Something to Think About - "Could Moses Write Hebrew?"

Introduction

From time to time I become confronted with the traditionalism of my past to the facts of the world as they actually are. Usually what I have held true is not true at all which then causes me to rethink how this new knowledge may help or hinder my previous perspectives of things I had considered true in my Christian faith.

As Christians, we face these events nearly every day, especially if we are absorbed in knowing more about something we find important to us, such as our faith. It is part of what it means to being "a student of the bible unwilling to be content with a "casual traditionalist" view of bible holding the mindset that what we once had learned in the past was true for all time. Many times this is not true. As example, simple mathematics can be learned but the more we study it the more complex it can become. So too with biblical doctrines, dogmas, and beliefs. It can be simple but it can also be vastly complex. And depending on the theorems and axioms you assume (or establish) so goes the entirety of the formula built upon. Great mathematicians became great because they were unwilling to be content with simple mathematics. And so may the disciples of God as they explore His wisdom, ways, and forms of being in this world.

Long years ago I had begun taking the view that what I was taught and believed true may change as I grew older, as the world grew older, and as academia grew older. For those of us trying to make sense out of the bible we each, in our own way, must adapt and change with every succeeding new year of discovery, knowledge and understanding. When we don't we become effectively "stuck in time" and find ourselves "defending our (sacred) positions" rather than asking how this new knowledge might aid us in our assessments, comportments, responses, and comprehensive apprehensions.

For the Christian - and especially for those like me who have grown up in the pious traditions of fundamentalism (and later, conservative evangelicalism) - I find myself nearly daily confronted with my past. I am haunted by it. It lingers upon me and can weigh me down but for the Spirit of God who delivers, protects, and urges me forward. My choices is whether I should reject new things which come to light, or take them in, reconsidering how this new knowledge might broaden my faith, my idea of God, and witness of His Word. In a large part, Relevancy22 is my journey through the lands of enlightenment as I try to pick my way through the lands of devotional circumspection.

Yes, it can be challenging. But when done in a spirit of wonder and Spirit-led investigation can be a clear-eyed projection of just what the biblical faith might become. Mostly, I would like my faith to be as objective as possible to the discoveries being made without being waylaid in its journey by misleading forms of gnosticism (contemporary forms of mysticism comes to mind), unhelpful philosophies (I've lately been choosing Process Philosophy's influence upon Continental Philosophy), or dithering hermeneutics more interested in protecting the faith than projecting the faith. Now whether I understand how to reconcile all these elements or not is another subject for another day though this site here gives testimony of how this might be done as I try to sort through it. For many of my friends they do not wish to think as deeply or allow their faith to be disturbed so thoroughly under the categories of "doubt and uncertainty". For myself, this form of patient investigation and comparative study hopes to obtain a kernel of truth gleaned from the vast history of faith's journey through human history even as it is developing today in its complexity and burgeoning doctrines smashing against one another.

Moses the Lawgiver

Today's subject will be one of those times. Here we have the hallowed traditions of the lawgiver cum prophet Moses writing out God's 10 Commandments to the tribes of Israel - as opposed to very serious questions of whether this event actually occurred or not. Was Moses a real person? Was he visited by God and given a code of conduct to transcribe? Was the totality of this event true or not?

For some of us it must be more true for us to trust the bible than man's speculations. But as I've said on many occasions, the bible is not what we suppose it to be as an ancient collection of oral traditions and legends. Regardless of the historicity of its biblical characters or "actualized" events, in some way the bible is true and testifies to the self-revealing God who tells us what He has done in the past, is doing now in the present, and intends to do in the future. And importantly, how we might respond to His revelation.

If you've had any studies in biblical doctrines this can be a tricky thing to answer as whole doctrinal systems may topple down in our hearts should we admit even one new idea which might destroy the entirety of the structure we had learned, embraced, and believed. But this doesn't have to be the case.

Assuming that God is more real than He is not - which is an important assumption to make, but one I have made in the past, arguing the impossibility of being a true atheist at a philosophical or theological level (cf. Alvin Platinga's discussion on atheism somewhere in this website). As someone committed to the divine faith it behooves us to think rightly about our faith than to force upon it, or even God Himself, constructs which are not true.

Such is the problem of Moses. For myself, whether he is a historical personage or isn't is no matter. Or whether he did or didn't give to Israel God's laws is no matter. Somehow, someone or some group, through some process, came to an idea about God which later became canonized amongst an ancient tribe of peoples living in the lands of Canaan who were going through some kind of sorting out process which brought to them a concept of God which was importantly different from the gods of the peoples they observed around them.

As this body of conviction grew so did their legends, either rightly or wrongly. Which is where we then begin reading in the bible of the many kinds of interpretations Israel and her teachers debated about. This becomes especially noticeable between the "false prophets" and the "true prophets" in the lands of Israel. Each opposing group had an idea of God which impacted how they lived and worshipped. Over time these disagreements divided Israel into two nations.

Israel proper, the older nation with a much greater history of religious worship, eventually came under Assyrian rule and was scattered by defeat and exile (the "ten lost tribes"). Judah, the newer nation, lasted nearly as long as Israel once had, but was also similarly defeated and exiled under the rule of another conquering power, Babylon. When later recomposed as a shell of itself under Ezra and Nehemiah, Judah's holistic idea of canonical law and what it meant to live by it also broke down into a thousand pieces. This then presented to its people as many choices as there were priests. Those early priests who may have first followed the Ezra tradition later, in the absence of any further "divine revelation" during a time of "Intertestmental Silence" birthed as many Hebrew sects as we now have today in the Christian church (... well a few more, I would admit).

This especially came into sharp reveal when Jesus came across the stricter interpretations of the Hebrew religion which later birthed a corrected "Rabbinic form" of the Hebrew faith a hundred years later to offset the corruption which had pervaded it. By doing this Jesus declared to Jewish religious leaders of His day that they had misapprehended and misappropriated God's truth of love and grace for judgment and works. A truth which when denied disassembled into a more "religious code" of conduct and beliefs which said, "If you do this, and believe that, and do these things, than God will approve you." To this Jesus said this kind of faith was false, wholly worthless, and deeply misleading.

At which point Christianity arose on the very last remaining remnants and surviving strands of the Hebraic faith delved from the best traditions of Ezra many years earlier to birth a whole new religion. One bourne not only upon Jesus' teachings but upon His very atonement itself. Now does all this historical movement require that Moses be real or his legacy be true? Does it require that Moses actually transcribed God's 10 Commandment on Mt. Sinai? Or rather, perhaps in some way, God set down a codification of divine faith which was birthed within a small gathering of pious people granted a greater ken of fellowship by the Spirit with Himself and His desires for their lives? In the long view of things I think we must admit that however this ancient faith developed and came to be, it now is, and is as powerful now as when it first formed so many long years ago in yesteryear's deep legacies irrespective of our greater academic and cultural awareness of today. God is real, He is present, and He moves with us towards redeeming our lives and the world we live in.

Which also means we should reserve the right to restructure the Christian faith should it stray from the simplicity of its first principles even as Jesus did in His day - especially in light of a fundamental conviction that today's more popular forms of faith are misleading many through the false idea of who God is, what He expects, and who we must be in order to earn His allegiance. These kinds of faith-pictures do not help in apprehending the God of Salvation. From a religious sociological perspective it seems more truthful to say, "There is a God who is influencing His creation in such a way that our redemption - and that of creation - may grow and thrive in the lands of sin and evil in which we daily live."

Conclusion

As a theist - especially a metaphysical and ontologic theist - this makes more sense to me than the oft-times senselessness of preachers preaching a literalized bible out of time, out of sense, and out of mind. If I were to hold to these more traditional ideas than as a thinking Christian I would lose my faith rather than gain back to my faith the richness of its long developmental history gleaned from the sociobiological and evolutionary history of its human species as it adapts to its environment that it might survive. I think this is one reason we see so many leaving the church. Christianity has become outdated to the understanding of the world asking questions the faithful are forbidden to ask. I also think that should we begin answering those questions many would similarly return.

For some of the church it can hold to a mythical bible and be content. In fact, I must allow this, if not even encourage it for those who do not have the same strong faculties of faith others may have. Paul says this is the difference between those who drink milk or eat meat; or those who wish to mature in the faith in ministries and teachings beyond where they could quite naturally stop. But for others of us, we must pull back the withholding curtain of religion to evolve our own God-ward faith lest we become like the Jews of Jesus' day and lose our faith altogether through misunderstanding and false beliefs.

In final analysis, God is all around us. His revelation speaks daily - if not moment by moment - to us. We are not left without the divine witness either of God or His Spirit. In this our hearts and minds and souls rejoice in God's presence even as we are sadden by the oppression of sin or heartlessness of religion. We stand together as a faith legion, and together seek to grasp the simplicity of God's love in the sublimeness of its power. Here is where we stand and on no other bedrock as living testaments to the faiths of our forefathers, to Christ's redemption, and verily, to God's self-revelation. Amen.

R.E. Slater

September 21, 2017

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Could Moses Write Hebrew?

by Bart Ehrman

As you may have noticed, on a number of occasions I get asked questions that I simply can’t answer. I received one such question this week, about the history of the Hebrew language. Here is how the questioner phrased it:

What is our earliest evidence for Hebrew as a written language? I’ve been to apologetic seminars where they say it’s long been said by atheists that the Hebrew Bible can’t be trusted because the Hebrews didn’t have a written language until well after the stories in the OT would’ve taken place. The evidence that the Hebrews had a written language in close proximity to the Biblical stories is based on pottery evidence and things of that nature. I’m sure these are topics you are very familiar with and I’d appreciate your take.

It’s actually amazing how many topics I’m not familiar with at all! So, not knowing the answer, I asked a colleague of mine who is an expert in Hebrew philology, Joseph Lam (he teaches courses in my department in Hebrew and other Semitic languages, and on the religion, culture, and literature of the Ancient Near East, and in Hebrew Bible; his office is across the hall from mine). I simplified the question to get the heart of it. This is what I said in an email to him.

Joseph,

Someone has asked me the question below. Damn if I know! I don’t need a long exposition, just a basic answer will do (some kind of inscription?)

What is our earliest evidence for Hebrew as a written language?

Here is his very helpful response.

It depends on what you define as Hebrew. We have a number of inscriptions from Palestine in the late 2nd millennium/early 1st millennium BCE (which is when Hebrew mostly likely branched off as a distinct language from the broader “Canaanite” family of languages), but early Hebrew and Canaanite are difficult to distinguish from one another, especially in short inscriptions (sometimes a single word). For a long time the standard answer was the Gezer Calendar from the late 10th century (900’s) BCE, but I now think that text is better described as Phoenician or common Canaanite. Others would say the more recently discovered Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon (11th/10th century), but there are various oddities to that text that make it difficult to classify. There are also a number of short inscriptions from Tel Rehov that have been dated archaeologically to the 10th/9th centuries. The upshot is, there are a number of candidates from the 10th/9th centuries, but certainly by the 8th century we have many more unambiguously “Hebrew” inscriptions.

For more detail, I would recommend to your readers the following online article (and the article to which it responds):

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/inscriptions/what%E2%80%99s-the-oldest-hebrew-inscription/

As a follow-up, I said/asked the following:

Fantastic. Just what I needed. The questioner was not a scholar, but an interested lay person, who was especially interested in the question of whether, if there was a Moses living in say the 13th c BCE, he would have been able to write. Do you have an opinion? (I myself don’t think there *was* a Moses, but still, assuming there was…)

Here is Joseph’s short and very interesting response.

If there was a Moses, raised in the Egyptian court, he probably would have learned to write in Egyptian! The texts of the Pentateuch, whoever wrote them, are NOT in 13th century language; they are in classical 1st millennium Hebrew. Whatever a hypothetical 13th century Moses wrote, whether in Egyptian or Canaanite or something else, that’s NOT what we have preserved in the Pentateuch.

Bart

Confusing Judaism's Covenantal Nomism with Evangelic Terms

Challenging the New Perspective on Paul

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/09/26/challenging-the-new-perspective-on-paul/

 

by Scot McKnight

edited by R.E. Slater

Sep 26, 2013

Comments

E.P. Sanders, and then following him J.D.G. Dunn and N.T. Wright, challenged the traditional Christian consensus of how to “read” Judaism at the time of Paul (and Jesus) in 1977 with his well-known and must-read Paul and Palestinian Judaism. The consensus was that Judaism was a works-righteousness religion in which Jews, not on the basis of their covenant-based election by God but on the basis of merit and works, sought to earn favor with God. While there was nuance, and dissenting voices like G.F. Moore, this was the ruling paradigm. So, when Paul said “not by works of the law” most people thought they knew exactly what Paul meant: human pride, self-justification, and weighing one’s merits in a scale so the tip favored the human’s accumulation of merits.

Amazon Book Links

 

Paul and Palestinian Judaism

Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People

Jesus and Judaism

Sanders proved that Judaism was far more complex than this and that its “pattern of religion” was in fact a covenant based summons by God to obey the Torah. So Sanders said Judaism’s pattern of religion was not merit seeking but instead “covenantal nomism” (covenant-based call to do the Law [nomos]). This required a re-evaluation of what Paul was opposing and what “works of the law” meant and whether or not the opponents of Paul were seeking to establish themselves by earning favor with God.

 

Sanders won the day; the vast majority of NT scholars believe today that Judaism was not a merit-seeking system and, in fact, if one is not careful one ends up either in anti-Semitism or its softer version anti-Judaism or in some kind of Marcionite denial of the truth of the Old Testament. [This paragraph deserves extensive commentary but this is not the place.]

 

But Sanders and the so-called “New Perspective on Paul” were challenged by some, most notably Reformed or Calvinistic thinkers and exegetes. I am persuaded that the “problems” for the NPP are far more problems for Calvinists and Lutherans and much less so for Arminians, who have never had as much of a problem with the issue of obedience and works, and in some ways for Anabaptists, who valued obedience and discipleship as central to what faith means. (Frustratingly to many of us, many critics repeat talking points and have not read the Jewish evidence at all.) The most recent challenge, a nuanced one, comes from Preston Sprinkle, Paul and Judaism Revisited: A Study of Divine and Human Agency in Salvation (2013). It’s a good book though whether or not his proposals will satisfy deserves more than can be said here, and whether or not his sketch of Paul would fit Jesus is yet another one worthy of discussion. [Preston and I have corresponded about this review and his comments made this post better.]

 

Preston’s big ideas:

 

The Old Testament, when it comes to “divine and human agency” (how much are humans involved in salvation? how are they involved?) and “continuity vs. discontinuity” (how different is Paul from Judaism?), reveals two major strands of thinking. Preston calls these the “Deuteronomic” and the “Prophetic.” By these he means that one must repent before one gets restoration or salvation and the other that it all comes from the grace and intervention of God (so that repentance is not the precipitating factor).

 

He then examines these themes, examining what the Dead Sea Scrolls teach and comparing that with what the apostle Paul teaches: the curse of the law, the eschatological spirit, anthropological pessimism, justification, and judgment according to works. Each of these concludes with admirable nuance for each side of the comparison — Qumran and Paul.

 

His fundamental conclusion is that pockets (sectarian elements) of Judaism are Deuteronomic, or mostly so, while the apostle Paul is Prophetic, with some nuances all over the place. In essence, then, he comes out suggesting that the New Perspective overcooked “continuity” between Paul and Judaism and undercooked the discontinuity and that while Judaism has a stronger emphasis on human agency Paul had a stronger emphasis on divine agency in salvation.

 

A few questions:

 

1 - An Artificial Division.

 

I wonder if Deuteronomic vs. Prophetic doesn’t deny the coherency of these two themes in the authors of the Old Testament and therefore the coherency of grace and election and covenant and the simultaneous demand of repentance and obedience for salvation. In other words, at times some suggest Judaism’s emphasis is Deuteronomic without the Prophetic. I doubt any Jewish text is entirely Deuteronomic and I doubt any Prophetic text is not also Deuteronomic. One text he saw as almost entirely Prophetic has some core statements about covenant that are relentlessly Deuteronomic, and Preston Sprinkle is aware of such texts and offers reasonable explanations. Notice  Jeremiah 7:23; 11:4; where covenant election and grace are set up in conditionality, and the point must be seen: we are dealing here with covenant status dependent upon or shaped by or conditioned by obedience:

Jer 7:23 But this command I gave them, “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.” 

Jer 11:4 which I commanded your ancestors when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron-smelter, saying, Listen to my voice, and do all that I command you. So shall you be my people, and I will be your God…

At work here in theological hermeneutics is what is sometimes called the “failure” of the Mosaic covenant and the completion (words are important here and I chose a neutral one) of that covenant with the New Covenant. This entire approach is shaped by Augustinian, Lutheran and Calvinist hermeneutics. Part of the NPP is that those categories do not emerge sufficiently from a 1st Century Jewish framework. I will emphasize that Preston knows these texts and seeks to resolve them within his Deuteronomic and Prophetic approach.

 

2 - The Many Faces of Salvation. The bigger issue for me is that this term “salvation” is slippery. Frankly, the OT texts are not about personal salvation but about Israel; so too Judaism mostly. But the NT stuff is more or less taken to be personal and individual. What happens, then, to “restoration” or “salvation” when it is more corporate focused?

 

At work, as well, is that soteriology is shaped by discussing in the OT how covenant people are restored (top of p. 34). I wonder if that how most in the Protestant tradition understand “salvation” in the NT — in fact, I’m confident they see it as “entry” into the covenant. Hence, for me there is a lingering question: Are we comparing the same senses of salvation?

 

3 - Evangelic Terms Do Not Equate with Biblical Terms. I do wonder how much rhetoric and choice of terms shapes how much “works-based” stuff we see in Judaism, and now that Gary Anderson has virtually proven that “debt” and “merit” were the new commercial metaphor at work in Judaism for “sin” and “obedience” (see his book Sin: A History), I have to ask if we have not overdone the works element in Judaism while ignoring the covenant and grace themes. To his credit, Preston works hard to nuance works and grace and divine and human agency with variety in each text. But for me the positing of the Deuteronomic over against the Prophetic is shaped by that very issue — how much is human agency involved?

 

4 - The Use of Law within the NT. But this simply misses how we have learned to read our own faith. Read the Gospel of Matthew (e.g., Matthew 6:1, 2, 5, 16) and watch this word “reward” on the part of Jesus. Is Jesus Deuteronomic? (Preston doesn’t answer this but I don’t know how one could read Jesus and not see his term Deuterononomic instead of Prophetic.) And doesn’t Paul say our final state is on the basis of works in his judgment by works texts, like 2 Cor 5? So, are we minimizing the Deuteronomic in our faith and maximizing it in Judaism? All in the attempt to prove we are better and right?

 

This is a big one: Let us assume my suspicion is right, namely, that Jesus fits the Deuteronomic paradigm. What does that say about Paul? That he departed? That we need to re-visit Paul? (This is what the NPP does, after all.) Or does it suggest the Deuteronomic and the Prophetic fit more closely into a single coherency? Anyway, the two approaches to OT themes sure makes me wonder what Preston does with Jesus.

 

5 - The NPP Remains a Tour de Force. OK, there’s something at work here in Paul especially about grace that shapes the whole system of thought. And there is discontinuity here. But in my judgment the New Perspective offered an important and enduring correction from which we cannot move back. Sprinkle’s effort here is a good one with plenty of sensitive nuance, but this is not the final word.


 

Understanding Christianity's Jewishness

 

Christian Judaism

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/03/20/christian-judaism/

 

by Scot McKnight

Mar 20, 2012

Comments

 

E.P. Sanders famously said the problem with Judaism for contemporaries of Paul was that it was not Christian.

 

Sanders was a lightning rod, and at the same time, a lighthouse, for scholars in the late 1970s and 80s, and his legacy — usually called the “new perspective” (language used by Tom Wright and Jimmy Dunn) — has been that while there is a clear difference between “Judaism” and “Christianity,” that relationship in the 1st Century — and perhaps a lot longer — was not so much two kinds of religion but varieties within one religion, namely Judaism.

 

So the debate is often, Do we call “it” Christian Judaism (a Christian form of Judaism) or Jewish Christianity?

 

[My own opinion is to call it "Messianic Christianity," even as our faith is the same, making both one and the same, and placing the onus on us to understand the Jewishness of Christianity; and on the Jewish Christian on understanding its transnational, transcultural, transtemporal implications. - res]

 

And what are the consequences of seeing Christianity — the 1st Century kind — as a kind of Judaism?

 

Daniel Boyarin, in his new and (for the first time for Boyarin) accessible book, The Jewish Gospels, proposes his way of understanding the relationship of Jesus-following Jews in the context of non-Jesus-following (or is that Jesus-non-following?) Jews. His book deserves a wide reading, even if I think there a chunks of chunks of issues not covered and crying out for some explanation. Boyarin is one of my favorite Jewish scholars who interprets earliest Christianity, though I have to admit that his writing is often very difficult to comprehend. His first work, The Radical Jew (about Paul) and then his Border Lines are important contributions to understanding the original relation of the two groups — Jesus followers and those Jews who did not follow Jesus.

 

I make the following observations from his book:

 

First, for Boyarin the key or secret to comprehending earliest Christology — how Jesus became a “part” of God (his word, an odd one to be sure) — is Daniel 7. Over and over he takes the reader back to Daniel 7 to explain how Jesus understood himself and his mission in his Jewish world.

 

Second, Boyarin belongs in a history of religions school that contends ancient Israel combined El with YHWH, and at least one main version was that El was the older god and YHWH the younger one, though eventually YHWH takes over El. This version of how God developed among Israelites finds a similar version in the relation of the Ancient of Days with the “one like a Son of Man” in Daniel 7, and he makes the thoroughly acceptable suggestion that the Son of Man is “part” of God — sometimes he says a “second God” — because the only one who rides on the clouds of heaven in the Old Testament is God. That makes Son of Man divine.

 

So, when Jesus uses Son of Man, he is referring to Daniel 7 (this is a major issue for many NT scholars), and if he is then “Son of Man” is a divine title while “Son of God” is a kingly, more human, Davidic title. So Boyarin is turning simplistic but quite traditional theology on its head.

[e.g., The traditional understanding is that "Son of Man" refers to Jesus' affinity with humanity - His human-ness; whereas "Son of God" referes to Jesus' affinity to divinity - His God-ness. However, this is simply read by our English eyes and ears ("man," "God") whereas by Boyarin's account, we are to read those titles biblically - in their context with Scripture. One that I much prefer, even though I understanding the practical symantic purpose of relating our English preference for Jesus' hypostatic union - that He is fully, and equally, both God and man, in His spirit and flesh. - res]

 

Third, there is good Jewish evidence supporting this kind of Christology at work in Judaism well before Jesus, so when Jesus called himself Son of Man, and with that meant divinity and messianic vocation, there was nothing offensive or non-Jewish about his claim. Boyarin points to 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra, and he’s right here — if it can be proven that these texts are pre-Jesus [and hence, apolcalytic - res].

 

Fourth, Jesus lived an entirely kosher life. Mark 7: 19′s famous statement is not about making all foods clean — so that he was saying you can eat bacon and eggs with milk and still be kosher — but about saying that foods are not sources of purity but instead morals are. Bodily fluids make one unclean; food doesn’t. Food is kosher but this is not the same as purity. Jesus was contesting the addition to the Torah — making foods purity/impurity — by the Pharisees. (Foods are either permitted or not permitted; foods are not clean/unclean or pure/impure.)

[In my church experiences, many times I have found well-meaning Christians making this same mistake; esp. my Christian Torah brethren, who emphasize the importance of observing diets, dress, calendar dates, and other such Jewish decorums for Christian rigor. Under Jesus and Paul, each say this is not necessary. For myself, I have decided my Christianity is Jewish, but that I am not a Jewish Christian, but a Messianic Christian, freed from all laws except God's law to love. - res]

 

Fifth, suffering was an element of the messianic vision in the Jewish world — and here he sketches stuff in Isaiah 53, how Jews read Isaiah 53, how messianic Jews today are keen on this connection (he says this is a bit embarrassing to some orthodox Jews), how Isaiah 43 was messianic for Jews … etc..

 

The result for Boyarin: it was the 4th Century and 5th Century that split Judaism into two religions, Christianity and Judaism. The heresiologists of those days said one had to believe one version of the Jewish vision of Jesus (Trinitarian version) or they were not Christian; and Jewish scholars then pronounced such views heresy. Thus we have two religions.

 

There are problems in his theory, not the least of which is the relationship of Jews and (non-Jewish) Christians already in the 2d Century — Justin Martyr et al — but the big vision is right: Christianity was part of Judaism and everything about Jesus was within the Jewish story.

 

 

 

The New Perspective Revised - "Paul and Messianic Judaism," Parts 4-1

Messianic Judaism: An Introduction

PART FOUR
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/02/19/messianic-judaism-an-introduction/

 

by Scot McKnight

Feb 19, 2013 @ 0:13

Comment

 

If you want to know what Messianic Judaism was (in the New Testament era) and what it is today, here’s the book: David Rudolph and Joel Willitts, Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations. The book is afloat with excellent studies about all the crucial topics — both today and in the 1st Century.

 

Over the years I’ve read a number of books on Messianic Judaism, including the important study of Daniel Cohn-Sherbok, but this book both “supersedes” (excuse me) that one and introduces us to a critical juncture in Messianic Judaism studies. In five or ten years this book may well need some new legs because MJ has become a serious field in itself and developments are happing rapidly. Decisive in all of this is the “Jewish Turn” in biblical and theological studies — that discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the aftermath of the Holocaust led to renewed scholarship bent on relearning how to examine the Bible in Jewish context, and then from EP Sanders (1977) on New Testament studies experienced a revival of interest in re-framing NT history and theology in light of the Jewish Turn. This book floats well in these waters.

 

A sampling of studies in the book: MJ synagogues, worship and prayer, Scripture, Jewish tradition, ethics, outreach, women, MJ in the Land of Israel, national organizations, MJ and the Jewish World, MJ and the Gentile World, Jewish-Christian dialogue. For the NT stuff: Matthew, Luke-Acts, James, interdependence and mutual blessing, Israel and the church, equality, mission-commitment, and the issue of supersessionism.

 

What then is Messianic Judaism? This statement, from the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, and found on p. 136 in Rudolph and Willitts, states the issues well in that it defines the Messianic Jewish community as “a distinct part of the Body of Messiah”:

Jewish life is life in a concrete, historical community. Thus, Messianic Jewish groups must be fully part of the Jewish people, sharing its history and its covenantal responsibility as a people chosen by God.

At the same time, faith in Yeshua also has a crucial communal dimension. This faith unites the Messianic Jewish community and the [Gentile] Christian Church, which is the assembly of the faithful from the nations who are joined to Israel through the Messiah.

Together the Messianic Jewish community and the Christian Church constitute the ekklesia, the one Body of Messiah, a community of Jews and Gentiles who in their ongoing distinction and mutual blessing anticipate the shalom of the world to come.

Do you think separable bodies — the Gentile Christian Church and the Messianic Jewish community — fractures the One Body? Do you think it is what Paul had in mind in his mission?

 

 

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Where Christians Got it Wrong with Paul

PART THREE
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/08/20/where-christians-got-it-wrong-with-paul/

 

by Scot McKnight

Aug 20, 2012 @ 5:08

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Mark Nanos is on a mission to expound for readers of Paul a Paul who never broke from Judaism. His project, and here we are sketching some of what he says in the book edited by Mike Bird called The Apostle Paul, is both about rhetoric and theology. Nanos, who plays golf well and is a Jewish scholar of Paul, has been stumping for his themes for more than a decade.

 

The rhetoric is clear: Christians have explained their faith, in particular the theology of Paul, at the expense of Judaism. They have made Paul a champion of freedom by arguing Judaism was slavery, Paul a champion of universalism by arguing Judaism was exclusive and ethnic, and Paul a champion of a religion of grace, faith and love while Judaism comes off looking like a religion of merit, works and legalism. In a strange irony, Nanos then says “those values that Christians champion… are instead inferior to the values Jews actually uphold” (163). I get his point, but he’s done the same thing he’s accused Christian scholars of doing: comparative descriptions come off as comparative denunciations. But Nanos has the larger end of the stick on this one; he’s right; Christians have failed to comprehend Judaism because they’ve settled for caricatures that they can use to champion their own faith. Though Luke Timothy Johnson, in his response, thinks Nanos has kept a binary opposition by talking about Judaism as if it were “normative Judaism.” Johnson’s contention is that Judaism was more diverse than Nanos suggests. And Campbell thinks this perception of Judaism derives from Melanchthon.

 

Can you point to a text or texts where you think the Jewish apostle, Paul (or Peter), did not observe Torah? Do you think Paul observed Torah completely? Would you say Paul’s gospel is a kind of Judaism, but still Judaism? Or did he crack the door?

 

The theology of Paul, then, needs another explanation. If the traditional view made Jews legalists, the new perspective (Nanos argues) makes Jews ethnocentric. He wants to argue neither of these categories belong on the table.

 

Paul never left Judaism and the only difference between Paul and other forms of Judaism is that Paul’s Judaism had Jesus as the Messiah. Paul was Torah-observant, never left being Torah-observant [I'd quote Acts 23:6 here, but he doesn't; there Paul says "I am a Pharisee"], and Paul’s mission was to expand the Shema faith of Judaism — One God — to include Gentiles. So, Paul’s mission was including Gentiles into one Judaism. Freedom from the Torah is only for non-Jewish Christians; Jewish Christians remained under the Torah. Schreiner’s response focuses on Paul no longer being Torah observant, and he points to Peter in Galatians 2:11-14 (eating with Gentiles) and Paul saying in Romans 14:20 that all foods were clean.

 

It is big, then, for Nanos to say a major cutting edge between Paul and other forms of Judaism was that Paul permitted Gentile “conversion” without becoming “proselytes” to Judaism. You could convert to Judaism but did not have to become a Jew by undergoing circumcision. Paul opposes proselyte circumcision for Gentile “converts” to Judaism, because circumcision entails Torah observance, and Gentiles don’t have to obey the whole Torah.

 

Nanos, then, has a narrowed meaning for “works of the law”: it’s about circumcision. Works of the law ultimately leads to changed ethnicity or to ethnic Jewishness.

 

Nanos is not alone in thinking Paul didn’t have a “conversion” but instead a “calling” to the Gentiles. I think Nanos’ point can be sustained in some ways but his perception of “conversion” could benefit from conversion theory studies themselves, in which conversion is measured by identity change and not by swapping religions. So, I would argue was converted to a whole new frame of mind but that doesn’t necessarily mean he changed religions, which is the (anachronistic, a la LT Johnson’s response) categories he presses into service. Nanos thinks the term “conversion” muddies the water, and he’s right. So he uses “calling,” which I think muddies the water. Paul’s change is more than simply vocational. He saw everything anew through and in Christ. So convert is a good word, but I would want to respect Nanos’ concern to make sure this does not necessarily mean Paul swapped religions.

 

The issue, for Nanos then, between Paul’s Judaism and others is “chronometrical”: What is appropriate now that the crucifixion and resurrection have occurred? Are we in a new era or not? Paul says Yes, others say No. In other words, it is eschatological. Or, perhaps even more nuanced, hermeneutical. How do we explain where we are in God’s plan? And it revolves around whether or not Jesus is the Messiah.

 

The big issue of this whole discussion can be expressed as questions: Did the apostle Paul think all Jews had to believe Jesus was the Messiah to be saved, or to enter the kingdom of God, or the Age to Come? Did he think non-messianic Jews were just as saved as messianic Jews? Was historic Judaism sufficient or did one have to embrace messianic Judaism? Johnson thinks Nanos doesn’t give sufficient attention to the newness in Paul’s gospel.

 

 

 

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The New Perspective Revised

PART TWO
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/08/14/the-new-perspective-revised/

 

by Scot McKnight

Aug 14, 2012 @ 0:20

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In my life time the most significant book on Paul has been E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977) because it both shifted interest in Judaism but completely shook up how scholars understood Paul. Since Sanders there have been major articulations of Pauline theology, including those of J.D.G. Dunn and N.T. Wright, but they build on and take further what was said by Sanders.

In Mike Bird’s new book, The Apostle Paul, there are four views of Paul: the Reformed view by Tom Schreiner, the Catholic view by L.T. Johnson, the post New Perspective view by Douglas Campbell, and the Jewish view of Mark Nanos. Today’s post will look at Campbell’s piece.

 

What do you see as the major problems with the traditional reading of Paul? What do you see as the major problems with the New Perspective on Paul? Do you think Campbell’s reading helps us forward?

 

In essence, and Campbell gets this right when many don’t, the core of the New Perspective is a new view of Judaism and a new view of Paul rooted in that new view of Judaism. The “old” perspective on Paul, it is argued, overcooked Judaism into a works-based religion. This led to religion being man’s attempt to justify himself, and the whole gospel of Paul was read as a response to this fundamental anthropological pride. Hence, we read in folks like Tim Keller of two options: performance vs. grace/faith. I see this all over, so Keller’s not alone. The New Perspective calls this into question because it argues that this “performance” stuff emerges from a false view of Judaism and therefore from a Judaism Paul could not have been opposing. Paul’s concerns were elsewhere. Put differently, the old perspective thinks Paul’s concerns were anthropology: the human arrogance of self-justification before God, and that means the essence of gospel preaching is to get humans to perceive their pride. Again, this is not what the New Perspective thinks Paul was on about.

 

Campbell, however, goes beyond anything being said by the New Perspective, though he agrees completely with its view of Judaism. He thinks the New Perspective explanations of Paul — Dunn, Wright, oddly not really dealing with Sanders — are not good enough and so he revises those explanations. I would say he radically revises.

 

1. Campbell thinks Paul’s theology turns on three axes: that it is revealed by God to him, that it is Trinitarian (and here he is thoroughly Nicene and orthodox), and missional (his message arises from his mission).

 

2. Campbells thinks soteriology and gospel are one and the same. [I disagree, but only in emphasis or order.] And he thinks that gospel is found, not in Romans 1:18-3:26, which is classic, but in Romans 5–8. He finds here a God whose work in us cannot be stopped, and he finds an ethic that transforms through the Spirit and transcends the Jewish Torah. [This last point leads to Mark Nanos' strong disagreements.] He is Barthian and Torrancian in his approach.

 

3. Campbell doesn’t really follow the assignment, which was followed by Schreiner and Johnson, which means we get his closer reading of how to read Romans 5–8.

 

4. The three persons of the Trinity are indistinguishable in Romans 5–8. Humans are fundamentally relational beings. Christ determines humans not Adam. Since Christ is the solution, Moses is not. (He calls this “thinking backward,” which is a variant of the “from solution to plight.”) The ecclesial approach of Paul is family and he uses the term “brothers” for the Body of Christ.

Both Johnson and Schreiner criticize Campbell for insufficient attention to the rest of the Pauline corpus.

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Finding the Apostle Paul

PART ONE

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/08/07/finding-the-apostle-paul/

 

by Scot McKnight

Aug 7, 2012 @ 0:03

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Paul gets bashed a bit these days as more and more Christians realize the anchor of their faith is Jesus. But all orthodox Christian faith is at the same time rooted in the biblical witness and not just historical methods. Biblical faith deals with Paul because Paul’s letters — thirteen of them in traditional counting — not only take up lots of pages in your New Testament but his mission and message shaped 1st Century Christianity at deep levels.

Which of these readings of Paul do you think is most like Paul, or most accurate? Why do you think Paul has “fallen out of favor” with so many today? Why do you think others make Paul so central, even more central than Jesus/Gospels?

Biblical faith, then, deals with Paul. Careful readers of Paul’s letters know that there are some major, major disagreements over how to interpret Paul. So the question is not Jesus have I loved, Paul have I known, but which Paul? Last week we sketched the 1st chp in Michael Bird’s edited volume, The Apostle Paul, another Zondervan Counterpoints book. That chp represents a Reformed, or Calvinist, reading of Paul. Today we look at Luke Timothy Johnson’s study of Paul. Three quick facts: Johnson is Catholic; he is one of the most prolific and significant NT scholars; his sketch of Paul may be Catholic but it shows that when it comes Catholicism, Paul’s letters are not the primary source for creating Catholic distinctives. So, in the end, this is the historian’s Paul, the Paul who emerges from the canonical letters who also thinks — contra many in the academic guild — Paul wrote all thirteen letters.

1. Too many of those who sketch Paul’s theology limit the evidence: he was not a systematic thinker; each letter emerges in context and in contact with issues at hand for his mission; there was a school around Paul; Paul prefers personal relationship and communication.

2. Those who find a “center” in Pauline theology are mistaken, and here he pushes against finding it in Epicureanism, Stoicism, Palestinian Judaism, or apocalyptic — or his struggle with the law or the narrative theology of the new perspective. If we consider all letters, we don’t have a center but themes of a missional apostle.

3. Johnson thinks we have to find the matrix of personal religious experience, the religious experience of his readers, and the compex of traditions and practices already in play at the time of Paul.

4. Christology: an exceptional sketch of Paul’s christology, focusing not so much on Christ as on Lord but it all begins with the resurrection. Holy Spirit is prominent in this sketch. Jesus’ resurrection was an eschatological event. Jesus has representative significance.

5. Cross: a scandal for the Jews; supreme sign that God did not spare his Son, was a sacrifice for sin; an expression as well of Jesus’ faith in God and love for others. It is about his faithful obedience. And the cross is a pattern for human behavior: cruciformity.

6. Salvation: it is accomplished by God and it is not about the accidents of life but basic existential existence; his death was not primarily liberation from systemic powers but from sin and sinfulness. Nanos’ response pokes Johnson for inconsistency here since the remaining portions of this chp seem to move in a more social, if not political, direction. He’s not a proponent of the empire theorists today. Salvation does not just rescue but transforms. The language of salvation explores five different metaphors, none of which is sufficient but each of which is adequate and pointing us to the fuller realities of salvation: diplomatic, economic, forensic, cultic, kinship. He sees an inaugurated salvation: here and not fully complete yet. But salvation is social in that it ushers people into the new community. Schreiner’s response calls out Johnson for a lack of attention to the grace of God and to the importance of faith for justification and to Johnson’s emphasis on corporate (not individual) election.

7. Church: the local assembly; mostly Gentile churches; sketches leadership in elders and superintendents and servants… more than a voluntary association but derives from the call of God. Paul dealt with boundaries over against both Gentile/Roman world and Jewish world. Jewish believers follow Torah; Gentiles believers need not. Paul had egalitarian ideas that crashed at times against social realities, and Douglas Campbell thinks Johnson needs to work more on this element of his chp as Campbell thinks the social tensions arise in the non-Pauline letters.

Surprisingly, hardly a thing on eucharist or baptism.


 

Christians should learn from Jews on Passover

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/christians-should-learn-from-jews-on-passover/2011/04/20/AF4eJcPE_blog.html

Brian McLaren

April 20, 2011

I can understand why some Jewish leaders are concerned about Christians adopting (usurping?) the Passover seder and replacing its original Jewish meanings with Christian meanings. With nearly 2000 years of Christian anti-semitism in our shared history, this can easily be interpreted as yet another encroachment and attempt at conquest and assimilation.

But I wonder if something more helpful - for both Christians and Jews - could come from Christian engagement with Passover. Perhaps instead of importing Christian meanings into a Jewish holiday, Christians can important Jewish meanings into Christian faith, thus reframing our understanding of Jesus and the gospel. (This is one theme of my book “A New Kind of Christianity.”) Many of us are increasingly convinced that it’s a mistake for Christians to see Jesus as a Christian - especially in the modern sense of the word: he was a Jew, as were all the first disciples.

When we Christians reframe and rediscover our faith in light of its Jewish roots (rather than interpreting it in the alien categories of Greek philosophy and Roman politics of the second through fifth centuries), I think our faith is enriched - and we are confronted more deeply by the ugly and violent aspects of “Christian history.”

For example, the word “salvation” in the context of the Passover does not mean “atoning for original sin so the soul can go to heaven instead of hell after death.” No, the word “salvation” means “liberation from slavery and oppression.” So to speak of Jesus as Savior suddenly has less to do with one’s destination after death (as Rob Bell affirms in “Love Wins,” and as I also explored in my “A New Kind of Christian” trilogy) and more to do with one’s participation in and pursuit of God’s justice, reconciliation, and peace in this world, with Jesus - justice for all, reconciliation with all, and peace among all.

That’s quite an improvement over usurpation, encroachment, conquest, and assimilation. So instead of Christians telling Jews what the Passover really means, I propose that we Christians reverse roles and take the role of listeners for a while, learning with our Jewish neighbors forgotten or suppressed meanings that will challenge us all towards repentance and faith, love and good work.

BEST-SELLING AUTHOR AND INTELLECTUAL LEADER OF “EMERGING CHURCH”

Brian D. McLaren

McLaren is an activist, speaker, and author (most recently of Naked Spirituality and A New Kind of Christianity). He was a pastor for 24 years and is a leader in the global conversation about emerging Christianity.

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