Professor, I had a few questions about the C&J seminar; I was hoping you could provide some insight:
1. Did the OT predict Jesus' life?... The last book of the OT was written in 169 BCE (before Christ), but doesn't the OT mention Christ?
2. Why would Christians claim that a Jewish man (Jesus) was their leader? In an example, wouldn't that be like a vegetarian looking up to a carnivore?
3. Why is the New Testament combined with the Old Testament to form the Bible? Based on the texts, it sounds like the OT was primarily a Jewish text while the New Testament was for the Christians... so why join the two opposing materials?
What i especially like about Chris' questions is that they go straight to the heart of the differences between a theological and a historical approach to early Christianity. He is bringing what he knows (theology) to this new historical approach and isolating several important contradictions between the two different approaches.
ReplyDeleteFrom my very limited experience in the Catholic Church I was taught that Jesus was just the continuation of the Jewish religion. This idea was mentioned in Wylen, page 12. It was the "Y" view: "Jesus represents the true continuation of biblical Judaism, the unbroken line of prophecy." In other words the Jews of today are waiting for a Messiah that has already come. And I do believe that the OT predicts the coming of a Messiah.
ReplyDeleteI was also taught that the OT and the NT were not necessarily opposing materials. Some of the rules, particularly the Ten Commandments, still apply to today while others don't. I was never given a great explanation for why only certain rules apply today and why God became friendlier in the NT.
ReplyDeleteRight Sam...the term for seeing Christianity is the true Judaism is called supercessionism. The book of Hebrews is usually held up as an example of how this line of thinking works. The OT high priest is transformed there into Jesus, etc.
ReplyDeleteAs for how to have your cake and eat it too--accept the OT into the Christian canon, but not follow many of its rules--circumcision, kosher laws, sabbath. That turned out to be hard but not impossible. Paul seems to posit (Galatians) a different set of rules (all moral) for pagan converts to the new movement.
As far as 'predictions' of Jesus as the true messiah in the OT...that turns on exgesis of OT texts and allegorical readings, not on literal readings. As you will see 1st century Jews were thoroughly Hellenized and learned how to read allegorically especially through Philo as were the pagan converts to the Jesus movement who inhabited a thoroughly Hellenized world.
In the end, the proto orthodox victory in keeping the OT in its canon necessitated a necessity for connecting the OT with the new beliefs and allegory and exegesis of OT texts (especially Isaiah and Psalms, see Matthew) came to the rescue.
Instead of a 'clean cut' we wind up with two belief groups arguing about the 'true' meaning of the words on the page...most famous example is Isaiah 7.14. Each group claims to "own" the OT text. I liken it to a bad divorce with mother and father endlessly squabbling about custody of
the child (OT).
Finally, what is so interesting about Chris' questions is that they offer a great example of the 'anachronism' (Ehrman) and 'willed naivete' (Fredriksen) described in the first readings.
Certainly the generation of Jesus did not know that they were founding a new religion. The second century christians had to make hard choices about their relationship with Judaism. Some like Ebionites saw continuity,
Marcionites wanted a clean break, and the protoOrthodox made what in a way turned out to be the most difficult compromise choice of them all,
as they did with the notion of a triune God.
I just want to add this quote from Fredriksen on the gnostic way of interpreting the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which is what they used as a text of the OT)
ReplyDelete*(Fredriksen)one of earliest theologians Gnostic Valentinus (Fl. 130 CE).
Philosopher and Christian. V. attempts to make religious systematic sense of the Septuagint.
*God of Genesis is ignorant (can’t find Adam etc), a low jealous deity of the
material cosmos. Valentinus and Gnostic (knowing) Christians believe Jesus sent into this lower material cosmos by his Father, the true High God; only appears to be flesh but this isn’t real. His opponent is the lower God, the God of Genesis.
*Jews mired in flesh (e.g. circumcision, food) and confused creator with High God, but Christians knew better. Read Septuagint as coded revelation of Christ which is what it really was because he had GNOSIS to read it with kata pneuma (with spiritual knowledge). Only Christians with their true knowledge could distinguish between coded laws from Christ and lower laws from lower god and Jewish tradition—that we find in the Septuagint.
*Christian knows how through Christ he will be saved. He is trapped in flesh through which wicked creator holds his soul captive. After death, free of matter the Gnostic like Christ will ascend in spiritual body to the Father-an eternal spiritual life without anything like a carnal body (included by Jews in their notions of ressurection). Valentinian clearly defined relations of Christianity to Judaism (through allegory and theology). “The Jews had systematically misinterpreted their own book."
Another quote from Fredriksen on the paradoxes of the protoOrthodox position as pointed out by Chris' questions:
ReplyDelete(Fredriksen) Internal Paradoxes of this position?
This group had a more complex polemical situation: they repudiated Jewish LAW as works of the flesh (like Marcion and Valentinus) as based on an unintelligent reading of the Septuagint. BUT they held on to the Torah as their sacred scripture even though it enjoined the very practices that they repudiated. Torah had to be reinterpreted kata pneuma (according to the spirit); circumcision was never about flesh; food laws really about forbidden sexual practices (e.g. rabbit taboo because its sexually profligate). Jews just misunderstood their own sacred text.
They conceded point of Marcionites and Valentinians that “busy” God of Jewish history who talked to Abraham at Mamre, wrestled with Jacob at Jabbuk could not have been the High God the Father, radically transcendent and serenely immutable. That High God was actually Christ before his incarnation as Jesus. Christ was the god who spoke at Sinai and spoke through Isaiah. Christ was the High God who gave the Torah but not the historical actor in it.
Jews as the problem for protoChristians?
For this group the Jews were the problem; God through Jesus tried to work through them, but they were a hard-hearted, stiff necked and stubborn people and carnal people who kept the law in a carnal way only. What for Philo had been a both/and situation was for these Christians an either/or situation. Either fleshly understanding or spiritual understanding, but not both. Either Jewish practice or Christological allegory, but not both. “In short, either Judaism or Christianity.”
The Jews were obdurate-killed their own prophets (pseudoepigrahic The Lives of the Prophets preserved by Church, was originally Jewish; each prophet dies a martyr’s death) and killed Christ and repeatedly rejected the chance to repent for the 40 years after the crucifixion. Finally God definitively and publicly punished them by destroying their Temple. And still they lived by their own traditions, still awaited the messiah, refused to be converted.
ProtoChristianity is the group that “won” and became “orthodoxy
Chief thinkers of this work include Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus, Hippolytus. Marcion and Valentinus only rediscoverd at Nag Hammadi.
Constantine 312 converted to this Christianity; more Christians persecuted after 312 than before as Xians strove to stamp out heresies. Conversion or death often became choice for Jews in Middle Ages.