Ghosts in the New Testament? – Part 4
The Disciples Visited by Peter’s Ghost?
One particular passage in the New Testament has always had raised questions for me which I’ve not been able to bottom out until recently, when I realised that cultural setting and beliefs of the writers and original readers are important in getting a proper understanding of the text in context.
The story is found in Acts 12 where it records the freeing of Peter from prison and Rhoda and the disciples behaviour towards him as he attempts to enter the house in which they are meeting…
About that time King Herod laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. 2 He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword. 3 After he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. (This was during the festival of Unleavened Bread.) 4 When he had seized him, he put him in prison and handed him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover. 5 While Peter was kept in prison, the church prayed fervently to God for him.
Acts 12:1-17 (NRSV)
6 The very night before Herod was going to bring him out, Peter, bound with two chains, was sleeping between two soldiers, while guards in front of the door were keeping watch over the prison. 7 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his wrists. 8 The angel said to him, “Fasten your belt and put on your sandals.” He did so. Then he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.” 9 Peter went out and followed him; he did not realise that what was happening with the angel’s help was real; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 After they had passed the first and the second guard, they came before the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went outside and walked along a lane, when suddenly the angel left him. 11 Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hands of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.”
12 As soon as he realised this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many had gathered and were praying. 13 When he knocked at the outer gate, a maid named Rhoda came to answer. 14 On recognising Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed that, instead of opening the gate, she ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the gate. 15 They said to her, “You are out of your mind!” But she insisted that it was so. They said, “It is his angel.” 16 Meanwhile Peter continued knocking; and when they opened the gate, they saw him and were amazed. 17 He motioned to them with his hand to be silent, and described for them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he added, “Tell this to James and to the believers.” Then he left and went to another place.
The background to any story is always important, and for this, it’s Peter’s miraculous release from prison is Herod’s execution of James, the brother of John. Herod saw it pleased the population, so arrested Peter for execution later. The disciples are in hiding and praying for Peter at this time.
Peter’s release through the agency of a spiritual being called an angel was so strange that Peter initially believes it’s only a vision. The story tells of paranormal events which involve passing by four squads of soldiers unnoticed, who would know the penalty for falling asleep or losing a prisoner (their own execution, as shown later in the story). Then locked iron gates of the city (which would have had their own guards on them to protect the city) mysteriously open by themselves to let them out. Eventually the angel disappears, leaving him to continue to the safe house alone.
Luke comments that this was the angel of the Lord which rescued him, not his own guardian angel. Both the writer and Peter could have mentioned the concept of guardian angels, but specifically don’t. This is important later in the story.
Peter arrives at the door of the safe house of Mary, John’s mother, and knocks upon it. A household servant, Rhoda, speaks through the closed door it to confirm who was outside (she wouldn’t have opened it as these were times of persecution and it was also dark outside). Note: Rhoda did not see Peter, only heard his voice, which she recognised and ran back inside to tell the disciples.
The disciples had been in the house praying for Peter. Having lost their friend John at the hands of Herod, they were expecting the worst for Peter too, his execution. This detail is also important to note. When Rhoda tells the disciples Peter’s at the door, they laugh, say she’s mad. Peter’s voice alone convinced her enough to insist it was him.
The disciples retort is a key moment in this part of the story: “It is his angel.” Many have used this verse as a proof of the existence of guardian angels. Whilst I believe that there are indeed spiritual beings which watch over us and help us as part of the work God has assigned to them (God’s heavenly agencies do work on behalf of God, just as human agencies do), I don’t believe this is what the disciples meant to convey at all [1].
Given the finer details of the story and the context of belief in crisis apparitions of the dead or nearly dead appearing to the living which have been recorded throughout the millennia from ancient times (an example was given in part 2 of this series), up to modern times [2], perhaps the disciples thought this was a crisis apparition, where the expected deceased Peter’s spirit was coming to tell them of his passing?
Whilst this may sound wacky, some questions about this passage are efficiently answered if we take the crisis apparition hypothesis seriously:
– Why don’t the disciples want to open the door to the ‘angel’?
This is very odd in a culture where welcoming the stranger was a very honourable thing to do. To turn away someone they’ve been convinced is an angel of God, would have been very bad form culturally, given their knowledge of their founding father, Abraham, who had welcomed the three angelic strangers into his abode (Genesis 18).
The sensible suggestion is that they were fearful of answering the door because this was some strange phenomenon such as a crisis apparition. It took continual knocking from Peter to get them to pluck up courage to venture to the door for further investigation.
– Why did Rhoda hear Peter’s voice and not the voice of a different being?
Surely an angel aligned with the purposes of God would not be behaving so deceptively as to impersonate the voice of Peter? Nowhere in Scripture do we read of angels deceiving people by appearing like them or sounding like them.
It’s clear that Peter’s voice was heard and recognised by Rhoda, and the disciples were convinced it was a spirit being related somehow to him. As such, their expectation of his imminent death, coupled with his voice being heard would surely mean to them that they thought it was Peter’s crisis apparition, and that’s why they were not wanting to open the door – one welcomes angels from God, but not human spirits at the door!!!.
– Were their expectations such that their interpretation of the events as a crisis apparition is a possibility?
Yes – we’ve already seen that Peter’s death was expected from Luke’s scene setting at the start of the chapter. Therefore, given that they were told Peter’s voice was at the door, they could have interpreted this as his recently deceased spirit.
However, one key question remains which we have to explore deeply, for it unlocks the mystery of this passage and aids our understanding regarding whether the disciples could have thought it was Peter’s spirit at the door…
– Can ‘angel’ mean a human spirit, not just a non-human one?
The word angel, Greek aggelos, simply means messenger. It does not carry any meaning that describes the nature of the messenger, but simply means one who carries a message from one party to another. Humans can be angels, aggelos, too: in the New Testament we see a variety of humans being called aggelos – John the Baptist (Mt 11:10), the disciples of John (Lk 7:24), the followers of Jesus (9:52), Paul (Gal 4:14), and the spies sheltered by Rahab (Js 2:25). We also see a number of occasions where heavenly angels are described as men – the angel in white in the empty tomb (Mk 16:5), the two dazzling men who appeared to the women going to the tomb (Lk 24:4), the bright angel in Peter’s prison (Ac 12:15). Whilst we may expect them to appear glowing (remember, ghosts don’t glow), we read in Hebrews 13:2 that they may sometimes appear as humans, to such an extent we wouldn’t know the difference. Therefore, the context where the word aggelos is used determines whether or not the writer is describing a human or non-human messenger.
At this point things we’re going to take a dip out of the main article to learn something about the historical background for the usage of the word aggelos. This is a very, very condensed version of a future article on angels and demons, but is necessary to include key points here to help us understand the next part. For an academic level article which explains this in much greater depth, see Martin [4], which I’ve condensed below:
- The usage of the word aggelos stems from the Septuagint writers, when they translated the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament + Apocrypha) into Greek.
- The Hebrew word, mal’ak, meant ‘messenger’ (human or otherwise).
- The Greeks had a concept of spirit beings called daimon, who were either gods, intermediary messengers, or even deceased humans.
- Daimons delivered messages to and from humans.
- In order to differentiate between messengers from God and the large daimon grouping that included gods, the Septuagint translators avoided using the word daimon in their translation for mal’ak, instead choosing to use the word aggelos, primarily to mean a messenger angel from God. Any other form of spirit being which wasn’t an aggelos would be classed as a diamon, including dead humans.
- By the time of the New Testament, writers who wanted to speak of a being (human or otherwise) with a message from God would use the word aggelos.
Right, back to the main argument… All three Synoptic writers mention Jesus’ comment that when we die, we will be like angels (Mt 22:30, Mk 12:25 and Lk 20:36). The context of this usage is important, for Jesus is being questioned by the Sadducees about the nature of the afterlife. What did the Sadducees believe then about it, as this can help unpack what Jesus was talking about? Acts 23:8 says that ‘The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, or angel, or spirit; but the Pharisees acknowledge all three.’ In the Anchor Bible Dictionary [3], we read that they ‘did not believe that the soul continued to exist after death or that people suffered punishments or received rewards after they died… their soul perished along with the body at death.’ However, the Sadducees did believe in angels!!! Although they only restricted themselves to the Pentateuch (Genesis to Deuteronomy), there are plenty of accounts with angels: one who looked after after Hagar after being kicked out by Abraham’s wife, Sarah (Ge 16:7; 21:17); Abraham’s three visitors (Ge 21:17); the rescue of Lot (Ge 19:16); Jacob’s dreams (Ge 28:12; 31:11), his journeying (Ge 32:1); the Passover angel (Ex 12); the giving of the Law (Deut 33:2). It’s very clear the Sadducees believed in heavenly angelic messengers from God. So what is Paul on about when he says in Acts 23 that the Sadducees don’t believe in angels? Well, given the context of angels and spirits in this sentence, the Sadducees rejection of human afterlife and the cultural background beliefs that dead humans could bring messages, including those involved in crisis apparitions, it’s perfectly acceptable to have Paul talking about the Sadducees not believing in dead human messengers as aggelos. This then makes sense of passages like Mt 22:30, Mk 12:25 and Lk 20:36 which all say that we will be like angels when we die and rise again. It also makes sense of Mt 18:10 which describes the angels of the children in heaven continually being in God’s immediate presence (what the metaphor of seeing God’s face represents) – we’re talking children who die early in their life, not non human guardian angels.
Luke, when writing Acts, is writing to a Greek, Hellenist, culture, so if he was intending his readers to understand the disciples perception of what was at the door to be a messenger from God, would have used aggelos. But if he intended it to be a dead human, could have used daimon. However, because daimon would have included gods, and Luke was aware of Jesus’ words that we shall be like angels when we die, chose aggelos to steer it away from too broad a category of beings.
In summary, when analysed, Rhoda hears Peter’s voice, goes and tells the disciples, convincing them that it’s really his voice out there at the door. They’re expecting him to be dead, so the natural thing is to expect it’s his spirit coming to tell them something, and as it’s not an angel of God which they’d let in according to their culture, but a human spirit, they’re reluctant to let it into their house, even though it’s someone they knew.
This whole story, which on initial reading is fairly mundane, but with serious questions remaining, becomes unlocked when you understand the cultural context and what people believed about the paranormal back then.
Bibliography
Heathcote-James E. (2004), After-Death Communication, London, England: Metro Publishing.
Martin, D. B. (2010) ‘When Did Angels Become Demons?’, The Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 129, no. 4, pp. 647-677.
Porter, G. G. (1992) ‘Sadducees’ in Freedman, D. (ed.) The Anchor Bible Dictionary – Volume 5. New York, NY: Doubleday, pp. 892-895.
References
1) Certainly there are scriptures which discuss protection via heavenly beings which are not God (Ps 91:11-12 and Tobit 5:21-22), there’s no specific linking of a particular angel to a particular person. There is however, linking of an angel to a group of people, such as Michael to Israel, and the seven angels of the seven churches in Revelation.
2) Heathcote-James’ book contains many accounts of after death communications from those who were at or had passed into the point of death (crisis apparitions), a number of which occurred to people who were unaware of the passing of their loved one which either happened whilst they were asleep, and / or whilst many miles away. There are many other accounts of crisis apparitions in both Christian and non-Christian history, and it would do us well to test everything by assessing its fruits and hold onto that which is true. We shall explore crisis apparitions in a later post.
3) Porter, 893
4) Martin
