b i b l ica l v ie w s
Paul, Jesus and the Rolling Stone
John Byron
Every now and then I read something
in the apostle Paul’s letters that trips me up—where
he makes a claim or statement without offering any
explanation and then moves on. For instance, while
arguing why women should cover their heads dur-
ing worship, he throws in the line “because of the
Did a rolling stone angels” (1 Corinthians 11:10), but Paul never explains
that provides what he means. He just keeps writing and ignores
water accompany the mental train wreck behind him as readers are
left asking: “Wait, what about the angels?” And
the Israelites on since nature and scholarship both abhor a vacuum,
the Exodus? numerous explanations have been offered as to
what Paul might have meant. Alas, we don’t know
if any of the proposed solutions is in fact what Paul
had in mind since he never tells us.
Another tricky passage is 1 Corinthians 10:4.
There Paul recounts the story of Israel’s Exodus
from Egypt and period of wandering in the wilder-
ness. As he narrates how God led them through the
Red Sea and fed and watered them in the desert, he
makes the incredible claim: “For they drank from
the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock
was Christ.” If one isn’t reading carefully, it’s easy
to miss Paul’s claim that the rock Moses struck to
give the Israelites water followed them around the
desert. But compare Paul’s claim with the Hebrew
Bible, which nowhere states that the rock followed
Israel around the desert—much less that Jesus was
present in the shape of a rock. One is left wondering
if Paul knew what he was talking about.
It would be easy to dismiss this as another exam-
ple of a Pauline throwaway line, except that Paul is
not the only person to suggest it. In another first-
century C.E. document known as Pseudo-Philo’s
Biblical Antiquities, we read: “But as for his own
people, he led them forth into the wilderness: Forty
years did he rain bread from heaven for them, and
he brought them quails from the sea, and a well of
water following them” (10.7).
While there are some differences between Paul
and Pseudo-Philo (a rock vs. a well), the parallels
are striking. Both authors believe that a movable
water source followed Israel in the desert during
their wanderings. But how did they arrive at this
interpretation?
The key seems to be something ancient interpret-
ers observed in Israel’s Exodus story. Twice God
miraculously provided Israel with water from a
rock, once near Rephidim at the beginning of their
28
wandering period (Exodus 17:1–7) and again at
Kadesh toward the end (Numbers 20:1–14). Ancient
interpreters may have asked the question: “What,
then, did they drink in between?” What they seem
to have concluded is that since Moses named both
the rock at Rephidim (Exodus 17:7) and the one at
Kadesh (Numbers 20:13) “Meribah,” the logical con-
clusion was that both were one and the same rock
and that it, therefore, must have accompanied Israel
on their journey. Adding possible weight to this exe-
gesis is Psalm 105:41, which states: “He opened the
rock, and water gushed out; it went [Hebrew: klh]
through the desert like a river” (author’s translation).
The “it” here is ambiguous. Did the rock travel
through the desert or the water? Once again, some
interpreters concluded that it was the rock that fol-
lowed them.
With Paul and Pseudo-Philo we have two first-
century sources that provide the earliest evidence for
this interpretive tradition. The difference between
identifying the water source as a well rather than a
rock can probably be explained by the presence of a
song in Numbers 21:16–20, where we read how Israel
arrived at a well in Beer where God promised to
“give (Hebrew: ntn) water to them.” Israel responds
by singing about the well (21:17–18).1 The song is fol-
lowed by a list of places on their itinerary: Mattanah,
Nahaliel, Bamoth and a valley in Moab.
Some interpreters didn’t read “Mattanah” as the
first stop on the itinerary but as a form of the Hebrew
verb ntn (“it was given”). This led them to under-
stand the itinerary as being that of the well rather
than Israel.2 One place where the popularity of this
interpretive tradition is evidenced is the Aramaic
Targumim.3 One of the more developed and humor-
ous versions of this tradition depicts the well as deliv-
ering water door-to-door: “And because it (the well)
was given to them as a gift, it turned to ascend the
high mountains with them and from the high moun-
tains it descended with them to the valleys, going
around the entire camp of Israel and giving them
drink, each and every one of them at the door of his
tent” (Targum Pseudo-Jonathon Numbers 21:19).
Nonetheless, the apostle Paul identifies the
water source as a rock, not a well. It’s possible he
was unaware of the moving-well tradition found in
sources such as Pseudo-Philo and the Targumim. But
his retention of the moving rock tradition may be for
c o n t i n u e s o n pa g e 6 6
S e p t e m b e r / O c t ob e r 2 0 1 5
Biblical Views
continued from page 28
practicable and theological reasons.
First, Exodus, Numbers and Psalm 105
all indicate that it was a rock, not a well,
by which the Lord gave Israel water.
Second, the rock was more relevant
than the well for identifying Jesus as the
water source that followed Israel. Paul
may be reading Exodus 17:1–5 and Num-
bers 20:1–13 in conjunction with Psalm
118:22, which reads: “The stone that the
builders rejected has become the chief
cornerstone.” The “stone” in this psalm
was interpreted by several early Chris-
tian interpreters as referring to Jesus
(Matthew 21:42; Acts 4:11; 1 Peter 2:7).
Thus, when Paul read the story of the
water from a rock in Exodus and Num-
bers, he may have done so through the
identification of Jesus with the stone in
Psalm 118:22. By combining both of these
interpretations, he concluded that Jesus
was the rock that followed Israel around
66
the desert providing them with water.
At the end of the day it’s unclear
whether Paul really thought the rock fol-
lowed Israel in the desert. Most ancient
and modern commentators assume that
Paul is reading Israel’s story typologi-
cally rather than suggesting that Jesus
was present with Israel in the wilderness
in the form of a movable water source.
But the off-handed way in which he
makes the comment demonstrates that
it was a well-known interpretation in
his day. A statement that creates a men-
tal stumbling block for modern readers
was probably taken in stride by those in
Paul’s first audience who were familiar
with Jewish methods of interpreting
the Bible. And so in this case, Paul really
does know what he’s talking about.
John Byron is Professor of New Testa-
ment at Ashland Theological Seminary in
Ashland, Ohio.
1 In
some interpretations, it is known as
“Miriam’s Well” because the second instance
of Israel needing water takes place right after
Miriam dies (Numbers 20:2). Interpreters may
have thought that the original rock followed
Israel because of Miriam but then ceased
working after her death (James L. Kugel, Tra-
ditions of the Bible [Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1998], p. 621).
2 Peter Enns, “The ‘Moveable Well’ in 1 Cor 10:4:
An Extrabiblical Tradition in an Apostolic Text,”
Bulletin for Biblical Research 6 (1996), p. 30.
3 See Targum Onqelos Numbers 21:17–19 and
Targum Neofiti Numbers 21:17–20.
Tischendorf
continued from page 53
Universitāt Leipzig (Leipzig: Evangelische
Verlagsanstalt, 2005), pp. 270–274. See also
Christfried Böttrich, Der Jahrhundertfund: Ent-
deckung und Geschichte des Codex Sinaiticus
(Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2012).
12 D.C. Parker, Codex Sinaiticus: The Story of the
World’s Oldest Bible (Peabody, MA: Hendrick-
son, 2010), pp. 143–147.
13 Porter, Constantine Tischendorf, p. 60.
14 Alexander Schick, Tischendorf und die älteste
Bibel der Welt: Die Entdeckung des CODEX
SINAITICUS im Katharinekloster (Mulden-
hammer: jOTA Publikationen GmbH, 2015).
S e p t e m b e r / O c t ob e r 2 0 1 5