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American Reformation
We believe the American church needs reformation. To go forward we must go back. This podcast will explore the theology and practices of the early church and other eras of discipleship multiplication and apply those learnings to our post-Christian/secular American culture. American Reformation is a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. Follow us at uniteleadership.org. We consult, bring together cohorts of congregations for peer to peer learning, and certify leaders for work in the church and world.
American Reformation
The Future of Pastoral Formation with Dr. James Voelz
Reverend Dr. James Voelz joins us for a riveting exploration of reformation within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the broader Christian community. Ever thought about how the gospel remains relevant in today’s fast-paced world? Dr. Voelz shares fascinating insights from his experiences at both Missouri Synod seminaries, underscoring the critical role of engaging laypeople in deep theological conversations. We promise you’ll gain a fresh perspective on why Bible study is not just a church activity but a transformative force that can invigorate both congregations and individual faith journeys.
Uncover the untapped potential of Bible study as we recount an uplifting story of how a couple’s curiosity led to six new members joining a church community. This episode reveals Bible study as more than just learning; it’s a dynamic platform for laypeople to discover their teaching gifts and contribute significantly to spreading the Gospel. Reverend Dr. Voelz advocates for pastors adopting a dialogical approach, where meaningful engagement with congregants on pressing issues strengthens the bond between scripture, pastors, and the community.
We also venture into the intriguing world of seminary education, dissecting the debate over the ending of the Gospel of Mark. Dr. Voelz navigates through the complexities of manuscript evidence and scholarly perspectives, offering a balanced view of traditional and modern theological education. Explore how technological advances impact seminary students' text engagement and the necessity of structured hermeneutics courses. Engage with these thought-provoking discussions about pastoral formation, the implications of the Mark 16:16 passage, and how these debates shape baptismal liturgy and the faith practices of today.
Welcome to the American Reformation Podcast, tim Allman. Here I pray. The joy of the Lord is your strength as you buckle up for an awesome conversation today with one of my favorite professors on planet Earth, the Reverend Dr Jim Veltz. How are you doing today, dr Veltz?
Speaker 2:Doing great. Buckle up I like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're going to have a good time. So standard opening question this is the American Reformation podcast. How is you look? And you've got quite a breadth experience, both within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and beyond. How are you praying for reformation, especially understanding the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and beyond.
Speaker 2:How are you praying for reformation, especially understanding the times today, dr Veltz? Well, I'll tell you what I think it comesneyed, redoing of old phraseologies and everything like that. I mean, you know, I mean actually engaging. What's going on in society? What's going on in people's thinking? You know, every year I go to the National Society of Biblical Literature meeting. I'm going again this year. It's always in November, the weekend before Thanksgiving. It's going to be out in San Diego this year and just to give you an example of what I'm talking about, a couple of years ago I went to a session. This was unbelievable.
Speaker 2:Tim called the Problem of Whiteness and this was a thing. There was a white guy leading it and five black pastors and they were actually pretty good. And then we got into all kinds of hermeneutical discussion because I asked some questions and people got mad at me and everything. But what I'm talking about, tim, is we got to engage. We got to engage and not be what would you say, tim? Say Tim withdrawing, you know, not becoming a monastery fortress or something like that, but we got to be out engaging and then preaching the word of God. I mean I just well, you know, you've had me and you know how big hermeneutics is? For me that's, that's so huge, because if we're not engaging people in their thinking and so on, all of a sudden the gospel is not making any sense to them.
Speaker 1:Well, that, and it has to start. It has to start inside our church. Yeah, it has to start with us engaging one another and maybe challenging or nuanced theological conversations regarding the changing context today. And then it seems like in the early church, this is go there, not just to the Missouri Synod, right, but it seems like in the early church they're kind of testing things out with one another. There's much debate, obviously, acts 15 gets quoted, obviously the Galatian controversy and circumcision and like, but they're staying connected to one another, all for the sake of the mission of engaging a pagan culture, I mean you. So I would love to get your take on the old phraseology. Use old phraseology when you, when you say the gospel and I think you're you're talking about a narrowing of what it means to proclaim the gospel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and obviously it narrow, it narrows down on Christ, for sure, Christ crucified. But when you say old phraseology, Dr Veltz, what does that mean and what does that sound like for us and what are you concerned about when you use that phrase old phraseology?
Speaker 2:For example, I heard a sermon recently where the pastor just comes trotting out with the phrase sanctification.
Speaker 2:Well, do people actually know what that means? You know, it's not like you can't use the word, but if you're going to use the word you better be talking about an explanation of it and then you know. Kind of working it into the conversation, tim, I want to tell you you probably know this, but at St Paul's de Pere in St Louis, when we went there, I taught a Bible class for 25 years there and I engaged in the deepest kind of stuff, hermeneutically with the people I remember. Let me give you a specific instance. You're going to love this In Matthew, when there's the discussion of the time of the end by Jesus in Matthew 24, and he says no one knows the time of the end.
Speaker 2:One knows the time of the end, not the angels in heaven and then there's a variant reading nor the sun. Okay, ah, interesting. So the sun may not know the time of the end. I engaged that class for three weeks in a discussion of the communication of attributes. In a discussion of the communication of attributes, you know what? Does it mean that God becomes incarnate? Does it limit him? If it does limit him, in what way? Or maybe it's really not limiting him, and so on. So one of the things that I would say to you in answer to this question is pastors everybody listening to this, but pastors especially, do not underestimate your lay people in two respects Number one, how interested they actually are in in-depth Bible study. And number two, how much they actually can engage, absorb, deal with and so on.
Speaker 2:Tim, let me just say a little bit more about this because this is a big thing for me. I have taught at both seminaries this year. Tim, this year is my 50th year teaching at the two Missouri Synod seminaries, teaching at the two Missouri Synod seminaries. And I will tell you from teaching at both seminaries, I think both seminaries have made the mistake of underestimating how important adult Bible study is. You know I'm not here. You know I'm not here to belittle preaching or anything like that, but you know I almost get the impression at both seminaries that preaching is this big thing and then if people have time they do Bible study.
Speaker 2:I would say it's probably in terms of engaging people. It should be the reverse. For example, I'm talking about that, st Paul's de Pere Bible study. A couple dropped in to the church, and they happened to come to the Bible study. The guy and his wife got so enthralled by this, they started bringing their friends, and we had six people join the church just through that Bible study. Those people never went to a service, you know, at the beginning they only came to the Bible study. Well why? Because they're actually interested in what the Bible says it is. You know, I think we so underestimate how important this is. And then my second point, though, is equally important. They are willing to engage, sort of the deepest stuff. I mean, tim, I teach in my Bible studies what I teach in the seminary classes. It's just not as fast, not as quick, you know. But you know, can I just put that out here in our podcast today that, especially pastors, please take super seriously your adult Bible study.
Speaker 1:Dr Vales, oh my gosh. Yes, I couldn't agree more and I'm going to take it up one step because we were talking before I hit play that. This is this. I'm a leadership systems guy. Can a pastor have a vision of some of the laity not all, but those who are actively engaged? Some of them may have the gift of teaching, and could this, could this bible study interaction be a front door toward opening a theological mind to raise up other communicators of the gospel within the body of Christ?
Speaker 2:Oh well, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Sure, sure, obviously. I mean it's not rocket science here. This is kind of what Jesus did. This is kind of what the early church did. They identified men who were able to teach 2 Timothy 2, 2, and raise them up. It's nothing other than intentional Bible study that has a multiplying discipleship intention, moving forward. That's all we've been engaged in here at Christ Greenfield. I don't know that I've ever kind of articulated it that way, but there's power in dialogue, right? This is why the teaching task is so huge. I mean, it's the difference between monologue and dialogue. Monologue one way, dialogue there's a conversation and.
Speaker 1:I don't know, maybe one of the intentions and I don't want to go too far down a negative hole here but it may be that we've not been adequately trained to understand the nuance of the theological conversation so that we can have the word to say, and not even the word to say, but even the humble posture to say, hey, let's do.
Speaker 1:I need to learn more. The scriptures are active and living and I always have more to learn. So I think when we put on the pastor, you have to be like the Bible answer man right, and you've got to understand everything. I guess the question is this, dr Veltz after they leave the seminary, are our pastors growing in love of their people and obviously most especially in love of the depth of the word of God? And if that's the case, game on on this. But maybe it could be that, ooh, I don't know that I really want to engage that way, cause there may be some things that make me uncomfortable that I have to encounter in the texts that are maybe counter to even the way I understand church right now in 2024. Any any observations there, dr Veltz?
Speaker 2:Yeah, two things. I can't remember which year it was. It's either 04 or 07. You'll remember it when there was this huge tsunami in Southeast Asia and you know hundreds of thousands of people died.
Speaker 2:Well, I was teaching my Bible class then and we stopped teaching Matthew for three weeks and discussed issues of evil. And you know why do good things, bad things happen to good people. You know that, that, that sort of stuff, and we engage that because that was on the people's minds and hearts, and properly the people's minds and hearts and properly. So you know. So the Bible class in that sense, you know you're always founded in the text but, like I said with my discussion of the communication of attributes, the stuff leaks out all over the place. It's founded in the word of Scripture and then you engage people where they are. Now I have one member, denny Barnett, who is a ex-Baptist. He grew so much and it was so important for him to have this class because you know he'd come in and say, dr Vells, dr Vells, a guy at work today was saying this. Then we engage that, see, then we engage that, so that my Matthew class I'm not making this up for your listeners my Matthew class lasted 25 years.
Speaker 2:That is that, I'm sorry. 18 years, 18 years. It lasted 18 years and after the 18 years then I embarked in Mark. Then I came back to Fort Wayne here, but by that time we had gotten through five chapters of Mark. Okay, in another seven years. Why? Because it was a fertile seed bed to discuss all kinds of other things, and often we would only get through one verse or something like that. So, but I'm going to go back specifically to your question. I think our pastors aren't oriented to be dialogical, they're oriented to be monological and that's the emphasis on preaching. Now, as you said about five minutes ago and I'm going to repeat what you said, we're not here to be tearing down preaching or anything like that because I mean you have the people and you can preach the word of God to them and everything like this.
Speaker 2:But in the Bible class, you can address things in a deep way and then address the things that are important to your people, not just to what you think are important. And this is why, tim, I was doing this. When you were my student, I was using the flipped classroom method. You know where you read the chapter, you submit to me reaction papers and then we run the class on the basis of the reaction papers. I run all my classes this way now. Why? Because then we deal with what's important to you, not what I think is important to you.
Speaker 2:I mean, obviously there's stuff I want to make sure you get across, but it is so, so critical to engage people where they are and then connect them to the Word of God. I can't tell you how happy I am to hear your attitude toward this, because this is where growth is going to take place. This is where it's going to take place is engagement in in-depth Bible study.
Speaker 1:I have 10 men of various ages, from 17 to gosh, I don't know, 55 or something like that, that show up every Sunday, dr Veltz, at 6 AM for a Bible study class. Before our services get going, and when we have, we have a few wonderful teachers that have a nine o'clock morning Bible class that attracts a lot. A large amount of people are. So the struggle is I'm going to go back. The struggle is like I got four services, the larger church right. I got four services on a Sunday. So I have to get creative during the week and then during my, my catalyst time, that 6am time. But all of those leaders that are coming to that 6am Sunday morning, they're all like in our leadership development kind of pathway, the pastoral ministry could be in their future, co-vocationally or vocationally into the future. So, yeah, it's very, very exciting. Couldn't love more what you're saying, brother. This is so, so good. So let's, we got to get to the article. You got to land it, dr Veltz, before we get off of this.
Speaker 2:Let me just talk about, you know, my new book, which came out last October 31st, so it's about one year Principles of Biblical Interpretation for Everyone. This is the layman's hermeneutics, the lay people's hermeneutics, those guys who are coming at 6 am. This is what they should be studying right here. This is put out by Concordia Seminary Press in St Louis, and this is not just a watered-down version of what does this mean, my big hermeneutics.
Speaker 2:This is completely rewritten. I mean, it's got obviously the same ideas, but it's packaged differently and so forth, and I want everybody to be aware of this. I'm not getting any money for it, so I'm not really, you know, promoting it for that kind of a reason, but this is the kind of thing that is going to be effective for those people at 6am. And the book is set up in such a way that you read the front part and then there are these notes that are referenced in the back, called deeper dives, and you can go deeper into issues, but if you don't want to, you don't have to say, and so there will be a whole bunch of lay people who do that. Other people just read the front of the book, but please make people aware of this.
Speaker 1:Well, thank people just read the front of the book, but please make your people aware of this. Well, thank you for making me aware of it. There's so many books that get written by so many amazing leaders like yourself that sometimes some slip through the cracks. I'm glad you brought that up, brother, thank you, thank you. So let's look at seminary education here, and then we're going to get to the article.
Speaker 2:I just had a couple questions.
Speaker 1:I mean you've been in seminary education for quite a while, at both seminaries. As you think of pastoral formation, what has changed, not changed, what needs to stay the same, what should change in your mind? Just take a broad brush view of seminary education, because I think a lot of things have evolved. I mean I've been out almost now, dr Veltz, 20 years. Think of the massive, massive changes that have taken place culturally, technologically, et cetera, in seminary education and are we responding to that? So just would love to get your take on that, dr Veltz.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say a negative, but this is, this is old fogeyism, but this is old fogeyism okay. A negative is, I think people have become too dependent upon electronic stuff and, as a result, you know, there's just a big difference between encountering the text like this and encountering a page with a bunch of numbers and other stuff folded in and so on, like this that's code, this is reading, communication is reading communication. And to me this is a negative that people have become really dependent on logos and stuff like that and that you don't, you don't actually I don't know what would you say, tim sort of joy in the text itself.
Speaker 2:You know the text is just sort of seen as some cipher or something like that. So, and as a result, people miss not only the beauty but the power and the genius of the authors. I mean, when I, tim, when I wrote the commentaries on Mark, the longer I worked the more I was in awe of a huge mind. You know that I was. I was in the presence of greatness, I was really in the presence of greatness. And you just sit back and you look at this and you say you know, we are not worthy, we really aren't.
Speaker 2:I think that kind of engagement with these authoritative writers we're losing with this electronic stuff. I really do believe that. I do think, since you asked and you know I'm not all that negative about it because it's got some real positive aspects to it, all right, but you've got to be able to engage it correctly and so forth I think that there are too many people in our orbit that are completely negative about postmodernism, you know, and it's all a kind of a recidivist, as if modernism was the great friend of Christianity, which it certainly wasn't. It gave us the closed universe you know so well hermeneutics is. Fort Wayne doesn't even have a hermeneutics course. They have no hermeneutics course in their curriculum. They believe you can do all this kind of catch as catch can in the various exegetical courses and I think this is a complete disaster. You know, you know what it's like in my stuff on hermeneutics. You have to actually think about it. You can't be, you can't be just kind of doing it by the by.
Speaker 2:And let me at this point here, tim, if you'll allow me, let me just reference the two text conference that that Andy Bartel, paul Robbie, my former colleagues and I have organized, where it's going to be our fourth year and we are putting on this conference. It's the second week of June. We're going to be meeting again in Mundelein, illinois, at University of St Mary, the Lake Retreat Center, and we are just considering big issues of hermeneutics that're going to have a tremendous speaker come in this year talking about post-Holocaust. Just think of what's happening in our country with anti-Semitism, post-holocaust, doing exegesis in the light of anti-Jewish sentiment and so on, like that. These are challenging issues. What do you do with Romans and so forth, you know? In this context, I just think people don't realize that we are engaged in interpreting reality against the reality that's given to us in the scriptures. I'm not sure that the seminary curricula are really engaged in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's good. If people want to hear more about the two-text conference, Dr Veltz, where could they go to find out about it?
Speaker 2:Well, just Google reading two texts and we've got a website. Or they can send me an email and I can tell them more. Or they can send me an email and I can tell them more. Veltsj at csledu and I can give you. Or Bartelt A. Andy Bartelt kind of does the nuts and bolts of communicating with people. I think people would be extremely interested in something like this. And it's you know, you and I operate, we're we both. We're both holding onto the stick, but we operate on different ends of it. You know you operate on the leadership organizational thing. I operate more on the theoretical stuff to deal with. We need each other and well, we can't retreat into some kind of monastery-like idea.
Speaker 1:I 100% agree, and people have heard me, dr Velds, be quite bold about creative ways that leadership development all the way up to pastoral formation can take place. Today, what I think often gets presupposed is that I want a downgrading of hermeneutics and deep exegesis connected to the original text, and nothing could be further from the truth. I think we can do. I think we can do both and, yes, absolutely, pastors have kind of unique bents. We get not every path we're not cookie cutters right. God made us in certain ways with certain unique passions. But our ultimate passion is, if you're a pastor, our ultimate passion is the word of God, to abide in the word of God, to get the word of God into the hearts and ears of people that they may believe and go and proclaim, because the days are far too short for us to look at one another and and not not cherish the diversity of gifts that have been given. And specifically for us lifers in the Lutheran church, missouri synod, there are so many uniquely gifted people that can agree on so many things and then can have nuanced discussions about. I think a lot of that and I'm not going to go down the political LCMS here, but I think a lot of the discussions are more on the how rather than the, the what, and if we can just kind of disagree agreeably and kind of run respective tests in formation, I think that would be helpful for the next generation of of leaders being raised up in the LCMS. But I do agree with you being with God's people, being with leaders, deeply studying the text, the original is the best. And so can we raise up more exegetes within the LCMS? I really, really think we can who are bent in the Velsian mold and there are many who are there, brother, and so this is so, so good.
Speaker 1:So let's geek out now Last half of the podcast here. I loved your article. I had Dr Lewis on and we dealt with the first, yeah, last week, and I don't, yeah, you guys hopefully will be kind of linked up together. So Dr Lewis has spent a lot of time on the first eight verses of Mark's gospel, chapter 16. And now your article dealt with the last 12 verses. So get us into the article, the origin of the article and the evolution of being able to critique the text in recent years. We're going to geek out on Mark 16. This is going to be great, and go, dr Belts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know this all really revolves around. You know, when I was doing the commentary, the two-volume commentary, on Mark. You have to decide what are you going to do with verses 9 to 20 of chapter 16. They are in the vast, vast majority of manuscripts. Now, the fact of the matter is that the question of the genuineness of the last 12 verses didn't really come to the fore until the middle of the 19th century, with two related things the discovery of Codex Sinaiticus on the Sinai, st Catherine's Monastery. And then what started to happen at the same time is the publication of some of the other big manuscripts, like Vaticanus, which was known in the 15th century already but was seen as some kind of outlier, and then suddenly this was published and manuscript D Beza was more widely distributed, and so on. Now it is true the following statement is true that in the Greek manuscripts that we have, the only manuscripts that do not have the long ending are Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Okay, all the rest of them do. Now there is one Latin manuscript that also omits that long ending. Now why should we entertain at all that verses 9 to 20 are not genuine, given the fact that the manuscript evidence is so overwhelming? Well, a couple of things. Number one, the grammar is markedly different and people say Tim, well, that's subjective. You know something like the grammar? In fact, it's way less subjective than you think.
Speaker 2:Now, in preparation for our podcast, I whipped up this little paragraph OK, our podcast, I whipped up this little paragraph, okay, and this is a paragraph that reflects this. What I have here is not actually what my mother wrote to me, but she did, about 25 years ago, write something like this, so I wrote this up. My parents had this problem with the basement of their house that had a big crack in it, okay, and I got a letter that said something like this, and I want you and all the listeners to listen to this Jimmy. She always called me Jimmy, jimmy. The man came yesterday to talk about the crack in our basement. It looks real bad. We're worried. He told us that, due to the natural settling process, cracks develop quite naturally and must be dealt with in a timely manner in order to prevent more serious issues. We have to do something. I hope we have the money, love Mom issues. We have to do something. I hope we have the money, love mom.
Speaker 2:Now that sentence that I wrote there, that kind of complex thing about the natural setting. You know my mother did not say that she is right. I mean she is channeling the guy, or you know, reading off of a thing or something like this, now you can say that's subjective, but it's not, everybody knows. All of a sudden it's longer, it's more complex, there's subordinate clauses and everything like that.
Speaker 2:Well, that a couple of salient points that even the pro-long-ending, genuine people don't appreciate, and one of them is the demonstrative pronoun echinus, or in feminine, echinus, used in the nominative as a subject. Okay. So in the long ending, three times at least, this demonstrative pronoun is used kind of to mean this woman, she or these people, they. Now, you would never know this from reading a translation, because the translation will just take this nominative and translate it she or they. Okay. But in the Greek, in the nominative, that demonstrative pronoun is used as a subject three times within the space of about four verses. It is never used that way in the entire Gospel of Mark. For the rest of Mark, that is a kind of what I would call a kind of a linguistic tick. You know how some people have phrases that they use. Now I don't know how. Uh, how old are your kids?
Speaker 1:all high schoolers uh 17, 16, 15, yep, perfect, perfect uh, do they use like a lot, like I was?
Speaker 2:was talking to my friend Jeannie.
Speaker 1:My girl's more than my son, the girl's more than my son. Yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's sort of a linguistic trick, tick T-I-C. A linguistic tick. So like I was talking to Mary and she was saying like we should go to this, all right Now, mary, and she was saying like we should go to this, all right Now. Now, if all of a sudden you see a transcription and this like thing appears like this, then all of a sudden it disappears for three pages and then it reappears. You're going to say there's something odd about that, because that's the way the person writes, that's the way this kind of thing is, this is. You never hear me use like in that, in that manner. If all of a sudden you see a transcription of me saying well, like I was talking to him and like we were saying you know, there's some phony about that and that's what I'm talking about here, that's what I'm talking about here.
Speaker 2:I think the grammatically, linguistically, the people who argue for the genuineness of the long ending don't appreciate something like this. Plus, they don't appreciate larger syntactical things. In other words, they think it's all about words. But, like my little paragraph about Jimmy, the man came to talk to us. Actually, what's the real revelation is that it's longer, more complicated, that sentence about the settling. It's got subordinate clauses. See that kind of thing. Nobody looks at that sort of thing. They just think it's all about vocabulary. It's not about vocabulary principally. All right. So this is my first point is that the long ending grammatically is not Congress.
Speaker 2:Second, and most people don't understand this, the manuscripts, a bunch of manuscripts, actually discuss the matter of the ending of Mark in the manuscript in the margin, the matter of the ending of Mark in the manuscript in the margin. Okay, so, for example, there is this set of manuscripts called Family One, which is a bunch of manuscripts that have like readings and they say the following after 16, eight, with the women going and they were afraid. And then it says here in some of the copies until here the evangelist fulfills, fills up his writing, his writing until where Eusebius, the follower of Pamphilus, drew the line. In many others also these are presented and then they put the long ending. So I want the listeners to appreciate this. That set of words is actually in the manuscript. Tim, when I was at the seminary they never actually told us about this, that there's an actual discussion. It's the only place I know any place in the New Testament and that includes the woman taken in adultery. You know, in John chapter 8, where the manuscripts have a marginal discussion of what's going on in the ones that they're following Now you'll notice.
Speaker 2:This thing that I read to you mentions Eusebius. Eusebius, now, eusebius, was the number one church scholar at the time of Nicaea, so he was centered in Caesarea and he was a personal friend of Constantine. Constantine gave him the job we have the records for this Constantine gave him the job of coming up with 50 manuscripts of the scriptures for the new Christian churches in Constantinople following Nicaea and so forth, and so Eusebius was kind of the number one guy. Well, he discusses specifically in a letter to a person called Marinus the letter in Latin is ad marinum, to Marinus. He discusses specifically the problem of the ending of Mark. And here's what he says he says that the majority of manuscripts end with for they were afraid, and then he adds at least the accurate ones. So this guy who is charged with putting together 50 Bibles for the new churches of Constantinople says to this other guy that the majority of the ones he knows end at for they were afraid, and then he didn't have to add this other thing and he says, in fact, the accurate ones. Well, I actually think that it is. How should I say this, tim? It's kind of impossible to get around Eusebius's testimony, you know, because the guy is a text critic himself and is working with this kind of stuff right from the word go. So, and he's Constantine's right-hand man, all right, then I'm going to add a third thing.
Speaker 2:Now there is a huge book by a guy by the name of John Bergen, b-u-r-g-o-n, and he has this big study and he's trying to do the genuineness of the long ending. Okay Now, it's a really great study. I'll have to tell you I admire it greatly, but he, for example, does not. He tries to discount Eusebius. It doesn't quite work and he doesn't really understand these larger syntactical things and so on. But here's the point I'm going to make. One of his attacks and this is your listeners should know this anybody who is for the long ending will do this they will mercilessly attack Vaticanus and Sinaiticus as inferior manuscripts, as corrupted manuscripts. Okay, bergen does this. Now here's what they don't realize.
Speaker 2:Bergen, in his attack on what he thinks are the corruptions in these two manuscripts, brings forth a number of instances. Almost none of them actually occur in the Gospel of Mark. They will occur in Matthew, in John, in Luke, and so my thing is let's say John Bergen, I even want to listen to you. You're not bringing me examples of the inferiorities of manuscripts in the Gospel of Mark, and that's what we're discussing. We're discussing the Gospel of Mark. We're not discussing the what shall I call it, the general reliability in other Gospels. We're talking about Mark, and when you're talking about Mark, you can't come up with more than about two examples of what you think are inferior readings.
Speaker 2:See, so there's a three-legged stool here. The three-legged stool, against seeing the long ending as genuine, is the grammatical stuff, and I could be a lot more complicated than this, but not on the podcast. The grammatical stuff, the testimony of, well, the testimony of Eusebius I guess I would say it's a four-legged stool the testimony of the manuscripts that they know that there's this discussion. And then the Bergen assessment that's kind of wrongly aimed at being Aleph. You know that he's trying to discredit him, but he can't discredit him in the gospel of Mark, can't discredit him in the gospel of Mark.
Speaker 2:Now, through the history it's been recognized as you go down through the centuries, go down through the centuries, that ending mark at 16.8 has been around. But the farther away it goes, the less you see testimony to it. Okay, now, interestingly enough, some of the reformers knew about it. There is a guy what's his first name? It's something like Alexander Zygobinus or something from the 12th century and he recognizes it. But he says I don't see any manuscripts. But I know that it's around and so forth forth, but now David Lewis, perhaps on your podcast, talked about the appropriateness of ending at 16.8 for the whole story.
Speaker 2:See, but this is another matter. I decided not to talk about the literary features. But literarily it spoils the story to put 9 to 20 on there. Literally it doesn't really work. But for most people they're not interested in that, they're interested in more concrete sorts of things. Now let me say one more thing.
Speaker 2:The huge study that's been done on the long ending was done by James Kelhoffer, who actually at the time was a scholar at St Louis University, at SLU. He's now over in in Sweden and his big book on this is really terrific. I mean, he lays this stuff out about Eusebius and he talks about, you know, the history of the church and so on. Now he shows that essentially the long ending is not seen in any manuscripts until about 150. And well, I didn't say that correctly. Erase that, take it back that we don't have testimony to it until 150, because we don't have a bunch of manuscripts from 150. That's not the right thing to say. But we don't have a bunch of manuscripts from 150. That's not the right thing to say. But we don't have testimony. For example, we have testimony by Irenaeus, but now you're talking about 180 or something like that. And Kelhoffer has a very interesting theory on this. His theory is that it was put together by someone who thought that the ending was missing, but he didn't want to just make stuff up, so he actually drew from Matthew and Luke and John and Acts, and you can see this. So the various things that are in the long ending have these parallels in the other Gospels and in Acts, like the snake handling, and then Paul in Acts 28, and so on, like that. It's very interesting the way Kelhoffer works this out. And so now for your listeners, this next point of his is really quite important. He says so it's probably done around 150, and that's about the time that we see the appearance of the other pseudepigraphical gospels the gospel of Thomas, the gospel of Peter, gospel of truth, gospel of Mary, and so on, like that. So these what you might call competitors to the canonical gospels arise around 150, and this is kind of in that same time period.
Speaker 2:Now I'm going to say one more thing, and that is there is this fellow who has a bunch of stuff on the internet James Snap Jr, s-n-a-p-p. James Snap Jr. Now I've got some real admiration for this guy. He is pro long ending, okay as market. But he has an extremely sophisticated position and I've never heard anybody contend this before.
Speaker 2:He contends that it's Markan but it's not the original ending of the gospel. So he contends that Mark wrote it. But Mark wrote it for a different context, like as part of a sermon or something in Alexandria, and then later on followers of his attached it to the gospel as an ending to the gospel. Now I've said to a number of people and I presented a paper on this to the National SPL last year and I said if you just got to have the long ending, you know I would go with the same James Snap Jr Explanation is now I think he's wrong. Ok, I think he's wrong because the testimony of Eusebius and also because the James Snap Jr Solution doesn't solve the grammar syntax problem, see, I mean that's, I don't think that Mark did that. It doesn't look Markan to me at all, you know, but it's an interesting theory because he does recognize that the transition between verse eight and verse nine is way too awkward and improper and so it's probably not like the original composition of Mark. Well, I'm going on.
Speaker 1:This is good. No, hey, this is. We're at time. We're at time, but I have to ask one other question, dr Veldt.
Speaker 1:So I'm a believer since I was in Dr Lewis's class and obviously in yours in the verse eight ending, the suspended ending, with the hopeful outcome being you place yourself in the shoes of the women and you're leaving having heard, not seen, but just having heard the testimony. And now we're carrying out this message in anticipation of our faith being sight on the last day when Jesus returns. And so we would. We know, we know the end of the story, we know that Jesus bodily rose, jesus bodily ascended and Jesus will bodily return to make all things new. And so now we stand with Mark, having not seen, but we're carrying out that message. I'm a believer in the suspended ending. At the same time, the struggle point is verse 16, mark 16, verse 16, he who believes and is baptized shall be saved. I mean, can we still keep this in our baptismal liturgy and other places where that verse in particular has had quite a sway in terms of our baptismal theology? How do you answer that question, dr Biltz?
Speaker 2:Well, in Excursus 19, volume 2 of my commentary, I talk particularly I think it's point D or something like this about the use in the confessions of not only that verse but also verse 20. There are a couple of other ones, and you know, I mean, the fact of the matter is that the confessions actually you know what I decided to do, tim? I decided to look and I looked in the index of the confessions of every place that Mark is referenced, okay. Well, then you find out that it's actually referencing also other things that we would no longer do in terms of text criticism, like, for example, in chapter 9, when the guy comes with the demonized boy and Jesus says well, this type of thing departs only with prayer. And then some manuscripts add and fasting okay, now, we don't follow those. Aleph and Bea and a whole bunch of others don't add and fasting. Well, the confessions do add and fasting, and then they go and start to develop a theory of fasting on the basis of that. See, I mean, I just don't think, you know, once you start down this, you can't be saying something like this Well, the confessions are our baseline of text criticism. That's simply not right, because they have access to what they have access to.
Speaker 2:Now let me come back to your specific question. I wouldn't use it. I wouldn't use it because I just don't think it's genuine. But it's not. I mean, you have Baptism. Now Saves Us. You have the Great Commission.
Speaker 2:You have plenty of other stuff and in fact in Excursus 19,. I talk about that, about all the alternatives to what they have. And you know, here's why there are alternatives Because if James Kelhoffer is right, the guy who composed that took from elsewhere in the scriptures and brought that together into the long ending. That's why you don't have sort of unique stuff. So you know, he who's not believed is condemned. Well, you got that in John 3, verse 17. So I personally would not use it.
Speaker 1:I would not use it. I love it. Hey, Dr Veltz, this has been amazing. We'll have you back on. There's so much more to talk about on so many other topics.
Speaker 1:Reading Two Texts. Shout out just Google, reading Two Texts, you'll find their website and I got to get there. You know the struggle is, dr Veltz. I get invited to so many different gatherings and I'm a dad of three high schoolers right now, with kids and activities, and I can't miss this season.
Speaker 1:But hey, when there's another season I'm going to be all in, because the exegetes, the leaders and everybody in between, man, we got to rally around getting the gospel into as wide of a base possible, because I think there is to double down on the postmodern context today, or the pre-modern, and we don't have time to get into this. We have a lot of work to do by the Spirit's power to get the gospel into the hearts and ears of people, and it's such a compelling time right now to be alive in world history, to speak into the gods of this day and age that people are believing in and point them to the Creator, the Redeemer, the Sanctifier. I'm using all these words you say I need to define, and so anyway, sorry we don't have time to do that.
Speaker 1:But what an honor, what an honor to have you. Dr Veltz, if people want to connect with you though you mentioned your email Just give it one more time. If people want to connect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, V-O-E-L-Z-J at CSL Concordia, St Louis, CSLedu. I love it.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:I'd be happy to talk with people and you know, please, again, let me just promote this book here. Principles of Biblical Interpretation for Everyone. Tim, this is my fifth book and this is going to be the most important one that I've written, even more important than the Greek grammar and so on. Why? Because it gets in-depth study of the word into people's hands, that's it.
Speaker 1:That is it. Well, he is the one and only Reverend. Dr James Vells, I'm just Tim Allman, just a parish pastor trying to have wonderful, kind, collegial conversations, and we have so much to learn and I thank you for enlightening us today, dr.
Speaker 2:Vells hey, don't forget, you're a great point guard. Remember our great trip down to.
Speaker 1:South Park.
Speaker 2:Hey well we're going to talk basketball we didn't have, we had.
Speaker 1:that was an awesome trip. By the way, I got hurt on that trip. We're going to talk basketball and kind of seminary culture and a lot of those stories. Next time I have you on. But this has been so much fun, dr Veltz, and this is the American Reformation podcast. We'll be back next week with another fresh episode. God bless you, dr Veltz.