These four verses were read eight days ago as the end of a longer passage about the wall coming down. Today they are read on their own, for a feast of apostles, and the emphasis shifts from the demolition to what was built afterwards.
What happens
"You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of Theos, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a templesacred in the master; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of Theos in the Spirit."
What to notice
Epoikodomēthentes epi tō themeliō tōn apostolōn kai prophētōn — "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets."And the genitive is ambiguous in a way that matters.Read one way it is a genitive of apposition: the foundation which is the apostles and prophets.Read another it is authorial: the foundation laid by them.The distinction is not idle, because Paul says something apparently different in 1 Corinthians 3:11: "no one can lay any other foundation than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ."There the foundation is Christ; here Christ is the akrogōniaios and the apostles are the foundation.The two images do different jobs and the New Testament does not harmonize them.Akrogōniaios is the other contested term: usually rendered cornerstone, it can also mean the stone at the summit, the keystone of an arch. In the Septuagint of Isaiah 28:16 it is a foundation stone; in Psalm 118:22 the rejected stone becomes the head of the corner.Either way it is the stone every other stone is set by.Synarmologoumenē… auxeieis naon hagion, "being fitted together, it grows into a holy sanctuary" — and naos is not the temple complex (that is hieron) but the sanctuary building itself, the inner house where Theos was held to dwell; and auxei, "grows," is a botanical verb applied to masonry. And the last phrase names what the building is for: eis katoikētērion tou theou en pneumati, "into a dwelling place of Theos in Spirit" — katoikētērion being a rare word, the Septuagint's term for Theos's dwelling in the Song of the Sea, Exodus 15:17. On a feast of two apostles about whom essentially nothing is known, the reading says the foundation course of the sanctuary is a row of persons.
Psalm 19 is in two halves scholars have long argued about — the first about the sky, the second about the torah — and the lectionary takes only the sky. It is the standard psalm for feasts of apostles, and the reason is a translator's decision.
The selected verses
Psalm 19:2–3."The heavens declare the glory of Theos, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day pours out the word to day, and night to night imparts knowledge." Psalm 19:4–5."Not a word nor a discourse whose voice is not heard; through all the earth their voice resounds, and to the ends of the world, their message."
What to notice
Ha-shamayim m'sapperim k'vod El, "the heavens are recounting the glory of El" — participle: continuous, ongoing. And ha-raqia, the firmament, is from raqa, to hammer metal flat; the Hebrew sky is a beaten dome.Psalm 19:3 is one of the most beautiful lines in the Psalter and is usually flattened: yom l'yom yabbia omer, v'laylah l'laylah y'chavveh da'at, "day to day pours out speech, and night to night breathes out knowledge."Naba is to bubble up, to gush, used of a spring. The days and nights are handing something along a line. And then Psalm 19:4, which appears to contradict what has just been said: ein omer v'ein devarim, b'li nishma qolam, "there is no speech and there are no words; their voice is not heard."Some translations soften this into "their voice goes unheard" or add "yet." The Hebrew simply states it.The sky is speaking and there is no sound. Then the crux, and it is why this psalm belongs to apostles: Psalm 19:5 reads b'khol ha-aretz yatza qavvam, "through all the earth their qav has gone out."Qav means a measuring line, a cord — the surveyor's string. But the Septuagint renders it phthongos, "sound" — probably reading qolam, "their voice," instead of qavvam, "their line." And Paul quotes that Greek version, of the apostolic preaching, at Romans 10:18.So the psalm sung on every apostles' feast became an apostles' psalm because a translator read a cord as a sound.
Early in Luke, before the Sermon on the Plain. Opposition has begun — the sabbath controversies are just behind — and Luke marks the choosing of the Twelve as the most deliberated act in the gospel.
What happens
"Jesus went up to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to Theos. When day came, he called his disciples to himself, and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called a Zealot, and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor."
What to notice
Ēn dianyktereuōn en tē proseuchē tou theou — "he was passing the whole night through in the prayer of Theos."Dianyktereuōoccurs nowhere else in the New Testament; it means precisely to spend the night right through to morning.Luke reports Jesus praying more than any other evangelist, and this is the only all-night vigil he records — before this one decision. Hous kai apostolousōnomasen, "whom he also named apostles" — and apostolos is not a religious word: it means one who has been sent, an envoy, a commissioned representative. And then the list, and the list is the point today. Twelve names. Peter, Andrew, James, John — we know a great deal.Matthew has a call story. Thomas has a scene in John.And then: Philip, Bartholomew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, Judas son of James.Between the five of them, the New Testament records almost nothing.There are two Simons and two Judases in this list, and today's feast pairs the second of each. Simon is ho kaloumenos Zēlōtēs; in Matthew and Mark he is ho Kananaios, the Cananaean, which is not a place-name but a transliteration of the Aramaic qan'ana — the same word.Whether it means he had belonged to the revolutionary movement — the Zealot party as an organized faction is usually dated to the revolt of AD 66 — or simply that he was zealous for the law, is genuinely disputed.What is not disputed is that a tax collector and a man called Zealot were in the same group of twelve.Jude is Ioudas Iakōbou, "Judas of James" — son or brother, the Greek does not say. Matthew and Mark have Thaddaeus in the same slot, and the identification is how the four lists are reconciled. John 14:22 mentions "Judas, not Iscariot," who asks the one question we have from him. And the last name is given its epitaph in advance: hos egeneto prodotēs, "who became a traitor."
Twelve names, and about half of them never appear again
Today the Church celebrates two men about whom it knows almost nothing, and the readings are unexpectedly candid about that.
Start with the list, because it is the honest place to start. Luke gives twelve names and the New Testament gives content to about half. Peter talks constantly. James and John want the best seats. Andrew brings people. Thomas asks the awkward question. Matthew has a call story. Judas has a betrayal.And then there is Philip, and Bartholomew, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon called Zealot, and Judas of James — and between them we have, in the entire New Testament, one recorded question (John 14:22, from a Judas carefully identified as not Iscariot).
These are not minor characters in a story. They are the men who were awake all night being prayed about.Luke reports exactly one all-night vigil in his gospel, using a verb that occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, and it precedes the choosing of a group half of whom then vanish from the record.
And Ephesians says what those men are. Epi tō themeliō tōn apostolōn — the foundation.A foundation course is the part of a building nobody sees and nothing stands without.It is laid first, it is buried, and it determines where every subsequent stone can go.The metaphor is exactly right for a group of people whose names survive and whose deeds do not.
And there is a real tension in the New Testament here that is better named than smoothed.1 Corinthians 3:11 says no one can lay any foundation but Christ.Ephesians 2:20 says the foundation is the apostles and prophets, with Christ as the stone that sets the angles.The images are not identical and the tradition has lived with both — which is probably the correct outcome: the second is what the first looks like once it has people in it.
Then the psalm, and its selection is a small marvel of accident. Psalm 19 says the sky preaches — day pours out speech to day — and then says, flatly, that there is no speech, no words, and no voice is heard.A sermon that makes no sound. And then: their line has gone out through all the earth.
And the Greek translators read their line as their sound — probably a slip, possibly a different Hebrew text — and Paul picked up the Greek and used it in Romans 10:18 for the preaching of the apostles going out to the ends of the world.Which is why this psalm is sung on every apostles' feast.The verse that celebrates the apostolic mission is a verse about wordless speech, made quotable by a translator who read a surveyor's cord as a noise.
It could hardly be more appropriate.What we have from Simon and Jude is exactly that: no words, no discourse, no voice heard — and a line that reached the ends of the earth.
The traditions attached to them are late and cannot be verified. They are paired in the Roman calendar because a tradition held that they preached and were martyred together in Persia; the earliest sources are centuries after the fact. Jude became the patron of desperate cases, and the reason usually given is unimprovable as an image of the whole day: his name was too close to Judas Iscariot for anyone to want to invoke him, so he was left unasked for centuries — and became the saint people turn to when everyone else has been tried.
A foundation stone is not less load-bearing for being out of sight.The building today is called a katoikētērion, a dwelling place — the word the Song of the Sea uses for the place Theos made to live in — and it is still being built: synoikodomeisthe, present tense, you are being built together.
The men in the foundation are not the point of the building. That is what a foundation is.
A Question to Sit With
He prayed all night — the only all-night prayer Luke records — and then chose twelve men, and half of them never say or do a recorded thing again. They are called the foundation, which is the part of a building that is buried, laid first, and decides where everything else can go. I would like the work I do to be visible enough to be credited. If the honest description of a life well spent is a stone nobody looks at, holding up a wall somebody else will be admired for, is that a thing I could actually want?