The Evangelical Dictionary of World Religions

JAINISM. Jainism is one of the sramanic traditions, like Buddhism, founded in India. Today it is estimated to have between three million and eight million members, most living in central and southern India. Its two primary sects are Svetambara and Digambara, with prominent organizations in North America including the Federation of Jain Associations in North America, Young Jains of America, the Jain Meditation International Center in New York City, and the Anekant Education Foundation.

According to Jainism, its history began 8.4 million years ago with a jina who was a giant, but historians trace its origins to the sixth century BC and believe it was founded by Vardhamana (559–527 BC), also known as Mahavira. He was raised in a royal family and left his home at approximately thirty years of age to become a religious ascetic. During this period, it is claimed, he attained perfect enlightenment, developing ideas quite different at points from traditional Hinduism. He began to amass many followers and organized them into orders of monks and nuns. When Mahavira was seventy-two years old, he entered into a religious fast until death. By the first century AD, Jainism had begun to diversify, forming moderate and strict elements. The moderate order was known as Svetambara, “white-clad,” while the stricter was called Digambara, “unclothed,” because they repudiated all material possessions, even their clothes. Starting in the seventh century, the Svetambaras split into more than eighty subsects. By the thirteenth century, Muslims had invaded India far enough that the Jains suffered persecution and destruction of their temples. South of this invasion, rulers of the Hindu Vijayanagar Empire (1136–1660) protected the Jains who were displaced by the Muslim invasion. During the twentieth century, many Jains migrated to East Africa, the UK, and the US.

Jains believe that all sentient beings are in bondage spiritually and are not aware of their inherent perfection. Due to this unawareness, humans are trapped in their bodies and not able to experience their true selves. One can achieve progress toward liberation through the Three Jewels: correct conception of reality, correct knowledge, and proper conduct.

Jainism believes in an eternally self-existent universe that operates according to intrinsic laws. The universe has cosmic layers: the Supreme Abode (abode of liberated souls), the Upper World (where celestial beings live), the Middle World (earth and the remainder of the universe), the Nether World (levels of different kinds of punishment), Nigoda (abode of lowest forms of life), and Space Beyond (a void where nothing exists). The universe is composed of living beings and nonliving objects.

One of the important scriptures of Jainism is known as the Kalpa Sutra (a collection of twenty-four accounts of Jain tirthankaras). Further, it has forty-five sacred texts, divided into six major groups: Angas, Upangas, Pakinnakas, Chedas, Mulasutras, and Sutras. Originally these were part of an oral tradition, but finally they were written down in the early fourth century BC.

Jainism holds to polytheism, believing in countless gods, but belief in a god or gods is not important for liberation. Mahavira is generally considered the last tirthankara. Each of the tirthankaras, or perfect souls, was a human but attained perfection.

Jains hold that every embodied soul is covered with karma particles and is trapped in the cycle of birth-death-rebirth. Humans are made up of an intrinsically pure soul imbedded in matter, time, space, condition of motion, and condition of stillness. Jains believe that all human life is of great value but that all living beings are equal and should be treated with respect. Additionally, Jainism believes in the accumulation of negative karma, which is counteracted by following specific ethical standards, including vows and certain actions.

Liberation, in Jainism, is attained through three key elements that are performed simultaneously: correct concept of reality, correct knowledge, and correct conduct. This process destroys eight types of karma: illusion, knowledge, vision, natural qualities, body, life span, social status, and bodily pleasures and pains. All persons can attain liberation, which is an existence of pure consciousness and bliss. If one has not attained liberation by the time of physical death, the karma that accompanies one’s soul fashions a new body to inhabit. If one has eliminated all the bad karma, then one’s soul is liberated from the world forever.

See also TETRAGRAMMATON

Bibliography. K. S. Hemphill, The Names of God; R. Rhodes, Reasoning.

E. Shropshire and H. W. House

JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES (JW). The Jehovah’s Witnesses are a heretical Christian group best known for their door-to-door and street-corner proselytizing and many religious and social taboos.

History. The JWs were founded by Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916). Russell grew up in Pittsburgh; he was raised nominally as a Presbyterian but had abandoned orthodox Christianity by his teen years. As a young adult, Russell discovered the teachings of a nontrinitarian Adventist group. Their use of the Bible to dispute the doctrine of eternal punishment and to construct a chronology pointing to their own day as the end times rekindled Russell’s faith and interest in the Bible.

Following some initial publishing efforts with his Adventist associates, Russell went his own way and in 1879 launched the magazine Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence. The title reflected Russell’s teaching that Christ had become invisibly “present” in 1874 and within one generation’s time—by 1914—would reconstitute Zion in the Holy Land. In 1881 Russell and his fellow “Bible Students” incorporated the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in Brooklyn, which was to evolve from a publishing house to the headquarters (known as Bethel) of an international religious body.

Russell died in 1916 at the height of World War I, believing that the war would prove to be Armageddon and would usher in the millennium. For three years, the organization was rocked by conflict from both within and without. Various factions sought to gain control of the corporation; meanwhile, the society’s vocal criticism of the US government’s role in the war led to serious legal troubles for the organization. When it was all over, the society’s chief legal counsel, J. F. Rutherford (1869–1942), was its second president. “Judge” Rutherford ousted several members of the Watch Tower’s board and led the society, and the religion as a whole, in an autocratic fashion.

A top item on Rutherford’s teaching agenda was handling the crisis of the apparent failure of Russell’s prophetic speculations. At first the 1914 prophetic deadline was “extended” to 1918, and later, most notoriously, to 1925, when Rutherford predicted the patriarchs would be resurrected and the New World would finally begin to appear. When these predictions failed, Rutherford quietly revised the society’s chronology to make 1914 the beginning of Christ’s invisible “presence” and of the final generation before Armageddon—and left the ending date unspecified.

Later Rutherford lived for a number of years in a mansion in San Diego, called Beth Sarim (Hebrew for “house of the princes”), that had been purchased for the patriarchs. In 1931 Rutherford gave the religion’s advocates a new name, Jehovah’s Witnesses, to distinguish them from the other “Bible Students” groups that had broken ties with the society in the wake of Rutherford’s seizing control. The largest of these groups are the Laymen’s Home Missionary Movement and the Dawn Bible Students Association. In 1939 he also changed the name of the flagship magazine to The Watchtower announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom. This name change further distanced the JWs from Russell’s teaching that “Christ’s presence” had begun in 1874; the change also reinforced the importance of the name Jehovah for the religion.

Rutherford died in 1942 and was succeeded by Nathan Knorr (1905–77). More of an organization man than a personality leader, Knorr made the Brooklyn corporation’s board of directors the collective Governing Body for the religion. Watch Tower books were now published anonymously, and programs were developed to train all faithful members to be able to explain and defend the religion’s teachings. The society published its own version of the Bible, the New World Translation (NWT), which reflected its specific and sometimes unique doctrinal positions. In addition the society published such traditional Bible study tools as a concordance, a two-volume Bible dictionary (Aid to Bible Understanding—later revised as Insight on the Scriptures), and a Greek-English interlinear (The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures).

Knorr’s efforts to make rank-and-file members of the religion biblically literate had a double-edged effect. On the one hand, practically every JW in good standing became a formidable advocate for their doctrines, citing biblical texts on a wide array of subjects and prepared with seemingly knockdown responses to proof texts and arguments for orthodox Christian beliefs. On the other hand, the heavy exposure to biblical texts and the training in religious argumentation gave JWs the tools to become genuinely thoughtful students of the Bible. As a result, many JWs were ready to turn their critical argumentative habits of mind on their own organization’s teachings; they needed only something to set them off.

Less than two years before Knorr passed away, the religion suffered a setback that led to widespread questioning of the organization’s teachings. In the late 1960s, under Knorr’s leadership, the society’s publications began speculating that 1975 would mark the end of six thousand years of human history—and that Armageddon should happen immediately, with a paradisiacal thousand years to follow. Many JWs sold their homes, quit their jobs, and put off college, marriage, or having children in order to devote themselves to “the preaching work” in the short time they thought was left. Not surprisingly, when 1975 came and went, a good number of JWs became disillusioned and left the religion.

Over the next several years, many JWs quietly reexamined the society’s teachings on biblical chronology and other doctrinal matters. Knorr was succeeded by Frederick W. Franz (1893–1992), a longtime member of the Governing Body and its chief theologian for decades. Franz had headed up the committee that produced the NWT and, though not professionally trained, was by far the most theologically knowledgeable president the religion has ever had. In 1980 the Knorr-Franz legacy of encouraging members to be biblically knowledgeable and doctrinally critical caught up with the organization. Several leading JWs in the headquarters at Bethel questioned JW teachings on certain subjects and were “disfellowshipped” (the JW term for excommunication). Raymond Franz, a nephew of President Franz, questioned some doctrines and was forced off the Governing Body.

One of the doctrines that JWs at the highest levels were questioning was the division of believers into two classes, an uncountable number of “other sheep” that will “live forever in paradise on Earth” and an “anointed class” of 144,000 Christians destined for life in heaven (see discussion of this teaching below). The doctrine originated during Rutherford’s tenure as president when it became evident that the number of JWs was going to exceed 144,000. In principle, all available openings for this anointed class were filled by 1935; since then newer members were understood to be added to its ranks only by the apostasy of older anointed members. Moreover, the spiritual leadership of the religion was supposed to be drawn entirely from the anointed class. As the number of living members of the anointed class dwindled, some JWs began to question the doctrine.

Fred Franz passed away in 1992 and was succeeded by Milton G. Henschel. Under Henschel the Governing Body made further adjustments to the organization’s end-times doctrine to accommodate the lengthening years since 1914. The most important of these adjustments was a series of articles in the 1995 Watchtower in which the organization abandoned Rutherford’s claim that the generation that had seen the events of 1914 would not all die before Armageddon. For the first time, JWs no longer lived under an eschatological cloud: the “apocalypse delayed” was now only potentially imminent. That same year, 1995, the number of persons considered members of the anointed class reached its lowest figure, about 8,500 (see the table). Since that time, the number has been increasing.

Meanwhile, though, another cloud threatened the organization’s integrity. One of the religion’s most controversial and infamous teachings was its ban on giving or receiving blood transfusions. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the society weathered a variety of legal challenges to this taboo. In the 1990s, though, it became evident that the society itself was vulnerable to litigation against it because of the many members, including children, who died as a result of adhering to the prohibition. Various articles in the religion’s magazines detailed certain qualifications but stopped short of retracting the doctrine. Late in the year 2000, Henschel stepped down as the head of the Governing Body and was replaced by Don Adams. The Governing Body members also vacated their positions as the administrative board of directors for the Brooklyn corporation, which was reorganized into separate corporations of more limited scope. The Governing Body in theory became the spiritual and moral authority over the religion but not the administrative and financial officers of its corporate assets. These changes not only made it less likely that the corporations would be targeted for expensive litigation but also placed them in the hands of men who were not all of the “anointed class.” (Meanwhile, the number of the “anointed” mysteriously leveled off and even increased slightly.) Thus the likely prospect of that class entirely dying off no longer poses a problem for the administration of the religious corporations.

Statistics. JWs count not attendees but rather active members (whom they call “publishers”), who are not only baptized but are involved in the preaching and literature-distribution work. The number of JWs worldwide exceeded one million in 1965, when almost one in three JWs lived in the US. Already by this time, the JWs were growing faster outside the US, especially in Latin America and the Pacific Rim. Over the next ten years, the worldwide JW population doubled under the urgent expectation that the end would likely come in 1975. Not surprisingly, growth of the religion slowed in the years following the 1975 disappointment, but it picked up under Franz’s tenure. The JWs added more than two million new members between 1985 and 1995—with seven of every eight new members coming from outside the US. The religion grew quickly in the former Soviet republics after the fall of the USSR in 1989, with Russia and Ukraine exceeding one hundred thousand members each in about ten years (the growth there has since slowed to a crawl). In 2002 the religion reported over a million members in the US for the first time and over six million worldwide. The largest JW populations outside the US continue to be found in Mexico and Brazil, with sizable followings also in Nigeria, Italy, and Japan. The most dramatic growth of JWs is taking place in Africa (notably in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Madagascar).

The broadening influence of the JW religion can be seen from the number of people attending its annual Memorial. This observance is the JW version of Communion and is held on or about Passover. Earlier in the history of the JW, the number of people attending the Memorial was roughly double the number of active members. In the 1980s and 1990s, that number was close to triple the active membership, with the trend reversing in the new century. According to the official Jehovah’s Witnesses’ website, in 2013 over nineteen million people attended the Memorial worldwide.

Jehovah’s Witnesses Statistics, 1965–2013

	1965	1975	1985	1995	2005	2013
Brazil Peak Publishers	36K	103K	178K	417K	638K	767K
Mexico Peak Publishers	33K	80K	173K	444K	594K	807K
Former USSR Peak Publishers	*	*	*	123K	356K	407K
US Peak Publishers	330K	567K	730K	967K	1.04M	1.22M
World Peak Publishers	1.1M	2.2M	3.0M	5.2M	6.6M	8.0M
Memorial Attendees	2M	5M	8M	13M	16M	19M
“Anointed” Participants	11,550	10,550	9,051	8,645	8,524	13,204
Hours Preaching	171M	382M	591M	1,200M	1,278M	1,841M
Notes: “Publishers” are members active in preaching and proclaiming. K = thousand, M = million. * Information unavailable.

It is interesting to note that only members of the anointed class are permitted to participate by taking of the elements (these are the “anointed” participants shown in the table). In 1965 this meant that about 1 of every 100 members partook of the elements—roughly 1 of every 200 attendees. By 2005 only 1 of every 774 members—and only 1 of every 1,877 persons attending—partook of the elements. Even with the number of attendees per participant falling in recent years to about 1,400, one can only infer that in many JW congregations around the world, no one partakes of the elements at all.

The Watch Tower Society is renowned for the sheer volume of its publication efforts. In 2014 the twice-monthly Watchtower magazine was being published in 210 languages and averaging forty-five million copies per issue. (Compare this to Reader’s Digest, which at its peak sold about sixteen million copies monthly and by 2004 was selling about twelve million.) Of its introductory book What Does the Bible Really Teach?, used to instruct prospective converts, 214 million copies have been published in 240 languages since it was first published in 2005. The society had also published, between 1950 and 2014, 184 million NWT Bibles in 121 languages. The organization boasts on its website, jw.org, that it “is the world’s most translated website,” with some 500 languages represented.

Culture. The JW religion forms a kind of subculture wherever it is found. Its distinctiveness is the result of both the insular nature of JW life and the long, stringent list of activities of the general culture that JWs consider pagan. They spend far more time in weekly meetings (and in preparation for those meetings) with their congregations—in modest buildings called Kingdom Halls—and in small home study groups than the vast majority of churchgoers. They also tend to derive many of their perspectives on the world from their own literature. In addition to the Watchtower, the society also publishes Awake!—a twice-monthly general-interest magazine that functions as a kind of Time magazine for JWs, who are broadly suspicious of the media. JWs are discouraged from participating in civic affairs; they are not permitted to hold government office, serve in the military (even as noncombatants), join a political party, or even vote. They view birthday celebrations, religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter, national holidays such as Thanksgiving in the US, and cultural holidays such as Mother’s Day or the New Year as pagan and forbidden.

Until recently the society’s publications discouraged but did not forbid outright the pursuit of higher education; although they have not yet begun actively encouraging JWs to seek university degrees, an increasing number appear to be doing so. Unfortunately for the religion, JWs who attain some scholarly proficiency are also more likely to question some of what they were taught at the Kingdom Hall. One of the best examples was the Canadian JW historian James Penton, whose earlier work on the history of JWs in Canada was lauded within the religion. When Penton researched a book on the general history of the JW religion, his discoveries eventually led to his being disfellowshipped.

The practice of disfellowshipping is one of the more onerous elements of JW religion and culture. The JWs take the apostle Paul’s teaching on church discipline in 1 Corinthians 5:9–13 to mean that family and friends should have little or no dealings with ex-members. The practice approaches the severity of shunning associated with Amish communities. Moreover, a JW can be disfellowshipped for a wide array of infractions, many of which are unlike anything mentioned by Paul. While Paul did discourage Christians from carrying on friendships with persons claiming to be believers but living unrepentantly in gross sin, he did not say that those who got too friendly with such persons would also be subject to removal from the church. Nor, of course, did he advocate church discipline for those who questioned speculative teachings on arcane doctrinal matters. A JW can be disfellowshipped for questioning doctrines in Watch Tower publications on such matters as biblical chronology and end-times speculations (which happened, for example, to the Swedish JW writer Carl Olof Jonsson) or for eating with an ex-JW (which happened to Raymond Franz, whose employer and landlord was an ex-JW). Naturally, this overly strict form of discipline makes it difficult for members to contemplate leaving the religion or even to question the organization’s teachings.

Theology. JWs believe that God is a single person, Jehovah, the Almighty God, who is the Father. They reject the doctrine of the Trinity. God has always existed and is all-powerful, holy, and loving. JWs do not accept the doctrine of divine omnipresence, at least as understood in orthodox theology; in their view, Jehovah God has a “spirit body” and is in some sense localized, though he can make his power and will known anywhere. JWs also deny that God possesses exhaustive foreknowledge of the free acts of his creatures; they argue that God could know such acts but chooses not to exercise that power (a position similar to open theism).

The divine name YHWH is God’s name forever, and therefore, according to JWs, a mark of true Christians is their use of this name. Following what was English convention until the mid-twentieth century, JWs use the form Jehovah (which was used, for example, in the American Standard Version [ASV] of 1901). The substitution of LORD or other surrogates for the divine name in Old Testament translations, and its alleged removal from the New Testament, are cited as evidence of apostasy in early Christianity.

According to JWs, God’s first creation—and the only creation for which he was directly and immediately responsible—was the Logos, or Word, his only-begotten Son. This Logos, also called Michael the archangel, was a prehuman spirit later known as Jesus. The Logos was “a god,” not Almighty God. After making this created Son, Jehovah commissioned him to make the rest of creation, including the angels and the physical universe. JW publications are not clear on whether creation was performed ex nihilo. Jehovah does all his works utilizing what they call “holy spirit,” which JWs define as God’s invisible active force. This force seems to emanate from Jehovah’s spirit body, though no explanation of how this works seems to have been published.

Human beings, in the view of JWs, do not have a soul or spirit distinct from the body. The soul is the life of the body, and the spirit is the life force that energizes that bodily life. Thus there is no intermediate state between death and resurrection. Physical death is the consequence of Adam’s sin. Had Christ not come, that physical death would have been the end of the matter.

In order to make it possible for human beings to live forever, Jehovah sent the Son to live as a human being, Jesus Christ. JWs agree that Jesus was conceived and born of the virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life as a perfect human being—no more and no less. He was neither God incarnate nor even a powerful spirit incarnate, but could only be a perfect man in order to serve as a “corresponding ransom” (1 Tim. 2:6 NWT), laying down an equivalent perfect human life for the one Adam forfeited when he sinned. (This interpretation overreaches the significance of the prefix anti- in the Greek antilutron, which simply emphasizes the substitutionary purpose of the ransom; and Paul states that Christ died as a ransom “for all,” not as a ransom corresponding to Adam.) And in order for the ransom to be effective, JWs argue, Jesus could not have received human life back in the resurrection since to do so would be to take back the “ransom price.” Thus Jesus was instead raised (re-created would be a better word) as a glorious spirit creature, essentially as he was before, though with more authority. The physical body (or bodies, according to the JWs) in which Jesus appeared to his disciples after the resurrection was a temporary materialized form, not Jesus’s own body (which is, again, a “spirit body” akin to those of Jehovah and the angels).

As a result of Christ’s ransom sacrifice, all or nearly all people will be resurrected from the dead with an opportunity to prove themselves faithful and worthy of everlasting life. Thus, although JWs attribute salvation to God’s “unmerited favor” (i.e., grace), this favor only affords human beings a kind of second chance. In order to be saved, one must believe in Jehovah God and his arrangement for salvation (which includes Jesus’s ransom sacrifice). Beyond that belief, one must “take in knowledge” of Jehovah and his purposes (through Bible study using Watch Tower publications), obey God’s laws (which include not only legitimate moral standards but also the JWs’ distinctive taboos), associate with God’s organization (found in the JW religion as represented by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society), and participate in the “preaching work” of spreading the message of the kingdom (that Christ’s invisible presence began in 1914 and will culminate in the inauguration of a Paradise Earth).

As has already been mentioned, JWs divide the ransomed into the “other sheep” of uncounted millions of believers and the “anointed class” of 144,000 believers, mostly from the first and twentieth centuries. The other sheep are destined for life on Paradise Earth, which will gradually come about when they recondition this earth during the millennium. The anointed class will live in heaven with Jehovah, Jesus, and the angels. This bifurcation distorts not only biblical eschatology but also the biblical teaching on salvation and the church. In JW teaching, the anointed gain final assurance of salvation only at death, while the other sheep must await the end of the millennium—during which their salvation will continue to be provisional—for such complete assurance.

The JW doctrine that Christ became invisibly present in 1914 also bears further elaboration. According to JWs, the Greek word parousia, commonly translated “coming” in English versions of the New Testament, should be translated “presence” and can refer to an invisible presence. The question of invisibility is moot since the actual JW view is that Christ will never literally be present on earth at all; his “presence” is strictly figurative, mediated by the work of invisible angels and of the anointed class. However one translates parousia, that Christ will visibly and literally return to earth to consummate salvation and judgment is the clear teaching of the New Testament (e.g., Acts 3:20–21; 1 Thess. 4:16; Heb. 9:26–28).

The 1914 date depends on a complicated interpretation of biblical prophecy correlated with an idiosyncratic system of biblical chronology. JWs interpret the seven years of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness in Daniel 4 as referring to a period of 2,520 years (since 7 x 360 = 2,520) during which gentile powers supplanted God’s kingdom on earth. This period is said to have begun when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem in 607 BC, according to JWs, despite the fact that all biblical scholars date the event to 587–586 BC. (Russell actually dated this event 606 BC; he arrived at the 1914 date by failing to take into account that there is no year zero between 1 BC and AD 1.) The outbreak of World War I in 1914 is claimed as vindication of the chronology, even though gentile powers seem no less entrenched a century later. The emergence of the Watch Tower as a religion sharply separated from “Christendom” in the period 1914–18 is thought to mark the beginning of the reestablishment of Jehovah’s kingdom on earth. Not surprisingly, many JWs have therefore viewed advancement in the JW religion as the best “career move” they could make.

JWs hold that the “presence” of Christ will culminate in Armageddon, a war in which the angels will bring destruction on the governments and other institutions of the unbelieving world. Only the “theocratic” government of the JW organization will be left standing. The millennium will then commence—a period of peace and fruitful labor in which JWs and other faithful ones of old will clean up the earth and remake it into a paradise. At the end of the millennium, those who do not remain faithful will be destroyed. The rest of the wicked will be resurrected to face the final judgment, at which they will be destroyed again (what JWs understand to be “the second death” of Revelation 20). Since death is extinction of the person, there will be no unending punishment or torment of the wicked. The Bible “hell” is Sheol, the grave, not a place of torment. The JW doctrine here capitalizes on the confusion engendered by the KJV use of “hell” in the New Testament to translate both hades (the Greek word used to translate the Old Testament Hebrew word sheol) and gehenna. In New Testament usage, hades sometimes refers to death and sometimes to the intermediate state of the dead, whereas Jesus used gehenna to refer to the final state of horrific punishment for the wicked. The real basis for the JWs’ rejection of eternal punishment is their belief that it is incompatible with God’s love—an understandable objection but one that is not biblically grounded. For JWs today, as for their founder Russell, the reasonableness of Christianity depends on a rejection of the doctrine of eternal punishment.

Bibliography. Official Publications (All of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society): Awake! (periodical); Jehovah’s Witnesses website, jw.org.; Jehovah’s Witnesses: Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom; Reasoning from the Scriptures; The Watchtower announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom (periodical); What Does the Bible Really Teach? Other: J. Bergman, Jehovah’s Witnesses: A Comprehensive and Selectively Annotated Bibliography; R. M. Bowman Jr., Jehovah’s Witnesses; R. Franz, Crisis of Conscience; H. W. House, Charts of Cults, Sects, & Religious Movements; C. O. Jonsson, The Gentile Times Reconsidered: Chronology and Christ’s Return; M. J. Penton, Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

R. M. Bowman Jr.

JESUS, HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR. The Four Gospels. By far the most extensive sources we have for the life of Jesus are the four canonical Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Some biblical critics doubt the historical reliability of these sources, believing that the four evangelists so embellished the story of Jesus that very little accurate history remains. Nevertheless, evangelicals accept their testimony at face value. In rough outline, the Gospels tell us that Jesus (1) was born of a virgin in Bethlehem near the end of the life of Herod the Great, (2) was raised in Nazareth, (3) was baptized by John the Baptist, (4) conducted a ministry of teaching and healing in Galilee and Judea, (5) gathered a large following of disciples, twelve of whom he appointed as apostles, (6) taught that the kingdom of God was present in his ministry, (7) proclaimed that he was in fact the Son of God, (8) engaged in a controversy with the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, who accused him of blasphemy, (9) was crucified on the authority of Pontius Pilate and buried in a tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea, and (10) rose from the dead three days later. Liberal and skeptical scholars typically deny that Jesus was born of a virgin, that he claimed to be divine, and that he rose from the dead, but generally accept the rest of the above summary as historical. Recent studies by such scholars as Richard Burridge and Richard Bauckham have done much to rehabilitate the Gospels as biographical accounts of Jesus.

Roman Sources. Several ancient Roman documents mention Jesus. Three in particular deserve attention. Suetonius, in his De vita Caesarum, remarks that Emperor Claudius “expelled the Jews from Rome on account of the riots in which they were constantly indulging at the instigation of Chrestus” (cf. Acts 18:2). Most scholars agree that the reference to “Chrestus” is actually a reference to “Christ” and that Suetonius is alluding to conflicts between non-Christian and Christian Jews in Rome around AD 49.

The historian Tacitus, writing about 115, describing Nero’s persecution of Christians fifty years earlier, explained that “Christ, during the reign of Tiberius, had been executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate.” Here we have excellent confirmation of one of the key events in the Gospels, the crucifixion of Jesus.

Pliny the Younger, governor of Pontus and Bithynia from 111 to 112, wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan asking advice on how to treat Christians, by that time an illegal sect. In part of the letter, he had this to say about Christians: “It was their habit on a fixed day to assemble before daylight and recite by turns a form of words to Christ as a god.” Though not saying anything about Jesus’s life, Pliny does tell us that Jesus was worshiped by his followers and that the Christian movement had spread not only to Rome but to northern Asia Minor as well.

Rabbinic Sources. The Babylonian Talmud appears to refer to Jesus twice. In b. Sanhedrin 43a, we read: “On the eve of Passover Yeshua [Jesus] was hanged.” It goes on to say that he was executed “because he . . . practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy.” The second reference is b. Sanhedrin 107b, which records an alleged meeting between Jesus and Rabbi Joshua that concludes with the accusation: “Jesus the Nazarene practiced magic and led Israel astray.” Those texts are of limited value historically because of their late date (ca. 500). Nevertheless, they are possible echoes of the early Jewish reaction against Jesus that we find in the Gospels (cf. Matt. 12:24; Luke 23:2). It is also clear that the Jews did not deny what the Gospels affirm—that Jesus was a healer and miracle worker—but simply attributed his powers to magic.

Josephus. Without doubt the best extrabiblical evidence for Jesus is found in the works of Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian. In his Antiquities (20.200), he mentions the execution of James, Jesus’s brother: “He convened a judicial session of the Sanhedrin and brought before it the brother of Jesus, the one called Christ . . . —James by name.” Few doubt the authenticity of this text, and the indirect way in which Josephus refers to Jesus as “the one called Christ” indicates that he has mentioned him before. And indeed there is an earlier reference to Jesus known as the Testimonium Flavianum (Antiquities 18.63–64), which reads:

Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of surprising works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named for him, are not extinct to this day.

Some scholars dismiss this entire text as a later Christian interpolation, but the later reference regarding James makes it virtually certain that at least part of the Testimonium is authentic. The italicized portions are clearly Christian additions, but read without those lines, we probably have what Josephus wrote. This means that Josephus knew that Jesus was a religious teacher and a worker of miracles, that the Jewish leaders conspired to have him crucified by Pilate, and that his followers persisted into Josephus’s own day.

Other Gospels? Other written accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus have also appeared in history and been appealed to for historical information about Jesus. Such works include the Gospel of Thomas, a second-century work, which some view as gnostic; the Gospel of Peter, which portrays a docetic, nonhuman Jesus; various “infancy” gospels that fill in the gaps of Jesus’s early years; the Muslim-inspired (or edited) Gospel of Barnabas, which claims that Judas replaced Jesus on the cross; and other stories that have Jesus traveling to India or living with the Essenes. However, none of these documents have any claim to historical reliability, all having been written very late (many in the Middle Ages) and obviously attempting to supplement or “correct” the New Testament Gospels.

Bibliography. P. W. Barnett, Jesus and the Logic of History; R. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses; C. L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels; D. L. Bock, Studying the Historical Jesus; F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins outside the New Testament; R. Burridge, What Are the Gospels?; P. R. Eddy and G. A. Boyd, The Jesus Legend; C. S. Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels; C. S. Keener, The Historical Jesus of the Gospels; E. M. Yamauchi, “Jesus outside the New Testament: What Is the Evidence?,” in Jesus under Fire, edited by Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland; R. E. Van Voorst, Jesus outside the New Testament.

S. B. Cowan

JESUS, MORMON VIEW OF. Mormons insist that their belief in Jesus Christ eminently qualifies them as Christians. His name is part of the official name of their religion (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Their keystone scripture, the Book of Mormon, goes so far as to represent the faithful living even before Christ’s earthly life as explicitly Christ-centered: “We talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ” (2 Nephi 25:23). Joseph Smith once said, “The fundamental principles of our religion is the testimony of the apostles and prophets concerning Jesus Christ, ‘that he died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended up into heaven’; and all other things are only appendages to these, which pertain to our religion” (Elders’ Journal 1, July 1838, 44). While there is no disputing that Mormons are sincere in their profession of faith in Jesus Christ, it is nevertheless appropriate to ask what Mormons believe about him.

Traditional Beliefs about Jesus Christ Affirmed in Mormonism. LDS doctrine agrees with traditional Christian beliefs about Jesus in some very important respects. Most notably, Mormons accept the historical statements of the New Testament Gospels regarding the birth, life, teachings, miracles, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Mormons affirm that Jesus was born of Mary in Bethlehem; that he lived a sinless life; that he performed such miracles as healings, exorcisms, and raising people from the dead; that he was crucified; and that he rose physically from the grave with an immortal human body. Mormon leaders and theologians, such as James Talmage and Bruce McConkie, have written voluminously and at times passionately about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Mormon beliefs about Christ prior to and subsequent to his mortal life on earth also coincide in some significant ways with traditional Christian belief. Mormon doctrine identifies the premortal Jesus Christ as Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. LDS scripture affirms, “We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost” (Article of Faith 1). Admittedly, some important differences, to be addressed below, underlie these apparent agreements. Mormons also affirm “that Christ will reign personally upon the earth” in a literal second coming (Article of Faith 10).

Finally, Mormons share important beliefs with historic Christianity regarding the essential role of Jesus Christ in salvation; in fact, Mormons quite often refer to him simply as “the Savior.” Mormonism teaches that salvation comes only through “the Atonement of Christ” and that “faith in the Lord Jesus Christ” is the first principle of the gospel (Articles of Faith 3, 4). Again, there are important differences as well with regard to these points of agreement.

Mormon Approach to Knowledge of Jesus Christ. Mormonism does not base its views of Jesus Christ on the Bible alone. The LDS view of Christ is based on the four standard works, or Mormon scriptures, which include the Bible (with textual changes made by Joseph Smith), the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants (D&C), and the Pearl of Great Price. Mormons accept what these four scriptural canons say about Christ as interpreted by their living prophet (the current LDS Church president) and other living authorities. The statement of Robert J. Matthews is representative: “I do not believe any person can know enough about the real Jesus without knowing what the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and the Joseph Smith Translation have to say” (viii). Joseph Fielding McConkie has warned that “there is no salvation in the worship of a false Christ” and that the LDS Church exists on the premise “that a true knowledge of Christ, the purity of his doctrines, and the authority to act in his name were restored to the earth through the instrumentality of the Prophet Joseph Smith” (3).

Mormonism’s Novel Teachings about Jesus Christ. On the basis of its expanded canon and the authoritative pronouncements of its prophets and apostles, the LDS Church holds to a view of Christ that differs in dramatic ways from the traditional (and biblical) doctrine. Gordon B. Hinckley, former president of the LDS Church, admitted as much: “As a Church we have critics, many of them. They say we do not believe in the traditional Christ of Christianity. There is some substance to what they say” (“We Look to Christ,” 90).

Mormon beliefs about Jesus differ radically most specifically with regard to his divine nature and identity. To understand how this is so, one must understand the larger picture of Mormon theology. The LDS Church teaches that God the Father and Heavenly Mother are the literal heavenly parents of billions of spirit children. Their firstborn spirit son, Jesus Christ, was also the first of their children to become a God. The Mormon “Godhead” is not one God but a ruling council of three Gods. This means that when Mormonism affirms that Jesus Christ was “Jehovah,” it is actually saying that Jesus was one of at least three Gods (four, if one counts Heavenly Mother) that existed before the world was made.

One regrettable consequence of this faulty theology is that Mormons do not pray to Jesus Christ. The Old Testament constantly represents Jehovah as the only God to whom people should pray (e.g., Deut. 9:26; 1 Kings 8:22–30; Ps. 5:1–3). The New Testament teaches believers to pray both to the Father (e.g., Matt. 6:6–13; Luke 11:1–3; Eph. 3:14–16) and to Jesus (John 14:14; Acts 1:24–25; 7:59–60; Rom. 10:12–13; etc.). Yet Mormons refuse prayer to Jesus Christ. This fact, in the broader context of the LDS worldview, calls into question the validity of concessions by some evangelical scholars that Mormons affirm “the full divinity of Jesus Christ” (Blomberg and Robinson, 142) or “that Jesus was fully God” (Millet and McDermott, 16). To affirm that Jesus is fully divine or fully God while redefining divinity and God in unbiblical ways is unacceptable.

In Mormon theology, Jesus is our “elder brother,” the first of our spirit brethren to become a God. The natural implication, of course, is that we can do the same. Hence Mormonism flatly rejects any permanent or essential qualitative difference between Jesus Christ and the rest of the human race. All human beings, all angels, and all Gods are members of the same species, beings of the same kind, with the same divine potential. Jesus Christ is simply further than we are along the path of what Mormons traditionally have called “eternal progression.” There is no room in Mormon theology for the traditional Christian doctrine of the two natures of Christ, according to which Jesus Christ is like us with respect to his human nature but unlike us with respect to his divine nature. Mormonism recognizes only one nature in Christ, the divine-human nature inherited from our common heavenly parents, who are themselves glorified physical beings. Lucifer himself was our spirit brother and therefore had the same potential, but he failed to make the right choices as Jesus did (Christensen). This is the context in which Mormonism’s doctrine that Jesus and Lucifer were “spirit brothers” should be understood.

The belief that Jesus was our elder spirit brother in heaven and is one of God’s billions of spirit children leads to some other doctrinal problems. For example, Mormons believe that Jesus’s conception and birth on earth were unique, but they explain it in a rather different way. Jesus was unique in that he was “the only person on earth to be born of a mortal mother and an immortal father,” so that God the Father was “the literal father of Jesus Christ” in the flesh (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 64). Although Mormons say that Mary was a “virgin,” this affirmation is at least in tension with the claim that the Father, who is supposed to be an exalted man with a literal body of flesh and bones, is the “literal” father of Jesus’s human body. The logical implication is that Jesus was conceived through a procreative act of God and Mary, a conclusion that Mormons often dismiss as an anti-Mormon slur. If so, though, it is odd that the LDS Church has never officially repudiated the idea, and in fact several Mormon leaders over the years from Brigham Young to Bruce McConkie have apparently embraced it. By contrast, in orthodox Christian theology such an idea is adamantly and consistently rejected. God is incorporeal Spirit, and Jesus Christ was conceived in the Virgin Mary through the supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:18–25; Luke 1:35).

Mormon doctrine also presents a rather different understanding of Christ’s work of salvation. The basic facts are the same—Jesus lived a sinless life, died on the cross, and rose from the dead—but the way they are interpreted differs. The LDS Church teaches that Jesus accomplished the atonement primarily (though not exclusively) in Gethsemane by literally bleeding “from every pore” (Mosiah 3:7; D&C 19:18) during the ordeal. This idea is based on a misreading of Luke 22:44, which reports that “his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (KJV). Luke actually says that the beads of sweat falling from Jesus’s face were like large drops of blood, not that they were blood. In any case, the New Testament consistently teaches that Jesus atoned for our sins specifically by his death on the cross (Matt. 20:28; Rom. 5:6–10; 1 Cor. 1:18; 2:2; 15:3; Eph. 2:16; Col. 1:20; 1 Pet. 2:24).

Finally, Mormonism teaches that Jesus’s atonement and resurrection guarantee resurrection to immortal life for practically everybody—Christian or not, moral, immoral, and heinously criminal—in one of three heavenly kingdoms (D&C 76). (The only exceptions are the “sons of perdition,” incorrigibly evil people, including some ex-Mormons.) Even the lowest and least glorious of these kingdoms is far more wonderful than this present mortality on earth. This resurrection to immortality is sometimes called unconditional salvation, and everyone except the sons of perdition will receive it eventually by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, though for most people their conversion will come only in the spirit world after death. Ironically, for the vast majority of the human race how they live and whether they come to faith in this life has no ultimate bearing on their eternal future since they will be given an opportunity for salvation in the next life. Thus Mormonism teaches a form of near-universalism in which repentance and faith in this life are not necessary.

On the other hand, entrance into the highest of the heavenly realms, the celestial kingdom, where Heavenly Father lives, requires far more than repentance and faith in Christ. It requires baptism and reception of the “gift of the Holy Ghost” administered by a Mormon with the proper priesthood authority; obedience to the laws and ordinances of the LDS Church, including tithing and certain food and drink taboos (called the Word of Wisdom); and regular participation in the secret ceremonies of the LDS temples. This “conditional salvation” is obtained by grace and works, not by grace alone.

The Bible, contrary to LDS doctrine, consistently teaches that human beings face two possible futures. The wicked or unredeemed will be resurrected only to face, in their bodies, their condemnation to eternal punishment (Dan. 12:2; Matt. 10:28; 25:46; John 5:28–29; Acts 24:15). They derive no benefit from Christ’s atoning death. The righteous “in Christ”—those who belong to Christ—will be made alive and given immortality (1 Cor. 15:22–23, 53–54), eternal life in God’s presence as a free gift in Christ (Rom. 6:23; see also John 3:16–18; 5:24). They become like Christ in his glorified humanity, but they do not become gods or beings of the same divine essence and powers as Christ. Jesus Christ remains forever unique as the one and only God-man (John 1:1, 14–18; Col. 2:9; Heb. 1:8–12; 13:8).

Bibliography. C. L. Blomberg and S. E. Robinson, How Wide the Divide? A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation; J. Christensen, “I Have a Question,” Ensign; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Gospel Principles; Elders’ Journal (LDS periodical); C. R. Harrell, “This Is My Doctrine”: The Development of Mormon Theology; G. B. Hinckley, “We Look to Christ,” https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2002/04/we-look-to-christ?lang=eng; G. B. Hinckley et al., “The Living Christ: The Testimony of the Apostles,” Ensign; D. H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4 vols.; R. J. Matthews, Behold the Messiah; B. L. McConkie, The Millennial Messiah; McConkie, The Mortal Messiah, 4 vols.; McConkie, The Promised Messiah; J. F. McConkie, Here We Stand; R. L. Millet, A Different Jesus? The Christ of the Latter-day Saints; R. L. Millet and G. R. McDermott, Claiming Christ: A Mormon–Evangelical Debate; J. F. Smith et al., “The Father and the Son: A Doctrinal Exposition by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles”; J. E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ; C. Volluz, “Jesus Christ as Elder Brother,” BYU Studies.

R. M. Bowman Jr.

JIHAD. Jihad is the term used in Islam for divinely sanctioned warfare—whether against an external human enemy or against one’s internal evil inclination. Linguistically, the root of jihad means “to struggle, to exert oneself,” and in the Qur’an many references to jihad and its cognates are not military in nature. For this reason, the standard verses describing warfare and martyrdom in the Qur’an use mostly the term qital (fighting) for Muslim warfare. However, in the later verses of the Qur’an (e.g., sura 8:72; 9:19) and especially the hadith (tradition) literature that spans the first three centuries of Islam, jihad, usually accompanied by the phrase “in the way of God [Allah],” came to signify fighting.

The standard verse used to describe jihad is Qur’an 9:111: “Allah has bought from the believers their lives and their wealth in return for Paradise; they fight in the way of Allah, kill and are killed. That is a true promise from Him . . . and who fulfils His promises better than Allah? Rejoice then in the bargain you have made with him; for that is the great triumph.” Most of the Qur’anic teachings concerning jihad are to be found in suras 3, 8–9, 33, and 61, all of which are closely related to battles that Muhammad fought.

Later Muslim teaching on the subject of jihad is fleshed out in the hadith literature, in which jihad is described as the pinnacle of Islam, with unique salvational qualities being accorded both to fighters and to martyrs. Muslim legal scholars (fuqaha) developed the doctrine of jihad in order to delineate the type of warfare that had the spiritual rank of jihad. The warfare had to take place between Muslims and infidels, to be proclaimed by a legitimate leader (either a caliph or an imam), and to be accompanied by an invitation either to convert to Islam, submit, and pay the jizya tax, or to fight. Those who could participate in a jihad had to be Muslim, male, free, sane, mature, and able bodied. The tactics used in (offensive) jihad were limited: indiscriminate killing was forbidden, and the killing of women, children, the elderly, and monks was also prohibited. However, in cases when Muslim countries were attacked by infidels, some of these prohibitions lapsed.

Jihad also involves personal struggle against the lower self (nafs, “soul”). This aspect of jihad is particularly popular among Sufi mystics, who taught that the lower self was more dangerous than human enemies and more difficult to overcome. Much of the Qur’anic terminology referring to Muhammad’s temporal battles was reinterpreted by Sufis in terms of this struggle.

Contemporary Muslim teaching concerning jihad either is very apologetic, avoiding (or in some cases denying) the military meaning of the term, or, if associated with radical Muslims, is very aggressive and expansive in defining the boundaries of legitimate warfare. Today the term jihad is very freely used throughout the Muslim world, and it is difficult to say whether the classical definitions of the term have much contemporary relevance.

Bibliography. D. Cook, Understanding Jihad; M. Fakhry, trans., The Qur’an: A Modern English Version; M. K. Haykal, al-Jihad wa-l-qital fi al-siyasa al-shara’iyya; A. Morabia, Le Ğihad dans l’Islam medieval; R. Peters, Islam and Colonialism.

D. B. Cook

JINA. In Jainism jinas, or tirthankaras, are persons who, upon liberation from the four karmas that obscure the original state of the soul, revive the teaching and practice of Jainism. Twenty-four jinas arise during each time cycle of the universe, the last jina in our current cycle being Mahavira (599–527 BC).

See also JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES (JW)

Bibliography. R. M. Bowman Jr., Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jesus Christ, and the Gospel of John [see esp. pp. 17–84]; E. C. Colwell, “A Definite Rule for the Use of the Article in the Greek New Testament,” Journal of Biblical Literature; Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, 1883–1896; P. B. Harner, “Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1,” Journal of Biblical Literature; M. J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus [see esp. pp. 55–71]; G. Stafford, Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended: An Answer to Scholars and Critics, 2nd ed. [see esp. pp. 305–66]; D. B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament [see esp. pp. 206–70].

R. M. Bowman Jr.

JOSEPH SMITH TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE. Also known as the Inspired Version, the JST followed from the Book of Mormon teaching that the Bible had gone forth “from the Jews in purity, unto the Gentiles,” but afterward was corrupted by the “Great and Abominable Church” (i.e., apostate Christendom and especially Roman Catholicism), which took “many plain and precious things” out of it (1 Nephi 13:25–28). It now fell to Joseph Smith as prophet of the great latter-day restoration to return the Bible to its original purity via revelation. The stage was set for the JST in a June 1830 prophecy in which God tells Moses that “in a day when the children of men shall esteem my words as naught and take many of them from the book which thou shalt write, behold, I will raise up another like unto thee; and they shall be had again among the children of men” (Pearl of Great Price, Moses 1:41). The reference was obviously to Smith himself, and the prophecy is printed as a prophetic introduction to the JST.

As his base text, Smith used a King James Version pulpit-style Bible published in 1828 by H. & E. Phinney, Cooperstown, New York, that he and Oliver Cowdery purchased from Palmyra printer and bookseller Egbert B. Grandin on October 8, 1829. Smaller corrections were marked in this Bible and then written out in separate manuscripts. Larger sections were simply written out in the manuscripts. Smith was aided in the project by a number of scribes, including Oliver Cowdery, John Whitmer, and especially the former Campbellite minister Sidney Rigdon. Work on the JST was completed on July 2, 1833. On that day Rigdon, writing on behalf of the First Presidency, declared: “We this day finished the translating of the Scriptures, for which we returned gratitude to our Heavenly Father.” We also find at the end of the manuscript for the book of Malachi the words: “Finished on the 2d day of July 1833.” Joseph Smith considered the JST an important “branch of [his] calling” and tried several times to see it through to publication, but without success. After his death it remained in the hands of his widow, Emma, from whence it passed into the possession of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS) of Independence, Missouri (now the Community of Christ), which published it for the first time in 1867. Since then the JST has passed through several editions as the canonical Bible of the RLDS Church.

In contrast, the LDS Church of Salt Lake City, Utah, the largest group of Mormons, has never officially accepted the JST as a whole. Two excerpts from it did, however, become canonical as a result of their inclusion in the 1851 Pearl of Great Price. These are the Book of Moses, paralleling Genesis 1:1–8:18 in the JST, and Joseph Smith—Matthew, paralleling Matthew 24 in the JST. From the beginning, the LDS Church viewed the remainder of the JST with deep suspicion, and it was only during the second half of the twentieth century that serious moves were made to rehabilitate it. The earlier suspicion was partly due to the more general atmosphere of distrust that existed between the LDS Church and the RLDS Church as the two main claimants to the prophetic legacy of Joseph Smith, and partly to the fact that it was not until the late 1960s that LDS scholars were granted access to the JST manuscript materials.

Long before that time, however, the King James Version had already established itself as the canonical Bible of the LDS Church. Its position was further enhanced when, after the publication of the Revised Standard Version in the 1950s, J. Reuben Clark Jr., a member of the First Presidency, adopted the arguments of the anti-RSV King-James-only advocates and vigorously defended them before a Mormon audience in his book Why the King James Version? (1956). So influential was Clark’s book that even as recently as 2002 a book by a professor at Brigham Young University credited the heretic Arius with producing the Alexandrian family of New Testament manuscripts (Marsh, 17).

A significant step for the authority and acceptance of the JST among Utah Mormons was taken with the production in 1979 by the LDS Church of its own edition of the KJV with short excerpts from the JST in footnotes and longer ones in an appendix in the back.

LDS apologists have attempted to sidestep problems associated with trying to treat the JST seriously as a restoration of the Bible to its original purity by insisting that Joseph Smith never revealed exactly what his intent was in producing it. In the very month of the JST’s completion, however, the official Mormon newspaper the Evening and Morning Star published an article intended to whet the appetite of the faithful for its appearance: “Both the old and new testaments are filled with errors,” the article declared, “obscurities, italics and contradictions, which must be the work of men.” Fortunately, however, “the Church of Christ will soon have the scriptures, in their original purity.” “The bible,” it goes on to say, “must be PURIFIED! . . . O what a blessing, that the Lord will bestow the gift of the Holy Spirit, upon the meek and humble, whereby they can know of a surety, his words from the words of men!” But it is not only from such statements as these that we may gather what Smith’s intentions were. They were also clear from his actual procedures in entering changes in the JST. In a revelation dated February 16, 1832 (now D&C 76), Smith reported: “I resumed the translation of the Scriptures. . . . It was apparent that many important points touching the salvation of man had been taken from the Bible, or lost before it was compiled.”

Consistent with this assessment, the changes made in the JST consist almost entirely of additions to the King James Version rather than deletions from it. An important exception to this is the way Smith treats the italicized words he found in the King James Version. “Throughout the Bible,” writes Robert J. Matthews, “many italics are crossed out, even when it does violence to the sense” (59). Since the 1833 article referred to the italicized words in the Bible as the “works of men,” it is not surprising that Smith often marked them out. Yet he often did not stop there. He regularly went on to replace the one or two italicized words he had marked out with whole phrases of many more words. This seems to imply that he incorrectly assumed that the presence of italics in English represented gaps in the original Greek and Hebrew texts—that is, places where “plain and precious things” had been taken out.

Of the many thousands of changes introduced by Joseph Smith in the JST, very few can claim support from biblical manuscripts ancient or modern. Moreover, in those places where Smith should have corrected well-known textual corruptions, he failed to do so. The JST evidences no familiarity with issues relating to texts that were disputed in Smith’s day, such as the inclusion of the longer ending of Mark (16:9–20), the placement of the story of the woman taken in adultery (John 8:1–11), the replacement of “tree” with “book” (Rev. 22:19), and—by far the most debated biblical verse at the time—1 John 5:7, the so-called Johannine Comma.

There are, however, two changes among the thousands Smith made that LDS apologists still single out as evidence of the miraculous character of the JST. The first is the phrase “without a cause,” present in the KJV of Matthew 5:22 but absent from the best early manuscripts and from the JST. The second is Isaiah 2:16, where they want to see in the JST a combination of the readings of the Greek Septuagint and the Hebrew text. However, Smith could have easily derived both variants from popular Methodist works available at the time. To mention only one example, John Wesley’s edition of the New Testament did not include the phrase “without a cause” at Matthew 5:22. And in his Explanatory Notes on the New Testament, which was one of the Doctrinal Standards of the Methodist Church and part of the standard kit of every Methodist preacher, Wesley condemned the inclusion of the reading as “utterly foreign to the whole scope and tenor of our Lord’s discourse.” Smith’s wife, Emma, was from a prominent Methodist family. Smith himself also repeatedly expressed sympathy with the Methodists and even attempted to join them in 1828.

Another reason the JST cannot be a restoration of the ancient text of Scripture is the regular transfer of distinctive language from one part of the Bible to other parts where it clearly does not belong. For example, we find Smith repeatedly introducing favorite phrases from the New Testament into his restorations of the Old. To mention only one example among many, we find language borrowed from John 1:14 in JST Genesis 4:7 (“the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of grace and truth”) and 6:53 (“mine Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace and truth”). John 1:14 is one of many biblical passages that regularly came to Joseph Smith’s mind when he was engaged in prophesying, translating, or restoring. We find its phraseology also in the Book of Mormon (Alma 5:48; 9:16; 13:9) and in Doctrine and Covenants (93:11).

Although RLDS scholars have long since come to terms with the fact that the JST is not a restoration of the ancient biblical text, many LDS scholars still insist that it is. The main problem with this assertion, as we have already seen, is that the ancient evidence in no way supports it. Consequently, a number of ingenious arguments have to be developed by LDS apologists to get around this.

The first argument is that all extant biblical manuscripts are already corrupted. This is refuted, however, by the fact that (1) the JST retains corrupt readings of the text that clearly entered the manuscript tradition very late, (2) there was not a Great and Abominable Church powerful enough and early enough to accomplish the needed universal corruption of the New Testament evidence, and (3) too much Old Testament textual evidence exists (e.g., Dead Sea Scrolls, Samaritan Pentateuch) to admit both Joseph Smith’s biblical corrections and his claim in the Book of Mormon that the Bible went forth “from the Jews in purity.”

The second argument is that Smith never finished the JST because he kept on modifying the manuscript after 1833 and supposedly later told certain early leaders he wanted to work through its translation again. Some have speculated that the kinds of changes Smith would have made in such a second run through would have served the radical changes that were taking place in his doctrinal views (see, e.g., his shift from modalistic monotheism to belief in a plurality of gods), not the restoration of the original biblical text. Such updates could only move the JST further away from the original text and sense of Scripture. That this is so may be seen, for example, in the changes made in the creation story of the Book of Abraham published in 1842, which, despite claims to the contrary, represents yet another reworking of the KJV of Genesis 1. The most basic problem with this argument, however, is that it acts as if the JST was a partial restoration of the ancient text of Scripture that only needed to be finished, which is simply not true.

The third argument is that the “plain and precious things” taken out had to do with so-called missing books, such as the Book of Jasher and Enoch, not with textual variants. Although Smith was interested in the “lost books” of the Bible, his main purpose was to restore the ones that were not lost. This is clear from both the kinds of changes he actually made in the JST and the 1833 article already mentioned, which explicitly spoke of purifying the existing biblical text.

Bibliography. P. L. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion; R. P. Howard, Restoration Scriptures: A Study of Their Textual Development; R. V. Huggins, “Joseph Smith’s ‘Inspired Translation’ of Romans 7,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought; S. Larson, “The Historicity of the Matthean Sermon on the Mount in 3 Nephi,” in New Approaches to the Book of Mormon: Explorations in Critical Methodology, edited by B. L. Metcalfe; W. J. Marsh, The Joseph Smith Translation: Precious Truths Restored; R. J. Matthews, “A Plainer Translation”: Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible; A History and Commentary; R. L. Millet and R. J. Matthews, eds., Plain and Precious Truths Restored: The Doctrinal and Historical Significance of the Joseph Smith Translation; M. S. Nyman et al., The Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of Plain and Precious Things; D. P. Wright, “Isaiah in the Book of Mormon: Or Joseph Smith in Isaiah,” in American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon, edited by D. Vogel and B. L. Metcalfe.

R. V. Huggins

JOURNAL OF DISCOURSES. The Journal of Discourses consists of twenty-six volumes of selected sermons from leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church or Mormonism) covering a period of about twenty-six years during the nineteenth century. It includes a compilation of 1,438 messages from fifty-five different people, most of whom were church general authorities. Brigham Young gave nearly 400 of these recorded messages.

Compiling the sermons of Mormonism’s general authorities was the innovation of George D. Watt, an English convert who also served as a clerk for second LDS president Brigham Young. Watt was commissioned by the LDS Church to record the words of LDS leaders during church conferences. These, in turn, were published in the church-owned Deseret News. However, Watt wanted the messages of LDS leaders to go far beyond the limited subscribers to the Deseret News. His desire was given the blessing of the First Presidency, who issued the following statement on June 1, 1853:

Dear Brethren.—It is well known to many of you that Elder George D. Watt, by our counsel, spent much time in the midst of poverty and hardships to acquire the art of reporting in Phonography which he has faithfully and fully accomplished; and he has been reporting the public sermons, discourses, lectures, &c., delivered by the Presidency, the Twelve and others in this city, for nearly two years, almost without fee or reward.

“Elder Watt now proposes to publish a Journal of these reports, in England for the benefit of the Saints at large, and to obtain means to enable him to sustain his highly useful position of Reporter. You will perceive at once that this will be a work of mutual benefit, and we cheerfully and warmly request your co-operation in the purchase and sale of the above-named Journal, and wish all the profits arising therefrom to be under the control of Elder Watt.” [signed] BRIGHAM YOUNG, HEBER C. KIMBALL, WILLARD RICHARDS.” (Clark, 2:119; this message is also found in the beginning of vol. 1 of the Journal of Discourses)

The Journal began as a sixteen-page semimonthly publication. Although it was considered a private operation, it was produced in the LDS Church printing office in Liverpool, England. When Watt first produced the Journal, there seemed to be no question that the actual words and beliefs of Mormonism’s latter-day prophets were faithfully recorded. In his introduction to the first issue, Watt proclaimed, “It affords me great pleasure in being able to put in your possession the words of the Apostles and Prophets, as they were spoken in assemblies of the Saints in Zion, the value of which cannot be estimated by man, not so much for any great display of worldly learning and eloquence, as for the purity of doctrine, simplicity of style, and extensive amount of theological truth which they develop.”

Most of the volumes of the Journal were edited and published under the direct auspices of men who either were currently serving as general authorities in the LDS Church or would later do so. The names are a veritable Who’s Who list of Mormon leaders and include such men as Franklin Richards, Orson Pratt, George Q. Cannon, Amasa Lyman, Daniel H. Wells, Brigham Young Jr., Joseph F. Smith, and Albert Carrington.

The Encyclopedia of Mormonism notes that a total of “twelve people reported sermons for the Journal of Discourses.” These included David W. Evans, an associate editor of the Deseret News who succeeded Watt as the main reporter for the JD from 1867 to 1876. Another was George F. Gibbs, who served as secretary to the First Presidency of the Church for fifty-six years. Even one of Brigham Young’s daughters, Julia, is credited with recording one of her father’s sermons (Ludlow, 2:769–70).

Speaking in Conference in 1905, Mormon apostle Hyrum Mack Smith, son of sixth LDS president Joseph F. Smith, told members of the church that they “should be firmly rounded in the knowledge of the truth.” Said apostle Smith, “They [the Latter-day Saints] have the Holy Scriptures, the Bible, which contains the word of God; the Book of Mormon, the D&C, and the Pearl of Great Price; they have the Journal of Discourses; also periodicals, books and papers which are published from time to time, containing the discourses and inspired words of the servants of the Lord.”

It is doubtful that many modern Mormons would want to include the Journal in the aforementioned list. Ironically, some of the Journal’s biggest critics today are Mormons themselves. Since the Journal is one of the few nineteenth-century LDS publications that have not seen revision or tampering, many of the teachings it contains are out of step with the “Christian” image the current LDS Church is trying to project. Some Latter-day Saints are quick to downplay embarrassing comments by insisting that the Journal is not “official doctrine” or that much of its contents are nothing more than the mere opinions of the speakers. The fact that the LDS Church has often cited the Journal in its many manuals and other publications certainly seems to send a mixed message regarding its authority.

Mormon apostle John Widtsoe used the Journal as a primary source for his 1925 book titled Discourses of Brigham Young. In his preface, Widtsoe makes no effort to hide the fact that it played a significant role in his book. There he writes:

This book was made possible because Brigham Young secured stenographic reports of his addresses. As he traveled among the people, reporters accompanied him. All that he said was recorded. Practically all of these discourses (from December 16, 1851 to August 19, 1877) were published in the Journal of Discourses, which was widely distributed. The public utterances of few great historical figures have been so faithfully and fully preserved. Clearly, this mass of material, covering nearly thirty years of incessant public speaking could not be presented with any hope of serving the general reader, save in the form of selections of essential doctrines. (vi)

A 1997 priesthood manual titled Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young cites literally hundreds of quotations from Widtsoe’s work. In essence the LDS Church is still endorsing the Journal since the great majority of Widtsoe’s compilation was taken from it.

Bibliography. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young; J. R. Clark, ed., Messages of the First Presidency, 2 vols; D. H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4 vols.; J. Widtsoe, Discourses of Brigham Young.

W. McKeever

JUDAISM. Definition. In Hebrew the terms that are translated “Jew” (yehudi), “Judah” (yehudah), and “Judaism” (yahadut) all come from the same Hebrew root meaning “to praise.” The distinction between “Jewishness” and “Judaism” is that the former is an ethnic identity into which one is born but says nothing about one’s beliefs, while the latter term refers to a religion or religious beliefs to which one can either be born or converted. Whereas in postbiblical Judaism, rabbis would apply the term Jew to gentile converts to Judaism, the Bible never does so and refers to them as “proselytes.”

The essence of Judaism is that this is the religion of most Jews. But one can reject Judaism and still be a Jew, as often happened in Jewish history when Jewish people fell into different forms of idolatry. Judaism had a valid phase when it was based on Scripture, but it became invalid when it was revamped in the course of Jewish history. The essence is that while Judaism is the religion of most Jews, historically Judaism has not always been the same.

The Development of Orthodox Judaism. Biblical Judaism. Biblical Judaism is the Judaism revealed through Scripture, primarily through Moses and the Prophets. This was a divinely revealed religion spelling out various requirements that included sacrificial laws, dietary laws, clothing laws, sexual laws, agricultural laws, and farming laws, among many others. The essence of biblical Judaism is that salvation was by grace through faith, just as Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him for righteousness (Gen. 15:6). But the rule of life began with the Abrahamic covenant and continued through the Mosaic covenant, containing the 613 commandments of the law of Moses.

Post–Old Testament Judaism. When the Jews first returned from Babylonian captivity (only a minority of the Jewish population in Babylon chose to return), Ezra began a process of explaining and teaching the commandments of the Mosaic law with the goal that the people should understand what was involved in keeping it and what was involved in breaking it—to give the Jewish people a knowledge of what the Mosaic law required. If they had this knowledge, they would faithfully keep the law and thus avoid another divine judgment like the Babylonian captivity. This was still within the bounds of biblical Judaism.

The Period of the Sopherim (400–30 BC). Things began to change within a generation or so after the close of the Old Testament. While the rabbis see the first period as extending from Ezra to Hillel, the period actually begins before the time of Ezra and before the time of Malachi, when Judaism was still strictly a biblical Judaism. But around 400 BC began the period of the Sopherim, a Hebrew word meaning “scribes.” The principle they initiated, which went beyond what Ezra was doing, was that it was no longer enough to merely explain the law; it was now necessary to build a fence around the law. This fence would consist of new rules and regulations that could be logically derived from the original 613 commandments, and their thinking was that Jews might break the laws of the fence—break rabbinic law—but that might keep them from breaking through the fence, breaking the Mosaic law, and thus bringing divine discipline down on themselves again. In making these new rules and regulations, the scribes followed a specific principle: a Sopher may disagree with a Sopher, but he cannot disagree with the Torah. The Torah (the law of Moses) was given by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai, it was sacrosanct, and therefore there was no valid basis for debating the validity of what God gave to Moses. But in making new rules and regulations, they could disagree among themselves until a decision was made by majority vote. Once the majority of rabbis voted on a new rule and regulation, it became mandatory for all Jews in the world to follow.

It was during this period that the scribes separated from the priests, with the result that the priestly class developed into Sadducean Judaism and the scribes developed into Pharisaic Judaism.

The Period of the Tannaim (30 BC–AD 220). With Hillel a transition in Judaism occurred, the period of the Sopherim ended, and there arose a new school of rabbis known as the Tannaim (i.e., “repeaters,” “teachers”). Rabbinically, this is viewed as the period from Hillel to Yehudah HaNasi (Judah the Prince). As they considered the rules and regulations passed down by tradition from the Sopherim, the Tannaim concluded there were still too many holes in the fence around the law, and they continued the process of establishing new rules for the next two and a half centuries. However, they changed their principle of operation to be as follows: a Tana can disagree with a Tana, but he cannot disagree with a Sopher. At this point, all the rules and regulations of the Sopherim became sacrosanct, equal with Scripture.

But then in order to validate their claim that the laws of the Sopherim were equal with the laws of the Torah, the Tannaim developed a teaching still taught in Orthodox Jewish schools to this day, which is that on Mt. Sinai God gave to Moses two separate laws. The first law is the written law, which contains the 613 commandments that were actually written down in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. But God also gave Moses the oral law, comprising hundreds of thousands of new laws. Moses memorized them and then passed them down to Joshua, who passed them down to the judges, who passed them down to the prophets, who passed them down to the Sopherim. Therefore, the Sopherim did not innovate all these new rules and regulations; they simply got them from the prophets, who got them from the judges, who got them from Joshua, who got them from Moses, who got them from God.

Indeed, from 400 BC until AD 220, these laws were not written down, but they became part of the oral law passed down by tradition, and they were memorized by certain key men who would maintain their remembrance. In fact, it was forbidden to write out the commandments of the oral law for a long time. Yehudah HaNasi finally permitted the oral law to be written down, which ended the period of the Tannaim.

The kind of Messiah that the Tannaim expected would be a fellow Pharisee, who would submit himself to both the written law and the oral law and join them in the work of plugging the holes in the fence. Jesus affirmed that he would submit himself to the written law, but he rejected the authority of the oral law and therefore the authority of the Pharisees, which in turn would lead to their rejection of his messianic claims (Matt. 12–13).

The product of the Sopherim and the Tannaim is the Mishnah, which became the bone of contention between Jesus and the Pharisees. In the New Testament this product is referred to as the tradition of the elders (Mark 7:5).

The Period of the Amoraim (AD 220–500). Once the oral law was written down in the body of the Mishnah, the period of the Tannaim ended, and thus began a new set of rabbinic scholars known as the Amoraim. They observed the work of the Sopherim and the Tannaim, determined there were still too many holes in the fence, and continued the process for the next three centuries, concluding with the production of the Gemara. However, they also changed their principle of operation: an Amora may disagree with an Amora, but he cannot disagree with a Tana. Thus all the rules and regulations of the Tannaim also became sacrosanct and equal with Scripture.

The Period of the Seboraim (Sixth and Seventh Centuries). The rabbis of the next age, the Seboraim, began a process of enlarging the rabbinic writings to make them more understandable, committing everything to written form, unifying both the Mishnah and the Gemara, and producing what is now called the Talmud, which incorporates both the Mishnah and the Gemara. The additions of the Amoraim also became sacrosanct, equal with Scripture. This ended the long development of Talmudic Judaism from 400 BC until the seventh century AD.

Denominations of Judaism in the First Century. Pharisaic Judaism. Pharisaic Judaism was the Judaism developed through the Sopherim and the Tannaim, which held to both the written law and the oral law. The Pharisees required the application of both the Mosaic (written) law and the oral law and were strongly inclined to impose duties on all Jews. The mass of the nation inclined toward Pharisaic Judaism, though they were not necessarily members of the guild. Pharisees did not reject the temple but claimed that much more than temple observance was required, and the new laws of the Pharisees were accepted as authoritative. They dominated the Judaism of Israel, Babylonia, and Diaspora Jewry.

Key points of Pharisaic Judaism that appear in the New Testament are belief in both angels and demons, belief in the resurrection of the dead, and the belief that doctrine can be derived from any part of Scripture, be it the Law, the Prophets, or the Writings.

By the end of the Hasmonean period, the Pharisees had the loyalty of the masses, and this would be the only Judaism that would survive after AD 70.

Sadducean Judaism. Sadducean Judaism was composed primarily of the priestly class and the aristocracy, and its adherents supported Hellenizing Judaism. While they did adhere to the Mosaic law, they rejected the authority of the oral law. They were always a minority Judaism but had great political power because of their tendency to cooperate with Rome up to a specific point. They controlled the temple services, and their religious practices focused on and around the sacrifice. The Judaism of the Sadducees was largely restricted to the land of Israel and had virtually no influence outside the land. It firmly rejected the doctrines of angels, demons, and the resurrection of the dead. Sadducean Judaism did not survive after AD 70.

Zealot Judaism. While mainline Pharisaic Judaism held to passive resistance to Roman rule, Zealot Judaism was a faction within Pharisaism that was active in guerrilla warfare against Rome and considered armed uprising as a divine command. Their policy of active resistance was denounced by mainline Pharisaism. Zealot Judaism and mainline Pharisaic Judaism, however, differed not in what they believed doctrinally but in their policy concerning resistance to Rome. Zealot Judaism was responsible for sparking the First Jewish Revolt (AD 66–70) and did not survive after AD 70.

Essene Judaism. Mainline Pharisaism recognized that Sadducees were in control of the temple compound and sacrifices; nevertheless, they thought it was still necessary to follow the sacrificial system. Essene Judaism was part of Pharisaic Judaism that believed continuing the sacrifices at the time of Sadducean control would be sacrilegious, and therefore they chose to live in segregated communities, whether within the city or outside the city, as in the wilderness of Judah. They were very concerned with ethics and social justice, and they abandoned the world to devote themselves to religious observance. They bathed frequently, and they dressed in white as a symbol of their purity. This Judaism did not survive after AD 70 either.

Development of Rabbinic Judaism (AD 70–90). The year AD 70, the year that the temple was destroyed and the practice of sacrifices ceased, Judaism underwent a change from Pharisaic Judaism to rabbinic Judaism.

During the Roman siege of Jerusalem, a key Pharisaic rabbi of that period named Yohanan ben Zakkai escaped in a coffin and arranged to be brought before the Roman general Vespasian. He requested that he be allowed to set up a school on the coastal city of Yavne, and his request was granted. He gathered around him the Pharisaic rabbis who had survived the Roman destruction of the city and the land and began to adapt Judaism to the new, changing situation. All the historical national institutions had to be replaced by a new focus of loyalty, but at the same time the temple must continue to be remembered. As a result, prayer was substituted for sacrifice, and the synagogue replaced the temple as the center of Jewish life. The rabbis adopted rituals to reinforce a symbolic link between synagogue and temple, and they attempted to establish a spiritual control over the Jews of the diaspora. They did two things: first, they formed a new central institution that would contain all the authority of the temple; and second, they enacted new laws to affirm the authority of the new center. The result of the rabbis’ work in Yavne was essentially a new Judaism that became known as rabbinic Judaism and continued through what is now known as Orthodox Judaism. It resembles biblical Judaism very little.

Denominations of Modern Judaism. Orthodox Judaism. Traditional mainline Orthodox Judaism stands in a continuous line from Pharisaic Judaism to rabbinic Judaism through talmudic Judaism to the present. Like those earlier forms of Judaism, it believes in the fundamentals of Judaism and the doctrines it considers pure. The essence of Orthodox Judaism is the Thirteen Articles of Faith that were formulated by Maimonides. They are as follows: (1) God created all things; (2) God is one; (3) God is incorporeal; (4) God is eternal; (5) God alone must be worshiped; (6) the prophets are true; (7) Moses was the greatest of all prophets; (8) the entire Torah was divinely given to Moses; (9) the Torah is immutable; (10) God knows all the acts and thoughts of human beings; (11) God rewards and punishes; (12) the Messiah will come; and (13) there will be resurrection. In addition to Scriptures and the Talmud, the extensive writings of posttalmudic rabbis, known as the Gaonim, play an important role in Orthodox Judaism, though they are never elevated to Talmudic authority. While not always comfortable with Zionism in its early days because Zionism was a secular movement, Orthodox Judaism now fully supports the State of Israel.

Hasidic/Chasidic Judaism. Hasidic Judaism is an extreme form of Orthodox Judaism. It originated with Israel ben Eliezer, known as the Baal Shem Tov and sometimes referred to as the Besht (vocalizing the initials “B.Sh.T.”). He was born in 1700 in Podolia (today parts of Ukraine and Moldova) at a time when rabbinic Judaism was attempting to consolidate power because of certain pseudomessianic movements. He proclaimed a doctrine of joy, optimism, and enthusiastic worship. Hasidism actually began as a revolt against the strict rules of the rabbis, and Jews by the thousands flocked to the Besht, receiving blessing and joining in a frenzied prayer. He died in 1760.

His teachings spread to every corner of Poland, and various Hasidic dynasties were formed. Although considered a heresy by mainline Orthodox Judaism, Hasidism gained hundreds of thousands of adherents. Eventually the division between Hasidics and Orthodox was overcome by Rabbi Shneur Zalmon of Lodi, who was both a Talmudist and a Hasidic. Zalmon taught that both Talmudism and Hasidism were necessary. Hasidism thus continued its fervent type of joyful practice but also became more zealous in its application of the Talmud.

While mainline Orthodox Judaism recognizes the role of the modern State of Israel, Hasidic Judaism is divided over the issue. Some segments are opposed, believing there can be no Jewish state until the Messiah comes; others tolerate it but hold to a view that a distinction between the religious and the secular should apply.

Modern Orthodoxy. This is an American innovated orthodoxy that practices Judaism in an Orthodox manner up to a point but has removed many elements, such as a continuous head-covering and the wearing of tassels. It is as far left of Orthodox Judaism as it can be while still claiming to be Orthodox.

Reform Judaism. Following their emancipation from the restrictions and confinement of European ghettos, Jewish people began to adopt more and more of modern culture and education and began establishing secular Jewish schools over against religious Jewish schools. This development began the Reform movement. The first Reform synagogue was established in Germany in 1818 by Eduard Klay. Israel Jacobson initiated new forms of worship in Berlin, introducing into the service some things that were normally forbidden in Orthodox Judaism, such as the use of the organ and a choir. In place of Hebrew prayer books, Reform Jews produced German prayer books and prayer books that were less religious. They moved away from belief in the future Messiah and instead held to the messianic mission of Israel in the world. Not believing that any future temple would be rebuilt, they called their places of worship “temples” rather than “synagogues.” They did not, and do not, wear any distinctive Jewish clothing or keep kosher.

By 1850 Reform Judaism was firmly established in Europe, and it soon spread to the US; it is still the predominant form of Judaism in America today. Reform Judaism made some radical changes to traditional Judaism in its Orthodox format. It is very modernistic and does not share the religious focus of Orthodox Judaism. In its early years, it gave up the hope of a national Jewish homeland and discarded the vast majority of Jewish traditions. However, following the Holocaust, it became (and still is) a strong supporter of the State of Israel and in more recent years has returned to the practice of some Jewish traditions, though not to the extent of either Orthodox or Conservative Judaism.

Conservative Judaism. Conservative Judaism is an American-innovated Judaism founded by Zechariah Frankel. In essence it follows many of the principles of Orthodox Judaism but adopts some of the changes introduced by Reform Judaism. It teaches that changes must come, but they must come slowly and naturally, not radically. Conservative Jews wear the head covering during religious services but not all day or every day. They have also discarded the wearing of distinctive clothes such as the tassels. The Talmud plays an important role but is not viewed as authoritative as it is in Orthodoxy; Conservative Jews keep kosher but not to the same degree of strictness as Orthodox Jews.

Conservative Judaism was once a very strong movement among American Jews, but in recent decades it has become smaller and is losing much ground.

Reconstructionist Judaism. Reconstructionist Judaism takes a much more radical approach than Reform Judaism, allowing for both belief in a God and atheism. It essentially teaches that every generation of Jews must reconstruct Judaism to meet the needs of a new generation.

Humanistic Judaism. Humanistic Judaism is simply atheistic Judaism, and its services and prayer books leave out any reference to God whatsoever.

Messianic Judaism. Messianic Judaism is a term favored by many Jewish believers in the messiahship of Jesus. It is a broad term and does not always explain what individual Messianic Jewish congregations may believe or disbelieve. The essence of agreement among all Messianic Jews is that Yeshua (Jesus) is indeed the Messiah, and most Messianic Jews hold to the basic fundamentals of the Christian faith that fundamentalist and conservative Christians would believe. However, it also includes radical elements that have moved it into heretical territory such denying the Trinity and the deity of the Messiah and believing that a person can be saved apart from faith in Yeshua. Others have adopted cultic elements similar to those that characterize British Israelism, though with a Jewish twist such as teaching that all gentile believers are really members of the lost tribes of Israel and therefore need to return to the law of Moses.

The Messianic movement has attracted many gentiles, and, in fact, the majority of Messianic congregations are composed mostly of gentiles, some even exclusively so.

A Summary of the Essential Beliefs of Orthodox Judaism. Orthodox Judaism is the only Judaism that has continuity from the postbiblical to modern times. The following is the essence of Orthodoxy but not necessarily the view of non-Orthodox Judaism.

God. Orthodox Judaism holds to an absolute unity of God, an absolute oneness, and therefore, God exists as only one person, not three persons. Judaism rejects any concept of plurality in the Godhead.

Inspiration. Orthodox Judaism holds to a dictation theory of the inspiration of Scriptures but does not assign the same degree of inspiration to all parts. The Torah (Law) is the most inspired; the Neviim (Prophets) less so; and the Ketuvim (Writings) even less.

The Torah. On one hand, Orthodox Judaism holds that God revealed the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai, but on the other it also holds that the Torah preexisted Moses, so even the patriarchs followed the Torah. The Torah has become the essential of Orthodoxy; thus it has become the focus of rabbinic Judaism, which continually studies what the Torah says. Further, once the Torah was given to Israel, it was no longer God who determined the meaning of the Torah; rather, the rabbis signify its meaning by majority vote. Note that the term Torah is not strictly limited to the five books of Moses, nor even the written law, but sometimes includes the oral law as well.

Israel. The name Israel is used to refer to the Jewish people as a people and not merely to the State of Israel as such. God has an eternal covenant with the Jewish people, though in Orthodox Judaism the focus is more on the Mosaic covenant than on the Abrahamic covenant. It was God who dispersed the Jews around the world, but the purpose of the dispersion was to spread the knowledge of the one true God among the gentiles. While gentiles need not convert to Judaism, to be able to enter into God’s kingdom they must adhere to the one-God principle (i.e., monotheism) and keep the seven laws of the Noahic covenant. As for the State of Israel, it is supported by mainline Orthodoxy, though elements in Ultra-Orthodoxy and Hasidism oppose it, saying Israel does not have a right to exist until the Messiah comes.

In the State of Israel, only Orthodoxy is recognized, and while non-Orthodox Jews are recognized as Jews ethnically, their Judaism is rejected as invalid. Within Israel only Orthodoxy applies to issues such as marriage, divorce, remarriage, circumcision, and burial. Thus Israelis who wish to marry non-Jews or wish to have a non-Orthodox wedding must leave the country to do so. While husbands can divorce wives, wives cannot divorce their husbands. In Israel today, there are many agunot women, separated from their husbands but unable to remarry for lack of a bill of divorcement. The vast majority of Israelis are secular, not Orthodox, but they must follow the Orthodox law on these issues.

Messiah. The Messiah is a very high figure in Orthodox Judaism, perhaps the highest, but less than God. For Orthodox Jews the Messiah is not God nor a God-man. When he comes, he will defeat the enemies of Israel, bring all Jews back into the promised land, rebuild the temple, and set up the messianic kingdom, finally bringing in world peace and prosperity. Before Rashi crafted a new interpretation of Isaiah 53 in the eleventh century, the passage was viewed as messianic. To rectify the contradictions between a suffering messiah and a ruling messiah, the rabbis innovated two possibilities. The minority view is that if Israel is unrighteous, he will come as the suffering messiah riding on the donkey; if Israel is righteous, then he will come as a ruling messiah in the clouds of heaven. But the majority view was simply to innovate two separate Messiahs, each coming one time. The first Messiah was called Mashiach ben Yosef, or Messiah the son of Joseph, and he would fulfill the prophecies of suffering and be killed in the Gog and Magog war. Then would come the second Messiah, Mashiach ben David, or Messiah the son of David, the conquering Messiah, who would raise the first Messiah back to life, establish the messianic kingdom, and bring all Jews back into the promised land. In modern Orthodox Judaism, there is little talk of the first Messiah but much talk of the second.

The Sabbath. Before AD 70 the temple was the real center of Judaism, but that was replaced by Sabbath observance once the temple was destroyed. Many of the rituals of the Orthodox service on the Sabbath are intended to imitate the rituals formerly practiced in the temple, such as the morning and evening sacrifice, although prayer has replaced the actual blood sacrifice. To the one commandment that Moses gave to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, the rabbis added about fifteen hundred Sabbath regulations, teaching that Israel was made for the purpose of honoring the Sabbath. In Israel, in hotels and high-rise buildings, one elevator is designated as the Sabbath elevator and preprogrammed to stop on every floor so that an Orthodox Jew does not need to kindle a light by pushing the button. For the same reason, hotels that use keycards to open doors provide Orthodox Jews with regular keys for the Sabbath. Public transportation is not used on the Sabbath, and Orthodox Jews will neither ride nor drive in cars.

The Jewish Festivals. The Mosaic festivals are still observed, with many rabbinic traditions and additions but not in their biblical format, due to the absence of the temple. Passover, Weeks, and Tabernacles are now observed in the home and local synagogue but are no longer pilgrimage festivals to be observed in Jerusalem. The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) is now a day of a twenty-six-hour fast from both liquids and solids. While mainline Orthodoxy today does not practice blood sacrifice, in Ultra-Orthodoxy it is still practiced on this occasion. However, in place of a goat, a chicken is sacrificed—a rooster for a male or a hen for a female. In addition to the Mosaic festivals, other festivals include Purim (the Feast of Lots) and Hanukkah (the Feast of Dedication). The last was normally a minor Jewish holy festival, but in North America it has become a major one, to offset Christmas, which falls around the same time of year. While Yom Kippur is now the most important fast, second to it is Tisha be-Av, “the ninth of [the month of] Av” (July/August on the Gregorian calendar), marking the date when both temples were destroyed.

Other Practices. The Mosaic law and its rabbinic interpretation are applied in all areas of life. That includes the dietary laws, which are not merely the Mosaic, such as abstention from certain kinds of meat, fish, or bird life, but also rabbinic innovations such as separating milk and meat products and wearing distinctive clothing such as a head covering (in most cases it is a simple skullcap), tassels, and other distinctive items. The whole daily life of an Orthodox Jew is influenced by both biblical and rabbinic laws to point out how Jews are different from all other people.

Bibliography. L Baeck, The Essence of Judaism; W. Dosick, Living Judaism: The Complete Guide to Jewish Belief, Tradition, & Practice; E. Feldman, On Judaism; M. M. Friedlander, Guide of the Perplexed; G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of Tannaim, 3 vols.; F. J. Murphy, Early Judaism; J. Neusner, Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah; Neusner, Transformations in Ancient Judaism; J. Neusner, A. Avery-Peck, and B. Chilton, eds., Judaism in Late Antiquity, 3 vols.; E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice & Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE; J. D. Sarna, American Judaism; S. Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology; P. Sigal, Judaism: The Evolution of a Faith; J. C. VanderKam, An Introduction to Early Judaism; M. Weber, Ancient Judaism; H. Wouk, This Is My God.

A. Fruchtenbaum

JUSTIFICATION, BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF. The term justify (Greek, dikaioō), as the New Testament authors employ it, means simply “declare righteous.” One reads, accordingly, of human beings justifying God (Matt. 11:19; Luke 7:29, 35; Rom. 3:4), the Spirit justifying Christ (1 Tim. 3:16), and self-righteous persons justifying themselves (Luke 10:29; 16:15). One also reads, more importantly, of God justifying human beings in three distinct ways. First, God justifies human beings, or declares them righteous, by imputing, or crediting, the righteousness of Christ to them. This first kind of justification occurs when God unites a sinner to Christ by faith and effects his reconciliation with God (Rom. 5:1). Second, God would justify persons by declaring them flawless if they merited eternal life by rendering God lifelong perfect obedience. Mere human beings cannot attain this second kind of justification because inherited corruption renders them naturally incapable of pleasing God (8:7–8). Third, God justifies all persons to whom he has imputed Christ’s righteousness when he acknowledges that these persons manifest the sincerity of their faith by good works (2:7–10, 13).

Paul writes of God’s justifying human beings primarily in the first and second of these manners. Over against those who claim that fallen human beings can merit God’s favor by obeying him, Paul insists that “by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20; all quotations in this entry are NASB). Human sin, according to Paul, thus eliminates the possibility that a human being might receive the second kind of justification. Justification of the first kind, Paul asserts, is nonetheless possible. For “now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe” (3:21–22).

That God imputes this righteousness to those who believe in Jesus is seen in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “He [God] made Him who knew no sin [Christ] to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Christ, who became like other human beings in every respect except sin (Heb. 4:15), naturally, does not become substantially sin; and Christians manifestly do not become substantially the righteousness of God. Rather, when God unites the Christian to Jesus by faith so that the Christian becomes a member of Christ’s body (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:13, 27), God imputes the Christian’s sins to Christ so that Christ might suffer the penalty for those sins. Likewise, just as God imputes Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension to the Christian (Rom. 6:6–8; Eph. 2:5–6; Col. 2:12–13), so God imputes the righteousness of the God-man, Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:30), to the Christian so that the Christian might be accounted righteous notwithstanding his or her ungodliness (Rom. 4:5).

Moses refers to this imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer, Paul explains, when he writes, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:3; Gen. 15:6). Abraham received this divine imputation of righteousness, Paul insists, not through performing righteous works but through faith. “To the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). God imputes Christ’s righteousness to human beings through faith without any consideration of works, Paul asserts, in order to preserve the gracious character of this imputation; “it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace” (4:16). Those who gain divine favor by faith, Paul apparently reasons, unlike those who earn divine favor by works, do not rely on meritorious actions of their own but look away from themselves to another on whom they rely entirely for their salvation. By teaching that “man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law” (3:28), accordingly, Paul exalts the grace of God and removes all ground of boasting from human beings (3:27).

By thus teaching, however, Paul by no means denies that God also justifies persons in the third manner indicated above—namely, by acknowledging that persons justified by faith manifest the sincerity of their faith through good works. Everyone who savingly believes in Jesus, Paul maintains, is a “new creature” (2 Cor. 5:17), “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph. 2:10). Paul holds, accordingly, that those to whom God imputes the alien righteousness of Christ will ultimately excel the unsaved in inherent righteousness, which manifests itself in good works. In his words, “God . . . WILL RENDER TO EACH PERSON ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation” (Rom. 2:6–8). For, explains Paul, “it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified” (2:13). In other words, Paul holds that, notwithstanding the impotence of human works for procuring God’s favor, those who are justified by faith and thereby saved will receive, in addition to this paramount blessing, God’s declaration that, relative to the ungodly, they are inherently righteous.

It is of this species of justification, the third type enumerated above, that James appears to write when he asserts that Abraham and Rahab were justified by works (James 2:21, 24–25). Admittedly, James declares faith without works dead (2:17, 26) and useless (2:14, 20). He describes Abraham and Rahab as justified by works (2:21, 25), moreover, and asserts that “a man is justified by works and not by faith alone” (2:24). Nevertheless, James declares only a fruitless faith useless, not the “faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6) preached by Paul. He also acknowledges the orthodoxy of the gospel Paul preaches during the latter’s visit to Jerusalem recorded in Galatians 2:1–10 (see especially vv. 6–9). It seems highly improbable, therefore, that James denies Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Bibliography. J. Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification; D. A. Carson, P. T. O’Brien, and M. A. Seifrid, eds., Justification and Variegated Nomism; J. Davenant, A Treatise on Justification, trans. J. Allport, 2 vols.; J. Edwards, Justification by Faith Alone, in Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. M. X. Lesser, vol. 19; S. Gathercole, Where Is Boasting? Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul’s Response in Romans 1–5; J. Owen, The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, in Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 5; J. Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright; B. Vickers, Jesus’ Blood and Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Imputation; G. P. Waters, Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul: A Review and Response; J. R. White, The God Who Justifies.

D. W. Jowers

JUZU. Juzu (Japanese, “counting beads”) refers to a string of prayer beads used by most sects of Japanese Buddhism. Originally called nenju (contemplating Buddha beads), these beads were introduced in Japan by Chinese Buddhists during the seventh century, though they did not become popular there until the eighth century, when the Indian monk Bodaisenna presented a nenju to Emperor Shomu (r. 724–49). A common juzu’s central string is threaded through 108 identically sized beads (koshu), which represent the number of earthly desires (bonnou) had by unenlightened mortals. There are exactly 108 beads because of the formula used to arrive at that number: 6 senses (5 ordinary ones + that of the mind) x 3 aspects of time (past, present, and future) = 18; 18 x 2 characteristics of the human heart (pure or impure) = 36; 36 x 3 attitudes (like, dislike, or indifference) a person may have toward something = 108. Representing the Buddha, 2 larger beads (boshu) are set at either end of the 108. One of them, the Father’s Bead, has two strings of 10 beads each hanging from it (these symbolize the Ten Worlds and their mutual possession); the other, the Mother’s Bead, is attached to three hanging strings of beads (which jointly symbolize ichinen sanzen: “three thousand worlds in a single thought”). Next to the Father’s Bead is a medium-size bead that represents the eternal, absolute truth of Buddhism. These hanging beads are strung with white braided cord having white pompom tassels at the end. There are also 4 smaller beads (shitendama) that represent four bodhisattvas (Jogyo, Muhengyo, Jyogyo, and Anryugyo) and the Buddha’s four virtues: eternity, happiness, true self, and purity. The string as a whole represents the eternal mystical law by means of which all Buddhas attain enlightenment. The roundness of the beads signifies the benefits of the mystic law and the true nature of all phenomena.

In Nichiren Shoshu, juzu function as a means of communicating the Three Treasures (the Buddha, the law, and the priesthood) to the people of mappo (the current age in which the Buddha’s teachings are said to be obscured) as an aid to counting the number of times practitioners have chanted the daimoku (the mantra “nam-myoho-renge-kyo”) as an aid to focusing the mind and, less commonly, as a protective charm against evil spirits. It is thought that during prayer juzu must be held in a very particular way in order to ensure that they possess maximum efficacy. Among other things, this proper holding of juzu involves placing one of the two boshu beads over the middle finger of each hand—holding the entire juzu in a figure-eight position—and placing the palm and fingers of each hand against the palm and fingers of the other. Practitioners believe that if they rub juzu together while facing the gohonzon (a ritual object of devotion) and chanting daimoku, their earthly desires, bad karma, and suffering will be transformed into enlightenment and nirvana. Moreover, practitioners are instructed to carry properly sanctified juzu with them wherever they go and always to handle them carefully and with respect, for the beads are considered to be one of the Three Robes that are essential to orthodox Buddhist practice. In fact, juzu are held in such high esteem by adherents of Nichiren Shoshu that, before being sold, they must be purified in front of a gohonzon by a Nichiren Shoshu priest in an event called the Eye-Opening ceremony. It is believed that during this ritual the beads are transformed into the very body and mind of the Buddha.

The other sects of Japanese Buddhism have different understandings even while using the juzu in a similar manner. For example, for Jodo-Shinshu, the whole of the string is understood as representing the Buddha’s teachings, and when it is wrapped around the hands in gassho (prayer hands), it is a symbol of oneness. Members of the Shingon sect, while using the beads on different occasions, also rub them together for purification.