Church Membership of African-Americans in Salt Lake City c. 1948

  

FIGURE 6

 

NEGRO CHURCH MEMBERSHIP, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH

 

African Methodist Episcopal	191
Calvary Baptist	143
Pilgrim Baptist	34
Seven Day Adventist	25*
Church of God in Christ	30*
Latter Day Saint (Mormon)	40*
Catholic	45*

*Approximation of membership. These figures are not all necessarily active members.

 

Source: James Boyd Christensen, “A Social Survey of the Negro Population of Salt Lake City, Utah” (MA Thesis; University of Utah, 1948), 77.

Luke 24:37, 39 as a Reference to a "Ghost"

  

GHOST KJV uses “ghost” in two senses, for the human life force and for God’s Holy Spirit. KJV never uses “ghost” for the disembodied spirits of the dead. All 11 OT references involve the phrase “give up the ghost” (for example, Gen. 25:8; 35:29), which means to cease breathing or simply to die. This phrase occurs eight times in the NT (Matt. 27:50; Acts 5:5; 12:23). The predominant NT use is for the Holy Spirit.

 

Modern translations use “ghost” (rather than “spirit” as the KJV) for the disembodied spirits of the dead. Jesus’ disciples mistook Him for a ghost when He walked on water (Matt. 14:26; Mark 6:49) and when He appeared after the resurrection (Luke 24:37, 39). (“Ghost,” in Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary, ed. Chad Brad et al. [Nashville, Tenn.: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003], 645)

 

 

Spirit, or, ‘ghost’, in the sense of that portion of the personality which leaves the body at death and is believed to appear to the living in bodily likeness; cp. also TH-Mk on 6:49. (J. Reiling and J. L. Swellengrebel, A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke [UBS Handbook Series; New York: United Bible Societies, 1993], 760)

 

 

they were seeing a ghost. Lit. “seemed to gaze at a spirit.” Instead of pneuma, “spirit,” read by most of the Greek mss., ms. D has phantasma, “apparition, ghost,” a term probably derived from Matt 14:26. This sense of pneuma, as the bodiless independent being of a person after death is not used elsewhere by Luke, but it does occur in 1 Pet 3:19; Heb 12:23.

 

. . .

 

no ghost has flesh and bones such as you see I have. This cl. begins with an ambiguous conj. hoti, which could mean “… and see that no ghost …”; or “… and see, because no ghost …”; or it could be taken as hoti recitativum, introducing dir. discourse, as I have taken it. Either the second or third possibility is preferable.

 

Luke is not concerned with the type of question that Paul discusses in 1 Cor 15:44; and his explanation of a sōma pneumatikon should not be invoked to explain this Lucan verse. By way of contrast, see Lucian’s description of the existence of “heroes,” Vera historia 2.12 Cf. Homer, Od. 11. 218–219. (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV: Introduction, Translation, and Notes [AYB 28A; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008], 1575-76)

 

 

Further Reading:

 

Lynn Wilder vs. Latter-day Saint (and Biblical) Theology on Divine Embodiment

Robert Alter on Psalm 140

  

Psalm 140:2 (Hebrew: v. 3):

 

stir up battles. The Masoretic Text appears to say “fear [yaguru] battles.” A minor emendation of the verb to yegaru, which is the reading reflected in three ancient translations, yields the more likely “stir up.” (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:319)

 

 

Psalm 140:8 (Hebrew: v. 9):

 

They would rise. At this point, continuing to the end of verse 12, the text shows numerous signs of mangling in scribal transmission. Attempts to reconstruct it have not been notably successful, though one might adopt the proposal of adding the negative ʾal, yielding “Let them not rise.” “They would rise” (a single word in the Hebrew) does not make evident sense in context, and the doubts about its textual authenticity are compounded by the fact that as one word with one accented syllable it does not scan and could not constitute a verset. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:320)

 

 

Psalm 140:10 (Hebrew: v. 11):

 

May He rain. The Masoretic Text has a plural verb, yimotu, which means “will slip down” and is not the word that would be used for the coming down from the sky of a shower of fiery coals. This translation follows one version of the Syriac in reading yamteir, “May He rain,” the same verb used in Genesis to describe the destruction of Sodom.

 

ravines. The Hebrew mahamurot appears only here. It seems to mean a deep pit or a natural crevice, as this translation guesses. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:320)

 

Robert Alter on Isaiah 61:8

  

robbery and vice. The Masoretic Text reads for the second noun beʿolah, “in burnt offering,” but this should be revocalized as beʿawlah. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 2:828)

 

Robert Alter on Psalm 139:21

  

those against you. Some scholars, with an eye to the symmetry of expression, prefer to read—instead of the Masoretic tequmemekha—a noun cognate with the verb, mitqotetekha, “those who despise You.” (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:319)

 

Steven Bigham on Images of God the Father in Eastern Orthodoxy

  

Images of an old man representing God the Father are justified as making visible, certain traits expressing the idea of the first Person’s fatherhood. . . . These images are therefore personifications of the idea of fatherhood and are not intended to be images of God the Father himself. (Steven Bigham, The Image of God the Father in Orthodox Theology and Iconography and Other Studies [Torrance, Calif.: Oakwood Publications, 1995], 201, italics in original)

 

Murray J. Harris: Jesus Requested the Forgiveness of the Romans, not the Jewish Authorities, in Luke 23:34

  

Some have suggested that the “them” who are forgiven were the Jewish authorities that pressed charges against Jesus before Pilate, or the Jewish nation as a whole, which failed to recognize and welcome their Messiah. On these views, Jesus was asking for the postponement of God’s judgment on the nation or their representatives for their persistent unbelief, and God’s response was to grant a generation of about forty years (ad 30–70), from the crucifixion to the fall of Jerusalem, during which time there was an opportunity for Jews to hear the gospel and embrace Jesus as Messiah. However, in early Christian preaching there was a call for Jews as well as gentiles to repent “for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47); their forgiveness was not automatic. Jesus’ request was not simply for a delay in divine retribution.

 

More probably, the persons for whom Jesus interceded were the four-man Roman execution squad and their supervising centurion. The present tense verbs—“they do not know,” and “what they are doing”; not “they did not know what they did”—strongly support this view. (Murray J. Harris, “Navigating Tough Texts: Whom Did Jesus Forgive on the Cross—And Why? (Luke 23:34),” Bible Study Magazine 14, no. 3 [March/April 2022]: 20)