Biblical Halakhah

On pages 135-136 of his chapter on "Halakha" in The Literature of the Sages, Part I, Shmuel Safrai talks about halakhah in the Hebrew Bible. Here are a couple of examples:

1. In Exodus 30:11-16, the Israelites are commanded to contribute half of a shekel to ward off a plague that could result from a census. This was a command for a "one time payment" (Safrai's words). But, somehow, it got "turned into a regular contribution." II Chronicles 24:6ff. mentions Josiah collecting "the tax levied by Moses," and Nehemiah 10:33f. refers to "the third part of the shekel for the service of the house of our God" (Safrai's quotations of the biblical texts). Second Temple sources and the Mishnah refer to a commandment of the half-shekel, and, "after a long struggle between Pharisees and Sadducees", "the donation of the half-shekel became a matter of principle" "during the Hasmonean period."

2. According to Safrai, "The Tora...does not mention any specific prohibition of labour on the New Moon day, other than its special sacrifice (Num 28:11-15)." But, in Amos 8:5, "the New Moon and the Sabbath are mentioned together as days when one should refrain from commerce", a sentiment which also appears in a baraita in Babylonian Talmud Meg. 22b. In Isaiah 1:13, new moons are times when Israelites gathered in the Temple, and this sort of thing will also occur after Israel's restoration (Isaiah 66:23). In II Kings 4:23, new moons are times when people can see a prophet.

I found this interesting on account of my own Armstrongite background, in which I rested on the Sabbath and holy days. What's ironic is that I didn't "rest" as much as orthodox Jews, and yet there were areas in which I rested more than the halakhah required! For example, Jews are allowed to read on the Sabbath, but they cannot write, and so there are Jewish academics who feel that they are not transgressing the Sabbath when they read scholarly journals.

But, anyway, I wondered if I had to rest on new moons as well. I knew one person who wanted to take the new moons off from work. But the Armstrongite ministers whom I heard said that there was no Scriptural command to rest on the new moons. Actually, that appears to be only half right: there is no command in the Torah to treat the New Moon as a sort of Sabbath, but Amos 8:5 seems to presume precisely that. And the new moons were times of worship---not necessarily mandatory worship, but Israelites did worship on those days.

That may have actually put me in a dilemma in the old days. Would I have to take off work or school on the new moons? I already had to take off enough work or school by observing the holy days! Nowadays, however, my spirituality is not based on keeping days. I myself refrain from work on the Sabbath, because I need rest and worship. I also try to honor the holy days. But I don't think that God imposes these things on me as mandates---as if I won't enter the kingdom of God if I don't observe them.

A Spiritual Desperate Housewives Episode

I really enjoyed tonight's episode of Desperate Housewives, and I say this as a viewer who hasn't cared much for this particular season. The reason that I enjoyed it so much was that it was a spiritual episode---about repentance, forgiveness, change, love, and understanding.

There were four sub-plots in tonight's episode. First of all, there were the events surrounding Paul Young and Susan Delfino. Susan needs a kidney to live, and Paul Young's wife recently shot herself, right after declaring to the hospital that Susan will receive her kidney. The problem is that Paul Young does not want Susan to receive his dying wife's kidney, for he hates the people on Wysteria Lane, including Susan. Years before, when he went to jail for killing Felicia Tillman (who actually was alive and faked her death to frame Paul), he was hurt that his so-called friends showed no concern for him through his ordeal. The first half of this season was about Paul Young's attempt to exact revenge on Wysteria Lane---to show them that they are no better than he is, and thus have no right to judge him. (And, in a sense, he succeeded, for the community rioted to protest a half-way house for convicts that Paul was trying to set up.)

When Susan tries to assure Paul that his wife's death would be worth something because she would have her kidney, Paul is livid. He does not see Susan having his dying wife's kidney as any sort of consolation prize. He asks Susan why she thinks that she even deserves his wife's kidney---when she and her friends did not reach out to his wife and accept her when she was alive. Basically, the people of Wysteria Lane rejected her on account of her relationship with Paul, who was known to have killed Martha Huber, the sister of Felicia Tillman. That was why Felicia Tillman faked her death and pinned the blame on Paul: to get back at him for killing Martha. When Felicia Tillman was found to be alive by the police who arrested her, however, Paul was released from jail, and Felicia herself was sent to prison.

But here was the twist: Paul's wife was actually Felicia Tillman's daughter, who was part of Felicia's continuing plot to get back at Paul. Paul did not know this for a while, but he was livid when he learned about it. He threw his wife out of the house, even though she loved him, and had forsaken her mother's plot. And her mother rejected her. Alone and desperate, she committed suicide.

On tonight's episode, Paul visited Felicia Tillman in jail, and they both lamented that their feud cost the life of an innocent person. Paul reflected on how his wife loved him, even though he did not deserve it, and how she was like that towards others who rejected her, as well. And that gave him the strength to let Susan have his wife's kidney. Paul learned to let go of his rage. He repented, and he forgave. (At the end of the episode, however, we saw that Felicia Tillman did not.)

Second, there was the story of Renee, who is played by Vanessa Williams. Renee was planning to throw a party, even though a number of her neighbors thought that was tasteless, considering that someone in the community had just shot herself. When Gabby confronted Renee for being so shallow, Renee responded that Paul's wife was selfish to kill herself, for she hurt the people who cared about her. The reason that Renee felt so strongly about this was that her own mother had killed herself when Renee was really young. Gabby could empathize with Renee because she had lost her father as a child. Gabby replaced her judgment of Renee with understanding---seeing where someone else was coming from.

Third, there was the story of Bree and Andrew. Andrew is drinking too much, and his husband is leaving him. Andrew's mother, Bree, is concerned, for she herself is a recovering alcoholic. It turned out that Andrew was drinking too much because of his loneliness, emptyness, and boredom. In the aftermath of the suicide of Paul's wife, Bree feels strongly that she cannot sit by when someone is lonely and isolated, especially when it's someone she cares about---her son. And Andrew, although he is annoyed by his Mom's intervention, reaches out to receive her help.

Finally, there was the story of Tom Sciavo. Tom is offered a high-ranking position in a company, on account of the recommendations of his friends and neighbors. But Tom doesn't want to abandon his friend, Carlos. Tom's wife, Lynette, confronts him about his hesitation and timidity, and asks him why, even at age 46, he has not yet established himself in the business world. Tom is angry at Lynette at first, but her talk with him motivates him to get his act together. Tom changed from being a passive person, to becoming someone with a little more initiative.

This was an awesome episode! Next Sunday, Desperate Housewives will not be on, but there will be a two-hour Brothers and Sisters. I liked last year's two-hour episode, which I blogged about here. I hope that next week's two-hour episode will be good as well. I have been disappointed by Brothers and Sisters this season, but next week's episode may surprise me!

Random Musings on Knowledge

At church this morning, the "Prayer of Confession" stood out to me. Here are some aspects of it:

"So we confess...

"The times when we used knowledge to put people down rather than build them up...

"When we see people exploited because of lack of knowledge, and do nothing...

"When we have idolized knowledge at the expense of loving and caring for others...

"When we have ridiculed others for having a weak and feeble faith because they appear to lack wisdom..."

I'll comment on each of these:

"The times when we used knowledge to put people down rather than build them up..."

This definitely caught my attention, especially since so many academic discussions and debates online (i.e., blogging, Facebook) strike me as games of one-upsmanship---portraying people who disagree with me as if they know nothing, and trying to save face when I appear to know nothing.

"When we see people exploited because of lack of knowledge, and do nothing..."

I'm not sure to what extent this applies to me. I will say that religion strikes me as exploitative, and it's good when people are at least exposed to other ways of looking at issues (i.e., hell, biblical inerrancy). But whether they want to pursue those questions is up to them. Many people are content with their present belief system, and, in my opinion, that's fine---just as long as they don't try to ram it down my throat. But I think that it's good for knowledge to be out there for the people who want to pursue it. It can be liberating, for people who feel that they are in bondage to religion and want to know that it's okay to think outside the box.

"When we have idolized knowledge at the expense of loving and caring for others..."

In terms of my spirituality, I have often patted myself on the back for pursuing the knowledge aspect of the faith---Bible study, quiet times, etc. A big reason is that I'm not good at the interpersonal elements of the faith---fellowship, evangelism, reaching out to others---and so I seek some assurance that I am all right. Moreover, I get annoyed when I raise a question or pursue an issue, and a Christian comes along and says, "I don't think that's important...it's just important that we love people." But the question or issue is important to me. Is it loving to casually dismiss it, whether one believes that it is important for her at the stage of the journey that she happens to be on?

At the same time, there are Christian intellectuals or pseudo-intellectuals who can be complete jerks. I wonder: what is the purpose of their knowledge if they don't treat other people with respect? And, while it's tempting for me to preach this to other people, I should also adopt it as a sermon for myself.

In a way, I feel that my sharing of knowledge (or so-called knowledge) through blogging can help other people, if they are interested in the topics that I address. And there are people who are, as my stats demonstrate. Should that substitute for service work? I don't think so. There is a sense in which blogging about knowledge can coincide with pride---look at the knowledge that I am sharing! But serving people---putting away chairs, opening doors for them---coincides more with humility. I am acting as a servant in that case, rather than as someone who thinks he should be looked up to.

"When we have ridiculed others for having a weak and feeble faith because they appear to lack wisdom..."

Do I do this? I think that I have, in a way. I've learned things in school and through reading about the Bible, and it's tempting for me to view those who don't read the Bible with a critical methodology as if they're naive. But they're not. Many of them have more wisdom about the world than I possess. They may be better than me at bringing their faith into their day-to-day lives. And there are times when a fresh way of looking at Scripture is better than an academic parsing of the text---especially when academia is pretty much a speech community in itself, which acts as if certain questions or insights are acceptable, whereas others are not, sometimes with little or no basis. I see this as I read for my comps, as certain scholars challenge the status quo: Why should we assume that P wrote that part about Abraham buying land from the Hittites, when other biblical authors talk about agreements? Why should we compare the Bible with Icelandic folk sagas, as if one is even remotely similar to another? The way that these scholars challenge scholarly assumptions makes me wonder why I should assume that the sun rises and sets on the assumptions of academic speech communities.

I grew up in a denomination that essentially ridiculed others for what it considered a lack of knowledge. We know about the seventh-day Sabbath, whereas others are keeping Sunday. We know that we will sleep until the resurrection, whereas others think our souls go to heaven or hell after we die. We know that Christmas and Easter are pagan, whereas others observe them. We thought that we were better than other people. Sure, we'd try to fool ourselves into thinking we were humble, saying that God graciously revealed to us this knowledge. But there was still an attitude of contempt towards those who did not see things the way that we did. Nowadays, I can condemn that sort of mindset in others, but does such condemnation coincide with any love on my part, even towards those who look down on others?

I will make another point: This part of the prayer criticizes looking down on others as weak in faith because they lack wisdom. But I've found that there are plenty of people who look down on those who have knowledge. I've heard Christians say things like, "Well, you're smart, and that's good, and I can't debate with you, but sometimes God reveals himself to the humble." I find those kinds of comments to be patronizing and condescending---especially when I wonder what makes the people saying them think that they know God more than I do. I don't see it in their words or actions---with their hatred of Muslims or their narrow-minded allegiance to the Republican Party, or their contempt for the poor. I don't want to be an elitist, but I'm also sick of others being spiritual elitists towards me.

Also, here's a question: When will we see a prayer that apologizes for making social extroversion into a mark of genuine spirituality, while treating introverts or shy people as if they're second-class citizens of the kingdom? I read and hear Christians bash knowledge for being elitist. But I find their definitions of "love" to be judgmental and elitist, as well.

Parallels and Peoples

In both In Search of History and Life of Moses, John Van Seters notes parallels between stories in the Book of Joshua and ancient Near Eastern campaign tales. In Search of History has a comprehensive statement on this topic, on pages 330-331:

"[T]he Dtr narrative has a basic similarity to the accounts of such military campaigns in the Near Eastern inscriptions, particularly those of the Assyrian annals and the 'letters to the god.' The latter often give special attention to a few major battles or conquests of important cities while summarizing the overthrow of many others in a stereotyped series. They may also highlight at the outset of a campaign the overcoming of a special physical barrier, such as a river in flood or a mountain range. Before an important battle the king often receives an 'oracle of salvation' from a deity who promises to deliver the enemy into his hand. Sometimes envoys come from a great distance to sue for peace and submit to terms of servitude in order to avoid destruction...General descriptions of sieges or military stratagems; summary treatments of attack and flight of the enemy and the burning of cities; enumerations of participants of coalitions, kings defeated, or cities taken; lists of casualties and the amount of booty; declarations of booty and of spoils to the god---all occur with great regularity. In the royal inscriptions of the Assyrians and Babylonians the native people of Syria-Palestine are all lumped together under the rubric of 'Amorites' or 'Hittites.' Also, the borders given for these inscriptions for the 'land of the Amorites/Hittites' correspond closely to those in Josh. 1:4. Once we isolate the basic Dtr account of the conquest, without the stories of Rahab (chapter 2) or the sin of Achan (chapter 7) and the other additions of J and P (especially chapter 5), then it is remarkable how closely Dtr's work has been made to correspond with the literary pattern of military campaigns in the Assyrian royal inscriptions. Even the 'installation' of Joshua as the leader who succeeds Moses suggests that the conquest is the first victorious campaign of the new regime."

This quote has interesting elements. First off is the parallels between the Book of Joshua and Assyrian inscriptions. To what extent is the Hebrew Bible a rip-off of other cultures? I was studying Psalm 18 recently, and two evangelical sources---The Intervarsity Press Bible Background Commentary and Peter Craigie's commentary on Psalms 1-50---noted similarities between Psalm 18 and the storm god of ancient Near Eastern literature. In my reading of The Psalms in Israel's Worship, Sigmund Mowinkel refers to similarities between the biblical Psalms and those elsewhere in the ancient Near East. I can't say that any of this really challenges my faith, for my faith isn't based on biblical inerrancy (which can't be proven one way or the other), as much as a belief in a benevolent higher power, whose foundation is the testimonies of people, past and present. But I do wonder how to account for these parallels from a theological perspective---one which considers the Bible to be revelation. I suppose that one can go the route of saying that the Bible is incarnational---it reflects its cultural surroundings because God is approaching people on their own level. But I can understand why someone could come along and dismiss that as theological "explaining away" of the evidence, asking why we should even consider the Bible to be special within the ancient Near East. Why not see it as just another ancient Near Eastern writing, which reflected other ancient Near Eastern writings? I know that I find inspiration from the Bible, however, and so that is why I'll continue to read and to study it.

Second, I found Van Seters' discussion of the Assyrian and Babylonian referenes to the natives of Syria-Palestine as Hittites and Amorites to be interesting, in light of my reading of Niels Peter Lemche's The Canaanites and Their Land. I no longer have that book with me, for I sent it back to the Hebrew Union College library, so that I can receive other books to read. I remember that Lemche argued that the term "Canaanite" does not appear much in the ancient Near East in the first millennium B.C.E., but I don't recall whether or not he addressed Assyrian and Babylonian references to the Amorites and the Hittites. His argument was that one of the authors of the biblical conquest narratives tossed in a bunch of nations that he knew from somewhere, even though those nations did not live in Palestine---and that is why he called some of the inhabitants "Hittites." But, if that biblical author was following Assyria and Babylon in characterizing the people of Palestine as Hittites and Amorites, then he was not being arbitrary: he was following a pattern that he knew. And yet, I forget where Lemche placed the Amorites and the Hittites. Were any Hittites in Syria? I know that Thomas Thompson acknowledged that there were Amorites in Syria---though he did not regard them as a homogeneous people. Does Van Seters know if the Assyrians and Babylonians only called people in Syria "Amorites" and "Hittites," or if they called the inhabitants of Palestine that as well?

But Van Seters statement about the Assyrian references to the Hittites and the Amorites did overlap with Lemche's thesis, in my opinion. Lemche argued that "Canaanite" was a term that foreigners loosely applied to inhabitants of Syria and Palestine---without a regard to the diversity of the people. That appears to be what the Assyrians and the Babylonians did when they referred to the inhabitants of Syria-Palestine as "Hittites" and "Amorites."

Psalm 18

For my weekly quiet time this Sabbath, I will blog about Psalm 18 and its interpreters. Psalm 18 is similar to II Samuel 22, and, to see my post about that, click here. There are religious interpreters who have argued that Psalm 18 is a conscious alteration of II Samuel 22 for the religious community, as David's perils were made into a Psalm that could be spoken by all the people of Israel. But, as I read the two Psalms (II Samuel 22 and Psalm 18) side-by-side, I really didn't see any significance in their differences. They seemed to me to be just variants of the same Psalm, expressing the same concepts in slightly different ways. But I'm open to other ideas.

Here are three items:

1. Even evangelical sources acknowledge that there is overlap between Psalm 18 and ancient Near Eastern motifs. In my study of Psalm 18, I saw that in John Walton's Intervarsity Press Bible Background Commentary, and in Peter Craigie's Word Biblical Commentary on Psalms 1-50. Other ancient Near Eastern cultures present a god coming in thunder (vv 17-19), or rescuing a distressed person from death, which is described as waters (v 16). Psalm 18:10 talks about God riding on the cherubim, and, although Psalm 18 does not describe these cherubim, Ezekiel 1 does, referring to them in terms of animals, namely, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. We see this sort of thing in an Assyrian relief, which depicts an armed storm god on the back of a creature that has a lion's body, a bull's head, and eagle's wings. I've read some religious commentators who have searched for deep theological significance in the descriptions of the biblical cherubim. But maybe the biblical authors were simply imitating their neighbors, and their neighbors were portraying the heavenly servants as composite creatures because that was strange, and they believed that there was something about the divine realm that was frightening and out of this world.

So was the Bible a rip-off of the ancient Near East? C.S. Lewis makes an interesting point on pages 82-83 of Reflections on the Psalms, after describing the thunderous epiphany of God in Psalm 18:

"All of this is of course in one way very close to Paganism. Thor and Zeus also spoke in the thunder; Hermes or Iris was the messenger of the gods. But the difference, though subtle, is momentous, between hearing in the thunder the voice of God or the voice of a god. As we have seen, even in the creation-myths, gods have beginnings. Most of them have fathers and mothers; often we know their birth-places. There is no question of self-existence or the timeless. Being is imposed upon them, by preceding causes. They are, like us, creatures or products; though they are luckier than we in being stronger, more beautiful, and exempt from death. They are, like us, actors in the cosmic drama, not its authors. Plato fully understood this. His God creates the gods and preserves them from death by His own power; they have no inherent immortality. In other words, the difference between believing in gods and in many gods is not one of arithmetic. As someone has said 'gods' is not really the plural of God; God has no plural. Thus when you hear in the thunder the voice of a god, you are stopping short, for the voice of a god is not really a voice from beyond the world, from the uncreated. By taking the god's voice away---or envisaging the god as an angel, a servant of that Other---you go further. The thunder becomes not less divine but more. By emptying Nature of divinity---or, let us say, of divinities---you will fill her with Deity, for she is now the bearer of messages. There is a sense in which Nature-worship silences her---as if a child or a savage were so impressed with the postman's uniform that he omitted to take in the letters."

Scholars of the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East may find Lewis' points debatable, holding that the Hebrew Bible's depiction of the divine realm overlaps with the ancient Near East much more than Lewis may believe. But Lewis does make a profound point: that when one views creation as the product of one God, then nature becomes a profound repository of messages from that one God, rather than merely a battleground of different deities. (This topic will come up again in my study of Psalm 19.) How this plays out specifically, that's tough to say. A thunderstorm can communicate to us that God is a source of water and (thus) food, even as it demonstrates that God has a dangerous side---one that the wicked should not test! But what happens when a severe thunderstorm causes havoc and destruction for people who are not particularly bad, but are just trying to live their own lives? What does that communicate about God?

2. I encountered some debate about the date of Psalm 18. W.E. Addis, on page 367 of Peake's Commentary on the Bible (which is old, since it dates to the early 1900's), disputes Davidic authorship of the Psalm:

"The internal evidence is decisive not for but against the Davidic authorship. There is a want of concrete detail, so that even the advocates of Davidic origin differ about the period of David's history to which the Ps. belongs. The conventional theophany would suit any victory won by a champion of Judah in later times. How could David have written 'Thou savest a poor (or humble) people'? or described himself in the language of Pharisaic piety, as one 'who kept the ways of Yahweh...for all his judgments are before me and I did not put his statutes from me'? Such language presupposes familiarity with the Pentateuch, or at least with a notable part of it. The monotheism of the Ps. is in keeping with that of the Psalter throughout: it is absolute and dogmatic, 'Who is God save Yahweh?' Very different were the views of the real David, who kept idols called teraphim...in his house (1 S. 19:13, 16) and assumed that when his enemies drove him forth from Yahweh's land he would have to worship other gods (1 S. 26:19). Nor could David (who died long before the Second Isaiah) have realized the missionary vocation to Israel and said, 'Therefore will I give thanks to thee among the nations and sing unto thy name.'"

Addis dates many of the Psalms to the Second Temple Period, which was after Israel's exile. And, while conservatives who read the above quote may criticize Addis because of his liberal assumptions (i.e., David could not have known about the Pentateuch, which indicates that Moses did not write the Pentateuch before the time of David, and also that Psalm 18 is from a mere mortal with limited knowledge, rather than a piece that was inspired by an omniscient God), Addis does make a powerful point: that Psalm 18 appears to manifest a piety that is different from that of David in I Samuel.

And yet, in my opinion, Addis should have elaborated on his claim that Psalm 18 could relate to "any victory won by a champion of Judah in later times." Addis, like many interpreters, appears to acknowledge that Psalm 18 is relevant to Israel's battles with her enemies, which is not surprising, for vv 37-40 talk about battle. The theophany that Psalm 18 describes is similar to ancient Near Eastern descriptions of divine assistance in battles. Peter Craigie says that the Psalm may have been used to celebrate victories after campaigns. And the Nelson Study Bible makes an interesting interpretive move. V 41 says that the enemies cry out to the LORD, and the LORD does not answer them. According to Nelson, this is saying that the foreign enemies of Israel---who do not even worship Yahweh---are calling upon Yahweh because they are losing their battle against the Israelites.

Could this fit the Second Temple Period? At many times during the Second Temple Period, the Jews did not fight that much, for they submitted to their Gentile oppressors. Could Psalm 18 have been composed in reference to the Maccabees, since they did fight battles? The problem is that Psalm 18:50 says that God gives to David and to his seed great victories---and the Davidic line was not ruling in the Second Temple Period, but it did rule Judah in the pre-exilic period. Is the Psalm Messianic, an expression of hope during Israel's post-exilic period that God would restore the Davidic king and help him to defeat Israel's Gentile enemies? Psalm 18 doesn't mention restoration of the Davidic dynasty---just the king. I can envision post-exilic Jews making use of Psalm 18 to assure themselves of God's power against evil-doers, but I can't see the Psalm being created in that period.

What's interesting, however, is that Psalm 18 looms large in minimalist Thomas Thompson's Mythic Past. Thompson views much of the Hebrew Bible as a product of the Hellenistic Period. For him, Psalm 18 is about David as a cosmic Messiah, and I am unsure what precisely Thompson means by that. On page 54, Thompson states that Psalm 18 is used to interpret the entire David story, presenting him as "the representative of the righteous in a cosmic struggle of Yahweh against the nations and against God's enemies." This seems to imply that the David we read about in I-II Samuel was the cosmic Messiah. On page 324, though, he says that the cosmic Messiah "rules from a heavenly Jerusalem and judges the world." In Psalm 110, Thompson states, "this messianic son of Yahweh is described as the 'lord' and 'patron' of the singer, a heavenly David, whom Yahweh gives birth to as life-giving dew from the womb of the dawn."

What exactly is Thompson proposing? That Psalms 18 and 110 believe that there is a heavenly David and an earthly David (see here for a rabbinic belief in a heavenly and an earthly Jacob), or that a heavenly Messianic David overtook the earthly David, the way that some Christians in antiquity thought that "Christ" came upon the human Jesus and went back to heaven at Jesus' crucifixion? Or that David thought that, in a sense, he ruled the world, since his God was the ruler of the world? One more point that Thompson makes is that Psalm 18 functioned for the individual Jew, assuring him that God would move heaven and earth to deliver him from his enemies, even if he wasn't a descendant of David. There is a sense in which every individual Jew has cosmic influence, in this scenario.

3. I listened to an excellent sermon last night by Gary Demar (see here for the sermon). Gary Demar appears to be a partial preterist---one who believes that many of the prophecies of the Bible have been fulfilled in history, but that Jesus will still come back in the future to judge humanity. Elements of his partial preterism include the view that the events of Matthew 24---even the coming of the Son of Man---were fulfilled at the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Demar is also a post-millennialist, which means that he thinks Christians should evangelize the world and create a godly society before Christ's return.

I already knew this stuff about partial preterism before I listened to Demar's sermon. And, to be honest, I was disillusioned with partial preterism. I felt that it was a weak Christian attempt to explain away Jesus' failure to return quickly, as he promised he would. I thought that the second coming of Christ in Matthew 24ff. had to be about more than the destruction of Jerusalem, for Jesus' second coming also includes a celebration among the saints as well as God's judgment of the nations (not just Israel), and those things did not happen in history. I also disliked what I believed to be an anti-Jewish element in partial preterism---not that it's against the Jewish people, but rather that it is against Judaism as a religion, as well as contains supersessionist tendencies. One preterist I know remarked that Judaism was destroyed after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., marking the beginning of a new era. I found that claim to be ludicrous, for some of Judaism's most fruitful years occurred after the destruction of Jerusalem! That's when we got the literature of rabbinic Judaism! Moreover, I have problems accepting that the "end" or the "last days" that the New Testament talks about refers to the end of the Old Covenant---which doesn't strike me as all that cataclysmic.

So why did I enjoy Gary Demar's sermon? I am a fan of the fourth century Antiochian method of interpreting the Hebrew Bible---which interprets prophecies in the Hebrew Bible in light of events in Israel's history, rather than viewing them solely as prophecies about Jesus. I have liked that sort of approach ever since I listened to a tape by Jews for Judaism (a counter-missionary organization) that talked about non-Christological, Jewish ways to interpret passages that Christians have applied to Jesus---such as Isaiah 7:14 and Isaiah 53.

Well, Gary Demar had this Antiochian sort of approach in his sermon---only he didn't relate prophecies to the time of the Maccabees, as Antiochians tended to do. First of all, he looked at Psalm 18, which, in the superscription, is applied to God's deliverance of David from his enemies, and also from Saul. Psalm 18 mentions earth-shattering, cataclysmic events, which we do not see in the life of David. Consequently, Demar concludes that those events are symbolic of God's deliverance of David from his enemies. Secondly, Demar asks why prophecies that predict earth-shattering, cataclysmic events cannot likewise be symbolic---as Psalm 18 was for the events in David's life. Demar's conclusion is that Zechariah 12---in which God dramatically saves Jerusalem and Judah from her enemies---concerns God's rescue of the Jewish people during the time of Esther. And, as someone who likes to look at context rather than forcing the Hebrew Bible into a christological mold, I appreciated something Demar said about the people beholding the one they had pierced in Zechariah 12. While many Christians have related that to Jesus, Demar said that it was about God himself, who was wounded by the sins of his people. According to Demar, John Calvin had such an interpretation as well. Demar may have supersessionist tendencies in his own belief system, but, here, he relates prophecies in the Hebrew Bible to the history of Israel, and God's faithfulness to the Jewish people.

I also appreciated Demar's humble, low-key approach. I once listened to a series on prophecy by someone who believed in the pre-tribulational rapture, and this guy claimed that some of his views were "Holy Spirit inspired." But Demar did not do that. He just looked at the Bible, and offered his viewpoint on it.

Concluding Thompson's Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives

I finished Thomas Thompson's Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives.

On page 325, Thompson defends the first millennium B.C.E Israelite Period as the historical setting for the composition of the stories about the patriarchs. At the earliest, Thompson dates the stories to the Iron Age. Thompson talks about anachronisms in the stories: integral elements that do not fit the time period that the stories purport to depict, namely, the early second millennium B.C.E. Surprisingly, Thompson not once in this book mentions the camels in the patriarchal narratives as anachronisms! But here are some anachronisms that he does mention:

"The tradition about Terah setting out with his family from Ur of the Chaldees for the land of Canaan, the genealogical tree of Abraham in Gen 11, the genealogy of Nahor the brother of Abraham, the tradition that Lot is the father of the Ammonites and the Moabites and his settlement to the east of Abraham the father of the Israelites, and the Jacob-Laban traditions, all bring the patriarchs inescapably close to the Arameans---those of Transjordan who were not there before the end of the Late Bronze Age in the twelfth century, the Arameans of North Mesopotamia who can probably be dated there post twelfth century, and certainly post-fourteenth century, and the Arameans of South Mesopotamia, the Chaldaeans, who were not there before the beginning of the tenth century. Similarly, the tradition which connects Esau with Edom can hardly antedate the beginning of the Iron Age, and the disinheritance of Ishmael is in its origin bound up with the conflict between Israel and the Ishmaelites. The identification with Jacob with Israel and the inheritance of his twelve sons presupposes the existence of Israel as a political and geographical entity, and the promise to Abraham presupposes the existence of the political boundaries of the Davidic kingdom. The story of the conquest of Shechem presupposes the possession of Shechem by the Israelites for a considerably period of time...

"...The reference to the Philistines in the patriarch's conflict over water rights can only arbitrarily be excluded from the story; and specifically because we do not have other evidence for the Philistines in this region, the reference appears to be original to our story...On the basis of the extensive archaeological study of Palestine, we can now say with some confidence that only during the Iron Age are all the cities of Palestine that are mentioned in the patriarchal narratives and which can be located with some certainty known and occupied. The geographical picture we get from the Genesis stories is that of Iron Age Palestine. I refer specifically to such sites as Bethel, Ai, and Beersheba."

We can see in the first quote that the narratives tie the patriarchs to particular people-groups: the Arameans, the Edomites, etc. Why? On page 298, Thompson states: "The patriarchs, and especially Abraham, are the means by which the biblical tradition has expressed Israel's political, sociological and geographical ties with the world surrounding it...Understandably, the stories often are aetiological in intent and are used to explain the historiographical relationship between the eponymous ancestor or hero and the tribe, village, or region bearing his name."

I wish Thompson had gone into more detail about why the patriarchal narratives present Abraham as an Aramean, or why Abraham is the ancestor of the Edomites in the narrative. Aram and Edom were not particularly on friendly terms with Israel, at least in biblical stories. So why did the patriarchal stories portray Israel as related to them, in some sense? Thompson does say that the agreement between Jacob and Laban was an etiology for a border, and that makes sense. But I feel that I don't know a whole lot about why the Israelites made the specific historiographic moves that they did in the patriarchal narratives---at least not from Thompson's book. But the closest explanation that I came across (that I remember from my reading, that is) was on page 302, where Thompson says that there are sociological grounds for Israel being "attached to the tribal elements in their cultural milieu (the Arameans, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, and Ishmaelites)". Maybe that explains why the Israelites considered themselves relatives of these people-groups: they all were alike in having a tribal background.

Neusner on Approaches to Comparative Midrash

I read the Appendix to Jacob Neusner's Comparative Midrash: The Plan and Program of Genesis Rabbah and Leviticus Rabbah. The Appendix is entitled "The Two Principal Theories of Comparative Midrash." Actually, however, Neusner discusses three scholars: Rene Bloch, Geza Vermes, and Steven Fraade.

Comparative midrash is "comparing what diverse groups say about, among other things, the meaning of biblical verses" (page 187).

One reason that Rene Bloch thinks that comparative midrash is important is that it can help one to provide a terminus ad quem for undated Palestinian rabbinic traditions. Suppose that there is an undated Palestinian rabbinic tradition, and the same tradition is in "texts external to Palestinian rabbinic Judaism which have at least an approximate date" (page 188). What we learn is that "the undated document contains materials that circulated prior to a certain date" (page 188). Neusner doesn't "see much in that discovery worthy of celebration" (page 188). Bloch also advocates comparing rabbinic traditions with those in Philo, Pseudo-Philo, Josephus, the Septuagint, the Peshitta, the Qumran documents, the New Testament, ancient Christian writings, and liturgical sources. But Neusner questions whether this is truly comparative "midrash"---comparing different exegetical approaches to a text---or if it is instead a comparison of different legends and stories.

Neusner's problem with Geza Vermes' approach is that he ignores "the documentary setting in which an exegesis occurs" (page 195), as he focuses instead on "the exegesis and the date of the document in which it occurs, without further attention to what the compilers or authorship of the document wished to accomplish by making use of the saying or exegesis" (page 196). I do think, however, that Geza Vermes says something important, in the quote that Neusner provides: "The differences in its application at various periods may result from changes in aims, needs, or even doctrines; but such changes cannot be detected without knowing what exactly has been altered" (page 194). My impression is that Neusner and Vermes overlap in their insistence that comparative midrash should look at how each document interprets a biblical text, and determine why it interprets it the way that it does.

Steven Fraade wrote about the history of interpretation of Genesis 4:26, which says that people began to call upon the name of the LORD in the time of Enosh. According to Fraade, Christians tended to interpret the text positively, in accordance with their view that there existed in human prehistory a church that was not specifically Jewish (since Abraham and his seed were not yet called). But Jewish interpreters, including the rabbis, viewed the text negatively---as if it was suggesting that people in the time of Enoch began to mistreat the name of the LORD. That accorded with their narrative---that humanity was on a downward slope, until God selected Abraham and the Jewish people to play a redemptive role.

Neusner's problem here is that Fraade generalizes about the rabbis, and fails to consider the role of specific rabbinic interpretations within their historical contexts, such as the dominance of Christianity over fourth century Palestine.

Fraade does, however, say that we should consider how redactors make use of the material in their own way, with which Neusner heartily agrees. But Neusner faults Fraade for not following through on this.