The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan

Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)

Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)

The Four: A Survey of the Gospels

Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John

Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture

Jane Austen
(A Biography)

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Bible - NT: Killing bad guys

In a response to Biggar in another issue of Studies in Christian Ethics, Hays claims that “Jesus never told stories in which the good guys kill the bad guys.”

Really?  What will the owner of the vineyard do to the vine-growers, Jesus asks, and they say, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers” (Matthew 12:40-41).  Jesus doesn’t disagree.  In Luke’s account, Jesus Himself is the one who says “He will come and destroy the vine-growers” (Luke 20:16).

The unforgiving servant doesn’t get killed, but he’s handed “to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him” (Matthew 18:34).

Those who murder the slaves who invite them to the wedding feast are destroyed and their city is set on fire (Matthew 22:7), and the poor fellow who doesn’t have the wedding garment gets tossed into the outer darkness (v. 13).

Bible - NT: Jewish persecution

What motivated the Jewish persecution of Christians?  Paul Fredriksen (From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Christ) suggests this plausible explanation: “News of an impending Messsianic kingdom, originating from Palestine, might trickle out via the ekklesia’s Gentiles to the larger urban population.  It was this (by far) larger, unaffiliated group that posed a real and serious threat.  Armed with such a report, they might readily seek to alienate the local Roman colonial government, upon which Jewish urban populations often depended for support and protection against hostile Gentile neighbors.  The open dissemination of a Messianic message, in other words, put the entire Jewish community at risk.”

Jews try to stamp out Christians as an act of communal self-protection, and this dynamic also explains the efforts to enlist Roman authorities to support them in this program.

Bible - NT Bible - NT - Revelation Theology - Ecclesiology: Gentilizing Jews

The New Testament frequently turns prophetic texts inside out.  In Revelation 3, for instance, Jesus applies prophecies that originally promised that Gentiles would bow to Jews to Jews bowing to the (largely Gentile) church of Philadelphia (3:9; cf. Isaiah 60:14).  In one respect, the import is obvious: The church is the new and true Israel, the Jews are now outsiders.

But how do the biblical writers justify this kind of twist?  Is it just a clever rhetorical inversion?

If it is more than that – more than rhetoric – these uses of Old Testament prophecy have to assume not only that the Jew/Gentile church is the legitimate heir to the promises to Israel, but also that the Jews have moved outside, taking the role of Gentiles.

When did this happen?  We can locate several possible moments: When they took Caesar’s side instead of Jesus’; when they tried to halt the apostolic preaching; when they stoned Stephen. For the New Testament writers, these are not slips like Israel’s failures in the Old Covenant.  These are acts of apostasy, which remove Israel from its status as Israel.  Jesus means what he says quite literally: “They say that they are Jews, and are not, but lie.”  The Jews have been Gentilized, and so prophecies about Gentiles suddenly apply to them.

Bible - NT: The Hour

James Jordan noted in a lecture on Zechariah that the date of Zechariah’s night visions is specified as day, month, and year.  This stands in contrast to the introductory verses (1:1-6), which date only by the month and year.  Jordan’s conclusion was that biblical datings are more precise in sanctuary-building contexts.  We know the day of the planting of Eden’s garden, the completion of the tabernacle and temple.  We know only month and year for many other events.

Jordan pointed to the use of “hour” in Acts as an indicator that Luke is concerned with the building of the new and permanent temple, the Christian church.  In the context of that temple-building, we move even beyond dating by day and move to dating by hour.

He might alos have pointed to the use of “hour” in the gospels.  From what I can tell, no Old Testament text mentions an event that took place in a certain “hour,” but the word is used regularly in the gospels.  In particular, the gospels speak of the “hour” of Jesus’ crucifixion and the later “hour” of Jesus’ return, and specify the precise hours of various stages of His suffering and death (Matthew 27:45).  The word “hour” is not used of the resurrection, but we know that the resurrection was revealed at “dawn” on the day after the Sabbath (Matthew 28:1).  The human temple is torn down and rebuilt, and that climactic event of history, the rebuilding of the most holy, has to be recounted hour-by-hour.

Bible - NT: Grafted in

Israel is a tree, and the people are branches.

On Palm Sunday, the people cut branches from trees and wave them before Jesus.  They are cutting themselves from the tree of Israel, and grafting in as branches of the true Israelite tree, the stump of Jesse.

But that tree is going to Jerusalem to be cut down, and when the tree is cut, all the branches are going to be removed and tossed aside.  Only after the resurrection does a new Israel tree grow.

Bible - NT: Jesus and purity

Jesus kept all the laws.  He never broke the Sabbath.  He fulfilled the purity rules, I blurted out in class a few days ago.

How?  a student want to know.  How does Jesus keep purity rules?

Here’s my best, belated shot: Levitical purity rules are rules of cleansing.  Just as the force of the slavery laws is not “Woohoo!  We get to keep slavery!” but “here’s how you go about freeing slaves, just as you’ve been freed; so also the purity rules specify types of impurity, but mainly give instruction about purification.

Jesus keeps Sabbath by giving rest in the fullest sense.  Jesus keeps purity rules because He provides permanent and more thorough cleansing than water mixed with ashes of a heifer.

Jesus also keeps purity rules because the purity rules always aimed to train Israel to be pure in life and heart.  No matter how carefully the Pharisees kept the purity rules, the land was defiled by their imposition of burdens on their disciples, defiled by their un-Sabbatical behavior.  So too the temple was a house of thieves and unclean greed even though priests sprinkled blood everywhere it belonged at the right time.  Jesus calls His disciples to a life of purity that surpasses that of the scribes and Pureones.

Bible - NT: Hospitality and Jubilee

Perrin again: He argues that Jesus announced and envisioned a Jubilee, not a spiritualized Jubilee but an actual restoration of property, tangible property, to the dispossessed poor.  One mechanism, Perrin argues, was hospitality:

“Jesus enjoins a collective but voluntary trickle-down or resources.  Nor would this have necessarily been a small trickle.  In a subsistence economy where surplus was unheard-of and the vast majority of the poor householder’s income was expended on food, any plan of providing meals to the poor on a regular basis would have made it possible, at least in theory, for these same poor to accrue savings.  And where you have accrued savings, there you also have the one thing that the poor lacked: capital.  And where there is capital, there is the possibility of economic freedom and reinvestiture within Israel.  If this was indeed the final design of Jesus’ teaching, then the goal was no haphazard or patronizing benevolence, but economic liberation on a local scale.  Judges by the practices of early Christianity, it seems that this is exactly how Jesus’ first followers thought of these things.”

Bible - NT: Treasures in heaven

In his highly stimulating Jesus the Temple, Nick Perrin examines Jesus’ statements about “heavenly treasure” in the light of the “counter-temple” agenda that Perrin argues is central to Jesus’ work.  The contrast that Jesus draws is not between a treasure room in a home (which few would have) v. a treasure room in heaven.  Perrin points out that in Scripture “treasury” typically, almost invariably, refers to the temple treasury.  Jesus is contrasting the practice of storing up treasures in the (doomed) earthly temple in Jerusalem – which are threatened by rust and robbers, like Antiochus and the corrupt priests – and the practices that store up treasure in the heavenly temple, the treasury that is being opened up in Jesus’ own ministry.

Bible - NT: The Four

As you’ll notice on the right of the page, my survey of the gospels, a sequel of sorts to House for My Name, will be available in November.  You can check out the Amazon page by clicking on the cover icon.

Bible - NT: Accommodation

As Markus Barth saw it, Bultmann was Protestant accommodation gone to seed: “Bultmann’s conception rests on the thesis that visible miracles (signs) are only a concession to man’s weakness, and that the appearances of the risen Christ are, likewise, a concession to the weakness of the Apostles.  But . . . even in the Old Testament the visible appearance of God [is] not something temporary – a means to an end or a mere concession – but rather . . . the fulfillment of Israel’s ultimate and supreme hope.”

Bible - NT: Sadducees

The Pharisees often act as a group, but the gospels also speak of individual Pharisees (Luke 7; 11; Acts 5:34).  Some of the Pharisees even show some deference to Jesus.

No individual Sadducee is ever mentioned in the gospels.  They are always a collective, a single mind, a united front.

Bible - NT: Worshiping Tradition

Gregory Beale writes (We Become What We Worship) that by the first century, Judaism had turned its own tradition into an idol.  Citing Paul’s claim that demons are behind the idols, he asks whether Israel too was incited to worship of tradition by demons, and rightly answers Yes:

“The upshot of this evidence and the presence of the devil and his demons in the Gospels shows that they were active in Jesus’ day as in Isaiah’s, though the idols that they were influencing Israel to worship this time were not molten statue but dead tradition.  The presence of these demons even in the synagogues shows that they were active in the religious establishment of the day and in influencing the religious leaders to focus on dead tradition and not on God and his word.”

Bible - NT: Jewish War

Madden examines the Jewish War (66-70 AD) in some detail, using it as an illustration of the difficulty of controlling religiously motivated terrorism, and he interestingly points out that Diaspora Jews not only celebrated the exploits of Palestinian guerillas but also initiated conflicts in their own cities:

“As news of the violence in Jerusalem spread [in 66], the killing was mirrored across the region and then the empire. . . . Diaspora Jews sympathized with their coreligionists, but few would condone this sort of slaughter.  And yet, in some places in the Middle East, Jews celebrated the massacre of Romans.  Several cities with large Jewish populations saw open warfare between them and their Gentile neighbors. . . .

Continue reading…

Bible - NT: Wise Men

 

Mike Bull from Australia sent the following, which I reproduce with his permission:

“We don’t know how many wise men travelled from the east, but perhaps we can make a guess via God’s deliberate typology.

“We do know there were three gifts. With Christ as the human Ark of the Covenant (most holy place), these three gifts correspond to the furniture in the “firmament.” As the Ark contained Word, Sacrament and Government (Hebrews 9:4), the response of these Babylonian elders around the throne was gold (Lampstand -government), frankincense (Incense Altar – prayer in response to Word), and myrrh (Table - sacrament). . . .

Continue reading…

Bible - NT: Throngs

Cicero advised his brother, “Take care to employ on every day men of every rank and order and age.  For one can conjecture from those very numbers how much strength and opportunity you will have in the assembly. . . . A daily throng to lead you down to the Forum brings a great reputation and great authority.”

No wonder the Pharisees envied Jesus for the throngs that surrounded Him.

Bible - NT: Multi-Lingual Palestine

In the time of the New Testament, Judea was a multi-lingual region.  Aramaic was the common speech among Jews; but most had at least a smattering of Greek, could hear Latin spoken all over Jerusalem, not to mention Hebrew in certain settings.  Linguistically, first-century Palestine was far more like Switzerland than like the US.

Now, in this situation, the normal thing is to become a comparative linguist.  It doesn’t require any formal training; becoming multi-lingual was a demand of survival, and once you know a few languages the natural thing to do is to play them off each other: The Aramaic is X; what’s the Latin equivalent?  Or Greek?

Interest in cross-linguistic puns, translations, word derivations in one or the other direction, seems inherent in the situation.  And the textual evidence is there, at least a bit: John translates Cephas, Rabbi, Messiah, and other terms into Greek equivalents.

Bible - NT: Living witnesses

Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is full of intriguing information and innovative arguments.  At least the arguments look innovative in the context of contemporary NT scholarship.  In any other context, they look like common sense.  Like this: “We [NT scholars] have become accustomed to working with models of oral tradition as it is passed down through the generations in traditional communities.  We imagine the traditions passing through many minds and mouths before they reached the writers of the Gospels.”  Even on the the dating accepted for the gospels “the period in questio is actually that of a relatively (for that period) long lifetime.”

Bible - NT: Synoptic dating

Austin Farrer said, “The datings of all these books are like a line of tipsy revellers walking home arm in arm . . . The whole series can lurch five years this way or that without colliding with a solid obstacle.”

Bible - NT: Root of David

Jesus is described twice in Revelation as the “root of David” (5:5; 22:16).  “Son of David” or “Seed of David” makes sense; Jesus comes from the Davidic line.  But Jesus is not only the fruit, but the root of the Davidic house.  He is the original Anointed One before who David stood, the Lord to whom Yahweh promised a seat at His right hand.

Bible - NT: Brothers

Jesus chooses a couple of sets of brothers to be among the Twelve: Andrew and Peter, James and John.  Plus, there’s Thomas the Twin.

Why did Jesus do this?  Possibly, because the Old Testament so often shows us brothers in conflict, especially older brothers hating and abusing younger brothers, while the younger brothers triumph.  For the New Testament brothers, we don’t even know which brother is the older one.  We just know that brothers are following Jesus together.  Jesus comes to divide families, but ultimately to bring peace and reconciliation, to turn the hearts of fathers back to children, of children to the fathers, of brother to brother.

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