Whenever the subjects of Free Will and Predestination come up, the subject-matter seems to be discussed and argued almost exclusively from a Greek philosophical perspective without reference to or reliance upon the Judaic perspective. It inevitably becomes to me an exercise in building castles in the air. Like the proponents of the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus, I continually come back to the same pivotal question, What’s Jewish about that?
Fortunately, through critical-historical study, I am rediscovering the lost foundation…as slow a going as it may be. In this post, I want to lay out some observations.
When Josephus introduced the three primary, elite Jewish factions to his clueless Roman readers, he composed his message in such as way that would communicate Jewish concepts to a Greek mind and culture. Greek thought was structured around philosophic schools, so Josephus spoke of the Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes, (eventually the Zealots) as philosophic schools. He specifically uses the terms free will
and predestination
in reference to them since these were familiar and definitive terms of several Greek, philosophic schools. Josephus describes the Sadducees as if they were Epicureans (libertarian free will) and Essenes as if they were Pythagoreans (absolute sovereignty/predestination), with the Pharisees being the wise keepers of balance between the two. Of course, the Sadducees, Essenes, or Pharisees would have described themselves quite different than Josephus does (as many scholars have noted).
So we see that these Greek philosophical concepts (free will
and predestination
) can be utilized as extensions of the Judaic perspective. Though ancillary in nature, they should not be written off as intrusions into the discussion.
I don’t happen to hold to Philo’s high view of the translation to a Greek perspective. I could not, for instance, pick up the Septuagint and consider it as equally inspired in its re-invention of Yahweh’s Word as the Hebrew/Aramaic texts (although the value I place in the translation of perspective continues to grow exponentially and the Septuagint is becoming more and more of a necessity to me). Because of that, I see any discussion of free will and predestination as secondary to and reliant upon the understanding native to the Jewish perspective.
So the question then becomes what is the other side of this discussion? What terms would a Sadducee, Essene, or Pharisee use? How would they think about these things? It appears to me that absolute sovereignty, predestination, and free will are Greek ways of talking about transcendence and immanence.
In all Judaic literature, when someone wanted to speak of the god of Israel as being in control of things and of being separate from his creation, a specific divine name was used to communicate his transcendental nature: Elohim. When wanting to speak of the god of Israel in a more personal capacity, acting and reacting in history and creation, a different divine name was used to communicate his immanent nature: Yahweh. Various other names served to play with the tension between the god of Israel’s immanence and transcendence. The combined name, Yahweh Elohim (Lord God), served to unify these distinctions. So we have both Elohim (the transcendent god) and Yahweh (the immanent god) and these are echad—a singular unity. The god of Israel both causes man to be saved and reacts to him alone with salvation. He both calls man of man’s own volition and power to follow him and be blameless and influences him to do and be so quite apart from his own volition and power. He both rules in the kingdoms of men and knows many kingdoms that have ruled against his will and way. He both establishes his will in the lives of men despite their will or mind and declares that men have done or said things which never entered his will or mind.
These are just hints at an answer to the question… But I believe that with diligence, we can come to the Judaic foundation on which later Greek philosophy was laid and perhaps know better how to avoid the pitfalls of each philosophic school
.
In the previous post, Causing Offense or Your Brother to Stumble, I mentioned the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15. The Jerusalem Church asked gentile believers to refrain from certain things that could result in unpleasant consequences among their Torah observant brothers and sisters. Those things were idol sacrifices, blood, strangled animals, and fornication.
Looking at the list, we might wonder why fornication was included. What, after all, does fornication have to do with eating idol sacrifices and strangled animals or drinking blood? While we might find connections between these things among gentile religious practices, this does not necessarily explain the connection from a Judaic point of view.
What is intriguing is that the leaders of the Qumran sect were in agreement with the Apostles. In a halakhic letter labeled Miqsat Ma’ase Ha-Torah, written against corruption and defilement of the Temple priesthood, the sectarians make a startling and direct connection:
And concerning the sacrifice of the gentiles…[we consider that] they {sacrifice} to [an idol and] that is [like] a woman fornicating with him.
So there is an explicit extra-biblical link which verifies the chosen categories of the Acts 15 Apostolic Decree. Gentiles who eat meat sacrificed to idols are one and the same as gentiles who fornicate with women. And this is why the Apostles felt obligated to include the one beside the other.
But what is it that makes these two things so interchangeable? Perhaps sacrifices to idols (whether eaten or not) and sexual misconduct are two of the primary characteristics of one who forsakes the God who created flesh for the flesh that was created (the first, animal; the second, human). In Torah, creation is shown to have an order that begins and is defined by Yahweh. Appropriate relations between human and beast or human and human are therefore defined and directed by the relation between the Creator and the creation. If the first is defiled, it will be reciprocated into the second.
The law against these secondary relations are therefore concrete examples that serve to direct us to the fulfillment of the primary relation. But unlike the Qumran sectarians who looked for the fulfillment of that primary relation between Creator and creation in a coming end of days, the Apostles saw our union with Yeshua and with his flesh, which is called the church, as the appropriate characteristic of that fulfillment. How, therefore, if we eat the flesh of Christ
can we also eat the flesh of Baal? How, therefore, if we are one with the flesh of Christ can we give our flesh to whoredom? One need not follow Torah to see that these same characteristics (idol sacrifices and sexual misconduct) serve also as indicators of defilement among those who would follow Yeshua.
I’ve known for quite a while now that there was a major problem with mainstream Christianity’s interpretation of Paul’s words about being without offense and not causing your weaker brother to stumble. I could tell that the universalized morality message was not the intent of Paul’s letters, but was unable to fully clarify the situation. Now, having done the necessary critical-historical study, I am able.
Much of what Paul says in Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans comes directly from what was passed on to him by the Jewish community headed by James and the other apostles in Jerusalem. Paul along with other Jewish believers like Barnabas and Silas, took these things to the Jews and Jewish Gentiles of the Diaspora. In the zeal of his letters, Paul elaborated on and added to the things entrusted to him. Therefore, the interpretation of much of his messages is controlled by knowledge of the actual things handed down to him. One of these is called the apostolic decree
. It occurs in Acts 15. But before we get there, let me briefly explain the historical circumstances.
In the early days of the Christian community, believers and followers of Yeshua were strictly Jewish. They were either full-blooded Jews or they were converts who were circumsized and followed Torah. It was their common cultural belief that the gentiles would be saved not because the gospel would go out to the gentiles as they were, but because the gentiles would BECOME JEWS. It was such a strange concept for them to think that a gentile could be part of the followers of Yeshua apart from Torah, that it took a direct revelation of Yahweh to several influential people like Peter himself (Acts 10-11) in order to change their minds. And even then, it was still a great point of contention. When Yahweh began working to save gentiles through Peter and through Jews from Cyprus and Cyrene in Antioch, this caused a big commotion among the Jewish believers. Many of them wanted the gentiles to become Jewish by following Torah and being circumsized before they could be considered followers of Yeshua. Paul wrote several times of going to Jerusalem and defending the truth of gentiles’ conversion despite lack of Torah observance (such as Galatians 2:1, 3)—events which are also found in Acts. The problem was two-fold. 1. The Jews were judging the gentiles as being outside of Yahweh’s will because they didn’t submit themselves to Torah observance and 2. because the Jews still believed in and followed Torah, for them to do some things that Christ himself asked them to do would force them to break Torah and therefore cause them to offend the Law/stumble in observance. (One of the practices of Yeshua which his followers mimicked was table fellowship and communion…a potentially disastrous situation for a Jew as it will be explained momentarily).
In Acts 15, the apostolic council decided in favor of both parties so that both Jew and Gentile might be honored and peace would be established among them. They decided for the benefit of the gentiles that the Jews should no longer judge them as inadequate, inferior, or outside the faith because they didn’t follow Torah—neither would they coerce them to follow their own regulations. And they decided for the benefit of the Jews that the gentiles should chose to refrain from certain activities or practices—not because of any limitation on themselves, but because of the limitation that Jews had on themselves according to their observance of Torah. These are the words of that agreement:
For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us (the Jewish believers in Jerusalem) to put not one greater burden on you (the gentiles who believed in Yeshua) than these necessary things: To hold back from idol sacrifices, and blood, and that strangled, and from fornication.
Acts 15:27b-28a
The reason these things were chosen to ask of the gentiles was because in the Levitical code, Yahweh told the Jews that in order to follow Torah, they could not have fellowship with or unite themselves with gentiles who ate sacrifices to idols, committed various acts of sexual misconduct, or drank blood (see Leviticus 17:10; 18:26; 20:2). If gentiles came into their midst who did these things, it would force a Jew to commit an offense before Torah and stumble in their observance of its commands. Therefore, since the Apostles asked the Jews not to judge gentiles as being unclean (because of lack of Torah observance), they therefore also asked the gentiles to not purposely put their Jewish brothers in a position which would make them unclean (by eating idol sacrifices with a Jewish brother who could not be pure in such a situation).
And so we find in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans the exact same things he was personally told to tell the Jews and Gentiles among the nations in Acts 15. The following are examples drawn from the decree about eating food sacrificed to idols.
Paul tells the Jewish believers in 1 Corinthians 10:27 that if they go to eat at a gentile’s table, not to ask if the food was sacrificed to idols, but if they are told that it was, not to eat it (otherwise they would condemn themselves under Torah). This mimics exactly the message Paul received from the apostles and Jewish brothers in Jerusalem—both that the Jew should be upheld in his observance and that the gentile should not be made to feel or believe that his table is unclean.
In Romans 14:15, Paul speaks to the gentile believers, asking them not to eat sacrifices to idols among Jewish believers, otherwise the gentiles would destroy their Jewish brother’s purity before Torah. Why would you make your Jewish brother believe he has soiled himself before God? Uphold him, do not strike him down! And yet in Romans 14, Paul also upholds the faith of the gentile believers, telling them not to think that they are less than their Jewish brothers or that they are defiling themselves if they eat what they have always eaten. Because they do not follow Torah, it is nothing for them to eat food from idol sacrifices.
And again, in Galatians 2:11-16, Paul writes about confronting Peter. When Peter and Barnabas had gone with Paul to Antioch, they had eaten freely with the gentiles—fulfilling this very decree that they (as Jews) should not consider the table of the gentile believers to be unclean. But when certain Jews from Jerusalem joined them, Peter, Barnabas, and the other Jewish believers separated themselves. Paul rebukes Peter for separating from the gentile believers. Had the grace of God to gentiles changed between the absence and appearance of the other Torah obedient Jews? Are the gentiles sinners because they don’t keep Torah? It is faith in Yeshua—whether you also follow Torah or not—which has changed you from one whom God has rejected to one whom God has accepted. Therefore why do you suddenly not accept those whom God has accepted? Paul goes on in Galatians 3 to ask the same question to the Jews in Galatia—why then if the gentiles have been accepted apart from Torah do you now reject them like Peter did when I confronted him?
Jewish and gentile relations going back to Acts 15:27b-28a is what offense and stumbling-block and weakness is all about. It has nothing to do with a gentile Christian ceasing some activity because some other gentile Christian has a problem with it. That would be akin to elevating someone’s personal feelings or thoughts to the status of a command from the lips of a prophet speaking in Yahweh’s own name—making a Christian’s personal beliefs into Torah. It would be deifying personal thoughts or words of men instead of recognizing what was and has been for thousands of years the word of God as witnessed and accompanied by signs and wonders to validate it. Even the appeal to avoid an “appearance of evil” is not a sudden universalized morality that could sidestep this situation–it is fundamentally tied to Jewish/Gentile relations and directly concerns the one thing which Paul himself says made sin or evil appear or be known–the Law (or Torah).
It is common to find in Christianity the mentality that Paul, being the Apostle to the Gentiles, wrote the majority of his letters for and to be understood by a non-Jewish, Hellenistic/Greek audience. But the more I study, the more it seems to be that Paul actually authored his letters (if not for Jews who believed in Yeshua) specifically for Gentiles who had embraced Judaism either fully as proselytes/converts or partially as Judaizers
, Sympathizers
, or God-fearers
. An evidence of this is the use of culturally-specific terminology in his epistles. Take, for instance, Romans 3:22-25, where Paul describes Yeshua’s death in very specific Jewish terms, referring directly to the judgment seat on the ark of the covenant, to the actions of the priests with the blood of a sacrifice, and to the meaning and context evoked by that situation (atonement for sin).
So what, you ask? Well, Rome is quite far removed from Jerusalem in many ways. A non-Jewish, Greek/Hellenistic audience would be familiar with the Jews and certain definitive aspects of their barbarian
ways (like circumcision, dietary laws, and Sabbath), but he/she certainly wouldn’t have any concept of a judgment seat or the ark of the covenant on which it rested. Neither would they be privy to what that had to do with priests and blood. And he/she definitely wouldn’t conceive of a sacrifice atoning for someone’s sin. Sacrifices in the ancient world were given to the gods not to cleanse a person or people group of sin/wickedness or to be considered holy, but to do things such as propitiate a god for his/her favor, feed a god, initiate an act or oath of devotion, as part and parcel of an agreement/promise between parties, or to symbolize/evoke one’s acceptance of a political entity.
Like any other intelligent or even educated person, Paul must have known something about the audience he was writing to and tailored his letters to be understood by them. If the people in Rome he was writing to were not in some sense Jewish, the whole description of Yeshua’s death and blood being an atoning sacrifice would be incomprehensible to them (see the non-Jewish, Gentile’s response to Paul preaching in the synagogue as a babbler and a speaker of strange/new words in Acts 17:18, 20). They would have a concept of a person (and maybe even a god) giving his/her life for another, but that is a far cry from what Paul is trying to communicate in his epistle. If it had been the case that Paul was writing to non-Jewish Greeks, we would have expected him to describe Yeshua’s sacrificial death in terms of the Pagan temples instead of the Jewish one since we know that he was quite familiar with culture, philosophy, and religion outside Israel and used that familiarity to his advantage among them.
The question of where and when the use of Adonai replaced YHWH in Jewish literature and liturgy has always interested me, but I never gave it much thought. And then today when I read this, my jaw literally dropped.
The rabbis taught: The year when Simeon the Upright had to die, he told the sages: Children, know ye that this year I am going to die.
They asked him: How dost thou know?
He said: Every year when I entered and left the Holy of Holies, I was accompanied by one old man, dressed in white and enveloped in white; but this year it was an old man attired in black and in a black turban, and he entered with me but did not go out with me.
And after the festivals, he got sick, and died. And thenceforth priests ceased to bless Israel with the name of Jehovah, but used Adonai
.
Babylonian Talmud, Seder Mo’ed, Tractate Yoma, Chapter IV
If this can be taken as at least semi-historical, it indicates that the blessings were changed at about the time that Alexander the Great and Hellenism conquered the world. Judaism was fundamentally and forever changed by this new era in almost every respect. It makes sense to think that the one people (literally the only people) in the entire Greek world who in their best moments would have nothing to do with the Greek gods even if it meant the destruction of their entire nation, might do something to at least present their non-Greek god in a light that could be more readily understood and favored by the Greeks who surrounded them and constantly looked on with suspicion or distrust. It seems more than mere coincidence that the name Adonai, which is not only very Greek-sounding, but almost the same as the name of the Greek god, Adonis, one of Aphrodite’s lovers, and who’s child was the ancient land of Lebanon at the outskirts of Israel, would come into use at that time.
Throughout the Old Testament and Hebrew literature, parallelism is used as a means of identifying the purpose and meaning of a story. John 14 contains a lot of parallelism typical of ancient Jewish narrative.
Just as the Father dwells in Yeshua (14:10), so the Spirit will dwell in you (14:26). Just as the Father is in Yeshua/Yeshua is in the Father (14:10, 11), so the Spirit will be in you/you will be in the Spirit (14:17). Just as by going to the Father, Yeshua will be in you, so by the coming of the Spirit, you will be in Yeshua (14:2, 20). Therefore, where Yeshua is, there you will be also (14:3). And so his works will be your works (14:12). In that way, Yeshua will be manifest to you (14:21). And since Yeshua’s works are the Father’s works (14:10), your works will be the Father’s.
Such talk serves to highlight the point that both Yeshua’s going and the Spirit’s coming are a part of the manifestation or habitation of God among his people as pointed out in the beginning of the chapter as well as 14:23 (we will come to him and make our dwelling-place with him
). Yeshua tells them this so that when all these things take place (Yeshua’s going from them, his resurrection, the manifestation of signs, and Yeshua’s works among them), they will know it is truly the way of Yahweh and his life(14:6). All this paralleled interplay is thus meant to ask us to examine historical events and see if they bear witness (15:26) to Yeshua’s message, and if so, to believe that message (14:29), which is, by definition, believing in Yeshua—and thus believing in Yahweh (14:1).
Chapter 14 comes together in such a way as to create this holistic picture and aim (which itself has a place in the larger picture of the gospel). As it is readily apparent, nothing in this has as its purpose or intent a pronouncement or definition of the divine nature of Yeshua’s personal being as commonly interpreted by Trinitarians. Yeshua is not, here, a Greek philosopher proclaiming universal truths about the makeup of his essence. Such would be an atomistic separation of verses from the structure and form in which they consist to support an ideology foreign to the message conveyed by the narrative. It does not speak of the existence and structure of the messenger, but of the detail and result of the message. Here is not an appeal to understand Yeshua as God in his essence, but to follow/obey/love Yeshua in order to be in Yahweh and receive from him that which is his (such as salvation).
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the love of God
and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
2 Corinthians 13:13 (14 in some Bibles)
Evidence for the three Persons of the Trinity? Unfortunately, no. Paul was not saying that Yahweh is three persons in one being. He was closing off his letter with a simple form of Hebrew poetry in which parallelism is used to give more detail to a single referent. This type of poetry fills the Old Testament and is scattered throughout the New. In 2 Corinthians, we have three names/titles (Lord Jesus Christ, God, Holy Ghost) referring to a single referent (God) and three circumstances (grace, love, communion) related to that single referent.
We could use a modern example:
The President rules our county
and Bush leads our people.
and the arm of our nation’s head will fight for us.
Neither president
, bush
, nor nation’s head
are meant to be understood as three different persons. They are different words for the same person placed in a poetic parallelism to each other such that what is said in each instance corresponds to and adds detail to what was said before.
Says our protector
the Lord who leads armies is his name
the sovereign king of Israel:
Isaiah 47:4
Sovereign king, Lord, and protector do not refer to three different persons. They have the same referent: Yahweh. They are part of a poetic parallelism in which our,
armies,
and Israel
are related to the exact same person—not to a separation or division of persons.
2nd Corinthians 13:13 (or 14) tells us not that Yahweh is three persons, but Yeshua, Yahweh, and Spirit are different ways of referring to the same person—God. The distinction is slight, but it’s significant. The poetry is telling us that when we speak of the person Yeshua, we are speaking of the person Yahweh. When we speak of the person Spirit, we are speaking of the person Yahweh. A Trinity reading of this verse would destroy the parallelism because the person Spirit is not the person Yeshua and the person Yahweh is not the person Yeshua, etc.
I think this misunderstanding is key to the Trinity. These three names/titles appear in many places in the New Testament together, but they are separated in such a way that something meant to give deeper and more unified meaning to a single referent becomes a partitioning and limiting of meaning between multiple referents.
…of Protestantism/Catholicism
…the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe [obligatorily] what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers.
Josephus, Antiquities 13.10.6
- Roman Catholicism = Apostolic Succession (Tradition of the Fathers) = Pharisees
- Protestantism = Sola Scriptura (Prominence of Word only) = Sadducees
Second Maccabees is a book not about the Maccabees but about the God of Israel defending his temple.
Judgment and restoration begin in the House of YHWH. In 1st and 2nd Maccabees, the purity and holiness of the People of God (and by extension, the mission of this People to purify and make holy the unclean and unholy nations) was being compromised. The temple was being overthrown and defiled. Yahweh is presented as working through his Remnant (the Maccabeen revolters) and its Head (Judas Maccabeus) to bring the temple back to life and restore his People to a right relationship with Him. This temple is, of course, an actual temple, and the restoration would take place in it through sacrifice that was the same as ancient days: animal. So it was that a new ceremony and celebration focused on the temple itself (Hannukah) would become definitive of Israel.
The gospels are also an attempt to show the God of Israel defending his temple. In that case, however, the temple is something other than a building of rock. This time, it is living stone, a tabernacle of flesh. Just as the former temple underwent a baptism of fire and was vindicated in rebirth, so Yeshua is stricken and destroyed, but brought back to life (resurrected) in vindication of the new dwelling-place of YHWH. The gospels also, in like manner, proclaim Israel’s God working through a Head (Yeshua of Nazareth) and a Remnant (Yeshua’s disciples), to restore and purify His People (and by extension, the nations). The sacrifice, this time, is not animal, it is human. It is a willingness of the People to give up their own life (as exemplified by Yeshua) to bring all things into right relationship with YHWH. Instead of being accomplished in Zerubabel’s temple as Maccabees would have it, this is now done in Yeshua. Like before, there is a new ceremony and celebration focused on the temple (Communion) that would become definitive of Israel.
The literatures present two ways meant to lead to the same result. Both present these as the way, the truth, and the life. And, perhaps, both were equally ordained. Instead of being mutually exclusive, these ways can be mutually beneficent in history. There cannot, of course, be two temples, which is why the one was raised and the other thrown down. But in the proper seasons, the People of God were being regathered and reorganized as YHWH moved through Her. In such ways, Maccabees and the Gospels are a witness.
This year is the 60th Anniversary of the DSS. In celebration, Biblical Archaeology Review and Bible Review have made available online, free of charge, several articles from their publications. Go here to read them.
- The Enigma of Qumran
- An Interview With John Strugnell
- A Gospel Among the Scrolls?
- What Jesus Learned From The Essenes
- Who Is The Teacher of Rightousness?
- Jesus and the Teacher of Rightousness, Similarities and Differences
