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Loading...Many of you responded to my colleague David Lambert’s provocative post a couple of days ago on whether the idea of “repentance” could be found in the Bible. He has replied to your comments, but has wanted to provide a follow up post. It keeps getting more interesting. This is an intriguing reflection on “repentance” in the Bible, one that totally turns on its head what many of us have always thought. See what you think.
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David Lambert is the author of How Repentance Became Biblical.
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“The Meaning(s) of Repentance in the Bible”
A lot of the comments that I received on my first post (https://ehrmanblog.org/is-repentance-a-biblical-idea-interview-with-david-lambertb/) had to do with the definition of “repentance” that I’m using in my new study, How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture. Just to review my main claim, I contend, after careful examination, that there are a lot of biblical passages and practices that we’ve understood in connection with repentance that don’t really have much to do with the concept. I claim that we’ve come to read the Bible as animated by a concern for repentance because of the concept’s subsequent importance within Judaism and Christianity. So obviously, it’s really important to be clear about what I’m considering to be repentance and what I’m not.
Now I want to start off by saying that, of course, every society has some sort of method for reconciliation. People do bad things, conflict ensues, and there needs to be a procedure for ending conflict. But we can’t call every form of reconciliation, “repentance.” If we do that, we just impose our own terminology and ideals, and lose the specific, fascinating insights that an ancient culture, such as that of Israel, has to offer us about sin, punishment and forgiveness. Clearly, there could be, for instance, procedures for dealing with sin in the Hebrew Bible and restoring the relationship with Israel’s god that don’t exactly fit into what we call “repentance” today.
Let’s start off by looking at a few examples from the Hebrew Bible. In 1 Kings 21:17-29, Elijah confronts Ahab about his bad behavior toward Naboth (he killed him and stole his vineyards). Ahab responds by tearing his clothes, donning sackcloth and fasting. God, in turn, responds pretty positively, saying that he’s going to let Ahab off the hook because he “humbled himself” before him. Is this “repentance?” Well, I think if we use that word we end up importing some things into the story that aren’t necessarily there. Is there any sign that Ahab, after this point, abandoned his evil ways and started to worship YHWH (Israel’s god) exclusively? Is there any sign that he felt badly about what he did? You could read feelings of guilt and contrition into his mourning rituals, but the biblical text doesn’t go there and instead highlights another really interesting term “humbled himself.” It turns out that this term nikhnaʿ is used most frequently in military contexts. It’s what happens when you’re defeated. To me, Ahab’s little performance looks more like a ritual of defeat; he recognizes his impending doom, and it turns out that that’s what the deity needs. He wants Ahab to demonstrate that even he too is subject to the power of Israel’s god. You could call this “repentance” but I think the term ends up obscuring more than it reveals.
Now, let’s take a look at another really interesting term in the Hebrew Bible, shuv. This turns out to be such an important term because the Rabbis later on use it as the basis for a word that they invent, teshuva, which means, you guessed it, “repentance.” So is biblical shuv really the same, as the Rabbis would have it, as teshuva? Shuv appears most significantly in the well known prophetic phrase, “return to the Lord.” That often gets understood as a return to covenantal obedience, but is it? I would suggest that the early prophets—Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah—used it quite differently. For instance, Isaiah talks about how one day the Egyptians (!) are going to build an altar to YHWH and will cry out to him whenever they are attacked. God will respond to their entreaties whenever they “turn back to him.” (Isaiah 19:19-22).
Are the Egyptians really “returning” to covenantal obedience? Instead, the term seems to function early on as a form of appeal, alongside other terms such as “seeking.” It has to do with turning to the deity at an altar site dedicated to oracular inquiry. Shuv is also really important to Jeremiah, but he talks about a “return to the Lord” that often seems more like an offer for familial reconciliation, “Come back, wayward children!” (Jer 3:22), than a formal process of abandoning sin and reforming one’s ways. Then when we get to later biblical texts, such as those found in Ezekiel, Jonah, and Job, we find a new phrase: “turn away from sin.” This clearly paves the way for the later understanding of repentance but doesn’t yet seem to be the identical concept. For one thing, you can’t “turn away” from a particular sin; it has to do only with a generalized abandonment of wrongdoing. For another, it’s not a mental act, just a behavioral change, what I call a “cessation of sin.” It has to do with removing sin, like other kinds of impurity, before the deity, so that, when he looks down upon the people, he is not enraged by the sight of their sin, but it doesn’t yet envision repentance itself is an efficacious act. What matters is the result, not the particular sort of process through which it is brought about. We may be closer to a concept of “repentance,” but still not quite there.
It’s really only when we get to the Greek sources that we start to see the idea in its most familiar form. First of all, it’s important to realize what metanoia, the common word for “repentance,” means. It’s usually used in classical sources for the futile feeling of regret that you get after making a wrong decision. But starting around the turn of the Common Era, it starts to be used in positive terms in the writings of figures such as Plutarch and Philo. Here’s a passage from Plutarch:
For as wayfarers who have stumbled over a stone, or skippers who have capsized off a headland, if they retain the circumstances in their memory, henceforth never fail to avoid with a shudder not only the occasion of their misadventure, but everything resembling it, so those who constantly hold up to their repentance and remorse the shame and loss involved in compliancy will in similar circumstances resist the feeling and not easily allow it to carry them away. (On Compliancy 536, 19 [De Lacy and Einarson, LCL])
With this formulation we arrive at a concept very close to the one used within early Christianity and Judaism. Repentance is retrospective; it’s a way of looking over our past lives and, through the pain caused by past wrongdoing, ensuring some transformation in our future identity. Philo takes the notion and applies it to the process of conversion as well. It’s not just for the righteous who err but for those who want to enter into Judaism as well. I think this is the concept as it appears more or less in rabbinic Judaism and in the Gospels (though there are attempts among certain scholars to see the concept there as unique, as something closer to a “change of mind”—see my book, chapter seven). It represents a significant development over and against what is found in the Hebrew Bible because of its focus on repentance as an effective mental act, an event that transpires within our beings that has transformative potential. Interesting enough, as a final point, the Septuagint, the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, does not even use metanoia to translate Hebrew shuv! It uses instead terms related to “turning.” However, later Greek translations did use metanoia as did passages in the New Testament referencing Hebrew Bible texts, thus showing that the understanding of Hebrew shuv had indeed changed. In this sense, “repentance” really only comes into its own around the turn of the Common Era long after the texts that comprise the Hebrew Bible were composed.
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David’s book How Repentance Became Biblical can be purchased on Amazon.com, at the following address: : http://www.amazon.com/How-Repentance-Became-Biblical-Interpretation/dp/0190212241/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452903064&sr=8-1&keywords=how+repentance
David: Thanks very much for your posts. I order books in religious studies for our library, and yours is on its way to us.
I studied at UNC over 30 years ago, and Bart’s blog and the occasional contributions of his colleagues remind me of what a marvel a research university is. Imagine, just a couple of doors down the hall sits one of the world’s leading experts in…. And how so many are so generous in sharing their time and engaging their students and colleagues with their scholarship.
I’m a librarian, reasonably well-accomplished in my particular specialty, and I still remain in awe of the resources accessible through the libraries of UNC, Duke, and NC State, all clustered together in and about the Research Triangle. Cherish your colleagues, the universities, and the resources. You’ve landed in a great place to engage your discipline and the world.
And, as always, thanks so very much to Bart Ehrman for opening so many windows to deeper scholarship for the interested reading public. And all the while raising money for worthy charities. I very much enjoy the irony of one of the word’s most famous agnostics setting out to do the Lord’s work.
Thanks so much for your kind observations about the work we do. Bart is a model for all of us at the university of the importance of doing serious scholarship but also of connecting it to the people for whom it matters most.
It must be noted, Ahab’s idea of repentance corresponds pretty closely with that of many modern Christians. You remember Jimmy Swaggart and the Bakkers, I’m sure. And now the Duggars. And let’s not forget the Catholic hierarchy after the sex abuse scandal (I’m sure many were genuinely repentant, but equally sure many others were just doing what was politic). And non-Christians can weep crocodile tears just as effectively.
True repentance, as we now define it, means understanding yourself in a new light, seeing past behavior through new eyes, understanding yourself to have been wrong, and sincerely desiring to amend your ways. But in practice, it’s often just the same as Ahab’s story. Repentance was certainly well-established by medieval times. Henry II had his best friend, Thomas Beckett, murdered in a cathedral, because having made him Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas would not do his bidding, be his catspaw. His loyalties were now divided, and to Henry, this was treason. He could not have him executed, so he induced some of his barons to assassinate Beckett (a story that has played out in modern times, in Uganda and El Salvador).
As a result, Henry was excommunicated, and his realm was placed under the dreaded interdict–in effect, every one of his subjects was in danger of hellfire, because of his actions. He was in danger of being overthrown, his dynasty ended. So he repented, literally, in sackcloth and ashes, humbling himself before the world. But does anyone believe that arrogant Plantagenet ever truly regretted his actions, that he believed his humbling was just and merited? We can’t know, but it seems unlikely. Maybe he was sorry to have lost his friend, maybe he spoke angrily and in haste, but did he amend his ways afterwards? Not really. He was just a bit more careful in future.
True repentance is a precious thing, but what makes something precious? Its rarity.
Thank you for reminding us of the example of Henry. There are definitely ways in which the biblical model of “submission” continues to fit into the practice of repentance today, even as we tend to focus on the importance of what’s “really” going on “inside.”
I’m wondering what caused the change in people to become more self-reflective and feel true sorrow or regret for their actions? The God of the OT has an entirely different “personality” than the God of the NT. That has to be a direct reflection of the mentality of people at the time. Wasn’t there a 400 year gap between the Old and New Testament writings? I’m very curious to know what caused people to have such a switch in mindset during that gap.
I would like to know (if you want to answer that is) what your personal beliefs are about God?
I think that the very way in which we conceive of ourselves as human beings has changed over time. In other words there are different concepts of “self” in different periods of time. That’s a big part of the picture around repentance. In the Hellenistic period, people became much more committed to developing a vocabulary around an individual notion of righteousness and figuring out techniques for ensuring that sort of righteousness (or wisdom). Repentance was one of them. In ancient Israel, their language was focused more on social connections, how individuals or groups related to one another. So the idea of “submission,” a physical lowering of oneself before another, proved to be more significant than any concept of what was going on “internally.”
Dr. Lambert, imagine a diamond-shaped graph divided into quadrants. At the stop of the diamond is written “Particular”, at the bottom “Universal”. On the right is written “Circumstantial” and on the left “Habitual”. Now take the word “Sin” and plot it somewhere on the that graph. For example, the higher up on the graph the more the sin is particular to a certain group–i.e. it’s only a sin for certain people, and not others–e.g. eating pork is a sin for Jews and Muslims but not for non-Jews and non-Muslims. The lower down you put the sin the more universal it becomes. For instance, while avoiding shellfish is obligatory for all Jews, only Cohens (Jews purportly descended from the priestly class) must actively avoid cemetaries so as to avoid being טָמֵא, making it a more particular sin. The more to the left we put the sin the more it relates to habits or customs as are outwardly expressed, being a common set of expected behavior for all people within the group. A marked example of habitual behavior or custom in Judaism would be wearing the yarmulke and tallit. Less habitual may be rules that are on the fringe of Talmudic exegetics, such as whether to pour the sabbath libation twice or thrice over one’s hands (each rabbi has a differing opinion on the matter).The more to the right we put the sin the more it relates to such exceptional circumstances. Can a Jew drive a car on the sabbath if his life literally depended on it? (Most rabbis would say yes, but some could just as readily argue no based on the Torah). The more to the right the more of a gray area it becomes because the circumstances become less regular, more unpredictable and more situationally dependent.
Now, take this model of sin and look at the concept of repentence (i.e. redeeming of sin) as through a mirror. It appears that the concept of sin and repentence slowly evolved, historically, from the upper left (Particular Circumstantial) to the lower right (Universally Habitual). That is, what were considered sins went from being actions taken by particular people in exceptional circumstances slowly became habitual actions taken by (more or less) everyone within the group.
Take one case as an example: when a king was served a meal, he would have his wait staff make sure that they and the king’s food would be impeccable, because the king could not risk being harmed or killed by some kind of contaminant. (We need to remember they didn’t more germ theory at the time, nor did they understand how poisons worked, so the best prevention was to enforce an outward appearance of cleanliness). This is where we get the first notion of a pure versus polluted offering. If you’re the king’s servent, you never offer the king contaminated food! Of course, if you would never do this to a king, you certainly would never offer contaminated food to a god, especially the king of the gods! For that reason the priests officiating the offering ritual at the temple had to always be “ritually clean”. Ritual purity was an expectation for a particular group (priest and levites) for an exceptional circumstance (ritual sacrifice at the temple). In other words, the top left of the diamond. If a priest or levite failed to practice this rite, they would have effectively “sinned”, for which they would need to “repent” by returning to the proper etiquette.
But this notion began to migrate down and to the right. Why? Probably because of the slippery slope that such a law creates. If priests and levites had to remain ritually pure when officiating then it would behoove them to remain ritually pure on a regular basis (i.e. habitually) just to be safe. (Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!) Moreover, if being ritually pure makes the priests and levites somehow more acceptable to God, why must only priests and levites practice ritual purity? Why not the laity, too, just to be safe? (The priests and levites have to interact with the general population, after all, so why not err on the side of caution and make everyone be ritually pure?) This is where the Pharisees got their obsession with ritual purity that modern rabbinical Jews have inherited. Slowly but surely this notion of uncleanness vs cleanness became associated with sin and repentence. A person “in sin” becomes effectively cleansed of that sin by repenting (being ritually clean).
I’m going to stop there, because I could literally write an entire book (which I just might do) on the evolution of sin using this model.
*I wrote sabbath libation when I meant to say sabbath ablution!
Sounds very interesting. I particularly like how the model allows for a continuum between concerns/sins that are particular moving into the universal. It’s helpful.
Perhaps the early references to repentance could be considered similar to aversion therapy? My following a certain behavior caused me grief, physical or mental, in the past so I will react to a similar situation with avoidance and shan’t repeat the behavior.
Yes, that does sound a lot like what Plutarch is saying.
In Jesus day, as in Christianity today, God judges your thoughts as well as your actions. He knows all and reads your thoughts. But it seems to me the further back you go, the less God is interested in peoples thoughts. It’s only really actions that count. He presumably can read peoples thoughts, but at times it’s not clear that he does. David your work appears to support this view. Would you agree?
Dragonfly,
Do you think Jesus was reading people? I don’t like saying fortune telling because that term doesn’t really fit him, but it does seem that he demonstrated *something* to people that made him popular and gave him a wow factor. I also think the miracle stories originate with some type of demonstration as well. When I think about the story of Jesus healing the boy foaming at the mouth (his father thought he had an impure spirit) I automatically think–seizure. He may not have been epileptic but had a psychologically induced seizure called pseudoseizure. Jesus could have rebuked the boy while he was having a pseudoseizure, and the boy’s belief that he was being released from a spirit could have actually stopped him from having another seizure for the rest of his life. Jesus could have easily been seen as a miracle worker in that respect.
Pattycake, i’m sorry you might have misunderstood my comment, or i might have misunderstood your’s. I was saying that in jesus day, God reads people’s thoughts, but in the earlier scriptures he doesn’t seem to. For example, jesus said “the law says don’t commit adultery, but i say don’t even look at another woman”. What he meant was that God will judge you the same whether you do it or just think it. In the OT God judges you for doing bad things, but doesn’t care if you have bad thoughts. I wasn’t making a comment on jesus reading people’s thoughts, if that’s what you were thinking. Now in regards to your theory, that could be the case, but i think a bit differently. Firstly i don’t know that jesus was popular, or had a wow factor. I think most people in palestine (and everyone in jerusalem) had never heard of him. Jesus wasn’t a success, his followers were, starting with the disciples. Seizures often don’t last long, it would soon stop whether someone cast out a demon or not, and jesus and his disciples would have never seen the boy again. The stories all come from jesus followers, shaped by what they already believe.
I knew what you meant. Just wanted to know your thoughts.
Ok, sorry. I get confused easily.
Yes, in the sense that God in the Hebrew Bible frequently appears with more anthropomorphic (human-like) qualities. I tell my students that it’s helpful to think of the ancient notion of God as more like a really powerful being that relates using all of the same modes of perception. He hears, sees and even smells (as in the case of Noah’s sacrifice)! He’s not all knowing, all the time, but needs to have problems in the world or with individual sufferers pointed out to him. That’s why the Psalms focus so much on drawing a picture of suffering. The psalmists need to get the deity to attend to their affliction.
To repent then is to ask for forgiveness for a wrong; that is, it begs the pardon of the one wronged. So, today, forgiveness, despite being given unconditionally by what I think are confused Christians, is not unconditional, is it?
One of the complications today is that many of us no longer know exactly what to do with this discourse around repentance. Should it get you off the hook? Can we tell if it is sincere? That’s one of the sources of conflict both in the public sphere, around public figures who “repent,” and in the criminal courts. Should the repentance of an offender “matter?”
I would like to hear some of your thoughts about the history of the concept of “atonement” as it relates to “repentance.”
There’s a lot to say about this, but one of the interesting points here is that these two concepts are not linked until later postbiblical literature. In other words, it’s only in rabbinic literature or later on in Christianity, if I’m not mistaken, that there’s a direct line drawn between atonement and repentance. Before then, it’s not necessarily seen as having this immediate, direct effect.
Dr. Lambert, I just read this 2-month old discussion. It reminds me of a passage that has long fascinated me–Exodus 32:14 which, as I’ve read it, shows how man must sometimes remind or teach God how to be more compassionate. Abraham does the same on the hill above Sodom. The RSV translation is, “And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people,” while the NRSV is, “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.” Certainly the RSV is more inflammatory to modern ears (God repented? Evil?). I don’t know Hebrew and do not know which is the more literal or the better translation. The Lord is not returning to the Lord. Or is he a Gods Anonymous member reconnecting with his higher self? It doesn’t seem like the Hebrew for “repented” or “changed his mind” would be “shuv.” Is it? What would you say we are dealing with here in Exodus 32:14.