A bridegroom is exempt from reciting the Shema’ on the first night, or until the close of the [next] Sabbath if he has not consummated the marriage.
m. Berakoth 2:5
Recitation of the Shema’ was a holy and righteous act that had many strict limitations upon it. All these requirements are annulled on the night of a wedding. Why? One word: sex. And if a husband is unable to make love to his wife the first day, he is exempt then from the Shema’ on the second day so he and his new wife may romp and roll. And if not the second, so the third. And so on and so forth up until the Sabbath. Of course, it should be kept in mind that sexual intercourse actually made one unclean, and it took some time to become clean afterwards, which probably factored into the decision to not say the Shema’ when one was defiled by lovemaking. But oh what a glorious and righteous defilement! Nonbelievers think we can’t really celebrate and enjoy defilement. If only they knew. Why we even postpone our religious duties to do it! Of course, in the ancient world, that was a major difference—sexual activity was often a part of religious activities outside Israel. In Israel, such things were separate.
R. Eliezer says: He that makes his prayer a fixed task, his prayer is no supplication.
m. Berakoth 4:4
I know a lot of Protestants who dislike Catholicism (and others) because of the rituals, the formalism, the fixed prayers, and such. In fact, my father (a former Catholic) said he disliked those structured and ordered prayers because it felt like a demand instead of a delight—something he was supposed to do instead of something he wanted to do. I’ve never understood that. Rather than being felt compelled by ritual and fixed, traditional prayers, I’ve found a unique sort of freedom—particularly a freedom to voluntarily join my voice and my heart with many others so that we stand together as one instead of apart as individuals.
This saying that is remembered of or attributed to R. Eliezer exposes another benefit of ritualistic, fixed, formal prayers. As a Protestant, I am all too familiar with the very common way Protestant prayer turns into little more than supplication and self-focus. When you have a fixed task and a traditional prayer, if it means something to you, it more often turns your heart, mind, and will away from yourself and outward to God. I have found that as my prayers become more formal, they become more focused on the person of God.
The Mishnaic Musings are a periodic series of posts where I reflect on one thing or another in the compendium of the Oral Law (the Mishnah) as I read through it for the first time. Quoted portions are taken from Hebert Danby’s eminent single-volume edition, The Mishnah, published by Oxford University Press.
From what time in the evening may the Shema’ be recited? From the time when the priests enter [the Temple] to eat of the Heave-offering until the end of the first watch. So R. Eliezer. But the Sages say: Until midnight. . . . Why then have the sages said: Until midnight? To keep a man from transgression.
m. Berakoth 1:1
It is telling that the very first part of the first Tractate of the first Division of the Oral Law speaks of the narrowing of tradition in order to protect people from getting too close to the line or gray zone between obedience and disobedience. This was a fundamental concern of the Rabbis and many of the Pharisees, sages, or pious who came before them. The classic term for this is building a fence (or wall) around Torah
and comes from the beginning of Tractate Aboth. The men of the Great Synagogue headed by Ezra after the return from exile were said to have had three motivations, purposes, or intents:
Be deliberate in judgment, raise up many disciples, and make a fence around the Law.
m. Aboth 1:1
In the beginning of the Oral Law, we see how that fence was taking shape—by teaching disciples to do their evening recitation of the Shema’ before midnight, this was supposed to keep them from falling asleep and then not saying it before they woke up the next day, at which point it would be too late.
It reminds me of a rule that was imposed over me when I was a new Christian. I lived in a house with a bunch of other young Christian men that was part of a university ministry. The rule was no 1 and 1 after 1:00,
meaning there should not be one male and one female alone together at the house after 1:00 A.M. The purpose of this rule was two-fold. First, it meant to guard the house or those in it against an appearance of evil.
Second, it was meant to protect the guy and girl from the temptation to do something they shouldn’t (sexually). Likewise, there were several women who were part of that university ministry who lived in a house together and didn’t allow guys in the house after a certain time. When an attraction sprang up between me and one of the women in the other house, I was always getting in trouble either at my house or her’s for being alone with her past these dogmatic curfews. Eventually, there were planned meetings between me and my male housemates and between me and the women of the other house. It became clear during these sessions that both parties and all those involved in those parties were mainly concerned with me not heeding the rules because they were trying to protect me from doing something I shouldn’t (sexually). And while I freely admit that the temptation existed, I was adamant in my resolve to not commit fornication, which I tried very hard to communicate and convince them of.
The irony of this whole situation is that I alone of the young men was the one who was breaking this rule (in both houses), I alone of the young men stood up for myself (unfortunately, not often with love toward those who took me to task for one or both of those things), and I alone of the young men who didn’t immediately marry their girlfriend or who had a girlfriend to begin with didn’t do what they were so fearful I might. In that whole situation, transgression was created not because of the transgression people wanted us to avoid, but because of the rule meant to protect us from it. For this reason, I can’t help but wonder if maybe—just maybe—the fence around Torah meant to protect people from breaking it, sometimes further destroyed it.
The Mishnaic Musings are a periodic series of posts where I reflect on one thing or another in the compendium of the Oral Law (the Mishnah) as I read through it for the first time. Quoted portions are taken from Hebert Danby’s eminent single-volume edition, The Mishnah, published by Oxford University Press.
So it appears that in a great many Christian circles, Feminism
is one of those trigger words that immediately evokes suspicion or dislike. Do you think this is true? Why do you think that is? Myself, I belong to a Mennonite tradition which thrives on this kind of thing. Our lead pastor was a woman and our associate pastor was a woman. And we held church meetings to discuss how better to elevate the roles of the marginalized, the oppressed, or bring those on the periphery into the center in terms of the functions and responsibilities of the body of Christ (such as children, women, minorities, and the mentally or physically challenged)–or to use some biblical metaphors, to bring down the high and lift up the low; to make the first last and the last first; to shame the ways of the world. But it occurs to me that my regular situation is probably rather drastically different than many other Christian environments. So what about you and your congregation? How do you understand, feel about, or deal with Feminism
? Do you speak about it in hushed whispers? Do you stand boldly against it? Is it simply absent from any church context, whether pastoral sermon or scriptural teaching? Does the topic only come up when discussing Paul’s words on the silencing of women?
As a prelude to this post, please watch Walter Brueggemann on the Bible.
While I appreciate the influence Brueggemann has had in and on scholarship, I am not a fan. In fact, my own Old Testament theology is directly antithetical to his own. However, there are three things Brueggemann says in that video that I strongly appreciate. The quotes below, elaborated by my own commentary, represent a recent revelatory breakthrough. This post is deeply personal and may turn out to be the most important thing I have to say on this blog all year. I know there are multitudes out there, both those with faith and those without, who have very real issues with the biblical texts and with the God therein. I hope that the following analysis will deal with some of these tough questions and issues and will prove as liberating for them as it has for me.
The God of the Bible is deeply implicated in, uh, in this inheritance of violence.
Walter Brueggemann in video above
First is the recognition that the God of the OT (and even the NT—the “God of Love” that is so frequently identified in the NT is just as vividly present in the OT and the “God of Judgment” so frequently identified in the OT is just as vividly present in the NT—but we are speaking of the Hebrew scriptures at the moment) sometimes stands condemned according to modern moral judgment. Held up to the lens of the way we think about and understand ourselves and our world, YHWH has been blood-thirsty, violent, and oppressive, and has committed heinous and grotesque atrocities. But it will not do for us who face this reality and dislike it to therefore deny it or try to cover it over with clever scholarship or smooth-sounding apologetics (and vice versa)—to lie for God as Job says in accusation of his “pious” friends. No, to do so would either be to deny our own world-view and cut ourselves off from the present (and therefore to either become enemies of the present or lose all ability to communicate with it) or to hijack the past and reshape it in the image of ourselves. And this is based on the second vital recognition:
The big revelatory moments before Jesus and Jesus and after Jesus are characteristically departures from what has been taken for granted.
Walter Brueggemann in video above
The God of ancient Israel thought and operated (and the people who wrote of him thought and operated) in a way that is very different from how we think and operate today. And that is precisely why we face this conflict of interest in which the very God we would turn to for a moral compass in our lives appears sometimes to be an abomination of it instead—because we have radically departed from the way things used to be and gone in new and different directions. Moral and ethical perspectives that were taken for granted or even heartily supported thousands of years ago are either no longer operative or adamantly opposed today. But the texts we are reading were not written today, they were written thousands of years ago outside of our perspectives and without foundation in our values. There is a rift between ourselves and the characters in the scriptures—including YHWH himself in those scriptures—that crosses every field of our existence from language to culture to politics to philosophy to religion. That rift exists not because we have necessarily veered away from what the God of those scriptures would have of us (although we do!), but because humanity’s world-views, perspectives, values, and judgments have changed rather drastically over time while the scriptures have retained a great deal of their original perspectives, values, world-views, and judgments. In other words, we have moved so much faster and further than our scriptures that it has come to the point where the very scriptures we turn to are alien and oppositional to us. This, of course, is not a new phenomena—it has been happening for a long time—as long as the scriptures have preserved the integrity of their viewpoints and perspectives in the midst of human change. Yet amidst these competing claims, we need to be aware of the third vital component that Brueggemann draws our attention to:
Our faith is requiring us to move in a new direction . . . Eventually, those departures can only be explained by the movement of God’s spirit, far beyond all that we can ask or think or imagine.
Walter Brueggemann in video above
This is where the rubber hits the road. The texts are bound to particular perspectives and cultures and understandings (that we don’t share). In much the same sense, so are we in that we have changed and moved in directions for specific historical reasons and we cannot change the past. But the Spirit is not so bound. The Spirit of God is not imprisoned inside an ancient text with foreign values and alien perspectives, nor defined and developed by the progression of time and change as we are. Rather, the Spirit is separate from and moves through and within history (or “above the waters” as we read in Genesis). It is active in all modes and forms that human society undergoes. And it can act in different times in different ways to direct creation at that point in history. Our texts tell us about the Spirit’s work in particular moments in the distant past, but it is not a complete record of the Spirit’s work and it does not mean that whatever way the Spirit worked then must be the way it will work now. Behold, YHWH does a new thing! Something our mothers and fathers, our grandmothers and grandfathers never saw and never knew! Something that contradicts what they thought or knew in their lifetimes—something that can even contradict what people in scripture saw and knew in theirs.
This is not itself a new idea for those of us who call ourselves Christians. Indeed, we claim that YHWH did something new in Christ—something no one before could have understood—something no one before could have participated in. A new covenant, a new kingship, a new Jerusalem, a new heavens and a new earth. And it is astonishing! It is astonishing, for instance, that women should be so abused and dehumanized in the ancient world and in our ancient scriptures and by our own ancient God within the ancient scriptures of the ancient world. And it is astonishing that the Spirit should bring us to a place outside the scriptures and outside that world where we can stand up for the dignity of women and fight against the silencing of their voices and work to release them from the shackles of male possession, dominance, and control. It is not biblical, but it is the Spirit of God active and alive in our history outside and beyond the biblical text.
The biblical God, confined to the texts, may sometimes appear vile to us looking in from outside that frame, but the extra-biblical God, the God who exists outside the frame of scripture and who cannot be contained by any text, surpasses such judgments just as he surpasses the texts and just as he surpasses ourselves. To say that the biblical God is misogynistic or any other number of modern judgments is not only short-sighted, since it pigeonholes God within a singular historical expression (the ancient text’s), it is anachronistic since it judges the biblical God as if he were acting within our perspectives, cultures, world-views, and values while denying him that very participation (since the biblical world is not our own). For us to adequately assess the biblical God, we have to enter the Biblical world in which he is operating, not pass judgment from outside. Would an ancient Babylonian or an ancient Egyptian or other ancient peoples have judged the Jewish God in the way we are tempted to do? Most likely not. Many things we would take strong moral issue with would be considered bizarre and laughed at in the biblical world within which the biblical God is operating. But when we look at the extra-biblical God, we see he is working to free womankind and to elevate this other whole of the divine image to her proper position. The God who in the scriptures did not condemn, but in fact supported and upheld human slavery as any good God would in the ancient world is the God who today has shattered the acceptance of human slavery amidst vast quarters of the world. The God who in the scriptures commanded the slaughtering of innocents and the extermination of peoples as any good God would in the ancient world is the God who later raised a son, Yeshua, Prince of Peace, to teach us the way of self-sacrifice and love toward our enemies instead of violence and slaughter. The God who in the scriptures supported and even initiated Jewish holocausts (Assyria, Babylon, and Rome) as any good God would in the ancient world who was wrathful against a people is the God who has since sought an end to all holocausts and has no continuance with Nazi Germany. It’s all about perspective. When we are reading the biblical texts, the God therein is operating according to a different perspective than our own. Realizing this will mean we are careful not to read our own contexts into those texts or into the God operating within them.
See Rejecting Job – Part 1
Job does not escape without rebuke himself, however. There is one thing about Job’s reasoning which was wrong. Job was wrong to think that he really mattered that much, that he was very important, that God was too much concerned with mankind and paid more attention to their wrongs than he should. Instead, God shows us through several long speeches that mankind is of small worth and of little consequence in terms of everything that exists in the cosmos. A long list of things are presented which far outweigh a concern for humanity such as the founding and the laying of the earth and the basic operations of running the universe. Job’s fate is ultimately not a big deal to God and it shouldn’t be a big deal to Job either. Job repents and acknowledges he was wrong: See, I am of small account
(40:4).
This is one of the major problems I have with the book of Job. This message directly contradicts the message delivered by Yeshua when he said that just look at the birds of the air, how God looks after them and is concerned about each one of them, or the grass of the field which he sends rain upon to give them life or withholds it so they wither in the heat of the sun, are you not more important to God than all of those (Matthew 6:25-33)? Or again, Yeshua says that just as sparrows are not worth much, but God forgets none of them, so also every hair of your head is numbered by God and you are more valuable to him than they are (Luke 12:6-7). Indeed, this message in Job runs contrary to virtually the entire corpus of Hebrew scripture in which God shows great concern for humanity and works through all of history for humanity’s benefit. Indeed, humanity is even set apart and elevated from the rest of creation so that we bear his image. The fate of humanity or of a single human–YOU matter to God, quite contrary to the message of Job.
Some might try to say that this message serves to stop humans from becoming self-righteous—but this is not the case. Job WAS righteous. And God agreed that he was. And if someone were to say that this might help people not think the universe revolves around them, this misses the point also. Job wasn’t saying the universe revolves around himself. He was saying that the punishment by God against him was unjust and that that was important. And this leads to the second major problem I have with the book of Job.
What Job tells us, quite contrary to the rest of scripture, is that God does not award the righteous and punish the wicked. That God is unjust. Job was put on trial by God and by the satan, but it is God himself who is on trial in the book of Job. God is condemned for having a definition of justice that is meaningless to humanity because what is just to God cannot be measured or be known by our definition of justice. And God says this is correct and that Job has spoken the truth of the matter! Who has not spoken the truth? Who has lied for God (13:7)? Job’s three friends (and Elihu) who tell him God does not pervert justice, who tell him punishment from God can be traced to sin or to unrighteousness, who tell him humans cannot be righteous before God, who tell him God only does what is right, and that God destroys the wicked but not the blameless. The book of Job—God himself in the book of Job–tells us they are wrong. This leaves us with a God who cannot, himself, be vindicated of wrongdoing because he actually agrees that he does wrong without reason (2:3). God is capricious. God cannot be trusted. God’s justice cannot be known or depended on. His promises are therefore empty and he is thereby unfaithful. This message stands in outrageously strong contradiction to all of scripture.
Even if we were to suppose that there is an afterlife or a resurrection, it would mean nothing because the judgment that will be given cannot be known or depended on by anybody for any rational, consistent, or coherent reason. All one would know is that God could destroy you or hold you accountable just like he did Job—simply because of an arbitrary whim. He could flip a coin, let his own law of gravity operate without interference, and assign you to eternal glory or eternal damnation based on the result. Appealing to an afterlife solves nothing, it only worsens the theological mess one has to deal with.
We all know that the innocent can suffer injustice or that bad things can happen to good people. We also know that God sometimes brings evil on people and does things that we see as not being right or good. These messages occur throughout scripture. What makes these messages different in Job as opposed to the rest of scripture is that in Job there is no reason, no mercy, and no justice to account for it, whereas in the rest of scripture, there is. In the rest of scripture, there are rules that apply to the world because of the character of God. In Job, because of the character of God, there are no rules that can apply to the world. Even the pessimism and vanity
of Qohelth/Ecclesiastes can say it is good to follow God and that this can have good results. Qoheleth/Ecclesiastes might end by saying everyone goes to the same place or that everyone gets dealt the same card—death—but there is no obliteration of reason and justice until the end. In Qohelth/Ecclesiastes, one cannot count on justice always being served, but that is different than saying God is not just as the book of Job does. In a canonical context, Qoheleth can be augmented by the message of the rest of scripture, but Job can only destroy the scripture around it or be destroyed by it.
The only halfway decent message Job contains is that one’s service to God should be because he is God and not because one will reap any kind of reward or benefit for doing so. The satan thinks Job follows God because of his rewards and if God takes away those rewards, Job won’t follow him. The satan is shown wrong and Job is afterward blessed for continuing to follow him despite the suffering it brings him. This is a good message. But it is only so if good
can faithfully describe God. If God is not good, then it would not be good to follow him regardless of the consequences. The gods of Greece were not good or evil gods, they simply were gods. They did good and they did evil and sometimes humanity benefited and sometimes it didn’t. This kind of religion could never result in any kind of overarching message or principle that it was good to follow the gods even if they did evil or wrong, because that was obviously not the case. Since the gods were capricious like human beings, humans and gods could only manipulate each other to further their own good. Since the god of Job is not good, there is no reason to follow him regardless of the consequences just as God can give no reason for the lack of justice that Job experiences. God could have equally chosen for no reason to not bless Job at the end and to leave him in his misery. That God goes one way or another is non-rational just as it is non-rational to say that Job did well to follow God. Only someone who’s faith is completely severed from their reason can accept this.
For these reasons, I have torn Job from my canon. It cannot be an inspired work which teaches us of God. I suggest you do the same.
Not long ago, for various reasons that will not be highlighted here, I came to the point of rejecting any kind of canonical
status for the book of Revelation—a judgment that a great many Christians before me, including Martin Luther, have shared. From taking a class on the methodologies in the study of biblical literature, I’ve since altered my position somewhat regarding that text. Though I am not really a student of the New Testament, my education in Redaction Criticism has enabled me to see quite clearly the composite nature of the Apocalypse and thus to distinguish between the letters which prefix the apocalypse and the apocalypse proper. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I now accept back into my canon the letters to the churches in Revelation. There is one text, however, which almost no Christian throughout the church’s history has stood against, but which has so thoroughly disgusted and offended my understanding of Judaism and Christianity that it has now become the second book to be unequivocally rejected from my canon: Job.
Like Revelation, Job has undergone its own editing and redaction over time. Some believe that the narrative portions were distinct from the poetic portions and that each part had a different purpose and understanding of Job before being combined. This may be the case. However, both narrative and poetic portions, whether separate or combined, should be equally offensive and abominable to anyone but a Fideist or a consistent Calvinist (I consider both fideism and Calvinism antithetical to Christian faith). After combing through many Christian analyses of Job online to see if anyone, anywhere was dealing with the very specific situations and answers in Job that have caused me so much consternation, I was shocked to find only two types of Job responses represented. Either blindly ignorant statements were made or the most important things that cut to the heart of the problem with Job were smoothed over or ignored completely. Before we bring out the big issues that nobody seems to want to talk about, it would be good to dispel some errant assumptions about Job.
First, Job does not have a happy ending by any true or good standard of judgment. Yes, Job receives enormous riches and an even bigger family with more kids and so forth. However, this neither fixes nor resolves the situation at hand. Job’s children and servants were slain by God. God does not give them back to him or to their loved ones. Nobody would agree that if their child was permanently severed from their lives, that having several other children could either make up for or replace the one that was destroyed. We know Job loved his children dearly. He even sacrificed on their behalf lest they should fall into sin. A significant part of the wretchedness of his state throughout the book is the fact of his children’s destruction. Having a great deal more children and servants later does not redeem him or the families of the slain servants from their loss. And then there is the appalling suggestion of a just ending for those who have, themselves, been destroyed. Would you think if God were to kill you for no fault of your own, that if God then gave someone else to your loved ones, it made up for your own destruction? Would you consider it a fair trade if your existence was replaced with someone else’s at merely the whim of the deity? Surely no one other than the suicidal and the depressed would even consider that a valid suggestion. And to think that great riches far exceeding the riches Job had before are any type of consolation to someone who has gone through these sorts of things is utterly pathetic. Only someone who believes that love and happiness have a cash value would give it any thought.
Second, no one should be fooled into thinking that Job does not turn his face against God and condemn God for his situation and for God’s injustice. He does not curse God like his wife says he should and like the satan had wagered he would, but his complaints and arguments against God are bitter, strong, and blasphemous. He says that God judges mankind too harshly or makes too much of mankind’s sin and fallibility. Why should an All-mighty God need to cause such suffering to the innocent? He says God perverts justice and covers over the eyes of the judges so that they pass faulty decrees. He says God is capricious and strikes down the sinner and the righteous. He says that if there were anyone who could stand up against God and defend Job, Job would be found innocent—but the fact is that God is both the judge and the accuser and so no one, even if they are in the right, could win their case (though I am innocent, my own mouth would condemn me; though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse
–9:20). He says God is responsible for his own injustice and a great deal of injustice in the world.
Third, there is no afterlife in Job—no justice to be served after death to make up for the injustice in this life. This seems to be something a lot of Christians overlook. They assume that redemption and vindication in resurrection or afterlife is part of the story in Job, but it is not. Job is consistent in his portrayal of the finality of death. A tree that is cut down can rise up again, but not mortals (14:7). An often misunderstood passage, 19:23-26, does not say that Job will rise from the dead or be vindicated at a final judgment in the afterlife. Rather, it says Job knows that some day later in his life, his judgment against God will be proven true and God will be seen to agree with him or be on his side.
In case this happens after he is long dead, he asks that his testimony and witness be written down and preserved since he won’t be. Job 16:19 echoes this whole situation. Job wishes that when he dies, his blood not be covered up by the earth and his outcry not be silenced, so that his witness against God can continue (because he does not continue to witness for himself). Indeed, all this is fulfilled at the end of the book when God appears to Job and confirms Job’s own words. God defends and supports Job’s own argument against God and instead rebukes and condemns Job’s friends
for not speaking correctly about Job or the situation (you [Job’s friends
] have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has
– 42:7). In the narrative portion, with the satan in the heavenly court speaking to God about Job, an afterlife or a resurrection is never mentioned. Throughout their counsel
to Job, his friends never mention an afterlife or a resurrection as a possible way that Job may be vindicated and injustice dealt with. And when God appears to Job in the end, God says nothing about an afterlife where injustice will be dealt with and justice established. The Testament of Job, a Hellenistic document written by someone like myself who was extremely uncomfortable with what Job actually says, has Job rewarded eternally in afterlife for his sufferings, but this is not part of the Hebrew text.
See Rejecting Job – Part 2
Please read A Disclaimer first.
Briefly stated, Categoricalism posits that Yeshua was made by God to represent him–to be the final and complete image, form, appearance, proxy, or avatar of YHWH. Yeshua is thus the category of God, but not ontologically God. Categoricalism takes for granted that YHWH is one person (not three) and that Yeshua is not that person, yet allows for Yeshua to be considered divinity in that he was uniquely chosen by YHWH and made by YHWH to represent him. Thus, to speak of the man Yeshua is to speak of the god YHWH. To follow the man Yeshua is to follow the god YHWH. And to be saved by the man Yeshua is to be saved by the god YHWH.
All this is based around a Hebraic concept that one person can be identified as another without literally or ontologically being the other. A person is understood to stand in the other’s place and be the category of the other (thus, for instance, you have Peter referred to as Satan1, Satan referred to as God2, Moses referred to as God3, and numerous other examples). This is further explained by the concept of agency as we find it even in the earliest Rabbinic halacha, a man’s agent is as himself.
The saying does not speak ontologically, of course, but categorically. The one who is sent is viewed as if he is the other.
A man’s agent is like to himself.
Mishnah, Tractate Berakoth 5:5
In all circumstances do we find that a man’s representative is equivalent to himself.
Babylonian Gemara, Tractate Nazir 12b
We find in the whole Torah that a man’s agent is as himself.
Babylonian Gemara, Tractate Nedarim 72b
A man’s agent is as himself.
Babylonian Gemara, Baba Mezi’a 96a
It is logical that the hand of a slave is as the hand of his master.
Babylonian Gemara, Baba Mezi’a 96a
Although the agent remains subordinate to the sender, the agent and sender are considered equal to any third party. The agent has the same rank and authority as the sender. Whatever authority or rank a sender lacks cannot be held by the agent. They are one. So much so that, as the expression goes, when the agent speaks, it is as if the one who sent was speaking.
We need not wonder, therefore, how Yeshua, if only a man, could pronounce verily I say
instead of thus says YHWH,
for if Yeshua is uniquely YHWH’s agent and representative, his words should be considered YHWH’s.
The agent can do all that the sender can do. That which a sender cannot do, the agent cannot. The question, therefore, is not whether a mere man can bring salvation, can receive glory, can be worshiped, or the many other objections people have to Yeshua having divine status without being YHWH himself. The question is, rather, can YHWH bring salvation, receive glory, or be worshiped? If so, then he can appoint one in his name to bring salvation, receive glory, or be worshiped, for such is considered done by or to YHWH himself.
If an agent acts or speaks without having identified themselves as being sent or without having identified their sender, then such is considered done on the part of and by the individual themself. However, if an agent does provide this information, the representative nature is understood and such an idea as them claiming something of themselves and for themselves is untenable. If Yeshua were YHWH’s unique agent and representative, we would expect to find a proclamation of Yeshua’s agency and representation in the New Testament. And if we were lucky enough to find Yeshua describing this exact agent/sender relationship as we’ve already explored in terms of himself and God, we would know that Yeshua means for us to understand him in this way and not according to Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union. Surprisingly, the evidence is staggering (unequivocal claims of agency in CAPS):
Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me RECEIVES HIM WHO SENT ME.
Matthew 10:40
Finally, HE [YHWH] SENT HIS SON [Yeshua].
Matthew 21:37
HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, TO SET AT LIBERTY those who are oppressed.
Luke 4:18
The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me REJECTS HIM WHO SENT ME.
Luke 10:16
My food is TO DO THE WILL OF HIM WHO SENT ME and TO ACCOMPLISH HIS WORK.
John 4:34
I CAN DO NOTHING ON MY OWN. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will BUT THE WILL OF HIM WHO SENT ME.
John 5:30
For THE WORKS THAT THE FATHER HAS GIVEN ME TO ACCOMPLISH, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that THE FATHER HAS SENT ME.
John 5:36
So Jesus answered them, MY TEACHING IS NOT MINE, BUT HIS WHO SENT ME.
John 7:16
And Jesus cried out and said, Whoever believes in me, BELIEVES NOT IN ME BUT IN HIM WHO SENT ME.
John 12:44
For I HAVE NOT SPOKEN ON MY OWN AUTHORITY, BUT THE FATHER WHO SENT ME has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.
John 12:49
And we have seen and testify that THE FATHER HAS SENT HIS SON TO BE THE SAVIOR of the world.
1 John 4:14
Those are just a sampling. Clearly, Yeshua is portraying himself to be not the literal nature and person of God himself, but is instead specifically using terms which describe himself as the functional representative and agent of God. He does not speak his own words but the words of his sender. He does not do his own deeds but the deeds of his sender. He has no authority other than the authority of his sender. But if they accept him, they accept his sender. If they believe in him, they have belief in his sender. If they know him, they know his sender. Et cetera. And clearly this concept was of primary concern. He even claims that believing himself to be the agent of YHWH is the marker of eternal life!4 To say that Yeshua used specific words again and again that meant one thing to his audience (agency) but really meant something entirely different (Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union) is not only to beg the question, but to make a mockery of the text.
Even in modern times we understand and utilize this concept of agency. No one would be confused if I said I watched and heard President Bush give a speech last night despite the fact that I was not actually in contact with the literal person of President Bush and even though I didn’t actually hear his voice. I watched thousands of flickering points of light on a television monitor and heard sounds created by pulsating speakers. The monitor light and speaker vibration represented Bush and his speech-giving in such a way that I can truthfully say I heard and saw him. In like concept then, YHWH made Yeshua to become his image and glorified him by giving him a name above every other name (his own) without Yeshua ever being God of his own self or being5. Our modern systems of jurisprudence have also incorporated this concept. If I were to appoint a man to marry a woman for me by proxy and she accepted, his vows, his presence, his signature, and his completion of the ceremony would be considered my own. Even if I had never met the woman, we would be legally wed.
Categoricalism has many further advantages. For one, it makes sense of every theophany without turning YHWH into something he isn’t or turning something that isn’t God into him and does so simply without need of complicated and arbitrary theological formulations. It allows one to call the burning bush a form or image of YHWH, the pillar of fire a form or image of YHWH, the Shekinah a form or image of YHWH, and so on and so forth up to Yeshua himself as the final and complete representation without having to delimit divinity. We need not wonder, for example, that all three visitors to Abraham are called by the divine name reserved only for the Father and that all three are worshiped by the Patriarch while simultaneously being called men.6 Likewise, we are not confounded by the messenger who speaks one moment as someone and something other than YHWH and the next, without qualification, as YHWH himself.7 For another, it requires no distortion of scriptural data. So, for instance, the Categoricalist need not create terms like God the Son
in replacement of scriptural ones like Son of God.
And when referring to a scriptural term like Son of God,
the Categoricalist need not define it in a way foreign to the text or its ancient Near Eastern background. Instead of understanding it as speaking of the philosophical makeup of a person’s ontological being or descriptive of their own personal divinity, which is nowhere present in scripture’s use of the term, it defines Son of God as scripture does: generally as either a righteous person or Israel herself and then specifically as Israel’s representative head, Messiah, or King.8 In fact, the idea of divine sonship as applying to the election of a human figurehead was quite common in ancient Syria and Palestine. So, for instance, we find that the kings of Damascus in the ninth century BC were titled “Son of Hadad” (Hadad being another name for the Canaanite god Baal) and at least one Syrian king was called “Son of Rakib” after the god Rakib-El.9
If this were all (and it is not), it would be more than enough for Categoricalism to make better sense of Hebraic perspective, ancient culture, and scriptural text than Trinitarianism. But since this theology is especially hard for Orthodox
Christians, fundamentalists, and proof-texters to accept, I offer up in conclusion a small but powerful list of passages in the New Testament that are not only misleading, but outright contradictory if meant to convey to its readers that Yeshua is and should be known fundamentally as YHWH himself. Instead, these verses literally define and speak of Yeshua as something other.
He is the IMAGE [not the actual person or literal divine being] of the invisible God.
Colossians 1:15
He is the REFLECTION of God’s glory [instead of the source or origin] and the REPRESENTATION of God’s being. [instead of God’s being, essence, or nature itself]
Hebrews 1:3
who existing in the FORM of God . . . [instead of the person or literal being of God]
Philippians 2:6
who is the IMAGE of God. [instead of the person or literal being of God]
2 Corinthians 4:4
I have undertaken in the next post to describe the fundamental propositions of a new theology to stand in replacement of Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union (as well as their various so-called heretical offshoots). The formulation of this theology was necessitated by an unsought-for and unwanted realization of two supremely undesirable situations: firstly, the complete failure of Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union to make sense of scriptural text, to properly align with a non-Hellenistic, ancient Jewish world-view, and to maintain rational coherence or consistency, and secondly, the absolute and unassailable position to which this doctrine has been glorified above every essential aspect of Christian faith. In other words, I did not seek from some pedestal of pride and rebellion to cast Trinitarianism down from a worthy place. Rather, having found the pedestal on which Trinitarianism resided so weak and it’s fall so great that it crushed all dependence I had set upon it, I was forced, like a fish thrust out of water, to wriggle and writhe in search of something that could rescue me from devastation. Those who have not similarly been betrayed will, of course, find little reason for replacing their theology with this new one, but it is not my purpose to show the utter frailty of that foundation (I am quite confident that unless the theology remains critically unexamined, it will eventually fail them as well). In the following post, I hope to lay out a new theological position based on historical world-view and scriptural text which, I believe, give better answers and a better theological foundation for the identity and person of Yeshua in terms of YHWH than Trinitarianism and the Hypostatic Union can provide. At some later point in time, I hope to augment this description with the analysis of various textual narratives, which will better show how this new theological position makes better sense of the evidence. But before the evidence can be shown and the texts examined, the idea must be presented.
Proceed to An Introduction To Categoricalism.
See Shake The Dust From Your Feet – P2.
In Yeshua’s case, he was taking the concept of Temple and placing it upon himself. This meant, for instance, that divine healing and forgiveness would now come to Israel through him instead of through the Temple and its priesthood. Instead of going to the Temple to be cleansed, Yeshua pronounced people clean. Instead of accepting the blood the covenant in the sacrifice of the Jerusalem temple,[12] Yeshua invited people to the blood of the covenant at his table and in his sacrifice.[13] Of course, there cannot be two temples. If Yeshua is now equating himself with the temple of YHWH, then what of the Jerusalem one? He pronounced divine judgment on it physically when he drove the people out and declared it the habitation of terrorists,[14] symbolically when he cursed it via the method of enacted parable,[15] and prophetically when he said not one stone would not be left upon another.[16] In place of this corrupt and soon-to-be-destroyed Temple would be an incorruptible and indestructible one—himself:
Jesus answered them, Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.
The Jews then said, It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?
But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
John 2:19-21
Jesus said: I will des[troy this] house, and none shall able to build it [again].
Gospel of Thomas, 71
Since the Pax Romana could be threated by a violent uprising against the Temple, but not by someone reinterpreting what it meant to be God’s chosen people, when men were found to bring false charges against Yeshua that might move Herod’s hand, they used Yeshua’s words to paint him in the first manner—like another Judas Maccabeus who wanted to drive foreign occupiers out of the Temple by the edge of his sword:[17]
We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands and in three days I will build another not made with hands.’
Mark 14:58
This man said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days.’
Matthew 26:61
In reality, of course, Yeshua meant only that he, a temple even greater than the Jerusalem Temple,[18] would be proven true when the Jerusalem Temple fell without being raised again, whereas he would be raised in three days.
If Temple now had meaning in terms of Yeshua, anyone who participated in Yeshua’s work would be participating in the true Temple service. In this new situation then, following Yeshua meant the same as acts of holiness and separation from defilement. And therefore it was not only acceptable, but appropriate that traditions which symbolized this might be incorporated into Yeshua’s or his disciples’ activity. By sending out his disciples with regulations befitting those going to the Temple Mount, Yeshua was providing them with a powerful reminder that in doing his work, they were doing so by the same Spirit, with the same dedication, and in the same manner as those going to participate in Temple activity. Since shaking the dust from one’s feet was an act of separation from the defiled or unclean, for Yeshua’s disciples to do so whenever they or their message were denied became a powerful polemic. It meant that such people had taken on the status of lepers. They were unclean and unfit for the way of the Holy One. While this may sound like a harsh judgment, its primary purpose was to keep the disciples on task and to foster the holiness and righteousness of God’s kingdom. If the gospel did not result in cleansing people from their defilement in one place, then the disciples should move on to where it might benefit others. We see this same concept in Yeshua’s admonition to protect what is valuable by not handing it over to unreasoning and unclean creatures who will only trample it underfoot.[19]
[12] – The blood of the covenant
comes from Exodus 24:8.
[13] – Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24.
[14] – When Yeshua calls the Temple a den of thieves,
he is not making an ethical judgment of their monetary practices. This refers to violent bands of brigands who would rape, plunder, kill, and destroy. Usually they formed around a leader who combined political and religious overtones with their criminal activity. They hid in the rocky terrain of the wilderness like David in Old Testament times in order to evade capture and death. In modern times, they would be compared with Al-Qaeda or other militants who blow up civilians and then retreat to hidden dens on the edge of the territory.
[15] – The cursing of the fig tree. Mark 11:12-14, 20-22; Matthew 21:18-20. Mark specifically bookends this event around Yeshua’s temple rousing in order to show a link between them. But the fact that this is a Temple judgment is made even more clearly when Yeshua, on his way up to the Temple, explains the cursing of the tree by saying that that very mountain will be removed and cast into the sea (Mark 11:23; Matthew 21:21).
[16] – Luke 21:5-6; Mark 13:1-2; Matthew 24:1-2. One of Yeshua’s first oracles of doom against the Temple occurs in Matthew 7:24-27 and Luke 6:46-49 where he says in parable fashion, the rain fell, and the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it.
[17] – 1st Maccabees 1-4. The story of Judas’ forceful retaking of Jerusalem and the Temple from unclean pagan rulers and rededicating the sanctuary to YHWH is celebrated annually by the festival of Hanukkah.
[18] – Matthew 12:6
[19] – Matthew 7:6
See Shake The Dust From Your Feet – P1.
Turning back to the prerogatives enumerated in the Synoptic Gospels, we see that they align very closely with the specific ordinances required of those who would go up to the Temple Mount. Setting aside possible exceptions introduced in Mark, we see that both instruct against taking staves, donning any kind of shoe, carrying vestments for the storage of money (and probably other items), and wearing an additional outer garment. Both also require the removal of dust from one’s feet. These prohibitions were probably meant to remind people of the sanctity of the Temple and the service they were performing. This was a sacred enterprise. Just as they should not think to disregard the Temple and use it as a shortcut if they are engaged in common activity, so when they are engaged in sacrosanct activity, they should not bring things with them that might pollute their course. For instance, those who carried a staff, which was often used for journeys, might be tempted to do a bit of extra traveling on their way to the Temple and those who carried bags of money might be tempted to engage in commerce. Removing dust from one’s feet symbolized separation from the unclean and removing one’s sandals or shoes symbolized the willingness to be holy.[5]
The significant difference seems to be one of location. The Rabbis state that one is not to spit on the Temple Mount or use it as a shortcut, which is not incorporated into Yeshua’s directives. However, Yeshua’s disciples won’t be on the Temple Mount to spit there or to use as a shortcut. That could explain why those two were left out of Yeshua’s commands (of course, there’s no reason why Yeshua should include all of these Rabbinic ordnances), but we still don’t know why Yeshua would apply the others to his disciples when they are also not specifically journeying to the Temple Mount. They are going out into the world. Perhaps even away from the Temple Mount. I believe the answer can be found in an understanding of Yeshua’s mission and message.
Yeshua was reforming Israel around himself and was therefore redefining what it meant to be the children of YHWH.[6] In doing so, he subverted established and authoritative systems, traditions, and symbols. That does not mean he was doing away with Judaism for something else or critiquing it from the outside, only that he was using Jewish elements in different and (so he believed) divinely authorized ways. One of those elements was the status and concept of Temple. According to ancient tradition, the Temple was already itself a subversion and redefinition of a former concept: Tabernacle. After the tribes of Israel had settled in the land, but before Solomon’s Temple was constructed, the Hebrew scripture seems to indicate that the house of God
may have been established at Shiloh. It probably would have taken another redefinition or subversion of the way of things in order to relocate it to Jerusalem. If some scholars are to be believed, it was thanks to one or more scribes at the time of King Josiah that Deuteronomy or the core of it was discovered
[7] (i.e., purposely written or assembled) in order to legitimate political and/or religious reforms by the nation’s Sovereign (specifically to eliminate the practice in Israel of any religion other than that of YHWH and to centrally localize that religion in the Jerusalem city and temple).[8] Using religious texts or even finding religious texts in order to support legislative or governmental projects is a practice common both to modern and ancient times.[9] Once the Temple along with hope of its restoration had been totally destroyed, the Rabbis further reformed and redefined things so that a Temple was entirely superfluous. The Shekinah now dwelled in them as it once had within the Temple: If ten men sit together and occupy themselves in Torah, the Shekinah rests among them.
[10] Indeed, they argued the divine presence that used to fill the Temple would come into even a single person and defended it with Exodus 20:24: in every place where I record my name, I will come into you.
[11]
See Shake The Dust From Your Feet – P3.
[5] – We are reminded of YHWH’s command to Moses in Exodus 3:5: Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.
[6] – Reforming and redefining Israel
was a very Jewish thing to do. At some point, various Semitic tribes with only a common, distant ancestry came under the same covenant and legislation. Moses is attributed with this major reform. Another great reformer would be the king who took those tribes with their own political sovereignties and united them into a national entity—commonly identified in scripture as David. In Greco-Roman times, we see people like the Essenes, who considered themselves Sons of Light and everyone else either Sons of Darkness or followers of Belial, the Samaritans, who believed themselves to be the true people of God preserving his true commands at Mount Gerizim, and countless others.
[7] – The discovery of the Scroll of Torah
and Josiah’s Reform is found in 2 Kings 22-23.
[8] – See the theory of The Deuteronomistic History. A short book that looks at the ideas and arguments while trying to pave a way forward through the many difficulties is Thomas Romer’s The So-Called Deuteronomistic History. K.L. Noll recently challenged the entire hypothesis in a ground-breaking article in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Deuteronomistic History or Deuteronomic Debate? (A Thought Experiment).
[9] – Many ancient Near Eastern kings claimed to have discovered religious texts in their god’s temple in order to support religious, political, or social actions and reforms that, in reality, were probably not actually inspired by those texts.
[10] – Mishnah, Tractate Aboth 3:6
[11] – בכל המקום אשר אזכיר את שמי אבוא אליך – The Hebrew for you
is singular.
