You Have 50 Minutes to Teach about Hebrew Civilization and the Origins of Judaism. Go.
Coming this January, at a UCLA campus near you (or not so near, as the case may be), I will be presenting a lecture on Hebrew Civilization and Second Temple Judaism within the context of the course “Introduction to Western Civilization: Ancient Civilizations, Prehistory to Circa A.D. 843.” I will be TAing for two sections of twenty each for this course, but this lecture will be for the entire 300-something student class.
So, what would you like the bright and impressionable young minds of UCLA to know about the rise of Hebrew civilization, the history of Israel, the exile, the origins of Judaism, and the Hebrew Bible based upon a 50 minute presentation?
Remember that this is in the context of the broad sweep of ancient history, serving as the foundations for something nebulous called “Western civilization.” The course is unofficially known as “From Caveman to Charlemagne.” The lecture in the class meeting prior to mine is on “Egypt in the New Kingdom; The Mesopotamian Kingdoms,” while the one after is “Minoans, Phoenicians; The End of International Bronze Age (Troy).” We will have already read Hammurabi, Gilgamesh, and The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant. They will be responsible for reading the Book of Exodus the week of my lecture. The only other biblical document they will be reading is the Gospel of Matthew several weeks later.
I have some of my own ideas, of course, but I’d like to hear what others would choose to highlight with such a brief opportunity to cover such an important topic.
Book Review: Jewish Believers in Jesus, Pt. 1
Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries
Editors: Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik
Hardcover: 930 pages
Publisher: Hendrickson
ISBN: 9781565637634
Buy: Hendrickson; Amazon
Though it is a bit overdue, I would like to extend my gratitude to Hendrickson Publishers for sending me a review copy of Jewish Believers in Jesus, edited by Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik. This weighty volume came out shortly before SBL 2007 and was the subject of a standing room only discussion (Session S19-116) at that meeting. Of particular interest to me at that time was Mark Nanos’ scathing review of Don Hagner’s contribution in this work. For anyone in the room at the time of its reading, the tension was palpable. An audio version of the session is available, as is a PDF of Nanos’ paper (which was not read in its entirety), and I have transcribed Don Hagner’s response to Nanos here. My friend Matt Barnes also did a few blog posts about the Nanos paper. Having said that, my interests in this topic have since expanded further.
I attended this session after having taken a course on “Paul and the Law” from Hagner (winter 2007). This past quarter (fall 2008), I was part of a seminar with Ra’anan Boustan at UCLA on “Jews, Gentiles, and Christians in the Roman World.” On the heals of this last course, I am excited to tackle some pieces of this massive work. After the Hagner course, I was interested especially in the issue of the New Perspective on Paul (which I found more helpful than did Hagner). After the Boustan seminar, I have a somewhat wider interest in this scholarship.
In his preface to the work, Skarsaune notes the challenges to the idea that there ever was a “parting of the ways” between “Jews” and “Christians”–he names Boyarin’s Dying for God and the edited work, The Ways that Never Parted. He says, “[T]his has meant that while we were at work, a paradigm shift was going on around us” (xii). That paradigm shift moves away from the idea that there was a clean break between something called “Judaism” and something called “Christianity.” That there was such a break is the traditional view. The idea that there was no such break is at the heart of newer scholarship, such as the recent publication of Paula Fredriksen’s Augustine and the Jews (I hope to do a review of that work on this blog as well). This idea that there was no such break was also at the heart of Boustan’s seminar. The work edited by Skarsaune and Hvalvik contains multiple viewpoints on this and other topics:
“Neither authors nor editors think of this volume as a definitive history of Jewish believers in Jesus during the early centuries (first to fifth centuries C.E.). Nor have the editors made any attempt at unifying and streamlining the points of view expressed in the different contributions. We have regarded it an advantage that the book contains more than one opinion on some of the problems treated. There is, at present, no established scholarly consensus on the different themes treated in this volume. This goes for the many large as well as many of the smaller questions. In this way it is hoped that this volume, rather than summing up current scholarship, may in some measure contribute to it.” (xii-xiii)
It seems important to begin this multi-post review with definitions. That is where the book begins and it seems to be the cause of some confusion for two unhelpful reviews on Amazon (reviews that are based more on assumptions of what the term “Jewish believers in Jesus” must mean rather than actual readings of the book itself!). Unfortunately, this book is not one that can be searched inside on Amazon nor on Google Books–so, it is difficult for those interested to check things out without a copy of the book in hand. That said, you can find the table of contents, the preface and Skarsaune’s chapter on definitions at Hendrickson’s site. You can also find a very lengthy review by Elizabeth Boddens Hosang and Bart J. Koet in RBL. I hope my own review can be a helpful contribution for those interested.
Skarsaune notes that their project seeks to consider “Jews” as something closer to an ethnic category than an ideological category. If we consider, say, “Jewish Christians” as those who “believed in Jesus, and at the same time continued a wholly Jewish way of life” (4), then we abandon an important group: that is, “Jews who believed in Jesus, and at the same time abandoned their Jewish way of life and were assimilated among the Gentile Christians” (4). Skarsaune would like to discuss a wide range of Jews who confessed Christ and thus the term, “Jewish believers in Jesus.” These are people who were born Jews and also believe in Jesus, whether or not they practiced the “Jewish way of life” (however that is defined).
The term “Jewish Christian” is unfavorable because of its (potentially offensive) connotations: “It has become a term denoting something by nature Gentile, and by implication, non-Jewish” (4). I appreciate their category of “Jewish believers in Jesus,” though it would be nice if we could have a term that not only focused on “belief.” I suppose this gets to a foundational issue in the book: once a Jew becomes a believer in Jesus, how does this affect his or her way of life? The issue is more complicated than whether the “Jewish way of life” is abandoned or retained. Even if we could define what a “Jewish way of life” means, certainly there must be middle ground between total abandonment or total retainment (or simple discontinuity vs. simple continuity–see Hagner’s remarks). The benefit of this term is that it encompasses any number of responses to the paradigm shift of belief in Jesus.
In response to the question of whether this term is merely a modern construction, Skarsaune offers a few relevant ancient examples (5-6). I would like to close this first post by sharing them here because I find them so interesting:
(1) “Jesus said to those Ἰουδαῖοι who believed in him . . .” (John 8:31).
(2) “. . . those of the Jewish people who have believed in Jesus [οἱ ἀπὸ τοῦ λαοῦ τῶν Ἰουδαίων εἰς τὸν Ἰησοῦν πιστεύσαντες]” (Origen, Cels. 2.1).7
(3) “Why . . . did he not represent the Jew as addressing Gentile instead of Jewish believers? [οἱ ἀπὸ Ἰουδαίων . . . πιστεύοντες]” (Cels. 2.1).
(4) “Notice, then, what Celsus says to Jewish believers [οἱ ἀπὸ Ἰουδαίων πιστεύοντες]” (Cels. 2.1).
(5) “. . . He failed to notice that Jewish believers in Jesus [οἱ ἀπὸ Ἰουδαίων εἰς τὸν Ἰησοῦν πιστεύοντες] have not left the law of their fathers . . .” (Cels. 2.1).
(6) “[Matthew published his gospel first] for those who from Judaism came to believe [τοῖς ἀπὸ Ιουδαϊσμοῦ πιστεύσασιν]” (Origen, Comm. Matt., in Eusebius, Hist. eccl., 6.25.4).
(7) “It is said that their whole church at that time consisted of believing Jews [ἐξ Ἑβραίων πιστῶν]” (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.5.2).
(8) “[Hegesippus] was a believer from among the Jews [ἐξ Ἑβραίων]” (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.22.8).
More to come!
Book Review: Christian Origins by Jonathan Knight
I would like to extend my gratitude to Abby at T&T Clark (see their blog) for sending along a fabulous (brand) new survey on the origins of Christianity. Jonathan Knight’s Christian Origins [publisher link - find the table of contents there] is a comprehensive introduction to the Jewish origins of Christianity, with an emphasis on the eschatological connection between Second Temple Judaism and the beginnings of the Jesus movement. The book is particularly relevant for my own interests because (1) I have just begun my doctoral program in Christian origins at UCLA and (2) I’m crazy about apocalyptic eschatology.
Knight’s work is quite ambitious. Within these pages, you find 31 mostly bite-sized chapters ranging topics as diverse as the sources of Second Temple Judaism, Diaspora Judaism, “Who Did Jesus Think He Was?”, Pauline soteriology and ethics, the “breach” between Christianity and Judaism, and the rise of Gnosticism. Knight covers both social and theological topics. He is sensitive to matters of scholarly nuance and introduces readers to important names and arguments within scholarship, while also keeping his prose accessible. Before going to far, we should note that Knight serves as a Research Fellow of the Katie Wheeler Trust and Visiting Fellow in New Testament and Christian Ministry at York St John University, UK. Knight is an ordained Anglican priest and has also written a book on Jesus. His preface notes that his next book will be on apocalypticism, “as if this has become a theme which I cannot evade” (xiii).
Knight attempts to dispossess the reader of the concept of an unambiguous “fixed” Christianity (or Judaism for that matter). He would like to take the reader back past the councils of the early church to the rich complexity of early Christianity. The book is divided into four parts, “From Judaism to Jesus,” “Jesus and His Mission,” “Paul and Christian Beginnings,” and “The Birth of Early Christianity.” The second part, especially the eleventh chapter on “An Approach to Jesus,” is a good primer on “historical Jesus” studies. To my enjoyment, Johannes Weiss receives a whole page and is not simply subsumed as a sentence or two under Schweitzer. Knight’s section on Paul does not survey the history of scholarship in the same way that he does for the historical Jesus, but it does reflect that scholarship. He surveys the writings of Paul (undisputed and disputed), gives a “whistlestop tour” of Pauline soteriology, highlights his eschatology, and considers his ethics.
Having just finished a presentation on the history of Christian writings on Judaism, I was happy to see Knight guide the reader through that difficult issue. For example, when speaking of Christianity’s possible inheritance of apocalyptic eschatology from Judaism, Knight rightly cautions,
In saying this, we must be careful to note the differences between ancient Judaism and modern Christianity and not to impose the younger understanding arbitrarily on older and quite different texts. This is to call for sensitivity in interpretation which allows the ancient texts to speak for themselves and not through a Christian matrix. Christian readers should recognize their natural bias in this respect. [58]
On mentioning E.P. Sanders’ “covenantal nomism,” Knight observes, “Sanders criticizes earlier scholarship on Judaism–particularly Christian scholarship–for its presentation of that relation as dominated by the perennial balance between sins and merits” (33). Knight could have tread a bit more carefully in his chapter on the “breach” between Judaism and Christianity. Even calling whatever “parting of the ways” that occured between the Jesus movement and its religious heritage a “breach” seems a bit harsh (?). Knight’s comment to start off the chapter uncharacteristically lacks some sensitivity to reader reaction: “The separation that occured was the result of reaction against the Christians by people of Jewish descent” (266). Out of context, this statement could be read as “blaming” the Jews for the separation and that is certainly thin ice. The content of the chapter, however, does cover key issues, including christological developments, the “twelfth benediction” of the Jamnian Academy and John 9, the polemic against the Pharisees in Matthew 23, Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, and so-called “Jewish Christianity” such as the Ebionites.
To give an idea of his comments on Jesus’ death and resurrection, Knight strongly dismisses the idea that Jesus did not actually die on the cross (148) and more gently suggests that we “need not doubt” statements regarding the empty tomb (155, cf. 260). Contrary to being an intentional apologetic, however, Knight’s agenda in discussing the resurrection of Jesus is in what Jesus’ early followers did with the event. Knight suggests that the empty tomb is an “ambiguous symbol” and that resurrection appearances are “apocalyptic visions in which a heavenly mediator appears to the disciples and communicates a revelation to them” (260).
The biggest oversight in the book from my perspective is its lack of addressing the issue of women in the church. Knight breezes past a comment that the first half of 1 Corinthians 11 is “controversial,” barely mentioning “a statement of the subordination of women to men” (181). In his endnote for this sentence, he does refer to work done by Morna Hooker and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Curiously, in the next endnote, which is regarding spiritual gifts in 1 Cor 12-14, he refers to Wayne Grudem’s work on prophecy in 1 Corinthians without explanation. Grudem’s work in this area is highly tilted in favor of the subordination of women. The missing engagement of women’s roles is felt particularly strongly in his chapter on “The Development of the Christian Ministry.” Within this chapter, Knight has the following statement under his treatment of “deacons”:
A whole passage in the Pastoral Epistles (1 Tim. 3.8-13) prescribes rules for their [deacons'] behaviour, including the behaviour of women deacons. The fact that the same epistle forbids women to teach or to have authority over men (1 Tim 2.12) is an indicator of the subordinate role of deacons in the communities addressed at that time. [291]
As far as I can see, this is the only statement on women in ministry in Knight’s book. I believe a book like this must address the patriarchal and androcentric nature of the surrounding society. Regarding gender roles in the family, Knight only casually mentions the household codes (191) and even then does not mention the role of husbands and wives. Within the book’s index, there are no entries for any of the following terms: women, female, gender, family, feminism, patriarchalism, or androcentrism. Knight nowhere mentions Paul’s key text (however one interprets it) in Galatians 3:28, “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.”
The book uses endnotes rather than footnotes, and 100 pages of them at that. While I know Nick Norelli prefers the latter (he demotes his reviewed books one star out of five if they use endnotes!), endnotes do seem appropriate for a book aimed at a survey introducing newcomers to the field. The “Index of Names” is a misnomer, as it is an index of names and topics, where it would be helpful to have them separated.
Any oversights aside, I would highly recommend this book for use in a Christian origins or introductory New Testament course (though the latter should probably supplement Knight with a New Testament introduction proper). My two favorite things about this book are: (1) Knight’s integration of the study of apocalyptic eschatology into nearly all aspects of Christian origins and (2) Knight’s adroit descriptions of complex scholarly arguments in an accessible manner. My most significant caution about using the book would be the need to supplement Knight’s work with solid coverage of gender roles in Christian origins. The material is certainly appropriate for seminarians or other graduate students and may be challenging to undergraduates, but in a positive way. As noted, Knight is a Christian, but his purpose is not to coddle conservative evangelicals–far from it. His insistence on nuance and ambiguity may just make a fundamentalist student’s head explode. But maybe they could grow a new one. On the other end, I do not believe it is too confessional for a secular classroom. With that said, I wish everyone happy reading!
Christians Writing about Judaism (with Bias)
This past Monday, I gave my first oral presentation (my first assignment!) of my doctoral career at UCLA. For our class on “Jews, Gentiles, and Christians in the Roman World,” taught by Ra’anan Boustan, we first covered the historiography of how Christian writers have treated Judaism throughout the millennia. The major works that I presented on were George Foot Moore’s “Christian Writers on Judaism” (from Harvard Theological Review in 1921), a chapter out of E.P. Sanders Paul and Palestinian Judaism (“Tannaitic Literature,” pp. 33–59) and a hefty excerpt from Charlotte Klein’s Anti-Judaism in Christian Theology (pp. 1-66). Making my way through all that history of scholarship and planning a presentation on it was a beastly task. But the results were interesting, so I’d like to share it here with you all.
Part of the reason that this reading was so overwhelming, besides the overabundance of name after name, is because it was so negative. We read about one guy after another (yes, all men) who poorly interpreted Judaism. Moore begins his article with this statement: “Christian interest in Jewish literature has always been apologetic or polemic rather than historical.” That sets the tone for the whole reading. (To make a simplistic clarification, “apologetic” is defending that Christianity is true, while “polemic” is closer to a hateful attack on Judaism).
Moore first covers Christian writings on Judaism through the eighteenth century. In the early centuries of this period, Christian writers set up caricatures of Jewish apologists as straw-men that could easily be knocked down. After a few centuries, Jews and Christians both stepped up their game. Jewish authors challenged Christianity on the basis of Christian documents and doctrines. Christian authors used authoritative Jewish writings, such as the Targums and Midrash (going beyond merely the OT), to show that true Judaism actually verified the claims of Christianity. During this period, most Christian writers were polemical, though there were some exceptions that were merely apologetic.
In the nineteenth century, Christian scholars made an attempt to depict Judaism from an objective historical angle, though Moore believes they were unsuccessful. Judaism was viewed primarily through the lens of the New Testament. Judaism was addressed as the “background” of the New Testament. Many scholars worked on collecting parallels found in Jewish writings to the New Testament.
Ferdinand Weber stands out as one who represents another trend in Christian writing on Judaism. Weber sought to develop a systematic theology of Judaism, using the systems of Christian theology to depict historical Judaism. Within Weber and other authors of that time, we see a shift in thinking about Judaism. Now, the theology of Judaism is thought to be radically different (and inferior) from that of Christianity. The God of Judaism is far removed from humanity and inaccessible. Weber describes the “soteriology” of Judaism (a Christian term referring to the theology of salvation) as wholly legalistic. At the judgment, the Jew will stand before God with their transgressions on one side of the scale and their good works and acts of atonement on the other. Their works are what make them righteous, but their eternal salvation is uncertain according to Weber. If they do happen to lean on the righteous side, this leads to self-righteous pride in the faithful Jew.
Sanders and Klein pick up where Moore leaves off, showing that Moore made some headway in the study of Judaism, but ultimately his rallying cry for fair scholarship on Judaism was nullified. Klein notes that scholarship that perpetuates old biases is not malicious, hateful, or anti-Semitic (contrary to Nazi “pseudo-scholars”, like Kittel), but rather they show an ignorance of the sources and of their own bias. Sanders highlights the work of Billerbeck and Bultmann as nullifying the work of Moore. Billerbeck with his widely used parallels between rabbinic literature and the NT and Bultmann who added his supreme weight in NT studies to the Weber line of thinking about Judaism.
One of the key problems seen in this quick history of scholarship is that assumptions can become so deeply rooted as to go unquestioned and unsupported within scholarship. Even well-meaning and careful scholars fall prey to inherited harmful presuppositions.
Bias is a legacy that lasts generations in complicated and hidden ways. So, what do we do with our presuppositions? How do we approach historical documents? What sources do we use to talk about “normative Judaism”? Is there such a thing as normative Judaism?
These are all difficult questions, no doubt. And the track record of scholarship does not give us a heck of a lot of hope (though things have certainly gotten better since Sanders and Klein wrote in the seventies). But personally, I feel like we can make great progress by trying to be self-aware of our biases (what do we want the texts to say) and trying to be as honest as possible. I also think we can help things if we can just be a bit more sensitive to concerns that have been raised by others. For example, though this issue isn’t mentioned above, if you are going to use the term “conversion” for what happened to Paul, you should probably explain why and acknowledge the concerns raised by folks who think that’s an anachronistic or otherwise inappropriate term for Paul. I don’t think sensitive and self-aware scholarship is an impossibility!
Hey, I know, let's blame it on the Jews…
Yesterday a friend of mine, who had just come back from an interfaith retreat and had picked up a cold, said, “The Jews made me sick.” Well, she was sitting in between two Jews, both with bad colds, at a dinner during the retreat and she happened to pick up what they had. But, given all the reading that I’ve been doing about the history of New Testament scholarship, it was almost a parody of some of the sadder moments in NT research. NT scholars throughout history have so often (and so easily) “blamed” the Jews for some theological problem they had.
For example, I have read in a few sources about how William Whiston (1667-1752), famous as the translator of Josephus’s works, demonstrated this tendency in dealing with the problem of Old Testament prophecy fulfillment in the NT. One of the major concerns for the early post-Reformation researchers in biblical studies was the fulfillment of prophecy. Alongside miracles, for them it was an indicator of the Bible’s divine origin. By Whiston’s time, however, much of the research on the “literal” sense of the putative “prophecies” in the Hebrew Bible was showing that these seemed to be misused by the authors of the New Testament. Read in their proper and “literal” or “plain sense” context, these were not prophecies at all, but mostly referred to historical events from their own historical situation.
Whiston’s solution? Blame it on the Jews! The early Christians used the original Hebrew texts appropriately, according to Whiston, attentive to their “literal” meaning. But then Jews, in reaction to Christian interpretations, went back and changed their own sacred Scriptures so that the literal meaning would not support the Christian claims of prophecy fulfillment.
I don’t doubt that there was back and forth between Jews and Christians and there was, at some point, some sort of “parting of the ways” between the two. I don’t doubt that such a parting led to the tweaking of some teachings on both sides of the equation (although, I’d imagine it was quite heavier on the Christian and anti-Judaism side of things). But to suggest that Jews would actually corrupt their own Scriptures to spite Christian interpretations, and to make this suggestion just so that Christians can hold onto a threatened belief in prophecy fulfillment . . . That’s just ridiculous.
On Faith: What is "Jewish Identity"?
A very important question has been asked on the On Faith blog, which is sponsored by the Washington Post and Newsweek. For those unfamiliar with the blog, it generally asks a controversial question relating to faith and gets several academics and religious leaders and others to respond. The responses are not always very long, but they are often quite interesting and from vastly different perspectives. This week the topic is:
Next week PBS will air a series on “the Jewish Americans.” We know what “Jewish identity” has meant in the past. What will it mean in the future? How does a minority religion retain its roots and embrace change?
So far the question has garnered responses from N.T. Wright, Arun Gandhi (who responds by talking about “Israel and the culture of violence”), Susan Jacoby, Jonathan D. Sarna, Willis E. Elliott, and Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite (the president of Chicago Theological Seminary). They will probably get some more respondents to the question, which tend to trickle in through the week. Intriguing and worth a gander.
Hagner's Response to Nanos' Critique
I have just noticed that the SBL session reviewing “Jewish Christianity” (S19-116) is available for free audio download (HT: JC Baker). I will be reflecting on the exchange between Hagner and Nanos a little later (as has Matt Barnes on his blog), but I thought that I would share Hagner’s response to Nanos’ critique here for anyone who might be interested. You should note that this is a transcription of what was spoken, so pretend you’re hearing it:
I thank the chair for the privilege of having a few minutes to respond even though I’m not on the program. My good friend, Mark–my former good friend, Mark [laughter], is as usual always interesting, always stimulating, but, at least for me, not always persuasive. He accuses me of prejudging the issues and I have to say that I think Mark has at least as much of an a priori as I have. And I think he has more of an a priori than I have, if that’s okay. Mark tends to dismiss my view as the “traditional view.” I’d like to say that because an interpretation is “traditional” does not mean it is necessarily true, but it also does not mean it is necessarily false. I think it’s interesting to ponder the fact that so many have understood Paul in the traditional way. It doesn’t mean it’s right; it’s just an interesting observation.
Next, I’d like to say that the challenge for both of us is to make some coherent sense not just of a few texts, but of all of the texts… together. And I think that leads us to the necessity of affirming tensions, nuances, subtleties, things that you tend to refer to as “contradictions,” I’m afraid. It’s also not a matter of either/or; it’s a matter of both/and. It’s not whether Paul is a Jew or a Christian. He is both: a Jew and a Christian. But these subtleties, I think, sometimes seem to escape Mark. Somehow Mark has missed my affirmation that Paul is a Jew… that Paul is a Jewish believer in Jesus, that Paul has not changed his religion, that Paul upholds the righteousness of the law, but with a new dynamic, in a new way. I emphatically deny something that he has in his written statement, namely (this is a quote from him), he says that I think Paul “is engaged in a new religion that stands against his former religion” [pg 15]. No, no, no! I do not think that. Not at all. It’s the absolute opposite of what I think, in fact. Paul is affirming the true Judaism in his own mind.
Mark wants to push me into a simple “discontinuity” between Paul and Judaism in contrast to his simple “continuity.” But again, the issue is not that easy. We have to deal with both/and, both continuity and discontinuity in this matter. Mark’s view is just a little too simplistic for me. Galatians 1:13, Paul speaks of his Ἰουδαϊσμός as something of the past and I don’t think I can read it in the way Mark does, just moving from one form of Judaism to another. The Ἰουδαϊσμός is behind him, I think. And his Philippians 3:4 and following, Paul counts his Jewish pedigree, including his blamelessness as a Pharisee as worthless. What matters is Χριστὸς.
And it’s ludicrous, by the way, I think, Mark, to say that he would have to include his apostleship in that list [see pg 8]. That’s not giving him a fair chance to say what he means to say, what he wants to say. Because Paul doesn’t use the word “Christian” does not mean that he can’t be described or shouldn’t be described as a Christian. I fail to see how Mark can deny my two nonnegotiables. Are these two statements really questionable on a reading of the authentic Pauline letters? First, that Christians are no longer under the law. Second, that righteousness remains for Paul an indispensable priority. Can we really challenge either of those statements on the basis of the Pauline letters? I don’t think so. Mark’s Paul, for me, is not the Paul of the letters. I would ask him to make better sense of the texts than I have. And I think so far, he hasn’t. Thank you.
Thanks, Hendrickson!
I received a Christmas gift from Hendrickson Publishers while I was away visiting my wife’s family. They have graciously sent along what is a very important publication on “Jewish Christianity”: Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries edited by Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik. This book, along with Jewish Christianity Reconsidered edited by Matt Jackson-McCabe, was the subject of a particularly interesting session at this years meeting for the Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego last month. Joel Willits has been taking a look at the book and “Jewish Christianity” generally (see these two tags Euangelion). My fellow Fullerite, Matt Barnes, has taken on the topic of Donald Hagner’s chapter of Skarsaune/Hvalvik and Mark Nanos’ harsh critique of Hagner, given at the SBL session (see a PDF version of Nanos’ paper on his website). See other bits on Skarsaune/Hvalvik from Rick Brannon, Danny Zacharias, and Scot McKnight.
Since this book is not only commanding attention, but fits within my interests in the social history of the early followers of Jesus, I will be writing an extended review. I will keep an updated list of my posts reviewing Skarsaune/Hvalvik here.
Many thanks to Mary Riso at Hendrickson for sending my review copy of this tremendous book! Check out their website for PDF versions of its Table of Contents, the Preface, and Chapter 1.
Update (12/29/2007): I just noticed that the entire SBL session that I mentioned is available via audio downloads at TorahResource.com (HT: JC Baker). I actually remember seeing someone recording the session, but didn’t realize it would be available. This resource excites me because I wasn’t able to stay for the entire session. It should be helpful as I work on my review.
Why do Jews use the Old Testament?
Don’t look at me! It’s not my question. Someone actually googled that inquiry to get to this blog post.
So… anybody have a good answer for this visitor? 
VanderKam on Qumran and the Early Church
During my class with James VanderKam this past Summer, “Introduction to Early Judaism,” I was reading the Rule of the Community (1QS) from the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) and the concept of communal sharing of goods struck me. There seemed to be an interesting parallel with Qumran (if that’s truly where the DSS were written) and the Jesus-following community in the early chapters of Acts. I asked Dr. VanderKam if any scholars had examined the relationship. He informed me of some other interesting links, not least of which is the fact that they both admitted new members to the community at the culmination of the Festival of Weeks (AKA Pentecost) and pointed me to two brief suggestions that he had made in print, which are more teasers for further research than actual studies but it seems appropriate to share them here. As an Anabaptist, thinking about connections and contrasts between the Qumran community and the radical community of the early church sounds like something worth exploring!
From his chapter, “Sinai Revisited,” for Biblical Interpretation at Qumran (2005), edited by Matthias Henze (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature):
Before concluding, we should note that the Qumran community was not the only one in ancient Judaism that allowed its self-image to be shaped by Israel at Mount Sinai. In the New Testament the earliest Jerusalem church, as pictured in Acts exhibits a number of the same traits. That community was constituted in a new way at the Festival of Pentecost, the Greek term for the Festival of Weeks. On that day many new members were welcomed into the fellowship. Those first followers of Jesus also established a unity, an ideal society in which property was held in common, meals were eaten together, and prayers were offered in community. It too was a community that received revelation in this state in a dramatic divine manifestation. As a matter of fact, an entire series of traits in the Pentecost story (such as the tongues of fire, revelation in the languages of the world) also have their origin in reflection on the Sinai event, an event that was central in the Hebrew Bible and continued to exercise influence for many centuries. (pg. 60)
In addition, this following quote is from his essay, “Covenant and Pentecost,” which appeared in Calvin Theological Journal (Volume 37.2, Nov 2002, 239-254):
Another aspect of the story in Acts 2–the nature of the community formed by the first Christians–may also be paralleled by Jewish understandings of the events at Sinai. As we have seen, the Bible itself gave rise to the idea of imagining the situation as ideal when Israel encamped at Mt. Sinai and received the Torah. The Qumran community embodied those ideal features in its structure, and the church of Acts 2-4 seems to have done the same. They, too, had all things in common and lived a life characterized by prayer and obedience to the apostles’ teaching, just as Israel had been unified and receptive to the revelation at the mountain. (pg. 252)
The latter essay is more focused on the Acts community (cf. 246-254), while the majority of the former article is in regards to the community at Qumran. This connection between the earliest church and the DSS community is something I hope to develop further in the future. I find it interesting in thinking about the ideals with which these two Jewish communities began. Since the majority of the DSS are most likely written in the first century BCE, and thus prior to Jesus and the early church, was the early church familiar with the ideas of the DSS group or other groups like them? The parallels are inviting. For another specific example, 1QS 6:25 addresses those who are deceitful about property: “If one of them has lied deliberately in matters of property, he shall be excluded from the pure Meal of the Congregation for one year and shall do penance with respect to one quarter of his food” (Vermès translation). And we are reminded of the admittedly more serious fate of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11.
Yet there are obvious contrasts. The Community Rule outlines a very defined sense of ranking among its members, especially regarding its communal meal. Though it is not the same kind of ranking, it is division nonetheless that concerns Paul about the Corinthian practices of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:17-22; 10:17). 1QS also has a strict view of insiders and outsiders. This is one of the strongest issues with which the early church wrestled, particularly in Acts 15. That chapter, of course, comes down on the significantly more liberal side of things by allowing Gentiles into the community, only requiring of them four “essentials” of the Law: “that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication” (15:29). Perhaps it is this more liberal side of the early church that leads to the abandonment of the early ideals of community (since there isn’t much mention of sharing of goods elsewhere in the NT). When the community busts open its doors to hoards of all kinds of people, keeping a strict and committed community life becomes difficult.
The questions nevertheless remain for the nature of the early church in Acts: Did they have some awareness of the DSS community? Did its leaders have some kind of “strategy” or “plan” about how to organize this new community based on a knowledge of other communities, groups, and sects? If they were aware of the DSS community or at least the kinds of views held at the DSS community, it would appear that they adapted this for the needs of the early church and some of the much different ideas of Jesus. So much to think about.
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Elsewhere . . .- Blog titles beginning with "A" to "Z" on your reader Mark Goodacre
- Of making many books there is no end Chris Brady
- Free Online: The Liddell-Scott Jones Lexicon S and C
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? II agathos
- Steven J. Friesen and the Identity of Satan’s Throne in Pergamum alan
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? agathos
- Bloomsbury buys Continuum Mark Goodacre
- Imperial America Peter J. Leithart
- C.F.D. Moule on the Birth of the New Testament d. miller
- Responding to Kostenberger (with comparisons to Marshall) Jeremiah
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