Friday, April 25, 2025

It is the 25th of April 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis. 

If you poke around in modern English commentaries on the New Testament and its world (and remember, I’m a historian and so “modern” in this sense goes back to the 1800s) you are likely to run into the name J.B. Lightfoot- an absolute giant in the field of New Testament studies at a crucial moment in textual studies.

Joseph Barber Lightfoot future scholar and Bishop of Durham (he was consecrated on this day in 1879) was born in Liverpool in 1828. By 1847 he was entering Cambridge where one of his tutors would be B.F. Westcott, himself also a towering name in New Testament studies.

But Lightfoot would not initially study theology- he took a double first in Mathematics and the Classics. He taught classics and the Greek New Testament and was ordained in 1858. His academic interests put him smack dab in the world of textual criticism- this was the critical examination of texts (biblical and otherwise) and using the tools of scholarship to determine authorship, their dating, etc… As the likes of Westcott and Lightfoot used classical training in the historical arts to ask questions of origins, so too did a famous school in Germany- Tübingen, where this “critical” method began to doubt much of the assumed chronology of the writing of the New Testament texts (among other things). This will merge and develop into the so-called “higher critical” methods in 19th and 20th-century theological liberalism.

[and I cannot overestimate how much that party and their opposing fundamentalists made the church what it is today]

Lightfoot’s work constituted commentaries on New Testament texts and critical editions of the church fathers including Ignatius of Antioch- follow this, his critical work on the dating of certain letters of Ignatius made reference to certain new testament texts such that if we can know that Ignatius was writing in the early 2nd century the Gospels had to come from the late first century. Lightfoot’s scholarship established this, but his world was not that of Tübingen, and the two schools of thought were like ships in the dark.

Until 1874, when an anonymous member of the Tübingen school published a book, “Supernatural Religion,” in which they argued that supernatural elements should be stripped from Christianity and the late dates of the New Testament texts should be accepted. This work took aim at Lightfoot’s friend Westcott and when JB saw that it was a hatchet job in being unfair to his friend he wrote a series of articles taking apart the arguments for the late dating of the texts and helped establish the 1st century dating of the Gospels as backed by the best historical evidence.

A recent collection of his works- among them a commentary on Acts has been published and one of the heads of the project the professor and reverend Ben Witherington III suggested that there are not five people in the past 250 years who had his linguistic skills, historical skills, biblical knowledge and knowledge of the Greco Roman world. And, Witherington adds, dedicated to the service of the church and understanding the New Testament. That publication series, from Intervarsity Press, had rightly highlighted a note from his work on Acts that claims his goal is to employ the “highest reason and the fullest faith”.

We might also note that the obituary in the London Times read: 

 It was always patent that what he was chiefly concerned with was the substance and the life of Christian truth, and that his whole energies were employed in this inquiry because his whole heart was engaged in the truths and facts which were at stake.

But even more to the point was the epitaph written by his onetime tutor and friend, the man he sought to defend in what became one of his landmark works- B.F. Westcott had Lightfoot’s epitaph read:

Antiquitatus investigator

Student of the past

Evangeli interpres…

Interpreter of the Gospel

Ecclesiae Rector

Leader of the Church.  

Joseph Barber Lightfoot died in 1889 born in 1828 he was 61 years old.

  

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Revelation 4- you can guess what Old Testament text its paired with for today:

4 Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. 5 From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. In front of the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God. 6 Also in front of the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.

In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. 7 The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. 8 Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying:

“‘Holy, holy, holy

is the Lord God Almighty,’

who was, and is, and is to come.”

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 25th of April 2025 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by someone who also has a face like a man… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who wonders about the eyes under the wings… Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.