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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
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This Rock
Volume 6, Number 6
 June 1995 
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How odd are these fellows?
Q: You have spoken out against Catholics joining the Masons and similar organizations. How do you feel about the order of Odd Fellows?
A: It isn't our feelings that are relevant; it's canon law. Under canon 1374 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, Catholics are forbidden to join societies which plot against the Church. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith applied this to Masons, indicating that Catholics who join Masonic organizations are engaged in serious sin and are to be barred from the Eucharist.
The Church has also judged that the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, the Orangemen, the Sons of Temperance, and the Communist Party are forbidden societies. Most Americans are familiar with the Masons and the Communist Party, but less familiar with the others.
The Odd Fellows was formed in England in 1812 and was brought to America in 1819. Like the Masons, it is a quasi-religious society, which is one of the Church's chief objections against it. The group has chaplains, altars, high priests, ritual worship, and funeral ceremonies. Also like the Masons, its members are indifferentists and teach the equality of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam before God.
The Knights of Pythias was founded in 1864 by a group of Masons and suffers from many of the same problems as the Masons and the Odd Fellows. This organization places emphasis on the pagans Pythagoras, Damon, Pythias, and Dionysius as teachers and models for moral life.
The Orangemen are militaristic Irish Protestants who are intensely anti-Catholic and are responsible for much of the anti-Catholic violence in Northern Ireland.
The Sons of Temperance was founded in New York in 1842 and is far more than just a temperance society (which the Catholic Church has nothing against; there were many Catholic temperance societies in nineteenth-century America). Like the Masons, the Sons is a quasi-religious society with its own religious rituals, but it admits both men and women to its lodges instead of having a parallel organization for women as do the Masons and most similar groups
Q: Why did some books mentioned in the Bible perish and not make it into the canon? Were they not inspired?
A: Some books the Bible mentions were not inspired but are simply used as historical sources. This is the case when Paul quotes books by the pagan writers Aratus, Menander, and Epimenides (Acts 17:28, 1 Cor. 15:33, and Titus 1:12, respectively) or when the Old Testament refers us to the book of the Annals of the Kings of Media and Persia (Esther 10:2).
The same is likely true of the book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel (1 Kgs. 14:19) and the book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah (1 Kgs. 14:29), which may simply have been court records or secular histories of the periods they discussed. The same goes for the book of the Kings of Judah and Israel (2 Chron. 16:11), and the Memoirs of Nehemiah (2 Macc. 2:13).
Other books contained genuine revelation, though the book as a whole was not inspired. This is the case with the book of Enoch, which is quoted in Jude 14, and possibly a book known as the Assumption of Moses, which appears to be quoted in Jude 9. A work of unclear status is the book of Jashar, which is twice quoted in the Old Testament (Josh. 10:12-13, 2 Sam. 1:18-27) and seems to be a book of songs concerning the history of Israel.
Among uninspired books mentioned in the Old Testament are the Records of Samuel the Seer, the Records of Nathan the Prophet, and the Records of Gad the Seer (1 Chron. 29:29), the Prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, the visions of Iddo the Seer concerning Jeroboam son of Nebat (2 Chron. 9:29), the Records of Shemaiah the Prophet and of Iddo the Seer (2 Chron. 12:15), the Annotations of the Prophet Iddo (2 Chron.13:22; the references to works of Iddo may be different ways of referring to the same book).
In the New Testament, there are references to a third letter from Paul to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 5:9) and of a letter of his to the Laodiceans (Col. 4:16; though many have thought this letter to the Laodiceans is the same as the letter to the Ephesians). Such books may have been inspired, but for some reason God chose not to have them passed down and included in the canon.
Q: If we dug up a lost book by one of the apostles, could it be added to the canon of the Bible or would that be impossible?
A: It would take an ecumenical councilor an ex cathedra statement by the pope to settle the issue definitively (assuming non-Catholics would give either one credence), but it almost certainly would never happen. . .
The first problem we would have to settle is how to prove, after an absence of so many centuries, that the work in question really was by an apostle or an apostolic man. This in itself would be insurmountable. There is no way that we today could establish that the work was genuine.
The early Church judged which books were apostolic and which were not based on which had been handed down to them as apostolic by Church Tradition. Those books which had been widely handed down as apostolic were regarded as apostolic when the canon was settled in the late 300s.
But by definition we could not apply that test to a manuscript we just now dug up. It is difficult to imagine evidence that could show conclusively that it was written by an apostle rather than by someone pretending to be an apostle. (There were such individuals in the first century, and Paul had to warn against them and give his audience a way to know his letters were genuine; cf. 2 Thess. 2:2, 3:17.)
The book would have to be unknown at the time the canon was settled in the 300s, because a negative judgment was passed at that time on all books which were known and were not identified as Scripture. Books not included in the canon by the Fathers of the 300s were rejected as uncanonical, meaning our newly-discovered manuscript would need to have been lost before that time.
Q: The Jehovah's Witnesses stress the 144,000. What 's the real scoop on this number?
A: The 144,000 people described in two passages of the Bible: Revelation 7:1-8 and 14:1-5. According to the first passage, they are "the servants of . . . God" (7:3) who are pictured as being sealed upon their foreheads. Verses 4-8 depict there being twelve thousand sealed from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, giving a total of 144,000.
In Revelation 14:1 we are told that the seal on their foreheads is Christ's and his Father's name. The 144,000 are with Jesus, and they sing a unique song of worship, which no one else can learn (14:3). In 14:4-5 we are told more about their identity: "It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are chaste [Greek, "virgins"]; it is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes; these have been redeemed from mankind as first fruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are spotless."
The Witnesses say these people represent the Church of Christ, the Israel of God, and this is a common view among Bible scholars, one that has had a long history in the interpretation of Revelation. The 144,000 are taken as a symbol of the Christian faithful. It is what Witnesses say next that is bizarre.
Supposedly God began collecting the 144,000 at Pentecost in AD. 33 but stopped collecting them in 1935, when the full number was reached. Some of the 144,000 are still living, and they are all Jehovah's Witnesses. As of 1986 there were only about 9,000 of the 144,000 left alive. Since the Jehovah's Witnesses are a larger group, possessing several million members, how are the rest of the Witnesses regarded? As non-members of the body of Christ. They will still be saved in the end, but they will not be part of the body and will not go to heaven. They are considered part of the "great crowd" mentioned in Revelation 7:9-10.
In Jehovah's Witness "kingdom halls" (church buildings) only members of the 144,000 are allowed to receive communion when the Lord's Supper is celebrated (which is done infrequently). Sometimes kingdom halls celebrate the Lord's Supper and no one receives communion since none of the 144,000 are present.
Needless to say, the Witness's view is riddled with holes. When discussing the 144,000 with Witnesses, make them realize that they are being inconsistent in how they interpret the texts where the 144,000 are mentioned. They insist that there are exactly 144,000 of these people, no more and no less, making it a literal number, but they interpret every other detail about this group in a symbolic manner.
If they were consistent, they would have to conclude that the 144,000 are Jews, drawn equally from the twelve tribes of Israel (most of which are now unrecognizably lost), that they are all male virgins who do not lie and who have two names literally written on their foreheads. The problem is that almost none of the 9,000 Witnesses supposed to be members of this group fit this description. Many of them are married Gentile women with children, and they presumably have bent the truth more than a few times in their lives.
The only detail from the text that the Witnesses take literally is the number. Every other detail of the text is taken non-literally. They should either take all of the details literally or see the 144,000 as a symbol of the Church as a whole (as does virtually everyone else).
Q: At Mass we say, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. " What is this prayer, where does it come from, and what on earth does "Hosanna" mean?
A: This prayer is called the Sanctus because that is its first word in Latin. The first line is the hymn of the seraphim in Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8. The second part is what the crowd cried to Jesus at his triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Matt. 21:9), which is modeled after Psalm 118:25.
Hosanna is a Hebrew term which is derived from the words yasha, which means "save," and na, which is an expression of entreaty or request and can be translated in a variety of ways-for example, "I pray," "I beseech," "please," or "O." The Hebrew terms were combined-yasha na ("O, save!"), as in Psalm 118:25-and this became hosanna.
It was used as part of the Jewish temple liturgy during the feast of Tabernacles, when the priests carried willow branches and cried "Hosanna!" while processing around the altar of burnt offering'. Over time, the crowd gathered to worship picked it up, and it became a cry of joy. The seventh day of Tabernacles even came to be called "Hosanna Day."
Thus the crowd greeted the Messiah by waving palm branches and joyfully crying "Hosanna!" to him as he entered Jerusalem. By this time, the term may have lost some of its original meaning and may have been mostly an acclamation of joy and petition (as it is now during Mass).
Yet it still carried the air of a joyful petition for deliverance The expression "Hosanna to the Son of David!" was an exhortation to acclaim or praise the Messiah in hopes of deliverance (probably from the hated Romans in the mind of the crowd).
The expression "Hosanna in the highest!" is more mysterious. Suggestions have included the idea that it is an exhortation to us to cry "Hosanna!" to God, that it is an exhortation to the angels to cry "Hosanna!" to God, that it is an exhortation for there to be songs of praise in heaven, and even that the phrase means "Up with your branches!" (on the unlikely supposition that the branches carried during the feast of Tabernacles had come to be called "hosannas").
"Hosanna" was used as part of Mass in the first century. The Didache (AD. 70) includes the acclamation "Hosanna to the God of David!" among the congregation's responses during the prayer of thanksgiving after Communion.
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