Yeshua in Context » Judaism Today & Yeshua http://yeshuaincontext.com The Life and Times of Yeshua (Jesus) the Messiah Mon, 04 Nov 2013 13:36:09 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 REVIEW: The Jewish Gospels by Daniel Boyarin http://yeshuaincontext.com/2012/03/review-the-jewish-gospels-by-daniel-boyarin/ http://yeshuaincontext.com/2012/03/review-the-jewish-gospels-by-daniel-boyarin/#comments Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:46:00 +0000 yeshuain http://yeshuaincontext.com/?p=711 Daniel Boyarin is Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture and rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. In the foreword by Jack Miles, he is called “one of two or three greatest rabbinic scholars in the world.” I’m not qualified to assign numbers to who is or isn’t the world’s greatest Talmud scholar, but it is easy to say that Boyarin knows his Talmud better than any but maybe a few dozen people in the world.

So, it might surprise you to know that Boyarin thinks Judaism and Christianity are compatible. His goal, stated on pages 6-7 is to help Christians and Jews to stop vilifying each other. He doesn’t follow Jesus and isn’t asking fellow Jews to do so. But he demolishes all ideas that Christian devotion to Jesus is contrary to Judaism or that Christianity is anything other than a Judaism to which mostly non-Jews have been drawn. Jews in the time of Jesus were looking, he says, for a divine messiah. And Jesus’ earliest followers were kosher Jews. The sad separation and enmity of Judaism and Christianity is something to get beyond, not something to perpetuate.

Among the themes of the book are some startling claims which deep six the status quo that Judaism and Christianity are separate and incompatible ideas about God and faith:

  • Jews in the time of Jesus were expecting a divine-man Messiah figure.
  • Many Jews already believed in something very much like what Christians call the Son and Father.
  • Some accepted Jesus as divine-man and some did not; both groups were Jews; one of these groups we now call Christianity and the other Judaism.
  • Christianity is a Judaism.
  • It is not just that Jesus is a Jew, but Christ, the exalted and divine figure, is also a Jew.
  • The doctrinal police represented by some rabbis and church fathers are the ones who sought to make Judaism and Christianity incompatible (he gives the specific example of Jerome who rejected people with orthodox faith who wished to remain Jews, saying they had to renounce Jewishness to be true Christians).
  • Early Messianic Jews (Christian Jews) called Nazarenes must have been a sizable group even in the fourth century.
  • The false boundary between Judaism and Christianity needs to be blurred.
  • “Son of God” originally meant the human Davidic ruler; “Son of Man” originally was a divine figure equal with God though submitted to him.
  • The roots of the All-Transcendent God [Father] and the Immanent Agent God [Son] go back even to pre-Israelite days as Canaanites sought to understand deity as both.
  • The Similitudes of Enoch (part of the book called 1 Enoch) give the lie to the notion that Judaism rejected a divine redeemer who is a God-man.
  • The Similitudes, written about the same time as Mark, parallel the ideas of a divine man almost identically to Mark, but neither text was aware of the other.
  • Yeshua (Jesus) and his early followers were kosher (he documents how Mark 7 and the “all foods clean” passage have been misunderstood).
  • There was a history of faith in a suffering Messiah (Isaiah 53 style) before Jesus and the usual debate about whether Isaiah 53 concerns Israel or Messiah is a moot argument.
  • The liberal Christian notion that the church developed the suffering Messiah idea by misinterpreting the Hebrew Bible is false.
  • The Gospels are a conservative return to an earlier idea of a Second Divine Figure, who represents the Immanent Aspect of God.
  • Jesus, or Mark, knew his way around a halakhic argument.

Boyarin also gives many intriguing solutions to long-held puzzles about Christology, the theology of the divinity of Jesus and his humanity, and how the Gospel texts are using the Hebrew scriptures and dealing with the seeming paradoxes of Yeshua (Jesus):

  • The debate about “Son of Man” as “human one” or “divine redeemer” can be resolved if we understand “Son of Man” as a simile: one who is divine but it is like he is human.
  • Contrary to much Christian scholarship, Yeshua (Jesus) saw himself as Son of Man from the beginning, not just at the Second Coming.
  • Daniel 7 has two ideas in tension: Son of Man is divine redeemer but also Son of Man is Israel.
  • The root of Jesus’ saying “the Son of Man” must suffer is Dan 7:25-27 where Son of Man is Israel and must suffer a time, times, and half a time. Jesus midrashically reads this as the Son of Man (himself) suffering for Israel as Ideal Israel.
  • Christianity long ago deemed adoptionism a heresy (Jesus became divine at his baptism when filled with Spirit). This idea is called apotheosis (a man becomes divine by indwelling divine spirit). Yet the gospels contain this theme, especially Mark, argues Boyarin (though he becomes God at his ascension, not his baptism). However, see the next bullet point.
  • The opposite of adoptionism (apotheosis) is theophany (incarnation, God becomes man) and the divine man is shown to have pre-existed and been divine before birth as a human. This theme is also in the Gospels and is emphasized over the apotheosis theme.
  • Boyarin sees both theophany (God became man) and apotheosis (a man became God, Jesus became God as his ascension) in the Gospels. Are these two incompatible streams? See my thought below.

What about Boyarin’s notion that the Gospels have both apotheosis (Jesus becomes God at the ascension) and theophany (Jesus was already God who became man at his birth)? As he shows extensively, the same thing happens in the Similitudes of Enoch, which Enoch chapters 70-71 seemingly contradicting what had been said earlier about Enoch. While earlier it seems Enoch became the Son of Man when, as it says in Genesis, he “walked with God and was not,” in truth, he was already Son of Man before he was born, according to chapters 70-71. Are these ideas really a contradiction? Perhaps they are relative to whether Enoch is viewed from the earthy viewpoint or the divine. This is a way to take Boyarin’s notion that in the Gospels Yeshua (Jesus) both becomes God and already was God. In reality, he already was God, but in appearance his divinity was revealed at his ascension. This way of reading it is compatible with the creeds of Christianity and the strong divinity statements in Paul, Hebrews, and Johannine writings.

The Jewish Gospels is a short, approachable book. Even people who don’t read academic literature can enjoy it and understand most of it. Boyarin gos out of his way to define terms in simple language. The body of the book is only 160 pages.

I can’t honestly think of a sound reason to criticize the book, although it seems my review may be weak for lack of finding fault. I found the entire book engaging and finished it in about three hours. In my opinion, this is a great step forward in Jewish-Christian relations and is a mind-opener worthy of being read by many thoughtful Jewish and Christian thinkers.

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PODCAST: Divinity1 http://yeshuaincontext.com/2012/03/podcast-divinity1/ http://yeshuaincontext.com/2012/03/podcast-divinity1/#comments Fri, 02 Mar 2012 21:55:43 +0000 yeshuain http://yeshuaincontext.com/?p=698 To some people, the idea of Yeshua’s divinity was probably something developed late. It must have involved a departure from Jewish thought. It must have been the result of syncretism, mixing pagan notions with the original understanding of Yeshua as a Jewish teacher or as Messiah. But what is the real explanation for the origin the idea of Yeshua’s divinity?

Divinity1

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Yeshua On Repentance http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/08/yeshua-on-repentance/ http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/08/yeshua-on-repentance/#comments Mon, 29 Aug 2011 12:08:51 +0000 yeshuain http://yeshuaincontext.com/?p=545

When he came to his senses he said, “How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger!”
-Luke 15:17

Yeshua dined with sinners. Those of us who eat bread with him today are infinitely thankful for this. It is not, contra E.P. Sanders, that Yeshua offered the kingdom without repentance or light without trial.

Those who dined with Yeshua did not think this is what he was offering. One said, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I give to the poor” (Luke 19:8).

Yeshua is at once inviting and imposing, welcoming and formidable. You may be to him the hundredth sheep, the one rejoiced over that was lost, or a whitewashed tomb. You may hear from him, “your faith has made you well,” or, “depart from me; I never knew you.”

No area of life is too small to be under God’s observation, not even the falling of a sparrow (Luke 12:6). So the way we deal with our fellow human beings is paramount. Don’t bother to offer great things to God if you are not willing to clear up offenses with people (Matt 5:23). Your love for others most likely follows the pattern of all creatures, loving those you need to love you back. But God has a higher requirement, so that we aspire to love even those who despise us (Matt 5:44). We do not aim high enough since the correct objective is to be like God in perfection (Matt 5:48).

We are apt to repent incorrectly by demeaning others in order to exalt ourselves in God’s presence. Our eye is on our peers and outdistancing them. “Thank you that I am not like other people,” we say (Luke 18:11).

It would be better if we knew ourselves to be out and out sinners. Then we would say, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” and beat our chests (Luke 18:13).

The power of repentance is not in outdistancing our peers, but in God’s love for the humble (Luke 18:14). It is in God’s joy over lost ones found (Luke 15:7). It is in our consuming desire to be nearer to him. It may be the desire for food that brings us his way (“you seek me . . . because you ate of the loaves and were filled,” John 6:26). He says even to those who come on such a basis, “The one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37).

But eventually we realize “it is the Spirit who gives life” and “the flesh profits nothing” (John 6:63). And we say, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).

Repentance becomes the ever-liberating way of life. “He who loves his life loses it” (John 12:25). It is better to enter life missing an eye or a hand (Matt 18:9). We practice our repentance before the Father in secret (Matt 6:1). And our prayer is that God will forgive us as we forgive others (Matt 6:12). We cannot seize those who owe us and choke them for every penny when we are forgiven much (Matt 18:28).

Rather, being forgiven much, we love much (Luke 7:47).

We repent often with watchfulness since “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38). We don’t settle until we rid ourselves of all disdain, since “everyone who is angry with his brother will be guilty before the court” (Matt 5:22). We give up control so that we “do not resist him who is evil” but turn the other cheek (Matt 5:39). We give our tzedakah (alms) and lay up real treasures where God is (Matt 6:3, 20).

Being good trees, we bear good fruit (Matt 7:17). We do not attempt to dominate but to serve everyone (Mark 10:42-43).

Yeshua dines with sinners. He transforms those of us who dine with him. He promises, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled” (Matt 5:6).

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Greece, Rome, Israel #3 http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/08/greece-rome-israel-3/ http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/08/greece-rome-israel-3/#comments Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:33:44 +0000 yeshuain http://yeshuaincontext.com/?p=533

And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and sought a way to destroy him; for they feared him, because all the multitude was astonished at his teaching.
–Mark 11:18

The gospel did not just happen. The events which marked the onset of a new stage in the world’s redemption happened in a time and place with three main cultural backdrops. Parts 1 and 2 introduced Greek and Roman influences on these events, both in Yeshua’s time and the later time the gospels were written. What about conditions and social structures in Israel itself? What are some basics readers need to know about conditions and groups in Israel? What about Jewish concerns in the times of the evangelists?

First, it cannot be over-emphasized, and it rather has been under-emphasized, that Yeshua was Galilean and his movement was primarily a Galilean one at the beginning. For more about this, see “Yeshua the Galilean” by clicking here. In Galilee itself, Yeshua was safe unless he ran afoul of Herod Antipas. It was primarily in Judea and Jerusalem that there was danger for Yeshua. Galilee was rural and had no aristocracy. Judea had powerful people with statuses to protect so that prophets and upstart messianic brigands were quickly eliminated.

Second, we must locate Yeshua among the common Jews and not see him as part of any of the parties. In an overreaction to centuries of neglecting the Jewish context of Jesus, some studies in recent decades have aligned Yeshua with the Pharisees. This is a misunderstanding of what the Pharisees represented. Yeshua did not belong to any of the parties. Of the parties, the Pharisees may have been closest to Yeshua’s way of thinking, but he himself was not a Pharisee.

As one of the people of the land, Yeshua’s common belief with his countrymen centered on monotheism, covenant, the election of Israel as God’s people, the Temple, and the way of life laid out in the Torah. Readings of Yeshua overturning laws of the Torah are without basis and should be rejected. A more sophisticated reading of Mark 7 and Matthew 15 is called for, a reading based more in Jewish discussions about how to keep the food and purity laws, not whether to keep them.

Second, we can and should accept the picture of the gospels that there was some degree of literacy in Galilee and synagogues with some education. It is not difficult to believe that Yeshua could read the Hebrew text. But we should not imagine him as a scribe with the kind of training found in Judea in the small movement of Pharisees and scribes. Yeshua would have been a literate, but by Judean standards, poorly educated layman.

Third, we should understand the times of Yeshua in Judaism as formative. The last decades before the First Jewish Revolt in 66-70 CE were a time when Israel was looking for an identity, for a way to be Israel. The powerful chief priests and Sadducees held nearly all the power in Jerusalem. Galileans paid tithes to the chief priests out of duty to Torah in spite of corruption and the fact that the Temple-state in Judea was abusive of wealth and power. The Pharisees were seeking to bring their own kind of renewal, but it too was a movement defined by power and status, not righteousness in the mode of the prophets of Israel.

Israel was seeking to be Israel, to recover some sense of what Torah had expressed as the ideal. The common people were powerless. From time to time, groups of the common people would follow an upstart messianic or prophetic leader. None of the small revolts inspired a wide following.

It is in this sense that we should understand Yeshua, who worked wonders in Galilee and attracted crowds. People were ready for change. They wanted to see something from God. Some of the people were ready for a revolution. Otherwise the various brigands who led small revolts would have found no followers. Yeshua seemed to be a person who could make things happen at long last.

Yet nearly all of Yeshua’s teaching and his actions were calculated to overthrowing popular messianic notions. Yeshua found a people so out of touch with the vision of the prophets for the world to come, the kingdom of God, that he set about overturning sacred cows. He dined with sinners. He healed impure people. He praised the faith of non-Jews. He warned that being the Chosen People would not bring inheritance by itself in the kingdom. He denied the idea of power and status as a way for Messiah or Messiah’s followers. He spoke of a long delay in the coming of the kingdom. He established a renewal movement, a group within Israel to be True Israel. He claimed to be of very high and exalted status which people would only understand when he was glorified. He gave many hints and signs of his identity. He left a group of disciples to lead a movement after his death and glorification when these things would become clear. He spoke of coming in the future as the Son of Man.

Yeshua’s vision of Messiahship and kingdom is a Jewish vision, but different in many details from other Jewish ways of imagining the kingdom.

In the days of the evangelists, division with synagogues throughout the empire heightened the distance between the Yeshua-movement and Jewish communities. The evangelists emphasized the origins of their movement as Jewish but with a view to spread to the nations. Yeshua had other sheep. Yeshua called for his name to be proclaimed to the gentiles. The Abrahamic promise was at last being realized.

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Revealed to Little Children http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/07/revealed-to-little-children/ http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/07/revealed-to-little-children/#comments Fri, 15 Jul 2011 12:43:37 +0000 yeshuain http://yeshuaincontext.com/?p=496 In “Why Yeshua? A Jewish Question,” I listed nine elements of Yeshua’s identity and purpose that add something new to Judaism (see it here). The first of these nine elements has captured my attention and been the source of my thoughts and searching for a few weeks now:

Yeshua is the Moses-like Prophet-to-Come, the New Moses, whose agency as the Voice of the Father reveals depths of God unknown or ambiguous in previous revelation.

I listed for readers the findings of Paul Anderson regarding the prophet-like-Moses theme in the fourth gospel, which is not a minor motif but a guiding principle of the entire Gospel of John (see my post “Moses-Like-Prophet in John” here).

In searching out examples of how Yeshua revealed greater depths of God than had previously been known, I first went down a path seeking in the teaching of Yeshua new revelation. I think to some degree I was on the wrong path. I came up with a list of nine existential questions about God and us that are addressed in Yeshua’s teaching and wrote a blog post about it (see “The Son Has Spoken” here).

Yet as I taught this material at our synagogue, a perceptive woman and friend said, “But, Derek, none of that is new. That’s all good interpretation of what’s already in the Hebrew Bible.”

I quickly realized she was right. In terms of Yeshua’s teaching about God’s nature, nearly all of it is accessible in the Hebrew Bible if you avoid certain pitfalls. Judaism has, like Christianity, fallen into a number of pitfalls in this area (e.g., the Saadian and Maimonidean ideas about God’s unity and transcendence in utter denial of real Presence).

Not long after realizing that I was searching in the wrong place — looking for Yeshua’s new revelation of the depths of God in his teaching — I came across some good thoughts on the New Moses theme in Matthew in a book by Darrell Bock (Jesus According to Scripture). His comments on Matthew 13:16-17, 52, made me realize that Yeshua’s purpose in teaching was often to clarify what was already in the old. The new wine was mostly new because the shepherds of Israel did not, in Yeshua’s time, understand the message of the prophets.

Those prophets, according to Matthew 13:16-17, desired to look into Yeshua’s time, to see in his identity and teaching the completion of what they envisioned. And the good scribe of the kingdom (the scribe who knows the King, Yeshua, and looks for his kingdom to come) brings forth both new and old. That is, the old (Hebrew Bible) is inextricably connected with the new, and the scribe brings forth the connections (but most writing about “messianic prophecy” has been terrible and has not followed scribal patterns at all).

Where I needed to be looking, to find the new revelation of the Sent-One, was not in Yeshua’s public teaching, per se. I needed to be looking more at his deeds (somewhat in combination with his teaching). It is more in the deeds and hints at the identity of Yeshua that we find the new things coming forth from the old.

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.
Matthew 11:25 (and Luke 10:21).

What are some of the things revealed to little children that may be referenced here?

The following list is subject to more evidence that I am planning to give here. I am not pretending that in listing these points I have demonstrated my case for them. This is an initial presentation of some themes and ideas presented in the gospels that cry out for closer scrutiny. Also, it is important to me not to simply draw from the fourth gospel, where the exalted identity of Yeshua is especially emphasized. Any meaningful portrait of what is new in Yeshua ought to draw from the synoptics as well as John.

  • The Way of Surrender. I was struck by a phrase in an essay by Marianne Meye Thompson: the path that God designates . . . giving power up in surrender of one’s life and service to others (“Jesus and His God” in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus, 2001). Yeshua not only described his own messianic career as being about surrender of his life and service, but said repeatedly that disciples were to lose their life, that the last was greatest, and that his followers should be servants to all. This is not simply social justice (the message of the Israelite prophets). It is a radical step beyond. It is Messiah killed being the real glory of Messiah. It is kingdom subjects not only working for justice, but selling everything for a pearl of great value. This is not an incidental theme, but is central in all four gospels (the messianic secret, the Sermon on the Mount, the kingdom for the poor, the lifted up Son of Man, and many other themes).
  • Ransom theology. This is an outgrowth of the first point. In surrendering all, Yeshua accomplishes a ransom. The famous ransom passage (Mk 10:45; Mt 20:28) is greeted with skepticism by many scholars (a late addition? it sounds too churchy, say some). Ransom theology goes beyond the way of surrender theme. Not only does Yeshua give up power in service to others, but his surrender to death, but this act of sacrifice is a necessary transaction for people to have life. This is cross theology. It grows out of the Exodus-Passover story.
  • Faith as inclusion in the kingdom. I do not think Yeshua in any way denies the election of Israel, which is a carnal election (via birth, not faith). I think, rather, he introduces a concept of a second requirement beyond election. The renewal movement of Yeshua suggests it is not enough to be Israel. God has not yet sent the messianic age because Israel has to go beyond being the Elect. Israel must believe and act according to belief. And in making belief the requirement for renewal, Yeshua opens the door for those in the Nations as well. This is where Yeshua’s universalism (that the divine covenant promises cover the whole world and not only Israel) comes through the door. Paul’s “works of the Law” equal presumption of rightness with God via birth as Jews (or conversion). Paul’s “salvation by faith” equals Yeshua’s call to “believe in me.” This is where Matthew 13:16-17 is really explained: the prophets called for faith and action, but the object of that faith and action was waiting to be seen. Yeshua claims to be that object of faith. And the action required is belief in his identity and message. The irrevocable election of Israel remains important, for in the fulness of time, Israel will also come to the renewal of faith, as the prophets had already foretold. And now that Yeshua has come, that faith can only be in the Messiah himself.
  • Word made flesh (incarnation). It is not only John, as some think, but all through the gospels, that we see Yeshua as the Exalted One, whose identity is more than a man. It is a mystery, because the nature of God as both transcendent (the Eternal, the Beyond-Knowing) and immanent (the Word-Glory-Presence) is mysterious. Yeshua is more than the Prophet-like-Moses, ultimately, but is the Prophetic-word incarnate. He is Living Torah. All things have been handed over to Yeshua by the Father. Even the wind and waves obey him. He comes in the Glory of his Father. He is greater than the Temple. He is before Abraham. Unless we know that he is, we will die in our sins.

Yeshua heals and those with faith are made well. Yeshua defeats evil powers and demons are drawn to oppose him, but they can only obey his greater authority. Yeshua criticizes the shepherds of Israel who have followed the pattern of domination and not surrender. Yeshua gathers disciples for his way of surrender. And Yeshua surrenders to the difficult will of the Father (“he will speak to them all that I command him,” “the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me”). And all these things are revealed not to the wise, the shepherds of Israel who deal in power, but to little children.

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Moses-Like Prophet in John http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/07/moses-like-prophet-in-john/ http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/07/moses-like-prophet-in-john/#comments Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:11:12 +0000 yeshuain http://yeshuaincontext.com/?p=459 In the fourth gospel, Deuteronomy 18:15-22 is a key passage. It’s language (from the Septuagint or Greek version) is echoed throughout the gospel of John. Much of the Father-Son language in John comes from concepts and phrases in Deuteronomy 18:15-22, the Torah passage about the Prophet who is to come. Of course, the Deuteronomy passage is in one sense talking about the office of a prophet (and so, in that sense, all prophets like Samuel, Elijah, Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah fit the meaning of the Deuteronomy passage). Yet the Prophet in Deuteronomy was also interpreted in another sense (as evidenced in the gospels) as a singular Prophet who would be greater than Moses. One could argue that this is not what the Deuteronomy passage intended, but there are two answers to this:

(1) The multiple meanings of an important scripture may become evident over time as events unfold.

(2) God at times may fulfill expectations (ones he approves of) regardless of the plain meaning of prophecies.

From Dale Allison, I learned of the New Moses theme in Matthew. From Raymond Brown’s commentary I first learned of the Prophet theme in John. But it is from Paul Anderson’s The Christology of the Fourth Gospel that I learned how much this theme really plays into the fourth gospel.

Statements and Concepts from Deuteronomy 18:15-22

  • Like Moses: “God will raise up for you a prophet from among your own people, like myself.”
  • To be obeyed: “him you shall heed.”
  • God’s voice to terrible to hear: “Let me not hear the voice of the Lord my God any longer.”
  • No one can bear the sight of God: “…or see this wondrous fire any more, lest I die.”
  • God gives him words: “I will put My words in his mouth.”
  • He says only what God shows him: “He will speak to them all that I command him.”
  • God judges, not the prophet: “If anybody fails to heed the words he speaks in My name, I myself will call him to account.”
  • Unauthorized prophets anathema: “any prophet who presumes to speak in My name…that prophet shall die”
  • Signs will reveal the identity of the Prophet: “If the prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and the oracle does not come true, that oracle was not spoken by the Lord.”

Yeshua as the Prophet-Like-Moses in John

  • Statements that explain Yeshua as the fulfiller of Mosaic roles: 1:17; 3:14; 6:32; 7:19.”Law was given through Moses; grace and truth through Yeshua.”
  • Statements that Moses wrote concerning Yeshua: 1:45; 5:46. “Him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote.”
  • Onlookers identify Yeshua as the Prophet: 6:14. “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!”
  • Yeshua says what he has seen and heard from the Father: numerous references including 14:24, “the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.”
  • Hearing Yeshua requires believing in him: numerous references including 5:24, “he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
  • Rejecting Yeshua is rejecting the Father: 5:37-38; 8:47; 12:46-48. “You do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe him whom he has sent.”
  • Yeshua speaks only the words he receives: numerous references including 7:16, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me,” and 5:19, “The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.”
  • Yeshua offers signs of his authenticity as the Sent Prophet: numerous references including 10:38, “Even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”
  • The name of Yeshua the Prophet carries great weight: numerous references including 15:16, “Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”
  • The Father judges for not heeding the Prophet: 3:16-18; 12:47, “If any one hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.”
  • Yeshua word as the Prophet is the standard of judgment: 12:28, “the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day.”
  • Yeshua accused of speaking presumptuously and being a false prophet: numerous references including 7:12, “He is leading the people astray.”
  • Yeshua foretells his suffering accurately: 13:18-19, “I tell you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am he.”

Paul Anderson’s list in The Christology of the Fourth Gospel (lxxiv-lxxviii) is much more detailed and elaborate.

See “Why Yeshua? A Jewish Question,” for a prelude to this article.

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The Son Who Has Spoken http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/07/the-son-who-has-spoken/ http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/07/the-son-who-has-spoken/#comments Fri, 01 Jul 2011 20:05:08 +0000 yeshuain http://yeshuaincontext.com/?p=451 Last week in “Why Yeshua? A Jewish Question #1″ and in the Podcast “Mosaic Revealer,” I began to explain nine benefits of knowing Yeshua for those who already know God through Judaism. I’m still mining the very first benefit of the nine, which goes like this:

Yeshua is the Moses-like Prophet-to-Come, the New Moses, whose agency as the Voice of the Father reveals depths of God unknown or ambiguous in previous revelation.

As you can see from the wording, I am using language from the gospels themselves to describe the benefits of knowing Yeshua. But this is not just theory or theology. Each one of these nine benefits concerns practical matters, things that weigh upon us and are of consequence to everyone on a daily basis. They concern the normal and universal questions and existential longings that require satisfaction.

This week, I will discuss, “What practical difference does it make that Yeshua reveals previously unknown depths of God’s nature and being?”

Universal Questions Addressed in Yeshua’s Teaching

(1) Does God see my pain? (2) Does God see my selfless deeds? (3) Is this present reign of death and meaninglessness the way God will leave things? (4) Do my interpersonal relationships matter to God? (5) Does God ever reward things done for him and for others out of pure love? (6) Does God care about the things I am lacking and desperately need? (7) Is God a stern judge or a hopeful parent? (8) Does God want me to know him? (9) Does God prefer the smart, the strong, the rich, the powerful, and/or the beautiful people? (10) Does God feel emotion or is that beneath him?

The Difference Between Yeshua’s Answers and Other Teachers’ Answers

Yeshua addresses the kind of questions I listed above and does s specifically in his teaching. Other teachers in Judaism and Christianity as well as a myriad of religious perspectives have addressed these and similar questions.

Why should Yeshua’s answers matter?

That is a question about Yeshua’s identity. It is a good question. It deserves more than a short answer. I have written a bit about reasons a Jewish person (or anyone else) might believe that Yeshua is more than a man, that his perspective is worthy of leaving behind other teachers and following him toward the world to come.

I am not primarily addressing the “why believe” question here, but one part of the “what does Yeshua add” to life and faith question. However the simple answer to the “why believe” question is what my book Yeshua in Context is all about. And here is the simple answer: if you encounter the story of Yeshua, which is in the four gospels, you will be able to confront reasons to doubt or believe based on things like internal and external consistency.

In Yeshua in Context, I explain for modern readers what Yeshua was all about, give guidance in understanding and encountering the stories, and suggest ways they give us evidence to believe that Yeshua is the Mystery revealed in human form.

Yeshua on the Existential God-Questions

(1) Does God see my pain?
Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.

(2) Does God see my selfless deeds?
Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. . . . your Father who sees in secret will reward you. . . . love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great.

(3) Is this present reign of death and meaninglessness the way God will leave things?
Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. . . . Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. . . . men will come from east and west, and from north and south, and sit at table in the kingdom of God. . . . from now on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. . . . The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field . . . And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last. . . . You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. . . . in my Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. . . . Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.

(4) Do my interpersonal relationships matter to God?
Every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment . . . So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. . . . If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies. . . . So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.

(5) Does God ever reward things done for him and for others out of pure love?
Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. . . . your Father who sees in secret will reward you. . . . He who receives a prophet because he is a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward, and he who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward. And whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward. . . . I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. . . . Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

(6) Does God care about the things I am lacking and desperately need?
And why are you anxious about clothing? . . . But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

(7) Is God a stern judge or a hopeful parent?
Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. . . . Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. . . . there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. . . . But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’

(8) Does God want me to know him?
But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. . . . I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us. . . . All that the Father gives me will come to me . . . No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. . . . It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.

(9) Does God prefer the smart, the strong, the rich, the powerful, and/or the beautiful people?
Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame. . . . Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me. . . . unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. . . . I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that jyou have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. . . . If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all. . . . Blessed are the meek.

(10) Does God feel emotion or is that beneath him?
Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. . . . he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. . . . Father, I thank you that it pleased you to do this. . . . the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry.’

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Why Yeshua? A Jewish Question. http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/06/why-yeshua-a-jewish-question-1/ http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/06/why-yeshua-a-jewish-question-1/#comments Fri, 24 Jun 2011 21:36:30 +0000 yeshuain http://yeshuaincontext.com/?p=444 Here is another mini eBook in the making: Why Yeshua? A Jewish Question. This is also the basis of a podcast that will be posted today on iTunes and at DerekLeman.com.

A friend recently said to me, “Jews are better Christians than Christians.” He was referring first of all to the ethic of Jesus about healing and serving and making this world like the world to come. His claim was that the Jewish community does these things better than Christians. Second of all, he was referring to statistics about charitable giving and service work and those who engage in them. The Jewish community, far in excess of our smaller population, out-gives Christians in the work of feeding, clothing, providing medical aid, and so on all over the world.

He followed this up with a bigger point. Who needs Yeshua? That is, given Judaism — and the wealth of information and tradition about God, ethics, the world to come that Judaism provides — who needs Yeshua? What does Yeshua add to Jewish faith and life?

Instead of turning to an afterlife formula — a typical evangelical Christian idea that Jews need Yeshua or they will be judged eternally in the life to come — I wanted to discuss other reasons Yeshua is needed. I leave the question of final destinies, who is included and who is excluded in the life to come, for others to wrangle over. The question is far from settled in terms of biblical theology, in my opinion, and the evangelical certainty that all but those who explicitly declare faith in Jesus are doomed in the life to come is overblown.

But even if hopelessness in the afterlife without Yeshua is the truth, is that and should that be the only reason Yeshua is needed? Is Yeshua nothing more than “my personal savior,” or a savior who makes no difference in this life but only in the life to come?

The following is at least the beginning of a catalogue of the benefits of knowing Yeshua, assuming already a knowledge of the God of Israel and the ethics of Torah and prophets and rabbis. I will first list the general categories and then expound on them in some detail:

  • Yeshua is the Moses-like Prophet-to-Come, the New Moses, whose agency as the Voice of the Father reveals depths of God unknown or ambiguous in previous revelation.
  • Yeshua is the Beloved Son whose Union with the Father makes greater union with God possible for those who are in Yeshua (in kabbalistic terms, he makes union with the Ein Sof possible).
  • Yeshua is the Dibbur (Word, Memra) made human, the Incarnate Shechinah, joining humanity and deity (note: those who say this is impossible for Judaism to accept must explain how any manifestation or dwelling of God is possible as taught in the Torah).
  • Yeshua gives us a clearer picture of the world to come (kingdom of God), making more specific what was ambiguous and affirming bodily resurrection (not reincarnation) and giving a specific organization and working plan for living now as we wait for the kingdom to fully overtake the cosmos.
  • Yeshua is, in his person, the completion of the future hope themes of the Torah, prophets, and writings: he is Messiah in the full sense of meaning captured by that term, the One who brings near to God, Ideal Israel, the Son of Abraham, and the Paragon of Prophetic hope.
  • Yeshua’s atoning death makes possible what was impossible in the Temple sanctuary: for people to be in the Presence of God without the separation of barriers like the Veil (parochet) or incense or the mediation of prophets like Moses. This direct access is vital preparation for the world to come.
  • Yeshua has broken through the problem of death in his resurrection, which is a sign of the coming resurrection at the end of the age. The kingdom or world to come has been inaugurated and our faith in it is made easier by the historical witness of those who saw the empty tomb and the appearances (note: it is inconsistent to believe Sinai is historical and doubt the resurrection).
  • Yeshua is enthroned beside the Father, is the appointed Judge at the end of the age, is High Priest to all Israel and the nations, and to know him is to have greater union with and knowledge of God. Prayers to God, knowingly or unknowingly, involve Yeshua as well as the Eternal (the Father, the Ein Sof). Knowing the High Priest by name is an advantage in prayer and access.
  • Yeshua is the sender of the Spirit who mediates the Living Presence of Yeshua in the community of disciples (note: the Spirit/comforter/paraclete in the fourth gospel is the vessel communicating Yeshua to his disciples after the ascension).

As a follow-up, see “Moses-Like Prophet in John.”

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Jewish Jesus http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/03/jewish-jesus/ http://yeshuaincontext.com/2011/03/jewish-jesus/#comments Fri, 25 Mar 2011 11:01:01 +0000 yeshuain http://yeshuaincontext.com/?p=347 If you prefer listening, you can listen to the podcast here (or subscribe to “Yeshua in Context” on iTunes).

I read an interview with a scholar recently in which he talked about the patronizing concept of the Jewishness of Jesus. I’m not precisely sure what he had in mind as the interview did not get specific enough on this point and I have not read enough of this scholar’s work to be sure what opinions he holds. I do know one complaint he had: people who say their historical presentation of Jesus is a Jewish Jesus and then proceed to explain how Jesus is radically different from their notion of the Judaism of his time.

He seemed to be ready to dismiss the value of speaking of the Jewish Jesus completely, and yet I know he did not mean by this that we should view the historical Jesus through some other cultural lens (such as the Cynic philosopher theory of Crossan). That got me thinking: what value is there, overall, in speaking of the Jewishness of Jesus? Is that a description and a category we could better live without? What are the simplistic ideas of a Jewish Jesus we want to avoid? What are the alternatives to a Jewish Jesus in our way of speaking of the historical Jesus? I would have to start with my own story: because the “Jewish Jesus” idea is the very basis of what impelled me to study and to become what and who I am today. I cannot exaggerate the importance of the “Jewish Jesus” idea for me personally.

Perhaps some scholars, knowing the complexity and diversity of Judaism, and lamenting the ways popular presentations can distort our potential knowledge of the historical Jesus, might wish people simply wouldn’t use the language of a Jewish Jesus at all. Yet I can say that for me, in late 1987, as a college student with no religious background, the notion was life-changing.

I had just come from an agnostic background into full-on belief in God and in the person of Jesus. I had not yet read the gospels. A Sunday School teacher at a nearby church was stupefied that my faith was based on a reading of the historical narratives of the “Old Testament” and half a book by C.S. Lewis. He castigated me: “You have to read the New Testament.”

Being very impressionable at the time, I woke at 6:30 the next morning to start reading the New Testament. I had an eight o’clock class and the church told me I was supposed to read the Bible in the morning, so even though it was hard to wake so early, I thought I had to do it that way. But I was about to develop a bit more independent thinking and to become less naive.

Matthew 1:1 is where the New Testament starts and it is where I discovered the Jewish Jesus. It says he is the Son of David and the Son of Abraham. I had read recently the stories of David and Abraham. They were fresh in my mind. I can say that the moment in fraternity room reading the gospels was a turning point.

It was a turning point because I saw in an instant that there was a difference between the historical Jesus, and the Jesus of the gospels as well, and the church Jesus. And, though I want to be more forgiving, though I believe in the goodness of Christianity, even after years of reflection I have to chastise the shepherds who have allowed and continue to allow this distortion to continue.

Why doesn’t the average church and the average pastor present a fuller picture of who Jesus was and is? Why aren’t the gospels read and taken seriously? I could do a series of podcasts on that one. But my point is that the Jewish Jesus idea, as I encountered it early one morning at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in my Zeta Beta Tau house, specifically led me to the place I met and married my wife, led to my choice of career, and has been the basis of all my work since then.

I guess you could say that Jewish Jesus idea is not something I’m ready to toss away.

I’ve heard one interesting way of talking about the perception people have of Jesus. Some see him as the “first Christian.” That is an interesting way of putting it. No one, as far as I know, actually uses that terminology. But it is between the lines of much, maybe most, writing about Jesus. The really bad stuff, the all-too-common rhetoric that makes us wince, is the Pharisees-as-Judaism and Jesus-as-the-first-Christian approach.

But the Christian Jesus idea is rampant even in less naive presentations. As this scholar said in his interview, many say their presentation includes the Jewishness of Jesus and then they proceed to explain how Jesus radically departed from the Judaism of his time. Many people are unaware of how supple, how diverse, how stretchable the various streams and ideas within broader Jewish religion and practice really were in Jesus’ time. Much of what people see as the Christian Jesus departing from his own culture and religious context is actually not new. Jewish thought and practice was full of potential reformers and renewers.

Jesus the first Christian is the Jesus I heard about, if I heard about Jesus at all in my early church experience. Mostly talk about Jesus was limited to three things: (1) the savior dying on a cross so I could have a very pleasant afterlife, (2) the resurrected man whose return to life meant I could believe in a very pleasant afterlife, and (3) the man in heaven next to the Father to whom all our prayers were directed. Sermons on the actual deeds or sayings of Jesus were quite rare. If I did hear them, the point of the sermon was always the same as the point of every sermon: you should ask Jesus into your heart so you will have a very pleasant afterlife.

An aspect of Jesus-the-first-Christian I heard more often was the converse: the Pharisees-as-what-is-wrong-with-all-religion. And Pharisees meant Jews in general.

I asked people at church during this formative stage: if Jesus was Jewish, why don’t we do anything Jewish?

I was told in various ways that: (1) the Old Testament was hard and unspiritual, (2) that Jesus died on the cross to set us free from Judaism, and (3) that Jewishness is the opposite of having Jesus in your heart so that you can have a very pleasant afterlife.

I decided that my Christian teachers were wrong about this. I decided this within the first month of my new-found faith. It wasn’t easy to resist the pull. But, fortunately, I found a few resources early on to help.

I found a Jewish Christian who saw Jesus and Judaism in a bit more of a synthesis than the other Christians I talked to. Through him I found out about and went on a trip to Israel, where my interest in the historical Jesus, Jesus the Jew, increased all the more. And I found out about Messianic Judaism. I wasn’t ready to sign on to the Messianic Jewish movement as yet, but I attended and learned from afar.

The Jewish Jesus made so much more sense to me for a number of reasons than the first-Christian-Jesus. He quoted sacred texts from Deuteronomy and Samuel and Isaiah with ease. He went to synagogue on Saturday. He read from a scroll. He kept Passover. He gave an important speech at Hanukkah. I understood his crucifixion largely through the lens of Isaiah 53. His resurrection, I found out, was part of a Jewish theme of bodily afterlife.

My understanding of the Jesus of the gospels and the Jesus of history needed a lot more work. It still does, of course. I got side-tracked for over a decade on my path of discovery. I was fooled for a long time by certain distortions of the message of Jesus and the apostles. But through this long period of confusion I did some things right. I am especially glad that I decided to engage in a long study of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), including a Masters degree from Emory in Atlanta in Hebrew Bible. I never went on to doctoral work and don’t know if I will, but the Hebrew Bible continues to be a love of mine even though I am specializing in the gospels and the life and message of Jesus.

My basic point is that the idea of a Jewish Jesus is far from an unnecessary correction. And the notion is much needed. And those who want to understand Jesus would do well to understand the first five books of the Bible and at least some of the Psalms, wisdom literature, and prophets.

Another distorted view of Jesus I have encountered is Jesus, the last Jew. I do not mean, of course, that Jewish people disappeared or ceased to exist after Jesus, but that the people of God were the Jews until and through Jesus, after which, everyone needed to be a Christian.

It was okay for Jesus to be Jewish, such interpreters tell us, but he was the last Jew in terms of God’s election and inclusion of people. Thus, we should read in Jesus’ teachings advanced notions that will take his disciples outside of the orbit of Judaism.

This Jesus-the-last-Jew approach is a way of affirming that Jesus is Jewish while denying and/or ignoring the fact that his deeds and message are equally Jewish and that his renewal movement is a Jewish movement.

I am not at all saying that I think non-Jews must become Jewish in order to follow Jesus. Perhaps that is the kind of distortion that well-meaning teachers of Jesus-the-first-Christian and Jesus-the-last-Jew were hoping to avoid. But I don’t think Christians can benefit from making Jesus a gentile. The path of discipleship must include and recognize the Jewish Jesus. Non-Jews follow a Jewish Messiah. I don’t care how simplistic that may sound in some academic ears. The Jesus of the gospels, and I would argue of history as well, is the Jewish Messiah. I will grant you that the term Messiah has been grossly over-simplified as well.

I first picked up on the Jewish Jesus theme from Matthew’s gospel, but all of the gospels begin with a theme of continuation, not discontinuity.

What I read in Matthew was about Jesus the son of David and the son of Abraham. That characterization of Jesus continues in Matthew’s gospel. Some have considered Matthew to be the product of a Jewish Christian, or as I would prefer to call it, a Messianic Jewish, movement in the early days.

But the other two synoptic gospels and even John begin equally with a theme of continuity. The arrival of Jesus on the scene in the gospels’ literary presentation of him is Jewish and continuous with the tradition of Israel.

Mark begins with the good news of Messiah and Son of God, Jewish terms best understood from the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism. Mark locates Jesus from the movement of John the Baptist and identifies his message as the reign or kingdom of God, a central theme of Judaism and the Hebrew Bible.

Luke begins with a priestly family in Jerusalem and writes in the style of the Greek or Septuagint version of the book of Judges. Luke’s Jesus leaps off the pages of the Hebrew Bible and has more to do with Jerusalem than Mark or Matthew have indicated.

And then there is John. His gospel has a prologue, generally thought to be added at a later stage of formation. The prologue presents Jesus as the Word. Many have sought in this a Greek notion of the Logos, and perhaps that is secondary. But the Jewish idea of the Memra, the Dibbur, the spoken words of God by which all things were created, is evident. And John, like the other gospels, locates the origins of Jesus’ movement in the work of the Jewish prophet John.

From this theme of continuation, the idea that Jesus is the next chapter in the unfolding drama of God and Israel, is matched by the theme of renewal in the gospels. This has been mistaken for a theme of replacement. The idea of the Jewish jesus is essential for rightly interpreting Jesus’ stance on things like the Temple.

To say that Jesus is anti-Temple is a gross error. It is his Father’s house. He has a zeal for it that his disciples remark about in John. He affirms its sanctity specifically in Matthew. His infancy is shrouded in a Temple community of the faithful in Luke. Even Mark is careful to show that the testimony about Jesus as a Temple-destroyer is false testimony.

Jesus is against the Temple state, the organizational entity running the Temple. His protest, the one that got him arrested and killed, is not against the edifice of God, but against its desecration and against its injustices toward the common people. It is a Temple state which demands the religious and economic obedience of the people, but which does not practice the economic redistribution of God’s Torah.

So, while I understand, probably, some of the frustration of the scholar who was interviewed, I think the statement that the historical Jesus is best understood in a Jewish context has lasting value. In fact, I think it is essential. Maybe if history had not developed the Jesus-the-first-Christian or Jesus-the-last-Jew notions we’d have been fine without using the adjective “Jewish” in our description of Jesus. But the fact that Jesus is Jewish and that his teaching and deeds are Jewish is far from obvious to most people. And the idea of the Jewish Jesus is very much needed.

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Notes on the Sabbath Grain-Field Controversy http://yeshuaincontext.com/2010/12/notes-on-the-sabbath-grain-field-controversy/ http://yeshuaincontext.com/2010/12/notes-on-the-sabbath-grain-field-controversy/#comments Fri, 31 Dec 2010 15:05:45 +0000 yeshuain http://yeshuaincontext.com/?p=231 Mark 2:23-28 is a passage worthy of an entire book and much has been said about it. It is a riddle wrapped in a riddle smothered in enigma.

Questions include everything from the mundane to the mysterious. Did Yeshua’s disciples actually break the Sabbath? Did they merely break an interpretation of the Sabbath rules according to some Pharisees? Is this ultimately about the Peah or corners of the field issue in Jewish law? Since the example of David is not a perfect match for what happens with the disciples, why does Yeshua use it? What does it mean, in the context of Second Temple Judaism, that the Sabbath is made for humankind? Is the Son of Man in vs. 28 Yeshua or humanity in general?

NOTES:

Good sources on this topic:
Ben Witherington, The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary.
Maurice Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel.

(1) Exodus 34:21 forms the basis of prohibiting reaping on the Sabbath. But picking for immediate use is not reaping.

(2) What do the Pharisees object to? We cannot rely on Mishnah or rabbinic sources as they often depict realities from after the Temple destruction and read them back erroneously into earlier times. In general, we can say that the Pharisaic-scribal movement, which was still centuries from dominating Judaism, was at that time enlarging the scope of the commandments by making traditions. Although we have no specific source as evidence, it is very reasonable to assume that this movement wanted to build fences around Sabbath laws, so that even picking for immediate needs was forbidden on the Sabbath.

(3) Is there any issue related to the Peah or corners of the field legislation in Leviticus 19:9 and 23:22? Corners of the field, parts that would be near walking trails, were to be left unreaped so those hungry could pick for immediate needs. This is what the disciples were doing, Furthermore, Casey suggests this is an important element in the David example Yeshua used: David’s men were hungry. Yeshua is implying the same for his disciples. The question, then, is whether it is right for those making use of the Peah legislation (the hungry picking for immediate needs as allowed by Torah) can do so on the Sabbath.

(4) Why does Yeshua use the David story and what does it teach us? The story of David’s starving men getting permission to eat the sacred bread is not a perfect fit for the situation. It could be seen as an example of greater to lesser, though. David potentially violated a greater law when he permitted the eating of the sacred bread of the Tabernacle. The disciples were eating permitted food obtained legally via Torah law but were doing it on the Sabbath. However, it is possible or even likely that early Jewish sources assumed David’s men ate the sacred bread on the Sabbath, according to Casey. The sacred bread was replaced every Sabbath (Lev 24:8). Casey gives several references in Talmud and midrashim about the sacred bread being replaced on the Sabbath as well. Therefore, the two cases may be more similar than they appear at first glance. But they are not identical. But there are two aspects of the David story that make it profound: (a) no one can say that David was wrong but equally no one can say that what David did is permissible, so Yeshua traps his opponents with this story that does not fit their clear-cut fences around Torah and (b) Yeshua may be implying that he is a David-like figure with authority to judge matters of mystery in the law.

(5) What does it mean, in Second Temple Judaism, to say that “the Sabbath is made for humankind”? Casey notes that the idea that Creation is for the enjoyment of humankind occurs in various Jewish writings. 2 Baruch 14:18, for example, says “you said you would make for your world humankind as the manager of your works, to make it clear he was not made for the world, but the world was made for him.” It is also a valid interpretation of Exodus 16:29, “the Lord has given to you the Sabbath.” Thus, Yeshua is saying that Sabbath regulations in Judaism must be about rest for the benefit of humankind and not fences which make rest more difficult. This is direct guidance for the Jewish movement of Yeshua-followers in how to make halacha and the non-Jewish church can also learn from this principles for practical living. Yeshua did not agree that making the regulations stricter than the law was the right direction for halacha to go in. That is the larger meaning of the story.

(6) Finally, is the Son of Man in vs. 28 Yeshua or humanity in general? One problem in answering this is that we have to decide of Yeshua made this statement or if it is a summary statement made by Mark. It is impossible to be certain. But if it is a saying of Yeshua, then it is a riddle much like others he poses and much like his use of the David story. His words have two meanings. Humanity is lord over the Sabbath, since it is made for humanity and also the ultimate Son of Man, Yeshua, has authority to law down halacha about the Sabbath just as King David did with the sacred bread. It is probably best to read the whole passage as a riddle. The David story raises unanswerable questions. The Son of Man saying implies that Yeshua is the Son of Man who is Messiah. It was probably even more mysterious to those who heard the exchange in the first place. Who is this Yeshua? How does he overcome his opponents so skillfully? What is the answer to his riddles?

SUMMARY:
Some Pharisees challenge Yeshua for not rebuking his disciples over a matter of Sabbath tradition they believed in, a fence around the law in which gleaning Pe’ot, grain left standing for the hungry, was forbidden on the Sabbath. Yeshua answered their challenge with an unanswerable riddle: how then could David allow an even greater violation, eating the sacred bread also on the Sabbath? Since Yeshua’s opponents would not be able to answer this, Yeshua does it for them: the Sabbath is made for the benefit of humankind and halacha should follow this Torah principle. Restrictive fences that make a burden out of something designed by God to be good is the wrong direction to take. And the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, both in the sense that humankind is what Sabbath is for and in that I am the Son of Man who has authority, like David, to make such a ruling. In saying this, Yeshua gives us strong guidance for observance of Torah today in Messianic Judaism and principles that apply in non-Jewish practical living as well. The law is for the good of humankind and must be interpreted that way.

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Yeshua as Torah, Part 1 http://yeshuaincontext.com/2010/10/yeshua-as-torah-part-1/ http://yeshuaincontext.com/2010/10/yeshua-as-torah-part-1/#comments Fri, 29 Oct 2010 17:43:12 +0000 yeshuain http://yeshuaincontext.com/?p=183 Not only should we understand Yeshua in his time and his context, but we should also devote thought to applying Yeshua into modern contexts. The various Christianities are the usual focus of this re-contextualization of Jesus, but what of Judaism today? How does Yeshua fit into the context of a Judaism filled with 2,000 years of water under the bridge, halacha, theology, commentary, mysticism, and so on? This is the first post in the category (many more to come) “Judaism Today & Yeshua.”

The more Torah the more life . . . he who has acquired for himself the words of Torah has acquired for himself life in the World to Come.
–Pirkei Avot 2:7.

The Torah said, I was the architectural instrument of the Holy One, blessed be he . . . So did the Holy One, blessed be he, look into the Torah and created the Universe.
–Genesis Rabbah 1:1.

On that account he created Torah first, since it is dearer to him than all else he made.
–Sifre Deuteronomy 37, 76a.

As water is life to the world, so is Torah life to the world. As water descends from heaven, so Torah descends from heaven . . . As water cleanses man from defilement, so the Torah purifies the unclean (morally).
–Song of Songs Rabbah 1:2.

There are a number of ways in which Judaism has developed the practice of Torah, the study of Torah, the mysticism of Torah in ways that fill the role Yeshua could and would play. Deeds of Torah become the basis of purification from sin in some sources. Study and practice of Torah gives life in the World to Come. In the Torah service liturgy, we read that God has implanted eternal life within the Jewish people, so that Torah becomes the divine-life within Israel.

There was a need in the developing theology and practice of Judaism to fill categories of redemption and ascending to the levels of divine knowledge and life in the World to Come. The New Testament and Christianity had Jesus and Judaism filled many of these categories with Torah.

When we, in Messianic Judaism, speak of Yeshua as Torah, we mean to say that God truly did send his Word-Wisdom-Knowledge-Revelation into the world. This certainly did happen in the form of Torah, prophecy, wisdom, and all of scripture. But the highest revelation of all is Yeshua, who emanates from God and is One with God. As Hebrews puts it:

After God spoke long ago in various portions and in various ways to our ancestors through the prophets, in these last days he has spoken to us in a son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he created the world. The Son is the radiance of his glory and the representation of his essence, and he sustains all things by his powerful word…
–Hebrews 1:1-3.

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