Month: ט״ז בכסלו ה׳תש״ע (December 2009)

II. MISSING PEOPLES MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE

Genesis 10:15 mentioned the ”Hittites” as descendants of Canaan, but up until 1906, this was also regarded as another error by post Enlightenment scholars. But in 1906, Hugo Winckler began excavating at ancient Hattusha (Modern Bogazkoy) in present day Turkey.  What he found was the center of Hittite life and culture.  The documents that bore evidence to the Hittite language now fill a series of volumes from the University of Chicago that look like the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica in its length and the number of words defined and discussed.

Another mystery group of peoples were the Horites (also known as the Hurrians), which in the Bible were descendants of Seir the Horite (Gen 36:20).  Late in 1995 word came that the capital city of the Horites, Urkesh, had been discovered beneath the modern city of Tell Mozan, some 400 miles northeast of Damascus, on the border of present day Turkey.  Dr. Giorgio Buccellati, emeritus professor at UCLA, announced that after eight years of excavating, he had found the Horites and their culture from 2300 – 2200 B.C.  The three hundred acre site yielded 600 items of epigraphic materials or clay seals.  Dr. Buccellati concluded, “The Hurrians now have names and faces.”

There is also an enigmatic reference to “the land of the eastern peoples” in Genesis 29:1.  Who were these people Jacob came across in his journeys and where did they reside?  The Scriptural text places Jacob at this point in a place known as “Aram Naharaim,” or “Syria of the two rivers,” a site east of the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia and situated between the Balikh and Habur Rivers.

More on this phrase, “the land of the eastern peoples” was disclosed in the delightful Egyptian story of “Sinuhe” (ca. 1900 B.C.).  Sinuhe was a high government official, who fled Egypt for reasons of state.  After a series of hardships, the story tells how he reached the country of the “East,” (Egyptian, Kedem) in Syria, which is probably the very same general area as “the land of the eastern peoples.”  Thus, the “eastern lands” seemed to refer to the lands east of Egypt, covering modern Israel, Syria and northern Iraq.

Sinuhe described these lands this way:

[It was] a good land … figs were in it, and grapes.  It had more wine than water.  Plentiful was its honey, abundant in olives.  Every [kind of] fruit was on its trees.  Barley was there, and immer [an early type of wheat].  There was no limit to any [kind of] cattle.  ….. Bread was  made for [Sinuhe] as daily fare, wine as daily provisions, cooked meat and roast fowl, beside the wild beasts of the desert, for they hunted for [Sinuhe] and laid it before [him], besides the catch of [his own] hand.²

 This description parallels very closely the description of the land of Canaan as Moses gave it in Deuteronomy 8:7-9.

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land – a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and the hills, a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.

Names and descriptions of peoples once mysterious to the modern reader can now be identified and described with confidence due to the illuminating light that Biblical Archaeology has brought.

III.  MISSING PLACES IN THE BIBLE AND NOW IN ARCHAEOLOGY

No site was more enigmatic than the Biblical reference to “Ophir,” from which Solomon’s ships brought such exotic specimens as peacocks, apes, and sandalwood (all of which would suggest a site in India; 1 Kings 10:22-24; 2 Chronicles 9:10-11, 21-22).  But even more fascinating was the fact that Solomon’s ships “brought back 420 talents of gold” (1 Kings 9:28).  That would be equivalent to a whopping sixteen tons, or 14.5 metric tons of gold!

In 1956, at the coastal town of Tell Qasile (just north of Tel Aviv in Israel), a small ostracon was found with a shipment inscription written on it saying: “gold of Ophir for Beth-Horon, thirty shekels.”  So, the site of Ophir could now be removed from the scholar’s list of so-called legendary sites.

A similar situation arose with regard to the existence of the southern city called Hebron in the Late Bronze Age.  Some archaeologists were certain that no Israelite settlements were known in these southern Hebron hills around or before 1200 B.C. However, an Egyptian map from around 1150 to 1175 B.C. showed four cities, numbered 77 to 80, which read: Hebron, Janum, Drbn, and Apheqah, which corresponded remarkably well with the towns Joshua distributed to the tribes in the hill country in Joshua 15:52, which included: “Kiriath Arba (that is Hebron),” “Janim,” and Aphekah.” Charles R. Krahmalkov commented, “Not only was Hebron in existence [at this time].  It was in a population area, surrounded by precisely those cities given in Joshua 15.”³

 Even though Numbers 33 seems to be a somewhat dry, routine listing of sites along the route of the exodus, which a great number of detractors had depicted as unsophisticated, naïve, and generally useless in constructing the route of the exodus, showing the writer knew little or nothing about the situation in the land at this time, Charles Krahmalkov appealed to these same Egyptian maps to show that the names listed in Numbers 33 involved four of the same stations: Iyyin, Dibon, Abel and the Jordan.  Again Krahmalkov observed that

“The Israelite invasion route described in Numbers 33:45b-50 was in fact an official, heavily trafficked Egyptian road through the Transjordan in the Late Bronze Age.  And the city of Dibon [otherwise unattested except in the Bible and in these Egyptian maps] was in fact a station on that road in the Late Bronze Age.”⁴

IV.  MISSING PALACES IN THE BIBLE OR ARCHAEOLOGY

At a small site, about halfway between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Yohanon Aharoni conducted excavations at Ramat Rachel from 1959 to 1962.  The site has tentatively been identified as Beth Haccherem, “House of the Vineyard.” It was also assumed (though not listed as such in the Bible) that this was the ancient royal citadel and palace described in Jeremiah 22:13-19 possibly built by King Jehoiachin (608-597 B.C.), son of Josiah.

The remains at this site were nearly totally destroyed in the days of the last kings of Judah, as the Babylonians thoroughly looted and destroyed everything either in 597 B.C., when Jehoachin was taken into Babylonian exile, or during the siege of Jerusalem in 588-586 B.C.  However, several proto-Aeolic stone capitals that had once crowned the columns and stone balustrade of the palace’s windows were found.   These seemed to bear witness to a type of Phoenician influence in Israelite archaeology.

These windows have below their sills a balustrade in the form of pillars with proto-Aeolic capitals very reminiscent of the motif “the woman in the window,” commonly seen in Phoenician ivory inlays.  The colonettes and capitals were of limestone and show evidence of red paint.  These windows, therefore, may have belonged to the house of Jehoiachin about which, in Jeremiah 22:14, the prophet warned Jehoiachin about thinking more of palace building than he did of God. Jeremiah pointed out that Jehoiachin “cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar, and painting it with vermilion [i.e., red paint].”  The fragments of these window frames were found in a heap of debris in the northwestern corner of the citadel. Also found were sherds of black and red painted ware with one jar that depicted a king with a curly beard seated on a highly decorated throne in an ornamented robe with short sleeves.  Since the sherd gave evidence of being manufactured as local ware, the drawing on the jar probably comes from a local artist, and given the fact that it was found in a royal palace, it is tempting to see this picture as a representation of one of the last kings of Judah, perhaps of King Jehoiachin himself.

Even more fascinating may be the work of Eilat Mazar, which she began in 2005.  She has begun excavating south of the temple square in Jerusalem on the spur of the hill where David originally had set up his government over all Israel.  Mazar has excavated only some ten percent of a site near the “Stepping Stone Structure,” that is so well known in Jerusalem, erected on the rubble of 13th century B.C. Canaanite pre-Davidic remains.  But Mazar is fairly certain that what she is excavating is a ten century B.C. palace, which must therefore belong to King David.  If she can verify this find, it will be one of the most celebrated discoveries of our times. 

Add to this possible verification of David’s palace the new excavation by Yossi Garfinkel (Hebrew University) of a proposed fortified city from the time of David in the Valley of Elat, and things are beginning to warm up for those who adhere to the “New Archaeology.”  Because of recent disappointments with the debates with the “Minimalists” over the reality of the early story of the Bible, and in an attempt to show their independence of any religious motivations for excavating, this loosely defined school began around the 1970s to move away from focusing on the Bible to a less parochial approach that favored a more scientific basis for their work.  In addition, there exists a debate over the archaeology of the time of David that varies a full century between the New Archaeology School and the traditional dating of around 1000 B.C. for finds associated with the period of the Monarchy in Israel. 

 Thus, what is significant for Garfinkel’s work is that the Iron II period is that he is dating what he is finding to around 1000 B.C, whereas the New Archaeology wants to argue that this part of the Iron II did not appear until 900 B.C.  According to this lower chronology, there was little, if any, centrally organized society in the days traditionally assigned to David and Solomon (c 1011 to 931 B.C.), which view departs from the way the Bible presented the organization of this period.  However, Garfinkel believes he has found a city that has a casemate wall with two gates to the city (a most unusual feature, which may mean this is the site of Sa’arayim, “Double Gates,” 1 Sam 17:52) from around 1000 B.C.  This find, if substantiated, will once again really upset some of the dominant forces in archaeology today,⁵ for this city exhibits good organization and in the very place where Israelites had not yet taken over.

Conclusions

 Biblical Archaeology is far from being declared a dead discipline.  Its detractors need to hear the same witty statement that Mark Twain made about the false reports of his death; they were all premature.

In many ways, some of the best years for this discipline are ahead of it, for given the fact that less than two percent of all sites have been touched in the Ancient Near East and many of those that have been accessible or have been opened up have had only a small portion of their tells exposed to patient brush and trowel of archaeologists. 

What we really lack from Biblical Archaeology are epigraphic materials from Canaan and Israel, but the prospects for any archaeologist finding a treasure trove of writings or inscriptions in that land are minimal at best.  The reason is that the climate is too damp and too wet.  Israel receives somewhere in the vicinity of 25 – 40 inches of rain per year, whereas Egypt’s delta hardly gets up to ten inches and further south in Egypt it may not even rain at all in a given year or nothing more than a total of one inch.  So documents that were put on papyri are very fragile indeed in Israel.  In Mesopotamia, they used baked clay tablets, which are almost as durable as stone.  But Israel did not use clay tablets nor did it use many stone inscriptions.  If anything has survived, it will have to be under special conditions or located in the Dead Sea area, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.  But we always keep hoping for a breakthrough, for as valuable as artifacts are, interpretation is best accomplished when we are also simultaneously in possession of written materials. 

So, the search goes on.  It may be that as we speak another sensational find will be announced that will advance our understanding in ways we could not imagine at this moment.  That is the excitement and the thrill of being involved in Biblical archaeology.

by Walter C.Kaiser, Jr

NOTES:

1  G. Ernest Wright, “What Archaeology Can and Cannot Do,” Biblical Archaeologist 34 (1971): 73

² Transl. John A. Wilson in J. B. Pritchard, ed. Ancient Near Eastern Texts. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1950, pp. 19-20.

³Charles R. Krahmalkov, “Exodus Itinerary Confirmed by Egyptian Evidence,”  Biblical Archaeology Review 20 (1994), p 61.

⁴ Charles R. Krahmalkov, ibid. p 58.

⁵ See Hershel Shanks, “Newly Discovered: A Fortified City from King David’s Time,” Biblical Archaeology Review 35.1 (January 2009): 38-43.

Read a biography of Dr. Kaiser here   “Who is Walter C. Kaiser, Jr?”,  by John Knapp II, PhD

www.walterckaiserjr.com

In many academic circles today, “Biblical Archaeology” is a disappearing discipline that has often been replaced by “Syro-Palestinian Archaeology” or “Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology.”  While the reasons for such a move are often somewhat overdone, more prominently placed must be the general consensus that this discipline should not be linked with the Bible, but with more scientific and non-religious interests. 

This is especially amazing since the Bible is still one of the world’s best-selling books and it lies at the foundation of much of the civilized world’s culture and history. Moreover, it contains one of the longest running histories of the story of the world.

Some fear that the discipline named “Biblical Archaeology” would be held captive in those who want to “prove the Bible is true.”  But surely, as most know, “proof,” in the technical sense of the word, is only available in the deductive forms of study and logic whereas Biblical Archaeology falls in the class of inductive studies, which means that it is pledged to collect as many evidences as possible to make its conclusions as “probably” as possible.  Thus, the discipline is not out to “prove” the Jewish or the Christian faith, but rather to gather as many evidences as possible so as to better interpret its message.  Any  facts it uncovers must stand on their own.  The discipline, as it developed in the last century and a half, aimed at illuminating the customs, culture, peoples, places and persons it stumbled upon in the course of its excavations.

Biblical Archaeology has given Bible students some highly dramatic moments in the past century and a half of discovery.  Even though almost all of these discoveries were so-called “chance findings,” in which few have deliberately set out to find x, y, or z; nevertheless, they have been enormously useful in rounding out our understanding of Bible times, culture and history.

HOW HAS ARCHAEOLOGY HELPED US TO UNDERSTAND THE BIBLE?

The twentieth century will go down in history as the great century of archaeological discovery.  One need only mention names such as Qumran’s Dead Sea Scrolls, the Ugaritic alphabetic script which shares some 60 percent of the vocabulary with the Hebrew Bible, the Ebla tablets with its lists of Palestinian cities from the 2400 to 2200 B.C. Syro-Palestine, and the Basalt Stelae from Dan referring to the “House/Dynasty of David.” Surely these must qualify as some of the most electrifying moments in this young discipline as well as in the study of the Bible.

This is not to say that this young discipline has not had its embarrassing moments as well.  One case in point would be Sir Leonard Wooley’s claim in 1929, as he was excavating in Mesopotamia, as he announced, “I have found the Flood [of Noah]!”  However, various other strata evidenced flood sediment throughout that same area, so naturally the claim had to be retracted.  Others have claimed to have found the Ark of the Covenant or the Garden of Eden, but these must not be confused with the real aims and the legitimate discoveries of this discipline.

G. Ernest Wright, of Harvard University, posed and answered the obvious question:  “What can [Biblical] Archaeology do and not do for Biblical studies.” His answer was: “What [biblical] archaeology can do for biblical study is to provide a physical context in time and place which was the environment of the people who produced the Bible, or are mentioned in it.  Inscriptional evidence is of exceptional importance for biblical backgrounds and even for occasional mention of biblical people and places.”¹

The key role of Biblical Archaeology, then, is to illuminate the Bible by casting light on its historical and cultural location.  By fitting the Bible into the persons, events and general history of the world, archaeology has been able to cast light on the very same persons, events and history that the Bible has also mentioned.

But even more telling, despite the inherent problems in the discipline, Biblical Archaeology has been able to further the cause of the reliability of the Bible, even though that was not in its mission, nor was it one of its stated or necessary goals.  It has aided in the identification of a number of missing persons, peoples, places, customs and settings.  These have all come as a by-product of the discipline rather than a stated purpose.  This does not mean that every one of those persons, events, customs or the like that we have not been able to account for in our modern culture have been found and explained.  For example, we still are not able to nail down “Darius the Mede,” even though a number of speculative suggestions have been made.  But it is astounding how many of what used to be called real problems and historical embarrassments have been removed from the list of missing persons or things through the work of Biblical Archaeology.  A short review of some things will demonstrate how far Biblical Archaeology has been able to take us in the last one hundred and fifty years or so.

I.  MISSING PERSONS OF THE BIBLE IN ARCHAEOLOGY

Two of the most famous missing persons cases are “Sargon” of Isaiah 20 and “Belshazzar” of Daniel 5.  As the Enlightenment Age began to doubt what was written in the Bible, it was not hard to pounce on these two prominent men in the Biblical text as examples of the creativity and fictional writing by the authors of Scripture.  If they were so prominent in Ancient History, so it was argued, why was it that only the Bible had given us any record of their existence?

At one point in the nineteenth century, we had what we thought was the complete list of Assyrian kings, but there was no mention of a King Sargon II.  We even had excavated Nineveh, but Sargon was not to be found among them or any of the official lists from Mesopotamia.  The sole reference to this king was found in the Old Testament prophet Isaiah (20:1).  Sargon had to be regarded by the children of the Enlightenment and Modern Criticism as a literary fiction.  He simply was not real!

However, in 1843, Paul Emile Botta discovered a new capital of Assyria, built on virgin soil some twelve miles northeast of Nineveh.  Later the University of Chicago further excavated this site.  Sargon II had begun to build this site in 717 B.C. and for the next ten years he laid it as a square, one mile on each side.  Sargon did not get to enjoy his capital very long, for he died in battle.  However, he claimed he was the conqueror of Samaria in 722 B.C., the capital of the ten northern tribes of Israel.   Thus, instead of finding an error in Scripture, the missing Sargon II has been found in external sources as well.

In a similar manner, the Old Testament book of Daniel stood alone in contending that King Belshazzar was the king in charge of Babylon as the city and empire fell in 539 B.C. (Dan 5:1).  Moreover, cuneiform documents subsequently found just prior to the first quarter of the twentieth century, named Nabonidus as the king at the time of the collapse of the empire.  So which was the last king of Babylon: Belshazzar or Nabonidus?

In 1929, Raymond P. Dougherty published a set of cuneiform documents that showed that Nabonidus spent the last years of his reign in Arabia for health reasons, leaving the actual conduct of the government to his eldest son, Belshazzar.  Another lost person was found and the Scripture was vindicated in the position it had set forth.

This list could be extended to many great lengths.  For example, three hundred cuneiform tablets found in the Ishtar Gate of Babylon confirmed the presence of the Judean King Jehoiachin and his five sons, who had been taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon (2 Kings 25:27-30).  Again in the Elephantine Papyri from Egypt we found external evidence for “Sanballat, the governor of Samaria” (Neh 2:10) and his adversaries, “Tobiah, the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab” (Neh 2:19).  These Egyptian papyri were written one generation after Nehemiah (c. 408-407 B.C.), and also refer to Nehemiah’s brother Hanani (Neh 7:2), and the High Priest Johanan (Neh 12:22).

But like the writer of Hebrews, time and space fail us to talk about the prophet Balaam, Ahab, Jehu, Hezekiah, Menahem, and many others. Perhaps we should stop to mention the fact that up until 1993, it had become fashionable in some scholarly circles to dismiss stories about King David, since we had not one shred of external evidence for so famous a king in the Bible.  However, Abraham Biran, of the Hebrew Union College, was excavating at the site of Dan in northern Israel and in 1993 and in 1994, he and his staff found  a 12 inch basalt fragment with an inscription as part of a reused stone in a wall. One year later two other smaller pieces were found, also written in paleo-Hebrew with the words “the house [dynasty] of David.”  This led to a reexamination of the Mesha Stone from Moab where the same “bt dwd,” “house/dynasty of David,” was found written twice.  David’s name also has turned up on the wall of the great temple of Amon at Karnak, Egypt, not more than fifty years from David’s lifetime. Later we will discuss the possible find of David’s palace in excavations that began in 2005.  The story of discovering missing persons goes on and presents a most exciting discipline that engages the Bible often at critical points of interest.

Continued to Page 2.

WalterC. Kaiser, Jr.

President Emeritus

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

www.walterckaiserjr.com

IV.  The Messiah Predicted in the Latter Prophets

One would have thought that the promise-plan of Messiah would have ended when the predictions made to Eve, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David were over.  Surprisingly enough, this was only the beginning, for now these same promises begin to proliferate and blossom way beyond anything anyone could have imagined once we come to the sixteen writing “Latter Prophets.”  These prophets exhibit thirty-nine direct predictions concerning the Messiah.  Yet what they wrote was no mere day-dreaming of a better day and time of blessing for all concerned; instead what God was going to do through his coming Messiah became the basis for repentance and a real change of heart in the present.  This is because the promise doctrine had a two-fold character: it was a standing prediction of what God would do in the future, but it was just as much a doctrine by which men and women could live in their contemporary situations.

The Ninth Century: Messiah as a Teacher.

The prophet Joel is probably set in the 800s B.C., though this cannot be stated with certainty.  In Joel 2:23 he speaks of God sending his Messiah as  “The Teacher” (Hebrew, hammoreh). Some want to render this Hebrew word as “rain,” but the Hebrew for that would be yoreh, which appears later in this verse.  Indeed, the blessing of God in sending his Messiah as “The Teacher” is depicted in terms of the coming of rain and fruitfulness on the land after a time of locusts invasions and a famine.  Thus, the coming of God’s Teacher signals the autumn and spring rain in their seasons.

The Eighth Century Non-Isaianic Prophecies

There are four prophecies during this period from three writing prophets: Hosea 3:4-5; Amos 9:11-15; Micah 2:12-13; and Micah 5:1-4.  While Joel focused on Messiah as Teacher, Hosea emphasized his kingship, throne, dynasty and kingdom.  He acknowledged that even though Israel would be a long time without sacrifices, an ephod, or the services of a king, yet when Israel returned and sought the Lord, the new David would come as king with his blessings in the last days.

Amos also acknowledged that the mighty house of David was at that time in a dilapidated state, but God would once more raise it up in that latter day as he unified the divided nation, rebuilt the dynasty of David and brought what had to be the new or second David back to the rule and reign of a kingdom that would extend over all the earth.  God would do this, in Amos 9:11-15, so that both the remnant of Israel and all in the nations who were owned by the Lord, and had his name called over them, might be under Messiah’s dominion.

In this same eighth century B.C., the prophet Micah saw Messiah as the “Breaker” (Mic 2:12-13,) who would open up the gate so that those who had been pent up could now be released and enjoy God’s salvation.  Indeed, Micah 5:1-4 told us exactly where Messiah was to be born: in Bethlehem.  And Messiah would rule as the ancient plan finally takes its final shape.

The Eighth Century Prophecies of Isaiah

Few prophets are as detailed in their predictions about the coming Messiah as the prophet Isaiah.  He, under the inspiration of God, contributed fourteen parts to the promise-plan.  There is only time to briefly list some of the magnificent prophecies that Isaiah set forth in his writing.

Messiah will be known, Isaiah taught in 4:2, as the “Branch of the LORD,” surely a reference to Messiah’s divinity.  This coming Man of Promise would also be born of a virgin (Isa 7:14) and carry a most awesome set of names and titles: “Wonderful Counselor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:1-7).  In Isaiah 11:1-16, Messiah’s reign is described while Isaiah 24:21-25 treats Messiah’s universal triumph and his defeat of Satan when he was released after being bound in prison “many days.”  Other Isaianic texts treating the Messianic promise are 28:16; 30:19-26; 42:1-7; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12; 55:3-5; 61:1-3; and 63:1-6.

Seventh Century Prophecies of Jeremiah

Just as Isaiah used the “Branch” to talk about Messiah, so also the prophet Jeremiah 23:5-6 used this same symbol for the Messiah, who according to Jeremiah, would also come from the line of David.  Later in Jeremiah’s Book of Comfort (Jer 30-33), the prophet makes it clear once again that God would raise up “David their king” “in that day” (Jer 30:8-9), which king would also be a priest (Jer 23:21c).  The prediction of Jeremiah 23: 5-6 is essentially repeated in Jeremiah 33:14-26.

Sixth Century Prophecies of Ezekiel and Daniel

Ezekiel, the younger contemporary of Jeremiah likewise ministered from the Babylonian exile.  In his view, Messiah would grow up as a “tender sprig” (Ezk 17:22-24), yet he would rule as the One “to whom [the throne of David] rightfully belonged” (Ezk 21:25-27)- a filling out of the meaning of the cryptic word “Shiloh” in Genesis 49.  Ezekiel also set forth Messiah as the “Good Shepherd” in Ezekiel 34:23-31.  But Ezekiel’s greatest prophecy was in 37:15-28, where Messiah was seen as the great unifier of the divided kingdom of Israel.  He would once again join the two houses of Ephraim (the ten northern tribes) and Judah (the two southern tribes) into one nation under his leadership.

Daniel, just a like Ezekiel, was carried off into captivity in Babylon with his three friends Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego.  For Daniel, Messiah came as the “Son of Man” in Daniel 7:13-14 to receive the kingdom and authority from God the Father.  Messiah was the “Anointed One” who would come in Daniel 9:24-27 as “the Ruler,” and the one who would defeat the “little horn” that represented the evil one and all his forces.

Fifth Century Post Exilic Prophets

There are eleven major Messianic prophecies in this final time period where the plan of God was unleashed: two were from the prophet Haggai, seven were from the prophet Zechariah and a final two came from the prophet Malachi.

Haggai 2:6-9 saw Messiah as “the Desire of all the Nations.”  He also reported that Messiah was the “Signet Ring” (Hag 2:21-23), which was the God-ordained emblem of the office and authority of the Davidic kingship.

But in this post-exilic era, few were more specific and graphic in detailing the life and ministry of Messiah than the prophet Zechariah.  He again included the work of a High Priest in the ministry of Messiah (Zech 3:8-10).  This Messiah would be a Priest-King over all the nations on earth in that final day (Zech 6:9-15).  Messiah’s kingly aspect would be noted more definitely in Zechariah 9:9 as he would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey.  This prophet also gave Messiah four titles in Zechariah 10:4.  He, as the “cornerstone,” would be the foundation and unifier of those who belonged to him by right of redemption.  Secondly, he would be the “tent peg” or “nail,” where everything would be secured in the household of faith.  Thirdly, he would be the “Battle-bow,” a symbol of strength for his military conquests as he secured the kingdom.  Finally, in the fourth place, Messiah would the “taskmaster,” the absolute Ruler on whom all sovereignty rested.  Zechariah 11:4-14 noted that Messiah would be rejected by his own people Israel and he would be “pierced” by them (Zech 12:10), but those setbacks would not last, nor would the smiting of Messiah as noted in Zechariah 13:7.  Messiah would emerge triumphant over all these adversities and he would rule from Jerusalem as King of kings and Lord of lords.

The prophet Malachi described Messiah as the “Messenger of the Covenant” (Mal 3:1), who would purify the Levites when he came, but he would also judge all unrighteousness.  The final title given to Messiah in the Tanak is the “Sun of Righteousness” in Malachi 4:2.  Messiah would come with healing in his wings like the bursting forth of the sun at sunrise.

V.  The Messiah in Modern Interpretational Schemes

Given this plethora of references to the Messiah in the Tanak, even on a selective basis, the modern conclusion of Joachim Becker is easily refuted as he summarized his study of Messiah: “there is not such a thing as messianic expectation until the last two centuries B.C.”³  But even Becker could not stand his own conclusion, for he wondered how such a conclusion could be reconciled with one of the most central affirmations of the New Testament, which with “unprecedented frequency, intensity, and unanimity [insisted that] Christ was proclaimed in advance in the Old Testament.”⁴ Becker’s way out of his own dilemma was to fall back on the method of exegesis in late Judaism, namely Pesher exegesis, which denied that there was a historic meaning to the Messianic references in the Old Testament, but the text could be read now to mean this new attributed interpretation to the Messianic texts in order to make a new Christian point of view.

Such bold statements as Becker’s is one reason why we are not also happy with what many have called in our circles, “Double Meaning” of prophecy.  According to this view, there is a distinction to be drawn between what the prophets had intended as they wrote from their limited perspectives and what God the Holy Spirit meant by the same utterance. But as Milton Terry warned, “If Scripture has more than one meaning, it has no meaning at all.”⁵

The Promise-Plan view avoids both extremes set forth by a Pesher type exegesis and a Double Meaning type.  There is a single, unified, continuing, purpose and plan that is organically related as the seminal germ in a seed is related by the final fully developed plant and all the stages of growth found in between the two ends of this process.   It is this plan and this method of interpretation that I commend to the body of Christ and to all believers everywhere.⁶

Notes  (#1 and #2 were in Part I):

³  Joachim Becker. Messianic Expectations in the Old Testament. Transl. David E. Green. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980, p. 93.

⁴  Ibid.

⁵  Milton Terry. Biblical Hermeneutics. New York: Eaton and Mains, 1890, p 384.

⁶  The basic thrust of this lecture can be seen in more detail in Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. The Messiah in the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995 and my other book entitled: The Promise-Plan of God. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008.

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.

President Emeritus Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

Link to Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.  website:   www.walterckaiserjr.com

Although it may not seem to make much of a difference whether we think of the Tanak’s (old Testament/ OT) words about Messiah’s person and work as being either scattered “predictions” found throughout the Old Testament or part of a continuing “promise-plan,” there was a vast difference in the minds of the Biblical authors and the way they present Messiah.  For example, a “prediction” is a word foretelling, or a prognosticating, the future. In such a usage, it focuses the reader’s or listener’s attention only on the two things: the word spoken before the event and the fulfilling event itself, which is proper and legitimate in itself.  But when such a usage is attributed to the Scriptures, it fails to capture a third element, which was a key ingredient that captured the hearts and minds of the Old Testament writers: it was the historic means by which God continued to maintain his promissory word and to carry it all the way to fulfillment.  This is what Willis J. Beecher described in his 1902 Princeton Seminary Stone Lectures called “the Promise.”  He described it this way:

“[Such a truncated analysis left out] the means employed for that purpose [i.e., the purpose of describing the coming of the Messiah].  The promise and the means and the result are all in mind at once . .  . If the promise involved a series of results, we might connect any one of the results with the foretelling clause as a fulfilled prediction . .  . . But if we preeminently confined our thought to these items in the fulfilled promise, we should be led to an inadequate and very likely a false idea of the promise and its fulfillment.  To understand the predictive element alright we must see it in light of the other elements. Every fulfilled promise is a fulfilled prediction; but it is exceedingly Important to look at it as promise and not as a mere prediction.”

In light of this definition, what follows will be a brief outline of the messianic doctrine as set forth in the Bible’s own promise-plan and a brief word on its interpretation.

I.  The Messianic Promise-Plan in the Torah

The messianic doctrine in the Torah may be surveyed under six headings: two in Genesis 1-11, two major ones in the Patriarchal period, and two that dominated the Mosaic period in the rest of the Pentateuch.  All six were inter-connected and related seminally to the one grand promise-plan of God, which plan was the backbone of the narrative and theology of the Old Testament.

The first two promises declared that the coming Man of Promise would be from the “Seed,” or “Offspring,” of the woman in Genesis 3:15, while the second promise announced that no one less than God himself would come and dwell in the midst of the families of Shem in Genesis 9:27.

In the second set of promises in the Patriarchal Era, the plan called for Abraham’s “Seed” to be the means of blessing all the families of the earth (Gen 12:3).  But the plan added more specificity when it named one of Jacob’s sons, Judah, as the one who would be given the rule and authority over the nation Israel as well as over all the nations on earth (Gen 49:10).

Two other events stand out during the Mosaic Era of divine revelation.  Surprisingly, one comes from a Gentile prophet (the exception that proves the rule that prophecies normally come through Jewish prophets) named Balaam in Numbers 24:17.  Balaam raised the promise that the coming Man of Promise would be a victorious king who would crush his enemies and find great success.  The second distinctive part of the promise-plan in this period has to be the promise made to Moses that a “prophet,” who would be  like him, would come in that same plan of God (Deut 18:18).

Even from these earliest and most rudimentary forms, the Torah has anchored this promise-plan with the seminal (ie., seed) truths that this person who would come in the divine purpose would be known by the titles of “Seed,” “Shiloh,” “Scepter,” “Star,” “King,” and “Prophet.”  However, care must be exercised not to take any one of these prophecies or titles in abstraction by itself, for each can only be appreciated in their own Biblical context as they contributed to the ongoing announcements and fulfillments of the promise theme.  Intertwined in this one plan of God were provisions for a name, a blessing, a land, a gospel, a people, a divine dwelling in the midst of the people, and an affirmation that God himself would be a personal deity to those who called on him by faith.  This last feature reminds us of the tri-partite formula of the promise-plan, repeated almost fifty times in both testaments: “I will be your God, you shall be my people, and I will dwell in the midst of you.”

While it is difficult to know where to place the book of Job chronologically, even though in genre form it belongs to the wisdom materials in the Tanak, there are very good reasons for placing Job historically and chronologically in the Patriarchal times.¹  Nevertheless, four times in this book a cry goes up to God for someone to act much as the Messiah would in his coming office and ministries.

First of all, in response to Bildad’s first speech, Job longs for someone to “arbitrate,” or in the older language to be a “daysman,” between himself and God (Job 9:33).  In a second appeal to heaven, Job longs for a “witness” in heaven who would act as his advocate on high to represent his case (Job 16:19-21).  But in his third appeal to God, Job pulls out all the stops and declares that he knows his “redeemer” is the one who will raise him up “in the end” when Job expects to look on God with his own eyes and with his own flesh on the Living God (Job 19:23-27).  In one more final time in this book, the young Elihu, who up to this point has remained silent in the presence of three older friends of Job, called for an “interpreter” who would explain to Job what was going on in his life (Job 33:23-28).  This “interpreter” cannot be fulfilled by any ordinary angel, or even by a prophet from the ranks of other mortals; he had to soar beyond the thousands of angels and exceed them in every way in order to redeem Job from the pit of despair and ransom him from all his troubles.

II.  The Messianic Plan Prior to and During the Davidic Era

The days after Moses began well enough, for Joshua conquered the land in a mighty way, showing God himself was with Joshua as he was with Moses.  But that enthusiasm quickly dissipated as a new syncretism engulfed the people and they began to adopt the gods and practices of the Canaanites.  In the days of the Judges, Israel enters into a dark period of her history.

The light of revelation reappeared toward the close of this dark period as three major prophecies leading up to David’s reign over the nation set the stage for the new advances in the plan of God.

One came to the mother of the boy Samuel, Hannah, in 1 Samuel 2:1-10.  It represented the fourth stage in royal or kingly themes in messianism.  The first came to Abraham when he had been promised that “kings will come from [him]” (Gen 17:6, 16), as God reaffirmed the same to Jacob, “Kings will come from your body” (Gen 35:11).  In the second stage, the symbols of rule and authority (the “scepter” and “ruler’s staff”) were given to Judah (Gen 49:10), which royal authority would claim the “obedience of [all] nations.”  The third stage depicted this coming king in the Messianic line crushing his enemies in the Balaam prophecies about a “star [coming] . . . out of Jacob” and a “scepter … out of Israel” (Num 24:17).  Now in 1 Samuel 2:10 the fourth stage had been reached: Messiah would be the exalted King and Judge over all the earth.

There was more to messianism than its royal or kingly theme; a priestly messianism could be seen in germ form as far back as Exodus 19:6, where the whole nation was called to be “a kingdom of priests.”  But this aspect was further clarified by an unnamed prophet who was sent to the priest Eli in 1 Samuel 2:35-36 to say that God would raise up “a faithful priest who would do according to what was in [God’s] heart and mind.”  But who was this “faithful priest?”  The Hebrew word for “faithful,” ne’eman, is the same root used of David’s house in 2 Samuel 7:16, a “house and …. Kingdom [which] will endure forever” (as 1 Samuel 25:28 repeats as “a lasting dynasty”).  The identity of the faithful priest mentioned here is to be understood as a collective expression, embracing all priests whom God raised up for altar duty and who collectively culminate in Messiah, the final one and only real “faithful priest.”

At the heart of the five promise-peaks in this era has to be 2 Samuel 7, where the prophet Nathan predicted about King David: (1) Messiah would come from his flesh and seed, (2) Messiah would be David’s climatic heir, (3) David’s son and the Messiah would be God’s own son, (4) Messiah would have a kingdom, a rule, and a reign that would never end, and (5) Messiah would surely come one day in the future.

To this key promise made to David, two Psalms echo this important and central point in the promise-plan of God: Psalm 89 and Psalm 132.  The messianic part of Psalm 89 is found in verses 19-37.  It repeats some twelve promises made by the prophet Nathan to David, despite the way the Psalm ends on the mournful note that David’s throne and kingdom were at that time in a dilapidated condition.  But the taunts of the nations will be answered as God rises once again to vindicate his plan.  In Psalm 132, three symbols describe Messiah: “a horn,” “a lamp” (already seen in 2 Sam 21:7; 1 Kgs 11:36), and “a crown.”  With such high accolades, there is little doubt that the anointed one is not just David and his line of kings, but the Messiah himself.

III.  The Messiah Celebrated in Eleven Psalms

J. Barton Payne declared that the single largest block of predictive material on the Messiah in the Old Testament was to be found in the Psalms.² He counted some 101 verses directly predicting the Messiah in thirteen different Psalms.  Since we have already treated two of the Psalms in the Davidic section (Pss 89, 132), we have time and space to only list the eleven additional Psalms here.

Two Psalms address Messiah as a conqueror and Enthroned Ruler, Psalm 2 and 110.   Another Psalm described Messiah as a rejected Stone by Israel, Psalm 118.  Two other Psalms, 69 and 109, saw Messiah as betrayed.  But two of the most important of this group, Psalms 22 and 16, dealt with his dying and rising again in resurrected form.  Add to this Psalms 40 and 45, where Messiah is addressed as a planner and a groom, while Psalms 68 and 72 declare Messiah to be the triumphant king.

—To be continued—

NOTES:

[1]  For a list of reasons why Job should be placed in the Patriarchal era, see the study by E. Dhorme. A Commentary on the Book of Job. Tr. Harold Knight. Nashville, TN.: Nelson, 1984, pp. xx-xxviii.

²  J. Barton Payne. Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy. New York: Harper and Row, 1973. P. 257.

by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.

President Emeritus

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

Link to Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.  website:   www.walterckaiserjr.com

At the post office, when I handed over my Earth Is Not Alone¹ to be sent priority mail to the Harvard-Smithsonian for Astrophysics, I got both the look and the question:

“Does this package contain anything potentially hazardous?”

“Don’t know,” I replied.

The look grew more serious.

“It’s a novel, and you know books…they can go many directions.  Reading can be hazardous.  Ideas can be dangerous.”

As a teacher and a parent, I’ve long believed and said that reading is risky, but that the alternative—not reading—is usually much more dangerous.  This time I’m going to recommend a book, GOD? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist²by William Lane Craig (the Christian) and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (the atheist); and a device, the Kindle, an electronic reader that is mushrooming in popularity.

As to the Kindle³: I still love the feel of paper and the sight of sagging shelves.  But also to have in my pocket a thin library of thick books that I can underline and put notes in is very satisfying. As of this writing, Amazon in the past month has sold more eBooks than paperbacks.  And they are considerably cheaper.

Enough about that.

The “GOD?” book, published by Oxford University Press in 2004, is not for everyone.  These polite, respected, well-trained philosophers take each other very seriously and they disagree strongly.  Fortunately, they use words you can understand.  If you take a gamble to see what they say, be prepared to “believe,” lose your (head) faith, believe again, lose it again several times.  The book follows a standard debate format with six chapters: Craig makes a case for God, Sinnott-Armstrong rebuts it, Craig responds to S-A; then S-A makes a case for atheism, Craig rebuts it, and S-A concludes responding to Craig.

Now with the current explosion in scientific knowledge (I’ve discussed in other articles) that favors “reasonable” acceptance of an intelligent mind behind the Big Bang and all that came from it, information that led the late militant atheist Antony Flew⁴ to reject atheism for theism, such a debate could be constructive, as well as fascinating.

And if some of you have been soured by the deadly and almost exclusively secular and atheistic philosophy of the last half of the 20^th century, be aware that the philosophy of today—even secular philosophy—isn’t what it used to be!

Push aside your Cliff Comments and let me offer these Knapp Notes:

Here’s three observations about the risk and reward of your reading this sort of material:

1.  Becoming absolutely convinced of the logic of every point on one side or the other probably isn’t going to happen.  If it were, two intelligent men probably wouldn’t be putting everything they believed in on the line this way.  Some points, though they may sound simple, the issues are anything but.  On both sides, the debaters will try to convince you of the logic of certain premises.  Do they make sense or not?  If only two options compete, which of them makes better sense?  You decide.  You may put some new things to think about on your back burner.  You don’t have to understand everything at once—if ever.

Now let me generalize even more:

2.  There are three points many atheists find tough to handle:  (1)  It’s almost universally accepted today—by atheists as well as by many Christians—that the universe, including the three space dimensions and one time dimension, began about 13.7 billion years ago.  The issue is “began,” not the time span.  (2) Second, the matter and energy in/on the earth and the creatures on it are “extremely fine-tuned” in dozens of ways difficult to account for by a series of purposeless “accidents” alone.

(3)  Third, there’s morality.  Although nearly everyone says some behaviors are “absolutely right” and other behaviors are “absolutely wrong,” what is the basis for such judgment?  And who is the “lawgiver”?  If Darwinism and ethical relativism is the main pressure behind decision-making, that’s scary to many.

3.  Two issues are especially thorny to Christians:

(1)  How could a good and all-powerful God allow harm, suffering, and disaster to come to innocent people, especially children?  How could God seem so unfair and treat people so differently—on earth, or in the hereafter?

(2)  How can a person prove something that is metaphysical, such as the real existence of a personal God, his real interaction with people, and real miracles in people or in nature?  How can one rationally explain this?

There are many smaller issues as well, but these are the main ones.  Realize that it’s possible for intelligent, thinking people to make cases for these concerns, as well as against them.  There is, of course, a real explanation somewhere—whether we understand the details or not—that accounts for everything that is, and is going on…

Even why I’m writing this.

As a warm-up to show how modern, well-educated people might look at all this, here are the major points made by Craig (the Christian) in Chapter 1 and Sinnott-Armstrong (the atheist) in Chapter 4.  Maybe these, and the book itself, will answer some questions you have—and raise some other questions you should ask.  This isn’t an “old-time debate.”  Here, using much information from science, math, and philosophy from the last three decades, two men from differing views organize the things they want to say first.

CRAIG’S POINTS:

Five Reasons God Exists  (Ch. 1)⁵

1.  God Makes Sense of the Origin of the Universe.

     (1)  Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

     (2)  The universe began to exist.

     (3)  Therefore the universe has a cause.

2.  God Makes Sense of the Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life.

     (1)  The fine-tuning of the universe is either due to law, chance, or design.

     (2)  It is not due to law or chance.

     (3)  Therefore, it is due to design.

3.  God Makes Sense of the Moral Values in the World.

     (1)  If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.

     (2)  Objective moral values do exist.

     (3)  Therefore God exists.

4.  God Makes Sense of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus.

     (1)  There are four established facts concerning the fate of Jesus of Nazareth…[he lists them].

     (2)  The hypothesis “God raised Jesus from the dead” is the best explanation of these facts.

     (3)  The hypothesis “God raised Jesus from the dead” entails that God exists.

     (4)  Therefore God exists.

5.  God Can Be Immediately Known and Experienced.

     [No systematic subpoints given.]

SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG’S POINTS:

Some Reasons to Believe that There Is No God⁶  (Ch. 4)

Sinnott Armstrong’s focus is to take issue with what he calls “Dubious Doctrines” about God that he calls “traditional,” suggesting that they may have originated after the beginning of Christianity although he won’t take issue with when they originated, though it was very early.  “When I refer to God, I will mean a being with these defining features” (listed below): He is

(a)  All-good  (God always does the best he can)

(b)  All-powerful (God can do anything that is logically possible)

(c)  All-knowing (God knows everything that is true)

(d)  Eternal  (God exists outside of time)

(e)  Effective  (God causes changes in time)

(f)  Personal  (God has a will and makes choices)

[It is not rational, Sinnott-Armstrong argues, to accept these traditional characteristics, so he rejects them.  He will do this by advancing three main points.]

1.  The Problem of Evil

    (1)  If there were an all-powerful and all-good God, then there would not be any evil in the world unless that evil is logically necessary for an adequately compensating good.

     (2)  There is lots of evil in the world.

     (3)  Much of that evil is not logically necessary for any compensating good.

     (4)  Therefore, there is no God who is all-powerful and all-good.

2.  The Problem of Action

[Deals with the supposed problem of an eternal God being active within the time dimension that we experience.]

3.  The Argument from Ignorance

[Leads to the conclusion that “neither arguments, nor experiences, nor miracles provide any good evidence for the existence of God.”]

4.  Conclusion

[Essentially an expansion of this opening line of his fourth section:  “Taken together, my arguments lead to the conclusion that no traditional God exists.”]

So if you order this book—a hardback or paperback copy—will some postal person pause and ask your supplier the “potentially hazardous” question that I faced earlier?

Of course, today you can leap over such confrontation with a Kindle.  Five minutes after reading these words you can purchase and begin readingyour own set of the electronic words I’ve been talking about!

And whatever “words” we believers have in any form we are to test for the truth they may carry or challenge (I John 4:1).  And as we grow in knowledge of  God’s Holy Word, may we be open and articulate sharing it with those around us.

For some, that might mean looking long and hard at the other side.

NOTES

¹It’s not our subject here, but if you wish to look at my tragedy/adventure/romance Earth Is Not Alone, see two of my previous articles in our archives—“Earth Is Not Alone” (now listed at #26) and “I Sold My Soul on eBay”—book 9 (now # 21.)—This novel, endorsed by astrophysicist and former seminary professor Robert Newman, is available at Amazon in print or eBook form.  Reviews there and elsewhere.

²William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist, (part of the Point/Counterpoint Series edited by James P. Serba, Univ. of Notre Dame; Oxford University Press, 2004.  Perhaps about 150pp.  Be aware that I’m operating using the Kindle version, and eBooks have “location numbers” rather than page numbers because you can modify print size and have more or fewer pages.  I assume that print copies also can still be obtained…)

³Let me encourage your use of Kindle, or other electronic readers, if you dibble-dabble with thick books, or materials you use primarily for reference, even Bibles.  If you’re buying, they’re cheaper, neater, easy to “word search” (as I did for the Bible reference at the end), and are never far away).

⁴For more on Antony Flew, who died in April 2010, see the archives for my comments in “Happy Holidays!” (now #3).

⁵The outline that follows comes only from Craig’s opening presentation in Chapter 1.  Additional comments and arguments made in Chapters 3 and 5 are not included.  The same procedure follows for Sinnott-Armstrong’s opening presentation in Chapter 4.  Nothing is included from his Chapters 2 and 6.  Be aware that a “first chapter” and a “last chapter” have special advantages!  Comments in brackets are my own.

⁶See the above note.

Author: John Knapp II

The Witness of Ezekiel 37 – 48

In this Ezekielian Apocalpyse of chapters 37 – 48, the “whole house of Israel” is reanimated and revivified in the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezk 37: 5, 11).  There, as one flock under one Shepherd and one nation under one king, the resurrected faithful dead of the nation Israel are resurrected and taken back to their promised land, just as God had promised in Deuteronomy 32: 39; Psalm 17: 15; 49; 14, 15; Hosea 13: 14; Isaiah 25: 6 – 9; 26: 14, 19; Ezekiel 37: 12; Daniel 12: 1-3.  Their “many days” of peace and blessedness are expanded on in Ezekiel 37: 1 – 28, as well as in Isaiah 2: 2-5; 11: 6 – 9; 24: 23; 25: 6 – 9; 60: 1 – 22; 61: 4 – 11; 62: 2 – 12; 65: 17 – 25; 66: 20 23.   This will be the time when Yahweh Shammah, “The LORD is there” (Ezekiel 48: 35) living among them.

But again, “after many days,” (Ezekiel 38: 8), Judgment will come on Gog with a punishment and visitation similar to what Isaiah 24: 22 and Revelation 20: 7 – 10 depict.  The termini of Isaiah 24: 22, Ezekiel 38: 8 and Revelation 20: 7 are identical.  Remarkably, Ezekiel 28: 25 – 26 notes that Israel will be secured from attack and the people will live in safety and their security will be undisturbed (also Ezekiel 38: 8, 11, 12; Jeremiah 32: 36 – 44).

Other Equivalent Expressions in Other Passages

If time and space would allow, we could add Psalm 102: 13 – 22, where Messiah comes with his holy angels with glory to build up Zion.  Then he will judge the world in righteousness and “give dominion in the morning.”  In addition to Psalm 102, is the expression “In His days,” found in Psalm 72: 7. This too is a text noted as a great Messianic Psalm.

There is also that group of four bright Messianic Psalms in Psalms 96, 97, 98, and 99, ending in the remarkable Psalm 100.  Here every land in the world is called upon to make a joyful noise unto the Lord as he concludes the work in history he said he would do.

Conclusion

But notwithstanding all this data (and much more) on the terms for the “Thousand Years,” “Multitude of Days,” “Many Days,” “In His Day,” the case for Pre-millennialism is almost completely missed if one does not focus on the everlasting promise of God made to his people Israel.

Pre-millennialism is defined not merely as the future time in the Rule and Reign of God (the kingdom of God), bounded by the resurrection of all believers on the front end and the resurrection of the unbelieving wicked dead on the other end, during which period Satan is bound, but loosed for a brief time at the end of the millennium before he is cast forever into the abyss.  It is more precisely the time when God finishes in space and time what he promised historically to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David and his line.  It is therefore a whole philosophy of history with implications for the Christ and culture hiatus that must find its resolution in the Lord of all creation and all value and beauty.

Principally the Abrahamic promise (Genesis 12: 2 – 3) had three parts: (1) the promise of a Seed, the coming Messiah, (2) the promise of the land as a gift to Israel, but owned by God, and (3) the promise of the “Gospel” in which all the families of the earth would be blessed (Paul equated this aspect of the promise with the “Gospel” in Galatians 3: 8).

It is impossible to read, teach, and preach on the prophets of the Old Testament without bumping into the promise of a return of Israel to her land again and again, something like one verse out of every eight verses in the prophets!!!  This is what makes the return of Israel to her land once again in the future the most important and key part of the premillennial doctrine.

Some will attempt to say that Israel forfeited that promise when she disobeyed, but what she forfeited was only the right each of those disobedient persons or generations had to participate in the blessing promised.  Nevertheless, Israel still had to transmit the promise even though some would not enjoy its benefits.  Transmission of the promise is one thing; participation in the blessings of the promise is another thing altogether!

To say that the Church replaces Israel is not only a form of supersessionism, but it is also without exegetical merit as I have argued elsewhere.[1]  Yes, Gentiles are included in the term “People of God” (just as the Jewish people who believe are part of the “People of God”), but the term “Israel” never loses its unique national, geo-political, or ethnic flavor.  This is not because God has favorites or that he is chauvinistic, but rather because God is faithful and true to his word. Once again, note clearly that there is a divine philosophy of history, in which God does complete within space and time what he proposed earlier on in redemptive history.

What is lost, some will ask, if we demote Pre-millennialism to a secondary doctrinal status?  Isn’t it true that the majority of Christians today do not recognize it as taught in the Bible – especially in a reformed or covenantal understanding of the text?  And if they do not recognize this doctrine, isn’t it also true that most think this teaching is reduced to only one teaching passage?

But we have shown that it is widely represented in the Biblical text.  Moreover, most will also concede that pre-millennialism was the majority view of the Christian Church in the first three or four Christian centuries.  It was the influence of Origen’s allegorizing tendencies, St Augustine’s change of his mind on this doctrine, and of the collaboration of Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, with Emperor Constantine in their desire to capture the geo-political sides of the discussions of the Kingdom of God that brought the major change into the life of the Church.

But what is affected the most is the doctrine of redemption and God’s promise-plan for the ages.  It becomes a much more difficult matter to teach the Kingdom of God with its two ages, two advents, two resurrections and two ends without these key texts. Moreover, most will need to shy away from teaching the whole counsel of God, especially as it is found in the prophets.  Also, the very warp and woof of salvation, which Paul says in Romans 1: 16 instructs us that it is impossible to talk about so great a “salvation” without at the same time noting that this Gospel is the power of God for salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.  Romans 9–11then, becomes not a parenthesis or an intercalation that interrupts the main flow of the story of redemption; on the contrary, one cannot talk about the gospel or our salvation without constantly intermingling the Jew/Gentile question.  Like it or not, the Jewish question will be the ragged edge on which many will be tested and found deficient from an truly exegetical standpoint of the clear witness of Scripture.

I urge Christ’s Church to go slowly in its rush to jettison the pre-millennial position or to avoid teaching about the future return of Israel to the land God promised her.  It can only lead to other problems down the road:  problems with correctly exegeting numerous passages from the prophets about Israel’s future; problems with the nature and extent of the “Gospel,” problems with a view of history; problems with the definition of the Kingdom of God; and problems with being ashamed of the whole redemptive program of God that is for the Jew first and then for the Gentile/Greek.

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.

President Emeritus

Colman M. Mockler Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and Ethics

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

Link to Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.  website:   www.walterckaiserjr.com

[1] Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., An Assessment of Replacement Theology: The Relationship Between Israel of the Abrahamic-Davidic Covenant and the Christian Church,” Mishkan, 21(1994): 9-20.

One of the most common misconceptions in Biblical interpretation today is that “the thousand years” (hence: the “millennium”), of which John speaks in Revelation 20: 1- 7, are mentioned nowhere else in the Scripture.  And since it is generally agreed that no major doctrine should be based on any one single passage of the Bible, it is no wonder then that all too many have concluded that pre-millennialism likewise should not be among any of our major doctrinal creeds.

However, a more careful study of God’s Word dissipates this conclusion.  The truth is that the “thousand years,” along with parallel expressions, are found in both testaments and constitutes one of the high points in Biblical prophecy.  Before we look at some of these key texts, it is important to note that the Kingdom of God in heaven and on earth is one of the grand themes of the whole Bible.  A quick review of that Kingdom (in its inception, progress, conduct, and consummation) should set the stage for our considering the key teaching passages in a pre-millennial doctrine.

The Kingdom of God

The Kingdom of God has two advents, two ages, two resurrections, and two end points.  Few, except some of Jesus’ own kin-folks, deny that the first advent has already occurred.  In a Television debate I had with Rabbi Pincas Lapide on the John Ankerberg Show some years ago, he observed that the difference between his Jewish viewpoint and my evangelical one was that I, as an evangelical, believed in two comings of the Messiah and he, as a believer in the Tenak (the Old Testament), only adopted one: a coming of the Messiah in a time of world peace.  I replied, “But Dr. Lapide, Zechariah 12: 10 says `They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child… a firstborn son.’  I asked, `Who is the one speaking that they will look on?’  He replied: `The Almighty!’  Then I asked, `How did he get pierced, then?’  ‘I do not know he said.’  My retort was, `I have an idea how: it was at Calvary in his first coming.’  Later the Messiah will come in a second advent in a time of final peace as this same chapter in Zechariah points out.”  Yes, there are two advents advocated in the Biblical text of both the Old and the New Testaments.

But there are also two ages: in Hebrew- “`Olam Hazzeh,” “This age,” and “`Olam Habba, “The age to come.”  The New Testament Greek employs these same two divisions of time some thirty times: “Aion ho houtos, “This age,” and “Aion ho mellon,” “The age to come.”  The “Age to come” overlaps this age with the work of Christ in casting out demons and especially in his resurrection from the dead.  While the “age to come” is still only in its incipient form, with the second advent, it will come into its full realization.

The Two Resurrections of I Corinthians 15: 22 – 24

Even more significantly, there are two resurrections, not just one.  Revelation 20: 5 speaks of “the first resurrection,” which all too many seek to evade by spiritualizing, allegorizing, or idealizing it in place of a literal resurrection.  But what John calls “the first resurrection,” the apostle Paul refers to “those who are Christ’s at his coming” in 1 Corinthians 15: 23.  In fact, the Apostle Paul has given us just as strong a text for pre-millennialism as has the Apostle John in the Apocalypse.

I Corinthians 15: 22 begins that just as “…in Adam all die, [for which the cemetery is our main, but all convincing, evidence], so in Christ all will be made alive.”  This affirms that every mortal, regardless of race, gender, religion, or the absence of any religious affiliation, will be resurrected in the final day.  Instead of proving universalism, as Karl Barth taught from this passage (i.e., that every one will eventually be saved), the Greek text, which had no punctuation, follows immediately after saying “all will be made alive,” with the qualification, “but each in his own turn.” The Greek word for “turn” is a military term (Tagmati) meaning “rank,” “squad,” or “platoon.” So all are resurrectible, i.e., they can “be made alive,” but only in distinct squads or platoons.  This text lists three such squads: (1) [vs 23] “Christ, the firstfruits,” [at the first Easter morning] (2) “then, when he comes for those who belong to him,” and (3) [vs 24] “Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power” (emphasis mine).  The most important matter to note is that Christ’s resurrection sets the pattern for the two resurrections that are to follow in the plan of the Kingdom of God. It is also important to note that there is a temporal space of time between the resurrections as indicated by the word “then,” which in Greek is represented by the words that always go together: epeita …. eita, (“then …. Then).”  These two are routinely found together in Koine and Classical Greek to represent a time period between them as in the Gospel record, “First the blade and then the ear and then the full corn [old world wheat and the like] doeth appear.”  Surely this signals the growth of the wheat in its various stages with a time gap between them.  That is exactly what the apostle John was indicating, though he was more specific as to the time period, labeling it as a “thousand years.”

In just the same manner, the Greek Aorist tense of “lived” or “came to life” (in Revelation 20: 40 indicated one definite act, which was called the “First Resurrection” in Revelation 20: 4.  “They lived” can only mean they came to life again and returned to a life like their former life as it also means in Revelation 2: 8, and of the beast in Revelation 13: 14 and elsewhere (e.g., John 5: 25; Romans 8: 13).  The famous quote of Alford needs to be stated again:

“If in a passage where two resurrections are mentioned, – where certain souls lived, at first, and the `Rest of the dead’ lived only at the end of a specified period, after that first, — the `First Resurrection’ may be understood to mean a spiritual rising with Christ, while the second means a literal rising from the grave, then there is an end of all significance in language, and Scripture is wiped out as a definite testimony to anything. If the `First Resurrection’ is spiritual, then so is the second, – which I suppose none will be hardy enough to maintain.  But if the second is literal, then so is the first, which, in common with the whole primitive church, and many of the best expositors, I do maintain and receive as an article of faith and hope….  I have ventured to speak strongly, because my conviction is strong, founded on the rules of fair and consistent interpretation.  It is a strange sight, in these days, to see expositors, who are among the first, in reverence of antiquity, complacently casting aside the most cogent instance of unanimity which primitive antiquity presents.”

The First Resurrection is just as literal a resurrection in John’s Apocalypse as it is in Paul’s “those who belong to him when he comes” (1 Cor 15: 23).  And in both John and Paul, those resurrections are separated by a period of time.

Nor does the fact that John saw only “souls” detract from a literal bodily resurrection, for the souls that had heretofore enjoyed heavenly joy were now to be reunited with their bodies.  Note that John does not say the “souls” “lived and reigned,” but the same “they” who were beheaded, and the “they” who had not received the mark of the beast, were the same ones who “came alive” and were reunited with their bodies and who reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

There are also two ends along with the two advents, two ages, and two resurrections.  The first end is signaled by the coming of the Son of Man, our Lord Jesus from the clouds of heaven in his second advent. The prophet Daniel brilliantly laid this out in Daniel 7: 9 – 14 as did the prophet Ezekiel in his Apocalypse in chapters 37 – 48. Instead of a Valley of Dry Bones, the nation Israel is resurrected again with an implantation of the revitalizing breath of Life in each of the skeletons of bones as the nation is once again placed back in her own land.  This marks the opening of the Age to Come, now in its full view (even though it had been inaugurated in the life and times of Jesus the Messiah), and the thousand year rule and reign of Christ with his saints of both Jewish and Gentile believers.

The second end comes with the Great White Judgment throne in which all the rest of the dead are resurrected to be examined by our Lord to see if their names are in the Lamb’s book of Life.  This does not end the Age to come, for it goes on without cessation into the eternal state and the Messianic Age of Eternity.

The Witness of Isaiah 24: 21-23 to the “Multitude of Days”

In addition to the two great New Testament passages dealing with the millennium, Isaiah 24: 21 – 23 can take the next pride of place.  It too places its prediction in “that day of the Lord” (Isa 24: 21), which “Day of the Lord” is mainly an Old Testament term that parallels the contents of the New Testament “Apocalypse of Jesus Christ” (Rev 1: 1).  Exhibiting the organic nature of prophecy, a separate name in germ form (an example of an epigenetic growth) is used for what John will later call in Greek Chilia Ete, “a thousand years.”  Isaiah names that same period of time Rov Yamim, “a multitude of days,” or “many days.”

Isaiah speaks of the Day of the Lord when Messiah himself will judge and then restore the kingdom to Israel.  At that time, the Lord will “punish” (or “visit”) the powers in heaven above and the kings of the earth in such a fashion that they will be gathered together as “prisoners” in a “pit” or “dungeon” and “shut up in prison.”  “After many days,” (i.e., equal to John’s “millennium,” but here not specified exactly) they will appear for judgment.  At that same time, “the moon will be confounded and the sun ashamed when the Lord Almighty will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before his elders, gloriously” (Isa. 24: 22-23).  Here, then, is a third major teaching text on the millennium.

This is the time during the thousand years when Satan is cast down to the pit “In that day.”  It is when Michael stands forth to fight for Israel (Dan 12: 1; Rev 12: 7) and when according to the vision of John “the angel, having the key of the abyss, and a great chain in his hand, laid hold of the dragon, the Old Serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and shut and sealed him over, that he should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years should be finished, or almost so, after which he must be loosed for a little season” (Rev 20: 1-3).

Note that Isaiah also fixes the duration of the imprisonment of Satan as a “multitude of days,” or “many days.”  Isaiah also says that it is “after” these “many days” that the “powers of heaven” and the kings of earth” will have their final retribution.  This implies their future unchaining and being loosed again.  Thus Isaiah 24: 22 involves a resurrection of the wicked at the close of the “many days.”

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.

President Emeritus

Colman M. Mockler Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and Ethics

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

Link to Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.  website:   www.walterckaiserjr.com

No, this isn’t a secular greeting.

But it does concern this season when many who love the Bible stop and think about what matters most.

I share my thoughts here, not as a natural-born son of Abraham, but as one who’s been gratefully adopted into Abraham’s family, and one who takes joy in celebrating with others the traditional birthday of Jesus the Messiah.

So I offer you seven significant old “words” about His birth, and one significant new word from this century.

First, the new word. 

In his last published book, the 20^th century’s most notorious atheist (who died April 8, 2010) announced, and gave extended reasons for, his very dramatic change of heart about belief in God.  And his new-found respect for Jesus the Messiah.  In concluding remarks, Andrew Flew emphasizes: “…no other religion enjoys anything like the combination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul.” 

                    —Antony Flew, There Is A God  (HarperCollins, 2007, p. 157.

                            In his Appendix B, Flew has Bishop N. T. Wright go

                            further and outline a strong case for the resurrection of

                            Jesus.)

What happened? ask his colleagues.  Partly his continuing encounter with modern science in recent years.  And how science, especially the theory of Intelligent Design, now informs science and philosophy.  For more than half a century Flew (in the spirit of Plato’s Socrates) had simply been “following the argument no matter where it leads” (p. 75).   And belief in God and a profound respect for the Jesus of the Bible is what he finally came to.

Now let’s turn back the clock 2000 years to those “seven old words” that I promised.  They come from special observers of, or participants in, events surrounding the miraculous birth of this Jesus:

One was his Jewish mother, another his legal (and I have a special interest in legal arrangements!) Jewish father, and still another was a relative, possibly an aunt.

And one was a long-time childless Jewish priest.

Others were poor, brave Jewish herdsmen.

Add to that a couple of quiet, patient Jewish religious fanatics—both probably very senior citizens.

And add in some unexpected extraterrestials with surprising information.

Seven pieces of extrordinary information about Jesus’ birth were recorded in the New Testament (B’rit Hadashah).  Please take a Bible and check them out in the (slightly mixed) order I’ve given them.

This is my holiday card to you.

Luke 1:26-33

Matthew 1:18-23

Luke 1:8-17; 39-45

Luke 1:57-80 (esp. v. 76)

Luke 2:8-20

Luke 2:36-38

Luke 2:34-35

If you belong to my religious sub-culture (made largely of believers legally adopted into Abraham’s line—see Galatians 3:26-29), sixof these bring happy, comforting news of great joy, hope, and peace, sentiments that you will probably hear over and over this season.

Six?  

Yes , just six.  Now really look them up!  Take a moment in the middle of times of good food, family get-togethers, and gift-giving.

Consider all seven as you contemplate the joy, hope, peace, and strange division and pain that was foretold.  Accepting Jesus as your Messiah, Savior, and Lord is not an inconsequential detail—for you, or the lives of those around you.

It really matters!  It has for me.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Let me add a note.  I, and Seed of Abraham Ministry, would be delighted to receive a seasonal note from those of you from the more than 100 countries who follow our website.  You can easily do this two ways:

(1) Send a note to the Contact Us which is part of this website.

(2) Send me a note at my email:  [email protected].  For me, now sitting “far away” in an old cottage in the mountains of Pennsylvania (USA), I wonder what you think and why. Nice encouraging notes are fine, especially now, but as an old college prof, don’t be afraid to say what you think is wrong!  I’m used to that. If something seems missing or in an error, just say so!

Thank you for reading—especially this far!

Author: John Knapp II

JEWISH LAWS OF PURITY IN JESUS’ DAY

The sages were required to interpret the biblical commandments, including those dealing with ritual uncleanness of menstruants. Rabbinic regulations about impurity caused by menstruation form the background to several stories in the gospels.

The Hebrew Scriptures and other early Jewish writings place considerable emphasis upon the laws of niDAH (menstruation, menstrual flow; menstruant). The main foundational teaching on menstruation in the Hebrew Scriptures is found in Leviticus 15:19-33. In addition, the sixth division of the Mishnah, Tohorot (Cleannesses) contains a tractate titled Niddah (The Menstruant). Furthermore, the Babylonian Talmud devotes hundreds of pages to commentary on the laws of menstruation in the tractate Niddah, including numerous accounts of how the rabbis judged the “purity” of various stained cloths that had been presented for their examination (Niddah 20b).

The Regulations

According to the Bible, a woman is impure for seven days from the beginning of her menstrual flow (Lev. 12:2; 15:19). Anyone who touches a menstruous woman becomes unclean until evening (Lev. 15:19). Whoever touches her bed or anything she sits on during the week is unclean until evening and must wash his clothes and bathe with water (vss. 20-23).

Sexual relations during a woman’s period are forbidden (Lev. 18:19; Ezek. 18:6; 22:10). The penalty for the man and woman who violate this prohibition is being “cut off” from the people of Israel (Lev. 20:18). But should a woman’s menses begin during intercourse, the man and woman become unclean for seven days, and her condition of uncleanness is transferred to him (Lev. 15:24).

If a woman menstruates for more than seven days, or has an irregular discharge of blood at any time other than her period, her uncleanness ends only after seven “clean” days (Lev. 15:25ff.). On the eighth “clean” day, the final act of ritual purity involves the bringing of two doves or two young pigeons for sacrifice (15:29ff.).

The sages extended the period when sexual relations between a husband and wife are prohibited to seven “clean” days following the menstrual period. This means that the total period of separation is about twelve days a month assuming a menstrual period of five days.

Purification

By the time of Jesus, bathing in water was an established part of the purification process following menstruation, but nowhere in the Bible is there mention of the menstruant bathing in water. Instruction on purification through the use of the mikveh (ritual bath) by menstruants may be traced to the time of the sages. An entire tractate of the Mishnah, Mikvaot, is devoted to immersion pools. To this day, for Jewish women committed to halachah (religious law), immersion in the mikveh is considered obligatory before marital relations can resume.

According to Leviticus 12:1-8, because of the bleeding associated with childbirth, a woman is ceremonially unclean after giving birth, just as she is unclean during her menstrual period. The uncleanness is for seven days if she bears a boy (vs. 2), and for fourteen days if she bears a girl (vs. 5). The mother must wait thirty-three additional days after a boy and sixty-six days after a girl to be finally “purified from her bleeding” (vss. 4-5). At the end of her time of uncleanness, she is to bring a sacrifice to the priest (vss. 6-8).

The synoptic gospels record an account of Jesus coming into contact with a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years (Mt. 9:20-22; Mk. 5:25-34; Lk. 8:43-48). Whatever the cause of her loss of blood, the Levitical restrictions (esp. 15:19-33) rendered her ritually unclean, and likewise anyone and anything she might touch, thus making her an exile among her own people. The moment the woman touched the cloak of Jesus, however, she was healed by the power of God, and her defilement removed. The New Testament is silent about whether the woman’s actions rendered Jesus ceremonially unclean and about her obligation to bring the prescribed offerings following cessation of her discharge (cf. Lev. 15:28-30).

Other Sources

In addition to the Bible, other Jewish sources indicate Judaism developed very strong and forthright teaching concerning niDAH. For example, the Mishnah compares the uncleanness of an idol to the impurity of a menstruating woman (Shabbat 9:1). The failure to heed laws concerning menstruation was considered one of three transgressions for which women die in childbirth (Shabbat 2:6). Josephus states that women during the menstrual period were not permitted in any of the courts of the temple (Against Apion 2:103-104; War 5:227). The social separation of women during their menses is further emphasized in the Talmud.

The Mishnaic sages taught that women were exempt from religious ordinances whose fulfillment depended upon a certain time of the day or the year (Mishnah, Berachot 3:3; Kiddushin 1:7). Thus, the lengthy periods of seclusion mandated by their ritual uncleanness, as well as their responsibilities at home, led to a general non-participation of women in the public activities of community religious life. A woman’s routine, however, could change somewhat at menopause. An “old woman,” according to the Mishnah, is one who has missed three menstrual periods (Niddah 1:5).

Chana Safrai Responds

In discussing Jewish regulations of ritual purity, one should not forget that this system of laws is biblically based. Scripturally, there are five causes of uncleanness:

1. Contact with a dead body (Num. 19:11-22).
2. Contact with the carcasses of living creatures (Lev. 11:23-44).
3. Bodily discharges, including emission of semen, menstrual flow (Lev. 15) and the woman’s bleeding at childbirth (Lev. 12).
4. Skin diseases (Lev. 13-14).
5. Contact with sanctified space or objects. Those who prepared the ashes of the red heifer became ceremonially unclean as a result of their holy labor (Num. 19:1-10); the high priest was required to bathe himself with water between his various duties on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:4, 23-24).

The Hebrew expressions tohoRAH (cleanness, purity) and tumAH (uncleanness, impurity) are technical terms that have no positive or negative connotations. Scripturally, one is either in a state of purity, or not in a state of purity. Uncleanness is a human phenomenon, almost commonplace, and one must view the contrast between clean and unclean as a contrast between that which is holy and that which is not (Lev. 11:47), between that which is divine and that which is human. Ritual cleanness and uncleanness should not be thought of as a contrast between good and evil.

Furthermore, regulations pertaining to cleanness and uncleanness do not single out women. There are types of uncleanness specific to men, and there are types specific to women, but most apply to both sexes.

Feminists have often failed to recognize these distinctions. Biblical regulations pertaining to ceremonial cleanness do not negate a woman’s religious experience; they emphasize unique feminine life experiences (gender appreciation). Thus, after giving birth, a woman made a pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem to bring the prescribed sacrifice and to purify herself. She did not come with a sense of guilt, but came celebrating a distinctive feminine experience. Her religious ceremony in the temple was a celebration of femininity.

The biblical prophets (especially Ezekiel) and poets sometimes employed the terms “clean” and “unclean” as metaphors for good and evil: “And he will cast pure water on you and you will be clean” (Ezek. 36:25); “Cleanse me from my iniquity and purify me from my sin” (Ps. 51:4). Perhaps “clean” and “unclean” were already used metaphorically in the Pentateuch in the passage about unlawful sexual relations (Lev. 18). In this passage, a connection is made between detestable pagan practices and ritual impurity, and God’s demand that the Israelites keep themselves undefiled by not engaging in such practices.

Joseph Frankovic Adds

It is nearly impossible in English to find a one-word equivalent that adequately expresses the sense of the biblical and rabbinic technical term taME. Most one-word equivalents used to translate taME, such as “unclean” or “impure,” carry a conspicuous negative prefix. However, the term does not convey a sense of moral judgment unless the state of impurity has been achieved by an act proscribed by Torah. The term may simply mean incompatibility with or unreadiness to enter God’s sphere (e.g., the temple sanctuary).

Perhaps a helpful way to grasp one nuance of the term’s meaning is by analogy. In designing a house, one does not put the dining room next to the bathroom. The activities of the bathroom do not complement those of the dining room. Neither bathroom nor dining room activities are, however, sinful, just incompatible. Also, note carefully Saul’s assumption about David’s absence at the royal meal (1 Sam. 20:26). He seems to arrive at his conclusion about David with no hint of alarm or disgust.

Joseph of Arimathea (Lk. 23:53, and parallels) took Jesus’ body down from the cross, wrapped it and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb. He became ceremonially unclean through this contact with a corpse. His ritual state was a result of his righteous behavior. If one is to take Jesus’ humanity seriously, then one must assume that Jesus went through cycles of being ceremonially clean and unclean. Whether Jesus, at a given moment, was “clean” or “unclean” said nothing about his moral character. The vast majority of New Testament scholars believe that Joseph (Mary’s husband) died before Jesus began his public ministry. Did Jesus participate at his father’s funeral? Did he come in contact with Joseph’s corpse? If he did, then he too, through this caring deed, would have become ritually impure.

By Marvin R. Wilson

The call to be a sage’s disciple in first-century Israel often meant leaving relatives and friends and traveling the country under austere conditions. It also meant total commitment. A prospective disciple first had to be sure his priorities were in order.

Consider the words of the man who said to Jesus, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go back and say good-bye to my family” (Luke 9:61). Jesus’ reply shows that only those who were prepared to commit themselves totally to him would be welcome: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and then looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

This is emphasized in Jesus’ response to another man who offered to follow him, but only after “burying his father.” “Let the dead bury their dead,” Jesus told him (Luke 9:60; Matt. 8:22).

Apparently, Jesus’ replies were directed towards persons whom he had invited to leave home and serve a full-time apprenticeship with him. This form of discipleship was a unique feature of ancient Jewish society.

Sacrifice

According to Mishnah, Peah 1:1, a person “benefits from the interest” in this world from certain things such as honoring one’s father and mother, while “the principal” remains for him in the world to come. “But,” the passage goes on, “the study of Torah is equal to them all.” Jesus said something similar: as important as honoring one’s parents is, leaving home to study Torah with him was even more important.

To the rich man mentioned in Luke 18, the call to follow Jesus meant giving up all his wealth. The price was too high for him and he did not become one of Jesus’ disciples. Peter reminded Jesus that he and the others who had accepted Jesus’ call were different: “We have left everything to follow you.”

“Amen!” said Jesus—in other words, “Yes you have done that and it is commendable.” Jesus went on to promise that anyone who had made the sacrifice of total commitment for the sake of the kingdom of God would receive something of much greater value than what he had given up, and, in addition, eternal life in the world to come (Luke 18:28-30).

Commitment

Jesus did not want his prospective disciples to have any false expectations and he frequently stressed the need to count the cost before making a commitment to him:

Which of you, if he wanted to build a tower, would not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he had enough money to complete it? …likewise, any of you who is not ready to leave all his possessions cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:28-33)

Jesus was clear about the degree of commitment that was required of a disciple:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and himself as well, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26-27)

In this context, the word “hate” does not carry the meaning it normally has in English usage, but seems to be used in a Hebraic sense. In Hebrew, “hate” can also mean “love less” or “put in second place.” For example, Genesis 29:31 states that Leah was “hated,” but the context indicates that Leah was not unloved, but rather loved less than Jacob’s other wife Rachel. Note that the preceding verse specifically says that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah.

A second illustration of this particular Hebraic shade of meaning of the word “hate” is found in Deuteronomy 21:15: “If a man has two wives, one loved and the other hated….” Here too, the context shows that the “hated” wife is only second in affection and not really hated in the English sense of the word. Likewise in Jesus’ statement, he was saying that whoever did not love him more than his own family or even his own self could not be his disciple.

Jesus also alluded to the rigors of the peripatetic life of a sage when he said, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:57-58). The burden Jesus’ disciples had to bear was a heavy one, but not unlike what disciples of other first-century sages had to bear, and would not have been considered extreme by the standards of first-century Jewish society.

Another hardship a disciple could face was being away from his wife. Disciples commonly were single, but since marriage took place at a relatively early age (usually by eighteen according to Mishnah Avot [m. Avot 5:21]), many disciples had a wife and children. For example, the mother-in-law of one of Jesus’ disciples is mentioned in Luke 4:38. If married, a man needed the permission of his wife to leave home for longer than thirty days to study with a sage (Mishnah, Ketuvot 5:6).

Like a Father

Despite the many hardships, nothing compared with the exhilaration of following and learning from a great sage, and being in the circle of his disciples. A special relationship developed between sage and disciple in which the sage became like a father. In fact, he was more than a father and was to be honored above the disciple’s own father, as this passage from the Mishnah indicates:

When one is searching for the lost property both of his father and of his teacher, his teacher’s loss takes precedence over that of his father since his father brought him only into the life of this world, whereas his teacher, who taught him wisdom [i.e., Torah], has brought him into the life of the World to Come. But if his father is no less a scholar than his teacher, then his father’s loss takes precedence….

If his father and his teacher are in captivity, he must first ransom his teacher, and only afterwards his father—unless his father is himself a scholar and then he must first ransom his father. (m. Bava Metsi’a 2:11)

If anyone could ransom his teacher before his own father seems shocking, it is only because we do not understand the tremendous love and respect that disciples, and the community at large, had for their sages.

Similarly, Jesus not allowing a prospective disciple to say good-bye to his family before setting out to follow him may seem cruel. However, Jesus’ first-century contemporaries would have seen this as quite reasonable and normal. What Jesus meant would have been perfectly clear to them when he said, “No one can be my disciple who does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters.”

By David Bivin