How to NOT do Historical Exegesis

I recently ran across a fella whose background included sub-optimal experiences with his Catholic family.  It left him being very jaded toward the Catholic Church - particularly the idea of hierarchical leadership.  

I pointed out that church leadership was found (and commended) in the Bible.  One good example would be in the letter to the Hebrews:

"Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you." - Hebrews 13:17

He replied by telling me to keep in mind the sin of the Nicolaitans.  What is that, you ask?  Good question.  I didn't know either.  

The Nicolaitans:

The Nicolaitans are mentioned early in the book of Revelation.  John records Jesus saying to the Ephesians:

“I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.   

Yet this is to your credit: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.  Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To everyone who conquers, I will give permission to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God." - Revelation 2:4-7

The text itself does not spell out who the Nicolaitans were or what they had done.  But my acquaintance said he had heard it was that a group of priests who had taken over the local church and had begun oppressing the people.  

Cardinal Bergolio, later Pope Francis

Well... I promised him I would research the matter and get back to him.  Here's what I found....


Reliable Sources:

How would you find out who they were?  The thing you would want to have is a contemporary recorded witness from Ephesus saying:

"There is the group we call the 'Nicolaitans'.  Here's what they do and here's why we're fed up with them." - Nonexistent Contemporary Source

Unfortunately, no such record exists.  So what now?

Well, the next place you want to go is the earliest historical witnesses who discuss the matter.  That person would be Saint Irenaeus of Lyons.  In the year 180AD he recorded the following regarding the Nicolaitans in his seminal work "Against Heresies":

"The Nicolaitanes are the followers of that Nicolas who was one of the seven first ordained to the diaconate by the apostles. They lead lives of unrestrained indulgence. The character of these men is very plainly pointed out in the Apocalypse of John, when they are represented as teaching that it is a matter of indifference to practice adultery, and to eat things sacrificed to idols." - Against Heresies, Book 1, Chapter 26, Section 3

"John, the disciple of the Lord, preaches this faith, and seeks by the proclamation of the Gospel, to remove that error which by Cerinthus had been disseminated among men, and a long time previously by those termed Nicolaitans, who are an offset of that knowledge falsely so called, that he might confound them and persuade them that there is but one God, who made all things by His Word; and not, as they allege, that the Creator was one, but the Father of the Lord another; and that the Son of the Creator was, forsooth, one, but the Christ from above another, who also continued impassible, descending upon Jesus, the Son of the Creator, and flew back again into His Pleroma." - Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter 11, Section 1

So Irenaeus proposed a few things:

• They were followers of a man named Nicolas
• That Nicolas was the same one mentioned in the book of Acts.
• They taught that adultery was no big deal.
• They encouraged people to eat things sacrificed to idols.
• They were an offshoot of the Gnostics.
• They taught that Jesus was not God.

I could walk you through later witnesses, but they don't differ much from Irenaeus' description. Some question whether the Nicolas in question was the same one from Acts, some propose they endorsed other sins of the flesh.  But they all agreed on the basics - they followed a guy named Nicolas and did bad stuff.

In any event, no historical witness proposes that the Nicolaitans were a group of oppressive priests who took over the local church.

So where did my acquaintance get this idea?


A Strong Basis:

Eventually I stumbled across a polemical anti-Catholic website (big surprise) which provided an answer.

These guys used a different tactic entirely.  Rather than appealing to historical witnesses, they pulled out a Strong's Greek Concordance, broke apart the word "Nicolas" into its Greek components, and assumed that would reveal the nature of the Nicolaitan's error.

So the word "Nicolas" contains two Greek words.  First you have "Nico" - which means "victory".  Then you have "laos" - which means "people".  (This is where we get the word "laity" and "lay person".)

With that data in hand, here's how the rest of the thought-process goes:

"Nicolas breaks down into 'victory' and 'people' in Greek.  Put the two together and you get 'victory over the people'.  And you know who has victory over the people?  The oppressive Catholic priests, that's who!  They rule over the laity with an iron fist, submitting them to all manner of rituals to earn their salvation!"

Exploring Other Options:

Now... let's subject that proposition to some scrutiny.... perhaps more seriously than it deserves.

Is the  anti-clerical conclusion reached by the polemical anti-Catholics really warranted?  Are there other possibilities they are overlooking?


Same Etymology - Alternate Possibilities:

First, let's assume their etymology is correct and the "Nicolaitans" are really a group of folks who have "victory over the people".

Why assume it is a group of clerics?  Couldn't it have been a political party?  Or a group devoted to racial purity?  Or any other group of people who sought to oppress the common man?

Possibilities abound.  It is nothing more than a gratuitous assumption to propose they were tyrannical clerics.


Alternate Etymologies - More Possibilities:

The other problem is that "Victory over the People" is not the only possible etymology of "Nicolas".  Other possibilities include "Victory-People" or "The Victorious People" or "The Victory of the People".

If any of those are what is meant instead, the resulting meaning could actually switch around who is having the "victory".

What if it is instead "the people" who is conquering?  Perhaps this is a group promoting a populist uprising?  A group of people seeking to overthrow the government?

Or maybe it is the exact opposite of what the anti-Catholics propose - a group of laity who want to conquer their bishops.

In fact, we know from history that this is precisely what happened in Corinth at the same time Revelation was written.  That was why Pope Clement had to write a letter to them.

The Obvious Method Error:

With all that said, the biggest issue is still the hermeneutic being used to arrive at the anti-clerical interpretation.  It assumes the best way to discover the teachings of the "Nicolaitans" is to dissect their name and subject it to Strong's Greek Concordance.

This method ignores the witness of all written history - which points out the blindingly obvious fact that "Nicolaitan" refers to the name of their leader Nicolas.

This same method of pointing to a groups of dissidents can be found later on in the same chapter of Revelation.  Shortly after learning about the Nicolaitans you find condemnations of the followers a false prophetess named Jezebel and also a reference to the Old Testament pagan-prophet Balaam.

This method of naming heretical groups by their founder was common in the ancient world.  That's how the names of the Pelegians, Marcionites, Arians, Montanists, Nestorians, Manichees, and Novatians came about.  There is no reason to assume the Nicolaitans were any different.

Now, there were other groups which were named for their doctrines.  Some of those would include the Monothelites, Gnostics, and Monoarchianists.  What those have in common is their names break down into obviously theological terms AND they are equally obviously not derived from someone's name.


To Conclude:

This brings me back to the acquaintance who first proposed the anti-clerical interpretation to me.  I don't know who he had initially heard it from, but there was nothing to back it up in the end.  It was simply asserted by some guy on the radio with unwarranted confidence.

Why did that radio guy have such confidence?

There is an unfortunate tendency among some Christians think the Bible becomes utterly transparent as soon as you break down the Greek words therein.  All mysteries are can be revealed if you are armed with a Greek concordance.  Well, that just isn't the case.

And just as unfortunately, there is a tendency among some Christians to believe any nonsense they hear which purports to take the Catholic Church down a peg.  This is particularly true among people who had bad experiences with Catholics, who maintain strong biases against them, and are looking for reasons to justify their bias.

The right way to do historical exegesis on the Bible is to consult early witnesses, compare your findings to known practices in the ancient world, and arrive at the most warranted explanation.

But for some people, the tools of choice are the Greek text, a concordance, and an axe to grind.