Stop Preaching Myths

Preaching Myths
The Church needs a Christian Snopes. Snopes is dedicated to exposing the myths and urban legends we like to spread around as true. I recently came across one of those “myths” that pastors like to perpetuate without ever stopping to check if it is plausible, much less factual.

To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, have you ever heard the following:

• A shepherd would break the legs of a straying sheep and then nurse it back to health?
• The word “servant” or “slave” in the New Testament referred to the under-rower on a Trireme?
• The Egyptians were drowned in just a few inches of water?

Perhaps you think these are true. Or perhaps you’ve shared them with others as truth and now want to kick yourself. I’d blame it all on Wikipedia and the way the internet spoils us with instant information, but many of these stories existed long before we started playing around with the internet. So where do these things come from? That’s not my focus in this post, but I have a few ideas:

1. We like to have “secret knowledge” that other people don’t know about (pride)
2. We are looking for stories to help prove our point—historicity isn’t important (laziness)
3. We’re likely to believe some historical or archeological “fact” that supports our reading of the Bible, especially if it’s coming from the lips of someone we know or respect (undiscerning trust)

The myth I’d like to expose, however, seeks to explain a phrase employed by Paul in Romans 7.

The “Body of Death Myth”
Merely saying “Romans 7” is usually sufficient in Christian circles to bring to mind the struggle with sin. As Paul describes the thoughts and impulses that war within him, he comes to verse 24 and says, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (ESV). What does Paul mean here by “body of death”?

Enter the myth:

The above verse was referring to one of the most severe punishments of Roman law. The dead body was literally chained to the murderer — face to face, hand to hand, toe to toe. The condemned man was sentenced to go through the remainder of his life chained to this decaying corpse. Keep in mind the acceleration of the decomposing process in that warm climate; then try to imagine how it would be with this body in front of you while eating or in attempting to talk to your wife and children… As the decaying corpse becomes rigid — stiff — when rigor mortis sets in, sitting down becomes virtually impossible. Sleep escapes you as death permeates every waking moment… There is no escape from the reminder of your crime.

… It is not difficult to understand that many times the condemned man would lose his mind if he did not first die of inhaled putrefaction.

What a picture of sin! (source)

What a picture indeed! This second version is a little less detailed, but sounds better since the murderer actually dies for his crime.

Roman society knew a gruesome form of capital punishment (practiced primarily by Etruscan pirates in Northern Italy) in which the body of the murdered person would be chained to the murderer (hand to hand, face to face, etc.) In the hot Mediterranean sun, the body would quickly decay, spreading not only rancid odor but also deadly infection to the murderer. The doomed criminal would carry this awful burden until the decay and infection from the corpse finally ended his own miserable existence. It was only possible to be freed from the horrors of this punishment if someone else chose to carry the body in the place of the murderer, carrying it to his death. (source)

Even Rick Warren, the author of Bible Study Methods, passed on this myth in one of his sermons. I recognize that anyone can make a mistake and I have nothing against the man, but since he encourages pastors to “re-preach” his sermons, his influence will carry this myth to an even broader audience (which is how I found out about it):

This is an amazing phrase here. In the original Greek it is literally “Who will free me from this body of death?” … Paul is giving a striking illustration here that you wouldn’t understand unless you knew what was going on in the Roman Empire. Because in those days one of the punishments for murdering somebody was sometimes they would chain the body of the person you murdered to you. And you had to walk around with that person until they decayed and fell off… Which means everywhere you go you’re carrying around the memory of your sin… That’s the phrase Paul is using here in the Greek. (Winning the Battle Inside Me, beginning at 34:45)

The Real Story
I searched for a historical reference to this “Roman custom,” written before or around the time of Bible passage in question. If you can’t find any ancient sources that talk about the practice, you should really doubt if it was actually so.

I found almost nothing mentioning a practice like this except one. It comes from Virgil’s Aeneid, originally published around 19 B.C (according to SparkNotes). If Romans was written around A.D. 57 (according to my ESV book introduction), that leaves plenty of time for Paul to have heard of it (his readers certainly would have). Here’s the section in question:

Not far from here is the site of Argylla’s city,
built of ancient stone, where the Lydian race,
famous in war, once settled the Etruscan heights.
For many years it flourished, until King Mezentius
ruled it with arrogant power, and savage weaponry.
Why recount the tyrant’s wicked murders and vicious acts?
May the gods reserve such for his life and race!
He even tied corpses to living bodies, as a means
of torture, placing hand on hand and face against face,
so killing by a lingering death, in that wretched
embrace, that ooze of disease and decomposition.
But the weary citizens at last armed themselves
surrounded the atrocious madman in his palace,
mowed down his supporters, and fired the roof.

(Aeneid, book VII, emphasis mine)

Does this prove anything? Not really. Though the story may be based on true events, it is largely fictional and describes what took place prior to the founding of Rome. If Virgil was alluding to a common practice of his day, there is nothing to show it. From the context before and after the bold section, it appears this kind of punishment was not acceptable (at least to Virgil), since he uses it as an example of King Mezentius’ “wicked murders and vicious acts” for which the people rose up against him.

The victims of this punishment were not identified as murderers, and the corpses were not identified as murder victims. Who would consent to having their murdered loved one chained to the murderer and left to rot instead of receiving a decent burial? The victim of this punishment didn’t seem to be able to get around, and there is absolutely nothing about someone taking their place. At least the concept of getting sick and dying from the presence of putrefying flesh was accurate!

Consider this chart that displays what the myth teaches and what we actually know from history:

The oldest commentaries that mention King Mezentius while discussing this passage do so as an illustration. The oldest source I found suggesting that Paul was alluding to this practice was from 1823. I made a short compilation of these references and the historic development here.

But couldn’t Paul still be making a reference to the Aeneid? I doubt it. Paul does not give any indication that he’s alluding to another work of literature here, even if that literature would have been well-known to his readers. In no other place does Paul reference the Aeneid, and his other references to “body” and “death” show no link to the book either.

Why This is Dangerous
It really scares me just how much we pretend to know about the ancient world. We’ve seen a few Jesus movies and went to a Bible times VBS and we think we know what it was like. We hear a pastor or other trusted Christian tell us about “Roman customs” or “Jewish thought” and assume they know what they’re talking about.

A two-second search can give you all you need to share with people the interesting allusion to the dreaded “body of death” punishment. A two-minute search can give you all you need to debunk it. In the search for a neat sermon illustration or a cool factoid we become lazy—and all it does is feed our pride. There’s nothing wrong with teaching and informing others of things they don’t know. But we shouldn’t do so to boost our ego. When we do, teaching becomes a means to an end. We give a misleading illustration that suddenly becomes the key to interpreting the passage.

Never forget the basics of biblical interpretation: look first to the immediate context. Both in this passage and elsewhere in Romans Paul has shown a link between sin and death. Sin produces death in him (v13) and sin dwells in him (v17). Paul says in Romans 3:23 that “the wages of sin is death.” When Paul has drawn so much of our attention to this link, ought we run to Google for a neat story to prove a point? The “body of death” is his sinful nature, the sinful tendencies that exist within him, not some external object he’s chained to.

Although there certainly are times when having cultural knowledge that is extra-biblical aids in interpretation, appealing to something outside of the Bible as an interpretive key is irresponsible and dangerous. It is easy to say, “You can’t really understand this passage unless you know this other thing first.” Cults get started that way.

Don’t cut corners in sermon preparation. Most people learn hermeneutics through following their preacher’s logic as he expounds the Scriptures. Laziness and pride on your part promotes a faulty hermeneutic on their part. And that can only lead to trouble.

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