Puzzled about Baptism

We had a baptism at church this morning!  And, as has happened more than once when my church has had a baptism (see, for example, my post here), I became confused about baptism!

Here are two items:

1.  The liturgy said: "We praise You that in baptism You give us Your Holy Spirit, who teaches us and leads us into all truth.  Pour out your Spirit upon us and upon this water from the Jordan River, that this font may be your womb of new birth."

So is water baptism necessary for a person to be born again, or to receive the Holy Spirit?  The liturgy seems to suggest that, unless I'm misreading it!

The thing is, my pastor appeared to be saying the opposite in his sermon.  No, he did not say "Water baptism is not what saves you," but he seemed to be sticking with a model of salvation that I have seen so often within evangelicalism: that a person can be saved just by calling on the name of the Lord, even if he or she does not go on to be baptized.  You hear stories about people in their hotel rooms picking up a Gideon's Bible, asking Jesus into their heart, and becoming born again.  I remember being in a campus evangelical group, and the evangelist was telling us that we can be saved simply by sitting in class one day and asking Jesus into our hearts.  And the pastor this morning told us a story about a woman who saw Billy Graham on TV, watched him because she was too lazy to change the channel, and became saved.  She placed her faith in Christ, and her life changed.

The way that it was for me, I said the sinner's prayer (if you will) years before I was actually baptized in water.  I don't think I'm the only person like this, for I know even evangelicals who have not been baptized, or who became baptized long after their born again experience.
 
But the New Testament seems to me to associate baptism with forgiveness of sins and spiritual rebirth.  I think of Mark 1:4, Acts 2:38 and 22:16, and Romans 6.  My impression is that many New Testament Christians did not radically separate the initial profession of faith from water baptism.  Rather, what we often see in the Book of Acts is that people decide to believe in Jesus, and then almost immediately thereafter they are baptized.  There wasn't a long span of time because the initial profession of faith and water baptism, in short.

2.  Why was Jesus baptized, when he was sinless?  To be honest, I've not yet encountered an answer to this question that entirely sits well with me.  The liturgy says that Jesus was anointed as the Messiah at his baptism, and, yes, there do seem to be places in the New Testament in which baptism was the time of Jesus' anointing for his ministry.  But baptism is also associated with forgiveness of sins.  Actually, it's strongly associated with forgiveness of sins.  Did Jesus' own baptism lack that significance?  Well, I guess it had to, if you want to accept the traditional Christian view that Jesus was sinless, but how could Jesus' baptism mean one thing, while other people's baptism meant something else entirely? 

Is Christianity Deep and Profound?

A question that I asked myself at church this morning is this: Is Christianity really that deep and profound of a religion?   My pastor was saying that it is.  And our liturgy and Psalm 139 say that God has numerous thoughts, which we are not able to count.  But, when I look at Christianity, it doesn't strike me as overly deep or profound.  I'm not saying that I know everything or even most things about it and its various manifestations and holy writings.  But I do believe that I have a fairly decent handle on its overall repertoire, and, even when I come across things about it that I do not know, I am not particularly awed, nor do I feel as if I am traveling in very deep waters.  There's enough for me to learn that I can stay entertained by reading and thinking about the Bible.  But the Bible and Christianity do not strike me as particularly deep or profound.

That's all I'm in the mood to write in this post.

Purification of Body and Soul

On page 287 of Verus Israel (translated into the English by H. McKeating), Marcel Simon talks about how ancient Christians distinguished Jewish baptism from Christian baptism:

"Sometime when they use the word baptism they are thinking of the regular ablutions, which is why these authors sometimes emphasize, as a contrast between Jewish baptism and Christian, the fact that the Jewish rite is repeated.  Most frequently they are thinking of proselyte baptism and purificatory baths at the same time.  But they always put the Jewish rite and Christian baptism side by side, and set themselves to demonstrate the conspicuous superiority of the latter.  The former can have no effect except on the body.  Only Christian baptism is capable of purifying the soul.  St. John Chrysostom does allow to Jewish baptism a religious value, which distinguishes it from the ordinary bath taken for hygienic reasons."

Here are some thoughts about this:

1.  The part about Jewish baptism only affecting the body, whereas Christian baptism purifies the soul, reminds me of what Josephus said about John the Baptist's baptism in Antiquities 18:117: "for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness toward one another, and piety toward God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body: supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness" (Whiston's translation). 

The idea here seems to be that baptism purifies the body, whereas something else was necessary for the purification of the soul, namely, righteousness.  Why would the body need to be purified, though?  Is this referring to ritual purification?

2.  The endnote for Simon's claim that certain ancient Christians said that Jewish baptism only affects the body refers to Apostolic Constitutions 7.44.  That includes the following (see here): "O Lord God, who is without generation, and without a superior, the Lord of the whole world, who has scattered the sweet odour of the knowledge of the Gospel among all nations, grant at this time that this ointment may be efficacious upon him that is baptized, that so the sweet odour of Your Christ may continue upon him firm and fixed; and that now he has died with Him, he may arise and live with Him. Let him say these and the like things, for this is the efficacy of the laying on of hands on every one; for unless there be such a recital made by a pious priest over every one of these, the candidate for baptism does only descend into the water as do the Jews, and he only puts off the filth of the body, not the filth of the soul. After this let him stand up, and pray that prayer which the Lord taught us. But, of necessity, he who is risen again ought to stand up and pray, because he that is raised up stands upright. Let him, therefore, who has been dead with Christ, and is raised up with Him, stand up." 

The idea here seems to be that, while Christian baptism is powerful because it entails becoming dead and rising again with Christ, it is not enough for the cleansing of the soul.  Unless baptism is followed by the laying on of hands and prayer by a pious priest, it amounts to mere purification of the body, not cleansing of the soul.

3.  The endnote for Simon's statement that Chrysostom believed that Jewish baptism has religious value refers to Chrystostom's Instruction to Catechumens 1:2, which includes the following (see here): "There is that laver by means of the baths, common to all men, which is wont to wipe off bodily uncleanness; and there is the Jewish laver, more honorable than the other, but far inferior to that of grace; and it too wipes off bodily uncleanness but not simply uncleanness of body, since it even reaches to the weak conscience. For there are many matters, which by nature indeed are not unclean, but which become unclean from the weakness of the conscience. And as in the case of little children, masks, and other bugbears are not in themselves alarming, but seem to little children to be alarming, by reason of the weakness of their nature, so it is in the case of those things of which I was speaking; just as to touch dead bodies is not naturally unclean, but when this comes into contact with a weak conscience, it makes him who touches them unclean. For that the thing in question is not unclean naturally, Moses himself who ordained this law showed, when he bore off the entire corpse of Joseph, and yet remained clean. On this account Paul also, discoursing to us about this uncleanness which does not come naturally but by reason of the weakness of the conscience, speaks somewhat in this way, 'Nothing is common of itself save to him who accounts anything to be common.'  Romans 14:14.  Do you not see that uncleanness does not arise from the nature of the thing, but from the weakness of the reasoning about it? And again: 'All things indeed are clean, howbeit it is evil to that man who eats with offense.'  Romans 14:20.  Do you see that it is not to eat, but to eat with offense, that is the cause of uncleanness?"

The idea here appears to be that Jewish rites of washing had the religious value of cleansing Jews' weak consciences when they touched something that they considered to be impure, but which was not impure in itself. 

4.  There are passages in the New Testament about the purification of the body or flesh, and the purification of the conscience or soul.  I'll give you some samples.  I Peter 3:21 (KJV): "The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ..."  Hebrews 10:22: "Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water."  II Corinthians 7:1: "Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." 

What do these mean?  There is a belief that the conscience needs to be cleansed.  That makes sense to me: that our guilt needs to addressed.  In I Peter 3:21, baptism is associated with that.  But, at least in Hebrews 10:22 and II Corinthians 7:1, there is an acknowledgement that the body needs to be cleansed.  Does that relate to ritual purity?  Or are the passages saying there that the body needs to be pure, in terms of not engaging in sexual immorality?  Sexual immorality is a prominent issue in I Corinthians.

Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 7

In this blog post, I'll highlight two passages from Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990.  We're in the Watergate scandal, and President Richard Nixon's former counsel, John Dean, has testified before Congress that Nixon engaged in a cover-up and obstruction of justice regarding the break-in of Republicans into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate hotel.  Dean was saying that Nixon was specifically trying to obscure the possible connection of that burglary with high officials in the White House.

1.  On page 194, Ambrose says: "To most Americans, the distinctly different reactions of Nixon and [John] Dean answered the question, Who was telling the truth?  Dean wanted the tapes played, in full, in public.  Nixon wanted the tapes to be kept sealed within the White House, where he could continue to make selective use of them."

Nixon recorded his conversations within the White House, and so there were tapes.  According to Ambrose, Dean called for the tapes to be played in full, whereas Nixon only wanted to make selective use of them to exonerate himself.  That sounded fishy to most Americans, Ambrose narrates.  My understanding of Ambrose is that Nixon could have destroyed the tapes before they were subpoenaed, since they were his own property.  After the tapes related to Watergate were subpoenaed, however, it was a different story.
2.  Nixon gave a speech about Watergate, and, on page 209, Ambrose states:

"Nixon claimed in his memoirs that the speech 'hit a responsive chord.  The numbers of telegrams and phone calls to the White House immediately after it was over were the biggest since the says of my Vietnam speeches.  People were tired of Watergate.'  Many of those calls and telegrams were manufactured by his own aides, as they always did after a major speech.  It gave the boss a boost to see the telegrams stacked on his desk."

Ambrose actually makes this point about the telegrams more than once, largely in volume 2 of his Nixon trilogy.  Were these aides manufacturing the telegrams, as in making up people?  Or were they contacting people who were largely sympathetic to Nixon and asking them to send telegrams, to make Nixon feel better and to give the aura of widespread support for Nixon?

Psalm 119: Nun

In Psalm 119:106, we read: "I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep thy righteous judgments" (KJV).

This verse puzzled me.  A person is swearing that he will keep God's word!  That's pretty serious, considering how strict God in the Hebrew Bible is about oaths and vows.  Ecclesiastes 5:4 says that it's better not to make a vow than it is to make a vow and not keep it.  Numbers 30:2 affirms that a man who makes a vow or an oath must perform what comes out of his mouth (but Numbers 30 allows for a father to nullify his daughter's vow, and a husband to nullify the vow of his wife).

Why would the Psalmist swear to keep God's word, when there was a good chance that he (like all of us) would fall short of keeping God's commandments?  Isn't that kind of an oath unrealistic?

Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit Revisited

Someone at church this morning asked me what I thought about the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.  In the course of our conversation, he and I agreed that God doesn't condemn or forsake people for being mad at God, for Moses, David, etc., were mad at God sometimes.  What went on in my head (but I didn't say it out loud) was, "What do I think about the passages concerning blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?  I wish they weren't in the Bible, that's what I think!  It seems to me that they've done more harm than good."

I expressed my problems with the conventional understandings of the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit a while back, in my post here.  If you want to read it, you should also read the comment by "Mike", who disagreed with me.  I still have many of the same questions and problems that I asked in that post----except that my understanding of the Greek aorist is different today in that it recognizes more nuance----but perhaps the conventional understanding I was critiquing is not so wrong.  Maybe Jesus was warning his critics that they should beware lest their hearts become hardened against God, since, once it becomes hardened, they are closing the door to God forgiving them because they most likely will not repent when their hearts are hardened.  I wouldn't make that an absolute, though, for there are times when God can soften a person's heart.  But I myself don't want to find myself in a place where I am hardened against God, or at the very least against what is good and right.

If People Can't Help What They Believe...

My latest reading of George Marsden's Jonathan Edwards: A Life covered a variety of topics: the growing influence of Anglicanism in early eighteenth New England, which concerned a number of Puritans; Jonathan Edwards' prophetic speculation, as he calculated that Christ would return in 1866 (1260 years after the start of the papacy, which Edwards dated to 606 C.E.) and viewed himself as one of those who would bring people to Christ in the latter days, through logical argumentation; Edwards' admiration for his future wife, Sarah, on account of her joy (an attribute he himself desired) and her enjoyment of God in solitude (something that he himself experienced); and how Jonathan Edwards----an educated man----could bring his sermons down to earth for his congregation by means of effective analogies.

There was a period of time when Edwards' sermons were rather positive, and that was when Edwards was seeking to encourage himself as he was struggling with negative thinking.  Edwards also had experience in trying to suppress resentment, and that was manifest in some of his sermons, which sought to teach people how to have a loving and forgiving attitude.  Edwards urged people to hate the sin but love the sinner, and even to live at peace with those who had different religious beliefs, for, as Edwards said, people can't help what they believe (page 97----in case you're interested in seeing Marsden's discussion and in tracking down his reference).  That's actually a provocative statement, and it inspires me to ask: Why does God judge those who don't believe in Christ, if they can't help what they believe?  And, if we should cut people some slack because they can't help what they believe, why doesn't God do the same?

Beginning Goodenough's By Light, Light

I started Erwin Goodenough's 1935 book, By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism.  In my latest reading, Goodenough covered a variety of topics.

1.  One topic that Goodenough discussed was Philo's belief that God had different powers or aspects (i.e., being, logos, creative power, royal power, law-making power, and the power of mercy).  Goodenough denies that Philo thought that these powers were independent beings in themselves, and Goodenough refers to Christian modalism (perhaps as a parallel), which held that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were three roles that one person----God----performed, rather than three separate persons.  And yet, Goodenough also compares the logos to Hera, who ruled for Zeus and had attendants (i.e., justice, law, peace, etc.), and my impression is that Hera was a separate being from Zeus.  Goodenough also says on page 71 that God as being "towers in brooding mystery even beyond the Logos."  Goodenough may think that, according to Philo, God has different dimensions.  God has a transcendent existence, but a part of God (the logos) acts in the world, and God also shows justice and mercy, gives laws, etc.  But it's the same God.  And yet, did not Philo refer to the logos as the "second God"?  He did, but was he in doing so intending to describe an independent being from God, or rather an aspect of God?

(UPDATE: On page 169, Goodenough distinguishes God in Philo's thought from God's "attendant Powers", which seem to be like angels.  On pages 243, Goodenough says that, according to Philo, the logos radiates from God and differentiates itself into the powers.  God acts through the powers, and yet the logos is technically distinct from God.)

2.  Another topic that Goodenough engages is the relationship of natural law to the Torah, according to Philo.  Greek philosophy and Stoicism held that there was a natural law about the way things were and how people should act.  But it was believed that statutory law was a derivative of natural law rather than natural law itself, and that "As a universal existence the Law of nature seems to be everywhere present and active, but not everywhere in the same sense" (page 55).  Goodenough's point may be that, in the mind of certain ancients, statutory law was an imperfect reflection of natural law.  How did this relate to the Torah?  Goodenough says regarding Philo on page 72: "By magnifying Law, and by orienting Jewish Law with Natural Law as the Law of God, the Jew could present his religion as the solution of the Greek problem, or of the mystic search of the Hellenistic Age."

And yet, there was more to Philo's thoughts regarding the Mosaic Torah, according to Goodenough.  Philo appeared to differentiate the Torah from a higher law, and, while Philo held that the Torah was closer to natural law than anything the Gentiles had, he still thought that "the Torah...is inadequate for a spiritually minded man, who would aspire, like Proclus, to become a [nomos empsuchos], not by obeying copies, but by getting [hoi alethes nomoi] to abide within the soul" (Goodenough on page 88).  Philo looked (at least in part) to the patriarchs, as he regarded the Torah as an "imitation of the true laws incarnate" in them (page 90).  Moreover, Philo believed that there was deeper spiritual meaning in the Torah---meaning that was consistent with Greek philosophical ideas about encountering the divine and subduing passions----and thus Philo held that the stories in the Torah, not just the laws, could function as law.

I have questions.  Is Philo essentially saying what many Christians say----that obeying an outward code is not enough, for people need the law to be written on their hearts?  I took a class on Philo, and what I learned seemed to suggest that Philo was sensitive to the issue of trying to become better through learning and practice, as opposed to becoming better by an act of supernatural grace.  Is Philo also overlapping with another belief held by many Christians----that the Torah is a reflection of something else? 

(UPDATE: Goodenough clarifies Philo's perspective on the Mosaic law and the patriarchs on page 121: "It has already appeared that Philo is by no means satisfied that the Jewish Law, as a literal revelation of the will of God, can be an adequate approach to Deity...[T]he literal Law was a thing designed for men in a material and essentially inferior state of being...[T]o Philo the way of approach to God in His immaterial aloofness has been revealed in the lives of the Patriarchs.  They had become the [vomoi empsuchoi], the incarnations of the will of God and of the life and nature of God...and as they had lived without the code in immediate experience of God, so they became at once the patterns for the code and the revelation of the higher and direct way to God by which they themselves had achieved union with Him.  The exposition of the mystic higher teaching of the Torah was to Philo largely an exposition of their lives.")

3.  I'd like to turn now to a passage that I liked on page 16:

"Now it must be noted that in the Classic Age the Greeks had developed a tremendous sense that unaided humanity is helpless without some sort of human intervention.  Man is sinful by his very nature, and only as he can get out of that nature into the divine nature can he hope to really live, since life in the body is death.  A divine savior is at hand to give him this life, the Son of the supreme God and 'the Female Principle,' and into the very being of the savior the mystic can rise.  The means thereto are at hand, the sacraments..."
On page 17, Goodenough says that the Eastern church is more like the Orphist mystery religion than is the Western church, for, while the Eastern church looks at sin more as a contamination, the Western church sees it more in terms of guilt.

I have questions about what Goodenough says.  First, is there evidence for what the mystery religions did?  Goodenough refers to the Orphic Hymns, and so perhaps we have something.  And yet, there are scholars today (such as Bart Ehrman) who contend that we cannot look at Mystery Religions in seeking to understand the origins of certain concepts within Christianity, for there is much about the Mystery Religions that we do not know.  Second, did the Western church lack a notion of sin as a contamination from which people needed to be healed?  Irenaeus was in the West, and he seemed to hold to such a concept, for he focused on Jesus' incarnation creating a new humanity.  Moreover, the belief that people could somehow unite with the divine nature was present in Western Christianity, if I'm not mistaken, for the argument that God became as we are that we might become as God is was not solely an Eastern idea.

Tensions

The sermon at church this morning was good because the pastor in his sermon was really highlighting some tensions.  He was preaching about John 17, in which Jesus radically distinguishes his own from the world.  Here are some points that the pastor made:

1.  How do we engage the world and benefit from what it has to offer (i.e., entertainment, money, etc.), without being taken over by the world’s mindset?  The pastor’s answer was continuing prayer and Bible reading.

2.  How can Jesus portray the world as evil and his disciples as set apart from that, when his disciples themselves had flaws?  The pastor quoted a commentator who said that God is more interested in the direction we are facing, even if we in our present state have flaws.

3.  The pastor said that Christ can be at the center of our lives, and yet we may still have things that don’t fit into that, such as resentment.

4.  The pastor remarked that obeying Christ can seem burdensome, and yet Christ being at the center of our lives brings us peace.

I was more impressed by the tensions that my pastor highlighted than by his answers or resolutions.  It’s not that I left the service feeling inspired.  It’s more that I left it thinking, “Good thing I’m not the only one who asks questions like that.”

B.T. Sanhedrin 90b and the Resurrection

I finished Brad Young's Paul the Jewish Theologian.

On page 125, Young quotes Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 90b. What's in the brackets is from Young:

"The Sadducees [minim; literally, heretics] asked Rabban Gamaliel, 'How do you prove that the Holy One, blessed be He, will resurrect the dead?' He answered, 'From the Torah, from the Prophets, and from the Writings. From the Torah: it is written, 'And the LORD said to Moses, 'Behold you are about to sleep with your fathers; but then [you] will rise [again]'' (Deut. 31:16, according to the Pharisaic interpretation!).' 'But perhaps,' they argued, 'the text reads, 'and they shall rise up'.' [But Rabban Gamaliel countered], 'Also from the Prophets: as it is written, 'Thy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. O dwellers of the dust, awake and sing for joy! For thy dew is a dew of light, and on the land of the shades thou wilt let it fall'' (Isa. 26:19). [The Sadducees retorted,] 'Perhaps this is referring to the dead who were resurrected in Ezekiel?' [Rabban Gamaliel, however, argued, 'The resurrection is] also taught in the Writings, as it is written: 'and your palate like the best wine that goes down smoothly, making the lips of sleepers to speak [or, in Pharisaic interpretation, 'the sleepers' may be understood as 'the deceased']' (Song of Songs 7:9)."

I have a variety of reactions:

1. The quotation of Deuteronomy 31:16 puzzles me because, in both the MT and also the LXX, it reads (in my translation), "Behold, you're sleeping with your fathers, and this people will rise up and will act as a harlot after the foreign gods", etc. How the Pharisees concluded that this passage is about Moses rising from the dead, I have no idea.

2. Rabban Gamaliel maintains that Moses will rise from the dead. A while back, I read in the IVP Bible Background Commentary for the New Testament that there was a Jewish belief (whether it was Second Temple or rabbinic, I do not remember) that the sinful generation of the wilderness during the time of Moses would not enter the World to Come. After all, it was told that it would not see the Promised Land and God's rest, right (Numbers 14:30; Psalm 95:11)? That curse carries over into the afterlife, right? Well, Moses, too, was told that he wouldn't enter the Promised Land (Numbers 20), so why will he be resurrected?

I don't remember what the IVP Bible Background Commentary's source was, if it even referred to one. The justification that I just made for the position that the wilderness generation would not enter the World to Come was something that I came up with, and it may not be the rabbis' justification. In Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:3, it is argued that the spies will not enter the World to Come on account of a redundancy in the text (Numbers 14:37). Regarding the wilderness generation, Rabbi Akiba argues on the basis of Numbers 14:35 ("In this wilderness they shall be consumed and there they shall die") that the wilderness generation will not even rise from the dead and experience post-mortem judgment. Rabbi Eliezer, however, refers to Psalm 50:5: "Gather my saints together unto me, those that made a covenant with me by sacrifice." Is Rabbi Eliezer arguing here that the wilderness generation will enter the World to Come?

As I look at Tosefta Sanhedrin 13:10-11, I see more detail. Numbers 14:35 is said to exclude the wilderness generation from the World to Come due to its apparent redundancy: "they shall be consumed" refers to this world, and "there they shall die" applies to the World to Come. Akiba also quotes Psalm 95:11, which says that the wilderness generation will not enter God's rest, so I was not off my rocker to speculate that Psalm 95:11 played some role in the rabbinic position that the wilderness generation would not enter the World to Come. Regarding Eliezer's use of Psalm 50:5, he is indeed appealing to it to argue that the wilderness generation will have a place in the World to Come. Moreover, in Tosefta Sanhedrin 13:11, we read the idea that God can retract what God swore in his wrath. Perhaps that's how some could conclude that the wilderness generation and also Moses would enter the Promised Land after their resurrection: God changed his mind.

3. Young is concluding that the minim are the Sadducees, perhaps because the minim in this passage are disputing the resurrection, as the Sadducees did. If they are the Sadducees, what is interesting is that the Sadducees in this passage appear to accept the authority of books outside of the Torah, something that many scholars in the past have said that the Sadducees did not do. After all, Rabban Gamaliel quotes Isaiah 26:19, and, rather than dismissing the authority of that passage, the Sadducee offers an alternative interpretation of it, by referring to Ezekiel.

4. I'm curious as to what the Sadducees (assuming they are the minim in question) meant when they appealed to the dead who were resurrected in Ezekiel to counteract Rabban Gamaliel's argument from Isaiah 26:19. Were the Sadducees like many modern biblical scholars, who see the resurrection in Ezekiel and Isaiah 26:19 as a resurrection of a nation (Israel) rather than a resurrection of individuals? Or are they saying that only a particular generation of Israelites will rise from the dead, not all people?

Does Popularity Mean Quality?

People often tell me that, if I write quality posts, then people will flock to my blog.  My question is this: Does popularity mean quality?  I’m not asking this out of an attitude of self-pity, for my blogs have been doing quite well lately, in terms of how many views I am getting, or (in the case of my WordPress blog) people choosing to following me.  I just find that there are times when I can be on somebody else’s blog, and a comment there really resonates with me, even though no one else has clicked “like” on it.  And I find that there are posts that I write that are especially meaningful to me, yet they are not necessarily as popular as my posts that are not as meaningful to me.

Question about the Talpiot Controversy

I started following the Talpiot tomb(s) controversy a few days ago.  I know, I’m late!  Sometimes, the biblioblogging controversies interest me.  Sometimes, they don’t.  And, sometimes, something is thrown in my face enough times that I just have to see what all the raucous is about.  The last is what happened to me in terms of the Talpiot tomb(s) controversy.

I’ll give you a little summary of the controversy, and then I’ll ask a question.  At Talpiot in Jerusalem, there is what James Tabor and Simcha Jacobivici believe is the family tomb of Jesus, for it contains a tomb of Jesus, the son of Joseph as well as a tomb of Maria.  There is also a son of Jesus among those tombs, and so there is a belief that Jesus had a son.  Detractors argue, however, that these names were so common in those days that we cannot say that this was Jesus of Nazareth’s tomb.

Elsewhere in Talpiot, there is an ossuary.  An ossuary is a chest for human bones.  On the ossuary in question, there is something, but there is debate about what that something is.  (Click here to see some images.)  Tabor says that it’s a fish spitting out a human being, and that we see on this ossuary an allusion to the story of Jonah, which Jesus likened to his own resurrection in Matthew 12:40.  For Tabor, this ossuary is talking about the resurrection of Jesus.  Others contend that it’s an image of something else, however—-a vase with handles, or a nephesh (which means “soul” in Hebrew, but I’m not sure what it means in terms of this ossuary).  Different sides have looked at other ossuaries and the decorations on them (i.e., vases) in making their arguments about this particular ossuary.  Personally, when I look at the ossuary, those “handles” look to me like they could easily be fins, but I’m far from being an expert on this topic, and I have only superficially looked at this debate.

But, if Jesus is in a tomb, does that mean he was not risen from the dead?  How could the early Christians believe in and proclaim Jesus’ resurrection, when their opponents could easily point out where Jesus’ tomb was?  These are not the questions I promised near the beginning of this post, for Tabor already addresses them.  For Tabor, there was an early Christian belief that Jesus’ resurrection was spiritual rather than physical (I Corinthians 15).  Consequently, Jesus’ bones could be in a tomb, and yet early Christians could proclaim that Jesus was risen, for their conception of Jesus’ resurrection was not physical.

Now for my question, which may be elementary, but I have not yet found anything that answers it: Where does Tabor believe that Jesus was buried?  Was it in the family tomb, or in the ossuary?  In news stories that I have read, Tabor says that Jesus was buried in the family tomb, and yet that Jesus’ resurrection was celebrated not far from that.  But an ossuary contains bones, right?

(UPDATE: I think I found my answer on wikipedia.  See here.  It says: "A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary...During the time of the Second Temple, Jewish burial customs included primary burials in burial caves, followed by secondary burials in ossuaries placed in smaller niches of the burial caves.")

If you’d like to go deeper and read more about this controversy, James McGrath has some posts with links (see here, here, and here).  At many of these links, you can read Tabor interacting with his detractors.

Where Did Cain Get His Wife?

Where did Cain get his wife?  Many contend that Cain married his sister, for Genesis 5:4 affirms that Adam had sons and daughters.  But I’m skeptical of this, for a variety of reasons:

1.  After Cain killed Abel, God gave Eve Seth as a replacement for Abel (Genesis 4:25).  Eve was elated that God gave her other seed!  In my opinion, that makes more sense if Cain and Abel were her only children prior to that point: she was sad that she lost both of her children (Cain left and Abel was killed), and so she viewed God giving her Seth as a consolation.  But why would that be the case, if she had other sons and daughters at that time?

2.  Genesis 5:4 says (in the KJV): “And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters”.  That appears to me to be saying that Adam begot those sons and daughters after he had begotten Seth.  Is not Seth mentioned in this genealogy because he is technically the firstborn, after Cain left the family and Abel was killed?

(UPDATE: As I look at the genealogies in Genesis 10-11, my impression is that genealogies do not necessarily focus on the firstborn.  Rather, they focus on the figure who can get them where they want to go.  Arpachshad was probably not the firstborn of Shem, for other sons of Shem are mentioned before him in Genesis 10.  But he is listed as the son of Shem in Genesis 11 because he's the ancestor of Abraham, and the genealogy wants to arrive at Abraham.  Similarly, I think that the people listed in Genesis 5 are not listed because they are the firstborn, but rather because the genealogy aims to culminate with Noah, and so it mentions his ancestors.)

3.  Genesis 4:16 says that Cain left to go to the land of Nod.  There is no mention of a wife leaving with him.  Then Cain is in the land of Nod in v 17, and he has a wife!

TV preacher Arnold Murray, if I understand him correctly, teaches that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 describe two separate creations: God created one set of human beings in Genesis 1, and another set in Genesis 2.  In this scenario, Cain went to the land of Nod and took a wife there, and she was one of the offspring of the first creation.  But I have problems with this view for two reasons.  First, Genesis 2:5 says that, prior to Adam, there was no man to till the soil.  Why would this be, when God already created human beings in Genesis 1?  Second, Genesis 5 essentially equates Adam—-the man of Genesis 2 who eventually begot Seth—-with the man who was created in God’s image in Genesis 1.

Perhaps there are responses that can be made to my reasons for my dissatisfaction with the argument that Cain married his sister.  Maybe Eve had a daughter (who married Cain) before Cain left, and she was the only child Eve had at that time apart from Cain and Abel.  When this daughter left with Cain, Eve was bereft of seed.  And Eve did not mention her perhaps because Eve didn’t think that daughters were as important as sons.  Regarding my third reason, perhaps Cain’s wife was not mentioned as departing with Cain because Cain was the head of the family.  Similarly, in the story of the akedah in Genesis 22, we read in v 19 that Abraham came down from the mountain, and there is no reference to Isaac coming down too.

Questions About Genesis 1:28-29

Each night, I pray ten minutes before I go to bed, and I decided a few days ago to incorporate Bible reading into that.  Essentially, I will read a passage, and then I will talk about it in my prayer.  I figure that it’s better for me to do that than it is for me to struggle to find things to say, or to talk primarily about my day and my plans (which is not to say that I can’t talk to God about those things).  I may blog about some of my thoughts from those daily quiet times, but I won’t obligate myself to do so.  For one, I don’t want to impose on myself another blogging obligation.  Plus, there are some thoughts that I like to keep personal—-rather than displaying them on the Internet for the public.

What has amazed me about my reading so far is that I have had questions rather than answers.  I was expecting to go through the same-old stories and to say the same-old things about them—-things that I have learned from biblical scholarship and other sources.  Instead, I’ve had questions.

Let me give you an example.  Genesis 1:28-29 states (in the KJV): “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.  And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”

The word translated as “replenish” is rendered as “fill” in many other translations because the root m-l-aleph often relates to filling.  I have two questions (or categories of questions):

1.  So the first man and woman are to fill the earth.  That appears to contradict what I was taught about Genesis, which is that, had Adam and Eve not sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, they would have stayed in the Garden of Eden for all of their lives, as would their descendants.  Is there a contradiction between Genesis 1, in which God at creation tells the man and the woman to fill the earth, and Genesis 2, in which Adam and Eve leave the Garden and inaugurate the process of filling the earth only after their transgression of God’s command?

I realize that many scholars say that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 have different creation accounts—-that Genesis 1 is by P and that Genesis 2 is by J (or whoever).  But they disagree about whether or not P knew of J’s creation account and was trying to supplement it, thereby creating a sort of “Fall” story in which human beings fall from a state of being good.  Does P in Genesis 1 manifest any awareness of Genesis 2, in which God appears to intend for humans to obey him and thus be cooped up in a Garden for the rest of their lives?  Or would P think that the transgression was the means by which humans could begin to obey God’s command to fill the earth?

2.  Many maintain that Adam and Eve were to be vegetarians, and that human beings were allowed to eat meat only after the Flood, as a concession to human brutality.  This view makes a degree of sense, for, in Genesis 1, God tells human beings that they can eat plants, without mentioning eating animals.  But God specifically tells humans that they can eat animals in Genesis 9:3.

But here’s my question: What does God mean when he tells the man and the woman to have dominion over fish and fowl?  Why would we want dominion over fish and fowl, except to eat them?  Does God granting the first man and woman dominion over fish and fowl imply that he was allowing them to eat those creatures?

Individuality, Community, and Alienation

I finished Texts and Responses. I'll use as my starting-point something that Paul Flohr says on page 222:

"[He is unable] 'to accept the natural aloneness of the ego.' He thus seeks union with the world, but it is 'refused him, because it is not the Thou (das Du) but the I of the entity that he encounters, and...I-ness rejects union.' 'The real locus of duality,' Buber observes, lies in one's ability to accept the separateness of his ego and to view the world as 'other than I.'"

I'm not going to pretend that I understand what all of this means. So are we alienated from the world because we see the world as other than ourselves, or because we do not accept that it is other?

I think that it's important to acknowledge commonalities with the rest of the world, and also to remember that taking care of the "we" can take care of the "me". Many of us have a stake in the community benefiting. At the same time, it's good when we can love others even when they are different from us, when we can appreciate individuality. Can refusing to accept our own uniqueness and individuality alienate us from the rest of the world, rather than bringing us closer to it? When we cannot accept what is special about ourselves, can we truly appreciate what is special about others?

Weird

Okay, I'm probably opening the door for people to rain on my parade, but I checked my Technorati rating, and my authority is 440, plus I'm in the "Top 100 Religion Blogs." A few months ago, my authority was 11. I couldn't have shot up that far that fast, unless Randy Olds and John Valade truly are good luck charms, since my authority seems to have gone up after they started reading me!

But I'm confused. I don't get too many comments. Many of my posts get no comments at all. I rarely get in the Biblioblog Top 50. Is there a gliche in Technorati?

UPDATE: The Technorati list puts me at 78, with an authority of 644. So there seems to be a discrepancy, unless I got the "Top 100 Religion Blogs" badge because I once was on the list, though I may not be currently. The Philadelphia Church of God vastly outranks me, so maybe I have nothing to brag about!

UPDATE 2: One thing that's strange is that I'm not finding some blogs that have a high degree of traffic, like hesedweemet.wordpress.com, or Polycarp's site. Or bryansthoughts.wordpress.com, which should be on record on technorati because it's cited on other blogs. I search for them, and there's no record. So I'm not sure what's going on.

Hebrews and Animal Sacrifices

The epistle to the Hebrews contends that animal sacrifices cannot take away sin. Why not? In Hebrews 10:1-4, we see its rationale:

"Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach. Otherwise, would they not have ceased being offered, since the worshipers, cleansed once for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sin? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin year after year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins" (NRSV).

I want to concentrate on the part about animal sacrifices being offered "year after year." The author of Hebrews wonders: if sin offerings truly cleansed the Israelites of sin, then why did they have to offer them every year on the Day of Atonement? Shouldn't once be enough? By contrast, v 12 says that "Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins." Unlike animal sacrifices, Christ doesn't need to be offered on a continual basis, for his one sacrifice of himself was sufficient to atone for sin.

I don't entirely understand Hebrews' reasoning. Just because the Israelites offered animal sacrifices every year, does that show that the sacrifices were ineffective for atonement? Maybe they cleansed the sins of the previous year. But when a new year arrived, so came a fresh batch of sins, and they too had to be removed. Just because a ritual is continually needed, that doesn't make it ineffective. I need to take a bath on a regular basis, but that doesn't mean the bath doesn't do its job for the day. Does the bath fail to remove dirt just because I have to do it more than once?

And the same is true in Christianity: sure, we have been cleansed through the sacrifice of Christ, but we still need to ask for forgiveness on a continual basis (Matthew 6:12, 14-15; I John 1:9). Why must we do that, if we've been forgiven once and for all? Isn't continual confession and repentance similar to the regular offering of the animal sacrifices? In both, we have to keep the slate wiped clean.

Hebrews says that animal sacrifices didn't work because the Israelites were not cleansed once and for all, plus they still had a consciousness of sin even after they had offered them. But isn't that true of Christians as well? They need to ask for forgiveness on a continual basis, which shows (1.) that they need repeated cleansing, and (2.) that they still have a consciousness of sin.

Of course, Hebrews 8:8-13 is clear that the old covenant by itself was defective because of the sinfulness of the Israelites. That's why the new covenant is about God writing his laws on people's hearts: we need a new nature in order to become sinless. The Israelites could offer their sacrifices year-in and year-out, but did that change their sinful nature? If it did, then why did they have to sacrifice sin offerings every single year?

Maybe Hebrews is saying that only Christ can take away sins--in the sense of bringing Christians to a state of actual sinlessness. And, indeed, Hebrews does use such terminology as "perfecting." Yet, at the same time, Hebrews also seems to say that Christ's death brings forgiveness (not just practical cleansing from sin) in a way that animal sacrifices do not. Hebrews 10:18 says, "Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin," which indicates that, in contrast to the Old Covenant sin offerings, Christ's one sacrifice was sufficient for atonement.

And so I'm back where I started: If Christ's one sacrifice cleansed Christians of sin once and for all, then why do they need to keep on receiving forgiveness? And how does what Christians do differ from the Israelites' continual offering of animal sacrifices?

Maybe Hebrews doesn't hold that Christians need to keep their slate clean. Perhaps it thinks that their slate is already clean--and that it always will be, unless they deliberately leave Christ (Hebrews 6:4-6; 10:26-27). Hebrews is clear that Christians will still sin, so it encourages them that they have a faithful and merciful high priest who is eager to help them (Hebrews 4:15-16). But maybe (unlike Matthew and I John) it doesn't assume that they need to receive continual forgiveness; rather, as far as Hebrews is concerned, Christians have already been forgiven--once and for all time--and they come to Christ primarily for compassion and aid as they struggle against sin.

Could it be that Matthew and I John resemble Catholics in their view on forgiveness, whereas Hebrews is more like a lot of Protestants on that issue?

My Church on the Nature of Jesus

The priest at the Catholic church that I attend spoke about the nature of Jesus in his last two sermons. There are two issues that I want to discuss:

1. Last Sunday, the priest said that Jesus did not become God; rather, he always was God, is God, and ever shall be God. According to the priest, no one can become God--either one has that specific identity or one does not. For him (and, presumably, for the Catholic Church), divinity is not something that one can earn or obtain through maturity.

I'm not going to get into diverse ideas about Christology, but I do have a question about the priest's claim that people cannot become God. When I was at DePauw, I took a class about Christianity, and we discussed the Arian controversy. My professor said that one of the slogans of the "orthodox" camp went like this: "God became as we are, that we might become as God is." What exactly did orthodox Christians mean when they said that humans can become like God? Do they mean looking like God, or resembling God in goodness, or being like God in immortality, or what exactly?

Indeed, I John 3:1-3 also says that Christians have the hope of becoming like God. It says, "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure" (NRSV). What does this passage mean?

Another point: As my readers may know, I grew up in an offshoot of the Worldwide Church of God, which taught that Christians will become divine beings as part of the "God family." In The Journal, a newspaper that publishes articles by people in the Church of God movement, someone argued that there are similarities between the Worldwide Church of God's traditional positions and those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. One example he presented was that both believe humans can become God (or God-like). Is this statement an accurate characterization of the Eastern Orthodox Church?

2. On New Year's Day, the Feast of the Circumcision, the priest said that Jesus was all-knowing at the time of his circumcision. He disputed the claim that Jesus' circumcision was meaningless because he did not remember it as an adult. For him, Jesus assumed pain throughout his life, from his birth to his circumcision, and he was fully aware of his pain during that time. The priest contended that Jesus' awareness even as an infant was due to his divine nature, which is aware and knowledgeable.

What the priest said reminded me of the Infancy gospels, in which baby Jesus actually talks in complete sentences (and child Jesus can get rather vicious!). I'm not sure if I'd go as far as the priest did, since Philippians 2 seems to present Jesus as laying aside several divine prerogatives in becoming a man. There are Christians who believe as I do, but those who say they cling to the "orthodox" position assert that Jesus had all of the divine attributes throughout his life. For them, he even had omnipresence, but he chose not to use it (I think that's their contention). It's interesting how creeds these days are as much a test of orthodoxy as the Bible in conservative Christian circles.

Christmas Musings 2007

Today is Christmas, 2007. What am I doing today? Yesterday, I was privileged to receive my video of It's a Wonderful Life. This was fortuitous. I could have gotten it after Christmas, but It's a Wonderful Life is Christmas fare, or, more accurately, Christmas Eve fare. As I watched it, I really felt bad for George Bailey. Here was a person who continually helped others, but he never had an opportunity to do what he wanted to do, which was to see the world. I know that the story is fictional, but I'd like to think that George and Mary Bailey got to visit Europe, Asia, and South America at some point in their lives. Of course, the problem is that they would have to leave the Building and Loan to Uncle Billy during their absence, and I can imagine Uncle Billy running the company into the ground. Maybe one of George and Mary's boys (or girls) grew up and helped run the company, allowing the couple to have some vacation time. But where would the Baileys get the money for travel? Well, at the end, George got more than the $8,000 that he needed. Maybe his neighbors wouldn't mind if George and Mary used it to see the world. George did earn this privilege, after all.

Today, I watched a Christmas episode of Highway to Heaven, in which Richard Mulligan (Empty Nest) plays a newspaper columnist who finds the Christmas spirit. I'll watch another episode later this evening, one that reflects Dickens' A Christmas Carol. At the moment, I am taping A Christmas Story. I've never seen it before, and it is a renowned Christmas classic. I'll also watch that this evening. At 3:00, I saw one of my favorite episodes of All in the Family, the one in which a draft dodger spends Christmas with someone who lost his son in Vietnam. It is a tear-jerker!

While watching television, I've been reading two books by Madeleine L'Engle: A Wrinkle in Time and Wind in the Door. I finished Wrinkle last night. I appreciate the books, but I have a hard time experiencing pleasure when I read them, and I don't exactly know why. I appreciate them because they are about God using socially marginalized people for his righteous purposes, and I also like the way that the socially awkward Meg becomes friends with the popular jock Calvin, whose life is not as rosy as we might expect. There is also a character who speaks in quotations, since she cannot come up with words of her own in social situations. I identify with her problem here! Too bad my Latin is not good enough for me to quote Cicero in daily conversation. The books also have jewels of wisdom. For example, in Wrinkle, one of the eccentric characters likens life to a sonnet: a sonnet needs a specific number of beats to be a sonnet, but it can still contain a variety of possible words. I interpret this to mean that there is one righteous path, which can encompass a variety of possible choices.

I went to church this morning. Drawing on Aquinas, the priest talked about the different ways that Christ is united with humanity. He said that a person who has faith yet lives a sinful life is in danger of becoming eternally lost. At the same time, he affirmed that God can still work with such a person, since there is a connection between him and the divine. The priest urged us to develop a deeper relationship with God. His specific steps for doing this included: (1.) Become a Catholic, if you are not one already, (2.) Go to confession, and (3.) Read about the saints. I usually don't feel "fed" by this priest's sermons, since they are rather philosophical and often promote ritualism as a spiritual solution. But they do intellectually stimulate me, which is more than I can say for evangelical and mainline Protestant churches (BORING).

As I was thinking about a topic for today's blog entry, a question entered my mind: Why did Christ come to earth? I remember reading a book by John Shelby Spong, This Hebrew Lord, in which Spong was stumped by someone who asked about Jesus' significance. Evangelicals and other Christians would probably deem this an easy question: they would say that Jesus came to reveal God's will, bring forgiveness of sins, and inaugurate a kingdom of justice for the poor. But these things existed before Jesus came. People already knew that they were supposed to love God and neighbor. God already forgave sins (though evangelicals will probably argue that the blood of Christ was the basis for atonement in pre-Christian times). And people already knew that they should help the poor. What did Jesus bring that was new? Well, he did make God's rules stricter. Now, we can't get a divorce or lust after women. I'm sorry, but I have a hard time getting enthusiastic about a stricter law.

Another topic that came into my mind was Christmas' pagan origin. I grew up in an offshoot of the Worldwide Church of God, which did not observe Christmas. Many argue that Christians transformed a pagan festival (Saturnalia) into the "Christian" holiday of Christmas. Others contend that the pagans were the ones who stole Christmas--from the Christians (see The Celebration of CHRISTMAS ). If Christmas has pagan origins, should it be observed? On one hand, Deuteronomy 12:30 seems to prohibit the use of pagan customs in the worship of God. It says: "Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following [the Canaanites], after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise." On the other hand, the Bible does describe the God of the Hebrews through pagan imagery (e.g., a god who slays a chaos monster), and there is also overlap between biblical and pagan customs (e.g., temples, animal sacrifices, etc.).

I guess that the way I approach this issue is as follows: I myself don't really keep Christmas, since I am usually alone on that day. But I don't have a big problem when others observe it (not that their actions are my business in the first place). God dislikes pagan customs that compromise his character, such as child sacrifice or orgies in worship. But I don't think he stresses out when people set aside a day to fellowship and honor Christ's birth, assuming that they are indeed doing that in their celebration of Christmas (rather than being materialistic). Christmas is a time to think about certain virtues, such as generosity. But we should be generous throughout the year, not only on Christmas.

So these are my Christmas reflections. Maybe I'll have more after watching A Christmas Story--I will have to see. Happy holidays!

The New Circumcision

I heard a presentation yesterday that I just can't get out of my mind. It was by Joshua Garroway, a candidate for my school's faculty. He is still being considered, and his dissertation has not yet been published, so I don't know if I'm being improper in commenting on his presentation. After all, my blog may not be the most widely read on the Internet, but my posts still show up on Google. I guess I'll offer a few comments, with the disclaimer that what I am about to write is solely my own understanding of what he said.

His argument was that Paul considered baptism to be the new circumcision. On some level, I've heard this argument before, mainly in Christian debates about whether or not baptism is a requirement for salvation. As a matter of fact, I heard it many years ago in my undergraduate Bible study group. The cultish International Church of Christ was trying to make inroads into my university, and one of its teachings was that baptism is necessary for salvation. My evangelical Bible study group was trying to equip us to refute this doctrine, and one argument we were given went something like this: "Baptism is the new circumcision, and the old circumcision was unnecessary for Abraham's justification before God (see Romans 4), ergo baptism is not necessary to be saved." Tim Warner, who believes in baptism's salvific necessity, responds to this argument by denying that baptism is the new circumcision. See Tim Warner's Baptism & Circumcision.

So, on some level, I have heard Rabbi Garroway's argument before. The reason that his presentation was so riveting, however, was that it brought rabbinic references into the discussion, highlighted things in the New Testament that I had not previously considered, and caused me to ask a lot of questions (which I'm still doing).

Regarding rabbinic references, he referred to Talmudic passages about what counts as circumcision. Who is truly circumcised, according to the Talmud? Well, there is a Talmudic view that Jewish women are regarded as circumcised and thus as part of the covenant, even though they don't have a literal foreskin that has been removed. And the Talmud also addresses whether the circumcision of certain Gentiles counts before God. Some Gentile cultures (e.g., Egypt) practiced circumcision, and there were also Gentiles who were circumcised to remove parasites from their body. According to the Talmud, the circumcision of these Gentiles does not count before God, even though their foreskin has been removed. Garroway's overall argument was that Paul regarded Gentile Christians as circumcised members of God's covenant, despite the presence of their foreskins.

For the New Testament, there were times when Rabbi Garroway showed a New Testament reference on the projector, and I kept looking in my Bible to make sure that it really said what was on the screen. I have read the New Testament a number of times, yet I am amazed at how I can miss some very interesting details. For example, take a look at Romans 15:7-9: "Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God. Now I say that Jesus Christ was [lit. 'has become'] a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers: And that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy; as it is written, For this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto thy name." I never noticed the part about Christ being a minister of the circumcision. How does that detail relate to the overall message of Romans 15? For Rabbi Garroway, Christ circumcises the sinful flesh of the Gentiles, enabling them to become a part of God's covenant, in accordance with God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 17:4-7.

So what sorts of questions am I asking? In the Q and A session, I asked Rabbi Garroway if he thought that Paul considered circumcision/baptism a requirement for salvation, and I pointed to Roman 4's argument that Abraham was justified by faith long before his circumcision. He responded that he thought Paul indeed had such a belief about circumcision/baptism, and that he disagreed with the usual interpretation of Romans 4. For Rabbi Garroway, Paul was not presenting circumcision as optional or unnecessary, but as the seal of Abraham's faith. He further said that he discusses this topic in his dissertation, in which he looks at many syntactical issues in Romans 4.

I hope to read his dissertation so that I can glean fresh insights on this chapter. After all, the topic of Paul and circumcision has often led me to ask myself, "Was Paul really being faithful to the Jewish scriptures?" Sure, Paul does well to point out that Abraham was justified before his circumcision, but Genesis 17 is clear that those who are not circumcised are cut off from God's covenant with Israel. On some level, I could sympathize with Paul's opponents, who probably appealed to Genesis 17 to argue that Gentiles needed to be circumcised in order to join God's covenant. But what if Paul actually took Genesis 17 into consideration and was faithful to the chapter's message that circumcision is an indispensable part of the covenant? For Paul, however, the new circumcision was baptism.

This brings me to another thought that entered my mind. Paul tries to present Christ as doing something new, and yet he grounds that something new in something old. For Paul, Christ inaugurated a new covenant (see I Corinthians 11:25), and yet Paul also tries to show that Jewish and Gentile believers are under God's covenant with Abraham. A student pointed out to Rabbi Garroway that the church fathers believed that Jews needed to be baptized, meaning that their circumcision was no longer valid after the coming of Christ. Rabbi Garroway responded that Paul believed the rules had changed once Christ came. True, and yet Paul also thinks that there is continuity with the Abrahamic covenant: justification is still by faith, and circumcision is still an indispensable part of the agreement. So Christ did not simply come and abolish the old. He did something new that was in some sense continuous with the old.

And that brings me to another question: Why did Christ come to die? Rabbi Garroway said that, for Paul, if Gentiles had to be circumcised to enter God's covenant, then Christ died in vain. But Gentiles in Old Testament times could enter God's covenant through circumcision. Exodus 12:48 says that a stranger could eat the Passover after he was circumcised. So if Gentiles already had a way to enter God's covenant (circumcision), then why did Christ have to die for them to become part of the people of God? Is the answer solely a matter of Christ setting up new rules, or is there something else?

So the presentation was really thought-provoking. Not every lecture interests me enough to make me think about it afterwards, but this one did.