Four Editions of Deuteronomy

I started Karel Van Der Toorn’s Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible.  I’m not going to blog through this book as I have been blogging through other books—trying to sum up huge chunks in a couple of posts.  Rather, I’ll be employing the “one bite at a time” approach—blogging on topics of interest from this book until I decide to move on to something else.

In this post, I want to talk about Chapter Six, “The Teaching of Moses: Scribal Culture in the Mirror of Deuteronomy”.  Van Der Toorn’s argument in this chapter is that there were four editions of Deuteronomy.

On page 145, Van Der Toorn states that one might think that there would be a problem with his thesis: Because Deuteronomy was considered to be the Word of God (which Van Der Toorn supports with Jeremiah 8:8-9), one would think that tampering with it would be a “no-no”.  As a matter of fact, Deuteronomy 4:2 and 13:1 prohibit people from adding to Deuteronomy or taking away from it.  But Van Der Toorn states that the priests (who, according to Deuteronomy 17:18 and 31:9, had control of Deuteronomy, which was not unusual, since scribal schools in the ancient Near East were often affiliated with the temples) nevertheless did add to the text, notwithstanding their responsibility to “prevent textual alterations” (page 146).  Their goal was to make Deuteronomy relevant to new situations, namely, the exilic and post-exilic periods.  On page 169, Van Der Toorn states that the editors of one of the editions, the Torah Edition, viewed “scholars like himself as the successors of Moses in his prophetic office[, with] the authority to interpret and to update traditional law in light of the insights revealed to him.”  Van Der Toorn’s model for how this editorial process occurred is not that scribes added to the text here and there, but rather that a new edition of Deuteronomy was produced every forty years or so.  As Van Der Toorn notes, the “life span of a papyrus scroll was limited” (page 148).  When the priests produced a new edition, they added to the text.  And Van Der Toorn does not seem to presume that there were multiple copies of Deuteronomy floating around in ancient Israel.

According to Van Der Toorn, the four editions of Deuteronomy were the Covenant Edition, the Torah Edition, the History Edition, and the Wisdom Edition.  I’ll say something about each edition.

1.  The Covenant Edition.

According to Van Der Toorn, the Covenant Edition consists of “a prologue (beginning with Deut 6:4-9), then the treaty stipulations (Deut 12:1-16:17, 26), and, finally, conditional blessings and curses (Deut 28)” (page 153).  For Van Der Toorn, the Covenant Edition is modeled after a treaty, perhaps the Neo-Assyrian ones.  Its aim was to support the Josianic reform of cult centralization that had recently occurred.  The editor “used existing texts, most likely reflecting royal decrees sent out to local officials ordering them to discontinue worship at provincial shrines and temples” (page 154).  Moreover, “Cloaked with the authority of Moses, the lawgiver of old, he reinterpreted, adapted, and rewrote the legal traditions he was familiar with” (page 154).

2.  The Torah Edition.

According to Van Der Toorn, the Torah Edition emerged early in exile.  It envisioned an ideal post-exilic theocratic society (as did Ezekiel 40-48 in exile) in which the priests would run the show, the king would merely serve as a ceremonial figure who read Torah, and the prophets would largely be teachers of Torah.  Van Der Toorn regards the Torah Edition as exilic because he does not think that Josiah would sponsor such a picture of Israelite society, and he holds that Deuteronomy 18′s comments on identifying false prophets on the basis of their unfulfilled prophecy would make most sense after the false prophets had been proven wrong through the destruction of Jerusalem.  Van Der Toorn also identifies certain passages in Deuteronomy 28 as part of the exilic Torah Edition because they refer to the teaching of Moses, and they mention the curse of exile.  Specifically, Van Der Toorn maintains that the priests who were “administrators, judges, and scholars”—not the priests who had served at the altar—were the ones who produced Deuteronomy.  These priests—the ones responsible for Deuteronomy—were the “forerunners of the Levites as we find them in texts of the post-exilic era such as Chronicles” (page 160).

3.  The History Edition.

For Van Der Toorn, the History Edition fused the Covenant Edition and the Torah Edition, making the Book of the Covenant and the Book of the Torah interchangeable—as the Deuteronomistic story of Josiah treats them in II Kings 22-23.  The History Edition also made Deuteronomy into an introduction to the larger Deuteronomistic History—with its themes of the priority of Moses and Israel’s rebellion—its goal being to account for the exile theologically.

4.  The Wisdom Edition.

Van Der Toorn believes that the Wisdom Edition includes Deuteronomy 4, 30, and parts of Deuteronomy 19-25.  It is hopeful and talks of restoration—which Van Der Toorn thinks makes most sense in the Persian Period, when restoration looked like a genuine possibility.  It also reflects Babylonian elements, and so Van Der Toorn believes that the wisdom editor was a “Babylonian Jew in the early Persian Period” (page 163).  The Wisdom Edition talks about wisdom, presents Torah as consistent with the reason that is inside of each person, appeals to experience (in this case, what occurred at Horeb), and offers reasons for commandments (i.e., the deterrence of the death penalty, the senselessness of cutting down defenseless trees, etc.).  Moreover, on page 172, Van Der Toorn says that, “in the Wisdom Edition, the Law is taken to embody a superior form of wisdom to be appreciated as such by every human being under heaven.”  In short, the Torah has a degree of universal value and relevance.

Why Centralization?

In this post, I’ll talk a little about Jeffrey Tigay’s excellent Excursus 14 in his Jewish Publication Society commentary on Deuteronomy, “The Restriction of Sacrifice to a Single Sanctuary (Deuteronomy 12)”.  A while back (probably ten years ago), I did a daily quiet time through the Book of Deuteronomy, and I wondered why God in that book is so insistent that the Israelites worship (or, more accurately, offer sacrifices) only at the central sanctuary.  What was the big deal?  Isn’t God everywhere?  So what would be so wrong about sacrificing to God outside of the central sanctuary?

Some of the answers that I conjured up are similar to the explanations that Tigay presents—which are not his own but are from the history of biblical interpretation, both pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment.  Here are the proposals that Tigay highlights:

1.  God limited sacrifice to the central sanctuary in order to curtail sacrifice, and to show that prayer (which can be offered in any place) is more important.  If the Israelites have to travel all the way to the central sanctuary to make a sacrifice, then they won’t make too many sacrifices!  This was the view of Maimonides.

2.  The medieval Jewish Sefer ha-Chinnuk said that “the sanctuary can inspire people only if it is unique—not if there are temples everywhere” (Tigay’s summary on page 460).  Familiarity breeds contempt!

3.  Hezekiah limited sacrifice to the central sanctuary in order to make the Israelites religiously dependent on Jerusalem so that they wouldn’t side with the Assyrians if the Assyrians invaded; also, Hezekiah wanted to solidify national identity by unifying the nation around Jerusalem, whereas “competing sanctuaries and the foreign cults…were sapping nationalistic fervor” (page 460).  After all, did not Jeroboam build sanctuaries in Dan and Bethel to keep the Northern Israelites from going South to Jerusalem to worship?  The sanctuary where one sacrificed had political ramifications!

4.  Centralization brought tithes and offerings to Jerusalem—so they could be employed “for royal uses such as defenses” (page 461).  According to Tigay, the problem with this proposal is that Deuteronomy has the worshipers consume their own tithe, and so the king was not a beneficiary.

5.  Josephus and Abravanel say that having only one sanctuary is consistent with the belief that there is only one God—one God, one sanctuary.

6.  Having only one sanctuary prevents Israelites from worshiping other gods (such as goat-demons, see Leviticus 17:1-10) and from practicing syncretism, which was at the multiple sanctuaries.  But Tigay notes that, in contrast with Leviticus 17:1-10, Deuteronomy permits the slaughter of meat outside of the sanctuary—in any location.  Moreover, Tigay quotes Yehezkel Kaufmann, who said that syncretism “radiated from the royal centers—Samaria and Jerusalem” (Tigay’s summary on page 462).

7.  If there are multiple sanctuaries, then people will conclude that there are multiple YHVHs—one for each location.  But Tigay sees no evidence for this view.  He notes that Mary, for example, is associated with more than one location, and yet Catholics believe in only one Mary!

8.  The solution that Tigay embraces is that Deuteronomy views multiple sanctuaries as a Canaanite practice, and so it prohibits Israelites from having them.  Tigay sees evidence for this in Deuteronomy 12:4-6, which tells the Israelites not to imitate the Canaanites by having multiple sanctuaries, but to have only one sanctuary, the place that the LORD will choose.

Before the LORD

Within the Hebrew Bible, we supposedly see two perspectives on God’s relationship with the earthly sanctuary: one says that God literally dwells in the tabernacle or temple, and the other states that God’s “name” is what’s there, not God himself.

According to Moshe Weinfeld, the latter is the position of the Deuteronomist, who disliked anthropomorphic depictions of the God of Israel. In this scenario, a good summary of the Deuteronomic position appears in I Kings 8:27: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!”

According to some critics of Weinfeld’s scenario, however, Deuteronomy is a lot more complex with that. Yes, Deuteronomy repeatedly refers to the central sanctuary as “the place God will chose to place his name,” but the Deuteronomist still thinks God is at his earthly sanctuary, as far as these critics are concerned! After all, their argument runs, Deuteronomy frequently uses the phrase “before the LORD,” indicating that the Deuteronomist believes that the Israelites were in God’s direct presence when they worshipped him.

I’m not sure if “before the LORD” means God is right there with the Israelites at his sanctuary. II Samuel 7:15 says that God removed Saul from before his presence. Is that literal, or does that simply mean that God no longer recognizes Saul as king? I opt for the latter.

Deuteronomy 26:12-15 describes a ceremony in which the Israelites make a declaration to God about hallowed things. They make their statement “before the LORD” (v 13), yet they implore God to look down from his holy habitation in heaven. The assumption is that God dwells in heaven, not in the earthly sanctuary. “Before the LORD” seems to mean, not God’s literal presence in the tabernacle, but rather God’s attention to what the worshipper is saying.

This doesn’t mean I’m gun-ho on Weinfeld’s position, however. I’ll share more in future posts. Stay tuned!

Beyond Patriarchy

I said in Female Offerings that I might wrestle today with the theological ramifications of gendered sacrifices, particularly the issue of why the more important sacrifices had to be male.

Was the Old Testament mindset patriarchal? Yes, but the Hebrew Bible says a lot of positive things about women. Were women better off in Israel under the Torah than they were in other ancient Near Eastern societies? Not necessarily, for other countries in the ancient Near East were more egalitarian on inheritance and divorce. Plus, the Israelite religion we encounter in the Bible does not have strong female deities as do other ancient Near Eastern nations, even though there are strong women in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Deborah, the Proverbs 31 woman, etc.). And, while Jewish and Christian apologists argue that women were treated as sex objects in ancient Near Eastern fertility cults, there is debate about the existence of cultic prostitution in that region.

So I’m not sure where God is in all of this. Although Israel was more patriarchal than other ancient Near Eastern nations, maybe God was moving her in the direction of egalitarianism. The custom in Israel was for only men to inherit property, but God said that Zelophahad’s daughters could inherit, since Zelophahad didn’t have any sons (Numbers 27). That wasn’t as liberal as other ancient Near Eastern countries, some of which allowed daughters to inherit even when the father had sons. But it was more liberal than where Israel was before.

In Exodus 21, only male Hebrew slaves are released in the seventh year. In Deuteronomy 15:12, however, both men and women Hebrew slaves are released after six years of service. Exodus 23:17 states, “Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord GOD” (NRSV). We see the same expression in Deuteronomy 16:16, but the chapter also mentions daughters and female slaves appearing before the LORD during his festivals. Was God, through Deuteronomy, moving Israel in an egalitarian direction?

Regarding sacrifices, God may have worked with Israel according to her patriarchal presuppositions. Perhaps he was also moving Israel beyond that mindset through other laws. I don’t know.

Could there be a practical reason that the male animals were considered more valuable? Were male animals the only ones used for agriculture, for example, since they were stronger? If so, then maybe that’s why the males were used for the more important sacrifices.

Sons of God in Deut. 32:8, Husband of One Wife, Pre-existent Messiah

1. Martin Jan Mulder, “The Transmission of the Biblical Text,” Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Martin Jan Mulder (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004) 93.

“Another example of the tendency to eliminate ideas felt as ‘pagan’ from the received text is Deut 32:8, which says that YHWH ‘fixed the bounds of the people according to the number of ‘the children of Israel” [(benei yisrael)]. The LXX and a fragment from the Qumran caves, however, clearly indicate what Ibn Ezra had already suspected in the Middle Ages, namely that the original wording must have been [benei el(im)], ‘sons of El [or: gods]‘–who might possibly be interpreted as angels.”

I already knew about the different versions of Deuteronomy 32:8, but I had no idea that Ibn Ezra suspected that the original wording was “sons of God.” I wonder what the basis of his suspicion was? The MT’s “Sons of Israel” may not work because, even though seventy people in Jacob’s family went down to Egypt (Genesis 46:27), and there are seventy nations in the world according to Genesis 10-11, not all of those seventy in Jacob’s household were sons of Jacob/Israel. Jacob and Leah were among that number, and they certainly weren’t “sons of Israel.” Maybe that’s why Ibn Ezra concluded the Deuteronomy 32:8 had to mean something other than “God divided the world into nations according to the number of the sons of Jacob, namely, seventy.” I don’t know.

2. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1910) 405.

“The passages 1 Tim. 3:2, 12; Tit. 1:5, where Paul directs that presbyter-bishops and deacons must be husbands of ‘one wife’…are differently interpreted. The Greek church takes the words both as commanding…one marriage of the clergy (to the exclusion, however, of bishops who must be unmarried), and as prohibiting a second marriage. The Roman church understands Paul as conceding one marriage to the weakness of the flesh, but as intimating the better way of total abstinence (Comp. 1 Cor. 7:7, 32, 33).”

I wonder what “Paul” of the Pastoral Epistles means when he says bishops must be the husband of one wife. Conservatives love to use this passage to exclude women and homosexuals from the clergy, but couldn’t it also exclude unmarried people? Isn’t there something about raising a family that gives a man the experience he may need to take care of a congregation? As I Timothy 3:5 states, “for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church?” (NRSV).

At the same time, Paul wasn’t married. But was Paul technically a bishop? Sort of. Yes, he was a missionary who started churches, but he also saw himself in a parental sort of role (I Corinthians 4:15), with the authority to discipline his churches (I Corinthians 4:21). So maybe he was a bit of an overseer. And yet, he wasn’t married.

So perhaps the Catholic interpretation is right: “Paul” of the Pastorals means that, if a bishop is married, he must be the husband of one wife. And yet, who knows? There’s a sense in which the Pastoral Epistles are more family-oriented than Paul himself. The Pastorals are big on marriage and family and children, which Paul doesn’t focus on as much (unless you want to count Ephesians and Colossians as Pauline). So I wouldn’t be surprised if they did mandate bishops to be married.

3. Jacob Neusner, Judaism’s Story of Creation: Scripture, Halakhah, Aggadah (Boston: Brill, 2000) 184-185.

“‘And the spirit of God hovers’ refers to the spirit of the Messiah, in line with the following verse of Scripture: ‘And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him’ (Is. 11:2).”

This is from Genesis Rabbah. There have been Christians who have maintained that Jews viewed the Messiah as pre-existent. They probably have missionary ambitions in this claim, for they want to show Jews that Christianity is not too different from Jewish traditions, meaning they (the Jews) can receive Jesus as their Messiah and still be faithful to Judaism. I’m not sure what other passages Christian missionaries use (I vaguely recall that they appeal to others), but this is one of them.

I agree with Neusner, however, that this passage doesn’t support the pre-existence of the Messiah, but rather seeks to demonstrate that Israel’s history is foreshadowed or previewed in Genesis 1. In the other parts of the passage, we see rabbinic attempts to tie Genesis 1 to Babylon, Media, Greece, and Rome. Their application of Genesis 1:1 to the Messiah relates to his future coming, in their eyes, not his pre-existence at creation.

I can say this about this particular passage of Genesis Rabbah, but I’m not as sure about other ones that Christian missionaries cite to support the Messiah’s pre-existence in Judaism.

How’d They Cover THAT?

Ever since I read Scot McKnight’s A Community Called Atonement, I’ve been visiting his web site every now and then. One post there that has gotten a lot of responses is God’s Wrath: A Question. Basically, it concerns a Christian mother who wonders how to teach her son about God’s command to kill Achan’s entire family for the sin of Achan (Joshua 7:15, 25).

My response was this: “Maybe the dad can say that Achan’s family knew about the garment when Achan was hiding it, and didn’t tell anybody. I mean, that would be pretty bad too, considering it led to the death of Israelite soldiers.”

Okay, actually it was a mom who raised the problem, but I’d just scanned that part. And my answer has problems, I admit, which may be why people did not respond to it (it certainly wasn’t the length that was the problem!). The Hebrew Bible often presents collective punishment for the sin of an individual, and such a concept occurs elsewhere in ancient Near Eastern literature, particularly the Code of Hammurapi. So I doubt that the group is directly involved in the individual’s sin when it is punished. It’s just that the ancient Near East often punished groups because of what individual members did, for whatever reason.

So my response was problematic, but I figured it would satisfy a kid and give the parent a break (for a while).

McKnight’s post caught my eye because I wonder how I will teach my kids about Christianity once I become a parent. I don’t have a lot of answers, and my beliefs are continually in flux. Would I teach my kids that God is a trinity or a binity? That they should keep the Sabbath or do what they want on that day? And how would I justify things God does in the Bible that seem so, well, unfair!

I’ve also been trying to recall how my parents handled the problematic passages of Scripture. Actually, I think it was my mom who exposed me to the problem of the Canaanite massacre in the first place. “When I was a child,” she recounted to young me, “I heard that the Israelites had to kill all of the Canaanites, including the children. And that bothered me. What did the children do?” But, if she tried to resolve the problem, I do not remember how she did so.

There was always the Armstrongite second chance doctrine to fall back on, the view that God will resurrect people and educate them in his ways after Christ sets up his kingdom. And so the Canaanites may have gotten killed, but they’d have an opportunity to know God once they’re resurrected. Maybe the sub-text there was that this life doesn’t matter a great deal, and so we shouldn’t stress out about the Canaanites. I don’t know.

Of course, we did learn stories that can raise similar problems. After all, didn’t the flood wipe out innocent children? But I don’t recall that problem being pointed out to me. All I remember hearing is that the world was wicked, Noah and his family were righteous, and so God spared Noah.

As far as the death penalty in the Torah went, that was pretty much justified to us. The death penalty was a way for society to keep order, to show without any equivocation that an act was wrong. And the American justice system certainly didn’t look much better! All we had to do was watch that commercial against Michael Dukakis, in which prisoners went in one door and out another, only to rape and kill again. And those things happened in real life!

I know that, at some point, I heard the evangelical “cancer” explanation: “When there is a cancer, you have to get rid of it! Well, the Canaanites were a cancer, so they had to be thoroughly eliminated.” But I don’t think my parents used that.

Actually, I’m not sure if my parents even harped on the Canaanites issue that much. I know I read about it in the daily Bible reading that I had to do. But I think the way I resolved that was to say, “Well, what were the Israelites supposed to do? Adopt all the children? They were only being practical.”

But, years later, I know that explanation doesn’t work, because there were other things Israel could have done besides slaughtering the children. For the cities outside of Canaan, God told Israel to offer terms of peace to the inhabitants, killing only the males if the cities refused. The Israelites could take the women, children, and animals as booty (Deuteronomy 20:10-15). But they had to wipe out all of the people inside of Canaan, including the children. So there may be another issue here besides practicality.

When I was a kid and read about the slaughter of the Canaanites, perhaps I figured that it had to be right because God said so. Today, I wonder what to say about that, especially in light of what I said a few days ago about God being the good (see Me and Prayer). I still believe that God is the good, since God commands us to do good things. I can teach my children that! But how can I explain the times that God appears unfair? I can say, “Well, he’s God. He can transgress his standards if he wishes.” But, if God is not consistently good, is he trustworthy? The nature of God is not merely an abstract intellectual issue, for it can affect one’s spiritual life!

Obedience and the Patriarchs

Whenever I’ve studied Genesis in evangelical churches and small groups, I’ve noticed a lot of emphasis on the characters’ flaws. Evangelicals are quick to point out that the godly characters of Genesis do a lot of stupid or immoral things. Noah gets drunk, Abraham lies to protect himself, Jacob steals his brothers’ blessing, Joseph is a spoiled brat, and Joseph’s brothers sell their own flesh and blood into slavery. The evangelicals’ point is that God is gracious and can use people who are not perfect. Evangelicals also affirm that God does not accept people on the basis of their merit, since the “heroes” of the Bible were far from meritorious. Rather, God accepted the biblical characters because of his grace, which they received through faith.

I live by this message. I know that I need a lot of grace each and every day because, well, I sin each and every day. But I wonder if there is more to the story.

For my Sabbath quiet time on Thursday, I studied Deuteronomy 30. I was just about to finish my study when vv 9b-10 leaped off the page:

“For the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors, when you obey the LORD your God by observing his commandments and decrees that are written in this book of the law, because you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (NRSV).

A lot of times, evangelicals read the Pauline-Lutheran view into all of Scripture. They argue that God gave the Israelites a law they could not keep to show them that salvation cannot come through law but through Christ. And, sure enough, the Israelites did fail to keep the law, to the point that Jeremiah 31:31-34 presents an altogether new covenant.

But the entire history of God’s people is not God’s anger at them for failing to keep an impossible law, nor is it God’s tolerance of sinners. That’s a big part of it, yes, but not the whole story. Deuteronomy 30:9b-10 says that God was actually happy with the patriarchs. And it states that God will be similarly happy with the Israelites if they obey his commandments. So why was God happy with the patriarchs? Could one reason be that they obeyed God?

You know, evangelicals focus on the bad things that the patriarchs did, but they should also acknowledge the good things. Abraham left everything behind for a land he did not know. He was willing to sacrifice his beloved son. God summed up Abraham’s life by saying that he “obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws” (Genesis 26:5). Isaac heeded God’s warning not to enter Egypt, even though famine was eating up the Promised Land. Jacob worked diligently for the corrupt Laban. He also put idolatry out of his camp when he was about to meet God. And he was willing to return to the Promised Land, despite the possibility that Esau might kill him. Sure, these characters needed grace, but there was something about them that pleased God, something that later generations of Israelites lacked: faith that expressed itself in obedience and good works.

I cannot be thoroughly critical of the evangelicals I have known. They were not antinomians. They almost always pointed out that, even though the characters of Genesis were not perfect, they grew and matured in faith and righteousness. For example, the Abraham of the akedah had more faith than the Abraham who lied to protect himself, or the Abraham who took Hagar to help God out with the promise. Maybe God was delighted in the patriarchs because they were at least willing to grow. And they came to love God’s standard of righteousness, which is a significant part of obedience. The subsequent generations of Israelites, however, were not willing to grow. God showed them sign after sign, and yet they did not trust and obey. God had to knock some sense into them through the exile for them to get on the right path.

My conclusion: Christianity is about God’s grace to sinners, but it is also about loving God and his righteous ways.

Ebal: A Place of Celebration and Cursing

In Deuteronomy 27, God commands the Israelites to set up stones on Mount Ebal. On the stones, they are to write the commands of Deuteronomy. They are also to sacrifice burnt offerings and peace offerings on an altar, as they rejoice before the LORD. The Israelites are to make the altar of whole stones, and they must not use an iron tool in its construction. Then, some Israelite tribes are to stand on Mount Ebal to utter curses on those who disobey the law (often secretly). Others will stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the faithful.

So Mount Ebal is a place of both celebration and cursing. Why?

The evangelical philosopher Francis Schaeffer offered an explanation. In Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History, he tried to interpret Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8 (where the Israelites carried out Deuteronomy 27) in light of the doctrines of the substitutionary atonement and justification by grace through faith alone. These doctrines state that all are sinners and deserve God’s wrath, but God sent Jesus Christ to experience that condemnation on our behalf. By accepting what Christ did, we become righteous in God’s eyes. We cannot trust our good works to impress God, however, since we are sinners.

Similarly, for Schaeffer, the Israelites relied on the altar on Mount Ebal for their survival. God’s law condemned them, since they were sinners. They deserved to die. But the burnt offerings, which atoned for their sins, allowed them to enjoy fellowship with God in spite of their violations. By sacrificing on Mount Ebal, Schaeffer argued, the Israelites acknowledged that they deserved the curses that were pronounced on that mountain. But they received blessings, not curses, on account of the slain animals that foreshadowed Christ’s work on the cross. And, in the same way that humans cannot earn God’s salvation through their human actions, the Israelites could not add anything of their own to the altar. They could not use a bronze tool.

Maybe this proposal has some merit. It certainly presents the Gospel that I trust for salvation. But is there another way to read Deuteronomy 27?

First, Evangelicals often assume that animal sacrifices always foreshadow the substitutionary atonement. They have a point, since Leviticus 1:4 says that the burnt offering makes atonement for the person bringing it. But there are other sacrifices that focus specifically on sin, such as the sin offering and the guilt offering. If Deuteronomy 27 wants to emphasize the substitutionary atonement, why not have those? Burnt offerings were ways to invoke God’s presence by presenting to him a sweet savour. Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8 may be saying that the Israelites were to celebrate in God’s presence the fact that God had just brought them into the Promised Land. The Israelites were saying “thank you” to God by giving God something he liked, a burnt offering. And, through the peace offering, they shared a meal with God.

Second, in Schaeffer’s scenario, the atonement is the end of the story. The Israelites sinned, and so they needed atonement to satisfy the curses of the law. In essence, Schaeffer views the atonement as the goal and main point of Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8. But, in Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8, the sacrifices occur before the blessings and curses. Why would the Israelites need to be told about curses once their sacrifices had already satisfied the penalty for sin? Plus, if the passages really wanted to make Schaeffer’s point, wouldn’t they have presented the curses before the sacrifices?

So here is an alternative way to see the passages: the Israelites celebrate what God has done for them, but, in the midst of their celebration, they remember that God has placed certain responsibilities on their shoulders. While they rejoice in God’s presence, they see the stones that have the Deuteronomic laws written on them. The laws are a testimony to them that God will punish transgression. Do the Israelites want to continue their enjoyment of God’s blessings? Well, they will have to observe the law to do so. Deuteronomy often stresses that the Israelites will live through their obedience to the Torah (e.g., Deuteronomy 4:1; 5:33, 8:1; 12:1, etc.). They will do so because God punishes disobedience with death (Deuteronomy 29:19).

Why does all of this occur on Mount Ebal, the mountain of cursing? Because God wants the Israelites to focus on the curses of the law. He wants them to remember the threats and be warned. Look at how much Deuteronomy 27-28 emphasizes the curses! Deuteronomy 27 only lists the curses for transgressors. In Deuteronomy 28, the curse section is longer than the blessing section, and it is enough to give people nightmares! The Israelites were to celebrate God while keeping the curses in mind.

So, in my opinion, Deuteronomy 27 offers a point of view that is not exactly evangelical, at least in the Francis Schaeffer sense. But it is not entirely consistent with Judaism, either. In rabbinic Judaism, the Torah is seen as a blessing. God gives the Torah to Israel so that she can know him, have wisdom, and improve herself morally. And, sure, Deuteronomy has some of these concepts (Deuteronomy 4:6). But, overall, Deuteronomy presents the Torah the same way that Paul does: as a ministration of condemnation (II Corinthians 3:9).

The Israelites still needed God’s forgiveness. In the Torah, they often received it through sacrifices, Moses’ intercession, and repentance. But I think that Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8 focus on other issues.

Ebal: The Place That the LORD Chose?

The Book of Deuteronomy often commands the Israelites to sacrifice in only one sanctuary: the place that the LORD shall choose. Where was that sanctuary? When I was in Israel this last summer, I heard a lecture from Sandra Richter of Asbury Theological Seminary. Professor Richter argued that Mount Ebal was the central sanctuary of Deuteronomy. One reason she offered was that Deuteronomy 27 mentions an altar on Mount Ebal. She also presented archaeological evidence for the existence of an altar at that site.

When I first heard her presentation, I thought, “How can people miss this? It is right there in Deuteronomy 27!” When I did my weekly quiet time in Deuteronomy 27, however, I could see how scholars missed it. Jeffrey Tigay, for example, argues in his Jewish Publication Society commentary that the altar was intended to be temporary, for a brief ceremony. In Deuteronomy 27, God commands the Israelites to set up stones on Mount Ebal and to put plaster on them. They are to write on the plaster the words of the Deuteronomic law. They are also to sacrifice burnt offerings and peace offerings on an altar as they rejoice before God. Tigay points out that rain can erase the words on the plaster, so he concludes that the stones, the plaster, and the altar were all part of a brief ceremony. He does not seem to believe that the altar was to be part of a long-standing central sanctuary.

Interestingly, however, there are scholars who believe that Deuteronomy 27 contradicts the prevalent theme of Deuteronomy: that Israel is to sacrifice only in the place that God shall choose. In the Anchor Bible Dictionary article on “Ebal,” Adam Zertal states the following:

“Although the biblical passages attesting to the Mt. Ebal ceremony are clearly Deuteronomistic (and therefore late), their reference to an important ceremony outside Jerusalem and in the heart of N territory is in sharp contrast with the so-called ‘main theme’ of the Deuteronomistic historian: namely, the centralization of the cult in Jerusalem. Thus, many scholars assume that the historical witness of these texts is generally authentic[.]“

But, if the altar was only part of a brief ceremony, why should we assume that Deuteronomy 27 contradicts the emphasis on the central sanctuary? Couldn’t Deuteronomy assume that the Israelites would do the brief ceremony on Ebal to celebrate God’s goodness and remember the law, and then the central sanctuary rules would apply?

Any thoughts?

Do Christians Have Rights?

When I was an undergraduate at DePauw University, I was part of a weekly Bible study group. The leader of the group once said that Christians have no rights, but that all of their “rights” are subordinate to Christ. After eight years, I still do not entirely understand his statement. At the same time, I can look at the statement itself and find good principles.

American society is often litigious and contentious. We are concerned about our rights and our dignity. But the New Testament says that there are higher principles. In I Corinthians 6:7, Paul says that a Christian should suffer wrong rather than take his brother to court. Jesus told his disciples to turn the other cheek in the Sermon on the Mount. In Christian morality, love for our brothers and our enemies is of higher value than us getting our due.

In a way, the same principle also appears in the Old Testament. For my weekly quiet time this week, I read Deuteronomy 24. The passage is about how creditors should treat the people who owe them. In the ancient world, creditors would do a variety of things to make their debtors pay. They would confiscate the debtors’ valuable belongings, or they would intimidate them in their (the debtors’) own homes. The Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East had laws that required the creditor to consider the debtors’ survival. For example, according to Deuteronomy 24, a creditor could not take the debtor’s millstone, which was necessary to make food. Every evening, a creditor had to return the poor debtor’s coat, which the debtor needed on a cold night. Deuteronomy 24 also required the creditor to respect the dignity of the person who owes him. For example, a creditor could not go into the debtor’s house to collect collateral, since that would humiliate the debtor.

In Deuteronomy 24, love of neighbor surpasses the value of getting paid back. On some level, I can understand why the creditor did what he did. He probably thought, “Maybe this guy should go without his coat or food for a while–THAT will encourage him to get off his hump and pay me back!” But the Torah teaches that respecting the life and dignity of someone else is more important than receiving one’s due.

At the same time, saying that people have no rights is going too far. The Old Testament does present a court system, after all, and it emphasizes the rights of victims and the oppressed. Without a conception of rights, the strong will walk all over the weak.

When should Christians assert their rights?