METHOD

I want to share a long excerpt from chapter six of a wonderful devotional-style book by Dr. Louis Markos, a Greek scholar. The book is called The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes. I have not gained permission from Dr. Markos or the publisher to share this and it might be too long to share—not sure—so, if this needs to be taken down I can do that. But this excerpt in particular will help me make a very valuable point about reading the bible and interpreting its words. Dr. Markos writes:

"Christians who desire to gain wisdom of eternal value from pre-Christian poets and philosophers will most often look to Paul's speech at the Areopagus in Athens (see Acts 17:16-34) as a model for how Christians can build a bridge between the gospel and pagan wisdom. In order to connect with his pagan audience of Stoics and Epicureans, Paul quotes two passages of poetry written by ancient Greek poets (see 17:28). Though the original poems were written with reference to Zeus, Paul treats them as if they were directed, unconsciously, to the God of the Bible.

"Paul does not dismiss the Athenians as people imprisoned in total darkness, but reaches out to them as people created in the image of God but fallen, who have an innate sense of the divine and who need to have their eyes opened to a fuller, rather than an utterly different, truth. That is why he declares to them in the beginning of his sermon: 'What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you' (17:23).

"Few preachers and theologians would disagree that Paul's desire in his sermon is to build a bridge between paganism and Christianity. What I would like to suggest here is that there is a similar passage in the gospels in which Jesus himself works to build a similar bridge. This is recorded in John 12, which marks Jesus's last public discourse. The setting is the Passover, and Philip and Andrew come to Jesus to tell him that some Greeks who are attending the festival want to see him.

"In reply, Jesus says, 'The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit' (12:23-24). Most Christians will recognize these verses and the powerful metaphor of the seed that dies and is reborn that underlies them. What most do not recognize is that the metaphor itself does not appear anywhere in the Old Testament. Indeed, there is only one other place in the New Testament where a similar metaphor is used and that is in Paul's letter to the church located in the (very) pagan Greek city of Corinth (see 1 Corinthians 15:35-58).

"Although no biblical scholar that I am aware of has commented on Jesus's decision to use a metaphor foreign to the Old Testament, I would suggest that he did so as a way of building a bridge to the Greeks who asked to meet with him. If, as I theorize, these Greeks were members of the Eleusinian mysteries, one of the oldest and most respected cults in the Greek world, then Jesus's metaphor would have spoken to them on a deep and personal level. The Eleusinian mysteries were inextricably linked to the story of Demeter and Persephone: that is, of the seed that dies and is reborn. Behind the mysteries, I would suggest, was a sense of lost closeness to the gods that could only be mediated by participation in the sacred rhythm of death and rebirth.

"Though there is much we do not know about the secret rites, we do know that devotees of the Eleusinian mysteries would place on their altar a ripe ear of grain in honor of the seasonal cycle initiated by the annual death and rebirth of Persephone. Though the biblical text does not say specifically that the Greeks who wanted to meet Jesus were initiates of the Eleusinian mysteries, their interest in the Jewish ritual of the Passover suggests that they may have been.

"If I am right, then Jesus was reaching out a hand to them, saving: 'All your lives you have been seeking after the seed that dies and is reborn. I am that seed.'"

– The Myth Made Fact
Louis Markos, Ph.D

You might have read Acts 17 before, or heard it quoted by your preacher at church. The most popular phrase from that chapter are these words: '…in whom we live and move and have our being.' Those are not Paul’s words. Paul was quoting the poet Aratus, from a very well-known poem about the 'signs of Zeus' called Phaenomena (like our word 'phenomenon'). Julius Caesar himself translated the poem from the Greek—that’s how popular it was.

In effect, what Paul was doing in Acts 17 was quoting a pop-song, much like we would today. I have a song stuck in my head and isn't a particularly good one, but let's imagine for a moment that the song stuck in my head was not Sabrina Carpenter’s annoying 'Espresso' and was instead a great song, like 'How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)' by James Taylor. Incredible song.

Now what if I got up on a Sunday morning and I quoted this: 'I needed the shelter of someone's arms… I needed someone to understand my ups and downs… I close my eyes at night, wondering where would I be without you in my life…' and what if I used those phrases, originally written to a lover, to instead describe the love of God? How sweet it is, to be loved by you, God! This isn’t too far off from the biblical truths communicated by our favorite hymns, where Jesus is described as the lover of my soul, and where it 'tis so sweet to trust in him.

What if I were speaking to a group of tenth-grade kids, at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes event or something, and I needed a metaphor or analogy to convey some biblical truth. Well, I might pull from popular media of our day, as is common. For example, I might use a Harry Potter metaphor:

During the battle for Hogwarts school, Harry willingly surrendered to the evil Voldemort and allowed himself to be hit with a Killing Curse so that the remnant of Voldemort's own evil soul residing inside Harry (the horcrux) would be destroyed, and the dark wizard would be defeated once and for all. In that way, God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us, to be destroyed on the cross of calvary so that through him the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us. Harry Potter, then, can be high-level metaphor for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Paul the apostle does this, but Dr. Markos argues above that the apostle John seems to do it as well in John 12. There is an even more clear picture in John 1, I would add to Markos' thought. In John 1, John uses a buzzword used heavily in the works of the great philosophers, one of which was Heraclitus, who used the word most of all. That word is the word logos, meaning literally 'word.' John takes the heraclitean notion of the logos as the animating force of reason behind all that has come into being, and he connects it with the very Hebrew understanding that it was from a word of God’s mouth that all things were created.

Some scholars debate how closely John sticks to Heraclitus' own notions of the logos, and wonder if perhaps he's pulling from Aristotle or somewhere else. When we get into these ancient documents, it's hard to tell, because everything was everything to the ancients, like, they didn’t organize their thoughts in the same way we do at all. And they don't cite their sources. But the point stands, this 'word' as animating force, as first cause, and as the identity of a prime mover or an unlimited, free causal agent… all those ideas were first found in Greece.

The philosopher Philo would have been a contemporary of John’s and, gosh, when you read John’s gospel, his use of logos sounds just like Philo. Philo talked at length about the 'unknowability' of God, and John opens his gospel by emphasizing that 'No man hath seen God at any time.' This is the man who walked with Jesus, remember. Philo describes the logos as 'the image of God… with no intervening distance' between him and God, and John draws upon that face-to-face motif, that prosopon idea throughout his writings.

If nothing else, it's compelling, to think that the apostle John, late in life and living in an apartment in Ephesus, might have written in conversation with contemporary philosophy and with mysterious pagan rituals in mind.

What's my point? I'll get to it now. If Markos' hunch is correct, that John is quoting Jesus as using a metaphor connected to the Eleusinian rites, this is huge, I mean, this has major, major implications for biblical interpretation. I’ll name a few.

It isn't known exactly what went on in the pagan Eleusinian rituals, but a couple of years ago during COVID, I read a book by a semitic languages scholar, Brian C. Muraresku, called The Immortality Key, where he talked about archaeologists' use of chemical tests to determine there was psychedelic ergot found in the wineskins and ceramic pots used at that time. Muraresku suggests that the Mysteries were a hallucinogenic drug thing.

Let's explore that for a moment. Let's reread John 12 using all that context as a new interpretive lens through which we might view the Scriptures.

John 12:20 KJV And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast [of the passover]:
21 The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus.
22 Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus.
23 And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.
24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
25 He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

Jesus is speaking to Greek guests, in a language they might understand, the language of their own rites and rituals in the cult of Persephone, called the Eleusinian Mysteries. These Greeks recognize that Jesus is a masterful teacher, and they want to know more about the passover meal, because of its symbolic connections to similar themes of death and rebirth in their own religion. More than any of that, they want to meet this wonderful man whose acclaim was spreading far and wide, this long-awaited Hebrew messiah.

Jesus spoke first, as if he were reading their minds: "The time has come for the son of God to be made most excellent, exalted as King of kings and Lord of lords."

A woman from among the Greeks, named Charis, protested, "Rabbi! Do you understand what you are saying? Those words are treasonous to Rome’s Caesar!"

Jesus grinned, "Dear sister, you know the saying. 'The ear of grain is cut in silence,' right? That religious practice of yours, to bless the harvest? Truly, unless an ear of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it produces nothing, no new life, no daughter plant. It remains alone. But if it dies, alone in the dark and damp, it bears much fruit. It's just like that for this king; I must die alone. Never mind what my disciples might say," and Jesus winked at Simon Peter. And then, turning to meet Charis’ eyes, he said: "But I will live again."

This merry band of pagans spent a few more moments with their new friend, Rabbi Jesus. This great man who had garnered such notoriety, the Greeks thought he’d be, well, you know, great. Big and tall and proud, that is. But this Jesus of Nazareth was unremarkable in his appearance, I mean, really nothin' to look at. And he was gentle, and lowly. Meek. It was as if there were an abiding peace about him. Even as he spoke about his treasonous acts against Rome, knowing his work meant he must be put to death, the man was calm as could be.

As she left, Charis gave Rabbi Jesus a small gift, a folded palm leaf with a dehydrated narcissus flower in it, a flower shared as a symbol of Persephone. It was almost as if she were giving up an idol, or casting aside an old paradigm for new perspective. Charis even felt as though a weight had been lifted. The idea of 'new life,' of resurrection, was coming into view for her now. Where once her great Mysteries only hinted at resurrection life, now this Jesus speaks about it explicitly, as if he knows that new life is a possibility—as if he knows the way.

Jesus took the flower and thanked Charis, and gently set the pagan symbol aside. He whispered a prayer of gratitude to his heavenly Father for such visitors, for the company. The conversation takes his mind off of what he knows must come next. Jesus smiled as he considered for a moment that Charis’ name in the Greek meant grace, and in an instant he came to view her in the forefront of his mind and direct all of his compassion and mercy toward the young woman.

Walking on the road, Charis reflected on their interaction with Rabbi Jesus. It was something he said… he would bear much fruit… she thought of the fig tree which, by that time had withered and was no longer producing fruit. Knowing that, in a little while, the fig tree will be full once more, Charis received so high a view of the sovereignty of God that she's never been the same since. It is the pattern of all that is, this renewal, this cycle of death-rebirth-death-rebirth. Charis made a solemn vow to herself to honor Jesus of Nazareth as Lord—not Caesar—and to worship his Father, the God of Israel.

Charis lived out the rest of her days loving the Lord and heralding the arrival of his kingdom in the city of Athens. These words were treacherously anti-Caesar, and as time went on, Charis faced greater and greater persecution for her faith in the one God and his son Jesus Christ. When Caesar demanded each person make a sacrifice at their local Persephone sex-temple and say, "Caesar is Lord!" Charis refused. As punishment, she was tied to a post and covered in tar, lit on fire and lifted high to serve as a kind of human tiki torch for the garden party of a local magistrate. As she burned alive, she saw the face of Jesus and she passed over from death to life.

Now, ok, that was a sort of fictional, imagination-fueled reading of the text. And not a lot of that is in there, right? But this is a perfect example of a type of interpretive method employed by intertestamental Jewish rabbinical scholars writing just before Christ. They wrote a series of interpretations of the Law called midrash. The purpose of midrash was to try and fill spaces in such a way that, apparent contradictions in the text of Scripture would be resolved. This interpretive method serves as a kind of generative fill of imagined story in Scripture. Such practice stretches your biblical imagination, causing you to really consider all the assumptions of the text.

Without filling the gaps, John 12 reads like something is missing. Verse 23 is the best example of this. In it, it’s unclear from the grammar there whether Jesus is speaking to the Greeks or to Philip and Andrew, but if he’s speaking only to Philip and Andrew then what he says makes little sense.

This is one of the most interesting ways to read Scripture, to me. You can think of it like the hermeneutic behind the popular series 'The Chosen.' I think any thought of Jesus is better than none at all, and God made us with wild imaginations, so why not turn our imaginations loose on Scripture? Only carefully follow the text.

This is worth bringing up as we think through interpretive methods, and it’s worth connecting to the idea that Jesus might have been engaging with pagans, why? Because while the New Testament seldom explicitly addresses the Greeks and the ones Paul calls barbarians, it acknowledges their existence, and it seems to borrow much of their symbolic language. Further evidence of the Pauline concept that Gentiles were to be 'grafted in' to the family of God and further encouragement for us to keep digging for little nuggets of wisdom from our bibles.