Subversive Sequels, Chapter 1

Disclosure statement: I did not receive any compensation from JPS for this review, but I did get a nice free book!

Note: I’m told the FCC has a new rule requiring bloggers to disclose any compensation when offering a review online.
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Subversive Sequels in the Bible: How Biblical Stories Mine and Undermine Each Other
Judy Klitsner. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2009.

Judy Klitsner teaches Bible in Jerusalem at the Pardes Institute, a non-denominational Jewish school. She reads the Bible with a sensitivity to feminist issues.

I was immediately interested in her book because inner Biblical interpretation is an area I want to read up in. In my coming research in Ezekiel, I believe the interaction in Ezekiel with earlier texts will be a key element. That is also why I will soon be tackling Michael Fishbane’s Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel.

Subversive sequels is a look at a series of pairs of Biblical texts in which Klitsner believes the later text deliberately undermines some of the ideas in the earlier text. Chapter 1 is of particular interest to me as Klitsner takes on Jonah as a subversive sequel to the Noah story.

Before considering the many parallels and possible interactions between Jonah and Noah, a key question is whether the Jonah story was written deliberately to comment on the Noah story. Klitsner’s study is literary and she does not address the issue of Jonah and history. Are we to understand Jonah as a fictional character and the book of Jonah as a parable? This is a leading interpretation in critical commentaries. Or was there a Jonah son of Amittai (2 Kings 14:25)?

All of that said, the parallels between the Noah story and the Jonah story do call for consideration:

(1) Noah sent a dove (Hebrew, yonah) to see if the flood was ended; Jonah is, of course Yonah.

(2) God flooded the world because of hamas (violence, injustice); in Jonah, the Ninevites repented of their hamas and turned away from it.

(3) Noah and Jonah’s stories both involve boats, sea journeys, and water-induced catastrophe (even though Nineveh is nowhere near the sea).

(4) The Noah story is about judgment without mercy; the Jonah story is about mercy over judgment.

(5) Noah ends his career in self-induced slumber and drunken self-destruction; Jonah begins his quest sleeping in the hold of the ship, then asking to be drowned in the sea, and at the end praying for God to take his life.

(6) Noah is ambivalent about the destruction of the world while God is unrelenting; in Jonah, God wants to save the wicked, but Jonah is unwilling.

Klitsner says:

As we will see, the book of Jonah serves as a subversive sequel to the story of Noah. The Jonah narrative adopts much of the Noah story’s language and many of its themes to invite comparison. But then the second story begins to dismantle and revise the first, questioning many of its basic assumptions about the prophet, about God, and about the doomed population. To begin with, the Book of Jonah will ask whether Jonah, with all his similarities to Noah, will be able to rewrite his story. Perhaps this time the prophet will adopt a more generous attitude toward others, and by extension, toward himself. In addition, the sequel will question God’s behavior, asking whether God might eschew the strict justice of Noah’s Flood in favor of a more forgiving attitude toward humanity.

Many of Klitsner’s insights are powerful and revealing. Sometimes her exposition lacks credibility. For example, she rightly notes the Hebrew pun involved in the sentence, “And Noah found favor in God’s eyes.” Noah is two letters in Hebrew: nun and chet. Favor is two letters: chet and nun. NoaKH found KHeN in God’s eyes. Yet Klitsner stretches the point with a non-sequitur: “[This] hints that the hoped for impact Noah was to have on the world is replaced by the much more limited, personal impression he makes on God.”

In other words, the purpose of the pun in Hebrew is to show that Noah is a disappointment. His father had hoped for much from him in 5:29, saying his name was to be Noah because maybe he would bring comfort to the world (comfort is from the same root as Noah). But Klitsner feels the reader is supposed to notice that Noah is instead a disappointment since he only found favor (khen) in God’s eyes. Never mind that the pun could be there to highlight the positive: that one Noah did receive favor from God in an age when the world was completely wicked.

However, for every strained exposition, Klitsner brings a dozen compelling ones. In fact, the theme of Noah as a disappointment was one I had never considered. Here is a summary of Kiltsner’s case:

(1) In 5:29, Lamech hoped his son, Noah, would bring comfort (Hebrew root, n-h-m) from the curse placed on humankind in the garden.

(2) In 6:6, using the same root word as comfort this time in a different meaning (regret), God turns Lamech’s hope on its ear: “The Lord regretted (Hebrew root, n-h-m) that he had made humanity on the earth.”

(3) Noah never asks God to spare more people in contrast to Abraham in Genesis 18 who tries to get Sodom and Gomorrah spared or given more time to repent (Klitsner notes that the rabbis had long made this comparison between Abraham and Noah to show that Abraham was more righteous).

(4) After the flood, Noah is apparently depressed. He builds a vineyard and gets drunk and is found lying unconscious and naked in his tent.

(5) The drunken episode leads to a curse, not a blessing, and the story records Noah’s death immediately after, though chronologically he did not die for some time.

Klitsner comments:

There is irony in the “man of the earth” planting something as inessential as grapes in the aftermath of the world’s destruction, instead of a more basic crop such as wheat. But his actions highlight his desperation to escape his unbearable reality, to simulate death by living in self-induced unconsciousness. The next logical step, his actual death, is recorded immediately afterwards, despite the fact that it occurs many years later. . . . God had wanted to spare the prophet from the Flood, but in a sense Noah, like all those around him, drowns. It is not God, but Noah who extinguishes his own breath of life by inundating his body with liquid.

While I would quibble with Klitsner that vineyards were every bit as vital in agriculture as wheat, nonetheless I confess to elation in the insight she finally comes to. Of all the stories of Noah’s life the narrator could have included, why the drunken episode? It not only explains the curse on the descendants of Canaan, but more than that, it shows Noah drowning in the aftermath of the world’s destruction. Perhaps he did feel some sense of failure for not trying to save more people. Or perhaps he was lonely and despondent in a world now containing only one family.

With careful attention to word-motifs and evidence for deliberate parallels, Klitsner brings this kind of close scrutiny also to the Jonah story. The prophet Jonah begins sick with failure and ready for death. Im his story, God wants to save the wicked and he wants them to die. Klitsner notes that his father’s name, Amittai, is from the root for truth. Is Jonah unrelentingly dedicated top truth above compassion?

The Noah story begins with the silence of the prophet. Noah does not ask God to save more people. The Jonah story ends with silence. God asks if he should not have compassion on the people and animals of Nineveh. But Jonah has nothing to say in answer to God.

Klitsner’s exploration of subversive sequels achieves what I consider to be the primary achievement of a good book on Biblical studies. She helps the reader to see the texts in new ways. Her expositions are not without fault, but at least in this opening chapter, she brings light to the mysteries of God’s judgment and mercy. My own theology differs a bit from hers, not being as willing to find fault with God in the Flood account. I would say that context was different between the Flood and Nineveh and that the Judge of all the earth does right. In fact, the repentance of Ninevah, if you believe Jonah is based on real events, was temporary and did not save them. In the end, the Assyrians like the generation of the flood, paid the price for their hamas and went down in history as a defeated empire and a despised people.

You can see more about Subversive Sequels in the Bible here or on amazon.

PODCAST: Yeshua in Context – Kingdom of Heaven, Pt 3

In part 1, we considered one of the largest associations Yeshua’s hearers would have had with the phrase “kingdom of heaven” or “kingdom of God.” That is the return of a kingship like David’s, a golden age for Israel under the right shepherd blessed by God.

In part 2, we considered the words of Israel’s psalmists and prophets about the great changes in the world when the rule of God overtakes the rule of man. We talked about Israel regathered, a paradise of singing and dancing, agricultural wonders, and God dwelling on earth in Jerusalem.

Now in the third part of our look at ideas about the kingdom of heaven, I want to look to the gospels and examine the many examples of people in Yeshua’s time thinking about and talking about the kingdom. Did people then think more than people do in our generation about the sudden and radical changes in the world that God would bring? Did they expect something drastic to happen? Were they looking for a Messiah? Were they looking for immediate changes to start at an unknown time?

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Recent Books on Biblical Interpretation

I’ve read a number of interesting books about how to interpret the Bible recently. Most recently I spent an intense few weeks in Kenton Sparks’ God’s Word in Human Words. I have a review which will appear in the May 2010 issue of Kesher Theological Journal (see Kesher online here).

Sparks’ book was one of the more negative books about the Bible I have read. I am not reviewing it on the blog since I agreed to do so for a journal. But I can say a few things about the book. Sparks wants to hold on to the authority of the Bible and at the same time accept the results of critical study of the Bible. I share the goal, but it seems to me that along the way Sparks lost his way. I appreciate another take I read recently, in Provan, Long, and Longman’s A Biblical History of Israel. They talk about reading tradition optimistically, giving it a benefit of the doubt. Sparks, it seems to me, has not done this. In his book, any time the Bible could be wrong, he assumes it is.

Readers unfamiliar with critical Biblical scholarship would be shocked to read Sparks’ views on many topics. In fact, many critical scholars take a more tradition-friendly tack than Sparks did. Results of his scrutiny of the Bible include:

–The Pentateuch is an anthology conflicting theologies from Israel’s different periods and schools and should not be read as a unity (p. 218ff).
–Samuel-Kings is theological-historical fiction embellishing an unknowable legendary core (p. 202).
–The Chronicler invents episodes to affirm the doctrine of reward and retribution in this life (pp. 221-2).
–Daniel’s “failed prophecies” are a genre of apocalyptic meant to communicate God’s control but not be taken seriously as prophecy (pp.223-4).
–John’s gospel uses invented chronology to strengthen the theological theme of Yeshua as Passover lamb (pp. 222-3).

Perhaps the worst example of negativity in Sparks’ book is his handling of the Canaanite genocide issue. God commanded Israel to expel and/or exterminate the Canaanites from the land. Sparks claims this is nothing more than the bigotry of the Ancient Near East and yet it is somehow included and accommodated into the Bible (pp. 297-298).

Needless to say, my review of Sparks will be about what I think he missed, theologically speaking, as he sought to deal with a constructive view of the Bible (one that integrates faith and critical reading).

Another recent book: Blue Parakeet
By contrast, I read and reviewed on Messianic Jewish Musings Scot McKnight’s Blue Parakeet. I so appreciated two principles for reading the Bible which McKnight not only expounded, but also illustrated with examples.

First, he said we need to read the Bible as story. Much of the Bible is, literally, narrative. And the non-narrative parts can be read as part of the ongoing story. This may seem a simple principle, but you can easily get confused since various traditions have not read the Bible as story. McKnight lists other methods including the following:

–Morsels of law: the way of reading the Bible that sees it as a rulebook and rather without consideration for context or development within the Bible isolates rules here and there. Fallacies abound in this approach.
–Morsels of promise: same thing, but with promises instead of rules.
–”Puzzling together the pieces to map God’s mind”: turning the Bible into a system of coded clues which all fit into one grand theory of theology. This method fails to recognize that the Bible includes varying viewpoints on the multi-faceted complexity of life and faith. Sometimes the Bible even seems to be contradictory as it expands our view of the multivalent reality of life (look up multivalent–it is a good word).
–Reading for the maestros: McKnight’s term for people who focus on one or two personalities in the Bible and read all through the lens of their words. Paul is the maestro of evangelicalism, for example, and would never approve of the way the rest of the Bible is shelved in evangelical churches (every time I bring this up, people deny it–but if you attend such a church pay attention to the way even other Bible texts have to in the end get vetted by Paul).

Second, I appreciate the way McKnight pushes Bible readers to see it as a developing story, or a wiki. Just as a wiki (an internet phenomenon–look it up if you don’t know what I mean) is updated and renewed by later writers, so it is with the Bible. The Bible is constantly in conversation with itself. Later parts look back on earlier parts and reexamine and tweak what was said earlier.

You can read my earlier review of Blue Parakeet here.

Speaking of Wiki: Subversive Sequels
If McKnight clued us in to the wiki nature of inner Biblical conversation (later parts referring back to earlier parts and expanding or even undermining what was said earlier), Judy Klitsner takes the task further, exploring in depth some of the relationships between two or more parts of the Bible that are in conversation.

Klitsner’s new book, which JPS was kind enough to send me as a review copy (note: FCC, I disclosed that I got a free book–new rules in case readers didn’t know), Subversive Sequels in the Bible: How Biblical Stories Mine and Undermine Each Other will be the subject for a soon-coming review on Messianic Jewish Musings.

Klitsner’s topic is the way certain ideas taken up in older Biblical passages are then recast in a new light in later Biblical passages. One that I am most interested in is the comparison between Noah and Jonah. If you think about it, you should be going, “Ahhh, I see it now.” One is God judging the world and saving one man. The other is God sending a man to save a city from judgment and the man doesn’t want them to be saved. Hmmm. Can Klitsner persuade that the connection is deliberate? Is it a reflection in the inner Biblical conversation about the nature of God’s judgment and of his mercy?

I will enjoy soaking it all up. But most of all, I keep reading and rereading the supreme text itself: the Bible. The rich spiritual and intellectual insights come slowly but surely. I believe in Torah lish’ma, Torah for its own sake. It is the idea that the very process of reading and studying the Bible enriches us, whether we get some deep insight or not.

Israel and Messiah’s Return

I have been having dialogue with a number of people who feel that Israel’s part in God’s healing of the world is done. Messiah came from Israel and since that time, Israel’s part is finished. Israel to some is the failed people of God.

The following is an excerpt from my book The World to Come which you can see here on amazon.com.

This excerpt assumes a number of things about how to interpret the Israelite prophets and how the time periods fit together. For a full explanation, I refer you to the book.
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Israel and the Age to Come
Virtually all of the promises of the age to come occur in Israel and with Israel as the central player. Again, we might assume that this was due to the audience’s limitation in understanding. Jewish prophets spoke about future Israel because Israel was being addressed. On the other hand, as I have said before, it may be that we need to orient ourselves to the Bible’s perspective rather than translating it to our own.

When Yeshua returns, it will be to Israel. When Yeshua returns, the specific event that draws him will be Israel’s need for rescue in a gruesome war commonly known as Armageddon. “Then Adonai will go out and fight against those nations, fighting as on a day of battle,” and “his feet will stand on the Mt. of Olives” (Zech 14:3-4).

Consider the basic plot of the end of this age and the beginning of the age to come. You can see more detail and a more complete list of prophecies in “Appendix A: Scripture Compendium.” For the moment, I simply want to introduce the drama and quote biblical language about the World to Come:

Israel will be drawn back into the land: “He will return and gather you from all the peoples to which Adonai your God scattered you. If one of yours was scattered to the far end of the sky, Adonai your God will gather you even from there; he will go there and get you” (Deut 30:3-4).

Armies from the nations will attack Israel: “I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle” (Zech 14:2).

God will trap these armies, luring them to attack Israel: “I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat [Adonai judges]” (Joel 3:2, see also 9-16).

God will destroy those armies and rescue Israel: “Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe; come, and tread, for the winepress is full. The vats are overflowing, for their wickedness is great” (Joel 3:13).

Yeshua himself will be Israel’s deliverer: “For I tell you, from now on, you will not see me again until you say, `Blessed is he who comes in the name of Adonai’” (Matt 23:39).

God will restore the tribal lands in Israel: “These are the borders of the land you are to distribute for inheritance by the twelve tribes of Israel” (Ezek 47:13).

Jerusalem will become the center of the world: “It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of Adonai shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it” (Isa 2:2).

The Torah will be given to the nations: “Many peoples shall come, and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of Adonai, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of Adonai from Jerusalem” (Isa 2:3).

Non-Jews will attach themselves to Jews in order to find God: “When that time comes, ten men will take hold – speaking all the languages of the nations – will grab hold of the cloak of a Jew and say, “We want to go with you, because we have heard that God is with you’” (Zech 8:23).

Nations will be included with Israel as God’s people: “In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom Adonai of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance” (Isa 19:24-25).

The hearts of Israel will be made new, circumcised, and filled with Torah: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit inside you; I will take the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit inside you and cause you to live by my laws, respect my rulings and obey them” (Ezek 36:26-27, see also Deut 30:6 and Jer 31:33).

A river of life will flow from the Temple in Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, which will become alive: “On both riverbanks will grow all kinds of trees for food; their leaves will not dry up, nor will their fruit fail. There will be a different kind of fruit each month, because the water flows from the sanctuary, so that this fruit will be edible, and the leaves will have healing properties” (Ezek 47:12).

Messiah Yeshua will rule from David’s throne in Jerusalem: “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore” (Isa 9:7).

There will be sacrifices and priests serving in God’s Temple: “The Levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to make sacrifices forever” (Jer 33:18).

God will dwell with Israel forever: “Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the people of Israel forever” (Ezek 43:7).

Un-Ordinary Beliefs

I get a regular stream of emails with questions about something someone read on Messianic Jewish Musings. Sometimes these come from regular readers and sometimes from people who ran across something on a google search. The questioners often are surprised by something they read here. It is not from the paradigm of theology they are used to. And they wonder what I believe about this or that or how I would defend my views.

Toward the end of creating a place for people to understand Messianic Jewish theology the way I see it, I am creating this post with a summary of certain big points in my theology. These are not chosen for being the most important or as a comprehensive list. They are chosen as the sort of un-ordinary beliefs, the ideas most likely to catch a person from a Christian or Jewish paradigm by surprise. I know that un-ordinary is not a word in regular use. But I didn’t want to say “strange beliefs” on the one hand or “extraordinary beliefs” on the other. And “out of the ordinary” might have worked, but it too didn’t quite capture it for me.

This post is just a summary of some key un-ordinary beliefs. I am not attempting here to give evidence for any of them, though I will say a little in order to explain and at least show that there is some reason for a person to consider them.

I welcome responses to any and all of them. Which ones do you have trouble affirming? Which ones do you adamantly disagree with? As always, my request is that we keep the dialogue respectful.

Jewish people have a covenantal responsibility to the Torah of Moses. This covenantal obligation is not somehow erased through faith in Messiah Yeshua. Jews do not leave Jewish life or Torah faithfulness at the door upon setting out to follow Yeshua. The Law-free statements in Paul are not addressed to Jews in the congregation of Messiah. Acts 15 questions a non-Jew’s relationship to Torah but assumes that for Jews in Yeshua, Torah is the way of life. Christians who doubt Messianic Jewish obligation to Torah should consider Acts 21:24 and should also ask, “Why would following a Jewish Messiah lead to Jewish rejection of the way of life God revealed to Israel and called permanent for all generations?” As Mark Kinzer has famously pointed out: The historic Jewish “no” to Jesus has been a “yes” to God. In other words: Christians have sought to convert Jews to Christianity, asking them to leave behind the commandments God gave to Israel. Presented with this false requirement, no wonder most Jews have not taken Jesus seriously. This conversion gospel makes no sense and it divides God. But this is not to say we believe in the continuing covenantal obligation of Jewish people to Torah because it is pragmatic. We believe in commandedness, the sacred obligation of all people to obey God in that which he commands them. His commandments are not burdensome, the apostles tell us, but are filled with love.

The Torah includes sign commandments that distinguish Israel as the priestly nation. Circumcision, dietary law, Sabbath, the wearing of fringes, and a few more commandments are not universal matters of righteousness, but identity markers for the chosen nation. Noah was not commanded to circumcise and neither was his diet restricted (except for eating blood and meat strangled to preserve the blood in it). Rather, Noah was uncircumcised (in spite of a midrashic tradition to the contrary) and allowed to eat all living things (even pigs). Neither did the apostles mandate circumcision for non-Jews in Messiah or restrict their diet beyond the blood prohibition. Acts 15 indicates that the sign commandments of Torah do not obligate non-Jews. Some interpreters try to use Acts 15:21 as a text to reverse the meaning of Acts 15 (as if the non-Jews in Messiah would slowly start keeping Torah), but this reading of Acts 15 is only a way of controverting the apostles. Further, the Torah itself evidences a distinction in God’s requirement for Israel and the nations (Exod 31:13; Gen 17:10; Lev 12:3; Deut 14:21; Num 15:38). These commandments were never given to the righteous of the nations.

The apostles recognize two distinct branches in the congregation of Messiah. Peter and James led the way in the mission to the Jewish people and Paul, Barnabas, and others led the mission to the Gentiles. The Jerusalem congregation prayed at the Temple, kept Sabbath, and was characterized by zeal for the Torah according to Acts. The congregations in the diaspora (outside Israel) looked to the Jerusalem congregation as the mother. James, not Peter, presided over the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 because James was the leader of the Jerusalem congregation. The Jewish Yeshua-followers remained a part of synagogue life in the diaspora and at first the Gentile Yeshua-believers did as well. Yet Paul’s letters evidence the formation of congregations outside the synagogue which were for the Gentiles and which were Law-free (by Law-free I mean not bound to the sign commandments of Torah–I don’t mean they were libertines). Paul distinguished Jews and Gentiles (Rom 11:17-21) and did not erase distinction. Much of the difficulty in recognizing this distinction between the Jewish and Gentile wing of the congregation of Messiah is because much of it was assumed by the apostles. They would never advocate Jews in Messiah abandoning Torah and this realization is the unspoken assumption behind Acts and the epistles. In spite of the lack of clarity on this matter, a number of Christian and Jewish scholars have arrived at such a theological position as detailed in Mark Kinzer’s Postmissionary Messianic Judaism.

Israel’s election as the chosen people of God is not replaced by the church’s election. There are many kinds and forms of supersessionism (replacement theology). The common form is Christianity assuming that Israel has forfeited her place and the church has stepped in. Incautious readings of Yeshua’s parables and Paul’s epistles have furthered this sad movement in history. Yet Paul’s statements in Romans and particularly in Romans 11 ought to make clear that Israel has not been cast off. The seed of Abraham remains the nation of God and redemption continues to work through Israel and will culminate with Israel. Another kind of supersessionism has risen in the recent Torah movements loosely associated with Messianic Judaism (Hebrew Roots, One Law, Two House) and involve non-Jews assuming Israel’s place as the Torah-keeping people and equating themselves with Israel on the basis of phrases in the New Testament such as “grafted in” and “commonwealth of Israel.” Israel in the flesh resists its own election (as Michael Wyschogrod poignantly observes) but cannot rid itself of this covenantal connection with God. Christianity too often disdains Israel, but as Markus Barth has gracefully observed, “no Gentile can have communion with Christ or with God unless he also has communion with Israel.” Yet for many Christians, that communion with Israel is unrecognized. The God of Jesus is the God of Israel and there is no other God. And God’s curse remains on those who dishonor Israel (Gen 12:3).

Messianic Jews are both “the Church in Israel” and “Israel in the Church.” This form of expression is found in Karl Barth, a theologian whose works I do not read but who has coined some useful terminology here (Church Dogmatics II.2, 235, 273; see Kinzer p. 176). As the “Church in Israel,” Messianic Jews represent Yeshua and the renewal only he can bring to the Jewish people. Messianic Jews are Messiah’s leaven amongst the chosen people. As “Israel in the Church,” Messianic Jews represent the link between Christians and Jews. The very existence of Messianic Jews is vital to the Church’s claim that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. The relationship between Messianic Jews and Israel is of one character and between Messianic Jews and the Church is of another character. There is solidarity with both. Messianic Jews must not remove themselves from Judaism and the Jewish people. But Messianic Jews must also maintain relations with Christianity as brothers and sisters in Messiah. A Messianic Judaism that is anti-Judaism is false and in danger of denying God’s work amongst the chosen people not only in the past and future, but also in the present. A Messianic Judaism that is anti-Christianity is equally false and in danger of denying God’s work amongst the nations. There is a lack of holiness and health in all forms of Judaism and Christianity, but God does not reject either and so we must not reject what God loves.

The renewal of Israel (the Jewish people) will come only in and through Yeshua. A Messianic Judaism which downplays Yeshua is anathema. Messianic Judaism represents the people within Israel who recognize and serve the Messiah of Israel as the only redeemer and healer sent by God to restore Israel and heal the world. If we deny him before men he will deny us before the Father. Our commitment to the way of Yeshua must show in our actions so that our words will be heard. It is insufficient to evangelize. We must be the people of Yeshua. We must reflect the values of Yeshua as Jews keeping the covenant and working for the healing of the world.

Sabbath Meditation: Abraham’s Election by God

Michael Wyschogrod, a modern Orthodox scholar, wrote the following in 1961 for a conference in which various thinkers were asked to write a Jewish affirmation. This excerpt from Wyschogrod’s affirmation is a fitting meditation for this week as the Torah portion is Lech Lecha (Genesis 12-17):

Judaism means to me the election of the seed of Abraham as the nation of God, the imposition upon this people of a series of commandments which express God’s will for the conduct of his people and the endless struggle by this people against this election, with the most disastrous consequences to itself as well as the rest of mankind. In spite of all this, the Divine election remains unaffected because it is an unconditional one, but subject to revocation. Lest all this sound inexcusably arrogant, I can only say that indeed it would be, were it the self-election of a people. As it is, it is a sign of God’s absolute sovereignty which is not bound by human conceptions of fairness. Israel’s election has meant that this people must observe a code of conduct far more difficult than that of any other people and that, when it does not live up to its election, it is visited by punishments so terrible that no human justice could ever warrant them.

PODCAST: Yeshua in Context – Kingdom of Heaven, Pt 2

We’re in the second part of a series considering what Yeshua’s hearers would have thought when they heard about the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven.

The relationship of first century Jewish men and women to the scriptures was a bit different from the way people, even religious people, in our time think of the Torah or the Bible. Theirs was an oral culture. Many people did not read. Even though Roman prosperity and Jewish concern for holy writings may have increased literacy, still for most people reading and writing was not a regular practice.

But the words of scripture were heard and discussed. And images and ideas floated around. They took on various shapes and were powerful stimulants for the imagination.

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Finding Early Israel, Pt 2

In the November/December issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (a magazine I encourage you to subscribe to and read), Avraham Faust writes about evidence in the archaeological record for early Israel.

What is the big deal, some of you might ask, I thought the Bible showed us the origin of Israel and that is all we need.

I would say that finding history in stones and clay pots is important alongside the Bible for a number of reasons. Two in particular are helping people believe that the Biblical story is true and helping those who already believe in the Biblical story to understand in more depth what life was like and how the history unfolded. The Bible is a very incomplete account and the stones do help us flesh out the picture.

In recent years the world has been bombarded in mass media with skepticism. I wonder how many people are unwilling to seriously consider the Bible because of people like Israel Finkelstein or, worse, minimalists like Lemche, Davies, Thompson, and Whitelam, whose ideas make for good controversy on television documentaries about Israelite history.

Many people whose research will include only watching a special on the History Channel think that archaeology proves the Biblical story to be a legend with very little truth behind it.

A Pharaoh Writes About Israel
Avraham Faust, associate professor at Bar-Ilan University and author of Israel’s Ethnogenesis (see it here on amazon), applies a slightly different methodology than other researchers such as Finkelstein. Faust works backwards from cultural artifacts found in later layers in Israel that are widely recognized as Israelite. He looks at cultural differences that would help differentiate Israelite settlements from Canaanite and Philistine areas. Working backwards from the known, he searches out evidence in earlier layers to see if Israel was there too.

But at the beginning of his article, he starts with one strong early evidence for Israel: the Merneptah stele.

Pharaoh Shoshenq in about 1210 B.C.E. commissioned a stone record in hieroglyphics of his achievements. One of his bragging points was defeating in battle a people he calls Israel. Faust notes, as have others, that the Merneptah stele includes a marker identifying Israel as a people as opposed to a town or place.

We should expect that any theory of locating early Israelites in archaeological digs should explain how Israel could be mentioned so early in Egyptian records. We will come back to the stele as we follow Faust in his working backwards through history.

Working Backwards from the Known to the Unknown
Faust’s starting point is Iron Age II (1000 – 586 B.C.E.). Most archaeologists grant that material remains from this period have been rightly identified as Israelite. The few who don’t admit this are so politically motivated against finding any evidence of early Israel, their views can be discounted fairly easily.

Here is what Faust is looking for: material clues that identify Israel as living with different cultural norms than surrounding peoples such as Canaanites and Philistines. Using these cultural markers, Faust hopes to be able to work back through earlier layers (Iron Age I and then Late Bronze) to find evidence for Israel.

Philistines, Decorated Pottery, Circumcision, and Pork
In Iron Age II layers, it is easy to observe that some settlements used plain pottery and some used decorated pottery. Some settlements evidence extensive use of pork in the food supply and others the absence of pork. In late Iron Age I, pork made up as much as 20% of the Philistine diet. This trend decreases in Iron Age II, but differentiation is still possible. Similarly decorated pottery (see photo with this post) fades out in Iron Age II.

Faust sees a cultural trend. Israelites sought to differentiate themselves from the Philistines. Avoiding pork became quite important as a cultural marker. And the use of simple, undecorated pottery also was an Israelite distinctive.

Right around the transition from Iron Age I to II the small highland settlements which might be tentatively called Israelite started disappearing as settlements consolidated into towns. The evidence points to trouble between the Philistines and these other settlements (a picture we see in the Bible in the time of Saul and David, which is exactly at this juncture of history).

Faust’s first conclusion then is that around 1000 B.C.E., Israelite culture became distinctively un-Philistine-like. This is pretty good evidence for Israel in late Iron Age I. But Faust continues to work backwards. Can we find Israel earlier?

The Four-Room House in Iron Age I
A distinctive of Israelite settlements in Iron Age II is the four-room house (see picture at right). This style of house was suited to a culture still farming and husbanding animals.

These four-room houses are also found in the highland settlements of Iron Age I. The four-room house appears to be a cultural distinctive of Israelites and is useful for marking a settlement as truly Israelite.

But can we go back to earlier layers and still distinguish Israel?

Decorated Pottery, Burial Customs, and the Late Bronze Age
Moving back into Late Bronze (1550 – 1200 B.C.E.), Faust notes that Canaanite towns contain a fair amount of decorated pottery, imported from the Aegean and Cyprus. Yet the highland settlements thought to be Israelite used plain pottery and have virtually no decorated or imported pottery.

Also, Israelite burial customs (much more simple than Canaanite customs) indicate a difference in the material remains.

The likely reason for small highland settlements of Israelites in Late Bronze is that the Canaanite city-states, with Egyptian military support, kept the Israelites from dominating the land. Their small settlements in the hills reflect a people marginalized. Yet by the end of Late Bronze, these Israelites were no longer marginalized and Canaanite culture disappears.

Again, this agrees with the Biblical story, as by the time of Saul and David, Israel’s hold on the land was nearly complete. Israel’s rival was no longer the Canaanites by Iron Age times, but the Philistines.

Conclusion and the Merneptah Stele
When and how did Israel come into the land? We should be surprised if archaeological remains alone could answer these questions.

Israel shows up in the 1200’s in highland settlements. Depending on how you date the Exodus story (1440 or 1290 B.C.E.) and the initial conquest of the land by Israel (1400 or 1250 B.C.E.) you might expect to find Israelite settlements appearing exactly when they do. Archaeology provides some evidence that the later date of the Exodus is most accurate.

And the more certain date of the Merneptah Stele (1210 B.C.E.) confirms what cultural clues in the material remains suggest. Israel was in the land in the 1200’s B.C.E.

Contrary to the claims made in some books and on television documentaries, the case for early Israel is pretty good. And we have some idea what early Israelites were like. They kept a simple, agrarian life in their four-room houses (the outer room could hold animals) and they preferred simple pottery. They seem not to have been infected with signs of power and wealth but to have a relatively egalitarian society. They did not conquer the land all at once, but slowly, which careful readers of Joshua and Judges will find to match the Biblical story perfectly.

Non-Jewish Messianic Judaism?

Today I really wanted my blog to be about finding early Israel (see the post below this, which is really the focus for today).

But I saw something on iTunes and had to bring it up. I was looking over other podcasts in Judaism in iTunes and found one by a “Messianic Jewish Senior Pastor.” My first thought is, “Jewish pastor?” Hmm, seems we are encountering non-Jewish Messianic Judaism here.

Then one of the reviews reads as follows: “Baruch Hashem! Finally a podcast that actually discusses the written Torah rather than the oral traditions of men!” And the name of the guy who wrote the comment? Zeke ben Michael. I don’t make this stuff up, I promise.

So, people have said to me many times, “Derek, where is the evidence that non-Jews in Messianic Jewish groups sometimes cause problems? It all seems peaceful to me.”

I am sharing this one example because I see similar ones routinely. Here is a non-Jew who gives himself a Jewish name and denounces Judaism as a false religion. Anyone should be able to say. “Something is wrong with this picture and these people are seriously confused.”

So, comments?

Finding Early Israel, Part 1

A nomadic people settle in a great empire and become a slave class for centuries until a deliverer leads them out through a wilderness and a generation later into a land they can conquer and call their own.

This is the Biblical story. Not much of it is evident from archaeology. How do you trace the movement of a small people and find their leavings in history?

You might object to my saying Israel was a small people. After all, the famous numbers in Exodus suggest a people two million strong (six hundred thousand men of fighting age). Yet many other texts suggest they were a small people, afraid of Egyptians and Canaanite towns.

I don’t have room here to do the notion justice, but it is widely thought that the numbers in Exodus must be a scribal mistake. The word for thousand also can mean clan or military troop. Perhaps the original text indicated Israel had six hundred squads of fighting men, about three thousand such men. If Israel had six hundred thousand men, they’d have no reason to fear villages of Canaanites which measured only a dozen acres themselves. They would have outnumbered any Canaanite village at least a hundred to one in fighting men. With three thousand fighting men, Israel as a people of ten thousand would fit the descriptions in Exodus and Numbers quite well.

No Easy Journey
Did this group ten thousand strong enter Canaan, a network of city-states ruled by Egypt, and simply topple one town after another until all the land was Israel’s?

We should disabuse ourselves of such romantic notions and not least because the Biblical story shows us otherwise.

There are texts which, if read incautiously, could support the shock-and-awe theory of Israel’s conquest and settling the land. Consider Joshua 21:43, “Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land which he swore to give to their fathers; and having taken possession of it, they settled there.”

Yet there are also numerous texts, which I will demonstrate with two examples, indicating that the conquest was gradual and very incomplete at first:

Yet the sons of Manasseh could not take possession of those cities; but the Canaanites persisted in dwelling in that land (Joshua 17:12).

And the Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain, because they had chariots of iron (Judges 1:19).

So the conquest of Canaan by Israel is shown in the Bible in two ways:

(1) God promised the land to them and that the days of the Canaanites were coming to an end. Joshua shows that God brought this small people into the land and gave them miraculous victories establishing themselves in the land. Many texts indicate that they conquered and settled giving glory to God.

(2) In a few places in Joshua and more so in Judges we see that the conquest was very partial, mostly a matter of conquering some highlands and failing to conquer the more settled areas and the city-states. Some initial victories were seen to be temporary. The Canaanites (some with Egyptian help) rallied and kept Israel at bay. Some of these failures were due to the shortness of time as the conquest would be a long task and some were due to incomplete obedience. The people wavered when their strong leadership was gone.

As in numerous other cases, in the cultural world of the Bible, seemingly contradictory ideas are both affirmed. God faithfully gave Israel the land and at the same time, Israel’s struggle was only beginning since they took a tenuous hold on a land that would require generations to conquer.

Looking for Signs of Israel
Every now and then someone comes to me with news, “They’ve found Pharaoh’s chariot wheels in the Red Sea!”

You can find sensationalistic claims like that not only in National Enquirer, but also on the internet.

To some people, the idea that Israel might not have left large tracks, easy to find, in the Sinai or in the Arabian desert, is hard to swallow. If Israel in the wilderness was 2 million people strong dwelling there for forty years, then we might find some major evidence of their passing through.

But with a more realistic view of Israel, mentioned above and backed by mountains of evidence of populations of towns at the time, you can see how a group of ten thousand, maybe twenty at most, might not leave such a visible trace, especially if they lived in tents.

So, how can we find signs on Israel’s beginning? How can we complement the Biblical record with archaeology? We have learned many things about Israel from later periods through archaeology. What about early Israel, before the kings of Israel?

In some books (Israel Finkelstein’s books are classic examples) you will read that evidence for early Israel is not only missing but that the Biblical story is certainly a myth. David was at best a village chieftain or bandit lord with a few dozen men. Solomon ruled an anthill sized kingdom and his wealth and power are legend.

But Avraham Faust has recently published a new and interesting perspective. So far I have only read his article in the new issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. But his 2007 book is going on my amazon wish list today, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion, and Resistance (Approaches to Anthropological Archaeology) (Equinox Publishing, 2007). See it here.

The book won the 2009 Biblical Archaeology Society award for Best Scholarly Book on Archaeology.

Next time: a summary of Faust’s article and his intriguing approach to finding early Israel.

Progress and Protest at the Western Wall

Until the recession hit, I was on a routine of leading a tour every December to Israel. I was last there December 2008 and it was my seventh trip. One of the benefits of going every year is seeing the changes and the new discoveries, especially in Jerusalem. And they have been coming fast this decade. In 2004 we saw the Pool of Siloam newly discovered (not the one they showed tourists for years). I think it was 2006 when Eilat Mazar declared that the newly uncovered structures in the City of David included David’s own palace. The pace of discovery has been quickening. Make of that fact what you will.

Two of the new developments in Jerusalem have been of particular interest to our group. The first is the Rabbinical Tunnel which leads along the Western Wall of the Temple Mount down on the level from Herod’s time, which means walking in a tunnel under the current city level. These tunnels have been open at least since 2004 when I started taking groups through them. You do not go under the Temple Mount, but under the city along the edge of the Western Wall. There is a spot which is considered the closest to the Holy of Holies. Orthodox Jewish women are praying there constantly. It is a better prayer location than the famous Western Wall plaza one always sees in pictures.

The other new development is much newer. In the last few years, they built a pedestrian bridge just to the right of the Western Wall plaza. To the right of the bridge, they have been excavating carefully and unearthing First and Second Temple artifacts along with items from later periods. Every time I have walked up that bridge I have looked over the side and wondered what treasures have been discovered. I would have enjoyed a career in archaeology.

Now, if the few sources I have seen are correct, there is a new and much larger development. Israel is building and archaeological park under the Western Wall plaza. The photo attached is from Arutz Sheva and they do not list a source.

The drawing cannot be perfectly accurate. I am wondering if the park will be completely underground and if the cutaway view here is intended to illustrate the layers and not as a literal view of the park. For one thing, this drawing eliminates the womens’ section of the plaza.

The lower level shown in the diagram will place worshippers at the level of the ancient city and apparently will be open to worshippers just as the current plaza on top has been since Israel took Jerusalem back in 1967. You can read a little about the park here at Arutz Sheva.

At the same time this new area at the Western Wall is being announced, work has just been completed in the Rabbinical Tunnels opening a new area called the Hall of Ages. While excavating this area, archaeologists found more artifacts from First and Second Temple eras. The newly opened section is so named because in it one can see building work from different eras in the Temple Mount’s history, including arches from different periods (I’m guessing Herodian, Byzantine, Crusader, and maybe some more recent Turkish work as well).

Ever Present Politics and Muslim Protests
In early October, some Muslim clerics issued statements to the press saying that Israel’s digging projects are destabilizing the Temple Mount and that this is being done on purpose so that an earthquake will destroy the Al Aqsa mosque. You can read more about the trouble at the Temple in October 2009 here and here.

The rioting and fear-mongering from the Muslim side amaze me (and not in a good way). It is a travesty that Israel has allowed the Temple Mount to become nothing but a Muslim worship center to begin with. The appeasement of Muslim interests on the Jerusalem Temple Mount is a scandal for the ages.

When Jordan controlled Jerusalem from 1948 until 1967, Jews were not allowed to come even to the Western Wall (which is beside the Temple Mount, not on it). In other words, under Muslim control there was no concern for sharing worship rights at the site.

Since the fateful decision (was it Moshe Dayan who was instrumental in deciding this?) to cede the Temple Mount to a Muslim authority after Israel recaptured the city in 1967, the Temple Mount has been run with no concern for Christian or Jewish access. Praying, bringing a Bible, or wearing a symbol of Christian or Jewish devotion is against the law on the Temple Mount.

And to make matters worse, Muslim excavation this decade has threatened the stability of the Temple Mount and has forever ruined the opportunity of archaeologists to study the dirt of the Temple Mount.

In 2004 and 2005 I remember the scaffolding on the south wall of the Temple Mount. It was there because the wall was bulging. Why was it bulging? Because irresponsible Muslim excavation was causing it to collapse while a new mosque was being built on the Mount. The Muslim authority not only handled the construction badly, but in no way coordinated with Israeli authorities. They simply dug as they wished and nearly brought their own holy site down in an avalanche of ancient stones.

And now some Muslim clerics are inciting trouble yet again. They claim Israel is digging under the Mount. It’s all an alleged conspiracy to cause the Mount to collapse. Oy!

Jerusalem in Bondage
The injustice to religious groups in Jerusalem should be apparent to the world. The case is very simple and straightforward.

Jerusalem is the Jewish city, the capitol from ancient times of everything Jewish.

And Jerusalem is the holiest place in the world for Christians.

And six and a half centuries later than Jesus died and rose in this city, the Muslims decided to make it a shrine for Islam.

If Islam has the smallest and latest claim to Jerusalem, why are all the worship rights and all the diplomatic concern amongst world governments on the side of Islam as the controllers of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount?

The answer is simple: violence.

Christian denominations will not throw molotovs or rocks at police to make the Temple Mount a Christian place of worship.

Orthodox Jews, known at times to resort to violence, will not start riots to retake the Temple Mount for Judaism.

So Israel and the world allow the party of violence to rule. Plain and simple.

What will happen to restore Jerusalem and begin the process of its future glory? How will events take shape? I do not know. But I do believe the foretelling of Jesus and of Israel’s prophets. Jerusalem will be a Temple again to the God of Israel. And Jesus will not return until the city calls on him, saying, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (see Matthew 23:37-39).

The New Testament, Jews, and Torah

I got a question by email recently from a Jewish Christian who does not keep Torah and who has thus far believed that the New Testament and Christian theology indicate that when a Jew follows Christ, the Torah is no longer an obligation. I believe the inquirer is open and wants to hear other perspectives and revisit this issue.

There are Christians who need to revisit this issue in terms of their understanding of their Jewish friends whom they want to have the same faith they do. I hope more people will be haunted by the issue Mark Kinzer raised in Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: why should Christians ask Jews to say no to God in order to say yes to Jesus?

There are mainstream Jews who need to revisit this issue. Is it possible for a Jew to be Torah-faithful and follow Yeshua? Michael Wyschogrod certainly has said so in his books. He indicates that a Torah-faithful Jewish-Christianity (Messianic Judaism) is a reasonable position.

There are, sadly, people in Messianic synagogues where the leaders teach that Torah is an outmoded covenant. And they really need to revisit this issue.

I am including the bulk of my response to this inquirer below followed by some discussion questions. Let’s discuss it over the weekend.

Revisiting the New Testament About Jews and Torah
The first and most important thing about this: if you assume that Paul’s writing is intended to address the entire subject and is a sort of divine correction on what had been said earlier in the Bible, you will come out with a Law-Free position for Jews and non-Jews. But if you notice two things, you will question the orthodoxy of the Law-Free position:

(1) Paul was not Law-Free himself (Acts 21).

(2) Paul was the apostle to non-Jews and his epistles are to non-Jews. The underlying issue in many of them is the insistence by some that non-Jews must convert in order to follow the Jewish Messiah. Paul’s rhetoric is about God accepting non-Jews as they are without conversion. Pauline scholarship in general is now almost universally agreed on this. The old idea that Paul was opposing a works-salvation like Pelagius or like the church selling indulgences in Luther’s time is a misreading of Paul. Judaism was not like medieval Catholicism.

Further points:

(3) Acts 15 assumes that Jews do keep Torah in Yeshua and only debates non-Jews. It is hard to miss this one.

(4) Theologically, what are we saying about God if in one era he gives commandments and in the next era he says, “I gave something unfit for the highest expression of righteousness and now I rescind it”?

(5) The Torah claims to be a permanent covenant with Israel. What do we do about biblical authority if we say, “It doesn’t mean what it says”?

(6) Yeshua’s words in Matt 5:17-19 should not be explained away, as they have been in Christian commentary for millennia.

(7) The Law-Free statements in Paul are about a distortion of the gospel that Gentiles need conversion plus Yeshua, which is not true.

(8) There are thousands of other misunderstandings that have built up over the years. It takes time to reread the Bible is a unity and not as a discontinuity (“the NT overturns the OT”). For example, few note that the New Covenant (Jer 31:31ff) contains within it the commandments of the old (seen not only in Jer 31 but also in Ezek 36).

(9) Statements about the Age to Come in the prophets frequently contain reference to Israel and the nations keeping Torah.

Discussion Questions

If you believe in the ongoing necessity and beauty of Torah, think outside the box. What are the most compelling reasons people think the New Testament teaches otherwise?

If you do not believe in the ongoing necessity and beauty of Torah (for Jews), think outside the box. What are the most compelling reasons people think the New Testament teaches otherwise?

Which New Testament ideas, if you were honest, trouble you the most with regard to Torah?

Which of my arguments above appears strongest/weakest to you?

REMEMBER: The purpose of dialogue is not to win an argument or demonstrate your cleverness, but to learn and to share what may help others learn. Let’s discuss this with mutual respect.

PODCAST: Yeshua in Context – Kingdom of Heaven, Pt 1

Yeshua had a central message. It was the first thing he ever taught. It was always in the background of everything else he taught. It is the key to understanding Yeshua and it is not a secret. It is well-known though often misunderstood.

Yeshua’s message was about God’s kingdom, which was about to advance another step in the progress of God’s plan to heal the world.

We read in both Matthew and Mark that the kingdom was the first thing Yeshua spoke about publicly. When Yeshua started traveling and speaking to crowds, his first message is recorded in Matthew 4:17 this way: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Mark records a similar summary of Yeshua’s early message in Mark 1:14, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.”

LISTEN ONE OF TWO WAYS:

(1) If you have iTunes, search Yeshua in the iTunes store and subscribe.

(2) If you don’t use iTunes, go to this link at derekleman.com.

Noah in Context: Meaning and Purpose

What if the ruler(s) of the heavens were capricious, vindictive, and immature? At times, life is harsh and it’s not hard to think the whole thing is run on the whims of an angry god.

What if the benefits and victories of life, too few and far between, are random acts of benevolence by limited deities with no universal scope or consistent justice? The race is not to the swift, after all, and good things happen often to those who do not deserve them.

What if the deities are as scared as we are, overpowered by forces beyond even divine control?

What if God were to enact genocidal destruction at every great failure of society?

These issues, and more, form the difference between the Mesoptamian flood myths and the Noah story. Though the stories are similar in many details (a vessel which saves one man and his relations, animals brought on board, the vessel resting on a mountain as the flood recedes, sending out birds to check for land, a sacrifice following the flood), the world of meaning could not be more different.

Mesopotamian religion, like many others, is based on the experiential difficulties of life. The goal is to prevent tragedy and maximize blessing through worship, appeasement, and he occasional use of professionals whose incantations can be a last-resort measure of life-manipulation.

In Mesopotamia and other ancient cultures, the deities were not the highest power. Above deity was a sort of realm of magic which gods and goddesses could use imperfectly to carry out their acts of power in the world. People were caught below the realm of deity and also below the realm of nature. The power of the gods was over the natural forces. The hierarchy looked something like this:

Magic

The Gods

Nature

Humanity

Through incantations, working with little power and almost blindly, people could sometimes successfully put pressure even on the gods. But for the most part, the gods could use their magic (things like tablets of destiny and so on) to control wind and fertility and life and death. People were at the mercy of natural forces and divine forces.

And the gods? They are immature, capricious wreakers of havoc. In the Sumerian flood myth and in the Atrahasis Epic, Enlil’s reason for destroying all life with the flood was noise. People were too noisy. He was having trouble sleeping.

If you’d like to understand the way ancient peoples viewed the gods, just read Homer’s Iliad. Greek religion is very related to Mesopotamian religion. And the Iliad is written about the time of Isaiah the prophet.

So, recognizing the way of the world at the time the Noah story was written. consider what a revolutionary and paradigm-changing piece of literature we have in the Bible.

The Message of Noah
You are living in the Ancient Near East. All the deities you have ever known were fearsome and immature. Your life depends on the whim of dozens of immortal beings. You know of a history of flood and destruction. You fear not only the death of your children to disease and starvation, but also that in your lifetime another deluge may come.

Then you hear the Noah story.

God’s reason for destroying life in the distant past was not something trivial. It was to control the spread of violence (hamas in Hebrew–yes, note the connection of the word to a certain Palestinian terror group). God cares about violence and evil and is doing something about it.

There is a purpose and a guiding hand in history. You find yourself in a new paradigm for understanding life. There is hope if a divine power, claimed by these storytellers to be the ultimate divine power, is at least doing something about the problem. You may never understand the cruelties of life completely, but there is comfort in knowing a divine being has a plan.

And Noah and his family were saved. They were not saved because they happened to be the favorites of some deity. Their salvation was not random. They were saved because Noah was a good man, a man whose life was characterized by faith in the One God, by deeds of righteousness.

God cares about how we live, whether we join the violence and corruption or participate in acts that heal the world.

And you find that in spite of all the pain and suffering, there is a blessing on the life of humankind. God gave it to the first man, Adam: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Did God rescind that blessing in the flood? In the Noah story, you find that God is still blessing humankind with fertility and spreading and growth.

People are not noisy pests disturbing the divine powers, we are the image of divinity blessed to fill and rule the earth. We ourselves are what would be called gods and goddesses. And what is above us is not some impersonal realm of magic and fear, but the ultimate benevolent deity.

All of the questions are not answered. We still wonder why some years there is too little rain or locusts destroy the crop. We still wonder why children die and why famine takes our old people all too early. Violence is not out of the world. God is not immediately solving all our problems.

But hope has arrived. The ancient stories have been misunderstood. God is in his heaven and smiles down on us, and he also weeps when we weep. This violence is not what he desires.

There may not be answers. But there is hope.

The Noah Story and Mesopotamian Myth, Pt 2

In Part 1, I presented the famous Sumerian/Babylonian/Assyrian flood story which passed down over more than a thousand years through Babylonian poets into the new Assyrian empire, where it has come to us through the results of archaeological exploration. As I said, this flood story is part of an epic which developed over time. And it is not the only flood story in Mesopotamia. Yet the other major example is really the same story, the Atrahasis Epic, told with a few different details. The Egyptians, for whom the annual floods of the Nile were the source of life, have a different flood tradition, as do India, Persia, and China.

The idea is at first disturbing: the Noah story in Genesis is related in some way to pre-existing Mesopotamian mythology?

It raises questions about how the Torah was written, especially the parts of Genesis that are before the patriarchs. Assuming, as I do, that Moses is largely the voice behind the Torah, how did he know about the creation story, the flood, the ancient genealogies, and the Babel story?

The simple assumption, and it is merely an assumption though many take it as a point of faith, is that God downloaded these stories into Moses’ brain either word for word or very near to it. After all, Moses was talking with God for a very long time up there on Sinai.

We are especially prone to believe in the “divine downloading” theory when it comes to the early part of Genesis. These stories reach back into what must seem a time unknowable by man. Surely direct divine revelation is all that could account for such knowledge.

Yet when we read other parts of the Torah and the Bible, we easily see the hand of the human authors. Why is it any less likely that Genesis 1-11 is a story passed along by very human means with the same invisible divine oversight that brought us the rest of the Bible?

Umberto Cassuto (A Commentary on the Book of Genesis: Vol. 2, Noah to Abraham, 1949, Magnes Press) peels back a layer and shows us a possible source that is pre-Mosaic and yet Israelite (by Israelite, we could mean from even before Abraham’s time, but passed down through the patriarchs).

Here are a few hints (see Cassuto for more) of a poetic tradition older than Genesis which lies behind the Noah story:

(1) The story in Genesis has some poetic lines which could be original, but which could also be evidence of an oral or written poetic form that predated Genesis. all the fountains of the great deep burst forth / and the windows of heaven were opened . . . the fountains of the deep were closed / and the rain of the heavens was restrained.

(2) The use of words in archaic forms which do not normally occur in classical Hebrew. gopher (the kind of wood used), kopher (related to kaphar, but used here to mean pitch), tzohar (possibly meaning window), mabbul (flood), yekoom (living flesh), etc.

(3) References in the Prophets and the Writings that suggest a broader story or a tradition widely known in an outside of Israel. Ezekiel 14:14, 20 for example uses Noah, Danel, and Job as examples of righteousness from the ancient past (note that this is Danel of Mesopotamian legend and not Daniel of Biblical fame). In Psalm 29:10 we read of God sitting enthroned above the flood (mabbul), which could be a reference to an earlier poetic form of the flood story or could be a reflection on the Genesis account. Ezekiel 22:4 speaks of a land not rained on in the day of indignation. Some scholars, including some Talmudic sages, see this as a reference to Israel and the idea that the land was not included in the flood (Zebahim 113a-b).

(4) In Talmudic and Midrashic literature, there are further stories about the days of Noah. Cassuto feels it possible, though I would have to say unlikely, that these could reflect some continuation of ancient Israelite traditions still passed on orally. It is more likely that Talmudic and midrashic sages drew elements from the flood myths of Babylon and adapted them (it helps to remember the Talmud was written in Babylon).

A Possible Path from History to Myth to Genesis
Of course we are dealing with educated conjecture. Yet we are looking for a theory which explains how the Noah story came to be in the Bible while it has remarkable similarities to Mesopotamian flood myths.

In tomorrow’s post, we will consider some differences between the Biblical story and the Mesopotamian myths. The differences are not just significant, they are central to understanding the theology of the Torah. The Torah does not simply accept the myths of the pagan cultures.

One key difference is that the hero in Genesis is Noah, and not Utnapishtim. And Noah is a mortal man, not someone still living at the mouths of rivers until the end of time.

If we consider how the Genesis story comes about, here are some possibilities.

(a) There is no relationship between the Noah story and the myths. The similarities are coincidental.

(b) The Noah story is a pious retelling and complete fabrication loosely based on the myths.

(c) The great flood of Mesopotamia happened and stories were passed down in various cultures. Moses received the Noah story directly from God without knowledge of the myths and the similarities are due to historical fact.

(d) The great flood of Mesopotamia happened and the stories passed through different cultures. The Mesopotamian versions represent corruptions based on their pantheon of deities and their ideas about the role of humankind. The Genesis version comes through the patriarchs from an ancient epic poem and contains a purer version of what happened.

(e) The great flood of Mesopotamia happened and the stories passed through different cultures. The Mesopotamian versions represent their ideas about the who, what, and when of the flood while the Israelites possessed a different tradition leading up to Abraham through Noah and Shem.

I think apart from faith in the authority of Genesis, option (e) is the least we should hold to from the evidence. Given a predisposition to believe the authority of Torah and Genesis, I choose (d).