Exodus 12:8-9, How To Eat The Passover Lamb

Saturday, September 20, 2014 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire—with the head, legs and internal organs.

//Yesterday, I mentioned an odd contradiction in the Law which stipulated how animals were to be sacrificed. Here’s another odd contradiction. How and where were the Jews supposed to eat the Passover lamb?

Answer: Not boiled but roasted, and in the privacy of your home. A few verses later comes this additional instruction: It must be eaten inside the house; take none of the meat outside the house. –Exodus 12:46

Why, then, does the Deuteronomic version of the Law say the exact opposite? It says boil it and eat it in public:

And you shall boil it and eat it at the place which the LORD your God will choose; and in the morning you shall turn and go to your tents.* –Deuteronomy 16:7

A couple of hundred years after the Deuteronomy rewrite, the author of the Chronicles saw the contradiction and corrected it. They effectively merged the two versions: Roast the lamb, but boil all the other meats.

They roasted the Passover animals over the fire as prescribed, and boiled the holy offerings in pots, caldrons and pans and served them quickly to all the people. –2 Chronicles 35:13

* Many translations disagree, using the word “roast” in order to dissolve the contradiction.

Mark 10:37, Sitting on Jesus’ Left and Right

Friday, September 19, 2014 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

They said unto him, Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory.

//In today’s verse, two of Jesus’ disciples, James and John, come to him and ask a favor. They realize that they are headed to Jerusalem, where Jesus as the anticipated Jewish messiah is supposed to announce his kingship. When Jesus sits on his throne as ruler, they want to sit one on his right, the other on his left.

They don’t understand what’s about to happen. They don’t understand the purpose of their trek to Jerusalem. Mark routinely portrays the disciples of Jesus as being slow to understand.

This particular story is a little disturbing to Matthew, so it gets rewritten: it becomes the mother of James and John who requests that her sons be given the place of prominence in Matthew’s version. Either way, Jesus’ answer is the same: You don’t know what you’re asking, and it’s not my place to give you anyway, for it has been prepared for others.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Who are the seats of honor prepared for? Who is going to get to sit on Jesus’ right and left when he ascends to his throne in Jerusalem as Messiah?

The answer comes from combining Mark with John. John explains to us that Jesus’ glory is revealed as he is lifted, crowned with thorns, up on the cross. Mark, then, explicitly refers to those who are selected to share in his glory, raised on his left and right:

And with him they crucify two thieves; the one on his right hand, and the other on his left. –Mark 15:27

Exodus 20:24-25, Where To Offer Sacrifice

Thursday, September 18, 2014 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

Make an altar of earth for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, your sheep and goats and your cattle. Wherever I cause my name to be honored, I will come to you and bless you. If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it.

//Feel like giving a goat to God? Just make an altar. Anywhere you please. Pile up some rocks and knock yourself out. It’s right there in the law: God will come to wherever he is honored, and will bless you.

Why, then, do we read these verses a bit later?

Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you please. Offer them only at the place the LORD will choose in one of your tribes, and there observe everything I command you. –Deuteronomy 12:13-14

Lest you imagine that these two verses refer to two different periods in time, it’s not so. Both were given to the Israelites on Mount Sinai.

Bible scholars, however, do recognize that the Law reflects different times. Leviticus chapter 17 makes it clear why the law was changed: Folks were sacrificing their goats to the goat-gods, not to Yahweh. So, the prohibition was put in place: bring your animals to the sanctuary and give them to the priests, so it will be done right.

These two laws are exact opposites, but in order to authenticate them, both lawgivers presented their laws as having been delivered to Moses on the mountain.

Book review: True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense Of Our Complex World

Wednesday, September 17, 2014 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by David Skeel

★★★★

This one is different, but fun. When I think of apologetics, I generally think of logical arguments to prove the existence of God. Skeel is a lawyer, so he doesn’t think in straight lines. He dances around unexpected topics, letting us build a feeling about the truth of Christianity rather than bludgeoning us with hokey evidence.

It’s apologetics with a twist. Soft arguments in contrast to hard science or logic. I like it.

The two topics which most intrigued me were (1) the mystery of beauty and (2) the paradox of justice. The discussion of both was interesting and engaging, if not fully convincing. His goal is not only to defeat materialism but to lift Christianity above other religions as the best fit, and I didn’t quite get there. Yes, Christianity matches our observations of the world, but the fact that Christianity built its belief systems around observations should hardly surprise us. (The universe is beautiful, so a good God must have made it. The world’s justice systems are lacking, so a good God will one day swoop in and make everything right.) Nevertheless, Skeel’s approach leaves us feeling hopeful that something magnificent is behind life on earth, even if we haven’t figured it all out yet.

Skeel is a different kind of Christian than I am; I felt that immediately. He writes often of what “Christians believe” (not this Christian, David) and seems to use the word “faith” in a different manner than I do. This leads to a discussion about heaven in the closing chapter which felt like it just didn’t belong. But again, I realize as I come to the close of the book that I’m not supposed to be drawing equations, but feeling. Skeel is right about this: it feels like there must be more to life than birth and death and purposeless pain in between. There has to be more.

Intervarsity Press, © 2014, 175 pages

ISBN: 978-0-8308-3676-5

My New Book: The River of Life

Monday, September 15, 2014 in Book Excerpt | 2 comments

My latest book has been published by Energion Publications, and copies are on their way to me from the printer! Anyone who would like review copies should contact me or Henry Neufeld at Energion.

This book is less scholarly than my previous books, much more personal and much shorter. It is an easy read, helping readers to understand the focus and beliefs of liberal Christians. Here’s a sneak preview of the opening paragraphs:

*********

I am an agnostic Christian.

For the sake of full disclosure, perhaps I should define what I mean by agnostic. I believe in God; I just don’t think we know squat about him. I sense that we are linked by something mysterious, that we are more than matter. I am not agnostic in general, I am merely agnostic toward the Christian depiction of God, or any other personal god, feeling that inadequate evidence exists for one caricature to rise above the rest. Arguing about whether it is Shiva or Allah who is the Truth is a little like bickering over the color of Cinderella’s eyes. Yet I believe, because I have both seen and felt God. I have sat in the churches of various denominations and seen strong people reduced to emotional puddles and then lifted into radiance. I have seen kidneys given to complete strangers. I marvel at Mother Teresa’s mission of kindness in the name of God, though she herself felt estranged from the God of her church.

I am a Christian in search of God. Christian, because Jesus is my inspiration and Christianity is my heritage.

Life is a mystery. How do we explain our universe, life’s origins, and human consciousness? In the Christian Trinity, we have the Son (the mystery of incarnation, or God-in-us); we have the Father (the mystery of our creation and creator); and we have the Spirit (that “something mysterious,” the wave of meaning and purpose which links us). All three are astounding, beautiful, awesome. We Christians tend to combine these three mysteries into one, and then personify their union, though we have no evidential reason for doing so. Nevertheless, I am happy uniting all three under the heading of God so that a common ground exists for discussion.

I am also a liberal Christian, living in a conservative world. Most of my family and friends are conservative Christians. Conservatives consider apostolic tradition of utmost importance, meaning they seek to emulate the first-century church as best they know how. This is a noble goal, but it can lead to stringent intolerance for diluted beliefs. It’s the right way or the highway. Liberal Christians, on the other hand, find the creedal requirements which develop from such strictness stifling and contrary to observation and experience. We see God in many people and places, not just in Christian circles. This can lead liberals to a violent condemnation of narrow doctrine. Intolerance is intolerable.

And round and round we go. As a liberal Christian, I have both stooped to verbal aggression and felt the sting of attack. Both sides care so dang much that we can’t help squabbling, but this hardly puts a good face on Christianity. If the two sides could merely take one step backward, digging back to the Jesus we both adore, perhaps there could be a unity of purpose. Even though there can never be agreement about religious belief, the Kingdom could nevertheless advance. That is my hope in writing this book.

–The River of Life, Energion Publications, 2014 by Lee Harmon

John 21:11 Why 153 Fish?

Sunday, September 14, 2014 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

Simon Peter climbed aboard and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn.

//Most of you know this story, how the disciples, disheartened after the death of Jesus, decide to go fishing. They have no luck at all. But suddenly a mysterious stranger appears (it’s Jesus, of course) and tells them to cast out one more time. They do, and net 153 fish.

Numbers are significant in the Bible. So what does the number 153 signify? Are we really supposed to believe that somebody sat down and counted all the fish, then recorded the number for preservation in our Bible? Or is the author of John’s Gospel telling us something meaningful … something that, probably, no contemporary reader, distanced by nearly two millennia from the readers this gospel was written for, can ever make sense of?

Some time ago, I posted a few guesses about the meaning of this number. At the time, I wrote this: “Add up all the integers from 1 to 17, and you get 153. Does that shed any light on the puzzle? Hmmm, probably not.”

Well, maybe it DOES mean something. The twelve loaves and five fishes of Jesus’ miracle feeding are highly significant numbers. And twelve plus five equals seventeen, the magic number we started with. This sort of numerology is common in the Bible.

But what is the ancients’ fascination with numbers in the first place? We’ll probably never know.

John :42-44, The Earliest Christian Church, part IV of IV

Saturday, September 13, 2014 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on my own initiative, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

//Continuing yesterday’s topic of similarities between the Ebionites, that first Christian church stemming from Jerusalem, and the Johannine writings, we now come to a crucial parallel. It’s this matter of supposed anti-Semitism. Today’s words condemning the Jews are placed by John on the tongue of none other than Jesus. Did Jesus really speak such damning words to the Jews? I don’t know. In today’s verse, he tells them that they follow the devil, not God; that their father is the devil, not God. But this friction between the Jews and the Christians in the first century was felt in both directions.

You may be familiar with the famous “twelfth benediction,” recited in Jewish synagogues to curse Christians. It is thought to have been placed in the common prayer in about 80 A.D. These “Christians” who were cursed by the prayer were probably Jewish Christians, considered by practicing Jews to be a heretical subgroup of Judaism. Epiphanius writes that the Jews curse the “Nazoreans” three times a day. (Early Christians were known as Nazarites.) Jerome indicates that it is the Ebionites whom the Jews are cursing.

Does it not make sense, then, that the Christian sect most likely to condemn their opponents, the Jews, would be the Ebionites? And which gospel most strongly condemns the Jews? The fourth one. This friction between traditional Jews and apostate Christian Jews is strongly reflected in the gospel of John, where Jesus roundly condemns “the Jews,” saying they never knew the real Father. And this is hardly the only passage in John’s Gospel condemning the Jews.

Jesus, of course, was a Jew; John was a Jew; all of the apostles were Jews. Yet Jesus condemns the Jews. It’s clear that he was speaking not of a race of people, among whom he would be counted, but of his religious opponents. Opponents of the early church, the Ebionites.

John 8:28, The Earliest Christian Church, Part III of IV

Friday, September 12, 2014 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.

//Yesterday, I promised to bring up some similarities I’ve noticed between Johannine Christians and the Ebionites, that early Jewish Christian sect that I believe stems from the first church in Jerusalem. Here are some that come to mind; if you can think of more, please let me know!

– John’s emphasis, in both the Gospel and Revelation, is Jerusalem. (Contrast this to the other three Gospels, where Jesus spends all of his time in Galilee before making that one fateful trip to the big city.) The Ebionites (being Jewish Christians) revered Jerusalem as God’s city, and continued to pray toward Jerusalem.

– John’s Gospel emphasizes community, a close-knit segregated brotherhood. The Ebionites lived communally and seemed to draw away from other groups, including other Christian groups.

– John’s concept of the pre-existent Christ (see today’s verse above as an example) matches Ebionite doctrine. They saw Jesus as a true prophet who had repeatedly appeared throughout history. Jesus’ first appearance was in Adam.

– The Ebionites understood the resurrection to be a spiritual event, not bodily resurrection. If you set aside the final chapter of John’s Gospel, which surely is an add-on, then John also describes the resurrection as spiritual.

Curiously, in many ways the gospel considered to be of highest Christology (John) aligns with the thinking of the very first Christian church, often described as a low Christology!

Galatian 2:9, The Earliest Christian Church, Part II of IV

Thursday, September 11, 2014 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me.

//According to Paul, the three “pillars” of the Jerusalem church were James (the brother of Jesus), Peter (known as Cephas), and John. James appears to have been the church leader at the time of Paul’s writing. The followers of these three “pillars” appear to have introduced distinct flavors of Jesus-worship, while still retaining their Jewishness. James, for example, favored a down-to-earth, practical approach to Christian practice (if the epistle attributed to James is any indication), and this fits the Ebionite philosophy we discussed yesterday very well. Indeed, the Ebionites held James in very high regard.

So these three pillars provide three different flavors of early Christianity. They seem also to represent three different locations: Jerusalem (James), Rome (Peter) and Ephesus in Asia Minor (John). Yet I have noticed in my studies some very curious commonalities between two of these groups: the Ebionites (James’s group) and the Johannine community, and I don’t quite know what to make of them. If the Ebionites are our best representatives of the earliest form of Christianity, might they have influenced Johannine theology too in some manner? If scholars are correct that Jewish Christians outnumbered gentiles in the Johannine community of Asia Minor, were these perhaps Jews that were displaced from Jerusalem by the war or 70 AD?

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss the similarities I’ve noticed between Ebionites and the Christians of Asia Minor.

Acts 4:32-35: The Earliest Christian Church, Part I of IV

Wednesday, September 10, 2014 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

//In my books about John’s Gospel and Revelation, the main character, Matthew, flees Jerusalem as a baby in his father’s arms before it is attacked by the Romans in 70 CE. They travel through Pella–the location where it is said Jerusalem Christians escaped–and continue on in time to Ephesus, in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). This fictional journey is not coincidental, though I never did find opportunity in my books to explain why I crafted it this way.

You may recognize Ephesus in Christian tradition as the home of John the Apostle, where he wrote his Gospel. A short distance from there, on the island of Patmos, John presumably wrote the book of Revelation. Ephesus was chosen as the background for my books for this reason.

On the other hand, the “Pella tradition” of Jewish Christians escaping the war is equally intriguing. It seems quite possible that this escape story is more than myth, and that many of Jerusalem’s Christians did indeed locate there. A sect of Jewish Christians known as the Ebionites soon clustered nearby, and in my research, it seems very likely that the Ebionites are the descendants of the Jerusalem church. The Hebrew name ebionim means “the poor,” and relates to the time when early Christians were sharing all their possessions and giving what they could to the apostles (see today’s verse).