Wednesday 22 December 2021

YORK AND CANTERBURY

A Telegraph Article Regular readers will be aware that I knew the archbishop of York many years ago, and so feel able to comment occasionally on things he says. I have given up the hope that he might try to look less prelatical in photographs, because that seems to be the style that he has chosen. Presumably he encourages the photographers to picture him staring meaningfully into the distance in full visionary mode. I continue to be anxious about archbishop Stephen’s Gospel interpretation, though. Last Saturday he had a piece in the Daily Telegraph which was a nice defence of singing, and especially singing in church (though there was no hint that he and the other bishops might have been over zealous in ordering us out of our churches in the first lockdown). He’s absolutely right about the Hallelujah Chorus (I made the same point a few weeks ago in a sermon). That was fair enough, and I was enjoying the article, but then I came upon this sentence: “It is the particular song that we sing at Christmas, the song of the angels: peace on Earth, goodwill to everyone.” Now, that’s an unexceptionable sentiment in a way, and rather the sort of thing that one might expect an archbishop to say, but the trouble is, that isn’t what the angels sang. Yes, if you rely on the Authorized Version (for which Stephen at college had contempt) the text says, “on earth peace, goodwill towards men” and I am happy to agree that those phrases are part of our English cultural heritage, and perhaps lurk in many (older) people’s memories, but that’s not the point. Of course archbishop Stephen amends “men” to “everyone”, which is perfectly fair, but it really won’t do to present that as what the angels sang, because the universal scholarly consensus nowadays is that the Authorized Version was translated from defective manuscripts. The angels didn’t sing the rather incoherent “peace on earth, goodwill towards men/everyone” but “on earth peace among those whom he favours”. All modern translations prefer “en anthropois eudokias”, which is found in the best and earliest manuscripts, to “en anthropois eudokia” which is a widespread reading but seems to be a mistake, or possibly an amendment by a scribe who didn’t understand the Hebraism of the original. “Eudokias” is a surprising usage, but it makes it into a coherent sentence, instead of two oddly juxtaposed phrases, and it is unbelievable that anyone would have changed “eudokia” to “eudokias” precisely because it is such an unusual form, whereas you can imagine a scribe outside the Hebrew Christian environment in which St Luke wrote assuming that it was a mistake and preferring the simpler “eudokia”. Apologies for the excursion into Greek, but the point is that it really does change the meaning. The peace that the angels proclaim is among those people who are pleasing to God, those whom God favours, the recipients of God’s goodwill. The phrase in St Luke’s Gospel is related to what is heard by those at Jesus’s baptism, when the voice from heaven declares, “You are my Son … with you I am well-pleased.” Jesus inherently pleases God, but that’s not necessarily the case with the whole of humankind, this blessing of peace is for those who do please him, and that is where we part company with the archbishop’s reading. Now you could construct a universalist case to say that actually the whole of humankind does please God (there is after all a strand in Old Testament “Wisdom” literature that takes that view) but that’s not obviously what St Luke means. He clearly intends “eudokias” as a qualifier, precisely because a significant portion of humankind clearly doesn’t please God, but causes him profound sorrow and regret (if not anger). The Christian gospel for 2000 years has been that the birth and death of Jesus was necessary precisely because so much of humankind was completely displeasing to God. His birth as one of us is an affirmation of our nature, but certainly not a celebration of our behaviour. Archbishop Stephen knows all this. Perhaps he is ignoring the fruits of modern scholarship in order to sound warm and affirming to all of humanity, perhaps he was just being careless, but he knows that there is plenty of human behaviour that is profoundly displeasing to God. Christianity requires that we change the way we live, “repent” in the biblical language, which aligns us with Christ and makes us people pleasing to God. In the end, the song of the angels is celebrating God’s people, those who accept the gift of his Son, which is not quite what the archbishop seems to say. And in the Holy Land Meanwhile I find myself having to take issue with the archbishop of Canterbury as well. Him I’ve never met, so I claim no insight, but his article in the Sunday Times caught my attention. It’s a piece co-authored with the Anglican archbishop in Jerusalem, following on from a statement issued by a number of Palestinian Church leaders last week, and the headline was “Pray for Christians driven from the Holy Land”. Now it’s absolutely right to draw attention to the plight of Christians in the Middle East and the frightening decline in their numbers as they go into exile, but this piece seems to suggest that this is all the fault of the state of Israel, which is simply not true. Israel is not driving Christians out of the Holy Land. The article admits that overall the number of Christians in Israel is rising, but concentrates on the exodus of Christians from the Old City of Jerusalem (the Church leaders’ statement makes a good point about trying to preserve the Christian Quarter which is missing from the Sunday Times article) and talks about attacks and intimidation from “fringe radical groups”. Clearly there is cause for concern, and there is obviously obnoxious behaviour from some Zionist groups in Israel, but frankly Hamas in the Palestinian territories is far more anti-Christian, and Christians in Israel enjoy much more safety and security than anywhere else in the Middle East. The major exodus of Christians is from countries like Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, which used to be safe, but are no longer, but the article rightly draws attention to the departure of Christians from the Occupied Territories, but this is not merely the fault of the Israeli occupation, but the catastrophic misgovernment of the Territories by the Palestinian Administration. As the article rightly points out, Palestinian Christians are disproportionately well-educated, and it is hardly surprising that they should leave the corrupt, lawless statelet, especially given the intimidation offered by Islamists. In the region, Egyptian Christians have been subject to barbaric Islamist terror attacks, whereas nothing remotely similar has ever happened to Christians in Israel, while Christians cannot even worship freely in Saudi Arabia. The archbishop has allowed himself to take a strangely one-eyed view of a real problem, presumably out of solidarity with his Palestinian fellow archbishop, which is very sad, because the plight of Palestinian Christians is a real one, as anyone who has been to the Holy Land is aware, but just blaming Israel is no answer. h

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