I Corinthians 9:8-11 and Judaism

For my write-up today on Joseph Telushkin’s A Code of Jewish Ethics, Volume 2: Love Your Neighbor As Yourself, I will use as my fulcrum what the apostle Paul says in I Corinthians 9:8-11 (in the KJV):

^“Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also?  For it is written in the law of Moses, thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen?  Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope.  If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?”

Paul is saying that the law in the Torah about not muzzling the mouth of the ox who treads out the corn is teaching the principle that workers deserve to be paid and does not really relate to oxen, whom God does not “take care for.”  Paul is arguing in I Corinthians 9 that he as a minister deserves to be supported by the Corinthian church, but he has graciously elected not to make use of that right, and so the Corinthian church should give him a break.

I have heard sermons that have taken a swipe at Judaism on the basis of I Corinthians 9:8-11.  These preachers’ idea is that Christianity sees a deeper spiritual or ethical meaning in the Torah, whereas Judaism sticks with the literal interpretation.  One preacher I heard speculated that a Pharisee would probably be meticulous in insuring that his ox was not muzzled while it was treading out the grain, and yet the Pharisee would turn right around and defraud his workers.  According to this preacher, the Pharisee was obeying the literal level of the law, while violating the law’s deeper meaning.

I seriously doubt that Pharisaic or rabbinic Judaism supported defrauding workers, whether or not it believed that the law in the Torah about not muzzling the ox had deeper meaning.  After all, the surface meaning of Leviticus 19:13 is that the Israelites should not defraud their neighbors and should pay wages promptly.  But did Judaism ever see deeper meaning in laws that related to the treatment of animals?  Yes.  Maimonides said that the law in Deuteronomy 25:4 about not muzzling the ox applies to other working animals as well.  Maimonides also stated that the law in Deuteronomy 22:6-7 forbidding the taking away of baby birds or eggs in the presence of the mother bird has implications for how we treat humans: “If the law provides that such grief not be caused to cattle or birds, how much more careful must we be not to cause grief to our fellow man” (The Guide for the Perplexed 3:48). 

Maimonides was not always consistent on the principle, for Telushkin notes that Maimonides was anti-Gentile, to the point that Maimonides ruled that a Jew is not obligated to save a Gentile idolater whose life is endangered (“Laws of Murder” 4:11).  But Telushkin asserts that anti-Gentile laws are not mandatory for Jews today, for we should remember the anti-Judaism among Gentiles in Maimonides’ environment, and how that contrasts with the tolerance towards Jews in the United States.  Telushkin refers to the thirteenth century French rabbi, Menachem Meiri as one who “issued a legal ruling intended to alter the status of non-Jews in Jewish law permanently” (page 279), and to alter it in a more tolerant direction.

I’d now like to turn to the apostle Paul’s question: “Doth God take care for oxen?”  Judaism would answer in the affirmative, for Psalm 145:9 affirms that God’s mercy is on all his works.  According to Telushkin, how we treat animals is a good indicator of our character, especially when animals are weaker than we are and lack the ability to thank us for our kindness.  I much prefer that attitude to that of Paul.

4/24/2012 Links

I’ve been reading a lot of excellent posts these last few weeks.  Here, I want to share some of them with you (if you haven’t read them already).

1.  Messianic Jew Derek Leman talks about Rachel Held Evans’ controversial post, 15 Reasons I Left Church.  Derek refers to an e-mail that he received, which said (and Derek changed some parts to respect the person’s anonymity):

“At the local university I am completing some classes in Judaism and loving them. Then I attend my local church and things that never bothered me before are suddenly a terrible disappointment. In a recent sermon, the pastor unfortunately used the typical theme of Jewish faithlessness in contrast to Christian faithfulness. His complete lack of skill in exegeting the scriptures, in realizing the authors themselves were Jewish, and that anti-Judaism is nowhere to be found in a skillful reading of the New Testament is alarming.  In another recent Bible discussion, many of the members gave smug answers about the harmfulness of the Law and the superiority of ‘grace,’ as they understand it. I felt so out of place here. This is the first time I have come to feel like a stranger in my own church. I am afraid I don’t fit within Christianity anymore, but my faith in Jesus has not diminished at all. Why can’t churches see Messiah for who he is? How can a person whose eyes are opened to these things remain?”

This made me think some about my own church’s approach towards the Hebrew Bible and Judaism.  (My church is PCUSA.)  Like other churches that I have attended, my current church criticizes the Pharisees (see my post here), and it sometimes treats the Hebrew Bible as inferior to the New Testament.  At the same time, both the Pastor and the Pastor Emeritus have said that God’s hand was in the creation of the modern state of Israel, albeit they didn’t say this in a fanatical Christian Zionist way.  Moreover, I think that our Bible study through Margaret Feinberg’s Scouting the Divine was a positive step, for Feinberg demonstrated knowledge and appreciation for laws in the Hebrew Bible, such as the Sabbath, gleanings, and the land rest.  Some people in the group were using that as a platform to promote blue laws, which (as someone who spent time in Seventh-Day Adventism) frightened me somewhat.  But Feinberg’s book definitely encouraged us to see the Torah positively.

2.  The Christian Heretic shared a journal entry that she wrote when she was a Christian in college.  She said:

“My Chi Alpha friends loved me when I was ultra-spiritual and rebuked me when I wasn’t.  So I sort of went into pseudo-spiritual.  I did all the right things, said the right words, but my motivation was to make friends, not just to get to know God.  He was the fringe benefit.  Here at home, my friends at church seem so shallow and superficial.  Whenever I get together in a social gathering, it’s all rowdy, fun and games, crazy, not too much hint of a serious side.  In both situations, I feel I have compromised my relationships with God for the relationships of people.  I keep searching for the perfect friend.  One who has all the qualities listed earlier.

“People just aren’t like that, though.  Every human being on this earth puts conditions on their love for one another.  ‘I love you because you seem spiritual.’  ‘I love you because you’re wild and crazy and like a good time.’  ‘I love you because you are my daughter.’  No person can love all the various facets of an individual.  A person loves, not another person, but certain sides of his personality that are compatible with their own.  Only God can love the whole person.”

I identified with wanting a deeper relationship with God that was hard to find amidst the evangelical fun-and-games, and also desiring unconditional love, which is hard to get in this world.

3.  Nick Norelli criticizes Bart Ehrman’s remark that “Apart from fundmanetalists and very conservative evangelicals, scholars are unified in thinking that the view that Jesus was God was a later development within Christian circles”.  Nick appeals to Larry Hurtado, a scholar who argues on the basis of cultic devotion that Jesus was exalted early on in Christian history, meaning that a relatively high Christology is early rather than late.

4.  Rodney shares what he thinks about being in churchrelevance.com’s Top 200 Church Blogs.

5.  Kate Elizabeth Conner talks about the two times that she adored Jerry Falwell when she was a student at Liberty University.

Stricter Abortion Law?; Eating a Limb; When Can a Gentile Keep the Torah?

I have three items for my write-up today on David Novak’s The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism.

1. In Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 57b, we find that abortion is prohibited for Gentile Noachides, to the point that the death penalty is prescribed as the penalty for that crime.  No exceptions to this prohibition are mentioned.  Tannaitic sources, however, do not treat abortion as a capital offense for Jews, plus they allow abortion to save the life of the mother.  So is the law stricter for Gentiles than for Jews?  As Novak documents, Jewish interpreters have said “no”.  They have either affirmed that Noachide morality applies to the Jews, or that the Gentiles, too, are allowed to resort to abortion when the fetus threatens the life of the mother.  There is a queasiness about asserting that Noachide morality is stricter than the Torah.

And yet, in my latest reading of Novak, there do appear to be times when the Torah is more lenient than what is required for Gentiles, and the reason is that Gentiles are viewed as corrupt.  For example, on page 103, we read that “for gentiles premeditation may be inferred, whereas for Jews it must be explicitly verified in capital cases.”  For Jews, it must be established that the suspect was aware of the prohibition that he violated and acted with premeditation, whereas premeditation is assumed with the Gentiles (or so I understand Novak’s point).  But Novak also refers to the view within Judaism that “In cases of ignorance of circumstances…Jewish law is also lenient with gentiles” (page 103).

2.  One of the Noachide commandments prohibits eating a limb torn off of a live animal.  Why?  One view is that this was an idolatrous rite.  Another view is that this commandment teaches people to refrain from cruelty.  And a third view is that eating a limb from a live animal violates God’s boundaries and order, since we’re supposed to eat the meat of animals that have died, not meat from animals that are alive.

3.  On pages 198-199, Novak talks about the late medieval Jewish thinker Meiri, who wrestled with the issue of whether Gentiles could observe and study the Torah.  According to Novak, after the destruction of the Temple and the schism between Jews and Christians, there was an attempt within Judaism to set up clear boundaries between Jews and Gentiles, and the result of that was removing “Anything suggesting a quasi-Judaism”.  Consequently, the third century Palestinian amora Rabbi Simon b. Lakish affirmed that a Gentile keeping the Sabbath deserved death, and his brother-in-law Rabbi Johanan ben Nappaha stated that a Gentile studying Torah merited death (B.T. Sanhedrin 58b-59a).

But things get murkier when we come to Maimonides and Meiri.  Meiri justifies these rabbinic rulings by saying that their concern was that people would think that Gentiles observing the Jewish laws were themselves Jews and would thus try to learn from them.  Meiri probably does not want for Gentiles to get their impression of what Jews are like from religious syncretists who may hold views that mainstream Judaism regards as unacceptable, and so Meiri wishes that Gentiles did not keep certain Jewish customs.  (Many Jews today have the same issue with Messianic Judaism.)  At the same time, Meiri does believe that Gentiles can observe some commandments in the Torah because he notes that Gentile offerings and donations were deemed acceptable at the Temple while it still stood.  Similarly, Maimonides “permits Gentiles to observe Jewish commandments and receive reward from God” (page 198).  And Meiri allows Gentiles to study the Torah “if their study of the Noahide laws likely will le[a]d them to conversion” (page 198).

Novak then asks a good question: “What is the difference between religious syncretism, which both Maimonides and Meiri judge as the basis for the prohibition of gentile observance of the Sabbath and Torah study, and electing to observe some Jewish commandments?”  The answer is this: If a Gentile is trying to start a new religion and is incorporating Jewish elements into that, then what the Gentile is doing is prohibited.  If, however, the Gentile accepts Jewish revelation and is electing to observe parts of it as a Gentile, then that is okay.  Maimonides applied the latter to the ger toshav, a Gentile who dwells within Israel.  And Meiri applied it to Christians, who accept the legitimacy of Jewish revelation.  Meiri’s view on this probably was not unanimously received, for there were Jews who regarded the Christians as idolaters.

The Noachide Laws: Jewish/Gentile Relations and Idolatry

I started David Novak’s The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism.  Novak talks about the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple literature, rabbinic literature, medieval Jewish literature, and modern Jewish literature, in terms of their stances on the Gentiles and the moral requirements to which Gentiles were believed to be subject.  In my post here, I’ll talk about ideas that I encountered in Novak’s book, without necessarily placing those ideas in a specific historical context.  I know that’s not good scholarship, but I want to get this post done this morning because I have other things to do!

My reading of Novak last night clarified things that I read in another book by Novak, Natural Law in Judaism.  In The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism, Novak talks about the Noachide laws, the seven commandments that elements of rabbinic (and subsequent) Judaism said that Gentiles needed to obey.  Novak discusses the relationship of the Noachide laws to the Torah.  One stream of thought viewed the Noachide laws as part of the Torah—-the part of the Torah that Gentiles would have to obey were they to dwell in Israel or (in the Messianic Age) be under Jewish authority; a similar view that associated the Noachide laws with the Torah held that the Gentiles became obligated to the Noachide laws once the Septuagint was promulgated.  Another stream of thought basically equated the Noachide laws with natural law by viewing the Noachide laws as rationally discernable.  What was the purpose of the Torah, if there was a natural law telling people (including Jews) the difference between right and wrong?  The Torah essentially was regarded as superior to the Noachide laws, and some even treated the Noachide laws as commandments that could prepare Gentiles to become Jews and embrace the entire Torah, or at least more of the Torah.

The belief in the Noachide laws enabled Jews to live at peace with their Gentile neighbors.  Jews were often regarded as clannish and misanthropic, and they could appeal to the Noachide laws to convince the Gentiles that Jews did not view the Gentiles as immoral, for Jews had a concept that Gentiles could be righteous by observing the seven Noachide laws.  Jews could also attain a degree of political autonomy by persuading the Gentiles that the Jews overlapped with the Gentiles on certain moral principles, and so granting the Jews autonomy would not violate the morality of the larger society.  And, on a practical level, Jews could accept the decisions of Gentile courts by telling themselves that Gentile morality overlapped with the Torah because it was consistent with Noachide commandments.

I’d like to touch on Jewish views on Gentile idolatry.  The prohibition against idolatry is one of the seven Noachide laws, which Gentiles are bound to observe in order to become righteous.  Does that mean that most Gentiles are unrighteous, since they worship idols or other gods?

According to Novak, there was a degree of latitude.  Philo in the first century C.E. believed that people should not even blaspheme pagan gods, for he assumed “that the pagan mention of god or gods is really directed at the One God”, which means that “polytheism is a philosophical mistake, but behind its error is latent monotheism” (Novak’s words on page 3).  On the basis of such passages as Ben Sira 17:17 and Rabbi Jochanan’s remarks in B.T. Shabbat 156a, Novak sees a Jewish notion that Gentiles could approach God through visible intermediaries (such as the heavenly bodies).  And then there was the acknowledgement that avoiding idolatry was quite difficult outside of the land of Israel, as one can see in David’s belief that his flight from Saul into other lands put him at risk of worshiping other gods (I Samuel 26:19), and Elisha’s concession to Naaman that allowed Naaman to participate in an idolatrous rite in Syria, even though Namaan worshiped the God of Israel (II Kings 5).

Supersessionism; A More Ethical Acts 15:20

I started Brad Young’s Paul the Jewish Theologian.  I have two items:

1.  On page 3, Young quotes Abraham Joshua Heschel, who talks about Christian supersessionism:

“The Christian message, which in its origins intended to be an affirmation and culmination of Judaism, became very early diverted into a repudiation and negation of Judaism; obsolescence and abrogation of Jewish faith became conviction and doctrine; the new covenant was conceived not as a new phase or disclosure but as abolition and replacement of the ancient one; theological thinking fashioned its terms in a spirit of antithesis to Judaism.  Contrast and contradiction rather than acknowledgement of roots relatedness and indebtedness, became the perspective.  Judaism a religion of law, Christianity a religion of grace; Judaism teaches a God of wrath, Christianity a God of love; Judaism a religion of slavish obedience, Christianity the conviction of free men; Judaism is particularism, Christianity is universalism; Judaism seeks works-righteousness, Christianity preaches faith-righteousness.  The teaching of the old covenant a religion of fear, the gospel of the new covenant a religion of love…”

I thought of this passage when I read John Mayer’s comments on Psalm 78:43-51 in Charles Spurgeon’s Treasury of David:

“Moses wrought wonders destructive, Christ wonders preservative: he turned water into blood, Christ water into wine; he brought flies and frogs and locusts and caterpillars, destroying the fruits of the earth, and annoying it; Christ increased a little of these fruits, five loaves and a few fishes, by blessing them, so that he herewith fed five thousand men: Moses smote both men and cattle with hail, and thunder and lightning, that they died, Christ made some alive that were dead, and saved from death the diseased and sick; Moses was an instrument to bring all manner of wrath and evil angels amongst them, Christ cast out devils and did all manner of good, giving sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, limbs to the lame, and cleansing to the leper, and when the sea was tempestuous appeasing it; Moses slew their firstborn, thus causing an horrible cry in all the land of Egypt; Christ saveth all the firstborn, or by saving makes them so; for thus they are called, Hebrews 12:23 .”

Young disagrees with the sentiment that Christianity is better than Judaism or the Old Covenant, at least in the way that Heschel says Christianity has conceptualized the issue.  According to Young, we cannot say that the God of the Hebrew Bible is a God of wrath, whereas the God of the New Testament is a God of love and grace, for there are times when the God of the Hebrew Bible is loving and gracious, and there is a prominent theme of God’s wrath in the New Testament.  I would add that Judaism and the Hebrew Bible contain such concepts as universalism (God’s love for all people), faith, and obeying God out of love (although there is also a strong particularist streak as well as an emphasis on ritual observances).  Young also contends that the New Testament does not promote a lawless sort of faith, for, like elements of Second Temple Judaism, it holds that good works are an expression of faith.

I agree with Young on these points, but I also believe that the New Testament contains the roots for the Christian supersessionism that he criticizes.  Paul, after all, associates the law with wrath and condemnation, while he holds that Jesus Christ has brought in a new age of grace.  John 1:17 says that the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  I don’t think that Paul and John are like Marcion, who maintained that the God of the Old Testament was cruel whereas the God of the New Testament was loving.  Paul and John probably felt that God had good reason to run things as he did during the old dispensation—-to convict people of sin so that they’d recognize their need for Christ, to regulate their behavior and provide discipline until Christ came, etc.  But now it’s a new dispensation.

2.  Young talks about the Codex Bezae manuscript.  You can read about that here.  This Codex dates to the fifth century, but Young believes that it may contain a more original version of the Jerusalem conference’s decree in Acts 15.  In Acts 15:20, the church decides that the only requirements for Gentile Christians will be for them to refrain from sexual immorality, not to eat meat offered to idols and animals that have been strangled, and to abstain from blood.  The Codex Bexae, however, says “to abstain from pollutions of idols, from fornication, from blood[shed] and whatsoever you would that men should do to you do not to another.”

I happen to like the Codex Bezae’s version.  A problem with the requirements for Gentiles in Acts 15:20 is that so many things are left out.  As Desmond Ford has asked, does Acts 15:20 mean that Gentiles don’t have to honor their parents, since “Honor your father and mother” is not one of the requirements for Gentiles?  It makes more sense, therefore, for the church to have required Gentiles to obey some form of the Golden Rule.

At the same time, I’m not sure if Young is correct that the Codex Bezae has an earlier and more authentic version of the Jerusalem Conference’s decision.  I can understand why a manuscript would give the decision a more ethical orientation, which is what we see in the Codex Bezae.  But why would one take an ethical decision and remove ethical pieces from it, such as the Golden Rule?  It makes more sense to me that the former happened, not the latter.

Another point that I’d like to make is that Young, in his discussion of the Jerusalem Conference, believes that there was some diversity within the New Testament church.  On page 39, Young states:

“Paul would probably view these legal requirements [in the Codex Bezae of Acts 15:20] as a maximum for the non-Jews to observe.  Peter, on the other hand, would tend to view these laws as a minimum.  He would hope that the new believers from pagan backgrounds would adopt more of the Jewish religious observance.”

Passover Links

I have some good links for Passover, from a variety of perspectives.

1.  Laura Baum is a Reform rabbi, who was a classmate of mine at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.  She has an excellent article at the Huffington Post about the role of Elijah in Judaism.  She discusses different eschatological views about Elijah, how they do not resonate with many religious Jews (who believe that people should make the world better themselves rather than hoping for a Messiah to do so), and how Elijah can still play an important role in liberal Jewish seders.

2.  Bob MacDonald shared with me a post yesterday by the Velveteen Rabbi.  I appreciated the following passage:

“This festival comes to tell us that we can experience liberation in our own lives! Liberation from sorrow, liberation from despair, liberation from our constrained and broken spirits, liberation from whatever constrictions have been part of our story. What a glorious promise.  And yet. There will be people who feel — there will be times when each of us will feel — that mitzrayim is ongoing, that we cannot break free. That God doesn’t lift people out of anywhere with a mighty hand or an outstretched arm anymore.  To those caught in a constriction which will not let go, I offer this prayer: that this Pesach may offer you an expansive breath through that tiny open space which turns hametz into matzah. A glimpse of freedom, a foretaste of the world to come. May it give you the space you need in order to cry out, as tradition tells us the Israelites cried out in our agony. May you find meaning in the story, the prayers and the songs, the familiar tastes, even though your liberation is not yet complete. And may those of us who do not (currently) feel bound remember you at our seder tables, and offer you every kindness we can.”

3.  Derek Leman is a Messianic Jewish rabbi, and he has a post entitled Passover: For Jews and Non-Jews.  The opening of the post especially stood out to me: “The old way of thinking: Judaism and Christianity are separate faiths based on contradictory premises. The historically correct way of thinking: Second Temple Judaism left two heirs, sister faiths, and one of them morphed into rabbinic Judaism while the other morphed into Christianity.”

4.  I’d like to share a post I wrote a couple of years ago: Is the Seder about Christ?  I critique different sides in that post, as well as wrestle with scholarship about the seder.

Completing Marshall’s Jesus and the Religions of Man

I finished David Marshall’s Jesus and the Religions of Man.  I read the Appendix, which tackled the Crusades, Inquisitions, pogroms, and witch-hunts.  I won’t go into great detail about Marshall’s arguments in this section.  I wrote this post in response to similar arguments that he made in The Truth Behind the New Atheism.  There were some things in the Appendix to Jesus and the Religions of Man which were different, and they certainly deserve consideration: that the Salem witch hysteria was starting by girls who were flirting with black magic, that the trials did not follow biblical procedure, that an imperial mindset played a role in the Crusades, etc.

On the whole imperial mindset issue, I wish that Marshall had applied that to the topic of anti-Semitism, or (more accurately, perhaps) anti-Judaism.  Unlike Marshall, I’m very hesitant to say that the New Testament had nothing to do with anti-Judaism within Christianity, for, in my opinion, the division between Christianity and most of Judaism played a role in the church’s stigmatization of Jews.  This may very well have started out as a debate between Jews, as Marshall and other have argued.  After all, even the Old Testament continually criticizes the children of Israel.  But criticism of Israel became more of a stigmatization of the “other” as more and more Gentiles entered the church, and the portrayal of the Jews as hard-hearted and as corrupt in both the Old and also the New Testament played a significant role in how Gentile Christians conceptualized the Jews.  I don’t believe that was the only factor.  The New Testament certainly does not command Christians to humiliate or slaughter the Jews, for it tells people to love their enemies, to be humble, etc.  While I maintain that the Bible played a role in how Gentile Christians viewed the Jews, I think that the notion that Jews should be subjugated and treated as a defeated people comes from other things, such as triumphalism, an attitude that is consistent with an imperialist mindset, but not with New Testament principles.

I have two other thoughts, which take some of Marshall’s arguments as their starting-point, even though they do not entirely relate to Marshall.

First, on page 309, Marshall refers to a critic who told him: “You’ll say they’re not real Christians.  But you have to take the bad with the good.  Christianity has changed many lives for the better, but it has also done a lot of harm.”  Does Marshall argue that those who were responsible for the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the pogroms, and the witch hunts were not real Christians?  At one point, Marshall refers to those responsible for one of those atrocities as alleged Christians.  But he also acknowledges in this Appendix that there were true Christians who participated in those examples of gross wrong-doing.

I’ve always hated the evangelical argument that those who were involved in atrocities were not real Christians.  I was once talking with a Christian conservative fanatic who was continually bashing President Obama and Muslims.  When she was expressing outrage that American Muslims are allowed to practice their religion in the U.S. military and referred to Muslim atrocities throughout history and in the present, I told her about atrocities that Christians have done.  She responded that those who do not love other people are not true Christians.  I thought what she said was ridiculous.  I mean, what right did she have to be so smug and judgmental?  Is she showing love when she stigmatizes an entire group of people?  Is she saying that true Christians cannot make mistakes?  What makes her think that she’s so perfect?  I admire Christians who are willing to admit that they and others can err in judgment, not Christians who act like they’re the “true Christians” while those who fall short (sometimes dramatically) are merely “professing Christians”.

Second, Marshall talks a lot in this book about the good that Christians have done.  Before reading Marshall, I thought that was a rather trite argument.  I mean, I used it often against atheists and non-believers back in the days when I was a conservative evangelical!  But what I have concluded after reading Marshall is this: it can easily become a trite argument because I and others have used it as such—-as a mere debating point.  It’s one thing to use a predictable conservative Christian debating point in an attempt to score, to make myself look good, and to make my opponent look bad.  It’s quite another thing altogether to step back and to admire those who put their necks on the line so that the oppressed, the marginalized, and the disadvantaged can have a chance, and (even more) to realize that I may have an obligation to help, too.  I’m not criticizing Marshall here, for he has done humanitarian work, such as combating the sex trade.  When reading his polemics, I often wish he would show more humility, but I know that I am not always humble in the battlefield of online and print debates.

The next book that I will read will be Marshall’s very first book: True Son of Man: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture.

David Marshall: Is Christianity a Curse?

For my write-up today on David Marshall’s The Truth Behind the New Atheism, I’ll blog about Chapter 8, which responds to the charge that Christianity is a curse.

1.  On page 156, Marshall states: “Jesus said you will know a tree by its fruits (Matthew 7:18-20).  The legitimacy of a teaching can therefore be judged by its effects…’Saints are sinners, too,’ some Christians respond glibly, then drop the subject as quickly as possible.  That won’t do.  The claim isn’t only that there are bad apples in the gospel barrel, or even that some criminals co-opt Christianity to do evil.  The claim is that there’s something in this faith, when taken seriously, that leads to the murder of the innocent.”

This is the question: Is there something within the Bible or Christianity that leads people to murder the innocent?  Marshall does not believe so.  He argues that the sorts of things that are blamed on Christianity (i.e., killing witches, inquisitions, and anti-Semitism) have been present in non-Christian and pre-Christian cultures as well.  He questions how devout the population was when the Crusades and the Holocaust occurred.  (He states on page 168 that “the percent of SS troops who belonged to the Catholic Church plummeted during the war”, and that “While six percent of university students studied theology in 1933, when the Nazis took power, that figure fell to only two percent by 1939.”)  He appeals to heroic things that Christians did, such as saving witches from death in medieval times and rescuing Jews during the Holocaust.

Marshall interacts some with the Bible itself to determine if the Bible is part of the problem.  Regarding witchcraft, he refers to the healings of demoniacs by Jesus and Paul (Mark 5 and Acts 16).  He also affirms that the New Testament does not promote hatred against the Jews but commands us to love everybody.  But what about the apparently problematic biblical texts?  On page 161, Marshall states: “The Old Testament does seem to give explicit warrant for what would come: ‘Do not allow a sorceress to live’ (Exodus 22:18).  Some modern witches argue, however, that the Hebrew term referred not to wicked herbalists, but ‘black magic.’”

I think that Marshall should have wrestled a bit more with the laws in the Hebrew Bible, for they seem to have analogies to the things that Marshall says we should not blame on Christianity.  Crusades?  The Torah presents the Israelites conquering Canaan at God’s command and slaughtering men, women, and children.  Killing witches?  Well, Marshall cites Exodus 22:18, which mandates the death penalty for them.  The Inquisition?  The Torah has laws prescribing the death penalty for idolatry and apostasy.  “But that’s the Old Testament, and we live in New Testament times”, Christians could retort.  But isn’t it problematic that God at any time commanded these sorts of things? 

2.  Marshall says on pages 165-166: “Of course it’s a terrible shame that anyone cooperated with the Nazis.  That’s easy to say, sitting in a leafy twenty-first century American or English neighborhood!  But what is surprising about murder and cowardice from an evolutionary point of view?  It’s just as Dawkins and Hauser predict: one looks out for one’s own, not for the ‘out-group.’  What’s surprising is when people risk their lives to save people of another race.”

I actually like this point because I myself can be quite timid.  I can easily rhapsodize about how I would have done the right thing in the time of the Nazis or segregation, but who knows?  Perhaps I would have been most concerned about protecting my own skin and not making waves.  That’s why I admire the Christians (and others) who loved people enough to do the right thing, at potential risk to themselves.  In my opinion, that’s the strongest argument for Christianity: that it can give people the courage to do what’s right, even when it’s hard.

3.  And yet, Marshall states on page 172: “‘Accepting Jesus’ does not, I admit, magically transform the beast within.  Jesus didn’t say it would.”  I think that Christianity advertises itself as something that does change people, since II Corinthians 5:17 affirms that those in Christ are new creations, and Paul’s Gospel concerns the death of the old, fleshly, sinful man and the birth of a new man who walks in the Spirit and serves righteousness.  But the problem is that so many Christians don’t appear to be new creatures.  I’m not going to get on my high horse and smugly say that they’re not “real Christians”, as do many evangelicals whom I know (as if they’re so perfect).  But I do wonder at times if Jesus changes people and, if so, how, for I myself realize that there is a “beast within” me, and me saying the sinner’s prayer several years ago did not make that beast magically go away.

I think that, on some level, change can come if we really want it (and I’m talking about really wanting it, not feeling that we have to want it because God will send us to hell if we don’t).  An experience or new knowledge may convince us that our current way of doing things is wrong and so we should pursue an alternative path.  But I also believe that there is a place for trying to make the best out of who I am now, rather than waiting for God to zap me and make me different.  I think of my introversion, for example.

On the issue of change, see Bruce Gerenscer’s excellent post, Does Jesus Change People?

4.  Marshall says on page 163: “Did Jesus only care about Jews, as Dawkins claimed?  Or is Harris right that the gospel teaches us to hate Jews?  Perhaps we should leave Dawkins and Harris to hash it out between themselves and come up with a single coherent accusation?”

I think that one can believe both of these things simultaneously, on some level, and a reason is that the Gospels themselves are multi-layered.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Jesus cared only about the Jews, but he does focus on Israel in the Gospels, enough to say that his mission is to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.  At the same time, the Gospels reflect concerns after Jesus’ earthly ministry, such as the inclusion of the Gentiles into the church, and many scholars have argued that this issue was projected onto the life of Jesus.  The Gospels, after all, were telling about the life of Christ, but they were also addressing issues that their audiences faced.

Did Jesus favor the inclusion of Gentiles?  This is debated.  Many ask why, if Jesus said or did anything that favored Gentile inclusion, Paul does not make reference to it to buttress his case.  But then some conservative scholars will retort that Paul’s concern was not Gentile inclusion, but rather the issue of whether or not Gentiles had to be circumcised and keep the law to become part of God’s people.  All Christians agreed that they should be included, but they differed on the criteria of their inclusion.  And, even in the Gospels, Jesus does not appear to address that particular issue, so what saying of Jesus would Paul cite?

Does the Gospel teach us to hate Jews?  I wouldn’t phrase it that way.  But I do believe that Israel is stigmatized in the New Testament, and this was due to a variety of factors: the rivalry between Jews and Christians, the Jewish establishment’s persecution of Christians, Christian frustration that most Jews were not seeing what Christians believed they were seeing in the Hebrew Scriptures (Christ), etc.  This view on the Jews was passed down from generation to generation, and it came to circulate apart from its original context.  Can anti-Semitism be blamed on the Gospels?  No, for the Jews were stigmatized before Christianity, since they often stood out as people with peculiar customs, and they were believed to be clannish and xenophobic.  But, in my opinion, the New Testament did play a role in accentuating criticism against Jews and Judaism.  Even if criticism of the Jews within the New Testament was by Jews themselves (which is sometimes the case, as with Paul, and sometimes may not be, as with Luke and Mark), as Marshall argues, the growing influence of Gentiles in the church led to the criticism snowballing into outsiders’ hostility towards Jews.

Is I Thessalonians 2:13-16 Pauline?

On page 125 of Jewish and Pauline Studies, W.D. Davies says that I Thessalonians 2:13-16 was authentically Pauline, whereas many scholars have maintained that the passage was added later than Paul.  A. Andrew Das, in Paul and the Jews (which I recently read and blogged through), also maintains that Paul wrote I Thessalonians 2:13-16, and he offers thorough arguments for his case.  In this post, I will talk about some of those arguments.  I will focus primarily on Das, since he is more thorough than Davies in his discussion of this issue.

I Thessalonians 2:13-16 states the following (in the King James Version): “For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.  For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews:Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men:Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.”

In the nineteenth century, Das notes, the main arguments against the Pauline authenticity of this passage was, first, that it referred to the events of 70 C.E. (“the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost”), which occurred after the time of Paul, and second, that it presumed a clear distinction between the Jews and the Christians, which happened after 70.  According to Das, some nineteenth century scholars still defended the passage’s Pauline authenticity, asserting that the wrath that the passage mentions could have been a pre-70 incident of calamity experienced by Jews (i.e., the famine of 46-47, persecution under a harsh Judean governor, the killing of thousands of Jews in 49, or the suppression of Theudas’ revolt in 49), or that Paul was speaking of a future wrath, as Paul speaks of God’s coming judgment as if it had already occurred. Das’ solution is that the wrath of I Thessalonians 2:16 is an eschatological wrath, which Paul believed could have present dimensions (Romans 1:18; 9:3, 22).

In the twentieth century, Das narrates, there emerged new arguments against I Thessalonians 2:13-16′s authenticity.  Das mentions these arguments, then he responds to them.  The first argument is that Paul in I Thessalonians 2:14 exhorts the Thessalonians to imitate the churches in Judea, which is uncharacteristic for Paul, who often tells his readers to imitate Christ or himself.  Das retorts that Paul often does “support his exhortations with the example of other churches (see 1 Cor 11:16; 14:33; 16:1-2; 2 Cor 8:1-7; cf. Rom 15:26-27)” (though Das does not think that I Thessalonians 2:14 is technically an exhortation, since Paul tells the Thessalonians that they are already living like the Judean Christians, not exhorting them to do so), and that v 14 expands upon Paul’s statement in I Thessalonians 1:6-9 about imitating the suffering of Paul and his co-workers.  The second argument is that II Thessalonians 2:14-16 uses linguistic constructions (i.e., joining two main clauses by kai, separating “Lord” and “Jesus” by a participle) and vocabulary that are not typical of Paul.  Das responds that the linguistic constructions in question are found in Paul’s writings, and he attributes the non-Pauline vocabulary to Paul drawing from earlier Jewish and Christian language.  (For example, according to Das, Paul uses apokteino because he draws from a long tradition about Israel killing the prophets.)  

The third argument is that removing I Thessalonians 2:13-16 provides for a smoother transition between v 12 and v 17, for Paul already thanked God in 1:2-3, so why does he need to do so again in I Thessalonians 2:13-16?  Das replies that Paul often uses and ABA pattern of saying something, switching to another topic or tangent, and then resuming discussion about his previous topic.  Das thinks that is going on in I Thessalonians 2, for he says that Paul emphasizes “we” (“But we, brethren”) in v 17 precisely because he is resuming his discussion before vv 13-16.  Das also notes that “thanksgiving is a motif that runs throughout the letter (see also 3:19)” (page 134).

The fourth argument is the “lack of historical evidence for Jewish persecution of Christians in Judea” in Paul’s time, at least to the extent that I Thessalonians 2:13-16 is describing.  Das thinks that this is a relatively strong argument, for Josephus narrates in Antiquities 20:200 that the Pharisees were angered by the death of James, plus Paul in Galatians 5:11 admits that he wouldn’t have suffered as much had he insisted on circumcising the Gentiles, and Das states that the “conflicts of Galatians 2 and Acts 15 revealed a preference by many Jerusalem Jews for Gentile circumcision in order to join the church (cf. Acts 16:3, 21)” (page 135).  For Das, these items are evidence that “relations between the Jerusalem church and the Jewish community may not have been that tense.” 

But Das ultimately rejects this argument.  He states on page 135 that “The NT documents do suggest a pattern of at least occasional persecution of the early Christians at the hands of non-Christian Jews not only in Judea (e.g., Acts 6-9 [esp. 8:1]; 22:4; 26:9-11) but also elsewhere (e.g., Thessalonica in Acts 17:5)”, and that Paul himself refers to Jewish persecution of Christians in II Corinthians 11:24 (where he speaks about his own suffering) and Galatians 1:13 (where he says that he persecuted the Christian church before he believed in Christ).  Das says on page 137 that “the Judean persecutions described by Luke in Acts must have been intense but only sporadic and perhaps limited to the early years of the church prior to the death of Herod Agrippa in 44 C.E.”, for Acts 9:31 presents the Christians in Judea, Galilee, and Samaria enjoying peace after the turbulence of Acts 6-9.  Das’ argument is that Paul in I Thessalonians 2:13-16 is referring back to these past events.  But Das also offers another argument: that Paul is using hyperbole in I Thessalonians 2:13-16, as Jewish writers did when characterizing their opponents “within eschatological contexts.”  Das notes the apocalyptic elements of I Thessalonians—-the “us” vs. “them” mindset, Paul’s discussion of the opposition he experienced to his work, etc.—-and concludes that I Thessalonians 2:13-16 fits well within I Thessalonians. 

Davies’ arguments are not as thorough as those of Das, but they cover some of the same ground.  Davies argues against the claim that I Thessalonians 2:13-16 is late because the passage is severe in its criticism of the Jews.  Davies contends that “Jews have often been their own most severe critics” (page 125).  But Davies does not believe that Paul was being anti-Jewish, but rather that Paul was specifically criticizing the Jews who were hindering his own work, plus Davies states that Paul was not closing the door of hope to Israel after the flesh.  A feature of the case of both Das and Davies is that Paul was engaging in an inter-Jewish dispute, not criticizing the Jews as an outsider.

Bara, the Golden Rule

I’m continuing my way through Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Wishart Anderson.  I read two essays:

1.  One essay that I read was S. Lee’s “Power Not Novelty: The Connotations of [Bara] in the Hebrew Bible.”  Lee’s argument is that the Hebrew word “bara”—which is often translated as “create”—relates to God’s sovereignty or control more than the creation of something new.  At times, “bara” does not refer to the creation of something new, but rather to renewal or refurbishing.  And, in the case of Exodus 34:10, “bara” is used to refer to the Conquest, which, for Lee, pertains to God’s power and sovereignty.  When “bara” does appear to highlight God as creator, as in Second Isaiah, the context is usually a discussion of God’s sovereignty.  You can see all of the appearances of “bara” in the Hebrew Bible here.  Personally, I don’t see the problem with translating “bara” as “create”—although it’s not necessarily creation ex-nihilo, but can entail making something out of already existing material, or situations.  And God’s status as creator relates to his power and sovereignty.

2.  I also read J.I.H. McDonald’s “The Great Commandment and the Golden Rule”.  McDonald talks about the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule, which, within the New Testament and rabbinic literature, are viewed as a summary of the entire Torah.  Or, in the Gospel of Mark, love of neighbor as oneself is contrasted with ritual.  McDonald criticizes a tendency—within Greek and Latin literature, and also in scholarly commentaries on the New Testament—to treat the Golden Rule as a matter of reciprocity: If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.  That is why McDonald believes that another factor is important, a factor that is highlighted in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: God’s grace to people, which is undeserved.

I do not really understand how the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule relate to reciprocity—though I do suppose that there is a degree of egoism in them, since how I want to be treated is an essential aspect of them.  Also, McDonald does well to highlight how Greek and Latin authors had a Golden Rule, and yet they also had a notion of fairness—that their enemies should be punished.  But I don’t think that the Golden Rule necessarily implies reciprocity.  As my Mom told me repeatedly when I was growing up, “The rule is not ‘Do unto others as they do unto you’, but ‘Do unto others as you want others to do unto you’.”

I appreciated a point that McDonald makes about Jewish and Christian dialogue.  He said that, often, it has degenerated into a clash over which side came up with the Golden Rule first—the Jews or the Christians?  But what we should do is learn from one another.