33 AD

Paul in Troas - A Meditation of History

2011-08-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

Hear me friends. A vision in a dreamhas come to me in the starry night—a figurein height and bearing very close to Nestor,standing above my pillow, saying to me: “Sleeping, son of Atreus, tamer of horses? You should not sleep all night, not as a captainresponsible for his men, with many duties,a great voice in the conferences of war.Follow me closely: I am a messengerfrom Zeus, who is far away but holds you dear.‘Prepare the troops,’ he said, ‘to take the fieldwithout delay: now may you take by stormthe spacious town of Troy…’”—Agamémnon to his warlords. The Iliad, Book II.

THROUGHOUT her storied and difficult history, Jerusalem has suffered atleast twenty sieges and destructions. WhenAlexander the Great went up to lay siege against the holy city of the Jewishnation during his conquest of the Persian Empire, however, he did not take thecity by laying a single hand against her, and no destruction of the city isevinced for the year 332 BCE, a remarkable fact when one considers Josephus’sstatement in the Antiquities of the Jews that the Jewish high priest hadspurned Alexander’s message requesting him to cede his loyalty to Darius andserve instead the Macedonian conqueror. Aftersacking Tyre and Gaza,Alexander, seething in anger over the high priest’s reply, marched to Jerusalem with the fullintention to lay siege against the Judean capital, his drooling Aramean andSamaritan allies in tow. But when he sawthe high priest and delegation of Jewish leaders approaching him from the citywalls, he repented of his intentions and even bolted from the safety of his entourageto go greet them. Why he did so is quite a interesting story, as Josephus recounts:

…whenthe Phoenicians and the Chaldeans that followed him thought they should haveliberty to plunder the city, and torment the high priest to death, which theking's displeasure fairly promised them, the very reverse of it happened; forAlexander, when he saw the multitude at a distance, in white garments, whilethe priests stood clothed with fine linen, and the high priest in purple andscarlet clothing, with his mitre on his head, having the golden plate whereonthe name of God was engraved, he approached by himself, and adored that name,and first saluted the high priest. The Jews also did all together, with onevoice, salute Alexander, and encompass him about; whereupon the kings of Syriaand the rest were surprised at what Alexander had done, and supposed himdisordered in his mind. However, Parmenio alone went up to him, and asked himhow it came to pass that, when all others adored him, he should adore the highpriest of the Jews? To whom he replied, "I did not adore him, but that Godwho hath honored him with his high priesthood; for I saw this very person in adream, in this very habit, when I was at Dios in Macedonia, who, when I was consideringwith myself how I might obtain the dominion of Asia, exhorted me to make nodelay, but boldly to pass over the sea thither, for that he would conduct myarmy, and would give me the dominion over the Persians; whence it is that,having seen no other in that habit, and now seeing this person in it, andremembering that vision, and the exhortation which I had in my dream, I believethat I bring this army under the Divine conduct, and shall therewith conquerDarius, and destroy the power of the Persians, and that all things will succeedaccording to what is in my own mind." And when he had said this toParmenio, and had given the high priest his right hand, the priests ran alongby him, and he came into the city. And when he went up into the temple, he offeredsacrifice to God, according to the high priest's direction, and magnificentlytreated both the high priest and the priests. And when the Book of Daniel wasshowed him wherein Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy theempire of the Persians, he supposed that himself was the person intended. Andas he was then glad, he dismissed the multitude for the present…[1]

WhileAlexander spared the holy city and its temple, his visit signaled the openingchapter in the dramatic story of Hellenism and the Jewish nation. Judaism’s encounter with Hellenism is widelydiscussed and debated, but scholars have only lately begun to appreciate theresilience of Judaism in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, following in a longwake of scholastic attempts to downplay the distinctiveness of the Jewishpeople (especially Diaspora Judaism) in Greco-Roman society. Judaism did undergo tremendous internal innovationsas a result of both the external influences of Hellenism and the newsensitivities that resulted from the Jewish nation’s self-reflection andevaluation of its sacred scriptures during the post-exilic period. Possibly no other period in history has lefta greater legacy in the history of world religion than this extraordinarilycreative period in Judaism. The epoch ofrebellions, sacerdotal intrigues, factionalism and political upheavals producedthe two great religious streams to come out of second temple period Judaism, RabbinicJudaism and Christianity, and helped set the stage for the rise of Islam. The late Hebrew Universityprofessor David Flusser, an Israeli authority on first century Christianity andJudaism, observed that a humanistic strain of piety emerged in second-templeperiod Jewish thought that emphasized one’s empathic relationship with one’sneighbor as the aim of the Torah. “Revolution broke through at three points,” said Flusser about thatreevaluation of the ethical thrust of the Law of the Jews, “the radicalinterpretation of the commandment of mutual love (Thou shalt love thyneighbor as thyself), the call for a new morality, and the idea of thekingdom of heaven.”[2] All three points were provoked in no small partby an intense theosophical undertaking that probed the character of God and plumbedthe meaning and purpose of God’s work in history.

A passive,infinitely transcendent God is much easier to live with than an observant andjealous God, for the notion that God actually cares for humanity, andespecially a portion of it, suddenly leads one to ask a slew of pernicketyquestions, most importantly, why on earth would a caring God suffer all thoseedifices of evil in our world? Why doesHe allow the wicked to get away with their pillories, while allowing His peopleto suffer traumas and humiliations in their hands? The problem waxed in Judaism even before theexile, for the author of the book of Ecclesiastes despairs, “I have seeneverything during my lifetime of futility: there is a righteous man whoperishes in his righteousness and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life inhis wickedness” (Eccle. 7:15). In the course of his or her studies, every studentof the Jewish apocalyptic will realize that the messianic hopes of the Jewishpeople during the second temple era were prompted in no small measure by themiseries imposed upon them at the hands of the Greeks and Romans. The unrealized promises of Isaiah, Ezekiel andZechariah were sure to guarantee such a royal dissatisfaction with thecondition of post-exilic life in Eretz Israel. Carl A. Keller, a specialist in mystical religioustrends, claims that Gnosticism and Jewish apocalypticism were alternateresponses to a profound dissatisfaction with the Jewish world-experience.[3]

In such anenvironment of discontent the apostle Paul crawled in from his youth, and itwas in that context that an enigmatic vision was delivered to him one night ashe tarried in the port of Troas during one ofhis missionary journeys, prodded by an unnamed restlessness. His companion Luke, in his New Testament bookof The Acts of the Apostles, recounted that before arriving to Troas, theHoly Spirit had not allowed Paul to preach anywhere in Asia (Acts 16:6ff). It is important to note that the lands whichPaul bypassed on this journey were regions where populous, thriving Jewishcommunities long existed, with important Christian communities already on the riseamong them. Paul traveled through Phrygia, which, according to the account of the Pentecostin the second chapter of Acts, had already gained Jewish adherents to themovement. Traveling from Galatia (in the central interior of modern-day Turkey) to Mysia (in the northwest), Paul hadprobably passed through the environs of Gordium, Phrygia’sancient capital of lore (by then in ruins), which had once housed King Midas’s legendaryGordian Knot. An ancient Phrygian sibylhad once prophesied that whoever managed to untie the knot would become ruler overthe entire earth. In 334 BCE, Alexanderthe Great crossed the Hellespont never intending to return to his hometown in Macedonia. Despite the fact that Alexander’s cavalry wasoutnumbered 4 to 1, his army slaughtered the Persians at the banks of the RiverGranicus, not far from the vicinity of ancient Troy. After freeing the Greek cities in Asia, Alexander marched to Gordium in 333 BCE and “untied”the Gordian Knot by slicing through it with his sword,[4] anact that could be said would forever foreshadow the attitudes of the Westernpowers towards the intractable realities of the East. The Greeks went on to shortly defeat DariusIII at Issus in Cilicia (near Syria),and it was in his campaign to consolidate the empire that following year when Judea became one of the many Persian territories to fall intothe hands of the young Macedonian king and his generals.

After passingthrough Phrygia, Luke recounts that Paul reached Mysia (the region south of theSea of Marmara), where he attempted to travel eastward into Bithynia (theenvirons of present-day Istanbul), only to find himself redirected by the HolySpirit in the opposite direction, down towards the Mysian seaport of AlexandriaTroas. The history of this city’snomenclature is particularly interesting. According to Strabo, this city, formerly called Sigia, was the largestremaining settlement of the Ilians in Alexander’s time. It was colonized after the Macedonianconquest of Persiaby Antigonus, one of Alexander’s four generals, who renamed the city “AntigoniaTroas” after himself. “Troas” wasappended to it to designate the Troad, the region pertaining to Troy, and thusbecame the proud name-bearer of that city over which Zeus declared in Homer’sIliad: “Of all the cities men of earth inhabit under the sun, under starryheavens, Ilion stood first in my esteem, first in my heart” (The Iliad,Book IV). After Antigonus’ defeat at theBattle of Ipsus, his rival Lysamachus helped consolidate his rule in Thraceby taking control of the city, renaming it “Alexandria Troas” in memory of hislate commander. Caesar Augustus laterenlisted the city as an ally in the Roman campaigns against Antiochus,eventually colonizing it with Romans and renaming it “Colonia AlexandriaAugusta Troas”.

At the timeof Paul, the port of Troas was one of the key nodes (along with its twincity Neapolis on the Greek mainland) of the east-west Roman communication route,the Via Egnatia, and would remain so until Constantinoplewould eclipse it in importance three centuries later. Constantine, however, had initially consideredputting the Roman capital at Troas, just as Julius Caesar, incidentally, had alsoonce contemplated before him, but he changed his mind in favor of the stronglyfortified Byzantium. Although Troas hadonly a fifth of the population of Ephesus (the largest city in Asia), it wasroughly equivalent to it in size at 1000 acres, causing the Ottomans to designateits sprawling ruins as “Old Istanbul”. Troas was on its way to becoming the Chicagoof the Roman Empire, and although Strabo mentionsit only briefly, he notes its rising importance as “one of the notable citiesof the world”.

Before theByzantine period, Troas, along with Corinth, hadbeen one of the most strategic cities in the Roman Empire, for the same reasonsTroy, guarding the entrance to the Hellespont, had been so important in the ancient world. It was not for nothing that the Spartansended the Peloponnesian War by defeating the Athenian fleet in 405 BCE at theHellespont, cutting off Athensfrom its major grain supply and forcing its surrender. Control of the Troad meant immense wealth andgeopolitical advantage for cities and empires in the ancient world, and (asHerodutus’ account of Xerxes at the Hellespont makes clear) the history of thisregion colorfully reflects the vicissitudes of history, its narrow, treacherousstrait a potent symbol of the Homeric conflicts between eastern and western civilizations. One could almost comment about the history ofthe last three millennia (up to the Battlefor Gallipoli in WWI) from the vantage point of these shores.

The move ofthe empire’s capital to Byzantiumis easy to understand. The region nearthe Hellespont was not only the nexus between the western and eastern halves ofthe empire, bridging Europe and Asia Minor for the fastest and most dependable traderoute to Rome across the Balkan Peninsula (as seafaring was seasonal), it alsocontrolled the flow of trade north and south through the channel, important foragricultural trade. In a real sense, itwas a sieve in the streams of commerce and within easy access of the Balkans, Pontus and the rich lands of Asia Minor. Asia Minor, inparticular, had more than double the population of any other region in theRoman Empire (estimated around 15,000,000 at the time of Constantine);this is more than Italy(6,000,000) and Egypt(6,500,000) combined. Not only was Asia the most cosmopolitan province in the Empire, it wasone of its most fertile, important in an empire that always owned an agrarianbased economy. It was also the cruciallink in the trade of luxury items such as silk and spices and dominated thetextile industry. In terms of wealthproduction, it was all-important for the prosperity and stability of the empire. When the region began to suffer invasions,inflation and deteriorating civic conditions in the late third century, theentire empire suffered severe economic and political destabilization.

The Romans hadearly discerned the critical advantage of settling Roman merchants in theregion. But it was not only thecommercial advantages and access to raw goods that spurred increased Romanpresence of the area; two crucial administrative necessities also factored: theenforcement of heavy taxation in Asia and the suppression of out of controlprice gauging. Asia,like many other provinces, had its share of savvy trade networks, which milkedthe Roman military complex for all it was worth. To maintain its economic hegemony, Rome had to increasingly clamp down on these cartels withan iron grip and continually curb, break-up and police Asia’sguilds and corporations. Constantine’s act toadopt Christianity as the state religion is not too unrelated from his move toput all corporations under state control (never was the empire more draconianand totalitarian in its scope as it was under the Byzantine emperors).

Paul wasborn a Roman citizen, we can rightly assume thus, the scion of a Jewish notableor wealthy Jewish freedman[5] fromthe prosperous city of Tarsus. Walking into the Latin colony of Troas (where business between non-Roman citizens wasconducted in delicate, muted terms) would not have necessarily represented theedge of friendly territory to Paul. Gustave Doré’s engraving “St. Paul Rescued from the Multitudes” (above) captures well the protectionshis Roman status granted him, a point not incidental to the success ofmissions. As a Roman citizen, he was granted the right, not only of protectionto his person, but of guaranteed hearing in trial, the right to keep one’slevel of citizenship in Roman colonies and immunity from corporal punishment, localtaxes or other local jurisdictional compulsions in travel. In the Roman port of Troas,a city named after Troy,Alexander the Great and Caesar Augustus, a vision came to Paul one night aroundthe year 50 CE. The apparition of a mandressed in Macedonian garb appeared before him, entreating him, “Come over to Macedonia andhelp us.”

“Thisepisode in Paul’s mission to the heathen in the West was of enormousimportance”, remarked David Flusser, “It was the will of God for Christianityto spread westward into Europe.” Such providence indeed it was, for Lukepenned the account more than a full two centuries before Constantine made Christianity the empire’sofficial faith. Paul sailed to Neapolisand there first set foot on European soil. In the banks of a Macedonian stream near Philippi, he baptized his firstconvert in Europe. The rest, as we say, is history. Slowly, over the course of his stay in theGreek mainland, the will of God to take the gospel to the pagans became moreevident to Paul and more central in his mission, culminating with his dialoguewith the pagan philosophers of Athens,in the cultural heart of the Greek world. To a Christian, this journey bespeaks of the triumph of the gospel messagein the West, but a sober reflection of history reveals the disheartening factthat neither Alexander going east nor Paul going west would result in much goodfortune for the Jewish nation. ForFlusser, an Orthodox Jew, the solace laid elsewhere. He comments on Paul’s vision at Troas by stating that Paul’s developing de-emphasis onthe more ritualistic aspects of the Torah was necessary for Christianity to developfrom a Jewish sect into an accepted European religion.[6] To Flusser, the event was probably proof ofthe extent of God’s concern for humanity. Flusser greatly admired Christ’s words in Matthew 5:48: “You must be perfect,as your heavenly father is perfect,” citing the best translation as: “Theremust be no limit in your goodness, as your heavenly Father’s goodness knows nobounds” (from the New English Bible).[7] For Christ, the concern for your fellow humanbeing was hinged on the imitation of the character of God (a very Rabbinicconcept) and sublimated in the dictum he coined, “Love your enemies!...For(God) makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on thejust and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:44ff.). A similar saying, pointed out Flusser, occurs in the Babylonian Talmudand is attributed to R. Abbahu (ca. 300 CE): “Greater is the day of rainfallthan the day of resurrection. For thelatter benefits only the pious, whereas the former benefits pious and sinnersalike” (B. Ta’anit 7a).[8]

[1] Flavius Josephus,Antiquities of the Jews, Book VIII, ch. 5

[2] David Flusser,Jesus, 3^rd ed. (Jerusalem: TheHebrew University Magnes Press, 2001) 81.

[3] Cited in Thomas Puttanil, A Comparative Study on the TheologicalMethodology of Irenaeus of Lyon and Sankaracharya (Frankfurt am Main: PeterLang, 1990) 17.

[4]Actually, some claim that Alexander’s “solution” may have been more subtle thanit may at first appear. He may not havetechnically cheated. The knot would nothave shown its ends, and recently, physicist Piotr Pieranski of the PoznanUniversity of Technology in Poland and the biologist Andrzej Stasiak of theUniversity of Lausanne in Switzerland (see http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_9_01.html)have speculated that the rope may have been constructed as a loop (the two endsof the rope would have been spliced together—not easy to do!). Those who attempted to unravel it may havealready known this, including Alexander. However, the loop would have been immersed in water and coiled into aknot while its still fresh threads were wet, so that, after drying out in thesun and aging, it would have contracted irreversibly to such a length that therequired operations needed to unravel the loop would not have beenpossible. Pieranski has proved that sucha contracted knotted loop, indeed, can exist. Alexander (who had been trained by Aristotle) may have deduced theproblem and thereby figured out where it was necessary to slice off some of thethickness the rope so that it could unravel.

[5]Freedmen were typically wealthy. Theengine of the Roman economy was driven in large part by the industrious,status-conscious freedmen merchants and artisans, upon whose trust-worthyclientage the landed gentry (that freed them) depended for theirprosperity. A Roman noble oftenincreased his wealth not by retaining his best slaves but by freeing them, thuscultivating and eventually gaining loyal and ambitious clients or “friends” (amici)that extended and prospered his business ventures. A perpetual slave has no stake in a ventureexcept under threat and requires constant supervision, nor is he likely tothink strategically. Jesus’ words to hisdisciples at the Last Supper are quite apt here: “No longer do I call you servants,for a slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends,for all things that I heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John15:15).

[6] See Flusser,p. 56ff. He comments, “Christianity,thus, penetrated into the Graeco-Roman world and from there later became aEuropean religion. In contrast to thecultural setting of Judaism and the religions of eastern Asia beginning withPersia, Western culture contributed to Christianity’s de-emphasis on ritual orceremonial prescription concerning “food and drink and various ablutions” (Heb.9:10)….Had Christianity spread first to the eastern Asiatic regions, it wouldhave developed specific ritual and ceremonial practices based on the Jewish lawin order to become a genuine religion in that part of the world.”

[7] Flusser,p. 83.

[8] Ibid.

Cascading to a New Creation

2010-06-13T16:59:00.000-07:00

In my previous two posts, I discussed the six Creation Day "Great Passages" that are represented by Revelation Chapters 1-13. These passages follow the structure of the creation account of Genesis as represented chronologically in the work that God performed from Day One to the Sixth Day. The six sections of the text from Revelation Chapter One to the conclusion of Chapter 13 work through, in an allusive and a thematic fashion, the creation work of the six days.

In the end-times chronology, such a literary schema represents a fitting culmination to the "old order" of the creation. The Revelation is describing a divine intervention into the final days of the old order in the same progressive order that the creation began. The apocalyptic drama seems to be shaking the creation up in the same order it was created. The end-times drama has taken the old creation out like a rug and is giving it a thorough shake-up and beating. In the process, heavenly creatures are separating things out, sifting the wheat out from the chaff. It is as if the old order of the world is being given a thorough inspection, so the "good" that is still in the creation can be preserved and rescued, like the animals of Noah's ark.

But with the beginning of Chapter 14, a new work, a new order of creation, is also announced. A "new song" is heard. A new day has manifested itself. But this new "Day One" breaks through like a ray into the old order in what I call a "cascading" fashion. It cascades progressively through the three "dominions" of created things that the six days of the Creation Week represent to the Revelation author. These three cosmological dominions represent the Genesis One created order as follows:

The works of the Three Dominions of the old order of the Creation:

The First Dominion -- "The Heaven and the Things in It" : The light created on Day One and the "creatures" of the Heavens that were created on the Fourth Day
The Second Dominion -- "The Sea and the Things in It": The firmament or "expanse of the sky" of the Second Day, the waters of the deep, and the creatures of the sea and the flying things in the expanse of the sky that were created on the Fifth Day
The Third Dominion -- "The Earth and the Things in It": The plant life of the Third Day, the rivers, seas and springs on the land, mankind and the walking/crawling creatures of the land that were created on the Sixth Day.

Notice the chronological pairing between the creation days above. The poetic structure of the Creation Week in Genesis One is actually suggestive of such a pairing schema. Day One, the Second Day, and the Third Day represent "stanzas" of a poem, which together represent one complete poetic cycle. The Fourth Day, the Fifth Day, and the Sixth Day represent another, more elaborate poetic cycle which hearkens back to the works of the first cycle within each of these days in the same progressive fashion. The Fourth Day hearkens back to Day One, the Fifth Day back to the Second Day and the Sixth back to the Third Day. Day One through the Third Day, in other words, have established a chronology of three "dominions" that the creatures created on the Fourth Day through the Sixth Day go out and populate in the same chronological order. This chronological repetition is what I call a "paralleled" chronology.

The section of Revelation from Chapters 14 to 19 works with the same parallel "dominion" chronology that the Creation Account uses, but the stepped order is reversed. Instead of starting from the beginning of the chronology, beginning with the First Dominion, this section works its way backwards in three stages that begin with the Third Dominion, continues through the Second Dominion, and culminates in the First Dominion. In the meantime, rays of a new order are peeking through. A new day is breaking through, like light through a tear in the fabric. A New Day is cascading through the stepped chronology, until it finally overtakes it at the end, as the light of the old creation is snuffed out.

Here is the "Three Dominion" cycle that begins with Revelation 14:1...

1. The "Third Dominion" Passage (Rev. 14:1-20): The Final Harvest

Third Dominion in Creation: "The Earth and the Things in It."

Third Dominion Themes: Gathering. Harvesting. The Exodus. Mountains (Sinai and Mt. Zion). Man's control over the things on the Earth. Naming/marking things. Receiving/having a dominion or something no one else knows about.

Look for the above themes in the letters to the Churches of Pergamum and Philadelphia and note how they appear in this passage.

2. The "Second Dominion" Passage (Rev. 15:1 - 17:18): The Wrath of God and the Harlot Who Sits on Many Waters.

Second Dominion in Creation: "The Sea and the Things in It."

Second Dominion Themes: The "sea of glass" (firmament). Clean/white linen. Pain and blasphemy.

Look for the above themes in the letters to the Churches of Smyrna and Sardis. This Passage includes a musical "break" sub-passage describing the plagues of the "Bowls of Wrath" (Chapter 16), and a transitional sub-passage elaborating on the descent of the "woman" in the wilderness (Chapter 17). As with breaks in other places, both passages contain imagery from other Dominions; they are improvisational interludes. Note that the Seven Bowls of Wrath parallel the exact same Creation Day thematic chronology of the Seven Trumpets. Both passages use the Creation Days similarly, but note the difference: in this case, the sun of the fourth "bowl of wrath" is not "darkened" (as in the fourth trumpet blast) but the dial is turned up the other way instead. Power is "given" to the sun.

In the "transitional passage" of Chapter 17, it might be very difficult to spot any link to Second Dominion (Second and Fifth Day) themes, but can you remember where we last encountered a "woman" in the wilderness? I believe that the author considers the "woman" in Chapter 17 to be the very same woman who was given the "two wings of an eagle" to escape the dragon in Rev. 12:14. She was once like an eagle who could escape the dragon in the wilderness, but, instead, we encounter her here drunk and sitting on the back of a beast in the wilderness. Apparently, since her last mention, she had failed to stay in the midheaven, in the Second Dominion (remember that the woman's origin was originally higher, in the Dominion of the Heaven above, among the sun, moon and stars). The commenting angels see the "woman" as a First then a Second Dominion denizen who has progressively fallen (see Rev. 14:8 and 18:2). She is now at home in the Dominion of the Earth. I'll comment more about this passage below.

3. The "First Dominion" Passage (Rev. 18:1 - 19:21): The Angel of Light, the Darkening of Babylon, the Preparation for the Marriage of the Bride and the Lamb, and the Victory of the Heavenly Dominion over the Earth.

First Dominion in Creation: "The Heaven and the Things in It."

First Dominion Themes: Lamp Light. Paying back according to deeds. Singing and music. Truth and Wisdom vs. the false wisdom of immorality (the "deep things of Satan"). Faithful Israel vs. worldly and wealthy Israel. the Rod of Iron. Sun, moon and stars.

Look for the above themes in the letters to the Churches of Ephesus and Thyatira.

...After this cycle we briefly go back to the Second Dominion in Chapter 20. Here, Satan is bound in an abyss for a thousand years and there is a "first resurrection" that brings the righteous back to life. Satan is released again after a thousand years, deceiving the nations once again and gathering them for one last battle. Fire from heaven, however, consumes his armies and they are cast into a "lake of fire". A little noted verse is Rev. 20:11: "Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them." Only the sea is left now! The sea, and Hades summarily give up their dead. Apparently, the sea, death itself and the Hades (as well as, it seems, the "abyss") are all considered "Second Dominion" places. Their dead appear before the throne to be judged and the great "Book of Life" is opened along with books recording every deed on earth. Startlingly, "death" and Hades itself are thrown into the lake of fire along with everyone whose name did not appear in the Book of Life. After this conclusion, there is a "new heaven and a new earth and there is no longer any sea." Now the Second Dominion is passed away and a totally new dominion of heaven and earth appear. There is only one dominion now.

These seemingly insignificant and obscure references to the dominions of "heaven", "earth" and "sea" seem like apocalyptic arcana that we tend to ignore, but they actually figure largely and centrally in the text of Revelation. The Revelator attaches tremendous significance to them. However, we are ill-prepared to understand their import because we are not steeped in the "Creation Week" language that forms the back-bone of his cosmology. If there is one single takeaway from all of this, just remember always that Genesis One is the lens through which ancient Jews understood the universe. Our cosmology is very different from theirs, and, partly because of that, Revelation continues to remain obscure and befuddling to our contemporaries.

As an example, lets go back to the description of the woman's activities in Chapter 17. Chapter 17 is one of those wonderful asides in the apocalyptic drama that can only be fully understood in light of the Creation Day themes. Without seeing how the Revelator is working cohesively throughout the dramas of the apocalypse using the Genesis One creation story as a cosmological frame, we will miss a subtle lesson building up through his very carefully placed symbols. The woman first appears in the Dominion of the Heaven, clothed with the sun and surrounded by the moon and stars. She falls down to the earth and gives birth to a son. The dragon is cast down and immediately, he pursues her. Ah, but heaven comes to her rescue and she is given the wings of an eagle. The Second Dominion comes to her rescue! The dragon spews forth a river to sweep her away in a flood, but strike two! The Earth swallows up the river. The Third dominion comes to her rescue!

...These seemingly small details and obscure corners in John's Book of Revelation suddenly unravel marvelously and pop up into clear sight when we are aware how the author is using the Creation Week compositionally and as a thematic lesson tool. They add layers to the apocalypse that give broader lessons to those Jewish heads "full of wisdom" who knew their Genesis One cosmology inside and out. These wise people would be able to follow these insignificant details with fine interest and knowing attention and build layers of meaning out of them. They would also spot immediately that the drama of Chapter 17 relates back to the drama of the woman in Chapter 12. They would know that this woman, drunk now with the blood of the saints, is Israel in the Roman Empire, that slayer of the prophets, that adulteress of the beast. That is a meaning that totally escapes us.

I have talked a lot about the Creation Days, the first six, but there is a Seventh Day, the Shabbat. In my next post we will talk about the Shabbats in Revelation.

The Creation of the Revelation (continued)

2010-06-07T21:21:00.000-07:00

Continuing from where I left off yesterday...

4. Fourth Day "Great Passage" (Rev. 12:1-17): The Woman and the Dragon

Fourth Day in Creation: God creates the sun to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night, and he creates the stars. They are for signs and seasons and days and years and for separating night from day.

Fourth Day Themes: All the themes associated with Day One, PLUS: father, mother, and children. Parenthood (and its authority). Leadership, shepherding, ruling the nations with the "rod of iron". Receiving the rewards according to one's "deeds". Loyalty versus adultery. The Woman vs. Jezebel/Babylon. Israel in the wilderness vs. apostate, worldly, and wealthy Israel. Signs in heaven. A son is born.

Look for the above themes in the letter to the Church in Thyatira. The theme of parenthood is attached to the sun, moon and stars in Genesis. The sun, moon and stars appear as symbols for Jacob, Rachel and Joseph's brothers in one of Joseph's dreams. God also tells Abraham that his children will be as numerous as the "stars in the heavens".

At verse 9 in Chapter 12 an interesting rupture begins to occur in the creation day imagery. This is the beginning of a "break", a transition passage. Note the up and down, up and down movement caused between 4th Day (heaven, stars), 3rd Day (earth, rivers) and the 5th Day (midheaven, eagle) symbols. At verse 12, we hear an angel proclaim: "Rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them", but woe to the earth because the "devil has come down to you". From this point on in the text, the sun, moon and stars are no longer harmed in the text of Revelation. They are instead empowered. The heavenly denizens created on the Fourth Day are suddenly off the table from the tribulations/judgments that follow.

5. Fifth Day "Great Passage" (Rev. 13:1-10): The Beast From the Sea

Fifth Day in Creation: God creates the swarming creatures of the sea and the birds of the air (the midheaven).

Fifth Day Themes: All the themes associated with the Second Day, PLUS: Birds, sea creatures, wings and flying. Eagles and locusts. Midheaven. Completing, filling and multiplying, swarming over things. Being full of life, wriggling with life, being energetic and virile. Being healthy vs. being full of pain and blasphemy. Liveliness vs. deadness. Active vs. slumbering. The Book of Life.

Look for the above themes in the letter to the Church in Sardis and note how they appear in the Great Passage with some themes that also belong to the Second Day--being once slain but now healthy again most pertinently.

There are no (discernible) breaks in this passage. You are probably noticing by now that the Great Passages of Revelation have suddenly contracted in relative length. It's hard to understand why the pace picked up suddenly, but, actually, this kind of shortening or elongating of the literary structure seems typical of the text. The structures are somewhat elastic. Compare the relative lengths of the Seven Trumpet judgments for example.

5. Sixth Day "Great Passage" (Rev. 13:11-18): The Beast From the Earth

Sixth Day in Creation: God creates the beasts from the earth and the man and the woman and he gives the man and woman dominion over the beasts and he gives the humans and the beasts the green plants for food.

Sixth Day Themes: The beasts of the earth and mankind. Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. Being empowered or given access vs. being weakened and denied access. Naming/marking things and having the power to do so. Exercising authority and granting authority or privilege, such as what to eat. Being given dominion over something. Images and giving "breath" to them. Making something in one's image. Giving one's name to something to mark its belonging/origin from oneself.

Look for the above themes in the letter to the Church in Philadelphia and note how they appear in the Great Passage. For greater effectiveness, go back and read the details of God's creation of Adam in Genesis 1-2 and then read Rev. 13:11-18. What do you notice?

...That's not the end of it. Revelation's Creation Day riffs only get more interesting from here. We are entering into what I call the "Great Break", an interlude leading to the Seventh Day that is quite a raucous and tempestuous passage of riffs wrestling with one another across many chapters...

The Creation of the Revelation

2010-06-06T21:02:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a nice Bible Study led by my friend James-Michael Smith, who cautioned the audience at Good Shepherd United Methodist Church (here in Charlotte) about common pitfalls in studying the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. JM pointed us to view the book in the scope of what represents the majority of the ink that scripture is devoted to: the broad swath of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) that describe God's covenant with Israel. I too agree that the loudest exhortation of the book is to hearken Israel back into that eternal, covenantal relationship with Himself, prying her away from the grips of the deadening corruptions in the greater world. God's covenant with Israel is one of the most overlooked relationships in excursions into the meaning of Revelation, but one that is quite necessary.

But another overlooked relationship of the book is exactly how it is written, how it is structured as a literary composition. Revelation is a book that artists (like JM) and designers (like me) can truly appreciate. JM's talk has inspired me to post a bit on how I reflect on the book of revelation as a designer, as someone who appreciates the beauty of patterns and, in this case, music.

Revelation is a very musical book. Not only does it contain a lot of interludes of hymns and passages describing heavenly singing, and reference to musical instruments, but the book is wonderfully patterned like a symphony (or--as I prefer to compare it to--a jazz composition). To spot the music of the book of the Revelation, you have to first spot what the notes or, better analogy, what the "riffs" of Revelation's jazz are. The "riffs" of Revelation (as that of John's other book John--read John Chapter 1 for a taste) are actually the seven days of the creation account of Genesis Chapter One.

The book, believe it or not, is subtly structured in seven great passages that relate back to each day of the Creation Account. All these sections are also in themselves working with sub-passages that are themselves structured as riffs borrowing or playing on the "themes" of the different days of Genesis Chapter One. Between each of the "great passages" (that each represent a sub-drama or "movement" in the apocalypse) are transitional passages that represent a kind of jazzy interlude between these larger overarching movements.

For example, the first great passage, the Day One "great passage" of Revelation, is comprised of the book's opening and extends into the conclusion of the Letters to the Seven Churches (Rev. 1:1-3:22). One of the important recurring items in the "first day" passages in Revelation is the voice of Jesus, who "spoke" the creation into being and who first calls out, seals, and designates what is "good" in the creation. Jesus speaks with the authority of the Creator who first called the light "good" in Day One of the Creation. In the seven letters, Jesus spends a lot of words dwelling on the subject of what is good and what is not. But, each of the letters, it turns out, also contain thematic sub-elements and symbols that (I kid you not!), reoccur in the rest of the Revelation in the same progressive thematic patterns. Within the "great passage" of the Letters to the Seven Churches, in other words, is a mini-Creation Day "riff" that extends through the main themes that Revelation attaches to each of the Seven Days of Genesis One. Each letter of the Seven Letters is itself thematically composed as one of the Seven Days of the Creation. The Seven Letters, thus, represent a kind of "table of contents" of the seven major passages that will follow and they also tell us how to spot the sevenfold "riff" themes that are riffed back and forth throughout the book between its subsections. For now, you just have to take my word for it, until you delve into the details yourself, but, to get you started, let me lay out the outline of the primary "Creation Week" pattern of the overall Book of Revelation for you:

1. Day One "Great Passage" (Rev. 1:1-3:22): The Vision of the Son of Man and the Letters to the Seven Churches

Day One in Creation: God "speaks" the light into being and calls it "good" and he names it "day".
Day One Themes: Lampstands (light), the word, hearing the voice of Jesus, day and night, good vs. evil/incompleteness, naming things, designating things, Tree of the Knowledge (the implied contrastive is the "Tree of Life"), knowing secrets, understanding/wisdom/knowledge/clarity to the truth, unveiling (apocaplypsis), all things "first" (e.g. first-born, first-separated/first-fruits), loyalty/obedience, speaking truthfully.

Look for the above themes in Jesus' letter to the first church, Ephesus. Incidentally, I don't think that it is coincidental that, in the passage of the Seven Letters, a lot of ink (or, shall we say, "red ink") is actually devoted to the very words of Jesus...much, much more than all the other sections of the book combined. Whenever the topic of "speech" or "words" or "voice" is highlighted in Revelation, your feelers should go up...You may be in a "first day" passage or sub-passage or first-day "note" (or even "half-note") in an interlude. Revelation likes to nest "creation day riffs" within larger, overarching "creation days or weeks" at a number of scales, especially in breaking interludes--that is part of the jazzy, multi-valent scaling of its music.

2. Second Day "Great Passage" (Rev. 4:1-5:14, and the Seven Seals interlude or "break" of Chapter 6): The Visit Above the Firmament (aka, the "sea of glass, like crystal" beneath God's throne)

Second Day in Creation: God creates a firmament to separate the "waters above" from the "waters below".
Second Day Themes: Above and below contrasts, separating, second things, breaking through or ripping apart, establishing one greater/worthier in importance and one lesser in importance, death and life, and especially: resurrection, coming back to life. Repeating things. Being once dead and now alive. Being once lowly/dirty but now righteous/clean/worthy and apart from the world. Being made pure, putting on white garments, and, perhaps, other such concepts Jews associated with "baptism". Note: the waters of the deep are a symbol for the grave in Jonas' song in the belly of the great fish. (Another interesting note is that in Jewish tradition the "waters that are above" in the Second Day of the creation account are the especially flowing, "alive", sweet and refreshing drinking waters that are reserved for the cleansing/satiation of "the righteous in the world to come".)

Again, look for the above themes in Jesus' letter to the second church, Smyrna, and note the appearance of a "sea of glass, like crystal" (this is the hard, translucent "firmament" that God created on the second day) in the Second Day Great Passage. Note also the themes of "being once slain" and "now alive". Note the theme of breaking/separating through things in the Seven Seals improvisational "break" interlude (which riffs on other days besides the Second Day). Note especially the sky (firmament) being ripped apart "like a scroll that is rolled back".

3. Third Day "Great Passage" (Rev. 7:1-11:19, this passage has within it several involved"breaks", including the Seven Trumpets and the "Two Witnessess"): The Gatherings of the Faithful

Third Day in Creation: God "gathers" the waters into "seas" (collections of water) and the dry earth appears. God causes the grass, plants, and trees to grow from the earth.

Third Day Themes: Gathering things. Moses, Phinehas/Elijah and other "Exodus themes" (esp. fleeing someone, being faithful in contrast to everyone else, and gathering in the desert). Being a "witness" (esp. in seeing/hearing the Torah). Seas, rivers and springs. Dry land, earth, stones, mountains. Harvest, growth, swords and sickles. Mannah. Stumbling blocks and words of teaching. Note: the symbol of the "mountain" refers to Sinai, i.e., the teaching or witnessing of Torah, in Jewish tradition. The theme of "teaching" may also come from the symbol mannah in Jewish tradition and perhaps also the symbol of the dew "dropping on the grass", which was a symbol for the "words/explication of Torah" as it flowed from the lips of Moses on top the Israelites (it appears in Moses' blessing at the end of Deuteronomy).

Look for the above themes in Jesus' letter to the third church, Pergamum, and note the central importance of the teaching/faithfulness theme here. Note themes of "gathering" in the Third Day Great Passage. Note that the very first of the Seven Trumpets "blasts" a judgment against the things that "appeared" in the Third Day of Creation. Note the density of all the imagery pulled from the Exodus story in these passages.

That's it for tonight...I will get to the remainder of the "Creation Days" in my next post. Sorry for the long break from 33ad!

For the Month of Love, The Song of Songs

2009-02-14T10:19:00.000-08:00

A retelling...

(Thought I'd post something to 33AD, since I haven't in over 2 years...)

ACT I, Scene One

Scene: King SHLOMO’s Harem in Yerushalayim. The Harem denizens are busy preparing for King SHLOMO’s arrival from Beit-Lechem, adorning, powdering and perfuming themselves. Harried looking slaves are busy putting the final touches on the garlanded, netted and bejeweled coiffures/headwear of the concubines, while these primp and inspect the progress with mirrors.

Only one concubine, SHULAMIT – the youngest member of the Harem, is not at all occupied with activity…She has no attendant busy at her side. Instead, she is crouching in the middle of her very spare-looking boudoir, inspecting the scene with a look of boredom, and, frankly, betraying a slight contempt over all the fuss. Sighing, she begins to twirl one of her lengthy (and simply braided and unadorned) locks. As she does so, a frenetic pair of feet (belonging to the GUARDSMAN) suddenly appear below a curtain divider, and, as he approaches closer from the side, he announces quickly, gutturally, and with a short breath:

GUARDSMAN: The dust (huff) of the army has been spotted on the southern ridge!

(huff)…They should be here by the time (wheeeeeze)…the shadow reaches the

top of the Mount of Olives!

All turn to the audience and squint, as if peering through a distant window. The slaves suddenly pick up their pace, while SHULAMIT’s face changes and she swings back quickly the lock that she was twirling. As the guard’s feet disappear from view, she jumps up, excitedly singing:

Song 1: Black Am I

SHULAMIT: Oh, let him kiss me

With the kisses of his mouth!…

(Shulamit looks toward the audience wistfully.)

For your love is more,

More refreshing than wine!…

(The other concubines roll their eyes, while the slave-maidens look at each other and attempt to hide their snickering with their hands.)

And your sweat is so,

So aromatic like incense;

The sound of your name,

Like oil poured to anoint—

(SHULAMIT begins spinning in circles, arms spread outward.)

Thus the maidens love you!

Take me away with you!

Let us run after you!

(The HAREM – that is, the other concubines and the slave-maidens – joins in, in a chorus and in a high, mocking tone)…

HAREM: The king has brought me,

Brought me, oh dear,

Into his chambers!

(Looking towards the audience)…

We will be glad

And rejoice in you!

For we find your love,…

(They extend one hand towards the audience in an exaggerated gesture, as if offering goblets.)

More refreshing than wine!…

SHULAMIT (quickly, overtaking the chorus contemptuously before they can finish):

THUS the maidens love you!

SHULAMIT addresses the Harem loudly, breaking out energetically at the first stanza, but slowing progressively into a plaintive voice towards the end:

SHULAMIT: Black am I and beautiful,

You-Daughters-of-Yerushalayim,

Like the tents of KeDAR,

Like the drapes of Shlo-moh!

Don’t stare at me

Because I am darker,

Because the sun,

The Sun has so loved me!

My mother’s sons,

They were angry,

So sulky angry with me.

They punished me – Me!

With vineyard keeping…

(She picks up again the lock that she was twirling and looks down at it, as she trails into a quieter voice):

But my own vineyard,

I have long neglected.

(Facing the audience, she begins singing longingly in a high, loud voice):

Tell me, tell me

Love of my soul,

Where your flock grazes,

Am I not able to run

To where your heart lazes

In the hottest hour?…

(As she is singing, a pair of tanned feet – wrapped in rough sandals and powdered with white dust – quietly appear below the curtain divider behind her, as if lowering from a higher opening.)

For why should I – I!

Be as one kept veiled

Beside the thin flocks

Of your fat companions??

SHLOMO (laughing): If you don't know,

Greatest of all beauties,
Follow the heels of the sheep!…

(Startled, everyone jumps up with a yelp)…

Bring your kids bleating

Beside the shepherds' tents!

The concubines quickly veil themselves, and send the slave-maidens scurrying quickly off-stage… SHULAMIT (veil-less) runs to the curtain yanking it away to reveal the figure of King SHLOMO in dusty warrior’s raiment, and the pair enrapturously embrace. The other concubines all (somewhat artificially if you ask me) make a swooning sound…

SHLOMO (laughing): Haven’t I compared you, my love,

To a shiny black steed

Among Par`oh’s chariots?

Your glazed cheeks

Are burnished earrings!

Your sweaty neck

As if strung with jewels!

Don’t worry! (Laugh)…

We will make you earrings

All golden and studded

With silver and whatnot.

Probably a jumpy number follows here, with lots of belly-dancing involved for sure, …but I’ll leave all those details to your imagination.

End of Scene One.

Love Plays on the Offense

2007-10-29T18:22:00.000-07:00

In one of Aesop’s fables, a mighty tree boasts to a little reed, “Who shall pluck me by the roots?” Straightaway a powerful wind blows and uproots the tree, and the little reed, able to sway in the wind, remains in place. The moral: there is an upside to not standing out. Glancing at the Beatitudes opening the Sermon on the Mount, we might evince a similar moral at play in Christ’s words “the meek shall inherit the earth”.

However, is this the same Jesus who once praised John the Baptist for his fatal criticism of Herod Antipas’s adulterous dealings? (For this stance, John’s head was cut off and brought to Herod’s court on a platter). Before the masses, Jesus ironically contrasted the teaching style of their conformist religious leaders with that of John the Baptist’s by asking, “Who did you seek out in the wilderness, a reed swayed by the wind?”[1]

Jesus owned an uneasy style for a moralist of his time (above is not his only stiff maneuver on Aesop). The Sermon on the Mount, both in our time and his audience’s, stands out among his unnerving strings of sayings. Still, a habit in our day is to regard Christ’s estimation of poverty and humility, and especially his saying to “offer the other cheek”, as prompts to passivity. (Is it an accident that the cantankerous philosopher Nietzsche regarded Christ’s call to love one’s neighbor as so much saccharine egalitarianism?) But to an audience under the thumb of Roman oppression, the tack of love carried a certain revolutionary zing. Jesus made that clear by giving ingenious expression to the Torah’s extreme valuation of human dignity.

From the starting blocks of the Law, Christ’s Sermon on the Mount elevates the worth of common-folk humanity to heretofore-unknown majestic heights. Every thinker who has ever read the Sermon has noted Jesus ratcheting up our responsibility to the precepts of the Law. Actually, he is pumping at the lever of human dignity. Using his poetic, Eastern homiletic style, he elbows out human presumptions about the awkward aloofness of God. God clothes the grass with the “lilies of the field” (a Hebraism), but He wraps the children of God in greater finery. Here, the sublimity of Solomon’s raiment is appraised as far inferior to the splendor of human flesh (I’m not kidding!). With Jesus, the wheeling swallows are evidence of God’s relentless decency. In this manner, Christ brings pungent questions to his audience’s trust in the guileless fatherhood of God. He draws attention to the bad habits of hypocrisy, self-advancement and gentile fatalism and worriment to undermine God’s life-giving overtures. Along the way, he drops some stunners – for example: “You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”.[2] In other words, “There must be no limit to your goodness, as your heavenly Father’s goodness knows no bounds”, as the New English Bible perfectly translates this.

Such moral insights remain unparalleled in the history of ethical discourse (we saunter along throughout our days in the West unaware how indebted we are to this sermon of firsts). Christ’s sayings once provoked an Israeli scholar of Early Rabbinics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to remark, “These are at once simple and profound, naïve and full of paradox, tempestuous and yet calm. Can anyone plumb their depths?”[3] Another scholar I met in Jerusalem, an expert in the 900 some parables that appear in ancient Jewish literature, remarked that the parables of Jesus easily rise to the foreground of her studies (and, implicitly, her Orthodox Jewish experience). According to her, Yeshua seems to have no peer in Rabbinic history in his homiletic effectiveness with the parable form, namely to draw out the ethical dimensions of the Torah and frame a multi-faceted response to it.

In fine Rabbinic fashion then, Jesus concludes his Sermon with a call to urgent authenticity by telling the parable of the two house builders (perhaps also a thump number on Aesop above). In the parable, “doing” (in addition to “hearing”) invokes the unshakable stance of the Kingdom of God against a violent world. Christ invites his hearers to dare the goodness of God by bringing their new outlook to bear on human activity (living life without setting limits to one’s goodness, apparently, opens up the opposing equivalent of Pandora’s box – the storehouses of God’s exuberant goodness). One can understand here the total punch of the Sermon: what follows the Beatitudes in the next three chapters is a well-built elaboration on the estimation of humility, God-trust and authenticity to aggravate “certainties” in the face of indifference, brutality and the mundane rewards of convention. This is no mere sentimental teaching. Jesus, after all, identifies the mourners, the broken-spirited and those who hunger and thirst for justice (Ts’dakah) not as victims. From God’s vantage, they are the overcomers. Understood this way, the Beatitudes suddenly become unnerving – you might even say that they are Christ’s clarion call to engage the fight. There is no succor here for “supporting the burden of existence” (as Nietzsche claimed) except to encounter it brazenly.

Like a mythic haze, or an arcane poem, the strong, overcoming aspect of Christ’s message seems to have remained only ephemerally present or obscured in the mounds and valleys of Christian history, except in the blaze of a saint’s life here and there (as with the life of St. Francis). A young Indian lawyer and civil-rights activist in South Africa finally rediscovered the strong aspect of Christ’s message only a little over a century ago. To change the course of human events through nonviolent resistance and appealing to the humanity and reason of one’s overlords (interestingly, with their own sacred text providing the ironic inspiration: “Do not resist an evil person”[4]) was an insight that had evaded Western intellectuals up to that time. Drawing inspiration from the Sermon on Mount, this non-Christian lawyer, Mahatma Gandhi, did not consider his political tactic of nonviolence as the weapon of the weak. In fact, he argued for its distinction from the misleading labels of “passive resistance” or (minority) “suffrage”. He called it instead “truth-force” (or “love-force”): the unblinking insistence on truth in patiently dispelling your opponents’ false constructs of life. Gandhi had understood that, with Jesus, love played on the offense. Only until the mid-twentieth century, and only in reflection of the life and thought of Gandhi after the emancipation of the Indian subcontinent, did the West recover an understanding of the strong aspect of Christ’s message. Through the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., who adopted Gandhi’s lessons in another civil rights movement, the love-force of Jesus was nudged back to the foreground of Christian history.

With easy conviction, I believe that Jesus was smiling at the Gandhis of history, both renown and unnamed, when he first uttered the Beatitudes. Nietzsche had assumed that only the pitiless Superman would transform history this devastatingly, and the last place Nietzsche would have looked for the kernel of that transformative power was in the words of the Sermon of the Mount. But today, our backs stiffen when we encounter pairs of drinking fountains labeled “white” and “colored” in museum displays. Our head shakes uncomprehendingly at that salt and pepper reality less than 50 years ago when this kind of daily degradation of human dignity was a certainty of human existence. So strong has been that overcoming, the mammoth in the natural history section seems as hoary as these relics.

[1] Matthew 11:7
[2] Matthew 5:48
[3] David Flusser, The Sage from Galilee: Rediscovering Jesus’ Genius, (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, 2007), p. 30.
[4] Mathew 5:39

The beauty of perserverence...Excerpt from Tamara's book!

2007-10-13T11:43:00.000-07:00

Following is an excerpt from Tamara's book on our trip from Rome to Jerusalem (in Summer 2005). IVP is publishing the book sometime next year I believe. This excerpt is taken from the chapter on our visit to the island of Patmos, where John composed the book of Revelation. Although the version below will probably be shortened for the book (it takes up too many pages currently), Tamara is encouraging me to pitch my Patmos teaching to a magazine or something. I'd appreciate any ideas/advice as to how I could convert the material to a magazine article. I think better understanding the setting of the writing of Revelation would be very beneficial nowadays (esp. in regard to the "Left-Behind" madness). What do you think? ;-)

Excerpt:

A stonewall becomes our bench. The three of us sit side-by-side, as our legs dangle above a terrain that plunges toward the sea. Eric tells us that the apocalyptic book of Revelation is one of tragedy and hope.

“Embedded in the storyline,” Eric declares, “is the tale of the Church's survival. This was one of the deadliest periods of persecution that the Church had ever faced. Had the Revelation never been written, in fact, the Church might have compromised its basic tenets in an effort to survive, and perhaps would not have survived as we know it…

“Unfortunately Revelation has been often misinterpreted and even at times used to promote hatred instead of hope. The early Church Fathers read it with Anti-Semitic overtones. But to really understand the impact of Revelation and its meaning you have to dig a little into its historical context.”

“So, why were Christians in such distress? And, why was John banished to Patmos anyway?” I ask with an urgent tone.

“In short,…beauty.”

“How is this a story of beauty?” I wick my head.

“We can call this a case of 'beauty from ashes'. This story has everything do with the surprising success of a humiliated and defeated people, the Jews…

“After the destruction of Jerusalem and the defeat of the Jewish nation at the hands of Titus in 70 CE, a very interesting thing happened. Droves of gentiles around the Empire became fascinated with Judaism, and by extension, Christianity. The nobility the Jews exhibited to persevere in their desire to be under the dominion of no man but one—and only one—god must have been compelling. Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher, for instance, admired the gallantry displayed by the Jewish resistance in Galilee—he was enamored with the ability of their ancient monotheistic faith to inspire uncompromising steadfastness in the direst circumstances. Regardless, so many gentiles appeared to be converting to Judaism and Christianity that toward the end of the first century the Roman Emperor Domitian began a serious crack down on Christian and Jewish proselytism. He used the tax system to attempt to crush Christians in particular, who were gaining adherents throughout the provinces and threatening the patronage of the local cults, especially in Asia Minor. Domitian also persecuted scores of high-ranking officials in the Roman population who were converting to Judaism and offending Roman sensibilities regarding Roman tradition, especially in respect to worship of the gods and deceased Roman emperors—who, as you know, were honored as gods in that age.”

“Was Domitian worried that no one would end up worshipping him?” Krista asks.

We all laugh. “Actually, Domitian did have a god-complex,” remarks Eric. “In fact, he killed some Stoic senators who had refused to address him as 'Lord and God'. Domitian called it 'atheism', you see, when folks refused to call him by those titles! But even to Romans, addressing a living emperor by such words was unprecedented – kind of a case of picking up the mantle too soon…He once,” says Eric with a smirk, “introduced his wife to the Senate as someone fortunate to visit his 'divine couch'.”

Krista guffaws, “I wonder if she ever visited his ‘divine couch’ again…”

“Ha!”, Eric almost rolls over, “…Well, guess who assassinated Domitian in the year 96? His wife’s house steward…so if that’s one indication.”

There’s no question in Krista’s mind and mine that Domitian’s wife was behind the deicide of Domitian.

“Well…I have to agree with you then,” says Eric still laughing merrily.

“But back (cough) to our story,” Eric tries to compose himself, “…leading up to Domitian’s fateful end. As you can (hu-hughhh) probably imagine, when gentiles converted to Judaism or Christianity life became quite tricky with an emperor who thought he was a deity, for, after all, the first two of the ten commandments bar idolatry and were held to be absolutely obligatory on both Jews and Christians. They might have respectfully bowed to an emperor but not to a god!

“But converts, in general, faced many cultural pressures to continue honoring pagan deities, especially the landed gentry who often held many civic offices and needed to officiate or participate in civic ceremonies, which always included some sort of homage to pagan deities in those days, if not to the emperor. Many aristocratic converts to Judaism and Christianity therefore seemed to disappear from public life…which was held as misanthropic, arrogant and impious by lots of folks once their absence became noted. The only strategy that the converts had, you see, to remain faithful to their adopted faith was to keep cooking up excuses for missing public ceremonies and to try to keep as low a profile as they could. Unfortunately, some Christian groups began teaching that it was OK to participate in civic ceremonies or guild rites (which also typically honored patron gods and goddesses) so long as one honored God in secret. According to these groups what really mattered was the spiritual devotion, not the externals. One of these groups is the 'Nicolatians' mentioned very derisively in Revelation.

“Now, the Romans had always granted the Jews the right to abstain from idolatry, but slowly and surely, this right began accruing a price. Following the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in the year 70, the Emperor Vespasian required the Jews to pay a privilege tax, called the fiscus Iudaicus, and other smaller taxes that guaranteed exemptions from religious and civic duties. Unfortunately, the Christian converts and 'God-fearers' (sympathizers of the Jewish faith) were not always guaranteed exemption by Roman law, even if they paid the fiscus Iudaicus in an attempt to do so. They had to first become full proselytes—for males, this meant circumcision. Circumcision and payment of the tax were assumed by the authorities to be the only valid way to gain exemption from idolatrous civic duties. But it was very unclear if Christian converts and God-fearers, who typically were not circumcised, needed to pay the tax of the fiscus Iudaicus, and for various reasons most simply kept low key and avoided payment of the tax.

“So eventually, in the early 90's, Domitian began a crack down on tax-evading converts, God-fearers and undercover Jews—Jews who had kept their faith secret in order to avoid enriching the Emperor by paying the humiliating fiscus Iudaicus. He demanded that all people who practiced or adopted any kind of Jewish religious practice (and that would include the Christians), whether openly or secretly, to be liable to the fiscus Iudaicus—and, if they were not born Jewish, they were not off the hook for observing civic duties and paying homage to the pagan cults! Furthermore, it they failed to come forward and continued to attempt to hide their identity, the state would hold their properties subject to confiscation upon exposure. In other words, Domitian just sardonically crystallized the predicament the converts were in, but this time, he also gave the tax policy enforcement teeth. Domitian thereupon began to reward informants who exposed tax evaders by granting prosecuting informants part of the proceeds of confiscated properties. As a consequence, many busybodies suddenly found a lucrative trade and many tax evaders began to pay off these informants to avoid prosecution. Blackmail thus grew to rampant proportions.

“Still, the high-ranking Roman converts or Jewish sympathizers remained a burr in the saddle of the Emperor, since, as Roman noblemen, Domitian could not use the tax policy to get at them. So, in the year 95, it all came to a head. Domitian banned secret conversion to Judaism and outright conversion to Christianity, declaring them 'impiety' (or 'atheism'), capital offenses. To make a good show of it, Domitian even executed his own kinsman Flavius Clemens, a nephew of Vespasian. Clemens and his wife Domitilla, who was Domitian's own niece, had apparently been found 'drifting towards Jewish customs'. Domitian executed Clemens on charges of impiety and banished Domitilla from Rome, probably intending to strike fear thus into the hearts of the Roman aristocracy. We cannot rule out, however, that other shady motivations may have been at play. Domitian probably rightly suspected Clemens for maneuvering political will against his draconian tax policies, and had perhaps even sensed his kinsman as a conspirator in a power play for the throne. It appears that Domitian declared conversion an ‘impiety’ in order to conveniently take care of Clemens and other of Clemens’s sympathizers…Such ruthless acts were not unknown for Roman emperors, especially paranoid ones like Domitian. Indeed, the historical record, especially Domitian’s assassination, hints that Clemens was offed for primarily political exigencies and was not an actual convert but merely accused as one for aiding the converts…

“Regardless, it was a dark day for converts and God-fearers when Clemens was executed, as they were now no longer with a prominent champion in the imperial family. For aristocrats, 'impeity' was missing civic ceremonies or failing to address the Emperor as 'Lord and God', and for all others, 'impeity' was hiding one's religious identity, which was proven by demonstrating that the accused had failed to pay the required taxes, namely the fiscus Iudaicus…

“Now, John, being Jewish, had probably always paid the fiscus Iudaicus, and so was probably off the hook for the charge of impiety. However, since he was one of the key evangelists in the Church, Domitian had him exiled to Patmos in 95 CE, right around the time conversion was outlawed. John was probably sent to the island shortly after Clemens was executed, and he might have already witnessed some of the travails his brethren were now facing in the mainland. Clemens's death opened the floodgates of prosecution cases against Christian and Jewish tax-evaders. Many of John’s exposed Christian brothers and sisters were now losing their properties and were going to trial for immanent execution. Jewish tax-evaders had it easier, since declaration of the Jewish faith could not easily be used to demonstrate impiety, as Judaism was an allowed practice in the Empire. But since Christian conversion was outlawed, Christians would have had to seek protection from the Jewish community to help avoid charges of impiety. Most synagogues did their best to protect tax-evaders, since it was a Jewish ethic to honor and treat any gentile who refused to participate in idolatry as if he or she were a member of the Jewish people, following the teaching of the late and beloved Rabbi, Rabban Yohannan ben Zakkai, the most respected teacher to survive the Judean revolt. But, unfortunately, some of the Jews or gentile God-fearers were being blackmailed to expose tax-evaders, particularly at Smyrna and at Philadelphia. More than likely, it was God-fearers or covert Jews (who hid their Jewish identity to avoid paying exemption taxes) who were exposing fellow tax evaders, to get themselves off the hook for impiety charges by proving their loyalty to the Emperor thus…

“That's one of the saddest chapters in history to me,” Eric sighs, “From that point on, the relationship between the Synagogue and the Church would begin to rip apart. The frictions Domitian inflicted on the Jewish community—which up to that point, however marginally, had always included the Christians—became the wedge that drove apart the Synagogue and the Church. The travail and hard feelings that resulted from the cooperation of few synagogues leading to the exposure of Christians seem to have left a deep wound in the Church that never healed. The next generation of Christian leadership, sadly, slid into Anti-Semitic apologetics as a result. Hardly more Anti-Semitic sentiments are found in the works of Christian theologians than in the writings of some of the second century fathers of Asia Minor, such as Melito of Sardis. Revelation may have contributed to the tone, since it contains harsh language against the traitorous synagogues; however, this tone is not unwarranted! One of the greatest sins in Judaism – if not the greatest – is to betray your fellow Jew (or God-fearer – a potential Jew) to the authorities. This is considered an 'unforgivable sin' in Judaism. We must read the polemic against Jewish/God-fearer traitors in Revelation as an inner Jewish debate to keep the book in its context…

“It's just so sad to me…”, Eric pauses and looks down at the slopes below us, “…that history has not remembered the more numerous and noble synagogues around the Empire that must have risked much to sequester Christians in their communities from Domitian's sword.”

I try to imagine how John must have felt as exile in Patmos when he found himself alone in that cave. Was he heartbroken and perhaps afraid knowing that the future of the Church and the bond with his Jewish people was in tremendous jeopardy? Was this what he was praying about when Jesus suddenly appeared to him?

I notice that Eric is also lost in thought. We all sit on the cliff edge silently for a moment. Suddenly, Eric looks back up at the sea, and his face brightens slightly. “But,…as I said, this is a story of beauty from ashes. I am convinced that Revelation is not only fit to be the last book in our Scriptures…but perhaps should be appreciated much more for the beauty in history it represents, and I'm not just talking about the end of the world…

“Asia Minor, what is now Turkey 30 miles that way,” Eric points toward the open sea to our right, “was the most populous, cosmopolitan region in the Empire. More people dwelled in Asia Minor, in fact, than in Italy and Egypt combined. It was actually the heart of the Roman Empire, and the wealth of the Empire flowed through this region of crossroads…call it the Roman version of the 'Midwest'. It was here where Christianity transformed from a sectarian Jewish movement into a full-blown world movement. Had the jolt of hope and encouragement and promises of the message of Revelation never arrived to Asia Minor, I have many reasons to doubt that the Church would have persevered so steadfastly through the grueling second and third centuries of its history … or spread around the world so amazingly.”

“But if it was such a straight-forward message of encouragement,” I ask, “why was it written in such an obtuse way?”

“As you know,” Eric answers, “the Revelation is actually a letter meant to be circulated around all of the churches of Asia Minor (not just the ones mentioned in the seven letters to the angels at the beginning). So some have posited that it was written symbolically to make the message unintelligible to authorities who might have intercepted a copy of the letter. I, however, believe that the distinctly holy language of John's Revelation and descriptions of God and His throne room would have made it highly unlikely that a Jew would have ever written down or copied its words. The language was simply too holy to write down. To have a 'copy', a reader would have had to memorize it. In other words, the letter was transmitted by word of mouth…the couriers themselves were the 'letter'. The text itself hints that it should be transmitted by word of mouth when an angel commands John to eat the scroll of the vision in Rev. 10:10. Besides, if John was worried about prying Roman eyes, then the letter is a very thinly veiled rant against the Emperor indeed. I think any official with a slight bit of intelligence would have seen what it was about.”

“So why did John write that way?”

“A clue is found in the text. Its pervasive Semitisms and poor Greek diction suggests that the language it was originally circulating in was Hebrew, which would have definitely made it a very holy message indeed, but one that is also very particularly aimed at well-learned Jewish sages. The esoteric and holy material would have been familiar to Jewish 'heads of wisdom' who had the Hebrew Scriptures committed to memory. These folks were typically well-trained in advanced memorization techniques…

“Revelation is actually written in a way that makes it extremely easy to memorize…it is full of memory aids. One aid is the vivid imagery, which carries implicit and double-meanings a well-learned Jew would find poignant and prominent and would be able to unpack for his congregation. Another is the pervasive Scriptural symbolism and references, especially to the Prophets—books very important to Jews facing difficult times and that would have been known by rote in those days. But probably most importantly, Revelation is extra-ORRR-dinarily structured to facilitate rapid memorization! I have read many ancient apocalypses and none has quite the same kind of sophisticated literary framework that I can evince throughout the book. It is actually quite artistic. Revelation uses the same literary patterns but tweaks and plays with them to also make each section independently noteworthy in its own special, memorable way—kinda like a purposefully changing composition, much like a Jazz composition, in fact…quite beautiful, but I digress. To get to the point, Tam, it would have probably only taken a couple of hearings of Revelation for a well-trained Jewish scholar to recognize the familiar structures—such as the seven-day creation structure of Genesis 1-2 that figures largely throughout the book—and have the entire message committed to memory through these structural handles. That may sound fantastic and improbable to us, but the ancients were masters at memorization. After all, writing was at a premium in those days and the easiest way to 'copy' something at the least expense (monetarily and time-wise) was to memorize it. In other words, Revelation is a message that was intended to disseminate with blazing speed - to get to the largest audience possible in the fastest way available. It is an urgent letter."

Pharisees Too Went Beyond the Letter of the Law

2007-07-04T20:22:00.000-07:00

A common assumption concerning what Jesus said in the Sermon of the Mount is to consider the prerogatives of Christ's teachings as discordant (to greater and sometimes lesser degrees) with the Jewish/Pharisaic values and teachings of the religious leaders of Jesus' day. Thanks to the insight of late scholars like David Flusser and Shmuel Safrai, a wrench has been thrown into this oversimplified view of Pharisaism. In fact, a robust ethic is found in the language of Rabbinical writings that not only echoes much of the same insights found in Christ's Sermon on the Mount, but also the philosophical framework underlying it. In fact, there is even in Rabbinic ethics a precise terminology to characterize Christ's exhortation to "exceed the righteousness" of those who teach the injunctions of the Law (Matthew 5:20). It is called "going beyond the line of Torah". To go "beyond the line" means to observe the ethical trust of the Torah (and even innovate or improve) in matters where the Torah remains silent.

I offer here below a diagram which I hope begins to show the distinction between "Torah Observance", in the strict sense, and what is called (among other things) the "Paths of the Righteous" to describe Jewish observance which goes beyond the letter of the Law. To read further on this concept, I encourage reading Chapter XIII "The Commandments" of E.E. Urbach's The Sages and Chapter VI "The Two Ways and the Sermon of the Mount" of Huub Van de Sandt and David Flusser's The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and Its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity.

2007-05-16T22:04:00.000-07:00

2007-02-17T08:58:00.000-08:00

He said in the same sermon:

Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:17).

Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven (Matthew 6:1).

Huh?...What gives? Which teaching supersedes the other? Possibly, we misunderstand the kinds of good deeds Jesus is referring to in the first saying. We find the saying in context with the Beatitudes. I like to think of Jesus' "salt" and "light" analogy a comment on the last Beatitude (which I like to call the "Be-Radical" Beatitude):

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven, because in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:11-16).

Further support for this reading is suggested by the cultural background. The land of Israel in Jesus' day got its salt from the Dead Sea (called "Salt Sea" in Hebrew). Jesus may therefore have made a critique against the Qumran sectarians who dwelt on the cliffs overlooking the Salt Sea. These separatists referred to their kind as the "sons of light", and they adhered to strict codes of separation from the realm of the "sons of darkness". They not only guarded their religious practices and wisdom (the "Mysteries of God") jealously, but withheld from conducting any sort of dealings with others outside of their sect. The Essenes wanted as much as possible to refrain from becoming encumbered from any burdensome relations with outsiders. Their attitude was to squirrel away into monastic seclusion until the end of the world arrived, when God would use the remaining elect to conquer the world. In the meantime, they would concern themselves only with purifying their minds, bodies and souls, thus vigilantly awaiting the immanent last battle between the sons of light and sons of darkness.

With the analogies to salt and light in Jesus' saying, it is highly plausible that Jesus' audience, familiar with the introverted piety of the Qumran sectarians, would have picked up on a sly dig at the sectarians, realizing he was criticizing the ineffective, in not misanthropic, sectarian strategy of withdrawal from the present problems of the world.

Here are some images that I think reveal the kind of "good deeds" Jesus would magnify:

What they said...

2007-01-23T21:17:00.000-08:00

Know thyself.
–Socrates

The life according to reason is best and pleasantest, since reason more than anything else is man.
–Aristotle

The blessed and immortal nature knows no trouble itself nor cause trouble to any other, so that it is never constrained by anger or favor. For all such things exist only in the weak.
–Epicurus

Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well… The only real thing is, to study how to rid life of (the debilitating affects of) lamentation, and complaint, …and misfortune, and failure…For what else is tragedy, but the dramatized sufferings of men, bewildered by an admiration of the externals?

–Epictetus

What He said:

How blessed are the down and out! For of such of these is the Kingdom of God.
How blessed are those weeping! For they will be comforted.

How blessed are the humble! For they will inherit the Earth.
How blessed are the hungry and thirsty for salvation! For they will be fully satisfied.

How blessed are the merciful! For they will be given mercy.
How blessed are the pure-hearted! For they will behold God.

How blessed are those who pursue peace! For they will be called sons of God.
How blessed are those who pursue redemption! For of such of these is the Kingdom of God.

– Jesus

Light: A Trajectory to Jesus

2006-12-20T18:59:00.000-08:00

A Very Divine Mystery Hunt Through Scripture, Involving Seven Points of Ancient Exegesis

Genesis 1:3 Then God said, "Let there be light!"; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that [it was] good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light YOM (Day), and the darkness He called Night.

One: The ancients were very curious about everything in the Bible…They were always wondering about things. They were always asking questions. What was the light of the first day of creation? (Do we not see by the light of the sun, moon and stars created on the fourth day?). Where is the light God named YOM?? Was it the light of a lamp??? What did it illuminate???? What is the purpose of this YOM, what time did it keep without the sun????? Have we ever even seen this light?????? If it is around, where might it be??????? If it was around on the first day, where, oh where, did it go????????…The questions piled up.

Two: The ancients read the Bible really carefully, and I mean really carefully. In order to find out where the YOM went, they read through the Bible with a fine-toothed comb. They spotted the YOM first in a very surprising place:

Genesis 22:10 And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the Angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" So he said, "Here I am." 12 And He said, "Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your YAHID [lit. “only-one”] from Me." 13 Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind [him was] a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 And Abraham called the name of the place, The-LORD-Will-Provide; as it is said [to] this YOM [day], "In the Mount of The LORD it shall be provided."

Three: The ancients read the Bible creatively, and I mean really creatively. The Greek Septuagint (ca. 2nd Century BCE) reads the Hebrew text another way:

(2ndOption, LXX’s) Genesis 22:14: And Abraham called the name of the place, The-LORD-Has-Seen (to it); that they might say today, “In the Mount, The LORD was seen."

Four: The Hebrew text was very important to these ancient interpreters. And the various nuances that the Hebrew text provided (as seen in the verse in question here) could be very significant indeed. …In fact, bearing in mind our “divine mystery hunt” for the enigmatic YOM, an even other interesting way an ancient might have read this verse in Hebrew is as follows:

(3rd Option, possible) Genesis 22:14: And Abraham called the name of the place, The-LORD-Will-Be-Seen; as it is said, “The YOM, in the Mount of The LORD, shall be seen."

Five: The ancients were ready, willing and quickly able to relate disparate verses in Scripture with one another, bringing verses to bear on one another just because of similar Hebrew wording, “thematic material”, or subtle relations….if not flights of fancy altogether. Usually, the appearance of shared words among verses was sufficient enough to warrant a connection; this was called “Stringing Pearls”. Another place where ancient Jews spotted the special YOM is in a Psalm:

Psalm 118:24 This is the YOM that the LORD made.

Six: The ancients could also creatively link entities in adjacent verses that we might not necessarily connect together or perceive as (sufficiently) related. For example, they might connect “the stone that the builder’s rejected” in Psalm 118:22 with “the YOM that the LORD made” in verse 24:

Psalm 118:22 The stone that the builders rejected is become the chief cornerstone. 23 This is the LORD's doing; it is marvellous in our eyes. 24 This is the YOM that the LORD made; we will rejoice and be glad in him.

Seven: Watching the ancients use scripture is as fun as it is enlightening. The Gospel of John links all the verses we discussed above to solve the mystery hunt of the YOM’s identity, its purpose, its special time to keep, its special object to illuminate. It opens up by telling us of the light’s “advent” – its coming into the world, its appearance, as foretold to Abraham (I have included parenthetical remarks to help you “feel” the special bearing of scriptures we referred to above):

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and what God was the Word was. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being [He “illuminates”]. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it …10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him [Only those who are his own can see by his light]. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God [like Isaac]. 14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. ...[The earth experienced a “YOM” of God’s glory.]

John 8:12 "I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life." … 56 "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad." ...[What Abraham “saw” is told in Psalm 118.]

John 9:4 "We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5 "While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world." ...[While Jesus was in the world, it was “Day One” of God’s work.]

Measuring the Might of God

2006-09-13T16:32:00.000-07:00

In Judaism, the preeminent sign of God's power is not the fact that God spoke the world into being. It is not that He the shaped Adam from the dust, either, that he created him (and her) in His image, and breathed into them His speaking spirit. Nor is the preeminent example of God’s exploits to bring Israel out of the house of bondage seen as enough of a challenge for God,…No, not the splitting of the Reed Sea, nor sustaining Israel with water and heavenly bread, leading them with a pillar of fire and smoke for forty years in the desert, nor vanquishing nations of giants before them.

Sure...Those things are of course evidence of His incomparable greatness, but one act represents the paradigmatic “power” of God. One act affirms God's might before all these. In a prayer religious Jews pray daily, God's might is simply described and praised the following way:

G-d's Might

“You are eternally mighty, my Master, the Resuscitator of the dead are You; abundantly able to save.

“He sustains the living with kindness, resuscitates the dead with abundant mercy, supports the fallen, heals the sick, releases the confined, and maintains His faith to those asleep in the dust. Who is like You, O Master of mighty deeds, and who is comparable to You, O King Who causes death and restores life and makes salvation sprout!

“And You are faithful to resuscitate the dead. Blessed are You, Hashem, Who resuscitates the dead.”

The might of God is tied here to the idea of mankind’s redemption…in particular, mankind’s redemption from death. God’s might to Jews is best evinced in the empowerment of the lowly, which is the definition of redemption in Jewish culture. God’s power is almost cast as a function of God’s mercy for the powerless. So all-encompassing is God’s might that even the carcasses of the lowly shall be raised by Him. There is very little else that could define paradigmatically the relational thrust of Jewish theology. Jewish religion, it could be said, is about the loyalty and devotion of the powerless to their one Great Sustainer…or rather, more accurately, the loyalty of the Great Sustainer to the powerless.

Of all the theological ideas the Jews have contributed to the world, the concept of God as a merciful, powerful resuscitating redeemer, it could be said, is the most definitively “Jewish”. God’s great work is fundamentally redemptive in character and not awaiting our belief in Him (the Pharisees too had “belief”!) God’s might, rather, unseats presents powers and lifts up those without power…those are usually the ones who are pliable, penitent and humble enough to reach out to Him. When Jesus instructs his followers to claim the least desirable seat in the banquets, he is expressing this relational Jewish disposition. John 3:16 is best understood as, “For God so loved the world that He sent down his beloved Son, so that whosoever would grasp His hand should not remain in the grave but be raised up to eternal life.”

O Trite Heresy!

2006-07-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

Why the DaVinci Code is “Emergent”

Lately, I’ve been somewhat pensive about the impact of Dan Brown’s book (the DaVinci Code--from hereon “DVC” for sake of space). What was the 15 minute appeal of Dan Brown’s book all about? I can think of several reasons, some that make me question what is truly behind the Emergent Christian movement. The DVC may be a poster-child of “emergent faith”. I’m not stating this as a “post-emergent” malcontent, here. I posit the comparison because it usefully clarifies questions I have with the both the Emergent movement and the movement to understand the Jewish underpinnings of the New Testament. I sympathize and participate to some degree in both movements, and I find that the DVC appeals to my loyalty similarly (though not at all convincingly of course). Anyway, here are the reasons:

Reason #1) It reconstructs authentic faith.

The alternate faith history of “authentic” Christianity in the DVC has, I believe, an ambient appeal because it is a palliative response against the insipid faith, contemporary hypocrisy and a spotty popular history of the Church. This has, broadly speaking, an “Emergent” appeal. Of course, that attack was present even before Luther, but I’m referring particularly about the framing of (what today is called) a spiritually bankrupt “narrative” of historical Christianity. This critique paints a picture of Church history as an unmoored drift of the Kingdom of God away from its “authentic” beginnings in Galilee, because of the worldly concerns of the Church, namely its political aspirations. To his credit, Dan Brown uses this appeal against Church worldliness to great effect. Who can blame him for exploiting this tug on our faith-seeking culture, in the wake of church sex scandals and cover-ups, to sell his cheesy, paint-by-numbers mystery novella?

Reason #2) Post-9/11 nostalgia for good ‘ol fashioned Westernism.

But it’s not the “authentic” beginnings of the Church that is the real concern of the DVC…I mean, who are we kidding here? Overall, I’m proud of our ability to immediately spot the DVC’s spongy attack on Christian orthodoxies. What I’m not so proud of is that we have failed to see its underlying target: a wimpy postmodern Westernism that is no longer able to convince and innovate and have some roots and self-pride for once. If we could only throw off the shackles of effete Kantian wallowing or nihilistic deconstructionisms and all that emasculated pop cultural wash! Let’s rescue the Renaissance by God!

The only critiques to have spotted this subtle obsession in the DVC that I have heard thus far are Anthony's (posted on his blog a while ago), as well as Ingrid Rowland's "Pop Esoterica" review in the New Republic(published about two years ago). Reframing old values in the guise of poetry, current causes, and peacenik ideals, like emergent bands, just gives people wounded by the transgressions of organized religion great succor. It’s just nice to see that the human condition can be analyzed in a few simple, aphoristic lyrics that fit better with our bedtime story views of Jesus (the only Jesus we intellectually know). Though Dan Brown does a bad job at presenting anything about Christ’s message at all, notice that (except for the sex stuff) he is not out to do any real harm to teddy-bear Christ.

Reason # 3) We rather like our insipid faiths and shallow philosophies

One of the things that is true of Americans and probably always will be is that we have an approach to faith and values that is irrepressively individualistic. Some may try to pin this way back to American transcendentalism or Thoreau’s cult of the Individual, but the truth is Americans have always had and will always have a great distrust for anything formalized, organized, hierarchical, etc. I hate to say it, but it’s our backwater “don’t tread on me” waspy heritage. This is why American intellectuals have always had a profound ambivalence towards urbanism, industrialism, commercialism, social utopianism, nationalism, and any phenomenon whatsoever that involves the aggregation of more than two people (in Thoreau’s case, more than one). “And as well we should!,” you say, quoting the Bible. But who we really need to credit for this position is not the Kingdom, but Immanuel Kant’s “Two World Ontology”, which posits that we poor industrialized/commercialized masses are fundamentally alienated from our souls. If the German response to Kant was national socialism - the beehive model (John Dewey called it right – Nietzche and Heidegger had little to do with what happened to Germany in the 1930’s), the American response has been Emerson’s transcendental individualism - the hedgehog. Don’t get me wrong, I much rather prefer the hedgehog model myself. But, thankfully, most of us are both “men of valor” and “men of the committee”. (Forgive the archaic language…I’m not leaving out you women-folk by any means). The values of 21st century are risk, innovation and individualistic opportunism but also good ‘ol fashioned back-scratching and hard-nosed pragmatism. Likewise, the noumenal forays of American intellectuals have tended to keep their pragmatic nose to the ground. But every once in a while, we hanker for something more Emerson-like, especially in moments of national crisis, and we stumble about for some private metaphysical juice to suck. I’m not post-modern enough to be opposed to this, but what I think very sad is the pop-cultural tendency to look for it in some pseudo-philosophy or New Age religion that remains fundamentally mysterious and unavailing. The DVC’s goddess-worshipping, mystery cult may offer a cheap veneer of this, but really it is its appeal to a mythical Renaissance “Westernism” that tugs effectively at us…call it “Metaphysical Westernism”, oh, DaVinci our free-thinking savior. The real mission of the DVC and books like it (e.g. The Rule of Four, where Westernism is rescued, how appropriately, in a Princeton eating club) is to replace Christianity with Heretical Westernism and if this is not really possible, then to marry Christianity with the West once and for all.

Pointing out our rampant metaphysical shallowness to our contemporaries, fellow critics, may be much more effective criticism of the “pop-esoterica” of the DVC’s vein. Why, at the very least, we may do our contemporaries a favor by accidentally inspiring a return to the spirited American metaphysical bravado of the 19th century – we’d be doing our forebears a favor if nothing else. Kabbalah, please!…Emerson and Thoreau would be ashamed. Is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance the best we can do, people?

For example, just look at how badly Dan Brown’s airhead Westernism authentically bungled even New Age values. Lets begin with his obsequious loyalty to the “open-specificity” of Americans’ world-views, which claims that organized religion must be distrusted at face value, analyzed and then retrofitted to reflect contemporary trends and values (this is Immanuel Kant’s victory). The DVC is tentatively innovative but somehow always remains shallow, contrived all the more for its blanket strive for irresolution. In its predictable fair-handed open-endedness, Mr. Brown wants to claim that his book is a celebration of the value of “faith”. And the DVC would attempt to replace the insipidness of faith with a reconstructed Christianity….only (thank you Anthony Smith!) it is exactly in this task that the book ultimately proves not only to be a literal royal disappointment but a bore. The hidden history of a goddess worshipping European family is simply offensive to our sensibilities (religious or otherwise). Christ’s descendants are (white) elites obsessed with Gnostic-sexual rites of Messianic primogeniture (“Gnostic-sexual” is oxymoronic, but not to Dan Brown). The concept is not only un-Christian but wholly un-New Age. To whom is this version of Metaphysical Westernism not distasteful to?…A weed-smoking skinhead cult? Stupid and Insipid.

Parables of Doing, the "Four-Item" version of Jesus

2006-06-25T08:56:00.000-07:00

In our previous post, we showed how Jesus' parable of the housebuilders imitated the flavor and point of others like it circulating in the Rabbinic world.

But scholars have so far not noticed that Jesus uttered another such gem like it. It too elaborates on Exodus 24:7's "Do - Hear" dichotomy, which in Jewish culture is the dichotomy between the doing of Torah and the hearing (or study) of Torah. Jesus, however, expands the comparison structure from the familiar two item comparison to the novel version comparing four items. Probably the most well-known of Jesus' parables is a four item, compare-contrast parable - the Parable of the Sower (or the Parable of the Four Soils).

Compare-contrast aphorisms of four items are well known in Rabbinic writings and are among the most ancient of Jewish homiletic delights. Some famous examples are found in the compilation of Rabbinic sayings Pirke Avot (Sayings of the Fathers), which contains some of the most ancient teachings of Jewish tradition:

Pirke Avot 5:13. There are four characters among men: he who says, "What is mine is mine and what is thine is thine," his is a neutral character; some say, "This is a character like that of Sodom"; he who says, "What is mine is thine and what is thine is mine," is a boor; he who says, "What is mine is thine and what is thine is thine," is a saint; he who says, "What is thine is mine and what is mine is mine," is a wicked man.

14. There are four kinds of tempers: he whom it is easy to provoke and easy to pacify, his loss disappears in his gain; he whom it is hard to provoke and hard to pacify, his gain disappears in his loss; he whom it is hard to provoke and easy to pacify is a saint; he whom it is easy to provoke and hard to pacify is a wicked man.

15. There are four qualities in disciples: he who quickly understands and quickly forgets, his gain disappears in his loss; he who understands with difficulty and forgets with difficulty, his loss disappears in his gain; he who understands quickly and forgets with difficulty, his is a good portion; he who understands with difficulty and forgets quickly, his is an evil portion.

16. As to almsgiving there are four dispositions: he who desires to give, but that others should not give, his eye is evil toward what appertains to others; he who desires that others should give, but will not give himself, his eye is evil against what is his own; he who gives and wishes others to give is a saint; he who will not give and does not wish others to give is a wicked man.

17. There are four characters among those who attend the house of study: he who goes and does not practise secures the reward for going; he who practises but does not go secures the reward for practising; he who goes and practises is a saint; he who neither goes nor practises is a wicked man.

18. There are four qualities among those that sit before the wise: they are like a sponge, a funnel, a strainer, or a sieve: a sponge, which sucks up everything; a funnel, which lets in at one end and out at the other; a strainer, which lets the wine pass out and retains the dregs; a sieve, which lets out the bran and retains the fine flour.

Save except for the last, all of the above sayings contain the structure: A-B, a-B, A-b, a-b. Remember high school biology class, and your fruit fly experiments? Think of this as that Mendel chart you drew:

AB | aB
---------
Ab | ab

Now read the Parable of the Sower and see if you can ascertain the "Mendelian Chart" structure:

Luke 8:4 When a large crowd was coming together, and those from the various cities were journeying to Him, He spoke by way of a parable: 5 "The sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell beside the road, and it was trampled under foot and the birds of the air ate it up. 6 "Other seed fell on rocky soil, and as soon as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. 7 "Other seed fell among the thorns; and the thorns grew up with it and choked it out. 8 "Other seed fell into the good soil, and grew up, and produced a crop a hundred times as great." As He said these things, He would call out, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." 9 His disciples began questioning Him as to what this parable meant. 10 And He said, "To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is in parables, so that SEEING THEY MAY NOT SEE, AND HEARING THEY MAY NOT UNDERSTAND. 11 "Now the parable is this: the seed is the word of God. 12 "Those beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart, so that they will not believe and be saved. 13 "Those on the rocky soil are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no firm root; they believe for a while, and in time of temptation fall away. 14 "The seed which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to maturity. 15 "But the seed in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance.

It may not immediately be clear to the reader that the "Hear - Do" elements are the contrasting traits of the four soils. In particular the differences between the four soils can be said to be their different qualities of a) the "Hearing"--that is, the reception/implantation of the Word (the seed) and b) the "Doing", the ability of the soils to allow growth to happen. Thus, lets label our Mendel-chart traits as follows:

A -- "Much Study" (the Rabbinic take on "hearing Torah")
a -- "Little Study"
B -- "Much Doing"
b -- "Little Doing"

The logic (and genius) of the Parable of the Sower suddenly pops out:

1) a-b: The soil exposed to the birds (does not study, does not do)
2) A-b: The rocky soil (studies enthusiastically but does not follow through in action)
3) a-B: The thorny soil (fleeting study because it has way too much "doing" going on)
4) A-B: The good soil (studies and does)

As you can see, the purpose of the Parable is purely admonitional (what scholars call "hortative"). Jesus is pointing out the foils that can impede the progress of the Kingdom in our lives. Recognize that soil #2, the shallow soil, above is the exact same foolish fellow we encountered in the "Parable of the Housebuilders", the guy who likes to study but is shallow in execution. He is the hypocrite. But there is another "Kingdom underachiever", the guy who over-executes everything, the ambitious, busy fellow who drowns out the Kingdom among the weeds of his various exploits. These two soils are in fact not far from the Kingdom, but they have recessive deficiencies that prevent true growth...and they can be us at various stages of our lives. Ben, Christy and I discussed that we could all recognize our own stages in life as progressing through all four soil types. In fact, I recognize in myself the recessive soil traits of both shallowness and thorniness. Looking honestly, I think the vast majority of us exist in similar soils. The parable tells us we need to go back to the "Do - Hear" staples of the Kingdom, and to prioritize our lives. If we read this parable fatalistically (as a "mechanics" of predestinary salvation/damnation) we miss the broader hortative point. In simple but revelatory dichotomies (such as those in Pirke Avot above), the parable encourages us to reset our priorities: we need to deepen our soils and push out the distractions that foil our walk in the Word.

Parables of Doing

2006-06-25T08:04:00.000-07:00

Exodus 24:7 And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the hearing of the people; and they said: 'All that the LORD hath spoken will we do, and we will obey (lit. "we will hear").

When the Rabbis read Exodus 24:7 they noticed something curious wording of the Israelite vow. How can the "doing" of the covenant precede the "hearing" of it? Some argued "...we will do and (then) we will hear" meant that they resolved to do Torah before they even heard its injunctions. From this some got that the doing of Torah took precedence over the study of Torah. Others disputed that both were equally important. Thus they launched into "Parables of Doing" to explicate the matter. One Rabbi, Elisha ben Abuyah, seized on the primacy of "doing" in a parable he taught:

If a man does good deeds and studies much Torah, What is he like?
To a man building first with stones and then with bricks;
Even when much water comes and the water stays (the building) does not move from its place.
And if a man does not do good deeds and studies much Torah, What is he like?
To a man who builds first with bricks and then with stones;
Even with a little water (the building) is turned upside down.

Another parallel:
If a man does good deeds and studies much Torah, What is he like?
To a tree that stands by the water, his foliage is small and his roots are large;
And if a man does not do good deeds and studies much Torah, What is he like?
To a tree that grows in the desert, its foliage is great and its roots are small; with a weak wind it is uprooted and tossed away.

Still another parallel:
If a man does good deeds and studies much Torah, What is he like?
To plaster painted on stones; Even when it is washed with running water, it does not move from its place.
And if a man does not do good deeds and studies much Torah, What is he like?
To plaster painted on bricks; Even when only a little rain drops, it is dissolved.

In Luke chapter 6 we encounter Christ teaching with one such "Parable of Doing":

Luke 6:46 "Why do you call Me, `Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say? 47 "Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and does them, I will show you whom he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock; and when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 "But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great."

It can be easily shown then that Jesus was probably borrowing his parable from those in circulation in the Rabbinic circles of his time. His point, like Elisha ben Abuyah's, is very basic. Hearing the word of God, without doing it, does not serve the student any better than an abacus he knows how to use but never employs to good use. It is in the use where the worth of the instrument stands the test of time. A good student is able to succeed in life with it because its use becomes second nature to him...and is thus able to remain steadfast on a solid foundation no matter what deluge life might throw at him.

No. 8: Legion visits our Bible Study

2006-05-18T10:16:00.000-07:00

So, we usually conduct our Bible studies at a coffee shop which has wine tasting the same night. Anthony shared his thoughts about composing a narrative about the demon Legion and while we are studying the cross and the Jewish people, a Jewish lady at the wine tasting happened to be listening in. She and her husband drop in and out of our conversation. I guess in a spirit of ecumenisism, this lady, who apparently organizes meditation sessions, begins relating to us about her regular visits with "spirit guides"...then it got really weird. Needless to say, I think Anthony is now spooked about inviting Legion's perspective. I just think it's too darn hilarious...I say, let's use the opportunity to plumb his minds, he, he.

Can't wait to see what happens next time. =)

33AD Huddle Gets Started!

2006-04-23T06:45:00.000-07:00

Folks:

Our format for our bi-weekly studies has changed. We are still going to have one "33AD Session" a month, where we will look in depth at certain passages throughout the gospels. We are still continuing with our Gospel of John studies. Every other week, however, we will gather to discuss our book writing project One Hell of a Week which we are undertaking in order to ramp up our personal growth and study of the Gospels...concentrating on the Passion Week of Jesus our Messiah.

So, every other meeting, which I'm calling for now "33AD Huddle", we will discuss your own personal research and hopefully encourage you to write a dramatic account of an event from the Passion Week using your research. If you choose not to contribute a piece to the book effort, that is ok. You can still research on your own topics that will help contribute to our collective research. Although the topic you choose has to have something relevant to the Passion Week, it need not necessarily be limited to the relevant Gospel accounts of the week...You may, for example, choose to research the references to the crucifixion in Romans, the book of Revelation, etc. or study the foreshadows of the Messiah's suffering in Isaiah, the Psalms, or you may choose to look at more in depth other topics of relevance, e.g. the textual differences of the texts, references to the Passion week in other literature, Jewish society and history of the time period, the Roman occupation under Pilate, and so on.

When we gather for our Huddle, we will discuss our research, ask questions, discuss contemporary events in light of Jesus' Passion, go over our creative writing ideas, and so on. I believe this will completely galvanize our learning and understanding of not only the Gospels, but our personal encounters with the Beloved Son of God.

We are attempting to connect with scholars who are not only knowledgeable about the gospels, but they are fluent in Hebrew, read Biblical languages, have studied at Hebrew University, and so are very knowledgeable about first century Jewish literature, history, culture, Biblical interpretation...among many other things. Hopefully, they will help us on our quest through the "Helluva Week" forum referred to above. Please visit this blog to post a current synopsis of the piece you are going to write (if you are game for that) and ask away your questions to begin getting any guidance from them you need about the Passion Week events, the gospel accounts, background and language issues and so on. I'll do my best to answer myself if they don't.

Looking forward to this in so many ways! =)

Session #7: Here Comes the Son

2006-04-14T20:04:00.000-07:00

This image of an Israeli peace activist to me is quite startling. I cannot help to think of the unnerving quality of her empathy...and her look to Heaven perhaps says it all. More than that, her protest has something of a touch of Christ's Messianic vision of his protest in Jerusalem.

For those of you who missed our talk last week, a quick recap: We spoke about the true motivation of the high priesthood in getting Jesus done away with and nature of Christ's problem with them. Jesus sealed his fate with his relentless provocation of the corrupt practices of temple authorities. He opened up his passion week by turning over tables literally. But the final straw came when Jesus made it clear that he was truly coming to recover the fruit of His Father's "vineyard". In the midst of the crowds gathering for Passover, he told the "Parable of the Vineyard, the Tenants and the Son" (Luke 20:1-19). In it, Jesus makes it clear that the "Son" (the Messiah, see Psalm 2) was coming to collect a debt...the fruit owed to the Father. In other words, he was coming to collect the tithes of the temple (the "vineyard" of Isaiah 5, which was a metaphor for the temple among the Jews of the day) that never seemed to leave the pockets of a lavishly wealthy and corrupt high priestly clan (the House of Caiphas/Hanan) who are the "tenants" in the parable, and hardly ever seemed to trickle its way down to the landless Levite, the alien (hmm...shall we say "guest worker"), the orphan and the widow...which Deut 14:29 makes clear the tithes should go to. In fact, Jesus blasts the Saduccean priestly hierarchy for "devouring widows' houses" (Luke 20:47). Why were the early Christians in Acts feeding the widows of Jerusalem one must wonder, when this was the responsibility of the temple authorities? It is not for nothing that Jesus labelled the widow's two mites "more than all" (Luke 21:1-4)...for the incident provokes his disciples to comment on the architecture (v. 5), which those two mites were going sustain. Thereupon, Jesus begins to prophesy the temple's demise. Looked at another way, God sold his house for two mites. For he too was not going to rob widows' purses. A new temple was going to be founded, Jesus foretold, the "stone" that the builders rejected was to become the "chief cornerstone" (Luke 20:17, see Psalm 118). The Jewish church was founded on that cornerstone, and not at all incidentally, its first martyr, Stephen, was one of its chief widow feeders.

What is probably driving the empathy of the woman above:

(A Palestinian woman grieves the loss of her house).

Session #6: "Cancelling Debts" - The Business Model of Jesus

2006-02-26T07:04:00.000-08:00

What we discussed last Thursday warrants much further consideration. Jesus' vision for winning others through personal and financial integrity offers a very convicting and relevant message for our times. Anthony's discussion of the Missio Dei and Bruce's redefinition of the "Tsadik" as the just person who actually produces a "righteousness" that "the city rejoices" in (Proverbs 11:10) are, in a way, perfectly encapsulated in Jesus' elaboration of the Missio Dei through the Parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1ff).

I would like to open up by recapping Jesus' vision of proselytism.

When we think of proselytism, we normally think of evangelists and missionaries (the bearers of Good News). Successful evangelists are esteemed in America, but when we consider the pious and humble evangelists whose family photos accumulate on our refrigerator - our missionaries, such esteem seems wanting. Typically, these photos remind us our duties to support our dutiful expatriates in love, prayer and financial support. Although not different from other members of our clergy, whose financial support goes unquestioned, missionaries are unfairly thought of as something close to beggars...even those that are "tentmakers", social workers and Bible translators whose work (in scope) brings materialistic as well as spiritual rewards to their host cultures. Missionaries are evangelists on two fronts, in their host country and back home, where they must proselytize for support. While they are thought of admirably by the majority of us, there is still a certain kind of social stigma in evangelical circles associated with their work because of the fact that they must constantly justify our support with what often comes down to a crude head count. Part of the answer, I believe, is in the way the modern evangelical church has calcified a rigid missiological structure that (in its narrowness) has promulgated a tacit economy of (wordly) pietism...we want our missionaries to be beggars, so that when we reward them financially, we get to share in their piety. Unconsciously, thus, they absolve us of our duty to missionize in our own lives. The structure, truthfully, is a system of indulgences...only we're not buying salvation, but a pardon from our evangelical guilt. Something is off kilter here,...What is it?

The answer, I believe, is in our grossly narrow definition of the "Good News" (insert Anthony's and Bruce's comments here). When one studies what Jesus' view of mission work was, a picture emerges (not surprisingly) of a very different view of proselytism. Interestingly, in Christ's "economy", the missionary (laborer) would be supported not by us or even by the personal means of the missionary himself, but by those who hear the message of the Good News, the proselytized! As David Flusser pointed out, "Jesus instructed those whom he sent into the world to eat and drink what was provided for them, 'for the laborer deserves his wages' (Lk. 10:7). In another passage this command is explained as follows: 'You have received without paying, give without charging. Do not take any gold, silver or copper in your belts; take no bag for the journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals nor a staff; for the laborer deserves his food' (Mt. 10:8-10)."

...In other words, those whose debts were being cancelled would cheerfully repay the bearers of Good News for their services. That, to our modern ears, sounds like a truly idealistic model for missionary support, but it is one that actually has a dramatically higher estimation (to speak in understatement) of the redemptive mission of the Good News.

The question and indictment is this:

What would the message of redemption look like if the receivers of the Good News saw it as something unquestionably worth their financial support? What would happen if missionaries did not patronize, but instead brought home funds (as Paul did for the poor of Jerusalem) for our own poor and our own widows and our own marginilized?

Rev. Bono

2006-02-11T08:27:00.000-08:00

Session #5: "Like a Bridegroom Coming Out of His Chamber"

2006-02-08T06:02:00.000-08:00

"And he is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoicing to run his course." Psalm 19.5

A Huppah (wedding canopy)
The attendants of the bridegroom would stand guard over them. Kings would have three erected for their wedding. Apparently, the first couple enjoyed ten, according to an ancient Rabbinic tradition. God Himself and the angels were the attendants on that occasion.

What does this have to do with John's prologue? That my friends, begins in an interesting place...in fact, at the (second) giving of the ten commandments, when God restored the tablets, in an interesting way: by pointing to His Lovingkindness. The commandments are restored with words of Lovingkindness. Let's go to that passage:

Exodus 34: 4 And he hewed two tablets of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. 5 And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. 6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed: 'The LORD, the LORD, God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in Lovingkindness and Truth; 7 keeping Lovingkindness unto the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and unto the fourth generation.'

Now, my friends, let us enter into a Rabbinic excursus:

Two tablets, what two tablets? "Like unto the first (Ibid)." What was written on these tablets? “What was written on the first (Ibid).” With ten sayings the Holy One, blessed be He, restored them:

On the One:

1) The LORD (I am the LORD thy God)
2) The LORD (Only I--no other gods)
3) God (nor shall you swear by My name—see, even I show deference to My name)
4) Merciful and Gracious (the Shabbat was given to you)
5) Long-suffering (as your father and your mother)

On the Other (that you be in solidarity with your neighbor, who is made in My image):

6) Abundant in Lovingkindness and Truth (Don’t murder—for thy neighbor is like thyself)
7) Keeping mercy unto the generations (Therefore don’t mess up a generation through adultery)
8) Forgiving iniquity (stealing)
9) …transgression (bearing false witness)
10) …and sin (covetousness).

Two tablets, what two tablets? The one with the words “(I am) the LORD (thy) God, etc” (the Torah), and the one with the words “Lovingkindness and Truth” written therein, as it is written:

Proverbs 7:2 Keep my commandments and live, and my Torah as the apple of thine eye 3 Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the tablet of thy heart

And,

Proverbs 3:3 Let not Lovingkindness and Truth forsake thee; Bind them about thy neck, write them upon the tablet of thy heart

When does one observe Lovingkindness truthfully? When one shows kindness to a bridegroom, as the Holy One blessed be He bestowed upon Isaac. [Gen. 24--Gen 24:27 is the first appearance in the Bible of the words “Lovingkindness and Truth” together. Read Pirke de Eliezer, Ch. 16 “The Service of Lovingkindness”, describing the service of Lovingkindness to bridegrooms. Note how the rabbis read between the lines to ingeniously “unpack” all the often subtle and hidden ways God shows this the service of Lovingkindess to Isaac. God does not like to advertise His good deeds—a token of “Lovingkindness in Truth”, chesed b’emes—so the Rabbis have to do a brain number just to spot them.]

When else does one observe Lovingkindness truthfully? When one shows kindness to the deceased and their mourners, as the men of Jabesh-Gilead bestowed upon Saul. [1 Sam 31:12-13; see 2 Sam 2:6 where David blesses these men with the words “Lovingkindness and Truth” another rare appearance of these words together. Read Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, Ch. 17 “Loving Service to Mourners”. Note how important the Rabbis make Saul’s burial out to be.]

Note John 2, how the first “sign” shows Jesus bestowing Lovingkindness to a bridegroom, and John 11, how the last “sign” follows the scene of Him mourning in solidarity with the mourners…Accidental? Well, when the gospel opens up with a theophany that describes the Word as the very “fullness of Lovingkindness and Truth” (John 1.14), what do you think?

The world as we know it...

2006-01-26T07:13:00.000-08:00

big news in the middle east.

ISRAELI NATIONAL RELIGIOUS PARTY MP EFFIE EITAM:
"It's beyond any shade of doubt that Ehud Olmert is dividing Jerusalem [by allowing Palestinian residents to vote].
Bear in mind that, [if] there were elections in Washington for al-Qaeda, would any American administration, would any American citizen accept that?"

an acceptable comparison? hamas is difficult to analyze because they are difficult to categorize. perhaps if Israel or even the PLO had invested in improving the infrastructure of Gaza since the 1960's or had adaquately supplied medical facilities and schools in the area, we could unabashedly declare Hamas to be a terrorist organization. but, the facts seem to indicate that hamas spends alot of money to build schools and facilities for palestinians that otherwise are without such assistance.

my father emailed today from Tiberius and said this about the elections:
"Everything fine here. Elections I do not expect to have an effect on us. Locals believe that until the Israel elections next month, nothing will happen. We have a guide who is Christian Palistenian. I am planning to tape an interview with her at some point. Her family has been here for at least 4 generations."

even if everything stays quite over the next several weeks, and the parameters of hamas controlled areas do not change, many still have the expectation that the change from the fatah party to hamas control bodes ill for continuing discussions between israelis and palestinians.

i guess we'll just wait and see.

Session #4: A Food You Know Not Of

2006-01-15T17:46:00.000-08:00

Mah nah? --What I beg? ...The bread of HaShem, this thing we call Life everlasting. What is it? What is a water that wells up to everlasting life? How is everlasting life lived?

As we savor John's Gospel, I thought it would be wonderful for us to be thinking very carefully about what it means to live life as Christians...and I mean, REALLY think about it. So, I've assigned some homework:

Write a brief three point "epitome" about what your vision is for HOW you will live life. This assignment will help us all, I believe, to ask the right questions when we read through John....To really suck the juicy marrow out of John's gospel, a succulent gospel that is all about Life.

Feel free to approach this anyway that suits you. One approach is to look at Ben Franklin's 13 Virtues. Pick a few of his virtues, or come up with some new ones. Next, meditate on all you know of Scripture. I suggest reading (in addition to John's gospel) the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7), the book of James, and Proverbs. Then try to redefine your list of virtues in your own way. See if you can narrow the list to just three (combine some virtues into a broader category).

When we're done with John, I hope we can all share our "epitome" to one another. Keep track of how you do it, and track your changes, new realizations, etc. Pray about it. Enjoy it. Own it.

Happy Contemplating!

Fresh Air Interview with Bart Ehrman

2005-12-17T12:53:00.000-08:00

In case you missed it, there was an interesting interview on NPR the other day about Bart Ehrman's book Misquoting Jesus. I agree with many of his general conclusions about scribal transcriptions and our need to understand the personalities of the gospel writers and their audiences. Interesting though, how he ends up a self-described "agnostic" after his encounter with our human-transcribed scriptures. His underlying problem with belief in Christianity is easy to understand: how can you place stock in scriptures filled with "errors". In the end, you need something you can trust. Has Ehrman missed something? Wondering what you guys think.

Session #1: The Geneaologies

2005-11-13T18:07:00.000-08:00

Two themes stood out in my mind after our discussion on the genealogies in Matthew and Luke.

1. God uses the unlikeliest of people to be agents of the kingdom.

The chief agent of God's kingdom being Jesus. I find it helpful recognizing this consistent theme throughout the bible. Particularly, the exodus and exile motif we see in the beginning chapters of Matthew.

One of the things I try to do in understanding these rich and deeper goldmines in the Bible is to relate them to our present day...to the world I inhabit. One of my thoughts came up in our discussion. I was thinking about the passed hip-hop artist/rapper Tupac Shakur as a metaphor for what I am talking about. Tupac was not an agent for the kingdom of God (or was he?) but he did represent the voiceless in American society. He was one of the few rappers and pop culture icons that consistently brought the voices of those in the margins in his rap songs ( e.g. Brenda's gotta baby, Keep ya head up, et al). Given his background and personal history Tupac was an unlikely candidate to represent other people's hopes and aspirations.

2. A part of God's story of redemption is the turning of the tables.

Consistently throughout scripture we see this theme repeated over and over again. In fact, the gospels talk about the "last becoming first". Once we understand that Jesus represents not only God, but also humanity...and in particular, God decides to become a human being in the form of a peasant who is a part of a people who are oppressed and occupied by a colonizing power. I think too often we Western Christians dismiss these historical nuggets as irrelevant to our discussion to Jesus' message of 'good news'. I don't know where this comes from. I have my suspicions: 1. the over-spiritualizing of the historical context of the New Testament 2. that we read the Bible from a place of relative privilege...its hard to identify with a people who are on the edges of barely surviving. We tend to read the Bible through our own culture...which isn't totally a bad thing...in some ways...many ways it is difficult to recognize and escape.

I'll post more thoughts as they arise.

Session #3: The Gospel According to Mary

2005-11-13T16:23:00.000-08:00

Those who carry pianos
to the tenth floor wardrobes and coffins
an old man with a bundle of wood limps beyond the horizon
a woman with a hump of nettles
a madwoman pushing a pram
full of vodka bottles
they will all be lifted
like a gull's feather like a dry leaf
like an eggshell a scrap of newspaper

Blessed are those who carry
for they shall be lifted.

-Anna Kamienska, "Those Who Carry"

"He speaks about faith in a way that even a nonbeliever can embrace."

2005-11-13T16:08:00.000-08:00

i know this is not exactly on topic, but Bono talking about scripture I found interesting, and somewhat familiar to our discussions on how the reading of the text changes for us.

"I want to build my house on a rock, because even if the waters are not high around the house, I'm going to bring back a storm. I have that in me."

check out this excerpt.

I will be purchasing this issue as soon as possible. This is a man I want playing on my team. The fact that he is not perfect is what makes him so compelling.

Session #2: A Baptism of Fire

2005-11-13T13:19:00.000-08:00

For those of you who missed our last session, Eric created an image to help us understand the perspective of the writers of the Gospel (and New Testament). By exploring their position within first century Judaism, we better understand their motives for what they chose to write, to whom they wrote, and why they wrote the way that they did. Paul, Mark and the author of Hebrews, for example, were much more Hellenistic in their approach to writing and in the way they communicated with their audience. Matthew, on the other hand, was closer to what we would consider charismatic. Our analogy was that he was Malcolm X to perhaps John's Martin Luther King Jr. Additionally, recognizing the various sects or theological leanings of the Jews during Christ's ministry helps us interpret the writer's intent and provides some context for Christ's teachings. (I think this will probably become more relevant as we move into the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables.)

The Gospels seem to indicate that John the Baptist expected Christ to bring the fire and brimstone John had been preaching prior to the Baptism. Jesus came with an entirely different message. Instead of dispossessing or expelling sinners, He offered a relationship, based not on a list of criteria to be met or rules to be maintained, but on a more mature and profound level. Consanguinity. Blood relations. Deep intimacy. Forgiveness. Grace. (Eric, I would love some clarification or comment on this point.)

Christ, noteably, falls into the middle of the "amoeba" and appealed in different ways to all of the modes of thought represented. Yeshua was extremely relevant, but at the same time he was redefining everything about how the Scripture represented the Messiah. He "turned the tables" and in many ways seemed to disorient previous concepts of what God's savior for Isreal really looked like. Jesus provided a theological middle ground undermining many previously divisive interpretations of what the Kingdom of God looked like; the result (if accepted) would be unprecedented unity (not to mention truly divine simplicity.) The preparation and opportunity which God provided (and provides) for all peoples to hear and understand the Good News can be traced throughout this "turning of the tables" and ultimately into the growth of a new sect of Judaism that we now embrace as Christianity. The more we pursue the relevance, and significance of Christ's teachings to His own generation, the more bafflingly beautiful God's plan of redemption appears.

33AD Warehouse 242 Affinity Group

2005-11-06T12:35:00.000-08:00

Welcome affinity group members! I hope our discussions will be rich and effusive. Please begin posting your reflections here, and carry over our conversation into our daily lives.

Anthony, please post here the reflections you sent Christy and me last week!