Jesus the Literate, Slavery, Had Adam and Eve Done It Right

1. M. Bar-Ilan, “Writing in Ancient Israel. Part Two: Scribes and Books in the Late Second Commonwealth and Rabbinic Period,” Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Martin Jan Mulder (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004) 33-34.

“A high percentage of the population did not know how to read and it seems evident that in rural areas and in small towns only one man could read from the Tora. We might conclude that in such settlements there were more than 90% illiteracy (T. Megilla 3:12).”

Bar-Ilan is talking about the rabbinic period, but I’ve heard the same thing about New Testament times in Palestine. Bar-Ilan gives a quotation from an ancient source, the Tosefta, so let’s see what it has to say:

“A synagogue which has only one person who can read–he stands and reads [in the Torah] and sits down…even seven times” (Jacob Neusner’s translation).

Okay, I guess literacy wasn’t widespread in Palestine back then, if there were towns in which only one person could read. When rabbinic literature talks about kids learning the Bible and the Mishnah, therefore, it may either be setting forth its ideal of Palestinian life, or discussing an elite.

We read in Luke 4:16-19 that Jesus could read. There, Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah in a Nazareth synagogue. How could Jesus read, if most people back then were illiterate?

This is where some believe that Luke is wrong, historically-speaking. At DePauw, I knew an atheist who made that very point. “How is Jesus reading? Most people couldn’t read back then?,” he asked. I also vaguely recall that John Dominic Crossan regards Jesus as an illiterate peasant.

But maybe Jesus somewhere learned how to read. I once had a conversation with a colleague at Harvard Divinity School. He wasn’t aiming to go into academia, but rather into a Korean Christian ministry. But he took a New Testament class, in which he had to read John Dominic Crossan’s book on Jesus the peasant. His class got into a debate about whether or not Jesus could read. My friend remarked that Martin Luther King in his context probably shouldn’t have been literate either! For him, great men are great precisely because they are able to rise above the limitations of their context.

I’m not sure how right my friend was about Martin Luther King. Schools were segregated in King’s day, but at least African-Americans had schools to go to, and I’m sure they taught reading. At the same time, the South tried to trip African-Americans up with literacy tests. So maybe there were lots of people in the South who could read, and lots who could not, and this probably applied to both races: black and white.

But, if even illiterate towns had at least one literate person in the synagogue, then why couldn’t Jesus have been one of those literate people? Perhaps God set things up so that Jesus would learn how to read.

2. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1910) 349.

“In the period before us, however, the abolition of slavery, save in isolated cases of manumission, was utterly out of question, considering only the enormous number of the slaves. The world was far from ripe for such a step. The church, in her persecuted condition, had as yet no influence at all over the machinery of the state and the civil legislation. And she was at that time so absorbed in the transcendent importance of the higher world and in her longing for the speedy return of the Lord, that she cared little for earthly freedom or temporal happiness. Hence Ignatius, in his epistle to Polycarp, counsels servants to serve only the more zealously for the glory of the Lord, that they may receive from God the higher freedom; and not to attempt to be redeemed at the expense of their Christian brethren, lest they be found slaves of their own caprice. From this we see that slaves, in whom faith awoke the sense of manly dignity and the desire of freedom, were accustomed to demand their redemption at the expense of the church, as a right, and were thus liable to value the earthly freedom more than the spiritual.”

Schaff includes a similar quote from Tertullian, and he also refers to a fourth century statement by Chrysostom that slaves should be gradually emancipated. In pages 350-352, Schaff cites some interesting facts: that Christian tradition “makes Onesimus, the slave of Philemon, a bishop[;]” that the slave Callistus “rose to the chair of St. Peter in Rome” in the third century C.E.; that Clement calls slaves “men like ourselves;” and that Lactantius (third-fourth century C.E.) proclaims slaves and masters to be equal.

I picked this quote to write about because Ignatius’ statement about slavery stuck out to me, but I never got around to discussing it on my blog. Ignatius essentially says that slaves shouldn’t try to become free. What was Paul’s position? That depends on how one translates I Corinthians 7:21. The NRSV has the following:

“Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present condition now more than ever.”

This seems to imply that the Christian slave should make us of his state of slavery rather than seeking to become free. As Titus 2:9-10 says, “Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior.” By being good slaves, Christian servants could lead their masters to Christ.

The NIV, however, has something different:

“Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you– although if you can gain your freedom, do so.”

For the NIV, a Christian slave should become free if he is able to do so.

The Greek looks rather ambiguous: it says something like “but if you are able to be free, rather use.” The debate concerns what the word translated “use” means.

But the New Testament is not always anti-slavery. I Timothy 6:2 instructs Christian slaves to submit to their Christian masters, so apparently the church didn’t require masters to free their slaves once they joined up.

At the same time, the New Testament requires masters to treat their slaves with kindness (Ephesians 6:9). Paul even tells Philemon to regard his servant not as a slave, but as a brother in Christ (Philemon 1:16).

The New Testament and early Christian record on slavery is rather checkered. There isn’t really a wholesale condemnation of the institution, yet masters and slaves were treated as equals. Does the latter part absolve Christianity of being pro-slavery? Some will say “yes,” and some will say “no.” I had a professor at DePauw who said that Southern slave-owners in pre-Civil War days acknowledged that their slaves were spiritual equals, yet, in their eyes, spiritual equality did not mean social equality. At the same time, shouldn’t spiritual equality lead to social equality? John Wesley certainly thought so, for he believed that a master wouldn’t beat a slave whom he saw as a brother in Christ. And Ephesians 6:9 is clear that masters shouldn’t mistreat their slaves.

One more point: God can use a person even in slavery. Many of us are seeking to change our circumstances, but should that be our sole focus? Maybe God can use us in an unpleasant situation. That’s not to say that slaves shouldn’t have sought their freedom, since freedom is a good thing, and slavery could be really horrible. But it’s one more thing to think about as we consider the issue of the Bible and slavery.

3. Jacob Neusner, Judaism’s Story of Creation: Scripture, Halakhah, Aggadah (Boston: Brill, 2000) 117.

“Adam picked and ate. But here too there is a detail that cannot be missed. Even after three years, Israel may not eat the fruit wherever it chooses. Rather, in the fourth year from planting, Israel will still show restraint, bringing the fruit only ‘for jubilation before the Lord’ in Jerusalem. That signals that the once forbidden fruit is now eaten in public, not in secret, before the Lord, as a moment of celebration. That detail too recalls the Fall and makes its comment upon the horror of the fall. That is, when Adam ate the fruit, he shamefully hid from God for having eaten the fruit. But when Israel eats the fruit, it does so proudly, joyfully, before the Lord. The contrast is not to be missed, so too the message. Faithful Israel refrains when it is supposed to, and so it has every reason to refrain and to eat ‘before the Lord.’ It has nothing to hide, and everything to show.”

Neusner is discussing Leviticus 19:23-25: “When you come into the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, then you shall regard their fruit as forbidden; three years it shall be forbidden to you, it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all their fruit shall be set apart for rejoicing in the LORD. But in the fifth year you may eat of their fruit, that their yield may be increased for you: I am the LORD your God” (NRSV).

Suppose that Adam and Eve hadn’t eaten the forbidden fruit? Would they have stayed in their state of ignorance and simplicity? Or would God have allowed them to eat it once they became more mature? After all, the knowledge of good and evil is not necessarily a bad thing in Scripture. The Book of Proverbs is largely about distinguishing good from evil! Maybe Adam and Eve weren’t quite ready to do that yet. Or God wanted them to learn to obey him first, before they got into the realm of complex decision-making. Madeleine L’Engle once wrote that Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve was like offering a martini to a child!

C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra is about what would have happened had Adam and Eve obeyed God. It’s not Adam and Eve staying naked and simple for the rest of their natural lives! Adam and Eve actually receive glory in Lewis’ scenario.

I like the way that Neusner presents the issue: the Israelites learn to obey God when they refrain from eating the fruit for three years. Eventually, they eat as they rejoice before the Lord. Maybe that could have happened for Adam and Eve, and God wasn’t trying to withhold anything good from them.

Martyrs Atoning for the Church?

Source: Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1910) 83.

“Origen went so far as to ascribe to the sufferings of the martyrs an atoning value for others, an efficacy like that of the sufferings of Christ, on the authority of such passages as 2 Cor. 12:15; Col. 1:24; 2 Tim. 4:6.”

I read the same sort of idea in my Ignatius quiet time, but I have neither the time nor the energy to comb through Ignatius to find it. On the Internet, there are articles that associate “Ignatius” and “martyrdom” with “vicarious,” so I know I didn’t dream up the whole thing.

Let’s look at the biblical citations that Origen appeals to:

II Corinthians 12:15: I will most gladly spend and be spent for you. If I love you more, am I to be loved less? (NRSV)

Colossians 1:24: I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.

II Timothy 4:6: As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come.

I don’t see anything here about Paul making a vicarious atonement for his fellow believers. One can argue that Paul suffered for the sake of the church in the sense that he strove to feed it with the Gospel, putting his life and well-being on the line if need be. He would travel to edify the church, even if that entailed ship-wreaks and persecution. And his role as a libation may simply mean that he’s consecrated for God’s service, not that he’s making atonement for the church.

At the same time, I’m reluctant to rule out a connection between martyrdom and atonement. Both Paul and Ignatius act as if their suffering is necessary. In their eyes, it’s not a mere inconvenience that the world thrusts upon them, as they hope and pray that society will show them more tolerance. Rather, they glory in their sufferings, and they think that they share Christ’s passion when they suffer. One purpose of suffering is that it builds character (Romans 5:3ff.), but was there a reason that Paul and Ignatius had to suffer on behalf of the church? Was atonement part of this reason? If so, that wouldn’t nullify Christ’s atonement, since the New Testament is clear that Christians still need forgiveness, even after they’ve been cleansed by Christ (Matthew 6:12-15; I John 1). Also, this model treats atonement not merely as an individual affair, but as something with communal relevance.

A Christian Studying Judaism

Source: Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1910) 39.

“The Talmud is the slow growth of several centuries. It is a chaos of Jewish learning, wisdom, and folly, a continent of rubbish, with hidden pearls of true maxims and poetic parables…It is the Old Testament misinterpreted and turned against the New, in fact, though not in form. It is a rabbinical Bible without inspiration, without the Messiah, without hope. It shares the tenacity of the Jewish race, and, like it, continues involuntarily to bear testimony to the truth of Christianity.”

At the outset, let me say this: I’m not reading Schaff as if it’s an unbiased scholarly source. I’m reading it to get a feel for Christian history–who lived when, what did they teach, and what was going on at the time?

What’s interesting is that Schaff wrote in roughly the same time as Graetz, whose History of the Jews I’ve also been reading. Both can get pretty mean, let me tell you! Schaff writes that Judaism is uninspired and without hope, and Graetz portrays Christians as constantly distorting the Hebrew Bible (though he has a soft spot for Origen).

I took a class on the Talmud a few years ago at Jewish Theological Seminary, and one on the Mishnah here at Hebrew Union College. Both documents can be rather tedious, I have to admit. As I go through rule after rule about what is and is not permitted on the Sabbath, I inadvertently start to ask myself: “Who cares?” The Mishnah and the Talmud have a lot of beautiful stories (or “pearls”), such as one we read about a rabbi who honored his parents above himself. But much of these documents is law. What I liked about my Mishnah class, however, was that we got into the theological and religious significance of the laws.

This raises an important point: I may ask myself, “Who cares?” But somebody cares–for some reason. The Mishnah and the Talmud flow from a certain view of God and the universe–one that values a righteous order with clearly-defined boundaries. It may not be my view of God and the universe, since I prefer a “big picture mindset,” which says that it doesn’t matter if a person walks out of his house on the Sabbath carrying an object, just as long as he worships God and is kind to his neighbor. But maybe other religious views have something to teach me. Plus, Judaism isn’t getting its focus on the nuts-and-bolts of law from nowhere, since the Torah has a lot of laws that many would consider tedious. In certain respects, Judaism is a continuation of the Torah’s trajectory.

Is the Talmud void of inspiration, a Messiah, and hope? A Messianic Jew once asked me if I thought that the oral law was inspired. He loved studying the Talmud, and he was hoping my answer would be “yes” (not that anything I said would shape his beliefs, one way or another!). But I couldn’t really answer “yes,” since there are many places in the New Testament where Jesus opposes Pharisaic tradition. In Matthew 15:6, Jesus tells the Pharisees that their tradition makes void the law of God! So is the oral Torah inspired? I’m sure it has a lot of good things, but, as a Christian, I’d have to say “no.”

Is the Talmud without a Messiah? No! It believes a Messiah will arrive! But I remember my Talmud professor saying that Jews have to obey the law for the Messiah to come. In Judaism, he asserted, the Messiah is not a hero like he is in Christianity–a Savior from sin. Rather, the Jews play a role in ushering in the Messianic era.

That may look rather hopeless, especially since so many Jews are not orthodox, or even mildly observant. But it probably wasn’t hopeless to the authors of the Talmud. And I’m not even sure if traditionalist Jews today see it as utterly hopeless. When I was in Israel, a Chabad Jew was handing out tefillin on a Friday afternoon, since obeying the law of wearing tefillin on the Sabbath can help bring about the Messiah. I’m sure he realized that many of the Jews on the street were not orthodox! But he tried to do his part, once person at a time.

This whole topic of studying Judaism overlaps with my daily quiet time. I’m reading Ignatius, and Ignatius says that Christians shouldn’t be taught by non-Christian Jews. In Philadelphians 2:6, he states, “But if anyone shall preach the Jewish law unto you, hearken not unto him; for it is better to receive the doctrine of Christ from one that has been circumcised, than Judaism from one that has not” (from the Lost Books of the Bible). Ignatius means spiritual circumcision here: for him, Christians are circumcised in the sense that Christ has removed from them their sinful flesh; the Jews who rejected Christ, however, still have their sinful human nature. So Ignatius is asking what non-Christian Jews have that can benefit Christians. The law? That’s a path to nowhere, as far as Ignatius is concerned! Plus, in his eyes, Christ has fulfilled it.

We see this sort of sentiment in the New Testament. Titus 1:14 says that we should “not [pay] attention to Jewish myths or to commandments of those who reject the truth.” Does that mean we shouldn’t study other religions? In the eyes of the early Christians, other religions were a path to nowhere. They did not make people moral, since only Christ could conquer people’s sinful nature. And they often focused on irrelevant details rather than what’s important: godliness and faith.

But there have been prominent Christians who have learned from the Jewish people. Origen and Jerome studied Hebrew under them. I wonder myself if there is a way to study and appreciate Judaism, without compromising my Christian beliefs. “Jewish fables” can teach a lot of valuable lessons about God and morality. And, while I don’t think that laws by themselves can conquer a person’s sinful nature, I wonder if I as a Christian can appreciate the order that Judaism strives to accomplish.

Glorifying Death?

Source: John Sellars, Stoicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006) 145-146.

“What [Nicolas Malabranche (1638-1715)] found most objectionable in Seneca’s Stoicism was the arrogance of the claim that it is possible to be happy in this life. For Malabranche the Christian, human life here on Earth is inherently miserable, for we are all sinners, and so we must wait for the next life before we can be truly happy. Stoicism’s claim that one can indeed be happy here and now is, he argues, simply the product of human pride and arrogance.”

The issues that this quote touches on have cropped up in my readings and daily quiet times.

I’m reading the letters of Ignatius in The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden. Ignatius was a second century church leader. Basically, he had a death wish: he wanted to be a martyr. He saw this as a path to purification, and he eagerly anticipated being with Jesus Christ forever and ever.

At first sight, that looks rather selfish. After all, he can only serve people on earth when he’s alive, right? Paul wanted to die and be with Christ, too, but he realized that God may have other plans: “I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you” (Philippians 1:23-24). There were people who needed Paul, which was why he left his time of death up to God.

But Ignatius didn’t exactly view himself as selfish, for he thought that his death as a martyr could be an expiation for the Christian community. Ignatius was not the first to maintain that martyrdom is meritorious. In II Maccabees and IV Maccabees, God stops punishing Israel after Jewish martyrs give their lives for the laws of God’s Torah. Their deaths bring expiation and divine benefit to the community of God’s people.

I have problems with a religion that celebrates death. When I was at Jewish Theological Seminary, Mary Boys of Union Theological Seminary was giving presentations against Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. She said that Jesus did not come to earth to die; rather, he died because of how he lived. I think she meant that Jesus preached God’s love for all people–including the marginalized–and this incited Jewish religious leaders to plot against him. But I could be wrong, since she tried to pin a lot of the blame for Jesus’ death on Pontius Pilate, not so much the Jewish leaders. In any case, she tried to shift the focus of Christianity from death to life.

I admire her attempt, but I’m not sure if it’s biblical. Ignatius talks about experiencing Christ’s passion. Where’d he get such an idea? Presumably from passages such as Philippians 3:10: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death[.]” Paul wanted to be intimate with Christ, even in terms of knowing Christ’s passion.

When I was at Harvard, a friend told me about Opus Dei, an ultra-conservative Catholic group that had people wear nails in their shoes to experience the pains of the Lord. That sort of outlook may explain why the Opus Dei character in Da Vinci Code whipped himself over and over. “Isn’t the point of Christianity that Jesus suffered in our place, meaning we don’t have to suffer?,” my friend asked? Apparently not in the eyes of certain Christians, who try to identify with Jesus in his sufferings.

I’m reminded of something a friend of mine at JTS said. America was about to go to war with Iraq, and my friend was a West Point graduate. He said that the army glorified death, since there were many monuments to people who gave their lives for their country. My professor asked him if all that death was actually necessary. Similarly, Christianity seems to glorify martyrs, as if they were athletes–people who took their faith commitment to the ultimate level.

I can understand that Christians may find themselves in a position where they’d have to die. If the world threatens to kill them because of their faith in Christ, then what are they supposed to do? What I don’t get is Christianity’s glorification of suffering and death. I like the Old Testament and Ben Sira’s focus on blessings in this life, in terms of enjoying this life to the fullest, and helping others to do so as well.

There are other things that I can say about this quote, but I’ll stop here for the time being.

An Open CGI

I’m home in Indiana right now, and one of my traditions when I’m here is to peruse old issues of the Journal. The Journal is a newspaper that has articles by various people in the Armstrongite movement, though I believe that others have contributed to it as well. I vaguely recall reading an article by James Tabor in it.

One article in the June 30 edition concerned the Church of God (International) in Jamaica, which is headed by Ian Boyne. Although the Armstrongite movement is dying throughout the world, the CGI is growing exponentially in Jamaica. Its praise and worship is lively, meaning that it doesn’t just focus on standing up and singing the same old Dwight Armstrong hymns over and over. And the preaching is dynamic, leading Garner Ted Armstrong to comment in 1987 that it was among the best preaching he had ever heard. As someone who once attended an Adventist church that is predominantly Caribbean, I am not surprised.

What did surprise me, however, was how open the CGI in Jamaica is to hearing different ideas. A seminary student who believed Christians didn’t have to keep the Sabbath was given an hour to present his position to the church. Mondays are set aside for people who want to criticize something they disagreed with in the weekly sermon. And those who express disagreement are not disfellowshipped.

I already knew that Ian Boyne wasn’t one to shy away from the outside world. I read a long time ago that he visited seminaries and universities and explained to their students the Armstrongite positions on various religious questions. But I had no idea that he allowed people with different beliefs to come to CGI to present their ideas.

I somewhat admire the security that such an approach projects. CGI Caribbean is not afraid to be challenged. It doesn’t have the attitude of “don’t read this” or “don’t listen to him” that has afflicted many Armstrongite churches.

It reminds me of some of my own experiences. I’ve attended Sabbatarian churches that love to discuss stuff–with anyone who wants to discuss it. And they’ll go around the clock if necessary! When someone from the cultish International Churches of Christ was trying to recruit me at DePauw, my dad recommended that we invite him to our church. And a church my family attended met in someone’s home for a Bible study one Saturday, when some Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked at the door. Our host let them in, took them downstairs, and–SURPRISE–there was a Bible study group going on! The Jehovah’s Witnesses started to feel uncomfortable, and they soon left.

One reservation I have about Boynes‘ approach is that there needs to be caution. Some of these cultists will take over the show, if you let them! There was a reason that Paul and Ignatius told churches to obey the church authorities and not to tolerate heresy. Personally, I think Ignatius can get pretty authoritarian, but I can appreciate that he saw some need to create and enforce boundaries.

But, to his credit, Ian Boyne probably does things in an orderly manner. From what I read, he has a Sabbath service once every week, and he hashes out the controversial issues outside of the main service. The service is a place for the church to celebrate its common beliefs in a state of unity, but time outside of the service is set aside for the controversial stuff. That probably keeps things from becoming a free-for-all.

Temporal Referents: A Decent Sabbatarian Argument

Today, I want to wrestle with a Sabbatarian, pro-holy day argument that is somewhat hard to gainsay. Even though I’ve been arguing against Sabbatarianism for the past couple of days, I acknowledge that it can make decent arguments every now and then.

The New Testament contains a number of Jewish temporal referents, which are indicators of time that refer to a Jewish festival or institution. For example, Acts 20:6 says that Paul left Philippi after the Days of Unleavened Bread. Acts 27:9 narrates that Paul sailed to Rome shortly after the Fast, that is, the Jewish Day of Atonement. I Corinthians 16:2 tells the Corinthian Christians to set apart a portion of their income on the first day of the week, which in the Greek is “mian sabbatou,” or first of the Sabbath. In v 8 of that chapter, Paul says he will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost–the Jewish Feast of Weeks.

According to many Sabbatarians, the New Testament’s use of Jewish temporal referents indicates that Gentile Christians were keeping the Sabbath and holy days. In their view, these New Testament writings were directed towards Gentiles, and they wouldn’t include those kinds of temporal referents unless their recipients knew about and observed the Jewish calendar.

I’m not sure if this argument will work with Acts, since Theophilus (the recipient of Luke-Acts) could have been a Hellenistic Jew. Many Jews in the Diaspora had Greek names, plus Luke goes out of his way to demonstrate that Christianity is consistent with Judaism. Luke emphasizes over and over again that Christianity is neither contrary to the law and the prophets, nor does it encourage Jews to abandon the observance of the Torah (Luke 24:44; Acts 6:13; 18:18; 20:16; 21:20ff.; 24:14). This would makes sense if his reader were a Jewish Christian, who heard rumors that Paul was opposed to the law. And, if such were the case, then Theophilus‘ familiarity with Jewish temporal referents wouldn’t be that surprising, nor would it indicate that Gentiles were observing Jewish institutions. In this scenario, of course Theophilus was familiar with the Jewish days, for he kept them like any good Jew.

But Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is a different story, since many of the members of that church were obviously Gentile. So why would Paul use Jewish temporal referents for a Gentile audience? Here are some possibilities:

1. The Armstrongite solution is that the Corinthian church was observing the Sabbath and holy days. This possibility has a certain appeal, since temporal referents usually mean something to us when we are actually observing them. If someone tells me that an event will occur around Christmas, I can understand what he’s saying, for many people around me celebrate that day. One can therefore ask: Why would Paul refer to Jewish days in a letter to a predominantly Gentile church, unless it were actually keeping them? Their surrounding culture certainly was not! And one can argue that someone in the letter’s audience had to be doing so for the temporal referents to make any sense. So I can understand why many Sabbatarians conclude that the Gentile Corinthian church observed certain Jewish institutions.

But I have questions about this option. The biggest one is this: Why doesn’t Paul ever discuss how to keep the Sabbath? I mean, in Armstrongite and Adventist churches, people naturally wonder what is permissible and forbidden on that day (e.g., can I wash the dishes? Can I watch a movie? Can I swim?). Rabbinic Judaism wrestled with this whole issue, which is why it had an oral law: the Bible forbade work on the Sabbath, and the Jewish people needed to know what “work” actually was, if they were to obey the commandment. And that’s one thing that the Mishnah, the Tosefta, and the Talmud try to define. Why doesn’t Paul address this sort of dilemma in his letters, especially when the Gentiles in his audience were fairly new to Sabbath-keeping?

Of course, these sorts of questions can be handled orally. I mean, not every group that observed the Sabbath wrote about the nuts and bolts of halakah. I can’t find specific rules about Sabbath observance in Philo’s writings, but he still kept it! Over time, a community can develop customs and traditions about what to do on its Sabbaths and festivals. They may not wrestle with halakic questions because what to do is not controversial for them: they simply go along with what they’ve always done. Or, alternatively, maybe the Jews in the Diaspora abode by the halakic decisions of the Judean authorities. I don’t know.

Another problem I have is something I raised in my post, Sabbatarian “Paul Would Have” Arguments: We don’t see much in the New Testament about the church meeting on the Sabbath and holy days. A possible exception is Acts 2, where believers gather together on the day of Pentecost. But, overall, when the early Christians honored the Sabbath and festivals, they did so within a Jewish context. Paul entered synagogues on the Sabbath day (Acts 13:14-44; 17:2). He desired to be in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost (Acts 20:16). When he got to Jerusalem, he worshipped in the temple. Why would he want to go to Jerusalem, if he could attend Pentecost services at a nearby church? Armstrongites assume that the early church had Sabbath and holy day services, just like them. But I don’t see much evidence for that in the New Testament.

2. Maybe Paul uses Jewish temporal referents because there were Jews in the Corinthian church. Acts 18:1-18 depicts Paul gaining converts from a Corinthian synagogue. In parts of I Corinthians, he acknowledges that the church contains both Jews and Gentiles (I Corinthians 10:32; 12:13). I Corinthians 10:32 may contain a solution to why Paul refers to the first day of the week as “mian sabbatou” (first of the Sabbath). It says, “Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God” (NRSV).

As I argued in my post, Bacchiocchi’s Argument from Silence, the early church did not want the Gentile Christians to offend their Jewish brethren. That’s why they were to avoid meat offered to idols, fornication, strangled meat, and the consumption of blood: Gentiles viewed these practices as normal, but Jews deemed them to be abhorrent, even for non-Israelites. Some argue that this is the reason James says in Acts 15:21, “For in every city, for generations past, Moses has had those who proclaim him, for he has been read aloud every sabbath in the synagogues.” According to some interpreters, James is saying that there were a lot of Jews in the Diaspora, so Gentile believers needed to make sure that they didn’t offend them unnecessarily!

Could that be why Paul mentions the Sabbath in I Corinthians 16:2: he’d offend a lot of Jewish Christians by referring to the days of the week according to the Greek and Roman gods? And so, as a result, he sticks with the Jews’ way of labelling days–with reference to the weekly Sabbath? If that’s the case, it doesn’t mean that the Gentile Christians observed the Sabbath and annual holy days. Paul’s simply taking into consideration those in the congregation who did: the Jewish Christians. It’s something to think about!

3. There’s also a possibility that Paul wanted the Corinthian church to remember the Jewish institutions, even if not every member literally observed them. All of the Corinthian Christians were heirs to the Old Testament, as they drew rich spiritual lessons from its stories and laws (see I Corinthians 9:9; 10). So when Paul exhorts the Corinthians, “[L]et us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (I Corinthians 5:8), he may not be telling them to observe the Days of Unleavened Bread in a literal sense; rather, his message is most likely that they should forsake the leaven of sin and instead pursue sincerity and truth (see vv 5-7). A lot of this passage is metaphorical, as is v 7, which calls Christ our Passover. Could Paul intend for the celebration of the festival to be a metaphor for the Christian life rather than a literal observance? That would make sense. After all, we’re supposed to avoid malice and be sincere every day of the year, not only on the Days of Unleavened Bread!

The same applies to the Sabbath. When Hebrews 4:9 says that “a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God,” I don’t think it’s talking about believers resting every Saturday. The “rest” of Hebrews 4 is much larger than that, for it encompasses the Christians’ life and hope. At the same time, the Sabbath is still relevant, for the author of Hebrews appeals to it as he tries to explain a spiritual reality.

According to the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament‘s article on “sabbaton,” the church fathers continued to refer to the days of the week according to the Sabbath, even though they didn’t observe it (Didache 8:1; Martyrdom of Polycarp 8:1; 21:1, et al.). Maybe that’s because they still deemed the Sabbath to be spiritually relevant to believers, recognizing that it commemorated creation, conveyed eschatalogical significance, and symbolized the spiritual life of Christians (see the long version of Ignatius to the Magnesians 9:2-4, which is slightly pro-Sabbath; the short version 9:1, which is more anti-Sabbath; Barnabas 15:5-9; Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho 12:1). Perhaps they wanted to attach biblical significance to their week, so they stuck with the Jewish labels for the days: “Sabbath,” “preparation day,” etc. Each week, even if they didn’t observe the Sabbath literally, they got to commemorate the divine drama, which encompasses the Old and the New Testaments. And that may be why Paul mentions the Sabbath in I Corinthians 16:2.

Again, it’s something to think about!