The King's Scroll

The 17th mitzvah is that we are commanded that every king who sits in rulership over the Jewish people shall write a Sefer Torah for himself; and that it shall never be separate from him.
Translated by Rabbi Berel Bell
Sefer Hamitzvot in English
The King's Torah Scroll
Chabad.org

"It shall not move from his presence except when he enters the bathroom, the bathhouse, or a place where one is forbidden to study. When he goes out to war, it must be with him; when he returns, it must be with him; when he sits in judgment, it must be with him; when he eats, it must be in front of him."
Rambam, Hilchos Melachim, Chapter 3, Halacha

"I will rise up at midnight to give thanks to You for Your righteous judgments." -Psalms 119:62

According to Deuteronomy 17:18, each King of Israel is to write for himself a copy of the Torah scroll. The Talmud interprets this as meaning the King will write two scrolls, one to be kept in the Treasury, and one to be kept, as we see in Rambam's commentary above, with the King at all times. If God's justice and mercy is before the King every waking moment, when he's eating breakfast, when he goes to war, when he sits in his home, when he goes along the way, then God's judgments will not be far from the King when the King issues his judgments over the people of Israel.

We who are disciples of the Jewish Messiah Jesus (Yeshua) have one King. If we are true to our faith, then he and his righteous judgments are always before us. He is our living Torah. But is he his own living Torah?

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. -John 1:14

It's common in Messianic circles to consider Jesus as the living embodiment of the commandments of God, the flesh and blood container for all of God's mercy, compassion, judgments, and ordinances, the Torah incarnate who dwelt among us. As the suffering servant, he set aside his Kingship and his majesty and he died, although he died with the titulus ironically declaring his Kingship nailed above his head. When he returns, he will come as avenging King. When he walked among men as a man, he obeyed all of the mitzvot without error or flaw. As King, he can do no less. But how will the King keep the Torah before him at all times?

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: King of Kings and Lord of Lords. -Revelation 19:11-16

I'm stretching the metaphor, probably beyond reasonable limits, I admit it. I can't say with any certainty that the commandment for a King of Israel to always have the Torah before him is fulfilled by his name written on his robe and his thigh. Yet it is a fascinating thought and a compelling image, that Yeshua is the Torah and that he wears the Torah, so to speak, upon him. He is the King of Israel; the final King. He is the Torah and the Torah is with him.

But what about us? Deuteronomy 31:19 is understood by the sages as a commandment for every Jew to write for himself a scroll of the Torah, even if he has inherited a scroll from his father. In modern times, the commandment is fulfilled by most Jews, in purchasing a book of Torah rather than writing it out by hand.

It is said that many of the commandments do not apply to Gentile disciples of the Jewish Messiah. I certainly don't think the Talmudic masters intended for non-Jews to be obligated to the commandment of writing a copy of the Torah. It's not a common concern among Christians certainly. Nevertheless, we have this:

They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. -Deuteronomy 22:4-5

As the King wears his name, so will we wear his name and we will belong to him. You may believe you belong to him now, and I certainly cannot refute this. However, the "throne of God and of the Lamb" is not yet with us (Revelation 22:3) and we do not yet serve only him with wholehearted devotion as we will in Messianic days. Today, we can keep his name and his word before us by studying the Bible, by associating with other believers, by performing acts of kindness and compassion, by attempting to embrace a mystic understanding of the Messiah beyond the literal word, and by praying that his "will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:8).

Pray that the King comes soon and in our days.

To the Hasidic mind Devekuth and Kawwanah were the primary emotional values, a significance which they had by no means always had before. "That is the meaning of Devekuth that when he fulfills the commandments or studies the Torah, the body becomes a throne for the soul...and the soul a throne for the light of the Shekhinah which is above his head, and the light as it were flows all round him, and he sits in the midst of the light and rejoices in trembling."
from Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
by Gershom Scholem

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

A Shroud for the Dead

The Gemara concludes that even though shrouds for the dead are exempt from the mitzvah of tzitzis, when a body is prepared for burial we do wrap a garment with tzitzis around the body. The idea is based upon the verse in Mishlei (17:5) which states “One who mocks a pauper insults his Maker.” The term “pauper” refers to a person who has died and is therefore no longer obligated in mitzvos. We are not allowed to mock his inability to perform mitzvos, so we dress him with tzitzis.
"Tzitzis on the garments of the dead"
Menachos 41
Daf Yomi Digest

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures...
-1 Corinthians 15:3-4

Jesus is dead. At least he's dead if this is just after the Passover. Since the timing of when he was executed varies from one Gospel version to the next, we aren't absolutely sure what "three days" means in terms of hours and minutes, or just how long the Master spent entombed as a corpse. But we know he died.

We also know that, as an observant Jew, he would have obeyed the commandment to wear tzitzit or "fringes" on the four corners of his garments (Deuteronomy 22:12). We see an example in the Gospels (Matthew 9:20-22; Mark 5:25-34; Luke 8:43-47) that he wore fringes or tzitzit. It would have been unusual and even a little bizarre for a Jewish Rabbi and Prophet not to have obeyed the commandment of tzitzit as a representation of his obligation to the Torah.

And then he died. Another quote from the Daf:

Nevertheless, Shmuel agrees that if someone made burial shrouds for himself there is no obligation to place tzitzis on it.

While there's no obligation for the dead to be dressed in garments with tzitzit attached because a dead person cannot obey the commandments, as the earlier quote citing the Gemara states, we do not mock the dead. When Jesus was prepared for burial, his disciples, perhaps the women or even Joseph and Nicodemus, would have taken care of this important detail to honor and respect the Master. They loved him. They would not neglect him in this.

Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. -John 19:38-40

Yet the dead cannot praise God and they cannot obey Him.

Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave? -Psalm 6:5

It is not the dead who praise the LORD, those who go down to the place of silence... -115:17

Who provided the garments for burial? Who offered the tzitzit to the Master's body? He was stripped when beaten, though his clothing was returned (Matthew 27:27-31), but the Roman soldiers removed his clothes when he was placed on the cross and cast lots for his garments (Matthew 27:35). When he died, he died almost naked.

But while the Romans and the faithless mocked the dying Jesus, those who loved him suffered in tears and when he died, they did not mock him by refusing to attach tzitzit to his garments as they prepared a shroud for the dead.

I know I'm extrapolating from later Rabbinic rulings to earlier practices, but in my imagination and in my heart, I do not mock the dead. As the Children of Israel died in the desert wearing tzitzit, and as Jews are commanded to wear tzitzit on their four-cornered garments, I can see the Master dressed for burial this way.

Shulchan Aruch (Y.D. 351:2) rules that we bury the dead with tzitzis, but Rema adds that the tzitzis should be invalid. Our custom is to wrap the dead in a tallis, but to cut the tzitzis from one of the corners.

In reading the Gospels, we jump almost immediately from the burial to the resurrection but I'm asking you to pause. Don't go on the the next paragraph or the next page yet. Stop and consider. In Christianity, we jump to Easter in a mad rush, eager to celebrate the risen Lord, running immediately from the ugly, bloody death to the party commemorating his life, but stop. Think about it. Consider the day after he died. Break a piece of dry matzah and put it in your mouth. It's almost tasteless. It's like death. It's like his body. Think about what the Passover and unleavened bread is trying to tell you. Ponder what the Master was saying when he compared his body to the bread and asked you to think of him when you eat it. Taste the dry, brittle bitterness of grief; let the salt water in which we dip our karpas during the Seder be tears.

He died. He was buried. Right now, immediately after the Passover feast, he is buried. We honor him and prepare his body, though our hearts are shattered within us. We apply myrrh and aloes to his broken and torn body and wrap him in fresh, clean linens, struggling between slowly and reverently attending the Master and the urgency to finish before the Sabbath. On his robes we make sure that the tzitzit are attached. Little do we know that they should not be "invalid" as Rema will later rule. In three days time, the Master will live again.

The dead do not honor and praise God. A corpse does not obey the commandments and perform the mitzvot. That is for the living. Today, Jesus is dead. Tomorrow, after the Sabbath, he lives again.

Praise God.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Sages , Students, and Rebels: How to Tell the Difference

Our Sages said explicitly, "Between [honoring] his father and his teacher, his teacher comes first. "The Sages have already explained that it is forbidden for a student to dispute his teacher, i.e. to reject his authority, to give separate interpretations, and to teach or issue rulings without his permission. It is forbidden for him to argue with him, or speak angrily to him, or to judge him harshly, i.e. to give any kind of [non-literal] explanation to his action or speech, since it is possible that this was not his intention.

Sefer Hamitzvot in English
Respecting the Sages
Positive Commandment 209
Chabad.org

I can agree with that as far as it goes. When you agree to come under the authority of a Rebbe or a Sage, you agree to "the rules of conduct", so to speak, including the Sage's right to issue rulings, and your responsibility to treat him with the respect and honor that is his due. It would be foolish of a student or disciple to make such an agreement and then dispute and argue against the Rebbe at every turn. It would be (to use an extreme example) as if Peter, John, and other members of Yeshua's (Jesus's) inner circle were to get in his face and disagree with his directives and his commandments. Why bother becoming a Rebbe's disciple if you aren't there to learn from him?

However, this also means you should do your homework on the Sage and his teachings before hand. I can't speak to the nature and character of the teachers operating in 1st century "Roman Judea", but I know for certain that today in both the "Messianic" and "Christian" movements (and in the places where they overlap), there are many so-called "teachers", Pastors, leaders, and self-styled "Rabbis" who are not reliable or honest scholars, and who have assumed positions of authority over groups, not to sanctify the Name of God and to teach others of His ways, but to glorify themselves, create a personal power base and, in some situations, to make money off the deal.

Sadly, many of these "teachers" will misuse the commandments to try and make themselves "criticism-proof". I've seen it happen more than once:

Our Sages said in the Talmudic chapter "HaChelek", "Anyone who goes against his teacher is as if he went against the Divine Presence., as it is written [regarding Korach], 'when they rebelled against G-d,'"; "Anyone who makes a dispute against his teacher is as if he made a dispute against the Divine Presence, as it is written, 'These are the Waters of Dispute where the Israelites disputed with G-d'"...

We have sections of the Torah (Deuteronomy 13:1-5, Deuteronomy 18:20-22) that teach about a false prophet, but what do you do about a false teacher? We see in both the Torah and the Apostolic Scriptures that we are to revere a Sage and to treat a leader with respect:

Do not blaspheme God or curse the ruler of your people. -Exodus 22:28

Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. -1 Timothy 5:1-2

The commentary of Paul in 1 Timothy 5 can be applied to Sages and teachers since the Talmud interprets respecting the aged person (Leviticus 19:32) in the same manner. But while I cannot find (at least in this limited study) a Torah or Talmudic provision for dealing with a less-than-sincere leader or teacher, Paul offers one to the Messianic community:

The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. For Scripture says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,” (Deuteronomy 25:4) and “The worker deserves his wages.” (Luke 10:7) Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. But those elders who are sinning you are to reprove before everyone, so that the others may take warning. I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism. -1 Timothy 5:17-21

Here, Paul continues the general theme of honoring a teacher and a leader, but he also acknowledges that a leader can sin, and offers the congregation the ability to respond when a leader strays outside of behaving in accordance to the position of authority they have been granted by God.

In our modern, western culture, we have a strong history of defending the rights of the individual and questioning authority figures, sometimes to an extreme. Human beings tend towards abusing power when they acquire it (just look at the arena of politics) and even entering leadership with the best possible motives, an honest person can be seduced by the allure of self-gratification and thus abuse their authority and the people they are to be serving.

Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” -Mark 9:35

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. -John 13:12-17

More so than any other teacher who has ever walked, the great Rebbe Yeshua of Nazareth deserves high honors and authority and his teaching is not to be questioned. Yet he humbled himself to wash the feet of his own disciples (and humbled himself even to death for the sake of many) to illustrate to them, and to us, the proper role of the teacher.

As a mentioned before, we are used to, as a culture, questioning and disobeying rightful authority and to "having our say" and "standing our ground". While this is sometimes necessary, our "rights" can easily become a barrier to obeying the example of the Jewish Messiah in humbling ourselves before God and before His Sages (and remember what Paul said about not showing favoritism to one person as leader over another), so that we might learn his good and upright ways. Be a responsible student. Choose a teacher wisely. If you discover you've come under the authority of one not fit to teach or lead, Paul has provided a method of addressing such a person. Beyond that, if you've selected your teacher carefully, then obey the commandment and do not rebel. Most of all, do not rebel against the Rebbe to whom we are all disciples.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Heeding Jesus the Righteous Prophet

The 172nd mitzvah is that we are commanded to obey each of the Prophets, may they rest in peace, and to fulfill all their instructions. Even if his instructions contradict one or many of these commandments, [we are commanded to obey him] as long as his instructions are temporary. This does not apply, however, if he permanently adds or subtracts [from the commandments], as we explained in the Introduction to our Commentary on the Mishneh.

The source of this commandment is G-d's statement (exalted be He), "To him you must listen." In the words of the Sifri: "The verse, 'To him you must listen,' means that even if he tells you to temporarily transgress one of the commandments of the Torah, you must listen to him."

Sefer Hamitzvot in English
Heeding a Prophet
Positive Commandment 172
Chabad.org

What?

This is very confusing. Why, if the Torah of God is perfect, would a Prophet be commanded (Prophets don't speak on their own authority; they speak the words of God, otherwise, they're false Prophets) to temporarily contradict or override one or more of the commandments?

The commentary I quoted from above contains a footnote with the answer:

See Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah 9:3, where the example is brought of the prophet Elijah, who brought an offering on Mount Carmel, in spite of the prohibition to bring offerings outside the Temple in Jerusalem. Since it was a temporary measure — only to disprove the idolatry of Baal — it was permitted.

What this says to me is that, under certain circumstances, a Prophet may, as directed by God, temporarily override or disobey a commandment to uphold a higher commandment or to "make a point", so to speak.

That brings me to the class I taught last night.

Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. -Matthew 12:9-14

Jesus (Yeshua) could have waited until the next day to heal the man's shriveled hand. The fellow had probably lived with it for years and waiting one more day wouldn't have made much of a difference. Even in Israel today, on Shabbat, such a disability probably wouldn't be treated by observant Jewish doctors, and only injuries and illness where the person was suffering would be attended to. Christ's example, ("if any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath") doesn't seem to be a good comparison, because a sheep falling into a pit could be injured and might die (or at least suffer terribly) if not rescued from the pit immediately. Not so with this man's shriveled hand.

So why did Jesus heal the man's hand on the Shabbat, especially when he knew the group of Pharisees present were just looking for an excuse to bring charges against him? Why did Jesus (apparently) violate the Shabbat?

While it's passages such as this one that traditional Christianity use as a "proof text" to illustrate that the Shabbat, along with the rest of "the Law", was done away with by Jesus, it's more likely (this presupposes the authority of the ancient Jewish sages to render opinions based on Torah and Oral Law) that the Jewish Messiah was acting in the role of a Prophet. Certainly as the Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8), he would know precisely what is and isn't permitted Shabbat behavior, but using the example of the 172nd mitzvah, we see that he could also temporarily suspend or weaken a portion of his Shabbat observance to obey a higher commandment or to "make a point". In this case, (my opinion), I think Jesus is saying that doing good is upholding the spirit and intention of the Shabbat, as opposed to manipulating the commandments in order to snare someone (which seems to be what the Pharisees were up to).

The Shabbat isn't a straight jacket that God uses to restrict us and to frustrate us. It's a protection from the troubles and problems we must endure the rest of the week. It's a "protected zone" where we are more free to pursue our experiencing God and to behave more completely out of His desires, including "loving our neighbor" (Mark 12:31), which is an extension of the commandment to love God (see Mark 12:28-34 for the complete context). The behavioral restrictions associated with the Shabbat are there to guide us and to help us structure how to observe the Shabbat, not to provide a list of "thou shalt nots".

Keep in mind that Jesus, as a true and righteous Prophet, as well as the Messiah, could not permanently override any of God's Torah because to do so, would have made him a false Prophet...and we know there is nothing false about the Jewish Messiah.

We are told to heed the Prophet because he speaks in the Name of God and not on his own authority (Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." -John 5:19). We are also told in the 6th mitzvah to "cling to the Sages" (based on Deuteronomy 10:20), imitating them in their "good and upright ways" because heeding and imitating a tzadik (righteous person) brings us closer to clinging to God.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Depths

Hundreds of linguistic and ideological differences between the commonly accepted Masoretic version of the Pentateuch and the Samaritan text indicate that editing may be one of the world's oldest professions.
Professor Yair Hoffman
Bible Studies / The things that you're liable to read in the Bible
Written for HAARETZ.com

In Israel, a new archaeological “discovery” of sorts is buzzing and making bold claims that they may be the next “Dead Sea Scrolls.” They include a collection of scrolls as well as 70 lead codices (ancient scripts bound in book form, rather than as scrolls). However, we have conflicting reports on the nature of these “newly found” artifacts. They are owned by “Hassan Saeda, a Bedouin farmer in Galilee who says they have been in his family’s possession since his great-grandfather found them in a cave in Jordan, a century ago.” Although there is still a lot of skepticism surrounding these artifacts, there are some strong voices that are willing to attest to their authenticity, wanting to avoid another possible Shapiro Affair.
from the Digging with Darren blog

How did the things we read now in the books of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John get written down in the form we now have them? There are many decisions to make if we try to reconstruct a possible or probably story of gospel transmission. I’ll try to make the story interested, not too bogged down with long lists of sources and proofs. I’ll keep that kind of writing short and refer the reader to various scholars such as Mark Goodacre, Richard Bauckham, Paul Anderson, and others that I know I will find along the way have added something significant to an understanding of gospel transmission.
Derek Leman
Chronicling the Formation of the Gospels #1
from the Yeshua in Context blog

All of the quotes you've just read have something in common. They are all the opening paragraphs of articles addressing the struggle we have in understanding, and in some cases locating, the Word of God. While many Christians in the world believe that the Bible, as it is translated into English (or as it is rendered in people's favorite English translation) is totally sufficient as the original, inerrant, Word of God; the source of truth and facts about God, Jesus, and everything, is this really so?

The quotes I posted and the articles they come from seem to indicate that the Bible, all by itself, as we have it today, isn't the end all and be all of the word of God.

I don't say this by way of complaint. I'm beginning to come to terms with the uncertainty that the Bible introduces as a "stand-alone" document and the requirement of interpretation and examination in "studying the Word". Yet, while we rely on the Bible for so many things, we can also be ignorant of what the Bible can't do for us.

He was born in Israel and lives in the north. He trains rabbinical court judges and writes essays on the weekly Torah portion, which he says are well-respected. Clearly possessed of a sharp, inquisitive mind, he could be described as a religious sage. During the flight, he was preparing a commentary on the Torah portion of Miketz, in Genesis, and he shared various questions and insights with me. I referred to variations of certain words in Genesis as they appear in the Samaritan Pentateuch, and to how the Greek Septuagint translation of the Bible contains sentences that do not appear in the Masoretic version.

My fellow passenger did not know what I was talking about. Not only was he unaware of the existence of ancient versions of the Bible, but he also lacked knowledge of the essence of the Masoretic text - the canonical Hebrew text redacted by scholars in Palestine and Babylon toward the end of the first millennium. He did not know, for instance, that the diacritical marks date only from the 10th century, or that manuscripts and later printed versions of the Masoretic text are not identical.

Yair Hoffman, professor emeritus of Bible Studies at Tel Aviv University, was describing a man he met on a recent flight from New York, a man who was an ultra-Orthodox Jew and who "trains rabbinical court judges and writes essays on the weekly Torah portion, which he says are well-respected." Yet, as Hoffman relates, this intelligent "religious sage" did not grasp some of the most basic facts about the Bible, what it is, and where it comes from. How can this be?

How can this be for any of us?

In my own case, I just didn't know any better. Fortunately I found out (the hard way) and once I got over my shock, I started consuming every text I could lay my hands on, specifically on the New Testament, and with a focus on Jesus and the "deity issue".

Our own Messianic Bible scholar, Derek Leman, addresses similar matters regarding the Gospels in a recent blog post and I certainly hope he continues to write articles for his series "Chronicling the Formation of the Gospels". It's not enough to "have" the Bible as it exists today. "Having" isn't understanding. Like a pool of unknown depths, we must go beyond the surface, brave the shadowy waters, and search for what awaits us as we dive into a sea of many hidden truths.

I had rather high hopes for the recently discovered lead codices before I found out that they were fakes. I did entertain the interesting question "are they Christian or Kabbalistic" with the hopeful thought that they could, in their own way, be both. That may sound strange to some of you, but I've found that looking at the mystery of the Jewish Messiah through a mystic and Chasidic lens has revealed more to me than most traditional Christian commentaries and dogmatic interpretations.

Saying "the Bible isn't enough" probably sounds horrible and maybe even a bit heretical, but if a surface reading of the Bible were enough, we wouldn't have commentaries, interpretations, and scholarly theological theses. Certainly observant Jews don't think the Bible is enough. Otherwise, we (they) wouldn't have Talmud, Mishna, and Gemara. When I introduce this topic among some folks associated with my congregation, I get the argument that we must rely on the Word of God, not the word of man. Yet the Bible we have today is as much (if not more) the word of the human writers, interpreters, and translators as it is the Word of the One, True God of the Universe.

While the "facts" of the Bible may be contradictory, and the truth of the Bible remains elusive, somewhere in the middle of man, God, and the words on the page, I see an inviting but mysterious portal. Paul said that in the present age, we see the things of God as "through a dark glass" (1 Corinthians 13:12). I believe we're looking at the surface of a body of water. We can't tell what's under that surface, how deep the water goes, how hot or cold it is, and what sub-sea enigmas it contains. If we want to know what God has to tell us, we have to dive in, sometimes half-blind, and pray that once we've made our "leap of faith", we will find the illumination under the blue waves that we can't find in the light of day.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Descent of God to Man

“Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?” declares the LORD.
-Isaiah 66:1-2

Isaiah 66:1 is often allegorically interpreted to describe the union of the heavenly with the earthly, the spiritual with the material, the infinite and the finite, in the Torah. The Torah is the "descending of the divine wisdom from the highest heights and embodying itself in earthly commandments." In these commandments God reveals His will and wisdom which are really one with Him.
-Paul Philip Levertoff
Love and the Messianic Age

You might think of this blog post as "part 2" of this morning's article We Are Living Torahs. In fact, it was the small essay I am creating now that I intended to write this morning, but as my fingers were moving over the keyboard, I discovered the need to appeal to people to extend their (our) spirits and to consider so many others in pain.

I previously described you and me as people who are "living Torahs", yet there is another living Torah, the living Torah, that we must also ponder. I am continuing to meditate on the issue of the nature and character of the Jewish Messiah Yeshua (Jesus) and whether we can include in that nature, the deity of Jesus. Is the Christ literally God as has been described by traditional, and particularly by evangelical Christianity, or is there another way to understand the Master and how he is illustrated in the Bible? I believe there is a way to understand Jesus as both human and as containing the divine:

According to this concept, God's unknowable and divine will and wisdom (which are inseparable from His being) descended to be clothed in the corporal substance of commandments of Torah and ink in a book. This is not to say that a Torah scroll is God, but that the Torah scroll is an earthly container for His will and wisdom. It is similar to the concept of the Shechinah, the "Dwelling Presence of God." Just as the Shechinah took residence and filled the Tabernacle, the Spirit of God fills the words of the Torah. -from the Love and the Messianic Age Commentary

The Word became a human being and lived with us, and we saw his Sh'khinah, the Sh'khinah of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth. -John 1:14 (CJB)

Looking at the quote from the commentary on Levertoff's book, we can see that God and the Torah are one in the same and at the same time, the Torah is not literally (or even figuratively) God. God has extended some portion of Himself out of His heavenly realm and "humbled" himself, if you will, to send a portion of His essence into His creation so that we can perceive and act upon His will and wisdom. Yet the words we find in the first chapter of John's Gospel also describes Jesus as both Word and, in a sense, God.

The Jewish doctrine of the "real Presence", to quote Levertoff and the book's commentary, is "that the Torah is the divine expression of God's will and wisdom, placed within the physical limitations of this world and translated into terms comprehensible to human beings. However, God's will and wisdom cannot be separated from HaShem Himself. If the Torah contains HaShem's will and wisdom, then it contains something of HaShem Himself; they are 'one in the same'."

That's kind of like saying the Torah is and isn't God. Remember, we're dealing with mystical and metaphysical concepts, so don't try too hard to understand the "nuts and bolts" of how a Torah scroll can contain something that is intrinsically connected to God and yet not actually be God.

Levertoff projected this Chasidic concept into the eucharist to explain how the bread and the wine could "be" the body and blood of the Christ and yet not literally be human flesh and human blood.

While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, ‘Take; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. -Mark 14:22-24 (NRSV)

My understanding of Levertoff is that he's saying while the matzoh and wine at the Seder were not literally or symbolically his body and blood, but in a mystical way, they contain something of him and something of God that we must incorporate into our being and in doing so, we become part of the "body of Christ". Again, don't try to imagine the mechanics of this process. If this only works for you on a strictly symbolic level, that's great, but if we compare how "real Presence" is applied to a Torah scroll and to the matzoh and wine, then it brings a whole new meaning to how we will experience our next Passover Seder.

Finally though, as found in the commentary for Levertoff's book, we discover that the "real Presence" is extended into the area that describes the relationship between the Father and the Son:

Regardless of how the "real Presence" is interpreted, Levertoff sees a parallel between the Chasidic idea of Hashem's presence in the Torah and the Christian concept of Christ's incarnation in the Eucharist.

Another way of presenting the parallel is to say that just as the mystics and the Tanya teach that the Torah is God's will and wisdom made into a scroll, the apostles and the Gospel of John teach that Messiah is God's will and wisdom made flesh.

In other words, if we can accept that something unique about God can inhabit the Mishkan (Tabernacle in the desert), Solomon's Temple in holy Jerusalem, the Torah as a "personified" object, and the eucharist, can we not accept that the divine God "inhabits" the living, human Messiah in the same manner?

I realize that's a lot to take in, but if you are a religious person who fully accepts that Jesus is literally God the Son, part of the triune God, then is what I'm writing here, as presented by Levertoff and his commentators, really so extreme?

Christianity isn't accustomed to utilizing Jewish mysticism to understand its own conceptualization of Jesus, but it might be wise for them (us) to start. So far, Paul Philip Levertoff, a man born a Jew, educated in the Jewish Chasidic tradition, who came to faith in Jesus as Messiah in the late 19th century, and who spent the majority of his adult life preaching the word of Jesus from a uniquely Jewish viewpoint, offers a different way of looking at the statement "Jesus is God." Did Levertoff believe Jesus was divine in the way Evangelical Christianity declares? Probably not. Did he see the divine residing within the Messiah in a special way that at once made Jesus God and not God in the same fashion as God "inhabits" a Torah scroll? Probably.

Some call Jesus "the living Torah" because he lived a human life in complete consistency with the will of God, never sinning. If we believe God can humble His nature so that he can "inhabit" a tent, a building, and a scroll (and none of these are literally God), can we not think of the Messiah in the same way?

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

We Are Living Torahs

The deepest longing, therefore, of the genuine Chasid is to become a "living Torah." The keeping of the Law is to him only a means to an end: union with God. For this reason he tries to keep the Law scrupulously, for "God's thoughts are embodied in it."
-Paul Philip Levertoff
Love and the Messianic Age

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ Then the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’
-Mark 12:28-33 (NRSV)

Hillel said: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn"
-Shab. 31a

I know people who refer to Jesus as "the Living Torah"; the only being in human form who perfectly obeyed the will of God and did not sin. According to the early 20th century sage Paul Philip Levertoff, the true desire of a "genuine Chasid" is to imitate the Master and also exist as a living embodiment of the Torah; the will of our Creator. For a Jew, this means continual, scrupulous study of the Torah and Talmud and also living out that "knowledge" in one's day-to-day existence, striving to improve obedience with each passing moment.

But is obedience to the commandments the goal?

If a man is worthy, the Torah becomes for him a medicine of life, but if he is not, it is a deadly poison. This is what Raba explained. "If he uses the Torah properly it is a medicine of life unto him, but for him who does not use it properly, it is a deadly poison." -b.Yoma 72b

The aforementioned quote of the Talmud is taken from the commentary to Levertoff's book and may illustrate something for those of us who are non-Jewish disciples of the Jewish Messiah.

Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. Once again I testify to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the entire law. You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love. -Galatians 5:2-6 (NRSV)

Paul seems to be contradicting both Christ's and Levertoff's perspectives on the Torah, but look at what Levertoff's source, the Talmud, is saying. What is it to use or misuse the Torah? The Chasidic Jewish tradition teaches that it's not enough to mechanically obey the commandments. Your intention must be correct. It not only matters what you do, but why you do it.

The Gentiles Paul is criticizing, as recorded above, most likely weren't desiring to convert to Judaism for their love of Torah or even for their love of God, but rather, because they had been convinced by outsiders, that they must convert to Judaism and take on the full weight of the yoke of Torah, in order to be disciples of Jesus; in order to be "living Torahs", just as the Master is our "living Torah."

However, it's not wearing tzitzit or laying tefillin that allows a Gentile disciple of Jesus access to God, but rather the desire within us to reach up to God through faith and trust in Jesus, and out of that desire to offer ourselves as "little Messiahs" to the rest of the world, by doing deeds of compassion, charity, and kindness.

I'm not drawing a conclusion at this point regarding the level of Torah observance that is proper for a Jewish Messianic disciple vs. a Gentile Christian disciple, but it seems clear from what we can read of Paul the Apostle and Paul the Chasidic disciple of Yeshua, that our approach to the Torah must be more than obedience for its own sake (although there is some merit in this if our desire is to also honor God). We must approach the Torah as if we are approaching the living essence of God, with a motivation not to take, but to give. Just as Jesus gave everything for us, including his own life, we must strive to be like him, "living Torahs" in the world, giving back to others the things we have so graciously received.

I don't want to end today's blog post without reminding everyone that the nation of Japan is in dire need of our help. Whatever you can do by donating funds or goods, please extend yourself to those who need you. Be a hero. Act in the Spirit of Jesus. Pray for Japan.

Bringing the Mashiach Revisited

The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.

Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? -2 Peter 3:9-12 (NRSV)

As a Jew, I believe that the coming of the Messiah does not depend on my belief that he will come, nor does it rest solely in God's hands. I believe it remains our task to bring the Messiah -- that he will arrive only when we are in a state of readiness to bring him, to welcome him, to appreciate him. Salvation must be earned. And thus it is what we do, as Jews, that will determine the time of the Messianic arrival.

from Bringing the Messiah - On Our Own Terms
by Rabbi Jerome Epstein
Published on September 1999
at The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism site

A little over a week ago, I posted a blog article called We're Here to Bring Mashiach, which apparently didn't get a lot of attention. I was comparing the actions of Moses in building the Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert to the Jewish concept that, we have something to contribute to the world that will affect the timing of the coming of the Messiah.

Last night, I was reading the first chapter in the book Love and the Messianic Age by Paul Philip Levertoff, and in reviewing the commentary by the First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ)/Vine of David writers, I found this very interesting (some may say "startling") statement:

That the Shechinah sojourns with Israel in exile can be demonstrated from the Torah; as it says "I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also surely bring you up again." (Genesis 46:4) This may also be learned from the apostles: "Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" (1 Cor. 3:16; Eph. 2:21-22) Through repentance we hasten the day of the coming of our righteous Messiah and thereby draw His Presence out of exile.

I'm sorry, what was that? Let's read it again:

Through repentance we hasten the day of the coming of our righteous Messiah and thereby draw His Presence out of exile.

That sounds like, "the sooner we repent, the sooner the Messiah comes." That means, a delay in repentance (of the Jewish people? Of the world?) delays the Messiah, while hastening repentance will bring him sooner. Not Biblical? Let's read 2 Peter 3:12 again, and I'll emphasize the key part of the verse:

...waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire?

Levertoff, in  Love and the Messianic Age, quotes from Isaiah 22:4, Jeremiah 31:16 and the Jewish mystical text, the Zohar (specifically Zohar I, 203a and Zohar III, 20b) to illustrate how the Shechinah, the Divine Presence which inhabited both the Tabernacle and Solomon's Temple, went into exile with the Jewish people. Levertoff used the unique and mystical perspective (I know this may sound very alien to some of you) of Chasidic Judaism to interpret the New Testament in ways we may not imagine, but also in ways that may add a meaning we've never understood.

Christians (as well as some Jews) reading this, may criticize me for applying the Old Testament as well as Jewish mystical texts to the New Testament writings about Jesus (and although the Zohar is thought to have been compiled in the 12th or 13th centuries, C.E., some of the individual writings may go back to the 1st or 2nd centuries, very close to the time of the Apostles), but we must remember that Jesus was and is the Jewish Messiah and that it was the Jewish people who alone, worshiped the One, True God thousands of years before our Gentile ancestors ever heard of Jesus. Jews were honoring God, observing the Shabbat, and studying the Torah for a hundred generations, while the Gentile ancestors of those of us who call ourselves Christians were bowing to pagan idols of wood and stone and even offering their children to the fire.

What I've just said certainly suggests that the Jewish people might have a few insights into their own Messiah that the rest of us may lack.

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, I'll write a complete review of Love and the Messianic Age after I've finished going over all of the material (mystic texts must be read more slowly than popular novels), but before that, I will be posting several "mini-reviews" as I encounter a number of little gems within Levertoff's treasure trove.

The FFOZ/Vine of David commentary contains a caveat stating that Jewish mystical interpretations may not be your cup of tea, so you could read what I'm writing with a bit of skepticism. That's understandable, especially if you've been taught to believe that the Zohar and the study of Kaballah equates to occult fortune telling and casting of spells. In fact, Christianity has its own mystic tradition (The Cloud of Unknowing, The Interior Castle), which contains analogous material. Mysticism in both Christianity and Judaism is the drive to move beyond studying about God into the realm of fully experiencing God. Levertoff saw the Gospels and the Epistles through a Jewish mystic lens. He saw how the New Testament writings closely mirrored Chasidic mystic lessons, and wondered how it was possible for non-Jewish Christians, especially those without a background in Chasidic Jewish education, could possibly understand what Jesus was teaching.

I wonder too. By reading Levertoff and the commentary addressing his book, I hope to take one or two steps closer to the answer. Wouldn't it be wonderful to discover that we can be a much closer part of God's plan for Creation and the plan to bring the Mashiach than we ever thought possible?

"A Jew never gives up. We're here to bring Mashiach, we will settle for nothing less." -Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Righteous Atonement

The Christian belief that Jesus Christ is God incarnate has been around so long that many people familiar with Christianity do not realize just how astonishing such a claim was and still is. Jesus was very much a real human being. He grew up in a dusty village as the son of a carpenter. He lived during a time of political turmoil for his people. He experienced the full range of human emotions, from unbridled joy to deep sorrow. He had friends and enemies. He perspired and got tired; he slept and awoke; he got hungry and thirsty; he bled and he died. Indeed, by some measures, he was not a particularly remarkable man. He led no army, held no political office, wrote no books, had no wife or children, left no estate, and never traveled even a hundred miles from his home. Yet billions of people during the past two millennia all over the world have worshiped him as their Lord and their God. How did that happen?

from Chapter 1: All Glory, Laud, and Honor
Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ

I've recently been exploring the topic of Christianity's origin, how we got the Bible we have today, and particularly the issue of Christ's deity (or lack thereof). I've already read books by New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman and Bible scholar Maurice Casey and I'm about 100 pages into Bowman's and Komoszewski's book. I'll write a full review when I'm finished, but I'll tell you up front that the book admits to making some fairly sweeping assumptions, such as the belief that the Bible we have today is correct in every aspect and 100% reliable as a source of theological and historic information (which is in conflict with a number of other NT scholars, including the aforementioned Ehrman and Casey).

I wasn't going to mention the Bowman and Komoszewski book, but I read the following last Shabbat and it got me thinking.

Rav Aharon Kotler, zt”l, explains how, when Hashem treats his tzaddikim with strict justice, He is feared and exalted and praised. “Our sages teach that—like Yom Kippur—the death of the righteous atones for sins. It follows that just as Yom Kippur does not atone without teshuvah, the same is true regarding the death of tzaddikim. But where do we find that one does teshuvah when tzaddikim die?

“The answer can be found on Zevachim 115. There we find that the verse ' — Hashem is Awesome from Your Mikdash,’ can be read instead as — from Your holy ones. The gemara learns from this that when Hashem punishes tzaddikim, He is feared, exalted, and praised. This means that people are catalyzed into doing teshuvah when Hashem’s stern justice is manifest in the world.

“Just as during the ten days of teshuvah the verse states '— Seek Hashem when He is to be found,’ when tzaddikim leave the world and are eulogized properly, this inspires people to do teshuvah as well. It is easier to do teshuvah during aseres yemei teshuvah precisely because during this time middas hadin (justice) is revealed in the world. When tzaddikim pass away, the eulogies cause distress and easily arouse us to teshuvah. This time is auspicious from on high and it is easier to do teshuvah than at other times.

“This explains why a heavenly echo proclaimed that all who had attended Rebbi’s funeral merited olam haba. They all merited olam haba since during that holy time they all became complete ba’alei teshuvah!

From Daf Yomi Digest
Shabbos, March 5, 2011
Zevachim 115
Stories off the Daf
Seek Hashem When He is to be found

Interestingly enough, Casey's book referenced this concept as well and it's not something you hear in Christian circles. I started wondering, if it's so obvious that Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah, must be literally God in order to fulfill the role of Messiah, why don't we see this concept more clearly in the Tanakh (Old Testament) or Talmud? In fact, Judaism is very specific that the Messiah will not be God and, for the most part, will be an ordinary human being.

I suppose that you could argue that, after the dramatic schism between Gentile Christianity and Judaism in the first few centuries of the Common Era, both movements amended their teachings and authoritative documents to make sure that both faiths appeared as unalike as possible, despite the Jewish origins of Christianity. That would mean, from a Jewish point of view, that anything in their authoritative documentation that might even hint at the Messiah being a Deity would be deleted or re-interpreted to make sure that Godhood was not part of the Messiah's resume.

On the other hand, what if it never was? What if the reason the Jewish people in modern times don't believe the Messiah will be God is because Jews never expected him to be God? What does that mean about the Messiah and his death? Could the crucifixion of Christ still have any meaning in the eyes of a Jew?

Given the reference I quoted from Zevachim 115, I'd have to say "yes". I'm not making a final decision on the matter of Yeshua's deity just yet, but I would like to suggest that the Messiah could be a unique and even a supernatural being, without absolutely having to share co-identity with God the Father.

Jesus answered, ‘If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, he of whom you say, “He is our God”, though you do not know him. But I know him; if I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know him and I keep his word. Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad.’ Then the Jews said to him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.’ So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. -John 8:54-59

Without getting into the issues some NT scholars have with John's Gospel, I want to take a look at what Jesus said, how his audience interpreted his statement, and why they were ready to stone him to death. Jesus made a claim that he was God, not necessarily that he was the Messiah. Claiming that you're literally God, to a group of people as strongly monotheistic as the Jewish people, especially in that place and at that time, was an outrageous thing to do. If Jesus had claimed to be the Messiah, they might have believed him, disbelieved him, ignored him, or laughed at him, but the Jews listening to him wouldn't have tried to kill him. "Messiahs" have come and gone throughout Jewish history, and one more man claiming to be the (or a) Messiah, particularly in Roman-occupied Israel, wouldn't seem too unusual.

On the other hand, an itinerant carpenter turned Prophet, claiming to literally be God, was not only unique, it was a heinous blasphemy which carried the death penalty. If Jesus had meant to tell the crowd that he was the Messiah (and even that seems odd, given how he warned Peter not to tell anyone about it in Mark 8:29-30), he most likely would have used scripture and metaphor that the Jews around him would have associated with the Messiah, rather than outright claiming equality with God.

I'm saying all of this because the Jews in Yeshua's day (as well as today), didn't expect the Messiah to be God and likely didn't interpret the Master's (supposed) claim to be God to be equal to a claim of being the Messiah. In Christianity, we miss this because the belief in Jesus's deity is so ingrained in the church, that we don't consider how such claims would have been received within the lived context of Christ in the early 1st Century. The Messiah would be expected, but God in living flesh, not so much.

We do see, based on Zevachim 115 though, that the death of a righteous man was believed to atone for the sins of the nation. This somewhat counters one of the Jewish arguments against Jesus being the Messiah based on God's abhorrence of human sacrifice. If we consider that a righteous man's death and the sincere repentance of the witnesses, results in the atonement of sins, how much more meaning can we attach to the death of the most righteous man to have ever walked the earth; the Messiah Yeshua, God's lamb, who takes away the sins of the world?

‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done. -Luke 22:42

Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ -Luke 23:34

Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last. -Luke 23:46

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Review: From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God

As we analyse the Jesus movement and the major stages of christological development, we can relate views of Jesus to Jewish/Gentile identity, and consider the relationship between christological development and identity change. We must begin by uncovering the origins of christology...I shall argue that the ministry of Jesus himself made further development inevitable. Before we can see him clearly, however, we must go back through our primary sources to recover him from the combination of authentic material and later developments which they offer us.

-from the Conclusions section of Chapter 2: Modes of Analysis

From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God
by Maurice Casey
Hardcover: 176 pages
Publisher: Ingram Publisher Services; First Edition (January 1, 2001)
ISBN-10: 0227679202
ISBN-13: 978-0227679203

Casey's book is based on a series of lectures he delivered at the University of Birmingham, England in 1985-86 and it seeks to trace the development of the christology of Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth, who Casey believes was originally a Jewish apocalyptic prophet, through various stages, arriving at being regarded as equal with God. To do this, Casey analyzes the available Biblical texts based on several key factors including:

• Identity
• Ethnicity
• Religion and Social Function
• Orthodoxy

Like many New Testament (NT) scholars, Casey's conclusion about the NT texts is that they were written sometime between the middle and end of the 1st Century C.E (and some perhaps much later) and that the Gospels and a number of the Epistles were likely not written by their named sources. He reviews the texts using the factors listed above in order to establish the likely identity of the writers (Jewish vs. Gentile), in order to substantiate his assumptions.

Casey sees the development of christology as having proceeded through three stages.

The first stage occurred during the lifetime of Jesus and within 15 or 20 years afterward before significant Gentile involvement in "the Jesus movement". This is the stage where devotion to Jesus as a prophet and most likely as Messiah (though Casey argues that the concept of "Messiahship" was seen differently in the 1st Century than we regard it today) was an entirely Jewish expression, and was identified by wholly Jewish identity markers (keeping Torah, dietary laws, Shabbat, and so on). Jesus was regarded in this stage, as an extremely holy person due high honors above others, due to his righteousness and Messiahship. However, he was not regarded as being equal to God, though certainly as Messiah, was elevated above all other human beings.

The second stage occurred as Paul and others were actively seeking to convert Gentile pagans to faith in Jesus and was marked by Paul, who kept the Law of Moses, specifically teaching that the Law was not required for salvation but rather faith in the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. At this stage, Gentiles had a significant representation in synagogues worshiping with Jews and may have marginally kept some portions of the Law (Shabbat rest, dietary laws) in order to have table fellowship with "Christian Jews". Casey sees Paul, though continuing to keep the Law, as "assimilating" into a more Gentile interpretation of Jesus and he may not have seen even Jews keeping the Law as an absolute requirement for faith. At this stage, there were likely different interpretations of Christianity due to the influence of Paul's letters and other documents being available (many not canonized in our modern Bibles), and the distances involved in transmitting consistent information regarding revelations of Jesus to the different churches in the near east and Europe.

The third stage occurred when Gentiles became the largest group in the Christian movement, establishing their own churches and producing their own documents and theologies. This would have happened in the latter part of the 1st century and beyond. While stage two would not have allowed (according to Casey) any widespread worship of Jesus as God, due to a specific Jewish monotheistic understanding, in stage three, and based partially on the Greek precedent that men (in mythology) can also be gods, Jesus was worshiped as equal with God. Casey doesn't require that the Gentile Christian belief among Gentile churches, be established in the 4th Century by way of the Nicaean Council, but the Council would have been the final arbiter of a united faith in the deity of Jesus across the larger Christian church. Prior to the council, there would have been inconsistency in the belief that Jesus was (or was not) God among different church groups.

Casey's analysis between Chapters 3 and 9 is quite involved regarding which documents can be considered reliably written by Jewish authors in the Aramaic speaking church, and which were created later by Gentile Christians (under the names of Jewish apostles), so I can only give this material brief coverage in my review. Casey believes that only the Gospel of John and some minority of the Epistles specifically make any claim to Jesus as God and that the Gentile Johannine community's adherence to this belief resulted in their removal from the "Jewish/Christian" synagogue and the acceleration of the development in Gentile-only churches in the late 1st Century and later. In other words, he believes that the deity issue was established largely (though not exclusively) by Gentile believers, probably after the lifetime of Paul, and that Jesus would not have been worshiped as God by his Jewish disciples and later Jewish followers.

While Casey's overall writing style is very scholarly and rather dry, he "opens up" in Chapter 10: History, Culture and Truth, to describe a deliberate set of acts by non-Jewish Christians to marginalize Jewish believers, discount obedience to the Law of Moses, and to establish and maintain worship of Jesus as God, directly in violation of a strict Jewish monotheism. Casey almost seems angry in Chapter 10 as he relates Gentile Christian activity aimed at removing Jews from worship of the Jewish Prophet and Messiah. Casey is definite that Jesus was a very religious Jewish prophet who was preaching a soon-to-come apocalyptic message (within the lifetime of many of his disciples) and who may have believed in his own Messiahship.

In spite of the rather scholarly approach of Casey in this book, it is still very readable and uses a large body of source material available via footnote pages. This book isn't quite a "page turner", but I found it compelling in it's acknowledgment of the significance of Old Testament authority, respect to Judaism of the 1st Century (and beyond) in particular, and willingness to challenge the classic Christian understanding that Jesus must be God. If Casey were your only source of information regarding christological development in the 1st Century, you would likely feel convinced that Jesus did not believe himself to be God, or at least have your personal assumptions of his deity questioned.

If you are a strict Trinitarian and your faith is based on the deity of Jesus, you will likely find this book dismaying and (hopefully) illuminating. I recommend it for anyone who is interested in NT scholarship as well as people such as me, who want to dig deeper into understanding the Bible that we have today.

The Bible is a Mystery Novel

It could only be a matter of time before the conflicts of the early period reached the stage when Judaism would reject Gentile Christianity, and Gentile Christianity, already objecting to the Jews "after the flesh" (cf Rom 2.28-29, Phil 3.2-3), would reject "the Jews" as Gentiles had always done. We shall see that the non-Pauline documents of the New Testament show us independent developments on these same lines. When we have taken them into account, we shall be able to trace the point at which the conflicts intensified by war between Israel and Rome drove christological development up to the deity of Jesus, and expelled the Johannine community from the synagogue.

from Chapter 8: The Christology of St Paul
From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God
by Maurice Casey

This will be short, since I have more questions than answers. I could have quoted from a number of different places in Casey's book, but I just finished Chapter 8 and so I picked that little bit of text to present here. I have experienced a number of different inputs that have spawned questions about the Bible recently, including the conversation going on in a blog post by Judah Himango and Derek Leman's latest missive, Missing Mysticism in the Bible. I must admit with more than a little chagrin, that my understanding and view of the Bible has remained static for quite some time. I believed that the Bible, at least as it was originally given by God to the various writers, was inerrant and that we knew exactly who wrote various parts of the Bible, and under what conditions all of the different books were written (Moses wrote the Pentateuch, each of the Prophets wrote the books with their names on them, the Gospel writers put their names on their books, and so on). I also believed that the Bible we have now is the exact Bible God wanted us to have and that, through supernatural means, He made sure that the correct books were canonized, that the content was totally accurate, and that the Bible was completely internally consistent.

Having done a bit of reading lately (Ehrman and Casey, so far), I am no longer convinced of these points.

You may say that your faith isn't ultimately dependent on a perfectly consistent Bible, but rather it is based on Jesus Christ, the Lord (Yeshua HaMashiach), but if all of the details we know about our faith come from the Bible, how can our perception of it not affect our perception of faith?

Like most males, I'm fairly literal (it's one of the few stereotypical male traits I possess...just ask my wife). When I was training to be a family therapist in the 1980s, learning to think, listen, and speak in a global rather than a linear manner was one of my biggest challenges. Fortunately, I was able to master it well enough to fuel 15 years of post-graduate clinical work, so I am adaptable. However, my general approach to the Bible has been from my default linear perspective. Start at "A", move to "B", move to "C", and so on.

While I've toyed with reading the Zohar, I've been a little shy about it, since just understanding the Bible "straight up" continues to be a challenge. I figured all of the "mystic stuff" would just muddy the waters. Nevertheless, it is a compelling way to approach the word of God, but...

If we aren't all that sure who wrote the different books of the Bible, how old they are, and if they were copied with even the slightest accuracy from what we assume are the original texts, then how do we even know what we know about the Bible? Further, if our level of uncertainty about the Bible is that high, where do we get off divining any spiritual and mystic meaning from what we read, on top of any literal meaning?

Reading the Bible and believing it means what we think it means (or at least what scholars think it means...and they don't all agree on numerous points), takes as much faith as believing in God.

My next book, after I finish Casey's, is Putting Jesus in His Place by Bowman and Komoszewski. Then I'm thinking about taking on both Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman and The Bible As It Was by James L Kugel (and I may even fit in Derek Leman's Yeshua in Context while I'm at it). On the one hand, you could say all this reading is going to really confuse me, and I can't say that it won't. On the other hand, I have a responsibility to expand my understanding of my faith, which includes the holy documents of Judaism and Christianity.

I suppose this is an extension of my previous blog, An Old Dog Looking for a New Book, since I'm revising my reading list (and I almost forgot, I want to read Michael White's Scripting Jesus, but it's still checked out of my local library). Given what I said in yesterday's blog, I have been a little hesitant to invest heavily in religious books, especially those dealing with the New Testament, but I also have to pursue the path that I'm walking until I either reach my goal or hit a dead end (or a drop off into the abyss).

Does anyone else besides me think about all these things? If you do, how do you resolve the inherent conundrums involved? How do you explore all of the uncertainties and inconsistencies presented by the Bible and yet not let it affect your faith?

Don't be shy. I really want to know.

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. -Friedrich Nietzsche

The road is long and we are surrounded by darkness.

Teaching Women

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’ -Luke 10:38-42 (NRSV)

I used this text during last Shabbat's teaching at my congregation as part of a discussion of gifts, giving, and motivation, but something a little unusual happened. It wasn't that I learned something new during the lesson. I often learn something new from what the class says when I teach, but I heard an interpretation, well a "hint" anyway, of something I'd absolutely never considered before.

We were discussing the differences between Mary (Miriam) and Martha (Marta) during this sequence of events and, while Martha was correctly expressing middle eastern hospitality (which particularly in ancient times was a much bigger deal than in modern American homes), the Master was pointing out that learning the things of God contains a greater and more lasting value.

First let's address the issue of hospitality just to get it out of the way. I'll use a classic example:

The Lord appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre; he was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot. Looking up, he saw three men standing near him. As soon as he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them and, bowing to the ground, he said, "My lords, if it please you, do not go on past your servant. Let a little water be brought; bathe your feet and recline under the tree. And let me fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves; then go on—seeing that you have come your servant's way." They replied, "Do as you have said."

Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, "Quick, three seahs of choice flour! Knead and make cakes!" Then Abraham ran to the herd, took a calf, tender and choice, and gave it to a servant-boy, who hastened to prepare it. He took curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared and set these before them; and he waited on them under the tree as they ate. -Genesis 18:1-8 (JPS Tanakh)

As you'll recall from Genesis 17:26, Abraham, and every male in his household, had just recently been circumcised, so running around to make sure that the needs of the three strangers (there's no reason to believe Abraham knew they were angelic beings at this point) was undoubtedly really "uncomfortable" for him. Nevertheless, he would have been severely remiss as a host if he had neglected his guests, no matter what the reason.

Also, there's this:

And he said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.” And he answers from within, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.” I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. -Luke 11:5-8 (NRSV)

In this case, Jesus is using an example of hospitality that would have been very familiar to his audience and which not only mirrors Abraham's example, but explains why Martha was so distressed that Mary wasn't helping out in serving the guests. Jesus wasn't undoing the custom and duty of hospitality when he spoke to Martha, he was explaining that there are things even more important, and Mary was doing them.

But besides breaching social etiquette, what's so special about Mary sitting at the Master's feet and learning from him? She was a woman.

Think about it. Although Jesus had many disciples who were women, in almost all "important" transactions, he is speaking to and teaching men. All of his inner circle; the twelve disciples, were men. There is a long tradition in the Tanakh, the Apostolic Scriptures, and in historic Judaism and Christianity that tends to favor men over women.

Does that mean Judaism and Christianity is sexist?

Besides all of that, I don't think that Christianity would exist today if it were not for sexism. If Mary didn't face getting stoned to death for getting knocked up before marriage, there would have been no need for the cockamamie immaculate conception story anyhow. Odds are, Joseph pressured her to have sex before marriage and told her nothing bad was going to happen. But, I guess I'm biased.

From an article at Think Atheist

However, there are numerous areas of the Bible where we see that women are not treated poorly, as the above writer suggests:

The daughters of Zelophehad, of Manassite family—son of Hepher son of Gilead son of Machir son of Manasseh son of Joseph—came forward. The names of the daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. They stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the chieftains, and the whole assembly, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and they said, "Our father died in the wilderness. He was not one of the faction, Korah's faction, which banded together against the Lord, but died for his own sin; and he has left no sons. Let not our father's name be lost to his clan just because he had no son! Give us a holding among our father's kinsmen!"

Moses brought their case before the Lord.

And the Lord said to Moses, "The plea of Zelophehad's daughters is just: you should give them a hereditary holding among their father's kinsmen; transfer their father's share to them. -Numbers 27:1-7 (JPS Tanakh)

On the one hand, Moses had to bring this case before God because it wasn't obvious that Zelophehad's daughters should inherit, but on the hand, Moses didn't dismiss their case out of hand because it wasn't obvious that they shouldn't have such rights.

There are numerous examples of how women are valued and esteemed in the ancient Jewish (Proverbs 31:10-31) and Christian worlds, but in Christianity, the most obvious example is this:

As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. -Galatians 3:27-29 (NRSV)

"No longer male and female" doesn't mean Paul is saying that the differences between sexes were eliminated, but that access to God and our value in the eyes of the Jewish Messiah isn't affected by our gender. For men and women (and Jews, Gentiles, masters, and slaves) the playing field is completely level in that regard.

While the message of wives submitting to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-24) is often seen as sexist and oppressive, critics usually don't read far enough to see that husbands are commanded to care for their wives to the same standard that they care for themselves (Ephesians 5:25-33), and that the relationship of love and respect in marriage goes both ways.

But having said all that, did women in ancient (and not so ancient) times, have equal access to Religious and Spiritual learning?

If you've seen the 1983 Barbra Streisand film Yentl, then you might be tempted to say "no". After all, Streisand's character in the film must disguise herself as a young man to be allowed to attend a Yeshiva in Poland in 1903. This is a relatively accurate understanding of women and Jewish Yeshiva education at that time.

Traditionally in Judaism, women are "exempted" from a number of time related mitzvot as they would interfere with their duties as mothers and wives (which can certainly sound sexist). Christianity must admit to the same historical responsibility in favoring men over women in the areas of education and ministry.

While the majority of "key players" in the Bible are undeniably men, perhaps this is more of a reflection of cultural bias rather than God's intent. We see some exceptional women in the Bible (the Judge Deborah) and we notice in a number of Paul's letters that he commends a significant group of faithful women in the fledgling Messianic community. While Jesus didn't seem to assign leadership roles to any women among his inner circle, his treatment of Mary seems to show that he didn't object to (and perhaps instead respected) Mary sitting at his feet and learning the same lessons as the men. Holiness is after all, an equal opportunity affair if we can believe Paul's letter to the Galatians, and if both men and women are to have equal access to God, they certainly must be afforded an equal opportunity to learn.

While "equality" is considered more or less the norm in religious practice today (adjusted for practices in different Christian denominations and in the different branches of Judaism), we tend to think of the ancient record as showing that women were held to a lesser standard or denied equal opportunities for study and ministry. I don't believe this is true, or at least I don't believe this is true because of God's intent. If we can trust how Jesus interacted with Mary and Martha (and I admit, I'm piling on a tremendous amount of meaning onto a single part of the book of Luke), then the modern practice of admitting both men and women to Bible and Talmud study (again, adjusting for customs in different expressions of Christianity and Judaism), means we are finally catching up to a teaching of the Master that has been historically ignored.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.