The Jews and Their Book
I took a Judaism class this semester. I hoped that a Jewish perspective would shed some light on some of my many confusions and frustrations with the Bible, and especially the Old Testament. I've felt for some time that Christians (of course I don't mean all Christians) have a tendency to ignore or distort the more troublesome aspects of the Old Testament by emphasizing the supremacy of the New. How do we deal with a God who punishes whole nations, and even their slaves, for the sins of their kings? For many of us, it is enough that he doesn't seem to do these things anymore, and that Jesus was a really nice, gentle guy. Surely the God who demonstrated such love and grace in the New Testament would not do anything cruel or unjust, so however cruel and unjust his old-covenant actions seem to be, they must really be motivated by compassion or righteousness or some other good, Jesus-y quality.
This doesn't do much for me.
I hoped that Judaism could offer me some insight into what the troubling parts of the Old Testament are really saying. As direct heirs of the patriarchs, the judges and the prophets, without the benefit of our "New and Improved" Testament, they must have some insight into the more vexing aspects of the Torah. That was my reasoning.
It turns out that modern Judaism has very little in common with its Biblical roots. The destruction of the Temple in the first century brought an abrupt end to the religion of Moses, in which animal sacrifice was central. Modern Jews of all persuasions have immense reverence for the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy) but in practice, it is not their most authoritative text. Judaism today is largely the product of the centuries of Rabbinical debates and commentaries that form the Talmud. It is understood that the various, often contradictory positions of the Rabbis are inspired by God, and that it is the Rabbis' responsibility to continuously reinterpret and adapt Judaism to meet the needs of their time, culture, and individual congregations. (The relative value of adaptation and tradition is the primary difference between Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism.)
I was disappointed to hear that even the strictest Orthodox Jews no longer hold to many of the things that bother me most about the Bible. It's not that I think they should, really. I like the idea of continuous revelation. I think you could make a strong Biblical case for it, and I think it's more honest to say that we no longer believe certain things God has said because he reveals new things to new generations than to claim that we still believe everything God has said, and then twist or ignore the parts that don't fit with our modern intuitions. (I don't mean to suggest a dichotomy. I think there are other possibilities, but the latter approach seems to be quite popular among Christians.)
I was disappointed because I want to find someone who really believes in the God who sent the plagues on egypt, or who orders rape victims to marry their attackers, or who punishes children for their father's sins, to the four generations and beyond. I want find a champion for this God - someone who can explain why he should be worshiped or loved or believed in, or else who can explain to my satisfaction how these passages don't say what they seem to say. I don't know if I could be convinced that passages such as these are God-breathed, infallible truth, but I want to give them a fair shot.
My Judaism Professor said that much of the Torah is embarrassing to modern Jews. They certainly don't believe, for example, that God still commands genocidal war against immoral nations, but it is still problematic that, according to their scriptures, he used to. Jews, like Christians, seem to have found no good solution to this problem.
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22 comments:
Peace be with you.
You asked for .."someone who can explain why he should be worshiped or loved or believed in"..
I'll take a shot.
While all the struggling your doing to reconcile one aspect of G_D with another is something (I hope) we all can empathize with, you must remember; you just cant work out three dimensions in two.
As G_D introduced himself (to Moses), "I will be, what I will be."
This is the universe we live in and the only God there is. He is at once the God of tender mercies and compassion you love... and The God your so perplexed at, as to question whether they are even the same.
Was it the same Jesus who said .." It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.".. as met the Roman Centurion in the way and wondered at his faith being greater than (in) all Israel? Sure was.
At the end of the day, this is the God, one facet and the other, and many more known and unknown make a better portrait of him, many seem at odds with each other, but that is just reality.
We fear / love, worship / adore, and above all believe in G_D because he is, and is what he will be.
Now he has called us friends (beloved, allowed free thought, treated as equals... sort of), rather than servants (subjects who accept implicitly, because thats what subjects do). Can it be better than this?
Don't kill yourself questioning it all (do question, but don't kill yourself over the unresolvable). We see in part and know in part, but then....
you know the rest.
Thanks, Ann. That's a good response.
I recognize that God is utterly beyond me, that I cannot hope to understand him, and so forth. But I feel that we often use this as an excuse to avoid thinking about the more troubling aspects of the Bible's God. It's easy to brush these things off with "God's ways are not our ways", and I don't think that's very honest. At least, I know it would be dishonest for me.
Hello,
True, "...we often use this as an excuse to avoid thinking about the more troubling aspects of the Bible's God." I don't mean to suggest this. Consideration of G_D's ways being unsearchable really only comes into play (it seems to me, if my understanding is indeed correct) at the end of our searching (prov. 25:2). There is so much we can know, and so much more we cannot (presently, at least 1Cor 13:12).
You know that much Biblical account (besides being history, and a number of other reasons) exists to form a "portrait" of G_D. When he is portrayed as a vengeful god of wrath and so forth, it's not so much a dichotomy, as a picture of one aspect of G_D. It's also not just 2000 b.c.e. stuff either, in places the last writings (1john 14:6 describe G_D as essentially love, while Heb 12:29 pains him as "a consuming fire". Both are the case, and not alone, but there is so much more....
I don't know if this will help, but what really worked for me in the question of "who is G_D (what is his character like), was to hear him in his own words address this..
Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah & Lamentations all deal with G_D describing and defending his character as a 2nd theme, to which the writing turns periodically between (the main thrust of their prophesy), and it's a theme woven through the minor prophets as well.
Really, there's little to compare with a good read through "the writings" (Major & minor prophets), except of course the Gospel and all that follows, but and understanding of this is foundational to that.
Ya.
I guess I would say that the different portrayals of God in the Bible represent different people's understandings of him, based on their experiences. I certainly believe that different people will often have radically different understandings of God, and that God is complex enough that two seemingly contradictory understandings of Him could both be more or less true.
But some things in the Bible are so violently opposed to my understanding of God that I feel like it would be a betrayal of my God not to be horrified and repulsed by them.
God's ways are not our ways, and I guess at the end of the day we must admit that it's possible that God punishes children for their father's sins, and maybe he has a good and just reason to do so, even if this flies in the face of everything that I know or believe about justice. But since I personally don't believe that all parts of the Bible are necessarily good representations of God, there's another explanation that seems far better to me.
Hello, well I certainly don't want to wear you down on this, and perhaps it's my unclarity that makes me think what I'm suggesting is being misunderstood. So I hope you'll bear with me once more while I try to get my point across, so that we'll at least understand each others stance.
I definitely don't mean to suggest that all the diverse, and seemingly irreconcilable portraits of the Most High differ only on the part of the beholder, consider (even if you only can as an exercise) that all of these representations were given by JEHOVAH (I ought to pause here to note I'm using some of the myriad of names G_D uses for himself to underscore the myriad of self portraits he presents) toward the ends of at once building the "big picture", and indicating the unfathomably of G_D.
Men have wrestled with this since the beginning (Job 5:9, 26~), and you do show wisdom in you final analysis. But we can go a long way toward understanding what we realize we cannot ultimately fathom.
In researching this I found a page listing the names, and brief definitions. I think it makes an interesting reference http://www.ldolphin.org/Names.html.
consider the diversity of meanings in these names. What is the (get ready) "..high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy" (Isa 57:15) trying to say? Many things occur, but certainly that he is painting many pictures of his nature, which one would need to somehow reconcile or combine to get the "big picture".
Perhaps that's just it, "The LORD Who Heals" is resisting our attempt to build a comprehensive "big picture" because it would be fundamentally inaccurate (besides incomplete). G_D, to you, is after all, whom and how ever he pleases to be toward you.
A man may be a (for example) Judge. A description of who and how he is, not at all inconsistent with the truth would vary widely depending upon who you ask. To the innocent dependent he may be a friend in a time of great trouble, a deliver who dealt fairly with them (in finding them innocent). to a stray do he may be a warm heart with a hand out of some sandwich, a benefactor of sorts. To his friends he may be any number of things, but foremost a friend. To his insurance company, he may be a number. To his dry cleaner, a man with sweaty armpits. to his co workers he may be the curator of justice, who diligently and fairly divides the evidence, not respecting persons, or swayed much by speeches, exonerating the innocent, and condemning the guilty. to his wife, perhaps, a fool. to the prosecutor, or defense attorneys, a high hurdle, immune to their whiles, before whom the defendant must stand or fall according to the evidence. to his paper boy, a good, if inconsistent tipper. to his colleagues perhaps, uncomfortably accomplished. to his daughter, Daddy.
Which of these is right? he is what he is to the person involved.
I think maybe that's the reason for the inscrutability here.
There, I've exhausted myself. I apologize for my slightly less than coherent rambling, the hour, the little box I'm forced to type in, and my own lack of writing skill, combine to make me poorly written.
I have tried sincerely to speak to this topic though, and I encourage response or inquiry from any who desire, I've left an email address as a name, hopefully bot resistant. Thanks for receiving all this!
I also dislike the little typing box, but I appreciate your contributions.
You make a good point about the transcendence of God and our inability to know or understand him to any great degree. I also agree that that the variety of portraits of God found in the Bible and elsewhere ought to challenge and expand our idea of him.
It is true that (as an analogy) a man may seem to be many different things to many different people. It may also be true no one has a reasonably accurate and comprehensive understanding of a given man, and that each of his acquaintances could gain a better understanding of him through interaction with others who experience him in a different role.
The only thing I'd like to add is that if one acquaintance believes the man to be the epitome of fair-mindedness and tolerance, and another believes him to be hate-filled, intolerant, and an active member of the KKK, one of these acquaintances must be mistaken.
Essentially, this is my problem with certain portions of the Bible: they describe a God whose character and commands are diametrically opposed to the most essential attributes of the God I believe in. I believe, for example, in a supremely loving, just, and merciful God, but many Biblical authors describe a God who is extraordinarily cruel , vindictive, and unjust. Unless my reading of the texts or my understanding of love, justice and mercy are greatly misguided, it seems to me that my understanding of God is irreconcilable with parts of the Bible.
This a tough one and an issue for me too. I love the Old Testament for a lot of reasons. There's some great stories in there, especially about extremely flawed individuals being chosen and used by God, and some profound moments of grace.
The prophets are particularily fascinating, proclaiming God's anger in pretty colorful terms using graphic sexual imagery and all manner of violent language, but every once and a while they'll suddenly turn on a dime and express God's grace and love in incredible poetry.
I spent a lot of time reading the prophets trying to grasp an understanding of what the lives of these mouthpieces of God must have been like. Guys like Ezekiel basically commanded to perform avant-garde street theatre in the public square, or Hosea commanded to marry a prostitute. It flys in the face of a lot of the people held up to be prophets nowadays who are well-liked amongst their own people and held up and venerated.
That aside, I find myself just putting aside the bits of the OT I don't get, as intellectually dishonest as that perhaps is. I don't think of God as being like he's described at times in the OT where it reminds me of an abusive spouse (and I don't mean this flippantly - it's the only comparable thing I can find for the extremes of rage and tenderness) - 'Look what you're making me do! If you'd just listen, I wouldn't have to beat you! But if you come back, baby, it'll all be OK - I'll love you again, we'll get that house, and it'll all be good...'
I'm far from studied, but I wonder how much of it's cultural in the sense of the writers at the time giving their best understanding of God's behaviour or what they perceived his behaviour to be. If you're a strict literalist, I guess you're stuck with the dichotomy to resolve, but if you believe that the writer's brought some of their own bias and perspective to the text, then it's understandable somewhat in the culture of the day.
People back then (and sadly today) believed their god was responsible when they achieved victory. They believed the death of their enemies (legitimate or otherwise) was a blessing and expressed it that way in writing down the account of taking the land of Caanan or their exodus from Egypt. The gods of the time were capricious and given to shifts of moods.
Are some of the difficulties in the OT the result of immature theology (in the sense of developing, not being condescending)? Looking at the OT and on to the NT, it would seem either God was learning & changing, or our understanding of Him was developing. I'm not studied enough in this area to be able to say concretely, but this is the direction I currently lean.
I agree.
I remember attending a church where a famous German missionary suggested that God does, indeed, change to fit the needs of interaction with humans, thus the changes that occur in the Bible... the next Sunday, the pastor made sure to mention in his sermon that the missionary was clearly wrong (he himself had invited the man in to speak!)
If you want to find someone who really believes in, and thinks they understand, the more troubling parts of the Bible I suggest you talk to those dreaded Christian conservatives/fundamentalists. Lots of them know their Bibles extremely well, and they believe even the wierd parts to be important. (For example, I remember reading one commentary on the genocide in Joshua, who suggested using the Book of Joshua that a)the Caananites had long, long warning and knew they were supposed to leave and b) the vast majoriy of Caananites, presumably including women and children, ran away instead of being killed. Unfortunately, I don't remember the link.
Finally, while I also am troubled by the parts of the Bible that worry you, I think it's smart to remember that we live in a very peaceful, orderly society. Parts of our world are violent and brutal... In South Africa, for example, a large portion of the population hopes for a more severe government response to crime, including as much force as necesary. It's not hard to imagine a South African Christian finding comfort and hope in a warrior God that fights on their side and smites their enemies.
haha. I must be one of "those dreaded Christian conservatives/fundamentalists" because I find no difficulty in reconciling the surface dichotomy between OT & NT. I find no inconsistency at all. At _all_. Furthermore, I find no need to suggest that the Biblical theology was evolving towards a more complete & mature understanding of God throughout mankind's history, giving credence to a cultural scapegoat for the reasons why our pictures of God don't match up with who God really is. Instead of the suggestion that David puts forward, proposing that the "problems" in the OT are due to writer's immature theology, perhaps is it not more simple to appreciate that our own perspectives on God (particularly what justice, mercy and love truly are) might be skewed because of our own cultural influences? Something to chew on: what makes us & our own personal understandings more correct than what the Bible says & teaches? Perhaps the audacity implied in that statement might cause some altered thoughts.
I will not continue to write a discourse on defending the unity of God throughout the Bible here on a blog post: it is the wrong medium for such a discussion. Get ahold of me in real life, and we'll discuss this face-to-face, if you'd like (see you tomorrow, Jake.).
Filth-Man: Good point. I wonder if I would feel better about a tough-on-crime God if I lived in a more depraved, brutal society. But the crux of my problem with the Bible is not that the guilty are judged harshly, but that the innocent are consistently judged along with the guilty. I would think that those who have experienced injustice and cruelty and oppression first hand would be all the more repulsed by a God who pours out his wrath the subjects, slaves, children and ancestors of the wicked.
Lucy: Yes, it's probably easier to talk about these things in person. But for the benefit of other readers, I'll respond to a couple points.
First, I don't want to frame this as an issue of OT God verses NT God. It's true that the God I take issue with appears more frequently in the OT, but there are parts of the OT that I think are great, and parts of the NT that I find very problematic. Even Jesus says some weird stuff.
You're right that cultural influences cut both ways - if we invoke them to explain difficult scriptures, we must also admit that they affect our own beliefs. This I do freely. I'm not suggesting that my moral compass is more accurate than those of the Biblical authors (although it might be); I'm just saying that they seem to be wildly out of sync, and I don't know how to reconcile them.
Jacob, I agree and share your concerns about Biblical Justice. I'd like to think that God "makes it up" to the innocent in a big way after death, but that's speculation and not Bible teaching.
You may be right, but the OT writers themselves didn't believe in an afterlife. Which makes the idea of killing the living for long-dead ancestors' sins still more bizarre.
"..but the OT writers themselves didn't believe in an afterlife."
HUH?!
what do you do with;
"Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel."(Eze:37:12)
they dicerned between phisical death and spiritual ongoing too:
"The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence.
But we will bless the LORD from this time forth and for evermore. Praise the LORD." (Psalms:115:17~18)
and resurrection:
"And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:
Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me." (Job:19:26~27)
You know, the best text on this is found in the New Testament where explanation is given:
"..the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection.." (Mt:22:23)
".. the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection.." (Mr 12:18)
"For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both." (Act 23:8)
Be careful who you listen to. Devout Jews even today hold the doctrine of resurrection, the idea of (spiritual) afterlife & so forth. Go ask the hasidem especially the hasid lubavitch. They will readily affirm their belief in these things (for all their outlandishness they are well studied, and can speak for a great portion of modern orthodox jewrey).
You've got to take this from where it comes, if your professor is teaching you "Jews say xxxx" remember, he can't possibly be speaking for more than a portion of Jews, there are simply too many doctrinal diversities to say "Jews believe %any one thing%".
I think you have a modern day Sadducee on the line there.
It should be said, somewhere along the way here; "Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying.." (1Tm:1:4)
try not to be washed away in all this Jewishness. It can be an enlightening study, but their about as Jewish as Catholics are Christian. They've changed it all around, added and lessened things, until their doctrine is about as useful as cheese cloth (is) for a life raft.
Remember: "..I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie.." (Re:3:9) as well.
Well...
Eze 37 is a one time miraculous event, or (more likely) a vision, used as an illustration of the way the Israelites will be returned from exile.
Psalm 115 says that the dead do not praise the Lord, but "go down to silence"; rather it is we (those who are alive) who praise him.
Job 19 is the closest thing in the OT to an affirmation of a resurrection, but could also be taken another way: Job speaks in the singular, and in fact, his skin was pretty much destroyed, and by the end of the book, he does see (or at the least, hear) God. But if Job is referring to a resurrection, it is the only reference to this in 34 chapters of debate about suffering and God's justice. (And probably the only reference in the whole OT.) If the concept of a resurrection was at all prevalent at the time, you would think it would come up at least a couple times in this long-winded battle of the theodicies.
I'm aware of the Sadducees' position on the resurrection. They were a prominent post-OT Jewish movement and were well acquainted with the OT scriptures. I am also aware that modern Jews are a diverse bunch, that they have little in common with Bible-era Jews, and that the majority, though certainly not all, believe in some form of afterlife. (My prof affirmed all of these things.) The idea that OT Jews didn't believe in an afterlife is by no means exclusive to liberal, Jewish university professors; several knowledgeable Christians have also mentioned this to me.
I'm not in any danger of being washed away by "Jewishness". And it's no secret that Judaism has changed a good deal since the time of Moses or Jesus. But I don't mind telling you that I've met some Jews who are a good deal more Jewish than most Protestants are Christian. Useless doctrines and false religion are by no means exclusive to Catholics and Jews.
I see.
Hey Jacob, I'm reading comments long after you're done with this post, so hopefully your email alerts you to this one...
First of all, my understanding of the Old Testament is, like Jacob's, that there is no coherent philosophy of an afterlife. There are some hints (Daniel 12, for example) but when Jesus came along the idea of a conscious afterlife was still very much for debate.
For Lucid Elusion; if you have a schema/process/whatever for reconciling seemingly contradictory aspects of God's character as described by the Bible, I'd love to hear about it. If you continue to believe a blog is not the proper medium for such a discussion you can contact me another way.
Finally, the idea of "corporate responsibility" seems to be huge in the Old Testament; that is, people are judged (and rewarded or punished) as a family, group, culture, etc... (The people of Isreal, the Caananites, the Ninevites, etc...) this marks a radical change from the New Testament, where pleasing or uposetting God, as well as salvation or damnation, depend on each individual's response.
It almost seems like God has shifted his way of dealing with human beings; either that or, as David suggests, New Testament writers have a more evolved (more correct?) understanding of God's justice.
If anyone has either a good theological answer to what I see as a dichotomy, or perhaps an understanding of how ancient cultures viewed guilt or innocence (and what THEY would have seen as justice or injustice) I'd love to hear about it.
People in the Old Testament are judged both individually and collectively (the siege of Jericho, for example, includes both). They are also sometimes judged for the actions of their kings and ancestors.
There are, I think, lingering elements of collective judgement in the NT (eg. Jesus proclaims doom - actually, degrees of doom, which is also kind of weird - on certain towns) but there certainly seems to be a shift towards individual accountability.
Off the top of my head, I can think of three explanations.
1. Those who highly value God's changelessness could deny that there is any significant shift. There are enough examples in both testaments of both personal and group judgment to make the argument that God has always - and will always - do both. (Of course, the fairness of collective judgment is another matter.)
2. It could be that the Jesus Event changed how people are judged. (It changed a lot of things.) There seems to have been something inherently corporate about the old covenant - it was made between God and a nation, and primarily concerned the laws, governance, and long-term success of that nation - whereas the new covenant is extremely personal (as our fundamentalist friends are fond of reminding us). This still doesn't explain why corporate judgment was necessary, or how exactly it's just, but maybe we can file these as "God knows best" mysteries.
3. The other explanation is that in a world which has little interest in individuality, is strongly nationalistic, cares more than anything about producing offspring, and lacks the concept of an afterlife, people noticed that they don't always get what they deserve and decided that judgment must come on later generations. When the concept of an afterlife gained popularity, it provided a more satisfying solution to the problem of earthly injustice.
Your suggestions are good. Like yourself, I don't understand the fairness of collective judgement. I
do think that justice is culturally determined- to some degree. For example, if my dad lipped off to his teacher, he would get the cane, and this would be seen as a just consequence. If I caned a lippy student, I would be justifiably fired- justice determined by the changing culture. However, the concept of justice isn't so flexible that the killing of children is ok because of it's cultural context... can it?
In the end, I guess the whole Bible could be about collective judgement, and collective un-judgement... "As in Adam all die, in Christ all will be lifted up".
I agree that there is a cultural element to justice. I don't know how to determine what is or isn't affected by culture, but I'd say that certain principles are non-negotiable, such as not punishing people for the actions of others.
Intriguingly, there seems to be movement toward this point of view even within the OT. Jeremiah says that a day is coming in which "everyone will die [only] for his own sin". And Ezekiel (his late contemporary) emphatically declares that the day has come. (Actually, he seems to be saying that God has never punnished children for their fathers' sins. Maybe Zeke needs to bone up on his Pentateuch).
Intriguing indeed. I never knew there was such strong argument (in the Bible) against collective judgement.
I found this interesting:
"Yet you say, 'The way of the Lord is not just.' Hear, O house of Israel: Is my way unjust? Is it not your ways that are unjust?" this after Exekiel/God explains the "new" concept of personal justice. Seems the people found it UNJUST that sons were no longer to be punished for their father's sins. "Will not the son share his father's guilt?" (paraphrasing...)
It's strange how even a concept like justice changes over time and culture... I still like our version best though.
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