Peckham’s Optimistic Jeremiah

For my write-up today on Brian Peckham’s History and Prophecy, I’ll start with a statement that he makes on page 395:

“Despite the optimism of Jeremiah and his mentors, it soon became evident that the reform would have no long-range effect on the future of Judah and Jerusalem.  Nahum knew Jeremiah’s work but did not agree with his tempering of the tradition, and described the onrush of the divine storm that would be the undoing of the city.  Habakkuk recalled and reconfirmed the vision of Isaiah and knew that it would be accomplished by the Chaldeans.  Zephaniah went back to the day of Yahweh envisaged by Amos and saw that the end of the world was at hand.  Ezekiel wrote when the worst was over to describe how and why the people had died and the conditions of their rising again.  For some the reform had failed; for others it made no difference; for all there was a prophetic fate and doom and historical predestination unrolling in their own time before their very eyes.”

For Peckham, certain prophets after the time of Jeremiah took up the mantel of Isaiah: they predicted destruction.  They may not have viewed the destroyers as the Assyrians, as Isaiah did, but they prophesied that some nation would destroy Jerusalem and Judah.  On page 353, Peckham talks about Jeremiah’s vision of the “crumbling of a world order that the Priestly writer described”, which sounds like Richard Elliott Friedman’s argument in Who Wrote the Bible? that Jeremiah argues against P—and one way that Jeremiah does so is by predicting in Jeremiah 4:23 that there will be a reversal of the created order of P’s Genesis 1, as the land reverts to a state of tohu va-vohu.

And yet, Peckham’s argument is that Jeremiah had optimism, and prophets after him sought to counter that.  Peckham’s claim takes me aback, for Jeremiah strikes me as a prophet of doom.  But Peckham bases his argument on Jeremiah 2-3, 4-5, 6 and 8, 9-10, and 30-31.  From these chapters, Peckham concludes that what is going on in Jeremiah’s message is this: God is threatening to destroy Jerusalem and to send Judahites into exile, and Judah indeed experiences God’s discipline.  But, right before she is hurled into exile, Judah repents and submits to God’s law, and God forgives her, and also restores Northern Israel from exile.  Peckham may think that the Book of Jeremiah as it comes down to us—which presents Jeremiah as one who predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and exile for Judah—was the result of redaction, as people sought to bring Jeremiah into line with what had actually happened: Jerusalem’s destruction and the exile of the Judahites.

Comps: Mishnah for the Future?

Source: Ben Zion Wacholder, Messianism and Mishnah: Time and Place in the Early Halakhah (Hebrew Union College, 1978).

Wacholder’s thesis seems to be that many of the Mishnah’s laws were intended for the Messianic period, when the temple will be rebuilt. I have some questions about this:

1. According to Wacholder, there were rabbis who believed the Jubilee would apply to the Messianic period, not their own time. If that is the case, why did Hillel invent the prosbul to circumvent the cancellation of debts every seventh year? He seemed to believe that those kinds of land laws were still applicable and thus needed to be reckoned with.

2. According to Wacholder, “The most-holy sacrifices could be consumed only inside the curtains of the sanctuary, and these existed only in the Tabernacle and the First Temple and will exist again in the Messianic Temple” (32). If that is the case, why do the synoptic Gospels refer to the curtain of the temple being torn from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45)?

3. Wacholder says that, in the eyes of the Mishnah’s authors, capital punishment will exist in the Messianic period. This raises profound questions. Isaiah 11 says that the Davidic king of restored Israel will slay the wicked with the breath of his mouth. Yet, it also affirms that people will not hurt or destroy one another, since the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD.

Jeremiah 31 says God will write his laws on the hearts of the Israelites and Jews, meaning they won’t have to teach people to know God. At the same time, it also states that people in that time will be punished for their own sins, not the sins of their parents.

But why are people being punished period, if God’s law is on their hearts, meaning that they don’t sin? Are the prophets referring to the judgment that will precede or introduce the Messianic era?

Dr. Dobson and the System

I’ve talked on this blog before about Doc Love, a dating guru whose advice has helped many. He has a dating technique called “The System,” which is based on three C’s: confidence, (self-) control, and challenge.

For Doc, women generally like men who are confident enough to approach them, who don’t totally fall apart whenever they’re rejected. A good sense of humor also helps, for Doc is clear that a man on the first date should be “light and funny.” Self-control means that a man should wait a week after meeting a woman before he calls her, and it also includes being willing to say “no” to a woman every now and then (which women love). That leads to Doc’s third C, “challenge,” which is allowing women to do some of the chasing. A man needs to show a woman that he has a sense of self apart from her. He should definitely flirt, since that goes with “confidence,” but there are also times when he should pull back. That can increase a woman’s “interest level.”

Doc’s advice is not exactly what you see on movies and television, at least not most of the time. Sure, there was an episode of 7th Heaven (Season 1) in which Matt told one of his friends to act aloof around Mary, since “chicks dig that.” Unfortunately, his friend didn’t follow that advice but chose instead to fawn all over her, leading her interest level to drop lower than it already was.

But, overall, movies and shows tell men to fawn all over women. “You need to tell her how you feel, send flowers every day, remind her all of the time that she’s beautiful.” There’s a place for all that, since such deeds can convey appreciation, which women (like everyone) desire. But, for Doc, they also don’t want a man whom they can walk all over. And women like receiving gifts and compliments from men they like, for whom they already have a high interest level. Gifts and compliments do not necessarily increase a woman’s interest level, as far as Doc is concerned.

Well, in the midst of all of these conflicting messages that are out there, guess who agrees with Doc Love (though perhaps by coincidence)? Another Doc–the Doc of the evangelical community–Dr. James Dobson!

That’s how Jim Dobson got Shirley. Here’s a quote from Dale Buss’ Family Man: The Biography of Dr. James Dobson:

“[A] more unsettling…strand of their relationship was the perpetual cat-and-mouse game they played as each one tried to figure out how serious they should be and whether the other partner in the relationship felt the same way…This dating equivocation surfaced almost immediately. [B]y the end of their first summer of dating, Shirley told him that she wanted to resume dating a boyfriend from the previous spring. Dobson later recalled his response as a crucial early step in their relationship. ‘I said that was a good idea, because there were some girls I wanted to date too,’ he says. ‘She said that she wanted to go with him and me too. And I said, ‘No, go with him.’ I set her free at that moment. If I’d said, ‘You can’t do that to me; maybe I love you!’ the relationship would have been over, stone-cold dead–I know Shirley. But I was confident enough to do that. She never dated him again. She stayed with me’” (33).

This game of cat-and-mouse continued on and off until Dobson finally proposed. Buss explains:

“Dobson finally drew an end to the uncertainties by determining that he wasn’t going to be a beggar in this relationship. One evening he pulled over the 1949 Mercury convertible he called Ol‘ Red and gave his beloved a moonlit speech. He was going somewhere in life, he told her, and he wanted her to come along. If she didn’t, he would move on. Shirley opted in, and their relationship was forever defined” (33-34).

He wasn’t going to be a beggar in the relationship. Doc Love couldn’t have said it better!

Dobson’s own experience inspired his book, Love Must Be Tough. I was listening to it a few weeks ago, and he said that the men who normally got the girl in his day were the ones who flirted, while maintaining some aloofness. Dobson also recounted that Shirley was a major heartbreaker in her younger years!

This puzzled me because Shirley was a Christian from her youth. Because of her troubled childhood, she learned to depend on her heavenly Father from a really early age. Would a Christian break mens‘ hearts?

That’s when it hit me: so much of dating is a game. Sure, there are important aspects to it, like genuinely enjoying the company of another person. But a big part of dating is determining if this is the one you want to be with for the rest of your life. And many women are drawn to a man’s strength (and I don’t primarily mean his muscles!).

As I was thinking about this, my (and Bryan L’s) favorite Bible passage entered my mind: “If you have raced with foot-runners and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you fall down, how will you fare in the thickets of the Jordan?” (Jeremiah 12:5, NRSV).

God is telling Jeremiah to stop complaining and toughen up, for things will soon get worse. Or they can get worse. And, believe it or not, this verse gives me comfort, probably more than the usual passages that Christians go to for reassurance (“I will never leave you nor forsake you”). I can whine about my current situation, or I can use it as an opportunity to become stronger. And I will need strength if I ever enter the dating game, for there is a lot of rejection out there!

"Maybe I Went Too Far This Time"

I heard a sermon a few weeks ago on anger. It was at a Catholic church that I attend. Much of what the priest said was standard: there is right anger (righteous indignation) and wrong anger (which is selfish and hateful). The priest also said that parents should never discipline their kids while they are angry. He probably said this because parents can go overboard when they act out of anger; once they let the anger pass, however, they are more likely to be fair and levelheaded in their discipline. When he made the latter statement, a thought entered my mind: “Didn’t God discipline people when he was angry? Is God’s justice always (or ever) dispassionate?”

The question occurred to me because of something I read in Jeremiah not long ago. In Jeremiah 42, Jeremiah speaks to the people who were remaining in the land of Judah after the Babylonian invasion. In v 10, Jeremiah says in God’s name, “If ye will still abide in this land, then will I build you, and not pull you down, and I will plant you, and not pluck you up: for I repent me of the evil that I have done unto you.” When I first read this verse, I interpreted it as follows: “Okay, I went a little too far in my punishment, I’ll admit. I was angry. But I’ve changed my mind. I’m willing to give you people a second chance right here and right now. You don’t have to wait 70 years for your nation to have a new beginning, as I originally promised. I’ll work with you right now.” But the story turns out to vindicate God’s original plan to destroy Judah (at least for a season). Even after God makes the Judahites a promise of immediate blessing, they distrust him, reject his word, and disobey his command, for they flee to Egypt rather than staying in Judah. So God’s first instincts were correct! It would take a lot more discipline before the Judahites were ready for restoration.

This is not the first time that God acknowledges he may have gone too far. In Genesis 8:21, God says, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.” Here, God seems to be saying, “I just can’t keep wiping out all of my creation whenever humanity gets too sinful! If I do that, then I’ll be destroying it on a regular basis, since human beings are inherently wicked. I guess I’ll have to put up with them and work with them any way I can.”

The strange thing, however, is this: Although these passages present God as acting out of anger, the biblical narrative as a whole does not portray God as impulsive. God put up with humanity’s corruption for several years before he sent the flood. For centuries, he endured Israel’s flagrant transgression, until he finally decided to do something about it. So God is not exactly like a parent who gets mad at his child and starts spanking her until she bleeds. God had time to deliberate about what he was going to do.

At the same time, God seems to regret his punishment of the sinners. Perhaps that’s because it was only theoretical to him when he was talking about it, but he saw how horrible it was once he actually did it and observed its effects. Initially, God was saying, “I am so mad at you! I will do such and such to teach you a lesson!” But once he did such and such, he saw how disastrous it was and regretted his action.

But was God wrong to punish sinners? I don’t think so. What else could he have done? Had he allowed the generation of the flood to continue in its sinful ways, humanity would probably be worse today than it actually is. And what else could God have done to Israel to turn her from her sins? He had already sent famines, and those weren’t producing any repentance. God had to shake her dramatically before she came to her senses.

Some may say that God does not resemble my portrayal of him because the Bible has a lot of anthropomorphisms, which are descriptions of God in human terms to make him more understandable. I’ll address this tomorrow. Have a nice day!

Should Josephus Be Used in Biblical Studies?

I was going to save this post for a rainy day, but I am so excited about my new blog that I am in the mood to post it now. Let’s hope that I come up with new thoughts for future posts!

Allow me to give some background information for my question. On another forum, a skeptic argued that Ezekiel made a false prophecy about Tyre and Egypt. Ezekiel prophesied that Tyre and Egypt would fall to the Babylonians, that did not happen, and so Ezekiel was technically a false prophet according to Deuteronomy 18:22 (or so the skeptic argued).

I thought about this issue some more when I was doing my daily reading and meditation on the Book of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 43 and 46, Jeremiah predicts that Babylon under Nebuchadrezzar will conquer Egypt. My HarperCollins Study Bible, my Jewish Study Bible, and my Anchor Bible Dictionary all tell me that this did not happen, for Nebuchadrezzar failed in his attempt at conquest. On what do they base this claim? They do not say. But I did a search on the Internet (not that I rely on the Internet alone for my scholarly endeavors), and I found the claim that the Babylonians did not record that they successfully invaded Egypt. For many scholars, such an omission would indicate that they most likely did not, since conquerors in the ancient world tended to boast about their accomplishments.

But here is the interesting part: Josephus says that Nebuchadrezzar did succeed in his endeavor (Antiquities 10:182, 195). One may argue that Josephus was basing his account on the biblical prediction, but, in Against Apion 1:132-133, he says that Berosus presents Nebuchadrezzar as a conqueror of Egypt. According to Josephus, Berosus was a Chaldean who followed the ancient records of his nation in composing a history of Babylonia.

But the plot thickens: I can envision someone saying that neither Josephus nor Berosus can be trusted, since they lived long after the time of Nebuchadrezzar (at least that was a possible objection that entered my mind). But, in an article on “Edom” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, scholar J.R. Bartlett uses Josephus (along with other sources) to draw conclusions about the relationship between Babylon and Edom in the sixth century B.C.E. (ABD, volume 2, p. 293). Josephus lived long after that time, and yet at least one biblical scholar seems to think that his works can be helpful for biblical studies (at least on this occasion).

I have not done research to see how many biblical scholars use Josephus, but my question is: Is it acceptable? Why or why not?