What one looks for in the texts and seeks to understand is more basic patterns of behavior; . . . The objective is not to establish reality
in some positivistic sense–this or that actually happened–but to suggest a broader social reality that was a part of the context in which the texts were produced and that continues to be reflected in the texts, despite their subsequent literary history.
If the context of the words we confront is a culture different from our own, that raises the problem to another level but does not alter the basic assumption. Language is still grounded in concrete social situations, . . .
Ibid., p. 20
The goal is to utilize cross-cultural similarity to look for a general, underlying context that enables us to understand symbols and settings in a biblical text. From that point of similarity, one can then allow the historic, archaeological, and textual particulars to alter that understanding so our general similarities take on particular dissimilarities. Then we have reason to say why something is a certain way, but also why it isn’t some other way.
For bucking the trend discussed below (Judging The Cover of Biblical Studies Books) by having some truly artful, inspiring, and beautiful covers. I just received their 2009 academic catalogue and you can tell they put a lot of creative time and design into their covers.
Why is it that so many biblical studies books are either banal or butt-ugly? The question is serious. What is the problem? For all their wonderful content, it seems that the vast majority of biblical studies books have un-inspiring, un-artistic, pathetically pointless covers. And the colors they sometimes come in can either hurt your eyes or your tastes. Take, for instance, the Hermeneia series of commentaries. Personally, I do not think there are better commentaries out there. However, you would never know looking at the covers. And woe be unto the person who takes off the cover! It seems the standard mode of cover-design is find some picture with religious imagery or a picture of a manuscript or artifact and splash color around it. Voila. An uninteresting cover that says religious studies oriented.
Recently, I purchased a few volumes from the Contexts of Scripture series (the replacement to ANET by Pritchard). A friend asked how old the books were. I told her they were brand-new. She replied that they looked like textbooks from the early ‘70s that her father had kept. I joked, only half-heartedly, that perhaps people who study ancient history are stuck in the past. If only they were! In former days, a book was not only a thing to be read, but it was a thing to behold. It had a presence and invited you to it. It was not just interesting to read, it was interesting to glance upon, handle, or display. Perhaps the beauty and detail of something like a Jerusalem Talmud from Artscroll is not possible or judicious when it comes to smaller paperbacks, but publishers outside of biblical studies have proven that they can sell good books that look good too. Am I shallow for thinking something like that matters? What do you think?
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.
History is not a blind, arbitrary road. Its course is paved by years of previous paths laid down, as they were, by those that preceded them. Unfortunately, dead ends don’t usually cause new roads to be built. Rather, they cause an attempt to build bridges that extend the dead end beyond our perceivable present or result in a route that is entirely reactionary and only tries to veer around the obstacle. Both are inevitably detrimental. This is an apocalyptic
history of how we got to where we are today and where I believe we might end up. It is also a call on you to join me in correcting the errors of our past and present by building a new road to the future.
The end of a road we are experiencing now is the reign of fascism and socialism of the elite. It was fueled by a nation so scared of foreign monsters destroying our way of life that we wanted someone strong enough to stand up against it and secure us from real or possible enemies. Unfortunately, this fear, coupled with our own behemoth pride and arrogance, led us to raise up a monster in its place. We did not empower something to guard us against abuse and wrong—we raised up an abuser and committer of wrongs. We released a hand of violence to rain death upon those who could not possibly stand up to the onslaught, let alone bring us the degree of violence and misery we brought them. The world saw what we did in the name of goodness and called it what it was—a beast from the abyss. But we were so blind we could not see the truth.
In our lust to glorify our wondrous Beast, we surrendered our rights and liberties through all manner of legislation from eminent domain to wiretapping/email confiscation to the Patriot
Act. We allowed for the subjugation and imprisonment of the innocent without due process. We supported terror and torture. We gave our powers to the Beast and the Beast used it against us. It gave us the Housing Bubble. It turned a blind eye to credit regulations and oversight while pushing interest rates down, which allowed us to absorb more debt than we ever should or would have taken on. And it punished those who didn’t follow, rewarding them with dismal savings, high inflation, erosion of monetary value, and the inability to afford basic living conditions. Housing prices doubled, tripled, and false wealth was created through equity. Blinded by these riches, we could only see the gleaming splendor. We offered gold and silver to the way of our national god. But there comes a time when every bill is due.
The war wasn’t ending. The foreign nation we set out to rebuild and secure was neither. Our loved ones continued to sacrifice blood and flesh while our failure and arrogance multiplied enemies around us. The housing bubble popped. The horror of September 11 was now surpassed by the horror of the Beast’s response: spend more money. The millions who followed the Beast on its path of false abundance began free-falling to their doom. Financial systems began failing. The Beast shoveled money into the system while throwing down interest rates at unprecedented levels. The value of our money plummeted. We became economically inferior to our neighbors and they began owning us. The price of commodities like oil and food skyrocketed to make up for the deficit of the devalued dollar. The Beast left us staggering to give our bellies food, our cars gas, our banks savings, our bills payment, and to maintain a grip on our homes.
But then the rich and powerful collapsed from following the Beast. National banks, Wall Street, and multitudes of con-men who built up trillions in fraudulent practices began evaporating like mist. The rich and elite who fed the Beast cried out to it to save them, and it listened to them. The Beast sent out checks which it boasted would bring help, but they were written in the citizens’ names, without their consent, to plunge them further into subordination to the power of the Beast and the debt it had created to hang around their necks. The Image of the Beast, McCain, praised his master in his party nomination speech, calling him Savior and Messiah. Then we watched as fraudulent thieves went free with millions of dollars to reward them for their injustice. We watched as the meager funds the Beast had reduced us to were made to serve the rich and powerful through bailouts. Bear, Freddie, Fannie, and virtually the entire Great Wall of our street were confiscated. In a historically unheard of maneuver, the Beast took control of the core of our financial system and left the poor, weak, and struggling on the hook for the risks of the fraudulent elite. The socialism of the rich at the expense of the poor was complete. Justice was perverted in the sight of God.
All this has given rise to a feeling that it would be better to have socialism for the poor than for the rich. As November approaches, we can make a change. Most people have been driven either delusional or mad by the Beast. The rich and elite will sacrifice to the Image, since the Beast is their protector. And despite tyranny and moral/ethical outrages of the Beast, many Republicans will still worship its Image. But it is likely that our current situation will raise up the Obamanation of Desolation. Rather than freeing us from enslavement to the system and its debt, this will draw us further in. Our goods and rights will again be stolen to benefit the health and care of others. Perhaps we can learn from history and build a new road—a road that leads past these two ends to the prosperity of both the poor and rich, the protection of the weak and innocent, to a nation that seeks justice, that listens to the words of Yeshua to turn its enemies from wrath through love, peace, and self-sacrifice instead of violence and slaughter, to a nation that does not steal from one to give to another. This November, forsake the Image and Obamanation. Join me in building a new road.
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.