Book Write-Up: The River of Life, by Lee Harmon

Lee Harmon.  The River of Life: Where Liberal and Conservative Christianity Meet.  Gonzalez, FL: Energion Publications, 2014.  See here to purchase the book from Amazon.

In The River of Life, Lee Harmon talks about what he believes as a liberal Christian.  He actually says what his religion is on the last page of the book: “Participatory Eschatology.  This is my religion.  This is Jesus’ dream, and it is happening.  The world will become what we, through the help of God and the inspiration and example of Jesus our Savior, transform it into.”

Essentially, Lee Harmon maintains that Jesus was preaching a this-worldly religion, rather than one that focused on having a good afterlife.  Harmon argues that, when Jesus preached about Gehenna, he was talking about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., not hell.  When Jesus spoke of the forgiveness of debts, Harmon says, he may have been talking about people forgiving literal debts—-debts that pushed people into poverty—-as part of the Jubilee that Jesus was inaugurating.  Jesus also went about doing good, freeing people of disease, and he emphasized giving to the poor.  As Harmon notes, there are different eschatological views within the New Testament.  The synoptic Gospels have an eschatology that holds that Jesus will soon return in power to establish a literal rule on earth.  The Gospel of John, however,  has a realized eschatology, which regards Jesus’ giving of the Holy Spirit to his disciples shortly after his resurrection as his second coming.  There are also different understandings within the New Testament about who exactly Jesus was (e.g., when Jesus became divine).  In any case, Harmon holds, there is a common notion throughout the Gospels that Jesus in some sense brought the Kingdom of God in his ministry on earth, a Kingdom that does good and alleviates suffering.

Harmon does not reduce religion to social justice or community service, however, for he does talk about personal piety and experience of the divine.  He says in one beautiful passage, “I have sat in the churches of various denominations and seen strong people reduced to emotional puddles and then lifted into radiance” (page 2).  He talks about his personal prayer life and how he prefers to pray to the Spirit that positively influences the earth: “With this focus, I feel silly praying selfish petitions—-a universal Spirit somehow transcends my selfish ambitions—-so my prayer naturally steers toward renewing my purpose to contribute to the Kingdom of God” (page 33).  He has quotations of prominent liberal Christians and spiritual thinkers about the definition of faith and how it may differ from (or mean more than) having prescribed beliefs or accepting something without proof.

Harmon is also honest about his own religious questions, about such issues as what we can know about God, whether God is personal, and whether there is an afterlife.  He says that he is not trying to encourage people who believe in an afterlife to abandon that belief, for he recognizes that believing in an afterlife gives comfort to people; he just wants to stress that Jesus’ mission was focused on this world.  I appreciated Harmon’s approach here because he was presenting himself as a fellow pilgrim giving us something to think about, and he was expressing acceptance of people with different perspectives.  He was communicating that one does not have to agree entirely with him to get something out of his book.

I found Harmon’s thesis about Jesus’ mission to be convincing, overall.  I agree with him that Jesus wanted to improve the conditions of people in this world.  On whether the churches of New Testament times were like that, however, I would say that it was rather mixed.  On the one hand, the early Christians in the Book of Acts and Paul appear to focus on encouraging people to repent and believe in Jesus in light of a coming judgment, and, while they were concerned for the poor, their concern appears to be rather insular—-for poor Christians.  On the other hand, Jesus’ apostles in the Book of Acts do continue Jesus’ practice of delivering people from disease and demon possession, and one could argue that Christians in New Testament times sought to have a positive influence on the world by demonstrating an alternative society—-one in which the needs of the poor are met and people from different social backgrounds embrace each other as family.

Harmon’s book encouraged me to think about the issue of Gehenna.  I acknowledge the possibility that Jesus may have been referring to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. when talking about Gehenna, and yet there do seem to be some voices in the New Testament that posit a dreadful place for the wicked in the afterlife.  I think of Matthew 8:11-12 and Luke 13:28, which say that many will sit with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom, while others will be cast into outer darkness, amidst weeping and gnashing of teeth.  In terms of Harmon’s discussion of Gehenna, I wish that he had fleshed out more the significance of Gehenna to Jesus’ mission: Why was Jesus predicting the destruction of Jerusalem, what did that have to do with his Kingdom mission of beneficence, and what does the destruction of Jerusalem say about the character of God.  Harmon in one place seems to suggest that salvation is not really about deliverance from God’s wrath, and yet does not the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. imply that God has wrath, according to the Gospels?  In some places, Harmon appears to touch on the significance of 70 C.E.—-that it was about the end of the old covenant (and I wonder if this would conflict with Harmon’s view that the earliest Christians were Jewish Christians who valued the Torah) or was part of the pangs that accompany the Kingdom—-but I was hoping to see more about the significance of Gehenna, especially as it relates to Jesus’ Kingdom mission.

Overall, though, I found Harmon’s book to be thoughtful and thought-provoking.

My thanks to the author, Lee Harmon, for sending me a review copy of this book.

John of Gischala vs. Josephus, and the Book of Revelation

For my blog post today on Lee Harmon's Revelation: The Way It Happened, I will focus on Lee's argument that the Jewish rebel John of Gischala was the John who wrote the Book of Revelation, and that this John had Josephus in mind when he was talking about the false prophet in Revelation 13:11-16.  This will be my last formal post about Lee's book, but I may refer to it in future posts.

According to Lee, John in Revelation 13 regarded Josephus as the false prophet because Josephus willfully contributed to Rome's victory when there was a Jewish revolt in Jerusalem in the first century C.E.  Moreover, as I talked about a couple posts ago, Josephus held that the Roman Vespasian was the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy.  According to Lee, John had this in mind when he portrayed the second beast (the false prophet) supporting the first beast.  When John says that the false prophet would do wonders and cause fire to come down from heaven, Lee interprets that in light of "the magical practices of the imperial cult", which Josephus upheld by contributing to Rome's triumph over Jerusalem (page 168).  When John criticizes Balaam in Revelation 2:14, Lee believes that this is John responding to Josephus' claim that Vespasian was the fulfillment of Balaam's prophecy in Numbers 24:17----that a star would come from Jacob, and a scepter would arise from Israel.

Lee's discussion about the false prophet was actually my favorite part of this book.  I struggled with what he was saying about the two witnesses, Daniel 9, and all those Jesuses, as interesting as those discussions were.  But I got goose-bumps when he was interpreting the false prophet of Revelation 13 as Josephus.  He looked like he was on to something.

But do I agree?  I don't know.  One could perhaps argue that the second beast (the false prophet) of Revelation 13 was far more powerful, grandiose, and influential on a worldwide scale than Josephus ever was.  That would be a good point, but that by itself does not convince me that Lee is incorrect to argue that the second beast represented Josephus.  John could have seen the events surrounding the Jewish rebellion in 70 C.E. in exaggerated terms because it was important to him.  John of Gischala had just fought against the Romans, and Josephus was a factor behind the Jews' loss to them.  It wouldn't surprise me that he would portray Josephus as a significant figure among the forces of evil!

It's the whole Balaam issue that perplexes me, somewhat.  For one, the Book of Revelation mentions Balaam within the context of the letter to the church in Pergamum, which is in Asia Minor.  Revelation 2:14 states (in the KJV): "But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication."  I don't see what this has to do with Josephus' application of Balaam's prophecy to Vespasian.  Rather, it seems to relate to what is going on at Pergamum, not Jerusalem.  I think that Lee should have brought Pergamum more into the picture in his discussion of Balaam, even if Lee wanted to argue that John's reference to Balaam was somehow related to Josephus' use of Balaam's prophecy to bolster the idolatrous Roman empire.  Incidentally, while Asia Minor does play a significant role in Lee's book (since the Christian character Samuel is pressured there to honor idols in order to make the contacts that he needs for business), Lee does not talk much about the seven letters to the churches of Asia Minor.

Second, Lee seems to present Josephus as depicting Balaam positively, while John depicts Balaam negatively.  But Josephus himself depicts Balaam negatively in Antiquities 4.  And Josephus' portrayal is similar to that of John: Balaam contributed to the Israelites' idolatry and their sleeping with Midianite women.  At the same time, John (within Lee's scenario) may not have encountered Josephus' negative portrayal of Balaam in Antiquities 4.  Lee seems to portray John as one who is familiar with Josephus' Wars of the Jews, which Josephus wrote prior to Antiquities.  Antiquities may not have been written when John was interacting with Josephus' work.

I'd like to close this post by tossing out some things that I found interesting in my research, and you may find them helpful, too, if you ever want to read Lee's book.

1.  Here are the articles about John of Gischala in the Jewish Encyclopedia and wikipedia.

2.  Lee says that John of Gischala ignored the Sabbath and Jewish dietary laws.  Lee may be implying that this could be an indicator that John was a follower of Jesus, who himself was arguably liberal on Sabbath observance and dietary laws.  I could not find anything about John of Gischala's ignoring the Sabbath, but the passage in which Josephus accuses John of disobeying the dietary laws is Wars of the Jews 7:264, which states (in William Whiston's translation): "for the food was unlawful that was set upon his table, and he rejected those purifications that the law of his country had ordained; so that it was no longer a wonder if he, who was so mad in his impiety toward God, did not observe any rules of gentleness and common affection toward men."

But it seems to me that, according to Josephus, John of Gischala appealed to the law when it was convenient for him.  John of Gischala warned the Zealots that their abolition of the law and law-courts could incur the wrath of the people (Wars of the Jews 4.223).  (See this article, which maintains that the Zealots were arguably undermining the law.)  John dissuaded the Roman Titus from entering Gischala on the Sabbath, providing John with an opportunity to escape at night (Wars of the Jews 4.102-104).  And John made lots of money selling kosher oil to Jews, so they wouldn't have to use Greek oil (Life 1.74-75).  Did John have an ideological reason for disobeying the law?  Or was John simply an impious person who exploited the law whenever he could for his own advantage?  Or was John truly impious or anti-law, at the outset?  Lee himself does not buy all of Josephus' bad-PR about John of Gischala.  On page 203, Lee says that Josephus accused John of plundering the Temple, and yet Josephus also says that the Romans found vast treasures in the Temple when they took it over.  The treasures were still there when the Romans came, in short!  Could Josephus have been incorrect on John's approach to the Torah?

3.  Others have argued that John of Gischala is significant to interpreting New Testament eschatology.  This article, for example, argues that John of Gischala was the man of sin in II Thessalonians 2:3-4!  That's different from what Lee argues!

I'd like to thank Lee for sending me a copy of his book on Revelation.  It's definitely worth the read!

Daniel 9:24-27, and the Hardest Passage in Lee Harmon's Book

In my blog post today on Lee Harmon's Revelation: The Way It Happened, I'll be talking about the most difficult passage in Lee's book.  I'll use as my starting-point Daniel 9:24-27.  That passage says the following (according to the King James Version):

24 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

A significant number of people who interpret this passage believe that a day here actually means a year, and thus the seventy weeks are 490 years.  You start counting at "the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem".  People have different opinions about what that was, and thus at what year we should start the count.  Was it Ezra's decree in II Chronicles 36:22-23 and Ezra 1:2-4 that allowed Jews to return to their homeland, making the starting-year 538 B.C.E.?  Was it Artaxerxes' decree in Ezra 7 permitting Jews to return to their homeland and to beautify the Temple, making the starting-year 458-457 B.C.E.?  Was it Artaxerxes' permission for Nehemiah to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the city walls (Nehemiah 2:5-8), placing the starting-year at 445-444 B.C.E.?  Or was it Jeremiah's prophecy that Jerusalem would be rebuilt, putting the starting-year at around 597 B.C.E.?

The 458-457 B.C.E. starting-year works out best for a number of Christians, for the count ends up in the first half of the first century C.E., which was when Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose again.  For these Christians, Jesus Christ was the Messiah the prince of Daniel 9:25, and the Messiah who is cut off in Daniel 9:26.  There are Christians who even argue that Jesus was the one of Daniel 9:27 who would cause sacrifices to cease, since Jesus, through his atoning death, nullified the need for animal sacrifices.  A number of Christians regard Daniel 9:24-27 as a prophecy about Jesus Christ----more, an exact prediction of when Jesus Christ would come and die.

What if you start your count with any of the other starting-years?  Where do you end up?  Well, they take you to dead ends, as Lee Harmon on his blog discusses in this post.  They're dead-ends in the sense that nothing spectacular happened at those times.  There was no Messianic sort of figure who died in those years.

A number of historical-critics argue that the ending-point for Daniel 9 was intended to be the second century B.C.E., which was when Antiochus IV Epiphanes was desecrating the Temple, prompting the Maccabees to revolt.  The Messiah (or Anointed One) who is cut off in Daniel 9:25 is often interpreted within this scenario as the priest Onias III.  The destruction of the city and the abomination of desolation are interpreted in light of what Antiochus IV did.  This interpretation makes a degree of sense, for Daniel 7-12 does appear to concern the time of Antiochus IV, for a variety of reasons.  The problem is that you don't end up in the time of Antiochus IV when you count off from any of the proposed starting-years, the years decreeing the rebuilding of Jerusalem.  One attempt to solve this problem is to say that the Jews in this case did not keep good track of time: that they didn't know exactly how many years there were between the decree and such events as the Messiah being cut off and the abomination of desolation.  Another solution I have heard is that the 490 years are not literal but are formulaic or perhaps symbolic.  Lee in this blog post offers yet another proposal: that some of the years are concurrent (occurring simultaneously) rather than consecutive (occurring one after the other).  According to this view, the forty-nine years (seven weeks) of Daniel 9:25 are between the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. and Cyrus' decree around 537 B.C.E. that the Jews could return to Jerusalem.  The 62 weeks, or 434 years, of Daniel 9:25 are the time between Jeremiah's prophecy of Jerusalem's restoration, which Jeremiah made around the year 597 B.C.E., and 167 B.C.E., which is the time of Antiochus IV.  So the 49 years and the 434 years overlap.  My problem, however, is that I don't understand why Lee starts the count for the 49 years at 586 B.C.E., the year of Jerusalem's destruction.  My impression from Daniel 9:25 is that the count for the 49 years starts from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, not the year that Jerusalem was destroyed.

Okay, so the 490 years do not fit the Antiochus IV interpretation all that well.  Many conservative Christians would say that the 490 years fits the Jesus Christ interpretation perfectly!  But there are problems here, which Lee discusses in Revelation: The Way It Happened.  So you start your count with Artaxerxes' decree in 458-457 B.C.E.  The Messiah, according to Daniel 9:25, comes 483 years later, which is 25-26 C.E., the time when Jesus was alive on earth.  The thing is, near the end of these 490 years from the decree to rebuild the Temple, something else is supposed to happen: the destruction of the city and the sanctuary.  There are many Christians who apply this to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.----"Christ fulfilled Daniel 9!", they proclaim, "since Christ was crucified, and later Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed!"  But there is a serious mathematical problem, here.  Daniel 9:24-27 appears to present the destruction of Jerusalem and the sanctuary as occurring right after the Messiah has been cut off, not over four decades later.  If we interpret the destruction of the city and sanctuary in Daniel 9:26 in reference to the events of 70 C.E., then we have more than 490 years: we have 528 years!  But the text says 490 years is allotted for all these things to take place.

In Lee's book, a Christian named Samuel and his son Matthew discuss these issues.  Matthew says that he heard from his tutor that Daniel 9:24-27 was about Antiochus IV's desecration of the Temple, and the Jews' subsequent purification of it.  In this scenario, the events of Daniel 9:24-27 are in the past, and they took place in close proximity with one another, as the text seems to present.  We then get into some speculation: Perhaps the events of 70 C.E. did take place very soon after the death of Jesus, but it was Jesus son of Ananus, the one in Josephus' Wars of the Jews 6:300ff (see Chapter 5 here) who predicted the fall of Jerusalem, four years before it happened. 

I don't think that Jesus son of Ananus would work as the Messiah of Daniel 9, since he doesn't fit the 490 years.  Again, 70 C.E. (or even a few years earlier than that, which was when Jesus son of Ananus preached) is much too late!  In any case, it's when Lee talks about Jesus son of Ananus that things start to get confusing.  Lee disagrees with the view that Jesus of Nazareth in Mark's Gospel was "nothing more than a composite of several wartime historical characters" (page 176), for Paul talks about Jesus decades prior to the Jewish wars; thus, Lee believes that there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth.  But Lee does seem to argue that Mark's depiction of Jesus of Nazareth was, on some level, based on John of Ananus, and Lee lists similarities between the two: they were believed to be possessed by a demon, they preached at the Temple, they "declared woes upon Jerusalem and the temple", they were scourged, and they were silent when they were chastened and when they appeared before an official.  Moreover, Lee appears to be suggesting that there are other Jesuses behind the Jesus of New Testament theology: there is the high priest Jesus (or Joshua) in the Book of Zechariah, who was one of the original two witnesses, and there was Jesus son of Gamala, who could have been one of the inspirations for the two witnesses in the Book of Revelation.  Remember that the two witnesses in Revelation 11 are killed, rise again three-and-a-half days later, and go to heaven, and this is followed by an earthquake.  This sort of thing happens to Jesus in some of the Gospels: he dies, rises from the dead three days later, and ascends to heaven, and Matthew's Gospel mentions some earthquakes going on during these events.  I'm not sure whether Lee's on to something, or if what we're seeing are mere coincidences or floating motifs that are being applied to different people.

But let's get back to Daniel 9!  Samuel in Lee's book interprets Daniel 9:27 in this manner: we have the final week of the seventy weeks, and this is seven days, or actually seven years.  The first three-and-a-half years are the events of the Jewish war around 70: the abomination of desolation and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.  The second three-and-a-half years are when Jesus restores the Temple.  Samuel refers to a saying that appears on the lips of Jesus in John 2:19: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (this saying appears in a slightly different form in Mark's Gospel, which is earlier; see Mark 14:58; 15:29).  Samuel interprets this to mean that Jesus would rebuild the Temple three years (remember, a day equals a year in Daniel 9) after its destruction, which is similar to how he sees Daniel 9:27. 

There are two questions that one can ask.  First, wasn't Jesus in John 2:19 referring to his own resurrection on the third day, with the Temple representing his body?  But that was in the Gospel of John, which was later than the Book of Revelation, and was also later than the setting for Samuel and Matthew's conversations in Lee's book.  Samuel does not know about this.  According to Lee, Samuel does not even know the stories about Jesus' bodily resurrection or appearances.  These stories would first appear in the Gospel of Matthew, which has not been written yet.  (The child Matthew has not yet grown up and written it.)  The Gospel of Mark, after all, simply ends with the tomb being empty, and the women not telling anyone because they were afraid.

Second, Matthew in Lee's book asks: If Jesus were to rebuild the temple three or three-and-a-half years after its destruction, why hasn't he yet?  The setting for Samuel and Matthew's conversations is nine years after the destruction of the temple.  Samuel replies that he doesn't know, but he speculates that the city may have been rebuilt in heaven: it's already built, but it hasn't come down to earth yet!

At this time, I'd like to quote the hardest passage in Lee's book.  It's on pages 179-180:

"Where did the Gospel of John come up with this idea, this alternative interpretation of rebuilding the Temple?  Well, in a curious way, it parallels Revelation, which hints at an oral tradition, and some of Paul's writings also compare our bodies to the Temple of God.  Note that Revelation actually specifies precisely three and a half days (years?) before the resurrection of the three priests, which better fits the vision of Daniel, if his 'rebuilding of the Temple' depicts the resurrection of the body of Jesus.  Daniel divided his final 'week' into two three-and-a-half day/year periods.  Jesus, the peasant prophet, and Jesus, the resurrected priest, come together to tell the story of Jesus of Nazareth, each contributing three and a half years/days to perfectly fulfill the final week of the prophecy of Daniel, and John, Revelation's author, can safely forget about the restoration of the Temple promised in Daniel and Mark from then on."

I've read this paragraph a number of times, and I still don't get it!  Lee's still a talented writer throughout the vast majority of this book, however.  And, even if I don't understand that one paragraph, I enjoyed reading his discussion on Daniel 9:24-27, and the tangents where that led him.
 

Lee Harmon on the Two Witnesses

In my post today about Lee Harmon's Revelation: The Way It Happened, I'll be talking about Lee's discussion about the two witnesses of Revelation 11.  Who are the two witnesses?  In Revelation 11:3-13, we read the following about them (and I will be using the KJV because it's in the public domain):

3 And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.
4 These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth.
5 And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.
6 These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.
7 And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.
8 And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.
9 And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves.
10 And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.
11 And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.
12 And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.
13 And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.

Lee's extensive discussion about the two witnesses occurs on pages 113-121.  I'll use as my starting-point something that Lee says on page 121:

"Moses and Elijah, Peter and Paul, Ananus and Jesus----how did these pairs get so tangled inside John's swirling head?  Undoubtedly, the original inspiration for the two witnesses of Revelation has been found in the Jewish priests, Ananus and Jesus.  Yet for common first-century Christians, many of whom probably fled Jerusalem before any of this happened, it appears that the Christian heroes Peter and Paul reaped the greater benefits of the story, as the legends grew for both their miracle working and evangelical abilities.  The tradition of their martyrdom under Nero became widespread in the late first century."

I can't say that I entirely understand what Lee is getting at here, but allow me to detail the similarities Lee highlights between the two witnesses and the various pairs that got "so tangled inside John's swirling head":
Moses and Elijah: The two witnesses are prophets and perform some of the miracles that Moses and Elijah did.  Moses turned water into blood, and Elijah stopped the rain.  Elijah, like the two witnesses, ascended to heaven.  Moses could have, at least according to the Assumption of Moses.

Peter and Paul: Both performed miracles, like the two witnesses (though, as far as I know, there are no stories about Peter and Paul turning water into blood, or stopping the rain).  The two witnesses are killed by the Beast, and there are stories about the martyrdom of Peter and Paul by the Roman emperor Nero, whom Lee contends was the Beast of Revelation 13.  The two witnesses were left unburied for three-and-a-half days, and Lee refers to a statement by the sixth century figure John Mahalas that the corpses of Peter and Paul were left unburied.  The two witnesses ascended to heaven, and there's the notion that Peter and Paul ascended to heaven: Paul in II Corinthians 12:2, and Peter in the early second century Apocalypse of Peter.  Plus, there's I Clement's statement that Peter after bearing witness was taken to "the well-deserved place of glory", and Paul "to the holy place" (in whatever translation Lee is using).  Lee also mentions the story in Acts 14 about Paul getting up after having been stoned and left for dead, as Lee sees a similarity between that and the two witnesses' resurrection.  Lee believes that the two witnesses are killed in Jerusalem, whereas Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome.  Lee speculates that, if John was referring to Peter and Paul when he was talking about the two witnesses, John could have moved their deaths to Jerusalem out of a conviction that prophets perish in Jerusalem.

Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala: These guys are priests who are mentioned by Josephus.  They were around during the first century Jewish uprisings in Jerusalem against Rome.  Josephus' telling of their story is in Wars of the Jews Book 4.  Lee, on page 120, notes a similarity between them and the two witnesses: "Curiously, just as [Revelation 11:]13 says, this earthquake did occur at the 'very hour' the Idumeans murdered, ridiculed, and left the two great priests, Ananus and Jesus, unburied in the streets of Jerusalem!"

Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala are significant in terms of Lee's interpretation of the two witnesses.  On page 203, Lee, thinking that the John who wrote Revelation was the John of Gischala who was a leader of the Jewish rebellion against Rome, says that Josephus depicts John of Gischala spying on Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala and passing on secrets to the rebellious Zealots.  Lee says: "Josephus seems to blame John's deception for the deaths of these two priests, but in reality, John pulled all stops to show his allegiance to them, even immortalizing them as the two great witnesses of Revelation."

Revelation 11:9 says that "they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations" will see the dead bodies of the two witnesses.  Lee interprets the phrase "every tribe and language and people and nation" as God's people, since Revelation 5:9 uses that expression to refer to those whom God has purchased.  God's people are the Jews, according to Lee.  Lee seems to argue in a couple of places that, at the time that Revelation was written, there was not a firm line separating Jews from Christians.  Lee says on page 291: "A million Jews from all over the empire congregated in Jerusalem, where, in John's mind, they beheld the death of the two witnesses (priests) and then suffered in the war against the beast."

Here are some points that I want to make in response to Lee's arguments:

1.  So who exactly are the two witnesses, according to Lee?  Are they characters who are based on Moses and Elijah, Peter and Paul, and Ananus and Jesus, or can they actually be identified with Peter and Paul, or with Ananus and Jesus?

2.  Like I said, as far as I know, there are no stories about Peter and Paul turning water into blood, or shutting up the heavens, which is what the two witnesses did.  Perhaps one could argue that there could have been traditions like that, since there were a lot of miracle stories out there about these towering Christian figures, and so maybe there were other stories circulating that we do not know about.  Perhaps.  Come to think of it, maybe Peter and Paul could work out as the two witnesses, if we allow John some latitude as a writer (which John exercised if he put their deaths in Jerusalem, when their deaths actually occurred in Rome).


3.  I have questions about associating the two witnesses with Ananus and Jesus son of Gamla:

a.  As far as I know, Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala did not turn water into blood, shut up the heavens, or spit out fire from their mouths against their enemies.  Perhaps one could argue that John associated them somehow with bloody water or famine that occurred during the rebellion, or that the fire from their mouths symbolized their preaching, or the disaster that came upon Jerusalem because many Jews did not heed them.  Lee should have discussed this a bit more in his book.

b.  I have not read Josephus as extensively as Lee has, but what I am finding in my perusal of Book 4 of Wars of the Jews, wikipedia (see here), and Lee's book is that Ananus and Jesus were opponents of the Zealots, on some level.  That's why they were eventually killed.  I think that Lee should have gone into more detail about why John would consider their message to be so righteous, especially since Lee also appears to argue that the martyrs in Revelation consist of some of the people who died while rising up against Rome.  Is John in Revelation for the uprising against Rome that occurred in the late first century, or (like Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala, it appears) against it?  (UPDATE: Sometime after writing this, I looked through Lee's book again, and I also perused the speeches of Ananus and Jesus in Book 4 of Josephus' Wars of the Jews.  It appears that Ananus and Jesus' concern was to protect the Temple from the Zealots.  Does that mean that they were against any rebellion against Rome?  I don't know.  Jesus son of Gamala in his speech seems to praise the value of liberty from the Romans.  One could apparently be anti-Zealot and still support some sort of uprising against Rome.  I still think that Lee should have gone into a little more detail about why John in Revelation would consider Ananus and Jesus' message righteous, as well as their stance on the Romans.  But the situation was more complex than I presented it here.) 

c.  According to this Josephus' Antiquities 20.9.1, Ananus ordered the execution of James, the brother of Jesus.  Would John portray Ananus as one of the two witnesses, after Ananus had done something like that? 

d.  Something that the Peter and Paul interpretation has going for it is that the Roman emperor Nero, the one Lee argues was the Beast, killed them, and Revelation 11 says that the Beast killed the two witnesses.  But the Idumeans killed Ananus and Jesus.  How would Lee explain that, especially since this narrates that the Idumeans were on the side of the Zealots, who were anti-Rome?  That said, I don't have thorough knowledge about what the Idumeans did during this conflict.  (UPDATE: On page 40, Lee narrates that the Idumeans initially joined the Zealots, but "when the exhausted Idumeans finally realized that Ananus had not really been a traitor and they had been duped into helping the Zealots, they packed up and went home."  Still, the Romans were not the ones who killed Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala, whereas, according to Lee, Nero is the Beast, and the Beast in Revelation 11 is the one who kills the two witnesses.  Perhaps one could argue that the two witnesses are based on Ananus and Jesus, on some level, but that there is not a perfect match between them.) 

e.  As far as I know, there are no legends that Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala got up and ascended to heaven three-and-a-half days after their deaths, which is what Revelation 11 says about the two witnesses.  Lee speculates that John may have depicted the two witnesses as doing this "perhaps in competition with Josephus", who ends Ananus and Jesus' story with their shameful deaths (page 118).  I can't rule this out, entirely.  This might work if you grant John some latitude as a writer: John was telling the story differently from Josephus.  But, again I ask, what about the message of Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala did John like? 

f.  I have issues with how Lee goes from identifying "every tribe and language and people and nation" with God's people, to arguing that those from around the world who saw the corpses of the two witnesses (and presumably mocked them) were Jews who beheld the death of Ananus and Jesus son of Gamala.  God's people are the good guys in the Book of Revelation.  The ones who mocked the two witnesses at their death are bad guys.  I have problems associating the two with each other.  Moreover, while there are many scholars who would agree with Lee that there was not always a solid line separating Jews from Christians, I have a hard time interpreting the martyrs and God's people in Revelation as anything other than Christian, since there seems to be so much in Revelation about their devotion to Jesus.  I have my doubts that John in Revelation understood the martyrs and God's people as non-Christian Jews.  But perhaps there are angles that I am not looking at adequately.

Josephus on Signs; Giants from the Abyss

I started Lee Harmon's Revelation: The Way It Happened.  Some months ago, I read and blogged through the sequel to this book: Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  See here for my posts on that.  And see here for Lee's excellent blog, The Dubious Disciple.  I'd like to thank Lee for sending me a copy of Revelation: The Way It Happened.

I'm going to play by ear how I blog through this book.  I do want to cover the broad themes of Lee's book, but I'll probably blog about tidbits here and there that interest me.  If that ends up overlapping with the broad themes, that will be good.  If it does not adequately do so, then I'll write a post about Lee's book that is more comprehensive.

Here are two tidbits for today:

1.  On pages 53-54, Lee says the following about the first century C.E. Jewish historian Flavius Josephus:
"In discussing the signs of the times, Josephus describes a light shining in the Temple, as well as a star like a sword, pointing to Jerusalem (probably Halley's comment in 66, which many Jews understood as foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem).  At one point, a heifer being led to sacrifice gives birth to a lamb in the midst of the Temple.  It is Josephus who first relates the story of the voice from the Holy of Holies saying, 'We are departing.'  But he implies that the common perception that the 'Day of the Lord' has arrived misinterprets these signs."

The idea that Josephus believed in those kinds of supernatural phenomena somewhat surprised me, for I assumed that Josephus was a fairly level-headed historian.  I learned in a class, after all, that Josephus often sought ways to rationalize away certain miracles in the Bible!  But it turns out that Josephus does talk about the signs that Lee is discussing, and much more, in Wars of the Jews, Book 6, Chapter 5.

Josephus is criticizing Jewish figures of the late first century C.E. who were holding out hope that God would deliver the Jews from the Romans.  Josephus' point was that there were signs that Jerusalem would be destroyed.  Josephus also applied to the Roman Vespasian the ancient oracle that someone from Israel would rule the earth, noting that Vespasian was made the emperor when he was in Judea.  Earlier in his book, Lee argues that John the Revelator had Vespasian in mind when he was writing about the first horseman of Revelation 6:2----who looks so much like the conquering Jesus, yet most likely was not that.  According to Lee, John probably regarded Vespasian as a false Messiah because Vespasian was considered by some to be the prophesied Messiah, plus Vespasian, like Jesus, performed miracles (see my posts here, here, and here).

I don't know a whole lot about Josephus' eschatological views.  But he does appear to be applying to Vespasian some Messianic prophecy.  One question I have is: Why did Josephus believe that God willed the destruction of Jerusalem?  Put differently, what, according to Josephus, did Jerusalem do that so offended God?  The New Testament says that Israel rejected Jesus.  Within rabbinic literature is the idea that Jerusalem was destroyed on account of Jewish infighting.  What was Josephus' view?

2.  On page 89, Lee is discussing Revelation 9, in which weird scorpions are coming out of the abyss amidst smoke to afflict human beings.  Lee cites Cassius Dio, a second-third century C.E. author who wrote a vast history of Rome.  In Cassius Dio 66.23.1, we read (in this translation): "Thus day was turned into night and light into darkness. Some thought that the Giants were rising again in revolt (for at this time also many of their forms could be discerned in the smoke and, moreover, a sound as of trumpets was heard), while others believed that the whole universe was being resolved into chaos or fire."  The context for this passage is Cassius Dio's discussion of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy, which destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

The wikipedia article on Mount Vesuvius says that it erupted in 79 C.E.  That is when Lee dates the Book of Revelation.  For Lee, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is significant in understanding a number of the cataclysmic events in the Book of Revelation.  Lee says that John could have seen the eruption from Patmos, yet Lee speculates that John may have been closer to the event (though Revelation 1:9 says John was on Patmos).  Lee also argues against the eruption occurring on a Tuesday, thereby allowing it to have happened on a Sunday, the Lord's Day, which was the day that John was in the spirit (Revelation 1:10).  In terms of the importance of Mount Vesuvius to understanding the Book of Revelation, I think that Lee is on to something, even if John happened to be viewing the event from Patmos on a Tuesday.  As far as I know, John doesn't say that he viewed the entire vision on the Lord's day.

Who were the giants whom Dio Cassius was talking about?  As far as I can see, Dio Cassius does not say.  But this article refers to giants who tried to overthrow Zeus, and some of them had feet that were serpents.  Giants are different from scorpions, right?  Yeah, but I still think that Lee and others who have interpreted Revelation 9 in light of the giants in Dio Cassius are on to something.  In both, you have rebellious figures coming out of the abyss in smoke.  Lee brings up other considerations in his discussion of Revelation 9, such as the idea that Nero----the oppressive Roman emperor who died in 68 C.E.----would lead Parthians from the east in an attack on Rome (see here).  Does not Revelation 16:12 refer to the kings of the east?  And Lee interprets the Apollyon of Revelation 9:11, the king of the Abyss, in light of the portrayal of Nero as Apollo.  For Lee, John's point was that demonic forces would be instigating Parthia's hordes, led by Nero.  Again, Lee and others who hold this particular interpretation are probably on to something!

Was Jonah Dead? Was Jesus Taking Away Dionysus' Glory?

My church is going through John's Gospel: Wisdom from Ephesus With Michael Card for its weekly Bible study.  Two things stood out to me at last night's meeting.

1.  A group of us was talking about the topic of Jesus going to hell during the time between his' death and his resurrection.  One person (whom I will call Joe) was offering his opinion and, in the course of his talk, he said that he believed that Jonah died inside of the great fish, but God brought Jonah back to life.  Joe was referring to Jonah 2:6, which says (in the King James Version): "I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God."  Were there mountains and bars in the belly of the great fish?  Probably not.  Consequently, according to Joe, Jonah was in Sheol.

I can see Joe's point.  I can also think of reasons that some might disagree.  They might view Jonah 2:6 as poetic or metaphorical rather than literal.  Moreover, they might interpret Jonah 2:6 to mean that God rescued Jonah from a near-death experience, not that God resurrected Jonah from the dead.  It was interesting to hear Joe's interpretation, though.  I've heard the view that God raised Jonah from the dead before, but I did not hear that view justified through an appeal to Jonah 2:6.

2.  Michael Card in the DVD was saying that elements of the Gospel of John spoke to the place where John was writing, Ephesus, as John challenged the paganism of the city.  Ephesus had a god of healing, Asclepius, and snakes were used in some of the healing rituals that were carried out in his name.  In John 3, we see Jesus appealing to the story in Numbers 21 about the brass serpent that the Israelites looked upon to receive healing, as Jesus likened himself to the brass serpent.  In Ephesus, there as a high regard for Dionysus, who changed water into wine.  In John 2, we see a story about Jesus changing water into wine.  According to Michael Card, Jesus in John's Gospel was taking back the glory from the pagan god Dionysus. 

I already knew about some of this information because I had read Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  And Lee in his book about Revelation discusses the similarities between a miracle that was attributed to Vespasius and one of Jesus' miracles.  Some Christian apologists maintain that Dionysus actually was not said to have changed water into wine.  See here.  Personally, the sources discussed in that link look rather ambiguous to me.  But let's say that there was a pagan story that Dionysus changed water into wine.  Should we really go all ga-ga over a Christian who said that Jesus did miracles that pagan gods were said to perform?  It's like how some scholars treat the Hebrew Bible: P wrote Genesis 1 to say that the God of Israel, not Marduk, was supreme.  So someone's saying that one's own god is better than another by claiming that his god can do what is attributed to another god.  Big deal?  I don't find that particularly powerful!

But suppose that John was saying that his audience in Ephesus could know that Jesus changed the water into wine because his Gospel was eyewitness testimony?  Someone in the group was saying that John 2 was probably powerful to some of the pagans at Ephesus because the stories about Dionysus were legends, whereas the story about Jesus changing water into wine was a fact.  John may have been trying to make that point: the Ephesians could trust eyewitness testimony to a miracle more than a legend about Dionysus.

Am I convinced by this, though?  I don't know.  I wouldn't be surprised if people had eyewitness stories about healing from pagan cults.  The pagan cults were popular, after all.  I'm sure that they were effective in bringing healing, at least some of the time, otherwise who would use them?  And, when these cults weren't effective, their defenders could perhaps explain that away: the person seeking healing was not pleasing the god enough, or the god had a reason for that person to remain sick.  Elements of Christianity have that same approach today.

John and John: Openness to Biblical Criticism

My church started a new Bible study last night.  We're going through John's Gospel: Wisdom from Ephesus, with Michael Card. 

What impressed me most last night was the openness of people in the group, and Michael Card on the DVD, to scholarly ideas about the composition of the Bible.  The pastor was saying that he learned from the History Channel's miniseries on the Bible that the John who wrote the Gospel of John was not the same person as the John who wrote the Book of Revelation.  Someone else in the group, who is rather conservative and evangelical yet is part of the more liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), said that he was in a Bible study group about the Book of Revelation, and it was discussing the question of whether the same person wrote the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation.

I had something to contribute to this discussion, for I got back into reading Lee Harmon's Revelation: The Way It Happened (and my blog posts on that book will appear starting June 25).  I happened to read the night before my Bible study Lee's discussion of the authorship of Revelation, so the issue was fresh in my mind.  I told the group about reasons that many scholars believe that John's Gospel and Revelation are by different people (different Greek styles), while also explaining the arguments of conservative scholars who maintain that the same guy wrote both books (i.e., literary reasons for the stylistic differences, and patristic ascription of Revelation to the apostle John).  I'm happy when I can come across as smart, as rarely as that happens! 

On the DVD, Michael Card was saying that Matthew and Luke base the outline of their story on the Gospel of Mark, so he was essentially agreeing with Markan priority.  While Card believes that John, the author of John's Gospel, was an eyewitness to Jesus, he seems to think that there's more to what John is doing than simply writing down what happened.  According to Card, John's Gospel was written much later than the synoptics, and so John had more time to reflect about the significance of Jesus.  The implication of this is that we see in John things that happened, mixed with John's retrospective and theological reflections about Jesus' significance.

I enjoyed hearing Michael Card talk about some of the differences between John's Gospel and the synoptics.  John leaves out some of the things that other Gospels have, while going in a different direction.  John, unlike Matthew and Luke, does not have a birth story about Jesus, but John does discuss the incarnation.  John does not have a Last Supper scene, but he does describe what happened after the Last Supper.  John, unlike the synoptics, does not have parables, but Jesus in John's Gospels is himself a parable----Jesus is the light of the world who goes on to open the eyes of the blind, and Jesus is the bread of life who feeds the multitudes.

I'm appreciative whenever an evangelical acknowledges some human element in the Bible, because that is a good counterweight to the ideas about the Bible that a number of conservative Christians hold: that all of the Bible's words were spoken or dictated by God.  I know that there are many conservative Christians who would distance themselves from this model of revelation, but there are still a number who hold fast to it.

I'm doubtful that some of the people in my group would be open to other conclusions that biblical scholarship has made: the view that Moses did not write the Pentateuch but that it contains contradictory sources or layers, or the idea there there are multiple hands in the Book of Isaiah.  It doesn't really tax one's faith to say that different Johns wrote John's Gospel and the Book of Revelation.  After all, even according to traditionalists, the Bible contains the work of more than one author!  But to say that Moses did not write the Pentateuch does not sound right to a number of conservative Christians, one reason being that Jesus seems to attribute parts of the Pentateuch to Moses.  The same would go for the question of how many Isaiahs there are.  And, for some reason, there are a number of conservative Christians who wouldn't be open to the idea that Paul did not write all of the letters attributed to him.  I think that the reason for their discomfort here is that such a view would make the letters less authentic----they'd like for a letter that is attributed to Paul to be from Paul, not from some unknown who was pretending to be Paul.

Moreover, I'm not sure if people in the group would acknowledge that the Bible contradicts himself.  Some in the group are more open to that than others.  When John's Gospel is different from the synoptics, that's not a contradiction, in the eyes of many conservative Christians.  Rather, John's Gospel and the synoptics are highlighting different aspects of the truth.   

John 20:23, and Concluding Reflections

I finished Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  In this post, I'll write about John 20:23, then I will provide my overall assessment of Lee's book.

John 20:23 states (in the King James Version): "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained."

This verse has long disturbed me, the same way that Matthew 16:19 has troubled me.  (Matthew 16:19 says in the KJV: "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.")  The reason is that I have a hard time with the notion that God would condition God's acceptance or rejection of me on what fallible human beings think.  I have seen or heard of church leaders abusing their power and scaring their congregants with the threat that God will reject them if they disobey the church authorities.  And I draw comfort from the notion that God sides with what's right and that God loves me, even if there are other human beings (even church authorities) who might not.

Is there a better way to understand John 20:23?  As I look at Protestant commentaries, such as those of John Gill and John MacArthur, I see the idea that the church has the authority to declare that people are forgiven or unforgiven in the sense that God has given it stewardship over the Gospel, upon which forgiveness is conditioned: if a person repents and receives the Gospel, then the church will declare that person forgiven; if the person rejects the Gospel, then the church will declare him or her unforgiven.  According to this view, as I understand it, the church has authority in terms of forgiveness because it possesses the means of forgiveness (the Gospel), and yet whether or not a person is forgiven does not depend on the whims of church leaders, but rather on acceptance of the Gospel that the church preaches. 

Lee has a similar view, at least somewhat.  Lee talks about John 20:23 on pages 342-343.  According to Lee, Jesus in John 20:23 is encouraging the disciples to go out and preach forgiveness, which is the way that people will become free.  Otherwise, people are lost and in sin.  But my impression is that Lee differs somewhat from how many evangelicals would understand this: that we need to preach the Gospel because otherwise people will not hear and will go to hell because they did not have a chance to receive God's forgiveness, and thus are in a state of unforgiveness.  According to Lee, God has already forgiven everyone, but we're the ones who keep dragging others' sin up in our refusal to forgive and let things go.  By atoning for our sin, Jesus has given us the opportunity to "see beyond it."  In this Jubilee, we should be setting people free rather than holding grudges.  God has forgiven everyone, but that does not free people if we do not let them know that they are forgiven or forgive them ourselves.

Both the views of Protestant interpreters and Lee's view are thought-provoking, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is truth in what they say.  Still, when I read the verse, it seems to say that God's forgiveness (not just our cognizance of God's forgiveness) is somehow conditioned on whether or not the disciples exercise forgiveness (not just preach the Gospel).  I don't think that Jesus was giving the disciples a loaded pistol or knowingly sanctioning the abuse of power.  But, somehow, the church seems to have authority when it comes to people's forgiveness.

Now, for my overall assessment of Lee's book.  Again, I'd like to thank him for sending me a copy.  I have enjoyed reading it, and I have found it thought-provoking, intellectually stimulating, and spiritually inspiring.  In terms of its positives, I appreciated its picture of Christians struggling to recover their faith after the failure of their apocalyptic expectations, Lee's discussion of early Christians' diversity and their complex interaction with the Hebrew Bible, and Lee's wide-ranging knowledge of biblical scholarship, which he manifests in the book.  In terms of its negatives, there were times when I wished that Lee provided more footnotes to document what he was saying, especially when he was talking about how John's Gospel reflects pagan religions in areas (which, as he knows, has been debated within scholarship).  Moreover, it seemed to me that Lee contradicted himself in areas: he presents Paul as believing in a realized resurrection, but later he says that Paul expected for the resurrection to be future; he says that John's Gospel knew of II Thessalonians 2:13 (which is about the son of perdition, the man of sin) and applies the "son of perdition" label to Judas, but Lee later contends that II Thessalonians 2:13 was a reaction against John applying the label to Judas (pages 268, 350); and I'm still not clear about whether or not Lee thinks that John believed in an afterlife.  Contradiction is understandable, for there are plenty of arguments that can make sense or manifest a degree of plausibility, even though they contradict each other; I struggled with this when I did my comprehensive exam in Hebrew Bible!  But I think that a book should be consistent.  Overall, I'd say that Lee's book was consistent, in terms of its big picture: that John was replacing a futurist eschatology with a realized eschatology.  But it was mostly on side-issues that there appeared to be inconsistencies.

I blogged a lot through this book, but there were plenty of topics that I did not get to (i.e., John was from a priestly family).  My blog posts hopefully gave you a taste, and you are now tempted to buy Lee's book and read it for yourself!

John 20:17: Mary Magdalene and Jesus' Ascension

In John 20:17, Jesus says to Mary Magdalene shortly after his resurrection: "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and [to] my God, and your God" (KJV).

Why didn't Jesus want for Mary Magdalene to touch him before he ascended to his Father?  Later in the chapter, Thomas touches Jesus when he puts his hand into Jesus' side.  Did Jesus ascend sometime between his conversation with Mary and his conversation with Thomas, and that was why Thomas could touch him whereas Mary could not?  (UPDATE: Lee Harmon later argues in John's Gospel: The Way It Happened that the part of John's Gospel about Thomas touching Jesus' side was added by a later hand.)

In this post, I'll go into various interpretations of John 20:17, including that of Lee Harmon in John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  Not all of the interpretations that I will mention are scholarly, for I don't own a lot of scholarly commentaries on the Gospel of John.  But I will draw from what I have.

Lee Harmon's view is that Mary was interrupting the ascent of Jesus' soul to heaven.  According to Lee, there was a notion at this time that the souls of the martyrs went to heaven, whereas the souls of everybody else went to Sheol, and, for John, Jesus was a martyr whose soul was going to heaven.  The soul departed from the body after three days, and Jesus at the time that he was speaking to Mary was therefore "incorporeal, untouchable" (page 330).  Lee also brings realized eschatology into the picture.  A common view within Christianity was that Jesus ascended to heaven and would one day come back to perform his Messianic role.  But John interprets this view within the lens of realized eschatology, according to Lee: Jesus would ascend to heaven, and soon thereafter he would come down and dwell with believers through the Holy Spirit.  Remember from my previous posts that, according to Lee, John's Gospel regards the coming of the Holy Spirit as Jesus' second coming.

Do I buy into this view?  While I am happy that Lee interacts here with the issue of the afterlife in the Gospel of John (since I was wondering what Lee's view on that is), I have a hard time with his focus on Jesus' soul to the exclusion of his body.  For one, as N.T. Wright has noted, this was a resurrection, and that's not entirely the same as a disembodied soul.  Moreover, in the Gospel of John, we can tell that John believed that Jesus' body rose on the third day because his body was missing from the tomb, and, later on, Jesus appeared to his disciples with his wounds.  If Jesus' soul were absent from his body when he appeared to Mary, then where exactly was his body?  It wasn't in the tomb!  Lee addresses this question, but he does not appear to answer it head-on; instead, he discusses the empty tomb tradition in the New Testament.  (UPDATE: In an appendix, on page 359, Lee says that what happened to Jesus' flesh is a mystery, and that it "has simply disappeared, never to be seen again!")

Regarding Lee's claim on realized eschatology, I find that to be plausible.  Jesus ascended to heaven, and then he returned and imparted to his disciples the Holy Spirit (John 20:22), which arguably could have been a means for him to dwell with his disciples.  (On a side note, Lee makes an interesting point when he interprets the five hundred witnesses to the risen Jesus in I Corinthians 15:6 in reference to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2.)

Why, then, could Mary not touch Jesus before his ascension?  There are a number of commentators (i.e., Peake's commentary, Bullinger, and others) who contend that something important happened at Jesus' ascension----he was presented to the Father as the wavesheaf offering, the Father accepted Jesus' sacrifice, Jesus officially was crowned with glory, etc.  But advocates of these positions did not explain, at least not to my satisfaction, why Mary could not touch Jesus before his ascension, whereas people could touch him after the ascension had taken place.  The closest I saw them get to an explanation was their assertion that Jesus wanted for Mary to regard him in a new way, not in her old manner of familiarity, and so Jesus needed to officially become new before that could happen.

But there are other commentators who take a different track altogether.  They don't regard Jesus' ascension as something that took place between the time that Jesus spoke to Mary and the time that Jesus appeared to Thomas.  Rather, in accordance with Luke-Acts, they regard Jesus' ascension as Jesus going to heaven forty days after his resurrection.  Consequently, when Jesus tells Mary not to touch him because he has not ascended, such commentators contend that Jesus is telling Mary that she should not cling to him but should rush to tell the disciples, for she'll have plenty of time to interact with Jesus before he goes back to heaven (John Gill), or that Mary should not cling to Jesus on earth because he will eventually have to go to heaven (John MacArthur).  I can't really argue against these sorts of ideas.  But they don't entirely set right with me.

A Random Tomb (Without a Stone and Guards)?

In my latest reading of John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, Lee Harmon discusses the tomb in which Jesus was placed in the Gospel of John.  Lee states the following on page 316:

"John's Gospel gives the impression that Jesus was hurriedly placed in a temporary location, his buriers aware of its impermanency, perhaps not even knowing the proper owner of the tomb.  Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea discover a tomb in an unnamed garden and borrow it for Jesus."

John 19:40-42 does give that impression.  It states (in the King James Version):

"Then took [Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea] the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.  Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.  There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews' preparation [day]; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand."

In this passage, it does appear to be the case that a Sabbath (perhaps the first Day of Unleavened Bread) was coming soon, and so Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were looking for any nearby tomb that they could find so they could place Jesus there until they could give him a proper burial.  They found a garden close to where Jesus was crucified, there was a tomb at that Garden, and so they placed Jesus there.

Lee depicts John and Matthew debating about Jesus' tomb (and I should say that the debates between John and Matthew are entertaining parts of the book).  Matthew says that Jesus was not put in a random tomb but rather in the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea's tomb, which Joseph of Arimathea himself had carved out of rock (Matthew 27:57-60).  Whereas John bases his account in this case on having seen Jesus die and having talked with Nicodemus, Matthew bases his understanding of what happened on Scripture: Isaiah 53:9 says that the Suffering Servant will be with the rich in his death (to draw from the KJV's language).  Moreover, while Matthew believes that a stone was rolled in front of Jesus' tomb and that guards were placed there, John says that he is not aware that a stone covered the tomb, and that there were no armed guards when he went there.

In my opinion, Lee's interpretation of the Gospel of John in this case makes sense of what occurs in John 20: Mary Magdalene sees that the tomb is empty and she thinks that someone moved Jesus to another location.  I can understand why Mary Magdalene would conclude that, if Jesus were put into a random tomb in a random Garden on a temporary basis. 

I guess where I am puzzled is when John 20:8-9 states: "Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.  For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead."  But why would the disciple whom Jesus loved believe after seeing the empty tomb, if the empty tomb by itself did not prove that Jesus rose from the dead, for there was a natural explanation for why Jesus' body wasn't there: somebody came and moved it (and, in John's Gospel, it was probably unencumbered by a huge stone or armed guards)?  Or did the disciple believe on account of Jesus' clothes lying in the tomb?  Or did the disciple even believe that Jesus rose from the dead at that point, for v 9 says that he did not know that the Scripture said that Jesus would rise from the dead.  Perhaps, when v 8 says that he "believed", it means that he accepted Mary Magdalene's testimony that Jesus' body was missing.

(UPDATE: On page 335, Lee presents Peter saying that a grave robber could not have removed the body of Jesus because "No grave robber could unwrap him and leave the grave clothes."  The idea is that anyone taking the body would take the wrappings as well.)

What Kind of Jesus?

In my last post on Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, I mentioned Lee's view that John was John of Gisclala, who was influential in a Jewish revolt against Rome that led to the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.  According to Lee, John still had dreams of a bloody end to evil when he was exiled on Patmos, which was when he wrote the Book of Revelation, but John later had a change of heart, as the Gospel of John reflects.  John stopped expecting a bloody end and embraced a realized eschatology that emphasized love, Jesus' presence with the church, and Jesus' victory over evil on the cross.

One question I have had as I've read this book is this: Was the John who believed in realized eschatology more faithful to the teachings of Jesus?  Lee narrates that John certainly understood some of Jesus' teachings differently when John became committed to realized eschatology.  For example, Matthew 10:23 says that you (presumably the disciples) will not pass through all the tribes of Israel before the Son of Man comes.  According to Lee, John came to interpret Jesus' coming here, not as a cataclysmic event that would bring a bloody end, but rather as Jesus' coming to the church through the Holy Spirit.

As far as what Jesus himself taught, Lee refers to scholarship that holds that Jesus' message was not particularly apocalyptic, but there were Christians who later added an apocalyptic layer.  In light of that, Lee appears to be arguing that Jesus himself had a realized eschatology, which was reflected in the sources behind the Gospel of John.  And yet, in one of his narrations of the life of Jesus in this book, Lee presents Jesus as one who proclaims a sort of Jubilee, which entails the healing of the oppressed and sharing with the poor (page 228).  How would that fit within a realized eschatology?  Or would it fit better within a futurist (and yet imminent) eschatology, in which Jesus is seeking to overthrow the present world system?  Perhaps it could fit a realized eschatology, as Christians continue to heal and show love to the poor in the here-and-now, and hopefully that would lead to a widespread Jubilee.  (UPDATE: On page 344, Lee associates the Jubilee with Christians forgiving and people being forgiven.)

More on John and Realized Eschatology

In this post, I'll write more about realized eschatology in the Gospel of John, as discussed in Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  In my latest reading, key eschatological themes are said to be applied in John's Gospel to the first coming of Jesus Christ and to his spiritual reign (if you will).  The Beast, or the man of sin, in John's Gospel is Judas Iscariot, for both are called the son of perdition (John 17:12; II Thessalonians 2:3, and Lee also refers to Daniel), and both lead soldiers against Christ.  The parousia takes place when Christ sends the Holy Spirit, which is how Christ will dwell with his disciples, since Christ is so united with the Holy Spirit that the two (in a sense) are one.  The devil has already been cast down from heaven in John's Gospel (John 12:31).  And Moses and Elijah in the Gospel of John are not figures who will come in the future to inaugurate the end times, nor was John the Baptist Elijah, since John denied being Elijah in John 1:21.  Rather, according to Lee, Jesus in John's Gospel is Moses and Elijah, for Jesus fed the multitude with loaves like Elijah, and he brought manna like Moses.  Actually, I should note that it was Elisha (not Elijah) who multiplied the loaves (II Kings 4:42-44), but Elijah did multiply flour and oil (see I Kings 17:7-16).

And who is the false prophet of Revelation 13 in the Gospel of John, in Lee's view?  In my latest reading, John actually identifies himself as the false prophet.  According to Lee, John was probably John of Giscala, who led a Jewish revolt in Palestine during the years leading up to 70 C.E.  John at first embraced Jesus' spiritual message, but then he took a militant apocalyptic approach, which he displayed when he wrote the Book of Revelation.  But, years later, John once more embraced a more spiritual, realized eschatology, and he regretted his days as an apocalyptic prophet.  (Lee provides arguments that the same hand was behind John's Gospel and the Book of Revelation, notwithstanding their stylistic differences, and that John was an eyewitness to Christ.  Lee discusses his identification of John with John of Giscala in more detail in his previous book, Revelation: The Way It Happened, which I have not yet read.)

One thing that I have wondered as I have read Lee's book is this: Does Lee think that John in his Gospel believes in an afterlife, a hope for the believer that extends beyond the grave?  To be honest, I'm having my doubts.  Lee interprets Jesus' statements in John 14 about preparing a place for his disciples, not in reference to them going to heaven to be with Jesus after their deaths, but rather in reference to Jesus through the Holy Spirit coming to be with them on earth, in a new spiritual temple.  What, then, does God's victory concretely mean in John's Gospel, according to Lee?  What I'm getting is that it entails such things as God protecting believers from the evil one, God expanding the borders of the Christian community, Christ through his death drawing people to himself, the believers loving and serving one another in obedience to Christ, people having a new outlook as a result of their spiritual rebirth, and the church experiencing Christ's presence.

All of this realized eschatology is good, in my opinion, but, as I said in my last post on Lee's book, I have a hard time conceiving of a religion being hopeful when it lacks a futurist eschatology, or at the very least a belief that there is a post-mortem realm where things are made right.  I have a hard time believing that John's Gospel----in which Jesus stresses life, calls himself the resurrection, comforts Mary and Martha by raising Lazarus from the dead, and rises from the dead himself----viewed resurrection solely as a spiritual rebirth, without some notion of the afterlife being attached to it.

(UPDATE: Later in the book, Lee addresses the question of whether John had a belief in some sort of afterlife.  Stay tuned for my post on that!)

(UPDATE 2: Actually, I'll comment on the afterlife right now.  On page 343, Lee says that "Not once does John promise an afterlife or describe heaven", and on page 355 Lee criticizes the "afterlife-oriented teachings of today's churches."  Lee understands eternal life in John's Gospel as abundant life and as knowing the Father and Christ, and such passages as John 10:10 and John 17:3 may very well support that.  At the same time, Lee does appear to be open to the notion that John could have had some conception of the afterlife, or at least that is my impression.  On page 332, Lee says that Jesus' soul going to the Father and the two of them coming down to dwell with believers may give us insight into John's view regarding the afterlife.  And, on page 339, the dying John tells Ruth that he will not leave her, for "Life is everlasting, our Christian spirit forever entwined, for we are one."  Personally, I see no problem with regarding eternal life as abundant life and as knowing God and Christ in the present, but I don't think that precludes it applying to the afterlife, as well.)

Parousia at the Cross

Something that I read in a New Testament class one time was that the Gospel of John does not have a scene of darkness at Jesus' crucifixion, unlike the synoptics, for John wanted to present the crucifixion as a time of light and glory.  In my reading so far of John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, Lee Harmon has made a similar point----that Jesus' crucifixion was a time of triumph.  In my latest reading, Lee explains more what he means by that.

On pages 234-235, John, Matthew, and Ruth are discussing whether or not Jesus' crucifixion was a victory.  John refers to Colossians 2:13-14, which affirms that Jesus  spoiled and made a spectacle of the powers and the authorities, presumably on the cross.  Matthew, who is skeptical that Paul wrote Colossians, asserts that Paul expected for the victory to be future rather than something that occurred at the cross, for Paul foretold in I Thessalonians 4:17 that Christ would show up in the air, and believers would ascend to meet him.  John then tells Matthew that Paul was correct, and yet John proceeds to interpret the parousia and Jesus' drawing of believers in another way: Jesus would be lifted up on the cross, and there he would draw all people to himself.  When Matthew inquires how Jesus can draw anyone to himself while he is on a cross, John asks Matthew what power Jesus would command while he is "suffering, dying, bound to a tree" (page 235).  Ruth then interjects an answer: "Love...that's all he would have left to draw people with" (page 235).

This was actually a powerful part of the book, but it wasn't just because of the scene itself.  It was also because I was watching a movie while I was reading this passage, and the music that was playing from the soundtrack fit the passage quite nicely.  The movie was Eastern Promises, which I did not care for, to tell you the truth, but the soundtrack was good with the passage that I was reading!

The notion that Jesus could command people with love when he had nothing else with which he could command them, due to his vulnerability and apparent helplessness on the cross, is quite powerful.  Like Matthew, however, I would like for that love to be backed up with concrete power, in some form, for how would we be helped if the person who loves us cannot deliver us from our hopeless situation?  In my opinion, there has to be some futurist eschatology if a religion is to have any hope----or at least some place that people can go (such as heaven) where good triumphs and evil does not prevail.

Lazarus and Osiris?

For my write-up today on Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, I'll comment on Lee's comparison of Jesus' resurrection of Lazarus in John 11 with the ancient Egyptian story of Osiris.  In John 11, Lazarus has two sisters (Mary and Martha), and Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead on the fourth day after Lazarus' burial.  On page 203 of John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, one of the characters, Ruth, draws parallels between John 11 and the Osiris story.  Ruth says to Matthew:

"Osiris has two sisters who weep for him when he dies.  It is said of him, 'You have slept, but you will awake; you have died, but you will live.'  He is instructed while dead not to decay, not to smell.  Just like Lazarus.  So his tomb is opened on the fourth day, like Lazarus.  Horus approaches and commands, 'Go forth: wake up!'  And his wrappings are removed...John's story has been around for a long, long time Matthew."  John then says, "Before Abraham was, I AM."

I should add that another point that is often made by people who draw parallels between the story of Lazarus and that of Osiris is that the names "Lazarus" and "Osiris" are similar.

The idea that there are parallels between the Gospel story about Jesus and Egyptian mythology is particularly popular in freethought circles, which seek to portray the Gospel story as a rip-off or as just another savior tale that draws on stock-elements.  See this clip from Bill Maher's Religulous.  Some Christian thinkers, such as C.S. Lewis, have contended that such parallels are actually compatible with Christianity, for Egyptian mythology could have been foreshadowing the coming of Christ.

But there are also a number of Christian apologists, as well as scholars who are not beholden to Christian apologetics, who dispute that many of these so-called parallels indeed are parallels.  See here at Yahoo Answers (only the answers here to the question about Lazarus and Osiris are not particularly well-documented), and also Maurice Casey's critique of D.M. Murdock's work here. 

In this post, I'll share some of what I found when doing online searches on this topic.  I'll be referring to wikipedia, which many consider to be a no-no.  But the wikipedia article that I'll be using cites scholarly sources.  Plus, I'm not claiming that my post here is the final word on Osiris.  Far from it.  I'm not an Egyptologist.  There's a lot that I do not know.  I'm writing this post to start a discussion rather than to end it.  And your comments are welcome, as long as you don't put me down. 

Okay, here we go!  D.M. Murdock/Acharya S is an author who believes that there are parallels between ancient Egyptian mythology and the Gospel story of Jesus.  She wrote a book, Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection, which I would like to read someday, but I'm not buying it right now because it's price is too high for my budget!  On this site, Murdock has a chart listing what she considers to be parallels between the story of Osiris and the story of Jesus raising Lazarus in John 11.  The reason that this chart is useful is that it actually refers to primary sources for the Osiris story.  I do not know what all of those abbreviations mean, but "PT" stands for "Pyramid Texts."  You can find an English translation of one of the Pyramid Texts here.  I myself have not plowed through the Pyramid Texts to see if I agree with Murdock's interpretation of them.  Trying to understand verse takes more work than I'm willing to put into this topic right now.  But I'm linking to the texts, in case you or I choose to take a look at them sometime, for research purposes or out of curiosity.

The thing is, when wikipedia and the site here sum up the story of Osiris, I don't see in their summaries much that resembles the story of Lazarus' resurrection in John 11.  Yes, Osiris has two sisters, Isis and Nephthys.  But there are elements of the Osiris story that are not in the Lazarus story.  Osiris' brother Seth conspires with others to kill Osiris, out of an attempt to take Osiris' throne and also Osiris' wife-sister, Isis.  Seth succeeds in his plot, and he scatters the body-arts of Osiris throughout the land of Egypt.  But Isis, Nephthys, and others find most of those body parts and resurrect Osiris so that he can impregnate Isis with a son, Horus, who would be the new king.  Osiris' resurrection appears to be temporary, however.  Osiris becomes the ruler of the afterlife, and Horus and Seth battle for kingship.
But what about Murdock's reference to the parts of the Pyramid Texts that appear to present Horus resurrecting Osiris?  The closest that I could find to this in the wikipedia article was the following paragraph:

"With great celebration among the gods, Horus takes the throne, and Egypt at last has a rightful king.  The divine decision that Set is in the wrong corrects the injustice created by Osiris' murder and completes the process of his restoration after death.  Sometimes Set is made to carry Osiris' body to its tomb as part of his punishment.  The new king performs funerary rites for his father and gives food offerings to sustain him—often including the Eye of Horus, which in this instance represents life and plenty.  According to some sources, only through these acts can Osiris be fully enlivened in the afterlife and take his place as king of the dead, paralleling his son's role as king of the living. Thereafter, Osiris is deeply involved with natural cycles of death and renewal, such as the annual growth of crops, that parallel his own resurrection."

You can click here to see the footnotes and the scholarly sources that the article sites for this particular paragraph.  What appears to be the case is that Horus is enlivening Osiris, on some level, but Horus is doing so in order that Osiris might serve as king of the dead in the afterlife.  The idea is not for Osiris to roam the earth once more, but rather for Osiris to serve his function in the realm of the dead.  I wouldn't say that there's a perfect match between the Osiris myth and John 11, for the stories are different.  And yet, I hope that I've taken some steps (however inadequate or preliminary) towards understanding the context for what Murdock considers to be parallels.

(UPDATE: On pages 205-210, Lee has a more extensive discussion about the parallels between elements of the Jesus story and other religions.  He talks about scholars who are skeptical about many of the parallels, as well as refers to attempts by Justin Martyr and Tertullian to account for them, attributing them to mimicry by the devil.)

The True Murderer, and John's Interaction with the Hebrew Bible

In John 8:44, Jesus says to his Jewish opponents, "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it" (KJV).  In my latest reading of John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, Lee Harmon interacts with the question of how exactly the devil was a murderer from the beginning.  Did the devil actually kill people?  Lee notes that Satan murdered the sons of Job with God's permission, and Lee refers to the views that the devil was a murderer from the beginning in that Cain----whom later Jewish traditions presented as the son of the devil----killed Abel, or the devil in the Garden of Eden contributed to humanity's death by encouraging Eve to disobey God's commandment, resulting in the death penalty for humanity (i.e., we all eventually die).

But Lee does not believe that, overall, the devil is a murderer in the Bible.  Then Lee says "...but Yahweh is", after which he mentions the times that God mandated stoning for a variety of transgressions, sanctioned genocide, and even killed a large number of people himself when he was angry.  Lee, in commenting on John 8:44, asks on page 164, "Did Jesus, blessed with the true Spirit of the loving Father, imply that his people never knew the real Father, but were repeatedly deceived?"  Lee answers his own question when he says: "'The Jews,' according to John, have misunderstood God for centuries; they do not even worship the same God as Jesus.  They have been seduced in their laws by the spirit of the devil."  Lee sees a parallel between this and and views held by Gnostics, who maintained that Jesus was in conflict with "the evil creator of this world and orchestrator of Old Testament inhumanities" (page 165).  Lee does not believe that the Gospel of John is Gnostic or orthodox Christian, but rather that John would probably "consider both these later strands of Christianity to be extreme" (page 165).  But my impression is that Lee believes that, in John 8:44, Jesus essentially is referring to the God of the Old Testament as a devil.

Overall, I don't agree with Lee on this.  I would concede that a theme in the Gospel of John is that Jesus is revealing the Father, who before was not seen or heard (John 1:18).  I would also concede that the Gospel of John maintains that there is discontinuity between the Hebrew Bible and what Jesus is doing, for John 1:17 contrasts the law that was given through Moses with the grace and truth that are in Jesus Christ.  And yet, Jesus in John's Gospel also maintains that his work is somehow a fulfillment of the Hebrew Bible----in that the law of Moses points to Jesus (John 5:39, 45-46), and Jesus has fulfilled ancient prophecies (John 7:38).  Moreover, Jesus appears to uphold the ethics of the law in John 7:19: "Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill me?"  My impression is that John regards the Old Testament as divinely-inspired, and yet incomplete.  Moreover, while I can see Lee's point that the theme that the devil (or Satan) was a murderer is not salient in the Bible, Hebrews 2:14 says that the devil has the power of death.  Granted, you don't see the devil killing people a lot, but there is a connection between him and death. 

But even Lee acknowledges that John believed that Jesus fulfilled prophecies in the Hebrew Bible.  The thing is, in my opinion, what Lee says highlights how complex John's interaction with the Hebrew Bible actually was.  John does not try to show that Jesus was born in Bethlehem to silence the detractors who say that Jesus was not the Messiah because he came from Galilee rather than Bethlehem (John 7:41-42), and the reason, for Lee, is that John does not think that the issue was important, even though Micah 5:2 affirms that the coming ruler of Israel would come from Bethlehem.  Lee maintains that John viewed Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecies in Ezekiel----such as the spiritual washing in such passages as Ezekiel 36:25.  And yet, Lee presents John knowingly preferring the vision of Zechariah 9-14 to Ezekiel's vision of restoration.  Ezekiel presents a restoration in which God defeats Israel's enemies and Northern and Southern Israelites return to the land, whereas Zechariah 9-14 has a picture in which the Israelites reject a meek one (a king? Prophet? God?) and Jerusalem is largely decimated in its purification.  According to Lee, John goes with the latter, for John regarded the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. as a necessary part of God's plan, in which God replaced the old Temple with the new Temple, Jesus.

I'd like to think that John was not arbitrary in his approach to the Bible----that he didn't pick and choose what he would accept from the text.  The way that Lee has presented it in my reading thus far, John consciously picked and chose.  But perhaps John did not believe that he was rejecting the passages that he downplayed or ignored.  Maybe he believed that Ezekiel's prophecy of restoration was fulfilled spiritually rather than literally, for example.  (UPDATE: Later in the book, Lee appears to go that route.)

I can somewhat sympathize with Gnosticism and Lee's problems with the God of the Hebrew Bible, however.  I look at a number of evangelicals who seem to be happy because they worship a God of unconditional love.  I go to the Bible to encounter this God whom they worship, and I see someone who strikes Israelites with a plague when he is angry with their behavior.  I suppose that I can try to justify God's wrath----I wouldn't say that it was baseless----but it seems to fall short of the unconditional love that evangelicals believe is characteristic of God.  And yet, evangelicals would profess to accept all of the Bible.