(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.
My Dead Sea Scroll Unicode font is complete! In creating this font, I surveyed the Great Isaiah Scroll, Leviticus fragment MS4611, and the Paleo-Hebrew Tetragramaton in 11QPS. DSShebrew-1.0 is released under the GPL Font Exception License. Download the font for Windows, Linux/Mac, or head to the Resources section of this site.
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.
In the Talmud Bavli (better known as the Babylonian Talmud), the Rabbis describe a prayer that was added to the 18 Benedictions after the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome. The subject of this additional prayer (called the Birkat Ha Minim) was the minim or Jewish heretics (see Tractate Berakoth, folio 28b and 29a). Any sectarian Jew who recited the prayer would bring down a curse of Yahweh’s condemnation and judgment upon himself. Therefore, by requiring this to be spoken aloud in the synagogue along with the other 18 Benedictions, it was the purpose of the rabbis to expose the non-Orthodox who would not speak such a thing upon themselves. Several rabbis spoke of these Benedictions metaphorically as vertebrae in the spinal column. To use a modern equivalent of the metaphor, this means that the Rabbis saw these Benedictions (including the additional one against minim) as being the backbone of their faith. One of the Jewish sects that the word minim undoubtedly represented was that of the Jewish believers in Yeshua, the Nazarenes. An ancient version of the Birkat Ha Minim found in the Cairo Geniza actually makes this identification explicit.
For the renegades let there be no hope, and may the arrogant kingdom soon be rooted out in our days, and the Nazarenes and the minim perish as in a moment and be blotted out from the book of life and with the righteous may they not be inscribed. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who humblest the arrogant.
published by Solomon Schechter in Genizah Specimens
, Jewish Quarterly Review 10
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.
Apologies for the lack of digestion here as of late. Unfortunately, there will be an even greater silence. I will be in Ireland shortly and not return until the middle of next month. But no worries, the spam filter will certainly be working overtime. While in Ireland, I will be visiting many places from the old and ancient world…places which rang with the worship of mystic gods and where the name of Yeshua overthrew dark magic. This once-in-a-lifetime experience will include a trip to the Cliffs of Insanity from The Princess Bride as well as several nights in a restored 15th Century castle. Perhaps I will bring back pictures of Celtic crosses and Druidic standing stones for your pleasure.
No sheep were straddled in the posting of this digest.
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).
