How to Read The Old Testament in Light of the New Testament

How to Read the Old Testament in Light of the New Testament

Daniel Kirk recently reviewed his colleague Dr. Goldingay's new book, "Do We Really Need the New Testament?" which asks the question how to read the Old Testament as a New Testament Christian.

Basically it advocates that the Christian learn to read the OT on its own without reading church history's re-interpretation of it through Jesus. Which is a fair point to be made - but impossible to do in light of Jesus.

At some point the text of the Old Testament should be discerned and interpreted in a twofold manner:

1. On its own apart from the New Testament's testimony to Jesus, and
2. Coupled with the New Testament's testimony of Jesus even as its gospel writers had clearly done.

Let us look at the first point.

If we are to read the OT alone without any interpretation to it by the NT then we must do so without the interpretation of the church councils which present doctrines like the "Trinity" into the mainstream of OT Jewish theology. Such doctrines were foreign to the theology of the ancient Jews even though within the texts of Scripture itself it can be seen by the "backwards glance" through the lens of the New Testament that the church doctrine of the Trinity is not as foreign a concept as first thought. But again, that is with the benefit of historical hindsight.

This may also be inferred by other "Christian doctrinal formulations" which developed after Jesus and not before during the period of the Old Testament. As such, Christian doctrine  is absent Old Testament Jewish theology as it developed its own theologies about God and their place within God's purposes for a time and people removed from the Christ-event to come.

So then, to read the Old Testament on its own and within its own historical periodicity is to attempt to understand its Scriptures without the theological perspective of the New Testament church and its councils which were not historically present in the OT.

Which gets to the idea then of "How does one read the OT in its own setting?" Or more to the point, "How does one read the OT without reading it through the grid of NT theology?" 

The best help and guide here would be from the ancient Jewish theologies themselves as they were formulated through the Inter-Testamental period between the Old and New Testament eras.

History of Jewish Theology

I find the Inter-Testament period between the Old and New Testaments to be significant for any number of reasons:

• It becomes the period of time when Israel comes to finally understand the full ramifications of God's covenants to Abraham, Moses, and David (the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, and the David covenants);

• When Israel comes to understand the full meaning of the blessings and curses that attenuated those ancient covenants when obeyed or broken;

• When Israel finally comes to understand the meaningfulness of God's promises to their daily lives as a true blessing - and not merely as a bothersome regulation or rule of authority;

• When Israel finally discovers what covenantal restoration really means in light of its repentance and confession from sins and transgressions to be fully restored to rightful fellowship to her Creator-God on the basis of blood sacrifice; or even,

• The scope of God's love and faithfulness to His chosen people at the height of their disobedience to Him (at the last, the Abrahamic covenant was ever-and-always enacted upon the faithfulness of God and NOT the faithfulness of Abraham nor his descendants).

Moreover, post-exilic Israel (now Judah) had the benefit of hindsight over its many years of redemption from Egypt as they tried to live as a people who worshipped a unique God quite unlike the gods of their polytheistic neighbors around them. A God whose expectations of ethics and morality were wholly unlike the ethics and moralities of the other gods of the nations. A God whose covenantal faithfulness and love was not really understood until experienced through difficult times of failure and breakage among his people as they strove to understand this God they worshipped and clung too (sic, the Psalms are full of the pathos of covenantal struggle and restoration).

The Inter-Testamental Period Demanded Owning up to Failure

After the times of the priests and early judges; after the times of the kings and their fickled people; after the times of the early and later prophets; now we come to Ezra and Nehemiah as they rebuild a people who have suffered long and hard for their sin and faithlessness. For sins that the God had warned them would create separation and struggle not only from Himself but from one another:

• From Himself as their Sovereign who granted the freedom of the heart to follow other loves, gods, and fallacious thinking; and

• From one another as evil entered into their assemblies causing this Godly separation to become harder, deeper, more grievous, with every twist-and-turn of the fallacious heart.

And so, after all this history, all the many stories of brokenness and restoration, Israel now stands on the other side of history and takes the long look back at itself. Its rich culture lost on the swords of so many destitutions. Its bright promise blighted in the night of its many sins. Its deep longings to be faithful to their loving God, their godly heritage, and to one another lost in the ragged return of its survivors coming to terms with the despair of their final and horrific holocaust.

Here now is Israel struggling to be a country lost amid the ruins of its own civilization as the world stage shifted from one empire to the next. From a Greek empire transitioning to a Macedonian empire ruled by a king named Alexander the Great. That fearless ruler who would conquer Asia Minor where Babylon once ruled; the land of Egypt where the Pharaohs once ruled; the lands of once mighty Persia; and finally find his eclipse in the terrible lands of India to vast its scourages, plagues, and tribes.

Upon Alexander's demise came the trading sea kingdoms of the Middle East and North African regions struggling against Egypt to the east and west and against Rome, to the north, becoming mightier and fiercer with every victory against nearer and further Gaul (Spain, France, Germany) as it came to its zenity to then turn its gaze southwards and across the blue Mediterranean.

Little Israel lay now in the ruins of world dominions seeking as it could the answers to a shattered faith that could give few answers but asked many unanswerable questions. Consisting of a covenanted people who remembered the religion of their fathers and sought to give this rich heritage a voice through their scrolls and scribes. Through new rules and laws (Mishna et al). Through a priesthood rededicating itself to its God who seemed no longer close. Or to care. Who was thought to be as faraway as His forsaken children  were from themselves struggling to survive in a harsh world made harsher in the lostness of their faith.

A History Created and Remembered in the Aftermaths of Ruin and Forsakenness

The remnants of this once blessed kingdom now wrote its long histories:

(i) Remembering its covenantal failures to God over a remarkably long period since the days of Joshua who led them out of the Wilderness into the lands of Canaan;

(ii) Remembering its covenantal judgments for their many failures through numerous occupations as it split in two and became a Northern of 10 tribes and a Southern Kingdom of 2 tribes where the first Jewish kingdom suffered under the brutality of Assyria and the second kingdom under the breakage of the kingdom of Babylon;

(iii) Remembering its final, culminating cycles of repentance-and-restoration from their Babylonian captivity-and-release back into the lands of Israel broken and despised;

(iv) And finally, remembering to rest in the land of their fathers and there to do the hard work of recovering a culture from what they could remember upon the lost shards of time once mishandled with careless disregard. To make sense of a past become even more distant from themselves when cast upon the deep lores of forgotten times now faintly intoned upon the disillusioned lilts of songs and poems by dying tongues remembering fonder memories.

This is the story of the Old Testament before Jesus, before His disciples, before the authorship of the New Testament gospel writers, before the early church's pentecostal beginnings, before the early Church Fathers and their early church councils. 

This was the Old Testament without the historical Jesus who was to come. Which looked for a suffering Messiah-Redeemer not understanding what this really meant and sometimes confusing it with God's own suffering people as a nation broken and alone.

This was the Old Testament that spoke of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the mighty God without ascribing to the later Trinitarian ideas of Father-Son-and Holy Spirit. Who saw the atoning sacrifices of the Old Covenant but could not make sense of its longer meaning until a toiling early church preacher wrote the NT book of Hebrews to ascribe to Jesus every precept and principal of the Jewish system built upon animal sacrifices and mediating temple.

Of a Jesus who paradoxically became both atonement and atoner. Both altar sacrifice and mediating priest. Both the broken covenant and covenant maker. Both the cleaved bullock halves of Genesis 15 and the Spirit of Him who walked between those halves to renew a covenant that would surely be broken again-and-again-and again in the wayward hearts of a sinful mankind.

Who was the suffering servant of Isaiah (52-53) and the mighty Davidic King who had at last come to reign and take His place among His people. But who offered a kingdom of upside-down proportions. Who sought weakness in place of strength - even in that of his earthly incarnation. Humility in place of grandness. Service in place of cruel reign. Sacrifice in place of survival. It was a King that the world could not appreciate - nor even want - so blinded by its councils and lost sight of the future.

And it was into this gospel era that Jesus, the Son of God, came as provision and provider. Who would re-write the passages and chapters of the Old Testament to once again become illuminescant with an unearthly meaning dared thought or hoped. Who came to re-write the histories of the Old Testament into the furthering chapters of the New Testament where those Jews of the land who had the spiritual vision to see might glimpse their portion of the promise of God made so many long years ago on the eve of their birthright upon the great faith of their Father Abraham. Himself called from the foreign lands of his fathers to leave all he held familiar and true and become a renewing man of faith and vision. And in a sense, a stranger to himself and his past when captured by God's vision for his future.

This is the story of the Old Testament. And the next chapter to its dusty pages scripted onto the heart of Jesus our Savior who would birth the many worlds of the church to come as it struggles even now to lay claim to a belief becoming more distant with every passing era of this new millennium.

A God who surely loves us and has become surety for us through His Son. A God who calls to a people not His own to become a people of His tabernacles. To there reside and no longer take up residence in any other alien lands. To find rest for the weary soul and an everlasting peace that will ever abide upon the faithfulness of His decrees and charters and eternal will. Amen.

R.E. Slater

May 18, 2015

* * * * * * * * * * *

Jesus and the Old Testament

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2015/05/15/jesus-and-the-old-testament/

by J.R. Daniel Kirk

May 15, 2015

My colleague John Goldingay has a new book out. Its provocative title: Do We Need the New Testament? Letting the Old Testament Speak for Itself.

The provocation doesn’t stop with the front cover, as the last chapter is entitled, “Theological Interpretation: Don’t Be Christ-Centered, Don’t Be Trinitarian, Don’t Be Constrained by the Rule of Faith”.

As someone growing my love for baseball, I want to say with all seriousness that batting .667 makes you one of the all time greats! Here’s my two out of three:

• Don’t be Constrained by the Rule of Faith. Agreed. 
• Don’t be Trinitarian (in your interpretation!). Agreed. 
• Don’t be Christ centered? Not so fast!

I have three compelling reasons to do Christ-centered (or Christ-directed) biblical interpretation.

But before I lay those out, I want to voice my partial agreement even with the idea that we should not read the OT Christologically. I agree with the claim up to this point: we should always allow the OT to say what it has to say, listen to what it has to say, as an expression of its own historical context as a first reading of the text.

In my forthcoming book on Jesus, I have 50,000 words invested in the notion that what pre-New Testament material says about God, humans, and how they relate is of its own importance, and absolutely essential as well for reading the NT aright.

So I half agree with my colleague. We need to first let the OT speak with its own voice. His batting average is now up to .833!

But we cannot stop there. We have to continue to a Christological reading. Here’s why.

1. The New Testament says that scripture is about Jesus

In the famous “all scripture is God-breathed” passage in 2 Tim 3, where we learn that all scripture–which would have meant our Old Testament–is profitable for teaching, etc., we often overlook something.

Before saying that scripture is profitable, Paul tells us what the outcome of such profitable reading is:

"Since childhood you have known the scriptures which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus."

Scripture has a goal, an end, an outcome: faith in Christ.

This parallels what Paul says in Rom 10:4, when he claims that Christ is the end or goal (telos) of the Law.

It is recapitulated in Jesus’s words in John 5: “You search the scriptures because you think that in these you have life–yet it is these that testify about me!”

If we do not read OT scripture as pointing to something beyond itself, if we do not read it as part of a story that has an end in Christ, we are not reading it in keeping with the NT guidelines.

2. If we don’t read the Old Testament Christologically then Christianity is not true

I know that this is a strong statement. But I’ll stand by it. (At least until one of you talks me out of it in the comments!)

The story of Jesus can only be the story of God’s salvation if it is the answer to God’s promise to save God’s people and restore the cosmos. But a “straight” reading of the text from front to back does not in itself paint for us the picture of the Jesus about whose life we read on the pages of the NT. It does not adequately prepare us for salvation through God’s offering of God’s own Son.

Jesus claims at the end of Luke, for instance, that the whole OT (Law, Prophets, Psalms) speaks to a suffering Christ who thereafter enters his glory. We find out what this looks like, exegetically speaking, in the sermons in Acts.

How does the OT speak of the Christ to come? Only when we return to those scriptures to read them with new understanding after we already know that Christ has been crucified, raised from the dead, and enthroned at God’s right hand.

In other words, if we don’t ever read Psalm 110 as speaking about Jesus’s enthronement in heaven, despite the fact that it was originally about the coronation of Israel’s king, then we have no grounds to claim that what actually happened to Jesus is related in any way to the preceding story.

And if Jesus is not related to the story, then the claim that he fulfills the law and the prophets (Matthew), that he goes just as it is written about him (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), that he is the fulfillment of the promises God made beforehand in the prophets (Paul)–that claim is proved false.

If we do not allow what God actually did to transform our understanding of what God promised to do, we have no answer to the promises of salvation articulated in Genesis-Malachi.

3. If we don’t read the Old Testament Christologically then we have a mess on our hands

I know that this claim is also going to be controversial. But here’s the deal.

Over the past couple of years I have led small groups through studies of both Amos and Isaiah. And those prophets, alongside their beautiful visions of the future, are also a troubling mess.

The heights of proclamation about the mercy and justice of God are interwoven with gruesome vengeance–God meting out on the nations the very sorts of violence for which they themselves are allegedly being punished.

We have to be able to return to passages that look for God to give destroy Egypt as the ransom for God’s people, and say no. No, God chose a different path. God gave God’s son instead.

We have to be able to return to passages that look for God to subjugate the nations as vinedressers and shepherds and say no. No, God chose to bring in the Gentiles on equal footing, bearing the divine image as co-heirs with Christ as much as Israel.

The cross does not make every mess go away–and it is, in many ways, its own mess to wrestle with.

But Jesus does show us what the ultimate revelation of God looks like. It is the God who confronts the enemy–by sending the Son to die on their behalf.

This is what permits us, better, demands of us, that we not allow the depictions of the violence of vengeance to stand. (And, yes, the Jesus story might demand of us that we reread portions of the NT for the same reasons.)

So yes, bracket the Trinity and the Rule of Faith while you read. But don’t leave Christ to the side.

Our faith depends on it.

* * * * * * * * * *

Comments

Donald Juels, Messianic Exegesis, 1998. Christological Interpretation of the Old Testament in Early Christianity.

Anon - "Dr Goldingay's approach is helpful in one aspect. It helps us appreciate the fact that no one was thinking in terms of Messianism the way Christians did because they looked at who, and what, Jesus was-and-did and this changed the game. Basically if one reads Donald Juel's Messianic Exegesis he says it all. Juels book is quickly forgotten in these discussions.

Anon - "I have read that Jewish sages figured out that there was a suffering servant Messiah they called Messiah ben Joseph and a conquering king Messiah they called Messiah ben David. What they could not figure out is whether the relevant texts were discussing two Messiahs or just one and there was debate. The puzzle was they did not see how a Messiah that would suffer and die could also reign as king."

Book Review - Messianic Exegesis by Donal Juels

Anon - "Juel's work is one of those books that I wish had been assigned a long time ago. The basic premise of the book is to show that the early Christians were convinced that Jesus was the promised Messiah (meaning "king"), and then undertook the task of reflecting on the good news of his death and ressurection in light of the Scriptures. What came first was NOT apologetic argument but scriptural reflection whose goal was to understand the gospel.

Basically the early Christians take key words from well known Messianic passages already established, and use other passages NOT considered Messianic, and apply them to what they saw happened with Jesus in his unexpected death and resurrection.

This should be required reading for all who study the Bible. I believe this mainly because after being involved in Biblical Studies for a while and digesting all kinds of discussions, I feel that the way things are presented in this book should be the standard for understanding the relationship between the Tanakh and what is referred to as the New Testament.

It is the ultimate way of honoring Christ. The Messiah becomes the one who reinterprets everything that came before. The written word is in submission to the Living Word. SO when the unexpected happens we re-imagine everything in light of [Him who is] the Truth.

This means that one needs to believe first that the death and resurrection of Jesus really happened, and also beleive that the result of this was vindication of His self declaration of being Messiah. When the Chief Priest asked if he was Messiah, Jesus said, "I am".

The other thing that one needs to believe in is that God is fully consistent. So that when something happens later in history after Jesus' resurrection and ascension that is significant, it should always be compared to the death and resurrection and seen as inferior to it. [sic, Christ as the Mid-Point of Salvific History" - r.e. slater]

Colossians 1:15-18 15 - "And He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created by Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 18 He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything."

Historical Timelines of the Bible

Main Events in Biblical History
http://www.bible-history.com/rome/RomeTimeline__Biblical_History.htm

HISTORICAL TIME CHART (Biblical and Historical)

Biblical dating follows that of several scholars esp. Whitcomb and Boyer. Some dates are uncertain. There is also some overlap, especially in the case of the judges and the kings.


B.C.

2090 Abraham called by God

2067 Isaac born

2007 Jacob born

1992 Abraham dies

1944 Isaac dies

1877 Jacob arrives in Egypt

1860 Jacob dies in Egypt

1806 Joseph dies in Egypt

1730 Hyksos invasion of Egypt; Hebrews bondage begins.

1728 Hammurabi of Sumer born

1570 Hyksos expelled from Egypt; Amose I founds 18th dynasty

1548 Amenhotep I becomes pharaoh of Egypt

1548 Hebrew midwives ordered to destroy all Hebrew male children

1528 Thutmose I becomes pharaoh;

1528 All newborn Hebrew males are to be cast into the Nile

1525 Moses born

1510 Thutmose II becomes pharaoh

1504 Hatshepsut becomes pharaoh

1487 Moses flees Egypt

1483 Thutmose III becomes pharaoh

1483 The great oppression of the Hebrews begins

1450 Amenhotep II becomes pharaoh

1447 The Exodus begins

1446 The Tabernacle constructed

1423 Thutmose IV becomes pharaoh

1410 Amenhotep III becomes pharaoh

1407 Moses dies; Joshua conquers Canaan

1400 Conquest of Canaan completed

1377 Akhnaton becomes pharaoh; inaugurates monotheistic reforms

1375 Othniel becomes judge

1319 Ehud becomes judge

1318 Rameses I founds the 19th dynasty in Egypt

1240 Deborah and Barak judge Israel

1194 Gideon becomes judge

1167 Eli born

1155 Abimelech usurps power in Israel

1152 Tola becomes judge

1131 Jair becomes judge

1109 Eli becomes priest

1105 Samuel born

1089 Jephthah becomes judge

1083 Ibzan becomes judge

1071 Elon becomes judge; Samson becomes judge

1069 Samuel begins to minister

1066 Abdon becomes judge

1043 Saul becomes king

1011 Saul and Jonathan slain; David becomes king of Judah

1004 David becomes king over all Israel

971 Solomon ascends the throne

966 Solomon begins to build the Temple in Jerusalem

945 Sheshhonk ( Shishak) becomes pharaoh of Egypt

931 Rehoboam becomes king of Israel and Judah

931 Jeroboam rebels; sets Up a rival kingdom in the north

913 Abijam becomes king of Judah

911 Asa becomes king of Judah

910 Nadab becomes king of Israel

909 Bausha becomes king of Israel

890 Benhadad becomes king of Syria

886 Elah becomes king of Israel; Zimri becomes king of Israel

885 Tibni becomes king of Israel

883 Ashurbanipal II becomes king of Assyria

880 Omri becomes king of Israel

874 Ahab becomes king of Israel

873 Jehoshaphat becomes king of Judah

859 Shalmaneser III becomes king of Assyria

858 Elijah begins to prophesy

853 Ahaziah becomes king of Israel ;

853 Jehoram becomes king of Judah

852 Joram becomes king of Israel

852 Elisha begins to prophesy

841 Jehu becomes king of Israel

841 Ahaziah becomes king of Judah

841 Athaliah seizes the throne of Judah

841 Hazael becomes king of Syria

835 Joash becomes king of Judah

830 Joel prophecies

814 Jehoahaz becomes king of Israel

801 Benhadad II becomes king of Syria

798 Jehoash becomes king of Israel

796 Amaziah becomes king of Judah

790 Uzziah becomes co-regent of Judah

783 Shalmaneser IV becomes king of Assyria

783 Jonah begins his ministry

782 Jeroboam II becomes king of Israel

776 Olympic games begin in Greece

767 Uzziah becomes full king of Judah

764 Amos begins to prophesy

755 Hosea begins to prophesy

753 Rome founded; Zechariah becomes king of Israel

752 Shallum becomes king of Israel

752 Menahem becomes king of Israel

745 Tiglath-pileser III becomes king of Assyria

742 Pekahiah becomes king of Israel

740 Pekah becomes king of Israel

739 Uzziah dies; Isaiah begins to prophesy

739 Jotham becomes king of Judah

736 Micah begins to prophesy

735 Ahaz becomes king of Judah

732 Hoshea becomes king of Israel

727 Shalmaneser IV becomes king of Assyria

722 Sargon II becomes king of Assyria Samaria falls;

722 The ten tribes of Israel go into captivity

715 Hezekiah becomes king of Judah

705 Sennacherib becomes king of Assyria

701 Judah invaded by the Assyrians

686 Manasseh becomes king of Judah

681 Esarhaddon becomes king of Assyria

669 Ashurbanipal becomes king of Assyria

660 Zoroaster born

648 Nahum predicts the fall of Nineveh

642 Amon becomes king of Judah

640 Josiah becomes king of Judah

634 Zephaniah begins to prophesy

627 Jeremiah begins to prophesy

626 Nabopolasser becomes king of Babylon

622 Revival in Judah

619 Habakkuk begins to prophesy

612 Nineveh falls

609 Neco II becomes pharaoh of Egypt

609 Jehoahaz becomes king of Judah

609 Jehoiakim becomes king of Judah

605 Nebuchadnezzar becomes king of Babylon

605 The Babylonians invade Judah Daniel begins to prophesy

597 Jehoachin becomes king of Judah

597 Zedekiah becomes king of Judah

593 Ezekiel begins to prophesy

586 The Babylonians destroy Jerusalem and the Temple

586 The Jews deported to Babylon

586 Gedaliah becomes governor of Jerusalem

586 The rabbis preempt the priests as the holders of divine truth

563 Buddhism founded by Siddhartha

553 Belshazzar becomes regent in Babylon

550 Cyrus becomes king of Persia

550 The temple of Artemis erected at Ephesus

550 Confucius begins to teach

539 Babylon falls to the Medes and Persians

539 Darius the Mede rules in Babylon

538 Zerubbabel and Joshua lead a small party back to Palestine

536 The Temple started in Jerusalem

530 Cambyses becomes king of Persia

521 Smerdis becomes king of Persia

521 Darius I Hystapses becomes king of Persia

520 Zechariah begins to prophesy

520 Haggai begins to prophesy

520 Construction of the Jerusalem Temple resumed

516 The Temple completed

509 The Roman Republic founded

486 Xerxes becomes king of Persia

484 Herodotus the historian born

480 The Greeks defeat Xerxes at Salamis

479 The Greeks defeat Xerxes at Thermopalye

478 Esther becomes queen of Persia

478 Esther saves the Jews of the empire from extermination

473 The Feast of Purim started

469 Socrates born

464 Artaxerxes Longimanus becomes king of Persia

458 Ezra takes a small contingent of Jews back to Palestine

447 The building of the Parthenon commenced

445 Nehemiah takes a small contingent of Jews back to Palestine

443 Nehemiah and Ezra read the Scriptures to the Jews

443 The beginnings of the Midrash; the Sopherim (Scribes) flourish

436 Malachi begins to prophesy

423 Darius II becomes king of Persia

404 Artaxerxes II becomes king of Persia

400 The Midrash begins to develop

399 Socrates condemned to death

359 Artaxerxes III becomes king of Persia

359 Philip becomes king of Macedonia

342 Epicurius teaches his philosophy

336 Darius III Codomannus becomes king of Persia

336 Alexander the Great becomes king of Greece

335 Aristotle teaches at Athens

333 The Battle of Issus fought; Alexander defeats the Persians

333 Alexander takes Egypt

332 Alexander destroys Tyre

331 Alexander seizes Babylon

330 Darius III of Persia slain

329 Alexander marries Roxana in a symbolic gesture of uniting East and West

327 Alexander invades India

323 Alexander claims to be the son of Zeus

323 Alexander dies

323 Alexander's empire divided between his four chief generals

323 Ptolemy I Soter takes Egypt

320 Ptolemy I seizes Palestine

311 Seleucus I Nicator takes Babylon

300 Rome becomes a major world power in the western Mediterranean

300 Seleucus I adds Syria to his realm

285 Ptolemy II Philadelphius becomes king of Egypt

285 Between 285 and 130 the Septuagint translated

280 Antiochus I Soter becomes king of Syria

276 The first Syro-Egyptian war begins

275 Ptolemy of Egypt invades Syria

274 Hinduism codified in India

264 Rome's first Punic war against Carthage begins

261 Antiochus II Theos (the God) becomes king of Syria

260 The second Syro-Egyptian war begins

252 Antiochus II marries Bernice, daughter of Ptolemy II

250 The Parthian kingdom founded

246 Seleucus II Callinicus becomes king of Syria

246 Ptolemy III Euergetes becomes king of Egypt

246 The third Syro-Egyptian war begins

245 Ptolemy invades Syria

240 Seleucus invades Egypt

223 Antiochus III (the Great) becomes king of Syria

221 Ptolemy IV Philopater becomes king of Egypt

221 The fourth Syro-Egyptian war begins

219 Antiochus the Great invades Egypt

218 Rome's second Punic war against Carthage begins

217 Hannibal invades Italy Ptolemy IV invades Syria; Battle of Raphia

215 Rome's first Macedonian war begins

206 Rome drives Carthage out of Spain

203 Ptolemy V ( Epiphanes ) becomes king of Egypt

201 The fifth Syro-Egyptian war begins Carthage surrenders to Rome

200 Rome's second Macedonian war begins

200 The Mishna begins to appear among the Jews

193 Ptolemy V marries Cleopatra, daughter of Antiochus III

190 Antiochus III defeated by Romans at Magnesia

187 Seleucus IV Philopator becomes king of Syria

181 Ptolemy VI Philomater becomes king of Egypt

175 Antiochus IV Epiphanes becomes king of Syria

171 Ptolemy VII becomes co-regent of Egypt with Ptolemy VI

171 Rome's third Macedonian war begins

171 Mithridates I begins the conquest of Babylonia and Media,

171 He adds those countries to Elam, Persia, and Bactra to form the Parthian Empire

169 Antiochus Epiphanes captures Jerusalem

168 The Romans interfere in Antiochus's war with Egypt and prevent his capturing Alexandria

168 Antiochus pollutes the Temple in Jerusalem and suspends the sacrifices of the Jews

166 Matthias leads the Jews in revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes

165 The Jerusalem Temple repaired and cleansed

164 Antiochus Epiphanes dies

154 The Jews in Egypt build a temple at Leontopolis

149 Rome's third Punic war against Carthage begins Rome's fourth Macedonian war begins

146 The Romans destroy Carthage

135 John Hyrcanus becomes high priest in Jerusalem

133 Rome begins to expand her empire eastward

130 The Pharisees begin to emerge as a sect

124 Mithridates II (the Great) conquers Scythia, adds it to the Parthian Empire,

124 Mithridates II makes a treaty with Rome

120 Hyrcanus repudiates the Pharisees and declares himself a Sadducee

106 Cicero born

88 Rome's first Mithridatic war begins

83 Rome's second Mithridatic war begins

74 Rome's third Mithridatic war begins

64 Pompey captures Jerusalem;

64 Pompey leaves the Maccabean high priest Hyrcanus in power

64 Pompey puts Antipater as civil adviser

60 The first Triumvirate at Rome (Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey )

59 Julius Caesar becomes proconsul; Pompey marries Julia, daughter of Caesar

58 Caesar conquers Gaul

54 Caesar invades Britain

49 Caesar crosses the Rubicon

48 Pompey slain in Egypt

48 Caesar makes Cleopatra queen of Egypt

44 Caesar becomes dictator of Rome for life

44 Caesar assassinated (Ides of March)

43 The second Triumvirate at Rome (Anthony, Lepidus, and Octavian )

40 Herod appointed king

37 Herod captures Jerusalem

31 Battle of Actium, Anthony slain,

31 Octavian becomes master of Rome, the final triumph of Empire

30 Egypt becomes a Roman province

30 Shammai fourished

30 Hillel flourished

30 Philo of Alexandria fourished

21 Octavian assumed the title of Augustus

20 Herod begins to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple

4 Herod dies

4 THE BIRTH OF JESUS





A.D.

14 Augustus dies

14 Tiberius becomes Roman emperor

26 Jesus begins to teach; He characterizes rabbinic teaching (the Mishna) as "vain tradition'

30 Jesus crucified and raised from the dead

30 Full Pentecost; the Christian church is born

37 Caligula becomes Roman emperor

40 Gentiles are added to the church with the conversion of Cornelius

41 Claudius becomes Roman emperor

42 Antioch becomes the new center of church activity

43 Theudas claims to be Messiah and is executed

54 Nero becomes Roman emperor

59 The apostle Paul is imprisoned at Caesarea

60 Paul appears before Agrippa

61 Paul a prisoner at Rome

66 The Jews of Judea revolt against Rome

68 Paul martyred at Rome

69 Jerusalem beseiged by the Romans

69 Jochanan ben Zakkai seeks an audience with Vespasian

69 Vespasian becomes Roman emperor

70 Jerusalem falls; the Temple burned; the Jews deported

73 The last stand of the Jewish rebels at Masada

79 Titus becomes Roman emperor

81 Domitian becomes Roman emperor

96 Nerva becomes Roman emperor

98 Trajan becomes Roman emperor

113 Rome goes to war with Parthia

116 A further Jewish revolt against Rome is suppressed with great severity

117 Hadrian becomes Roman emperor

132 Bar Kochba claims to be Messiah and leads a revolt against Rome

132 Judea depopulated and the Jews denationalized by the Romans

138 Antoninus Pius becomes Roman emperor

150 Tertullian born




The History of Rome - Part One 743 - 136 B.C.
© Bible History Online (http://www.bible-history.com)

My JEDP Observations of Biblical Cultural Preservation

My Observations

The Continuing Balance Between Holism and Accuracy

[Extracted from an earlier submission]

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/11/king-james-bible-historical-timeline.html

R.E. Slater

December 1, 2011

The following JEDP discussion (below) must be broached if only to show that God's revelation through Abraham and Moses, and Israel's later tribes and monarchies, was as complex a process as can be imagined. A process that endured the split of the monarchy into two separate kingdoms with their own separate traditions and beliefs. And later, two separate exiles (one for each kingdom) into foreign pagan countries which only added to the complexity of the textual/source transmission problem of Israel and Judah's epistemologies and culture.

During that time much of Israel's 1st Temple period traditions were lost due as much to their own negligence and nonobservance as to the massive exiles suffered by both the Northern and Southern tribes on separate occasions. Later, under Ezra (and others) the ancient institutions of Abraham and Moses were reconstructed and re-instated during the 2nd Temple restoration period. Many schismatic groups arose during this time, each perceiving some element, or other, of significance necessary to the preservation of their perceived traditions. (As example, John the Baptist's own Essene movement in the NT would be an instance of one of those of groups).

This early "redactionary" effort lasted from the 2nd Temple period into the InterTestamental period, and then through the time of the New Testament, until AD 200. It felt incomplete (as witnessed to by the many sectarian groups that arose in disagreement with one another) and was not standardized by any officiating priestly bodies as observed during Jesus' day of the early 1st century. Here we have the start of incipient (very early) "Rabbinicized" thought occurring in its incomplete construction of a Jewish "orthodoxy" as they debated each other - as demonstrated with Jesus and His disciples - over lost Mosaic traditions. Including their ancient Jewish culture which has already been said to have been lost due to the Israelite and Judaistic tribes nonobservance of their traditions, and because of the displacement of each disobedient tribe from beyond the "Holy Land of their birth."

[Please permit me an aside: ...Interestingly, "Holy Land of birth..." is a problem that continues to this day. One that falls under the Semitic idea of "birthright and inheritance." Rather than learning to live together as blended cultures (regardless of one's location on this planet) we as humans must discriminate and empower our un-loving actions towards other groups different from ourselves, as rights of fiat and control over "competing groups" to our own sociological group. In this case, the Jews have elevated their rights over-and-above their Palestinian, and later, Muslim neighbors. Each struggling with the other for land rights, political recognition, and safety - though the same could be said of any country around the world that has competing groups within, or outside, their borders (America not excluded). Each struggling for ascendancy over the other rather than cooperating with each other and using their cultural differences as added strengths to their continuing blended corporate identities rather than as detracting causes for separation and disharmony.]

Much later, in the late 2nd century, around AD 200, the Rabbinic tradition was codified having established the Torah with its separately perceived Jewish traditions that is observed by conservative Jewish worshippers of today some 2000 years later (again having morphed and endured millenia's of exile and cultural assimilations throughout Europe and the Middle East from the early centuries to the middle ages to today). This codification / ratification process was probably necessary due to the very popular reaction of regional Jews to the Jewish-Christian spread of the Gospel. As well as to its early influences within the early Jewish-Messianic church itself that had arisen in popular acceptance of Jesus radical teachings to the perceived notions of early Rabbinicism's Mosaic understanding of God, the Mosaic law and grace, mission, ministry and life. Meaning that, even in Rabbinicism's early days Jesus had told the Pharisees and Scribes that their perceptions of God, God's law, their faith and worship - even how they went about reducing their dogmatic perceptions into their culture - was misguided. Focusing on the rules of religion rather than the God of their religion. Jesus rebuked the religious bodies time-and-again for guiding their flocks into religious legalism and  austerities rather than into the grace and life of His Father's Gospel.

And lest we Christians think we're "off the hook" here it is Emergent Christianity's observation that whether Emergent, Denominationally Progressive, Evangelic - or whatever Christian group that we prefer to be affiliated with - these attitudes still persist today. We have taken the Gospel of Jesus and have usurped God's love and grace into rules, rules, and more rules. Rules that appeal to our self-righteousness. Rules that appeal to our pride. Our legalisms. The old man of our flesh. The deceits of our hearts. The lies of our tongues. And the blindness of our eyes. We have missed the simplicity of God's Gospel in Christ by making a "religion" out of it rather than a "life" out of it. God did not intend His grace and love to be hard. Its as clear as personal sacrifice. Personal service. And personal sharing. To follow Jesus' example is to follow a life that is selfless, giving and transparent. Its no harder than that. Our faith should be living. And it should be living-out God's love and grace to one another. Not systematized. Not legalised. Not legitimized. Not worship'ized. Not dogmatized. Not.... anything! Jesus is the ground zero of the Christian example. His atoning life, death and resurrection gives our faith its reality and energy. We are His disciples and follow Him in obedience as His disciples. It is no harder than that. And it is as simple as that despite all that we would do to confuse and muck-up the purity of God's love and grace by our more human interpretations and demonstrations of "service, worship, love and duty."

And so then, I'm sharing below the JEDP effort of source criticism more to show how difficult it was to preserve both the oral and written traditions over millenias of religious tradition, personal interpretive preference, understanding and constitution when it was especially misunderstood and neglected even in its earliest years before tribal feuding began in political earnest. Through the books of Joshua, Judges and Samuel alone we see disruptions of faith occurring through simple inobservance and education of their faith, let alone the local and regional wars that dissembled their collective knowledge and process of learning. Prophets came and they went decrying Israel's lack of attention to Torah and worship of YHWH. They were ignored or killed. Making us ask, just what are we attempting to "collect" in our eternal pursuit for the original autographs of the Word of God - even amongst Israel's earliest histories of political formation?! For it seems that what we can collect is only what's left to collect. Which is Israel's own history of understanding her ancient God through the millenniums of her struggle to apprehend the divine. A collective knowledge that perhaps presented together can lead today's postmodern church to hearing Jesus' words more clearly  than through our own creeds and confessions and church traditions built up over similar millenias of inobservance and misapprehension.

So that when we speak of God's "Word" our only credible evaluation of it now must be through Jesus and His disciples as they understood and interpreted the much older Abrahamic and Mosaic faith which had been lost and gathered-in as much as it was possible after Israel's return from their Babylonian exile. Verily, traditions and cultures by their nature can (and will) be lost due to time's ravages and the human psyche's perchance for selective memory. But the salvific truths of God's love and grace endures  however they are passed on to the next generations for all time. And this is the nub of our observations here. It's not in the lost details that we wish to re-discover and interpret, but in the plain evidences that we still know - and have preserved right before us - that actually are the remaining legacies of Israel's ancient faith. That God is actively involved in His people's lives to preserve and protect their living faith so that it may be shared with their friends and enemies alike. A faith important enough to be shared of God's love and forgiveness to all men and women everywhere. What has been lost has been lost. And in a sense is not necessary to recover because of the larger thematic themes left before us. But in another sense if recovered will show the durability of those sames themes in ages past of God's patient love, willing forgiveness, austere holiness requiring atonement, the necessity of redemption, of belief, of faithfulness, of mercy, wisdom and good judgment shown to ourselves and to our neighbors around us.

And it is these elements that are the rockbeds of faith's persistence. Not how long a priestly skirt should be. Or where a temple vessel should be properly placed. Or how many times one bows to the East or to the West to praise God. Those are man's weak cultic attempts to appease his legalistic spirit and sin's blinded prevarications of religious division and pride. God has given to us the freedom to worship Him within the infinite totalitarity of our enterprising human spirit and boundlessly creative imaginations. He is neither less pleased, nor more pleased, with our efforts to grasp and live His love and grace, truth and Spirit. It is for us to follow, obey, worship, and behold the splendor of His creation. From its many forms of suffering to its many forms of delight. We do not need to muck-it up with the overburden of our guilts and ignorance.

So that regardless of cultural proscriptions and approbations - including those ancient Jewish customs of yesteryear, or today's more recent heritage of Gentile/church traditions - all men everywhere may enter into the Kingdom of God without cultic formality except by the blood of the Lamb and the holy breath of the Spirit of God! It is not important whether we worship God as a Jew or as a Gentile, with bells on our dress and headpieces on our bearded heads - or shaved heads for that matter! What God is looking for is our heart's devotion - whether it has been circumcised in Christ and betrothed to the Cross of Christ. For it is in the heart that our worship ultimately lies. Not the color of our skin. Nor the traditions we observe. Nor how worn our knees are from following the religious traditions of our church's prescripts and liturgies. For the Kingdom of God is trans-national, trans-cultural, trans-temporal in all of its behaviors and inclinations. God is our birthright. He is our inheritance. And it is all made possible through Christ Jesus His Son until He comes again in the renewal of all things at some future day of final resurrection and infinite grace.

Amen

Section 3

HISTORICAL TIMELINES OF

OT & NT TEXTS

(Click on Picture to Expand to a Series of Gallery Views )

 The JEDP Old Testament

Documentary Hypothesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

The documentary hypothesis (DH) (sometimes called the Wellhausen hypothesis), holds that the Pentateuch (the Torah, or the Five Books of Moses) was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of redactors (editors). The number of these is usually set at four, but this is not an essential part of the hypothesis.

Diagram of the Documentary Hypothesis.

*	includes most of Leviticus
†	includes most of Deuteronomy
‡	"Deuteronomic history Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings

*

includes most of Leviticus

^†

includes most of Deuteronomy

^‡

"Deuteronomic history
Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings

The documentary hypothesis assumes that the text of the Torah as preserved can be divided into identifiable sources that predate its compilations by centuries, the Jahwist (J) source being the oldest, dating to as early as the 10th century BC, along with the Elohist (E), the Deuteronomist (D), and the Priestly source (P), dating to the 8th to 6th centuries. The final compilation of the extant text is dated to either the 6th or 5th century BC.

In an attempt to reconcile inconsistencies in the biblical text, and refusing to accept traditional explanations to harmonize them, 18th and 19th century biblical scholars using source criticism eventually arrived at the theory that the Torah was composed of selections woven together from several, at times inconsistent, sources, each originally a complete and independent document. The hypothesis developed slowly over the course of the 19th century, by the end of which it was generally agreed that there were four main sources, combined into their final form by a series of redactors, R. These four sources came to be known as the Yahwist, or Jahwist, J (J being the German equivalent of the English letter Y); the Elohist, E; the Deuteronomist, D, (the name comes from the Book of Deuteronomy, D's contribution to the Torah); and the Priestly Writer, P.

Julius Wellhausen's contribution was to order these sources chronologically as JEDP, giving them a coherent setting in the evolving religious history of Israel, which he saw as one of ever-increasing priestly power. Wellhausen's formulation was:

• the Yahwist source ( J ) : written c. 950 BC in the southern Kingdom of Judah.
• the Elohist source ( E ) : written c. 850 BC in the northern Kingdom of Israel.
• the Deuteronomist ( D ) : written c. 600 BC in Jerusalem during a period of religious reform.
• the Priestly source ( P ) : written c. 500 BC by Kohens (Jewish priests) in exile in Babylon.
• The Redactors: first JE, then JED, and finally JEDP, producing the final form of the Torah c. 450 BC.

While the hypothesis dominated biblical scholarship for much of the 20th century, it has been increasingly challenged by other models in the last part of the 20th century. Its terminology and insights continue to provide the framework for some modern theories on the origins of the Torah.

History of the Canonization of the OT

Theorized Transmission of OT Text based upon ancient JEDP Sources:

From the Judahistic (Yahwehistic), Israelite (Elohim/Elohist), Deuteronomic, and Priestly traditions.

Then proceeding from Redactors JE, to JED, to JEDP, and finally canonized into the today Torah.

[from Wikipedia continued]

After Wellhausen

Distribution of materials of Jahwist, Elohist and Priestly sources,
as well as Redactor's contribution in the first four books,
following Richard Friedman.

For much of the 20th century Wellhausen's hypothesis formed the framework within which the origins of the Pentateuch were discussed, and even the Vatican came to urge that the "light derived from recent research" not be neglected by Catholic scholars, urging them especially to pay attention to "the sources written or oral" and "the forms of expression" used by the "sacred writer". Some important modifications were introduced, notably by Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth, who argued for the oral transmission of ancient core beliefs—guidance out of Egypt, conquest of the Promised Land, covenants, revelation at Sinai/Horeb, etc. Simultaneously, the work of the American Biblical archaeology school under William F. Albright seemed to confirm that even if Genesis and Exodus were only given their final form in the first millennium BC, they were still firmly grounded in the material reality of the second millennium. The overall effect of such refinements was to aid the wider acceptance of the basic hypothesis by reassuring believers that even if the final form of the Pentateuch was late and not due to Moses himself, it was nevertheless possible to recover a credible picture of the period of Moses and of the patriarchal age. Hence, although challenged by scholars such as Umberto Cassuto, opposition to the documentary hypothesis gradually waned, and until the 1970s it was almost universally accepted.

This changed when R. N. Whybray in 1987 restated almost identical arguments with far greater consequences. By that time three separate models for the composition of the Pentateuch had been proposed: the documentary (the Torah as a compilation of originally separate but complete books), the supplementary (a single original book, supplemented with later additions/deletions), and the fragmentary (many fragmentary works and editions). Whybray pointed out that of the three possible models the documentary was the most difficult to demonstrate, for while the supplemental and fragmentary models propose relatively simple, logical processes and can account for the unevenness of the final text, the process envisaged by the DH is both complex and extremely specific in its assumptions about ancient Israel and the development of its religion. Whybray went on to assert that these assumptions were illogical and contradictory, and did not offer real explanatory power: why, for example, should the authors of the separate sources avoid duplication, while the final redactor accepted it? "Thus the hypothesis can only be maintained on the assumption that, while consistency was the hallmark of the various [source] documents, inconsistency was the hallmark of the redactors."

Since Whybray there has been a proliferation of theories and models regarding the origins of the Torah, many of them radically different from Wellhausen's model. Thus, to mention some of the major figures from the last decades of the 20th century, H. H. Schmid almost completely eliminated J, allowing only a late Deuteronomical redactor. With the idea of identifiable sources disappearing, the question of dating also changes its terms. Additionally, some scholars have abandoned the Documentary hypothesis entirely in favour of alternative models which see the Pentateuch as the product of a single author, or as the end-point of a process of creation by the entire community. Rolf Rendtorff and Erhard Blum saw the Pentateuch developing from the gradual accretion of small units into larger and larger works, a process which removes both J and E, and, significantly, implied a fragmentary rather than a documentary model for Old Testament origins; and John Van Seters, using a different model, envisaged an ongoing process of supplementation in which later authors modified earlier compositions and changed the focus of the narratives. The most radical contemporary proposal has come from Thomas L. Thompson, who suggests that the final redaction of the Torah occurred as late as the early Hasmonean monarchy.

The documentary hypothesis still has many supporters, especially in the United States, where William H. Propp has completed a two-volume translation and commentary on Exodus for the Anchor Bible Series from within a DH framework, and Antony F. Campbell and Mark A. O’Brien have published a "Sources of the Pentateuch" presenting the Torah sorted into continuous sources following the divisions of Martin Noth. Richard Elliott Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? (1987) and The Bible with Sources Revealed (2003) were in essence an extended response to Whybray, explaining, in terms based on the history of ancient Israel, how the redactors could have tolerated inconsistency, contradiction and repetition, indeed had it forced upon them by the historical setting in which they worked. Friedman's classic four-source division differed from Wellhausen in accepting Yehezkel Kaufmann's dating of P to the reign of Hezekiah; this in itself is no small modification of Wellhausen, for whom a late dating of P was essential to his model of the historical development of Israelite religion. Friedman argued that J appeared a little before 722 BC, followed by E, and a combined JE soon after that. P was written as a rebuttal of JE (c. 715–687 BC), and D was the last to appear, at the time of Josiah (c. 622 BC), before the Redactor, whom Friedman identifies as Ezra, collated the final Torah.

While the terminology and insights of the documentary hypothesis—notably its claim that the Pentateuch is the work of many hands and many centuries, and that its final form belongs to the middle of the 1st millennium BC—continue to inform scholarly debate about the origins of the Pentateuch, it no longer dominates that debate as it did for the first two thirds of the 20th century. "The verities enshrined in older introductions [to the subject of the origins of the Pentateuch] have disappeared, and in their place scholars are confronted by competing theories which are discouragingly numerous, exceedingly complex, and often couched in an expository style that is (to quote John van Seter's description of one seminal work) 'not for the faint-hearted.'"