of his research…to ensure the film’s secrecy, which would have caused a scandal had it become public knowledge (Wikipedia).

Kinsey has been unmasked in recent years as not only a fraud in his “research,” but an obsessive pervert who hid behind an academic facade to live out his own sexual fantasies.

Nevertheless, the influence of his books was major in moving sexual activity from the marital bed to the anywhere with anyone anytime. He gave our countrymen an excuse (if not actual encouragement) to experiment with “guiltless” sex as mere recreation. Perhaps, more than any other one person, he prepared the way for the “sexual revolution.”

Decades before Kinsey’s degeneracy, however, theological modernism and liberalism had been churning out an ever-increasing number of faithless graduates from their sectarian seminaries. By the middle part of the century (post-World War II), the effects of these pulpiteers and professors began to take a major toll on the moral fiber of the nation. From its inception the vast majority of its citizens had accepted the Bible as God’s standard of moral behavior. As more and more churchgoers heard their “pastors” from Sunday to Sunday cast doubt on the Bible’s inspiration and infallibility, God’s Word became less and less influential on national behavior in general, and on morality in particular.

Every day of my public school years through 1953 began with a homeroom devotional period, including a Bible reading and prayer. These were outlawed by a Supreme Court ruling in 1962. Coincidentally (or perhaps, not), “values-neutral” “sexuality education” courses began finding their way into the public high schools in 1963, teaching the fundamentals of sexual performance, but allowing children to reach their own conclusions about sexual perimeters. The premise of these courses was that “teenagers are going to be sexually active anyway,” so the main concern of the curriculum was to instruct in “safe sex.” Even a dummy way down on the dummy scale can deduce that plugging in classes on sexual performance and unplugging prayer and Bible reading is a bad formula for strengthening and elevating moral standards in young people. The tipping point of the moral decline of our nation can undeniably be dated from the time of these events, and I suspect they were a prime cause of the decline as well.

Millions of young post-World War II parents listened more to the radical leftist pediatrician, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and his anti-discipline, instant-gratification advice for the rearing of children than they did to inspired wisdom. The pampered children of those indulgent and permissive parents reached their late teens in the mid-1960s. Many of these were ripe for the radical anti-establishment agenda of such hard-core rascals as Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and Bill Ayers with their slogans of “If it feels good, do it,” and “Kill your parents.” Such influences produced the maelstrom of radical anti-war riots on dozens of college campuses and in many cities. (Ayers, mentioned above, close associate of President Obama in Chicago, was a notorious leader in such revolutionary activities.)

The general aim of these feckless punks was the fomenting of sufficient societal chaos and violence to overthrow former standards of civil democratic order, especially moral standards. In this same time frame, Hugh Hefner introduced his “playboy philosophy” and magazine, paving the way for public tolerance, if not glorification of pornography and its frequent offspring, fornication. While these civil and moral upheavals were occurring, social, theological, and political liberals were preaching their “gospel” of tolerance and non-judgmentalism regarding increasing sexual promiscuity.

Predictably, the entertainment industry began to relax notably its former standards (such as they were) in the 1960s. Scenes, words, and themes that formerly were not permitted on the big screen gradually began to appear, most of them involving sexual liberties. Lyrics in rock and roll songs picked up the same theme. Though they would seem mild compared with subsequent ones, they were risqué and shocking at the time. AM radio in those days still was mostly disc jockeys playing records between hourly news breaks. In the 1960s and 1970s, I called radio stations several times and shamed them for playing songs with very suggestive lyrics.

Television was bound to follow Hollywood. With but few exceptions, its programming since the mid-1970s has been characterized by ever-increasing levels of indecency, much of which has been specifically aimed at sexual stimulation and titillation. The Internet has made pornography and even arranging rendezvous for fornicators available at the mere click of a computer mouse. The relaxing of heterosexual moral standards has given opportunity for sodomites and lesbians to make great headway in their campaign to earn general acceptance for their abominations.

Atheists, Humanists, and Secularists, believing that physical life is all there is, are all in favor of the “free-love” attitude and are reveling in its acceptance. The odious American Civil Liberties Union has been a major force in defending the grossest forms of moral turpitude and in seeking to repress Biblical influence on every hand. The sexual permissiveness these and other factors have produced threatens to drown our nation in a flood of moral filth. America has been Corinthianized.

 

Some Consequences of the Sexual Revolution

No one can fully predict all of the consequences this decline of decency will eventually yield. It has the potential to bring our nation literally into bondage. The observable results already are many and damaging.

Sex has been degraded, devalued, and dirtied. The Hebrews writer expressed the Divine will when he stated: “Let marriage be had in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled” (Heb. 13:4a). This statement implies that to employ “the bed” (a literary figure for the sexual union) outside of marriage defiles it. Ungodly and undisciplined folk have dragged it out of the marital bedroom, the sphere of God’s honorable limitation for it.

They have reduced sex to the level of barnyard and alley cat behavior (with apologies to the animals in many ways). Rather than its being the God-ordained lovely and pure relationship between one woman and one man who become one flesh “as long as they both shall live,” to millions the sexual union has become merely another form of casual recreation with no more shame, mystery, or privacy attached to it than a game of “Trivial Pursuit” or “Monopoly.” It is something about which to make jokes and laugh.

The degradation of sex and the corresponding promotion of adultery and fornication by its illicit practice have dealt extensive damage to God-ordained marriage, home, and family. All of the foregoing elements of the sexual revolution have made it much easier (yea, given encouragement) for spouses to stray from their marital vows. “No-fault” divorce laws (that down-play the seriousness of adultery) began appearing in the early 1960s. These laws made it far more convenient for husbands and wives to go their separate ways when they found that “certain other” one they just must have. Divorce ceased to carry the shame that had been connected with it for so long. Non-marital and extra-marital sexual encounters have now become matters of little concern to the masses. It is common practice for a couple to “live together” openly, sometimes for years, and produce children before “going through the motions” of a marriage ceremony—if they even bother. They are even praised for being so “broadminded” and such is glorified by the entertainment industry. It is now all but impossible to get a divorce on the stated ground of adultery, a symptom of society’s moral corruption.

Although unstated, fornication (including adultery) is the cause of thousands of divorces each year.

The widespread sin of fornication has caused sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) to reach alarming levels. According to one Website: “One in five people in the United States has an STD, two-thirds of which occur in people 25 years old or younger. One in four new STD infections occur in teenagers” (Livestrong). STDs are preventable diseases and are all but non-existent among those who remain chaste until marriage and those who are married and remain faithful to their wedding vows made to and with one spouse.

Can there be any doubt about the role the sexual revolution played in the shameful Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973 that made it “open season” on babies in the womb (and sometimes more out of the womb than in it)? Abortion is generally little more than a cruel and depraved means of birth control. It is the ultimate “safety net” for participants in “affairs” and “one night stands.” The abortion advocates and the industry they have spawned are all too happy to help such mothers-to-be to dispose of that which to them is but an unwanted, inconvenient “it.” Were it not for the prevalence of adultery and fornication, the abortion mills would go out of business overnight. Adultery and fornication have precipitated tens of millions of murders since 1973.

 

The Ultimate Consequence of Fornication and Adultery

I earlier quoted the first part of Hebrews 13:4, to which I now call attention again: “Let marriage be had in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled.” Now let us notice the remainder of the verse: “For fornicators and adulterers God will judge.” This verse draws an unmistakable and indelible line between the Divinely ordained licit and the illicit fulfillment of the sexual appetite. It is licit and “undefiled” in marriages that God authorizes (Mat. 19:6). Such marriages are “honorable,” and the marriage bed pure within them. Just as clearly stated, fulfillment of the sexual instinct is illicit and “defiled,” constituting fornication and/or adultery, in all other circumstances—including state-sanctioned marriages that are not sanctioned by God. The word judge (Heb. 13:4) translates the Greek word, krino. Thayer cites Hebrews 13:4 as one of many occurrences in which context indicates it is “…used specifically of the act of condemning and decreeing (or inflicting) penalty on one” (361). Those who continue in these sins will receive God’s just condemnation and penalty on the Last Day.

Truth be told, there are few acts of which men are capable that more frequently fall under Divine censure and prohibition. In both pre-Mosaical and Mosaical eras, doctrine concerning sexual unions outside the context of marriage or with one besides one’s spouse closely parallel that conveyed in the New Testament. The seventh commandment of Moses’ Law forbade adultery, and the tenth commandment forbade coveting the wife of one’s neighbor (Exo. 20:14, 17). Elsewhere, the Law forbade incest, homosexual acts, and bestiality with violators to be cut off from Israel (Lev. 18:6–23).

The Lord and the New Testament writers continue this theme of condemnation of both fornication and adultery. Besides the Lord’s aforementioned injunctions concerning overt sexual misconduct, He further expressed His attitude toward fornication in His letters to the churches, promising dire judgment upon them if they did not repent (Rev. 2:14, 20–21). Moreover, He struck at the true source of these sins—the lustful eye and heart (Mat. 5:28; 15:19; cf. Exo. 20:17)).

Paul refers to these sins more than any other New Testament writer. As earlier noted, Corinth was a hotbed of sexual perversion and liberty, and it found its way into the church. Paul ordered the Corinthian brethren to “have no company with” the fornicating brother in their midst lest the entire church be Corinthianized with his sin (1 Cor. 5:5–11). This action was also for the purpose of saving his spirit at the Last Day (v. 5). Paul listed ten sinful behaviors that will bar one from the heavenly kingdom, half of which are sexual sins, including fornication and adultery (6:9–10; cf. his even longer list in Gal. 5:19–21, which also closes with the declaration that practitioners of such “shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven”). Later in the same First Corinthians context he labeled fornication as a sin from which the Christian must flee (v. 18). He continued in chapter 7 by urging that each man and woman should have his or her own spouse in order to avoid fornication (v. 2). To the Ephesians he wrote plainly of God’s judgment upon fornicators:

For this ye know of a surety, that no fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no man deceive you with empty words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience (5:5–6).

Several additional passages with a similar emphasis flowed from his inspired pen (e.g., 1 Cor. 10:8; 2 Cor. 12:21; Col. 3:5; 1 The. 4:3).

A “great voice out of the throne” on high informed John that fornicators (among other reprobates) shall have their part “in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death” (Rev. 21:3–8). The “great voice” further told him that fornicators, along with assorted other impenitent sinners, would be shut outside the heavenly city (22:14–15).

Adulterers will suffer the same fate, for their sin is included in fornicators.

Unmistakably, the ultimate consequence of fornication and adultery, if unrepented of, is being cast into eternal Hell, the lake of fire, the second death, and being shut outside the splendor, glory, and joy of Heaven.

 

Conclusion

We live in an exceedingly wicked world, saturated with encouragement on every hand to fulfill one’s sexual desires in ways and in settings that a righteous God cannot tolerate indefinitely. The destructive influence these constant stimuli have had and continue to have on young people is a special source of concern to all who value moral purity.

What can we do about it? Paul and his first century companions in the Gospel faced a sex-saturated world, though admittedly without the instant accessibility modern technology (print, film, TV, Internet) affords today. However, the way they responded to these corrupting influences was to preach the Word “in season, out of season” by every means at their disposal (2 Tim. 4:2). The Gospel is still God’s power to save (Rom. 1:16). The more we preach (whether by newspaper articles, Websites, radio and television programs, correspondence courses, Internet schools [such as Truth Bible Institute]), the more potential impact we may have as a purifying influence in a putrid world.

Further, we can vote for candidates at every level who we know stand for moral decency, and we can challenge, by means of phone calls and letters, those who have been elected thus to stand. Many people still read letters to editors of local newspapers, in which we can voice the need for moral purity.

We need to continue to pray for our families that our children and grandchildren may remain pure, all the while doing our best to provide Biblical moral guidance and instruction for them. We need to pray for the church of the Lord, so many members of which have succumbed to the call of compromise relating to adultery and fornication. We need to pray that men and women in positions of authority may be awakened to the reality of the moral pigpen in which our nation now wallows, and may exert leadership in reversing it. We need to pray God that in His providence we may withstand the tsunami of sexual immorality and undo the grave damage it has done the past fifty years. If we are not able to do so, given the inspired history of God’s dealing with nations and their wickedness, I am made to wonder how much more longsuffering He has left for us.

 

Works Cited

Bauer, Walter, Ed. Arndt, William F., Gingrich, Wilbur F. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1957.

Dictionary.com. “Word Origin & History: Adultery.” http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/adultery.

Divorcereform.org. “Divorce Statistics.” http://www.divorcereform.org/03statab.html.

Gesenius, William, Ed. Brown, Francis, Driver, S.A., Briggs, Charles A. The New Brown, Driver, and Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Lafayette, IN: Assoc. Pub. and Authors: 1981.

Livestrong.com. “STD Information.” http://www.livestrong.com/article/13924-std-information/Kittel, Gerhard. Ed. Friedrich, Gerhard. Trans. Bromiley, Geoffrey W. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,1968.

Online Etymology Dictionary. “Fornication.” http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=fornication.

Studylight.org. “Zanah.” The Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon http://www.studylight.org/lex/heb/view.cgi?number=02181.

Thayer, Joseph Henry. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. New York, NY: American Book Co., 1889.

Unger, Merrill F. and White, William, Jr., eds. Nelson’s Expository Dictionary of the Old Testament. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1980.

Vine, W.E. Ed. Unger, Merrill F and White, William, Jr. Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Nashville, TN: Nelson, 1996.

Wikipedia.org. “Alfred Kinsey.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Kinsey.

 

Endnotes

1         This family of words occurs forty-five times in the New Testament. The noun, porneia, rendered “fornication,” occurs twenty-six times (e.g., Mat. 5:31–32; 19:9; et al.). A handful of these occurrences are metaphorical, describing idolatry as “spiritual fornication” (Rev. 14:8; 17:2; et al.). The noun, pornos, variously rendered “fornicator” and “whoremonger,” occurs ten times, and is always used literally. The verb, porneuo, rendered “commit fornication,” occurs eight times (e.g., Mark 10:19; 1 Cor. 6:18; et al.). The verb, Ăªkporneuo, occurs one time (Jude 7). It is an intensified usage of porneuo, referring to one who becomes the servant or slave of fornication.

2         This word group is comprised of five forms that appear thirty-five times in the New Testament. The noun, moicheia, rendered “adultery,” occurs four times (e.g., Mat. 15:19). Moichos, another noun form, appears four times, also, and is rendered “adulterer” (e.g., 1 Cor. 6:9; et al.). Moichalis, yet another noun, occurs seven times, and is variously translated “adulteress,” “adulterous,” and “adultery” (e.g., 2 Pet. 2:14; et al.). Jesus also used it metaphorically in reference to apostate Judaism (e.g., Mat. 12:39; 16:4; et al.). The verb, moichao, is rendered “commit(teth) adultery, and occurs six times (e.g., Mat. 5:32; 19:9; et al.). The most frequently appearing member of this word family is moicheuo, also translated “commit adultery,” occurring fourteen times (e.g., Mat. 19:18; Mark 10:19; et al.). One of these times it is used metaphorically (Rev. 2:22).

All Scripture quotations are from the ASV (1901) unless otherwise indicated.

[Note: I wrote this MS for and presented a digest of it orally at the Annual Bellview Lectures, hosted by the Bellview Church of Christ, Pensacola, FL, June 11–15, 2011. It was published in the book of the lectures, Moral Issues We Face, ed. Michael Hatcher (Pensacola, FL: Bellview Church of Christ).]

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