“Woe to you, because you build tombs [‘sepulchres’: KJV] for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs” (Luke 11:47,48 NIV; cp Matt 23:29-31).
Jesus criticized the Pharisees for building the tombs for the prophets. Examples of such tombs dating to before Jesus’ day can still be seen near Jerusalem, and he may well have been pointing to some of them as he spoke. His criticism suggests that the Pharisees showed a great zeal for the reputations of the righteous ones who had gone before them, but that their zeal had produced a decidedly negative result. The parallel passage in Matthew 23 adds a second phrase to “you build the tombs”. There, Jesus also says: “and [you] decorate the graves of the righteous” (vs. 29). The word “decorate” (“garnish” in KJV) is from “kosmeo”, and it means to arrange, adorn, or set in order, with the strong suggestion of worship.
Jesus then adds: “You testify against yourselves” (Matt 23:31), thus indicating that those who revered the prophets’ tombs, or the graves of the righteous, were like those who had actually “murdered the prophets” (v 31; cp also Luke 11:47,48) and other “wise men, and teachers” (Matt 23:34).
Not only were the Pharisees just like those in the past who murdered the prophets: they were in fact their heirs. In other words, these Pharisees were the proper successors of all those previous generations who had disregarded the wise men, and now they would condemn themselves by continuing the sins of their forefathers:
“Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all” (Luke 11:50,51; cp Matt 23:35,36).
So intent were the religious leaders of Christ’s day upon preserving the traditions of their fathers, that they fought tooth and nail against anything and anyone that was different and challenging. This was also what their fathers had done when challenged by the prophets. Such rigidity of thought renders men incapable of hearing the message of God, and witnessing His glory. Being thus blind and deaf, they were unable to examine themselves, and unable to repent. They clung to traditions that had the outward appearance of religion, but never came to grips with the “more important [‘weightier’: KJV] matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matt 23:23).
The same frame of mind which would slavishly revere dead prophets and teachers would just as easily kill contemporary ones.
“The attitude of the scribes to the prophets was paradoxical. They professed a deep admiration for the prophets. But the only prophets they admired were dead; when they met a living one they tried to kill him. They honored the dead prophets with tombs and memorials, but they dishonored the living ones with persecution and death.”
William Barclay, Daily Bible Study Series: Luke Anthony Oosthuizen paraphrases:
“You have plenty of zeal for the tombs of holy men — but you have more use for them dead than alive! And remember that the men who treated them so vilely were your fathers. You have inherited the same characteristics, only worse. And now you plan to slay a greater prophet than any whom your fathers persecuted!”
Encounters with the Lord
Not just for Christ’s day
These are very hard words, and not just for the devout Jews of Christ’s day. If his words mean anything to us today, as we must assume they do, then they are very hard words indeed for us also. So hard, in fact, that we can scarcely imagine ourselves — “good” Christadelphians that we are — in the picture Jesus describes. And so hard, perhaps, that we may never have taken to heart the Lord’s warning — if one may judge such matters by the apparent dearth of any exposition of this passage in previous Christadelphian writings.
Jesus seems to say that the believer who is prone to overly idealize the memory of prophets, teachers and pioneers is all too quick to “kill” those who protest against such a practice, as well as those who are the same sort of teachers and pioneers in a modern context. Praising long-dead “prophets” is relatively easy and pleasing to human nature. Like those who worship images and relics, those who publicly lavish praise upon our “pioneers” achieve a superficial religiosity — a form of religion which carries the special benefit of being easy, since it requires no sacrifice or pain or even effort to achieve!
Thomson’s observation
W.M. Thomson was an American Protestant minister who lived in Palestine for more than 25 years. He rode a horse the length and breadth of the Holy Land, and kept an extensive journal of his travels, which was published in 1859. The book was entitled The Land and the Book, and it contains extraordinary insights into the landscape, buildings, culture and customs of the land and its inhabitants. These insights are so valuable because, for an outsider in his day, Thomson was uniquely familiar with his subjects — both of them: the Land and the Book!
Citing these verses in Luke 11, Thomson recalled the many instances he had come across, in his travels, of superstitious devotion at shrines supposed to hold the relics of long-dead “saints”. This kind of slavish devotion had infected Christian worshipers as well as Muslim ones.
His words, written with evident distaste, are a helpful exposition for us:
“The greatest sin of Israel… was apostasy from the true God and His worship by idolatry; and the most prevalent mode of this apostasy is sacrilegious reverence for dead men’s tombs and bones… Now, it was for rebuking this and other kinds of idolatry, that “the fathers killed the prophets”, and those who built their tombs would, in like manner, kill anyone who condemned their idolatrous reverence for these very sepulchers. Thus the Pharisees, by the very act of building those tombs of the prophets, and “honoring” them as they did, showed plainly that they were activated by the same spirit that led their fathers to kill them; and, to make this matter self-evident, they very soon proceeded to crucify the Lord… because of his faithful rebukes. Nor has this spirit changed in the least during the subsequent eighteen hundred years.”
W.M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, vol. 2, pp. 493,494
Are we prone to this also?
Why are we, even with far greater knowledge, still prone to a similar veneration of the “pioneers”? Perhaps primarily because we are human, and it is easy! But perhaps also because we intuitively understand that dead “prophets” and dead “pioneers” can be confined to books on shelves, where they can be controlled. By contrast, living “prophets” and “pioneers” cannot be compartmentalized or filed away. They stick their noses into our business, intentionally or otherwise. They disturb our consciences. They prod us out of our comfort zones, and they encourage us to actually do something when we would rather do nothing. In other words, maybe we revere deceased teachers so that we don’t have to listen to living teachers who are still with us.
Rules for Bible study
For example, we may devote ourselves to every detail of John Thomas’ prophetic interpretations, almost as if he were inspired. At the same time we may neglect to read Scriptures like Daniel and Revelation with the same open mind that Bro. Thomas himself used when he wrote his commentaries!
Early on in his ministry, Bro. Thomas published guidelines for personal Bible study, including these rules:
Never be afraid of results to which you may be driven by your investigations, as this will inevitably… disqualify you from arriving at ultimate truth.
Investigate everything you believe: if it is the truth, it cannot be injured thereby; if error, the sooner it is corrected the better.
Pursue this course with as much independence as if you were the only one concerned. Rely on no authority less than divine in so momentous an undertaking.
Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, Vol. 9, No. 8
(August 1859), p. 180
This is quoted by John Thomas, without citation, from a book by the minister and writer Thomas Mitchell, The Gospel Crown of Life, published in New York in 1850.
What happens then if we neglect John Thomas’ guiding principles of Bible study, but at the same time instinctively accept every word he wrote? We congratulate ourselves on revering his memory by “believing” all he wrote, but in doing this, we become much like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, tombs and special decorations and all. We honor John Thomas in principle but not in practice.
Meanwhile, we may compound our shortcomings by also belittling and ostracizing other believers who try, like Bro. Thomas the Bible student, to study their Bibles with open minds.
Jesus said to the Pharisees of his day that, when they built the tombs for the prophets whom their fathers killed, they were actually testifying that they approved of what their fathers had done (Luke 11:47,48)! As T.W. Manson paraphrased in his book, The Sayings of Jesus (London, 1949, p. 101), Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees could be condensed into this simple slogan: “The only prophet we honor is a dead prophet!”
Are not these same words in Luke and Matthew our Lord’s criticism of us?: Do we really honor the memory of dead pioneers and wise men by refusing to even consider the words and studies of other Bible students in our own day?
What would John Thomas think?
Put it another way: What do we suppose that Bro. Thomas would think of his “disciples” — that is, those who have been most outspoken in their devotion to him — if he knew that they had advanced very little if any beyond the prophetic ideas he developed 150-plus years ago? I think he might say something like this:
Why didn’t my professed friends take into account all the geopolitical changes since my day? Why didn’t they take into account all the advances in understanding Bible languages and the messages of the prophets in the last two centuries? But especially, if they were my true friends, why didn’t they revere and imitate my rules and my attitude toward Bible study? Surely they knew, didn’t they, that they show their devotion to the LORD God by carefully studying His Word — but not by carefully studying my words?
And what would Jesus think?
Most importantly, what will our Lord Jesus Christ think of us, when he returns to raise the dead? He will find that we have been given the “one talent” of gospel truth, in part by the labors of wise teachers and preachers who have gone before us. But will he also find that we were content to receive that “one talent” wrapped up neatly and handed to us (Matt 25:18), and then to complacently examine that truth from time to time, but not bother to work at making it grow?
If, as we often say, we stand on the shoulders of giants of faith who went before, shouldn’t we be able to see further and more clearly than they did? The great scientist (and Bible student) Isaac Newton summed up his career in these words:
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants… I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore… whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
Many “giants” have gone before us, in various fields of science, linguistics, textual analysis, history, and archaeology, as well as Bible study. We show proper respect to their memories not by lauding them, but by building on what they have labored to give us, in whatever capacity we might be engaged. We demonstrate that respect by following the rules which our own “giant”, John Thomas, has pointed out to us:
- Investigate what you believe.
- Do not be afraid of the results of your investigation.
- Do not rely on any human authority for the last word.
- Keep an open mind.
- Remember that the Word of God must come first, last and always.
The greatest “giant” of faith to go before us — Jesus Christ — showed the greatest reverence for his Father’s Word. We do our Lord the same service by showing real reverence for the Word of God too, in all that we say, think, write and do.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One