In my previous post New Thoughts On Abortion, I explored an authoritative, ancient Hebrew perspective about the beginning of human life by looking not only at the Hebrew Bible, but at the ordinances of the Pharisees/Rabbis preserved in the Oral Law and its commentary. In that post, we saw that breath was the foundation of human life according to an ancient and authoritative Israelite perspective. This was represented even in the very Hebrew word (nephesh) traditionally translated soul in the Hebrew Bible. We therefore were able to see that abortion was a legal and Torah-abiding activity because until a baby breathed, it was not considered human life.
Ancient Israel didn’t exist alone in history. Its concepts, ideas, values, and world-views were not sui generis. We know that Israel’s perception was in some ways very much like the Canaanites and that, in fact, trying to retain her own purity of tradition, ancestry, and religion instead of being absorbed into the Canaanite life and religion was a recurring problem. One of the ways, therefore, to come to an adequate understanding of ancient Israel is to make a comparison of it to its neighbors—particularly its closest neighbors whom Israel drank with, married amongst, cursed, and slaughtered.
In order to further solidify the proposition that human life began and ended with breath in the Israelite perspective, it would benefit us greatly to look to the Canaanites to see if they had any similar concept. If there is evidence that they thought in the same manner, then this lends a great deal of support to the proposition that Israel would have thought in such a manner. And in the matter of abortion, it would further the claim that abortion could not technically or even morally be considered the taking of human life if one respects the beliefs of the ancient Hebrew people.
To this end, I turn my attention to one of the great archaeological finds of the last century—the capital city of an ancient Canaanite kingdom called Ugarit, sitting under the long shadow of the Mountain of Baal himself. The archeology and artifacts of Ugarit have dramatically changed the way we think about the ancient world, ancient languages, and indeed about ancient Israel herself. Among all the texts found at Ugarit, there were several popular epics which were known as far away as Babylon. One of these is Aqhat. It is the story of how an ancient patriarchal hero asks Baal for a son. Baal turns to El, the supreme God, who grants the request and gives him a son: Aqhat. At a crucial point of his life, Aqhat is given a special bow which the goddess Anat desires. Anat asks for the bow, but Aqhat refuses to give it to her. Anat then gathers her forces and attacks Aqhat to kill him. In the description of Anat’s attack, we can see this same concept of life coming from breath (and conversely a lack of life meaning an absence of breath) in the ancient Canaanite perspective spelled out for us. The death of Aqhat is described thusly:
Let his life go like a breath…
From his nose like smoke…
I shall take his life.
[His] life went off like a breath…
from [his nose] like smoke.
Aqhat, Tablet 2, Column IV, lines 24, 26-27, 36-37, translation by Simon Parker
Aqhat’s life passes out of his mouth and nose as he ceases to breathe. Were breath to enter him again, he would return to life. However, unlike Baal in another Ugaritic epic, Aqhat isn’t so lucky as to have breath (i.e. life) returned to him.
As I was looking at the transliteration of the Ugaritic, I noticed something even more interesting. The word translated breath—the thing that leaves him and renders him non-living—is spelled NPSH. Add vowels to that and you have the Hebrew word “nephesh,” which occurs through the Hebrew Bible, and which as discussed previously is also the thing (meaning breath) which gives life in Hebrew literature. (Another example of breath being the thing that makes people living from the Hebrew Bible is Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones. YHWH resurrects the people, putting their bones back together, sewing flesh and sinews back together, and making their bodies whole and complete. But it is not until breath comes and enters them at last that they live.)
Those intimately familiar with the Hebrew Bible will at once be aware of numerous instances where the authors or editors of the texts could be charged with plagiarism (I put together a short list of some here). However, in the ancient world, this was not the moral or ethical dilemna it would be today. The opposite was the case. Originality was not necessarily a virtue. Writing and editing texts was a specialized art and being able to precisely copy something else or draw on a vast storage of shared literary heritage was considered participating in high craftsmanship.
Consider the following description of the Underworld as taken from three completely different texts composed and edited at different times in Babylonian history.
To the dark house, the abode of Irkalla,
To the house which none leave who have entered it,
To the road from which there is no way back,
To the house wherein the entrants are bereft of light,
Where dust is their fare and clay their food,
Where they see no light, residing in darkness,
Where they are clothed like birds, with wings for garments,
And where over door and bolt is spread dust.
from The Descent of Ishtar
To the dark house, dwelling of Erkalla’s god,
To the house which those who enter cannot leave,
On the road where travelling is one way only,
To the house where those who enter are deprived of light,
Where dust is their food, clay their bread.
They are clothed, like birds, with feathers.
They see no light, they dwell in darkness.
They moan like doves.
from Nergal and Ereshkigal
Seizing me, he led me down to the House of Darkness,
the dwelling of Irkalla,
to the house where those who enter do not come out,
along the road of no return,
to the house where those who dwell, do without light,
where dirt is their drink, their food is of clay,
where, like a bird, they wear garments of feathers,
and light cannot be seen, they dwell in the dark,
and upon the door and bolt, there lies dust.
from the Epic of Gilgamesh
When we approach the biblical texts, it is easy to forget that a prophet, figurehead, or legendry personage didn’t write much (if any) of those texts, but they are to a large extent (in their final forms) the work of one or more elite scribal artisans. In whatever locale the scribes of ancient Israel wrought their art, and whatever their motive for editing, composing, or rewriting their texts, they were part of a certain social system of scholars and craftsmen much like their Mesopamian and Egyptian counterparts. They had no qualms taking something from someone else and incorporating it into their own work or even putting another’s name to it.
Der Humanismus
In der Zeit der Renaissance und des Humanismus bahnte sich ein neues Geschichtsverständnis an. Darauf zu achten und dieses allmähliche Wachsen eines historischen Bewußtseins genau ins Auge zu fassen – das wird eine der wesentlichen Aufgaben unserer Darstellung der alttestamentlichen Forschungsgeschichte sein müssen.
Bewegt von diesem Erwachen und Wachsen des historischen Bewußtseins – und auch diese Entwicklung wird zu bedenken sein: –, wurde der Drang nach Erkenntnis, nach unbedingter Wahrheit freigesetzt. Laurentius Valla (1406-1457) war der Inspirator eines neuen kritischen Verfahrens, das zur Quellenforschung anleitete, neue Maßstäbe setzte und die vielschichtige Bewegung des Humanismus hervorrief. Auf die einzelnen Phasen und Erscheinungsformen des Humanismus kann im Folgenden nicht eingegangen werden. Es mag genügen, wenn in einer Skizze der Trend der machtvollen Bewegung erfaßt wird.
Hans-Joachim Kraus
Humanism
A new understanding of history developed itself in the time of the Renaissance and of Humanism. To pay attention to that and accurately contemplate this gradual growth of a historical consciousness - that will have to be one of the fundamental tasks of our account of the old testament history of research. If moved by this awakening and growth of historical consciousness (and even its development will be considered), then the impulse toward perception and toward complete truth was liberated.
Laurentius Valla (1406-1457) was the inspirator of a new critcial process which instructed concerning source research, set new methods, and gave rise to the complex movement of Humanism. The individual phases and manifestations of Humanism can not be received in what follows. It may be enough if the trend of the powerful movent is caught on in one sketch.
The historicity of the Tabernacle
is a question to be decided by evidence; and questions of the kind should be left to men who have practical experience in dealing with evidence―a category which does not include the Critics.
Sir Robert Anderson, in response to Orr’s Historicity of the Mosaic Tabernacle
I had to laugh when I read this… While critically examining the Documentary Hypothesis, I had suddenly stumbled onto the mirror image of a situation occurring in New Testament studies in the second Quest of the Historical Jesus. Burton Mack, for example, had presented the text of Mark as a historical fiction, which Mark based not on any actual evidence, but on an elaborate reconstruction of hypothetical traditions. And lo and behold, when the historical evidence was looked at, it became apparent that Mark and Mack were the same! Out of either sheer genius or complete blindness to his own presuppositions, Mack had gone about and created that vision of the Markan author weaving traditions without recourse to actual history by leaving historical evidence behind and weaving together elaborate reconstructions of hypothetical traditions.
In the same manner, the Higher Critics of old who fragmented the Hebrew text into several different traditions and presented us with an incoherent and a-historical picture of ancient Israel were themselves the very incoherent and a-historical authors they created. Without recourse to any actual historic evidence, they fragmented texts and explained inconsistencies in their fragmentation by appealing to a historically unknown Redactor.
So through incredible imaginary feats of intellect without basis in any real evidence, the Higher Critics crafted Pentateuchal Authors who had crafted incredible imaginary feats of intellect without basis in any real evidence.
The scientific person who does not laugh at the absurdity of it all would at least be dumbfounded at the lack of any grounding in Modern methods of rationally critical analysis by these so-called Moderns and their criticism.
Indeed, what were the Higher Critics actually criticizing if not the method of rational, scientific criticism itself? How can one defend a historical position about a text without any appeal to actual historical evidence of the text and then in many cases even in complete contradiction to the evidence which does exist? One can hardly blame the rise of fundamentalist Christianity in response. After all, what more native human reaction is there than to reproduce the error of your opponent in the opposite direction like a small child who wants his way and doesn’t care if it’s nonsense? Let us, like any good judge and jury, throw out those cases that mere imagination provides and build on the secure foundations of those things which exist in truth before us and by that token compel us in the direction implied by their evidential nature.
On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate slaves, but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could be thereby induced to stay in the Union.
The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.
No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle-but only in degree-between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man’s ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure.
(See also Part A and Part B)
Perhaps the capstone on this turning point in Christianity from an acceptance to a rejection of Judaism is Melito of Sardis (circa AD 170), who turned the Apostles’ charges against specific characters in history on the entire Jewish race, when he said, effectively, you [Jews] murdered God
. Since Christianity had now far removed Judaism from itself and given it the status of a failed religion, it was easy for church fathers like Melito to condemn the entire Jewish race. Tertullian, writing at the end of the second and beginning of the third century, took the example of those specific Jews who had failed to recognize Yeshua in New Testament times and universalized it so that he could say the Jews themselves had rejected Yeshua. Judaism itself has rejected and killed YHWH, therefore Christianity has replaced it in everything from authority to inspiration. On that grossly errant path, it would continue to walk.
One consequence of Christianity’s break with Judaism and replacement of it with itself was the fact that, unchecked by Judaism, Christianity developed a myth of prophetic inspiration concerning the entire Greek LXX. Justin and all those apologists after him would spend a great deal of time arguing with Jews about why the LXX and all its differences from the Hebrew scriptures in content as well as additional books, were true, inspired scripture. Augustine would eventually explain away the inconsistencies between the Christian LXX scriptures and the Hebrew scriptures by doing what Justin had done before him—trumping facts, evidences, and arguments by appeal to the Holy Spirit. Augustine contended that both the LXX and the Hebrew were equally inspired—even where they differed and conflicted—because there was not a single meaning in scripture or prophecy, but multiple meanings. Therefore, Augustine was able to claim the Spirit had correctly inspired the meanings and texts in the LXX which differed from the meanings and texts in the Hebrew scriptures. Just one church father rejected the myth of the LXX’s prophetic inspiration—but only temporary (Jerome).
Although a few Christians would seek to return in some way to Judaism (like Jerome and Origen, who took Jews as teachers and tutors to come to a better understanding of scripture), this would now be the exception, not the rule. Judaism would have a say only insofar as it agreed with the decisions and beliefs of gentile Christians. Christianity had cut itself off from the tree onto which it was grafted and its withered, dead fruit remains to this day.
(See also Part A)
Justin Martyr (circa AD 150 to 160), took Barnabas’ rejection of Judaism to a whole new level. While Barnabas had at first reckoned Torah as vital in its whole, Justin did not concede even that much. It was from him that the idea of turning parts of Torah into universals and abolishing the rest took flight and gained widespread approval in Christianity. This was, of course, incompatible with Judaism. While Justin was right in recognizing that following Yeshua had replaced Torah observance as the method and means of Yahweh’s covenant faithfulness, it was part of his overall belief that Judaism had been replaced with the gentile church, as if the gentile branches that had been grafted onto the Jewish tree (as Paul wrote) had actually become the tree itself, ready to graft Jews onto its branches instead. This had the effect not only of rejecting the old and established authority out of which Christianity sprung (as Barnabas did), but sitting its own young, inexperienced self in Judaism’s place.
Like the impetuous youth who tries to usurp the place of the wise elders quickly finds out, not only does he not really know what he’s talking about, but he has to go through strange and even worrisome arguments in order to back up his positions. From reading Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho, such a thing is clearly seen. Although Justin has been quick do away with Judaism, he acknowledges ignorance of it. It has to take balls to say that you don’t really understand something, but you’re right about it anyway. Instead of appealing to any great understanding or authority to back up his claims, Justin depends entirely on the subjective claim that God graciously revealed this truth to him (Dialogue 58:1). When Justin combats Judaism, not only are many of his arguments thin, they sometimes have no substance to them at all. We are now at the point where ignorance, clothed in the name of spiritual insight, has replaced the former, solid foundations.
I purposely chose for this title a term heavy with theological connotation. For it has seemed to me that just as there was a historic point at which mankind fell away from the perfection of Yahweh, so there was a historic point at which Christianity did so as well. Here I will argue that Christianity jumped the shark
(to use a pop cultural term) when it began to lose foundation, authority, and definition in Judaism. I do not mean by this that Christianity lost its way once gentiles began bringing Hellenism into the church. Greek thinking and pagan philosophy had long be assimilated into Judaism already. And one could argue that it brought as much good as ill to the Christian table. The point is, however, that whereas the Jews made outside ideas and ways of thinking subservient to their own perspective and traditions, in Christianity, it was Judaism that became subservient.
We can easily see things which would inevitably lead to feelings of estrangement and hostility between Christianity and Judaism in the first (AD 66-70) and third (AD 132-135) Jewish revolts. When Jerusalem and the very Temple of YHWH itself, the twin centers of Judaism, were threatened with destruction, Jewish and gentile believers left them both to be destroyed. After such great a tragedy, not one gentile Christian wrote or spoke to comfort Zion. And when Judaism rallied behind Bar Kochba, hailed by Rabbi Akiba as the Messiah and their last and final opportunity to re-establish themselves as the chosen people, believers of Yeshua didn’t follow. Apparently, they were violently persecuted for it. For a time, Christianity must have looked really stupid, not only outside but within, as this declared Messiah led the Jews against principalities and powers, overthrew them, and returned the exiles to Jerusalem in triumph. When this last rebellion was crushed, however, it provided Christians with salt to smother into the wounds of those Jews who had not long since tormented them.
It was during the second century that Christianity began earnestly walking the road of Judaic abandonment. I trace the beginning of the end to the writing of the Epistle of Barnabas about AD 130. Barnabas was written to instruct new believers in the way of Yeshua. Though it borrows a great deal from Hebrew scriptures and even Rabbinic sources, it betrays an inherent lack of knowledge and understanding. Here is a document that would have not a little impact on the church, which felt free to parrot the Judaic perspective as if grounded and established in it, when this was clearly not the case. To make matters worse, even though the author of Barnabas concluded that Torah was eternally binding on believers, he spiritualized the entire thing and vehemently rejected the written law, which had the effect of making any Jew…let alone a Jewish believer…seem redundant and perhaps even spiritually absurd (quite a contrast to those first Apostles and believers of Acts who could not even conceive of followers of Yeshua who weren’t converted Jews). This had the effect of yanking Judaism out from under Christianity.
Injecting Historical Reality with Theological Truth
Despite concomitant conflict both from outside and within; despite wars, exiles, genocides, slaveries, and even divorce from her own God, Judaism has survived the trials of time. But let no one say that through it all, the religion of Israel has remained unchanged. Judaism is nothing if not a religion of transition. In each new age, the children of Israel have looked through their own particular lens: deciphering the present, past, and future as acts of their God. For since the beginning
, no Word of Yahweh was known unless it manifested in and moved through the material and physical world.
Although the last couple centuries before Hadrian saw a great variety of theological interpretation manifest in what Josephus calls philosophic schools
, history preserved only two of these sects. If by his creation, the will and way of the Creator is made known, then the arm of Yahweh stretches across these historic circumstances and summons the world to see and know it. Just as the early Christians pointed to the historical events of Yeshua’s wondrous deeds, culminating in his physical resurrection, as validation for their theological message, so we meet in the second century AD a theological message behind the second Jewish sect. The Word of Yahweh is interpreted as manifest and moving material and physical history in the being of Israel’s final governing and legislative elders, who revealed in time through the tradition of their actions and decisions, The Mishnah, or Oral Law.
Tractate Aboth, the Sayings of the Fathers
, interprets the historically assured establishment of the thoughts and ways of Pharisaic tradition. When it says Moses received the [Oral] Law from Sinai
(Aboth 1:1) and it was passed on through successive generations until written codification, this is the assertion that Rabbi Akiba’s or Rabbi Johanan’s words and actions that have bearing on religious understanding and practice were prefigured and have fulfillment for the present day in the Law at Sinai. Christians, of course, have asserted that it was Yeshua’s words and actions that were prefigured and have fulfillment in the Law at Sinai (taking it back in some cases even to the work of creation itself).
The Judaic lens reveals Yahweh’s theological truth in historical event. This is not a strange conception, for if there is a God, what he does must be in some way according to himself as the final and deciding authority. Therefore, by looking at creation and history, those things he has done, we may see something of him. The Mishnah is the alternate (and in some sense, competing) second century interpretation of Yahweh’s work in history alongside the claims of Christianity. Throughout time, others have arise from outside, assimilating the Judaic lens for their own purpose (such as Muhammad and the Qur’an). It is our esteemed privilege that we get to look at creation and history in order to judge where, how, and if Yahweh moves in and through reality.
Not that I’m an advocate of government stealing from me or you what we have rightfully earned in order to use it for its own brand of arbitrary ethical propaganda…
But in light of Microsoft’s absurd declaration against open source software, saying that it violates at least 235 of its intellectual property
patents, I had me a thought. Since the government has felt free over the past several years to use my money to tell me how bad smoking is and that I shouldn’t do it, wouldn’t it be great if government came out with another campaign–a campaign against Microsoft? Think of the commercial possiblities… There could be billboards saying free yourself from Windows
or see a Vista they won’t let you see
showing a woman racing from a glass house into a field of flowers in the fresh open air, new worlds waiting to be discovered on the horizon.
Like the glass structures of the same name, Windows is enclosing. It limits your freedom by controlling and defining your actions and possibilities. Microsoft is not leading the way in faster, more efficient, more innovative, or more affordable software. Each new version is more system dependant. More resource intensive. And full of more holes and problems. Instead of following software standards meant to increase individual and public utlitiy, efficiency, and interoperability, Microsoft has created their own standards
in order to create a software slave market. Microsoft does not exist to give you more power, but to increase its power over you. Most people are shocked to discover that when they laid down their hundreds of dollars for Windows, they didn’t actually purchase an operating system–only a license to use one. Microsoft still owns, controls, and authorizes your computer use–not you. And the more you try to open their Windows, the harder Microsoft will shut it in your face (Vista).
Enter Open Source. Everything that Microsoft isn’t, open source is. It’s for that reason that open source has taken the world by storm and Microsoft is trying desperately to control it–from selling cripled versions of its operating system and software for 3 dollars overseas to making empty threats of patent violation lawsuits. In time, the Tyrant will fall and the digital Middle East will be free. Until then, Microsoft is a much bigger threat to civilization than cigarettes. Of course, I’m a computer addict, not a tabacco one.
