Essays I'll Need to Revisit

For my write-up today of The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume Three: The Early Roman Period, I have two items.

1. On pages 258-259, Raphael Loewe (in "Gentiles as seen by Jews after CE 70") discusses a rabbinic approach to the issue of the Gentiles: "In revealing Torah, God has promulgated the ethical, social and political ideal to be implemented by Israel---as an example, indeed, to mankind: but an example which, as history shows, the world may profess to admire or respect, but will not emulate." My impression from this is that, in rabbinic Judaism, the Gentiles were not to observe the Torah but rather the seven Noachide commandments, and yet they could admire the Torah or even convert to Judaism. According to Mekhilta Yithro Ba-chodesh 5, there is a "universal availability of Torah to all prepared to accept it---hence the divine decision to reveal it in no man's land" (Loewe's words). All could benefit from the Torah, including Gentiles who were not under its yoke, and Gentiles who chose to embrace the yoke.

But Loewe also says on page 257: "The relative rarity of universalistic halakhic exegesis should not overshadow the significance of such passages as the following interpretation of Lev. 18:5, 'you shall keep my commandments, which if a man (sc. any man) does, he shall live'. R. Me'ir assembled an anthology of texts to emphasize their universal and not exclusively Jewish import, including Isa. 26:2, where 'righteous nation' (goy) is understood as indicating an individual Gentile...Me'ir here equates a Gentile who fulfils the law with the high priest himself, and his formulation excludes the possibility that he is presupposing conversion. Fulfilment of the law by a Gentile is...a feasibility that is somewhat less demanding than in the case of the Jew..." Loewe cites Sifra and 'Acherey moth 13, 13 (but I don't know if Acherey moth is a part of the Sifra). Loewe's point here seems to be that Gentiles observe the law when they obey the seven Noachide commandments.

On page 264, however, Loewe characterizes 'Abbahu's position (in Babylonian Talmud Baba Qamma 38a) to be that, "Realizing the Noachides' moral failure, God abrogated their code in the sense that whilst its punitive sanctions stand, fulfilment of its prescriptions (with the consequent merit) becomes, for Gentiles, a voluntary affair..." And Loewe also refers to Yose b. Chanina's view (in Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 59a) that the Noachides "revert to the status of idolatrous Gentiles", since the ten commandments displace the Noachide laws that applied to Gentiles, and only the Jews need to observe the decalogue. This is new to me, so I may not be understanding some things here. So I will need to copy this essay, and probably revisit it more than once (whether or not I blog about it).

2. On page 235, Morton Smith (in "Gentiles as seen by Jews after CE 70") states the following: "In the predominantly pagan world of the Diaspora it is likely that Jews, Judaeans, and Ioudaioi often stuck together, overcoming their differences by compromise or neglect. We have little evidence of the requirements for admission to diasporic synagogues; no doubt they differed greatly. We find Philo writing of Alexandrian Jews who thought the commandments allegorical, to be understood, not obeyed (De migratione Abr. XVI.89). Josephus tells us that the first Jewish mentor of the King of Adiabene assured him, 'It is possible...to revere the deity even without circumcision...To be a zealous adherent of the ancestral customs of the Jews...is more important than being circumcised' (Ant. XX.41). But what did such people think 'the ancestral customs of the Jews' were? In Sardis, they seem to have included sacrifice, since the assembly of Sardis gave the Jews there a place to perform it (Ant. XIV.259ff)."

Smith's point here appears to be that the Jews in the Diaspora stuck together, and that meant that they weren't always strict about certain rules. For example, some felt that one could enter Diasporan synagogues and keep the Jews' ancestral customs without being circumcised.

Chapters 19, 21-23 of The Stand

In my reading last night of Stephen King’s The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition, I read Chapters 19-23. Here’s what stood out to me:

1. I’ve talked about Larry Underwood and how his Mom considers him to be a taker (see here). In Chapter 19, Larry is more of a giver, for he buys his Mom groceries and paperbacks when she is sick. But, as she dies, he struggles to get rid of a feeling that he has: How will his Mom’s death screw up his plans? He may be selfish, but he’s fighting against his selfishness.

Page 161 has an interesting thought. Larry can’t get an ambulance for his Mom, for the hospital’s line is busy, with so many people being sick with the super-flu. Larry tries to figure out what to do. “Larry decided to go down and see if Mr. Freeman could watch her while he got over to the hospital. Or should he call a private ambulance? [H]ow come nobody knew about these things when they needed to know about them? Why didn’t they teach it in school?”

I wonder that about a lot of things I’m supposed to know as an adult.

2. Chapters 21-22 are about Stu’s experiences. I wondered in my post, Deitz, if Deitz tries to kill Stu in the book for The Stand, as he does in the miniseries. He doesn’t. Somebody else does. Deitz dies before that.

Page 175 has something that I almost overlooked, but which is shocking: the Government hospital actually injected Stu with the superflu virus to see if he would get sick, since it was puzzled as to why Stu wasn’t sick while so many other people were. But Stu’s body killed the virus!

3. Chapter 23 is when we first meet Randall Flagg, the villain of the book. What I get about him so far is that he likes to incite political trouble, and he also gives people a bad feeling. What intrigued me was that page 183 says that Randall could not remember much before the 1960′s, except that he was from Nebraska and attended high school. So Randall Flagg, as powerful as he may be, may not have lived for a long time as IT did, nor does he seem to view himself as eternal.

Ideas in Christianity Putting Some People's Minds in a Tailspin!

In this post, I will draw from something that I read online, the Christian movie that I watched yesterday (Hidden Secrets), and some other things that I have heard. The topic is how certain Christian ideas can be managed well by some and badly by others. “Well” and “badly” here refer not to the accuracy of biblical exegesis, but rather to the quality of one’s life and attitude. You’ll see what I mean when I give some examples:

1. I was reading a note by a pastor yesterday, in which he was talking about abuses that he has observed in conservative Christianity. He listed some reasons that he responds to certain elements of conservative Christianity with a sharp edge:

“It’s the pastor who told me he was kicked out of Bible School during his last week on finals as a senior. Why? Because his wife left him for another man that week and he requested an extension of time to take his tests so that he could deal with the situation and also his own grief. The Dean of Students immediately expelled him from school, telling him that he couldn’t manage his own house, how could he ever manage the house of God.”

“It’s the guy in his thirties who could not find peace in his own salvation because he had been told that a ‘generational curse’ hung over him. Despite all the renouncing and binding and rebuking he had been told to do, he still was tormented.”

“It’s a precious friend who killed himself after telling me a few months earlier, ‘I believe God could use me if I could only get my shit together.’ Despite my best efforts to assure him that he didn’t need to get it together but just trust Jesus moment by moment, somebody came in one morning and found him hanging by his neck in a noose he had made.”

2. In the movie that I watched yesterday, Hidden Secrets (see my post here), one of the characters felt that God was punishing her because she had an abortion when she was in college. When a Christian friend tried to reassure her that the blood of Jesus could forgive any sin, she replied that God may have forgiven her, and yet God is still requiring her to undergo negative temporal consequences on account of her sin. For her, those consequences were that people she loved died. She did not refer to the story of David and Bathsheba, but I have heard Christians allude to that story to teach that, although God may forgive a sin and the sinner is saved, God may still require the sinner to endure the negative temporal consequences of that sin.

3. I’ve heard different people who get their heads in a spin as they try to accept such issues as hell and God’s foreknowledge. I remember a young man calling into Focus on the Family’s Life on the Edge radio program, and he was disturbed by hell. One of the hosts was giving him the usual evangelical “You send yourself to hell” spiel, but that did not satisfy the caller. He felt that God’s foreknowledge of all events took away people’s free-will, for God’s foreknowledge implies that the future is set in stone. When you add hell into the mix, there are people who can arrive at pretty disturbing conclusions, the kinds that can put some people’s minds into a tailspin.

4. To cite my own experience, I long had trouble with Jesus’ teaching that God will not forgive our sins if we don’t forgive others (see Matthew 6:14-15). That seems to me to be salvation by works, for it conditions God’s forgiveness and acceptance of me on my ability to push a grudge out of my system. This teaching depressed me for a long time.

Many Christians will come along and will say that what I presented in the above items is not “biblical”. But, in a sense, it is biblical. Paul told Timothy that those who can’t manage their own households are not fit to run the church of God (I Timothy 3:5). There are punishments in the Hebrew Bible that are passed down to subsequent generations. In some cases in the Hebrew Bible, God smites a person’s family members as punishment for that person’s sin. (I think of the firstborn of Egypt, and also Jeroboam’s son.) Jesus said that God will not forgive our own sins if we do not forgive others.

The thing is, there are many Christians who know how to cope and to function, for they interpret these things in a common-sense manner, or they reinterpret them, or they simply ignore them, or they may not even be aware of them. But then there are other people—who may be obsessive-compulsive, or who may take things literally and at face-value, or who take things really seriously—who can easily find themselves tormented by these and other doctrines. And, when someone offers a common-sense interpretation that is more consistent with a happy life, it may not make sense to people like this (which includes me), for the interpretation does not appear to be all that faithful to the Bible. For example, I’d be rich if I had a penny for every time that Christians brought in extra-biblical insights to explain away Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness. I’ve been told that I am forgiven simply by accepting God’s free grace, but that lack of forgiveness on my part can hinder me from producing spiritual fruit. But Jesus doesn’t say that. He says that those who don’t forgive others will not be forgiven by God. Many have said that, if I haven’t forgiven others, then that indicates that I haven’t truly accepted God’s forgiveness of myself. When I hear that, being saved appears to involve a lot more work than evangelicals say it does!

And then there are solutions that I hear that don’t solve much, in my opinion. For example, on the issues of the generational curse and God killing a person’s family members because of the person’s sin, I’ve heard Christians say that this was only the Old Testament, and that God now operates by different rules. What exactly does that solve? So God was an unfair psychopath for a while, and now he’s had a change of heart? What sense does that make?

I’ve gotten to the point where I just don’t rack my brain over this stuff. I try to go with what makes me happy, or compassionate, or peaceful in spirit. If bad interpretations of the Bible can assist me in that, then I go with them!

Hesitation Returns!

I talked here about the Bible study group that I will be attending at my church, which will be going through Tim Keller’s The Prodigal God. I said that I was initially afraid of going, but now I’m not because the Discussion Guide appears to focus on spirituality rather than doctrine, and that meets me where I am, since I am skeptical about a lot of doctrine, and yet I would appreciate wisdom on how to live a spiritual life. As I look more through the Discussion Guide, however, my worries return, for I wonder what I will do if I disagree with something.

I’ll illustrate. First of all, on page 63 of the Discussion Guide, there is a quote from Tim Keller’s book, which states that “there is no way you will be able to grow spiritually apart from a deep involvement in a community of other believers.” There is then a question: “Why is this true?”

I don’t necessarily dispute that community can help a person to grow spiritually. I found that the time when I was meeting with a mentor and a therapist on a regular basis and getting an outside perspective on my life helped me to grow. (I don’t know if Tim Keller would classify that as deep community, though.) But I’m not presently willing to be in “deep” community with evangelicals. I’m not interested in baring my soul before them, or in enduring their judgment, or in being pressured to think and act in a certain way. And I struggle with being in a group, period. One thing I hear from a lot of evangelicals is that being in deep community makes believers more loving, since they are learning to put up with each other’s bull. There’s a rhyme-and-reason to that, but I wonder why, if this is true, so many evangelicals are not loving.

Moreover, please understand: I’m not saying no one should be in a community with other believers. I’m not like a lot of evangelicals, who think that everyone should do things their way. I often got annoyed when I was in an evangelical small group, and we were discussing what “we” should be doing. Why should “we” all be doing the same thing?

So this is how I feel. Ideally, in the Bible study group that I will attend, I can just be quiet when this question is discussed. But I fear that the pastor will say, “Why do you think this is true, James?” I’m not sure what I would answer. I wouldn’t want to convey that I’m reluctant to be in deep community with the people at my church, because that would be offensive, plus the people at my church are nice people. I’ll probably answer that it’s good to get an outsider’s perspective—like I did with my mentor and my therapist. I just hope that people won’t take that to mean that I’m willing to spill my guts on my life and hear people judgmentally analyze it.

Second, on page 24 of the Discussion Guide, there is this question: “Why do you think many churches today are not attracting the broken and marginalized with Jesus’ message of grace?”

I can think of different reasons, and I wouldn’t be surprised if people in the group will come up with those reasons as well. But I’m afraid that this question will be turned into pressuring people to witness. “How can we attract people to the Gospel?” Frankly, I’m not interested in attracting people to a religious system of thought. Why do I have to be selling something? Again, hopefully, I can just keep my mouth shut during this question. But I fear that someone will ask, “What do you think, James?” Then I’d have to look unspiritual by saying that I feel no desire or compulsion to witness.

I may just be projecting, and my fears may be groundless. I’ll see what happens, and I’ll share what happens, since I’ll be blogging about each session that I attend. (I won’t be going into every detail, but just the parts that stood out to me.) But my problem with Bible study groups is that they work best when people are on the same page, in some manner. A reason that I don’t really fit into many of them is that I’m not on the same page, and the format of Bible study groups usually pressures people to be on the same page.

Loose or Strict Interpretation?

For my write-up today of The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume Three: The Early Roman Period, I will discuss an item on pages 195-197, which is in Morton Smith's "The Gentiles in Judaism 125 BCE-CE 66".

Deuteronomy 20:10-17 commands the Israelites to kill the inhabitants of Canaan. According to I Maccabees and Josephus, the Maccabees exterminated some populations in Palestine, drove out others, and permitted some to remain (such as the Idumeans and the Irutraeans) if they adopted Jewish practices. Regarding Deuteronomy 20:10-17, Smith states that the "Hasmoneans could interpret the Law to suit themselves and slaves were worth more than corpses, so enslavement, even of the resistant and of people from the territory biblically assigned to Israel, is indicated not only by Josephus' reports, but also by the fact that the Romans were later able to restore many of the gentile towns to (the descendants of) their former inhabitants..." So, according to Smith, the Hasmoneans interpreted the command to slaughter the inhabitants of Canaan in a manner to suit themselves, for the Hasmoneans preferred to take the Gentile inhabitants as slaves, not to kill them. Smith does not offer details about what the Hasmoneans' interpretation of Deuteronomy 20:10-17 was, but perhaps it viewed the passage solely in reference to Canaanite people-groups, not the Gentiles who inhabited Palestine in the time of the Maccabees. Shaye Cohen referred to rabbinic exegesis that said that the ban on intermarriage between Israelites and Canaanites pertained only to Israelites and Canaanites, not to Israelites marrying Gentiles in general.

The Hasmoneans also used Gentiles as mercenaries, even to put down Jewish opponents. Smith states: "Josephus' report that Hyrcanus introduced mercenaries follows almost immediately his report of the refusal to accept a Seleucid garrison in Jerusalem 'because (the Jews' principle of) keeping themselves apart did not permit them to associate with aliens', Ant. XIII.247, cf. 249. Mercenaries hired by rulers of small states were commonly stationed in the capital, and Hyrcanus' subsequent success in putting down his Jewish opponents suggests that his mercenaries were at hand in Jerusalem. However, as High Priest, he could interpret the law to suit the occasion. The need often to do so may have decided him to leave the tradition-bound Pharisees and go over to the Sadducees who reportedly held that nothing was binding save the letter of the text."

Smith does not detail what law was being violated, but he may be deducing a law against Jewish association with aliens from Josephus' statement that the Jews could not do so (and I'm sure that there's more to the issue of Jewish interaction with Gentiles than this). And yet, Gentiles were allowed to be in Jerusalem to serve as mercenaries. According to Smith, the Hasmonean High Priest went over to the Sadducees because interpreting the law primarily in reference to the text allowed for a degree of freedom. It's like the view of some rabbis that intermarriage was only prohibited between Israelites and Canaanites: if you stick solely with the text, then only what the text explicitly prohibits is what is banned. In that case, one can nitpick the text such that he can create more freedom for himself.

Hidden Secrets, and John Schneider's Testimony

I watched a Christian movie today, which (like most Christian movies) was cheesy, but I actually enjoyed it. It was Hidden Secrets, which was released in 2006. It’s about a group of people who gather at the funeral of a Christian friend. I don’t want to get bogged down in the details of the plot, so you can read a good summary here. Rather, I’ll be talking about the actors I like in the movies, as well as my favorite scenes. Then, I’ll talk some about John Schneider’s testimony, which is in an article about this movie.

There were familiar faces in the movie. There was Reginald Vel Johnson, who played Carl Winslow on Family Matters. There was Staci Keanan, whom I know from My Two Dads and Step by Step. (Yes, my family watched the entire TGIF line-up on ABC in the 80′s and 90′s!) There was also Corin Nemec, whom I know as Harold Lauder on The Stand miniseries, but I also learned today that he received an Emmy for portraying 14-year old Steven Stayner in I Know My First Name Is Steven. And there was John Schneider, whom I love as Jonathan Kent in Smallville, and he also played an all-right Michael Landon in Michael Landon: The Father I Knew.

A significant part of the movie was a love-triangle, and I won’t be getting into that. The three characters who stood out to me were Rhonda Mirfin, a judgmental conservative Christian who gets into people’s faces; John Schneider’s character, Gary Zimmerman, who is a skeptic and challenges Christians with his village atheist points and questions; and Corin Nemec’s character, Michael Stover, a likeable and humble Christian who is struggling with his homosexual past (and homosexual attraction that he still has).

In my opinion, the most entertaining parts of the movie were Gary’s one-liners, especially the ones that irritated Rhonda. “Christians…where are the lions when you need them?”, Gary asked after Rhonda had berated him for being involved in embryonic stem-cell research. And, when Rhonda prepared a little witnessing script to convince Gary (who was half-Jewish) that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies, Gary had some zingers and surprises up his sleeve. Rhonda asked Gary if he was familiar with the Old Testament, and Gary responds that, to his people, it’s the only Testament. Rhonda then asked Gary if he knew about Isaiah 53, and Gary proceeded to recite much of the chapter to her. Surprised, she inquired what that meant to him, and if he believed it was about Jesus. Gary replied, “The way I see prophecy is like this: I could predict that there will be two baseball teams, and one will win, and the other will lose.” The others then reply, “Yeah, that could happen.” Gary’s point was probably that it doesn’t take divine inspiration to guess at what will happen in the future. I’m usually interested in how movies address Isaiah 53, because that clues me in to how much their writers know about the debate concerning the chapter: whether it’s about Israel, the Messiah, a king, etc. I was a little disappointed that this movie did not get into that, but I thought that Gary’s point was valid: So Isaiah 53 talks about a person who will suffer and die. Many people suffer and die, so what does this prediction (if it even is that) prove?

Gary brings up good points, such as the way that even the Christians around him disagreed on what God’s will was. (They were debating over whether or not to go dancing.) And, sometimes, Gary lost the debate. When Gary tells Rhonda that he believes in what is life-affirming, Rhonda glibly responds, “So you’re pro-life now”, prompting even someone who didn’t care for Rhonda to say, “You walked into that one, Gary!” At the end of the movie, the characters make up, and Gary actually becomes open to faith. It’s not because of any argument that he heard, but rather it was on account of how the Christians he was around kept their faith through all of the chaos that they were experiencing. He admired that.

That brings me to John Schneider’s own testimony about how he became a Christian, which you can read in the article here. Essentially, John became a Christian because of his Grandma’s belief that she would be with God after she died, and also on account of something that he saw at church when he was 29. The article states:

“He saw a little old man being helped off the floor after prayer by a huge young black man with braids and gold around his neck, and there was a hug of appreciation between the two. Somehow in that little moment John saw Christ. He saw acceptance; He saw appreciation; He saw selflessness. From that moment on, he understood. It was a tiny little thing that probably took all of four seconds, much like it took four seconds for his grandmother to say that she’d be with God. But he saw something there that made him want to know more about what that was. That was the moment when the first little piece of green sprouted up from the bulb John’s grandmother had planted all those years before. After he accepted Christ, he started reading the Bible and looking at things from a different perspective. It was no longer a question of what could he get out of this day. It was, If God is always up to something, what is He up to today and what is my part in it?”

There’s something wholesome about that—being drawn to Christ by seeing one man helping another man, and both appreciating each other. Even someone who isn’t convinced by apologetics (like me) can admire that.

Chapter 18 of The Stand, and Also the Ruby Ridge Movie

For my write-up today of Stephen King’s The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition, I’ll talk about three items from Chapter 18, which is about Nick Andros, a deaf mute who is beaten up by bullies in a rural southern area:

1. Pages 135-136 state: “Nick had gained a healthy respect for Sheriff John Baker these last couple of days. He was a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound ex-farmer who was predictably called Big Bad John by his constituents. The respect Nick felt for him was not because Baker had given him this job swamping out the holding area to make up for his lost week’s pay, but because he had gone after the men who had beaten and robbed Nick. He had done it as if Nick were a member of one of the oldest and most respected families in town instead of just a deaf-mute drifter. There were plenty of sheriffs here in the border South, Nick knew, who would have seen him on a workfarm or roadgang for six months ahead.”

In terms of a lesson from this passage, I learn to appreciate the kindness that others show to me rather than taking it for granted, for not everyone in the world is kind or fair. But this passage also reminds me that I like the character of Sheriff John Baker, and also his wife. They are good country folks. They’re hospitable. They’re genuinely interested in Nick’s story. They’re concerned about Nick’s well-being. They serve good meals. They talk country. They’re salt-of-the-earth people.

2. For the second item, I’ll touch briefly on Nick’s story. I thought that Stephen King captured what it would probably be like to be a deaf-mute—to figure out how to read lips, and possibly to learn the names for things at a later age than most kids. Not surprisingly, there was a span of time in which Nick was bitter in his world of solitude. But a kind therapist came along and helped him out, and Nick was then seeking to finish his high school credits so he could possibly go to college. I wonder if Stephen King did research on deaf-mutes to write about Nick Andros.

3. A peculiar character is Doc Soames. Doc Soames notices that many people in town are actually dying of the flu (which, of course, is unusual), and he speculates that somebody in the government made a mistake and is now trying to cover it up. Soames remarks to Nick that he used to dismiss the paranoia of the younger generation, which was frightened of their phones being wiretapped and authorities following them around and running computer checks on them. But now Soames realizes that the younger generation was right, while he was wrong.

This reminds me of one of my favorite movies, The Siege of Ruby Ridge, which starred Randy Quaid, Laura Dern, and Kirsten Dunst. They played members of the Weaver family, which had a standoff with the U.S. Government in the early 1990s. Randy Quaid played Randy Weaver, and Laura Dern played his wife, Vicki Weaver. Randy and Vicki were very religious and were afraid of the U.S. Government, which was one reason that they were living in the hills, away from civilization. This baffled Vicki’s parents, who were moderately religious and were rather patriotic. (Vicki’s father fought in World War II, I believe.) And other members of Vicki’s family thought that she was plain nuts, for they were more liberal.

In a very poignant scene, Randy and Vicki’s son had just been shot dead, and a government agent is calmly speaking with Vicki’s parents, but he does not tell them that their very own grandson has been shot. After the government agent leaves, Vicki’s parents learn from the news that their grandson was shot dead, and they are incredulous. “He was standing right here”, Vicki’s father says about the government agent who had just left. “Why didn’t he tell us? What kind of people are we dealing with?” Vicki’s father then sobs and and says “Vicki was right.” He meant that she was right to distrust the U.S. Government.

I think that the impression that the movie, as a whole, was trying to leave with us was that the government really botched up the siege at Ruby Ridge. I doubt that the movie wanted us to view the U.S. Government as evil, but I think that it was trying to say that radical groups aren’t getting their distrust of government out of the clear blue sky, for the government has done things that arouse suspicion and resentment. The scene in The Stand in which Doc Soames talked about the government brought these elements of the movie to my mind.