It does Teachme. Thanks! I think I see where you are going?
We (man) keep putting Greek into the text for enlightenment but it is not sufficient because the language in which the scriptures were written were in Hebrew!
John is one of the most beautiful writings in the bible or scriptures. In reading it we can uncover many truths.
Alexander the Great, and the beginning of Hellenization; that is, the Grecization of the eastern part of the Ancient Mediterranean. That’s all Hellenization means, making it Greek. Alexander the Great’s father was Philip II, King of Macedonia, King of Macedon, and he conquered different Greek city-states by defeating Athens and its allies at Chaeronea. Alexander himself was born in 356 BC, he was educated by Aristotle, Alexander was made king after the assassination of his father. Alexander defeated the Persian Army, which at that time controlled all of Asia Minor, Modern Turkey, and had even threatened to control Greece. Alexander defeated the Persian Army in Asia Minor at Granicus, that put Alexander and his Macedonian Army in charge of both Greece and Asia Minor. When Darius II died, who was the king of the Persians, Alexander himself took on Darius’s title, which was Great King. After defeating the Persians again, Alexander pushed his army all the way to the Indus River in India, Alexander wanted to go all the way to the Ganges River, but his army forced him to turn back. Alexander died in 323 BC, when he was not yet 33-years-old, and Alexander died in Babylon of a fever. After Alexander’s death, his empire was divided up among four generals of Alexander, although they were Macedonians and spoke Macedonian and not themselves Greek, but they had, just like Alexander, they had adopted Greek language, Greek culture. They educated their children in Greek ways. Alexander, of course, had been educated by Aristotle, when he was young, and so he had adopted Greek language and Greek literature and a lot of other Greek ways. What Alexander had wanted to do was to take all these different peoples, who spoke different languages and had different customs, and use a Greek layer to sort of unite his empire overall.
Now Alexander didn’t really care about the lower class people so much. So they could just still live in their villages and out in the country and do their farming and speak their own local language. But if one were going to be elite= they wanted to establish cities throughout Alexander’s empire that would be actually Greek cities, and he wanted to have the elite people all be able, at least, to speak Greek. We have therefore one world, and in fact this whole dream of Alexander=and it was a very self-conscious, propaganda campaign and a cultural campaign on Alexander’s part. He wanted to make one world. We really have, therefore, for in some way the first time in history, a dream of making all of his empire basically universal, a dream of a universal vision, for one world, under one kind of culture, one kind of language. This really hadn’t been attempted. Other empires, like the Assyrian Empire, or these kinds of=the Egyptian Empire, when people conquered other peoples, often all they wanted was tribute. They just wanted taxes, and food, and money, and that sort of thing. They didn’t really care about turning those people into Egyptians or into Assyrians. And Alexander didn’t really care that much about the lower classes doing that, but he still wanted the elites. And so Alexander would plant Greek cities and settle his veterans in different parts of his empire in Egypt, in Syria, all the way over, and sometimes in the western part of India, and Alexander would take his veterans of his army, and he would drum them out of the army, when they retire, and Alexander would give them land and they’d build a city there, and that city would be just like a Greek city back home. And they all would speak what developed to be a common form of Greek, slightly different from Classical Greek, what is called Koine Greek.
Yeshua was human and only human; but their are those who suck up to other teachings of man?
Some Christians therefore had to make a decision, is Yeshua human and only human, or is Yeshua human and divine? Yeshua being human and divine, this is the take that most followers of Yeshua end up taking, although there were some followers of Yeshua who existed all the way into the second century who believed Yeshua was purely human. They tended to be Jewish followers of Yeshua, they still wanted to be complete monotheists and have only one Yahweh. So they said, No Yeshua can’t be divine. So some followers of Yeshua chose this route; human and only human.
Others, chose this route; human and divine. Then, though one has to split this up. Was Yeshua always divine or did Yeshua become divine? If Yeshua became divine, Yeshua always was divine. If Yeshua became divine then when did Yeshua become divine? One has different choices again like at his birth, because then you have the songs that all the angels sing, and you take some of those songs at the beginning of Luke, and it sounds like they’re talking about Yeshua’s divine now. Or at his baptism; or at his resurrection. So, Christians again seem to have divided up. Does one take Yeshua as becoming divine at his birth, Yeshua’s baptism, or Yeshua’s resurrection? We’ve seen other Christians say, no Yeshua always was divine, but even then they split up into different choices too, because some of them said Yeshua was divine but also fully human, so Yeshua was both divine but also fleshly; a letter in the new testament insisting that you can’t have Yeshua as divine without also having him as come in the flesh. Apparently some people in the Johannine community were claiming that Yeshua was fully divine, but not fleshly. Then you have, so this became that position, flesh and divine; that is, what came to be a heresy, remember, in the second century there was no organized church that could be able to declare what counted as orthodoxy and heresy. But this idea was Yeshua was not fully flesh, Yeshua was so divine, Yeshua was Yahweh, so that when Yeshua walked along on the wet sand on the beach, Yeshua’s feet didn’t leave footprints, that’s how divine Yeshua was. Yeshua didn’t have any weight about him; Yeshua was not even fully flesh. Notice all of these are choices that followers of Yeshua had to make in the decades following his death. Some of them took the human route, some of them took the human and divine route, some of them believed that Yeshua became divine, and the list goes on?
The Abrahamic covenant is a covenant with a single individual; Yahweh appears as a suzerain. Yahweh’s making a land grant to a favored subject, which is very often how these work. In general, in this kind of covenant, the parties to the oath would pass between the split carcass of a sacrificial animal, as if to say that they agree they will suffer the same fate as this animal, if they violate the covenant. Abraham cuts the sacrificial animals in two, the striking thing about the Abrahamic covenant is it’s unilateral character, only Yahweh seems to be obligated by the covenant, obligated to fulfill the promise that Yahweh made. Abraham doesn’t appear to have any obligation to return; and so in this case, it is the subject, Abraham, and not the suzerain, Yahweh, who is benefited by this covenant Their is a moral justification for this grant of land to Israel; Yahweh is the owner of the land, and so Yahweh is empowered to set conditions or residency requirements for those who would reside in it, like a landlord. The current inhabitants of the land are polluting it, filling it with bloodshed and idolatry; and when the land becomes so polluted, completely polluted, it will spew out it’s inhabitants. That process, Yahweh says, Isn’t complete; so Israel is going to have to wait. The lease Isn’t up yet, Yahweh is seeking replacement tenants who are going to follow the oral rules of residence that Yahweh has established for his land; it’s clear that Yahweh’s covenant with Israel is not due to any special merit of the Israelites or favoritism. Yahweh adds to the promises, that a line of kings will come forth from Abraham, and then, that Abraham and his male descendants be circumcised as a perpetual sign of the covenant. So here there is some obligation for Abraham; so circumcision is here infused with a new meaning: it becomes a sign of Yahweh’s eternal covenant with Abraham and his seed through Isaac.
More history on that logos junk? How much Hellenization are you into?
Alexander the Great, remember, wanted to set up a one world, a universal empire. He taught a sort of syncretism of religion, he taught a common language, Greek, he set up these Greek cities all around; that process is what is called Hellenization, so the Hellenization of the world in that time, the Hellenistic Period. The reason Hellenism is so important, is because what happened to Alexander's empire after he died. After much confusion and fighting among his major generals, after Alexander’s death, Alexander’s kingdom ended up being divided up into four major empires. One of Alexander’s generals Ptolemy II got the Kingdom of Egypt, and set up his own sort of Greco=Egyptian kingdom there. This Greek veneer when on, then came Antiochus IV reign from 175 to 165 BC; while Judah, though, was under Antiochus control a lot of Israelites tried to figure out, how do you deal with this whole process of Hellenization? In other words, if you want your own kids to get ahead in the world, in this time, and you’re going to have an elite family yourself in a town, in a city, it makes sense for your kids to get a Greek education. You want your sons, for example, to be able to speak, and read, and write Greek. In fact, there was conflict in Jerusalem at this time over how much Hellenization you should go alone with. Apparently, a majority of the priests and the lay nobility supported the Hellenizing group, that is the Israelites leaders who wanted to bring more Hellenization into Jerusalem itself. This high priest at this time named Jason, in 175 BC, he built a gymnasium in Jerusalem. Why did he build a gymnasium in Jerusalem? Well, if you’re going to have Greek education, you have to have a gymnasium. This Jason also founded a Greek polis, that is an Greek city structure, and Jason apparently paid Antiochus for the privilege of having Jerusalem recognized as a Greek city. This would have consolidated the power of those Israelite leaders who wanted to press Greek culture more, rather than those Israelite leaders who wanted to hold back on Greek culture. If you control the gymnasium, and you control the means of education, you actually control the citizenry, because you can’t become a citizen of a Greek polis, a Greek city, unless you yourself have Greek education, so sons would=sons of people would go to the gymnasium. Notice what this would do also, it would disenfranchise those leading families, who didn’t want to have their sons Hellenized. By holding the control of the eduction, you disenfranchise conservative Israelites, who are resisting this Greek influence.
Against all odds, got to wake people up to this logos cult?
Against all odds, a rag tag bunch of basically guerilla fighters, up against a far superior army of Antiochus IV, they beat them, they retook Jerusalem, they didn’t actually beat them in Syria, they just beat them in several battle in Judah, and Judas “Judah the hammer” was able to recapture Jerusalem and the temple. In the year 164BC, they cleansed the temple of the profanation, the pollution of having pigs and things like that sacrificed, it being polluted as a Greek temple, and so 164BC is the beginning of the celebration of the Israelites holiday Hanukkah. So 164BC in the cleansing of the temple is what Israelites celebrate with Hanukah. The Israelite leaders who wanted to bring more Hellenization into the Jerusalem itself, and in 175BC, a high priest named Jason built that gymnasium in Jerusalem. So this whole process of Hellenization, therefore, sometimes we’ll get the idea that the Israelites were all good loyal Israelites just trying to keep the law, trying to keep Torah, and that Antiochus IV is putting all this on them and forcing Greek religion and Greek culture on them.
That’s not really the way it happened, the Israelites started debating how much do we accommodate the dominant culture, how Greek should we be. The high priesthood was the main ruler of the Israelites at this time; they didn’t have a king, and they didn’t have a direct governor, so whoever controlled the high priesthood was sort of the political ruler also at this time. Antiochus was the one who had the privilege of appointing the high priest, Menelaus, another leading Israelite, seems to have offered Antiochus more money for the priesthood trying to get it away from Jason, and he couldn’t afford it. In order to pay for his own priesthood, he took gold vessels and instruments out of the temple treasury, and this seems to have caused a riot. We have two guys fighting for the high priesthood in Jerusalem, both with Greek names, not traditional Hebrew names, and both of them apparently trying to get in with this Hellenizing process. They get into a big fight. To settle things down in Jerusalem, Antiochus takes control of Jerusalem and he stationed Syrian troops, that is the Greco-Syrian troops, in Jerusalem in 167BC. Now things are heating up, around this time changes were made to the temple in Jerusalem. It may have been basically to accommodate the soldiers. They may have had to house soldiers from the Greco-Syrian Empire, and they may have used the temple mount apparently to house some of them. This caused changes to the temple. At this time Menelaus is in charge, and his Hellenizing party, which we could call the radical reformers, this is the beginning of the anti-Israelite laws. About this time several laws were passed that forbade circumcision, forbidden from observing the Torah; there was a pig sacrificed on the altar in Jerusalem in the Holy of Holies, and renaming it as a shrine to Zeus Olympus. If you’re one of these liberal Israelites, you may not really believe you’re doing anything bad. You’re not forsaking Yahweh, you're just updating Yahweh, you’re just bringing Yahweh up to the modern era. “Well what’s wrong with calling it Zeus Olympus; we all know these are just different names given to the same god anyway, there’s just one supreme god.”
Maybe we can have a Hanukkah like thing at the GreaseSpot, get rid of that logos greek teaching?
Basic structures are part of any kind of Greek city in the Ancient World. And what Alexander and his successors did was they took that basic Greek structure, and they transplanted it all over the Eastern Mediterranean, whether they were in Egypt or Syria or Asia Minor or anyplace else. One can travel right now to Turkey or Syria or Israel or Jordan or Egypt, and one can see excavations of towns, and it’s remarkable how they all look so much alike, because they’re all inspired by this originally Greek model of the city. Alexander and his successors Hellenized the entire eastern Mediterranean, and that meant, every major city would have a certain commonality to it. It would have a certain koine to it; that is, a Greek overlay, over what may be also be there, the original indigenous kind of cultures and languages. Just what was this high priest named Jason thinking, when he built a gymnasium in Jerusalem in 175BC; he also founded a Greek City structure.
The Greek polis, which is simply the Greek word for city, had several institutions that are very important; They all practiced a certain kind of Greek education. The Greek word paideia, means education, but it also means more than simply role learning or memorization or learning to read, like we think. Paideia is the Greek word that means the formation of the young man. Throughout all this it was mainly young men and boys who were educated, girls could be given some education, if their families were wealthy enough, but the cities didn’t really concern themselves so much with girls’ education. Their family might, but the cities concerned themselves with the education of their boys. So paideia referred to the education of the young man, both mentally, but militarily=so one was taught to fight=and culturally; one might be taught other things about culture. One might even have some music training or something like that. The place where this education took place was the gymnasium. Now a gymnasium doesn’t mean what it means in English, it actually comes from the Greek word for naked, gymnos. And the reason it was called ‘the naked place’ is because, of course, young Greek men always exercised in the nude and played sports in the nude. But this also became the place where one would do other kinds of learning. So if one was learning rhetoric, for example, you might practice giving speeches at the gymnasium. But also men in town would just kind of gather there, it was kind of a place where men gathered and they had gone to school at the same place. One would meet your friends, play games; so this would all take place in the gymnasium.
Another institution was what they called the ephebeia. When one was a young boy, one would have studied just reading and writing Homer. When one got to be 16 or 22 around their, one might enter the ephebeia; one would become an ephebe, and that just meant that one was past their sort of early secondary training and now one was being really in training to be a warrior and a citizen. They would march together in a parade in town. They would go on military training perhaps together. They would also engage in sports together, and they would develop a camaraderie because they were expected then to be the fighting force for their city, their city-state. So the ephebeia was this institution that every boy had to go through in order then to be a full citizen of a city.
Their also was these political structures, the first political structure is the demos. Demos just means the “people,” It’s just a Greek word for “the people.” But it actually referred more politically to all of the male citizens, and in Greek cities, by tradition, only men were citizens of a city. But all the men who were citizens had a vote, and the demos referred to that political body of voting men. Now they kept this idea that the demos=that is, the adult citizen males of a city=were a political body. And that’s when, if you had everybody come to the theater for a big debate about something, you could still have people voting in certain things that the city might decide to do, although they couldn’t rule themselves completely by themselves. Then they had a smaller council that might be 50 people. It varied the size, according to the city. The council was called the boule, and that referred to a smaller council of older men, usually, who made decisions that they then would put before the whole the demos the whole voting population. These are the basic structures that are part of a Greek City, and Jason just brought Alexander’s dream to Jerusalem.
Their was a group of former high priests, who have been dislocated and other priestly families withdrawing from Jerusalem, and apparently going out in the desert, and maybe building a community out there, and we find out about them in the twentieth century when the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in the late 1940’s. So that may have been another way to respond to this increasing Hellenization in Jerusalem, to just pull away and from a different community.
Alexander also used what is called ‘religious syncretism,’ Alexander took this tendency of syncretism, of mixing together different religious traditions from different places, and he used it as a self-conscious propaganda technique. Alexander even started claiming divine status for himself. Alexander went around passing out rumors that his mother had actually been impregnated by the god Apollo, when he appeared as a snake in her bed. So, Alexander is putting himself forward as divine. Why? This is not a Greek tradition, but it’s very much a tradition in the East for kings to be considered by their people to be gods. Alexander says, “Well, if they can be gods, I can be a god.” So Alexander starts spreading rumors that he is divine himself. Alexander probably even believed it; and so he had a god father, he had a human mother, and so then he would identify himself with whoever was a god in the different places. So Alexander would identify himself as a Greek god with a Persian god. Alexander would identify the goddess Isis with some Greek goddess; and so all the time these different gods from different places were basically all said to be simply different cultural representations, different names, for what were generally the same gods all over the place. Also, though, what they would do is sometimes they wouldn’t try to simply say these gods are the same. What they would just do is add on more gods. They’d get to Syria, “Look at all these god that the Syrians worship. Well, we’ll just add those into our pantheon of gods too.” And this is part of what ancient religion was like, is that people were not exclusive. You didn’t have to worry. Just because you worshiped one god, doesn’t mean you couldn’t worship another god or several gods or five gods or a hundred gods. Gods knew who everybody was-they weren’t particularly jealous, in that sense. So this is the way people did it. But what Alexander and his successors did, was they made sort of a conscious, propagandistic decision to use religious syncretism to bind together their kingdoms.
The Romans, when they came on the scene, in the East, and they gradually became more and more powerful, they destroyed Corinth in a big battle in 144BC. Pompey was the Roman general who took over Jerusalem in 63BC. So the Romans were in charge of Judah from 63BC on. And this is very important, because the Romans, as their power grew in the East, they simply moved increasingly into the eastern Mediterranean and they adopted the whole Greek system, the Greek world, and they didn’t even try to make it non-Greek. So Romans didn’t go around trying to get people in the East to speak Latin. They might put up an official inscription in an Eastern City in Latin, but they’d almost always, if it was an official inscription, it would also be listed in Greek, So Romans who ruled in the East were expected to speak Greek. And by this time all educated Roman men were expected to be able to speak Greek, well if possible. So the Romans didn’t try to make the East Roman, in that sense, culturally, nor did they try to change the language. Greek language, culture, and religions, different religions and the syncretism, Greek education, the polis structure=all of these things remained in the East throughout the Roman rule of the East, all the way up until the time you had a Christian emperor with Constantine, and later.
Romans just keep that Greek system going on, with a Roman legal twist.
Now there’s one thing that the Romans made even more of, than the Greeks had made of, and this the patron-client structure. This is a bit more of a distinctly Roman institution, even a legal institution; but it’s important for understanding both the Roman Empire, as well as early Christianity and its patron-client relations. The household structure of a Roman household was this=the Roman household was constructed like a pyramid, not a triangle. At the top of it is the head of the household, the man, ‘the oldest man of the household.’ Under him is his sons, his daughters, and then at the bottom are his slaves, and here are his freedmen, freed persons. And then also we consider, in some ways, free people who may exist as clients. But legally the word client refers to the freed slaves of the man of the household.
Now where’s the wife in this picture, why isn’t the wife and mother in there? Because legally she’s actually not part of this man’s household. She remains part of the household of her father, and she’s legally under the control of her father probably, or her brothers, if her father is dead; or her grandfather, if her grandfather is still alive. But since life expectancy in the Ancient World was much less than ours, they didn’t have usually several generations in these households. The wife though is legally a part of her own household over here. Why did the Romans do that? That’s very different from the Greeks, very different from other people in the Ancient Mediterranean. Why did they want to make sure that the daughters stayed in the households of their fathers? They did this because they didn’t want the upper-class in Rome, who were the elite, they didn’t want anyone household, or any small group of households, to become too powerful. And if you have women marrying off into other families, and then they leave the household of their fathers, and they are officially and legally in a household with somebody else, that may end up increasing those households that have intermarriage coming in and not so much intermarriage going out. By keeping women under the household of the men of their original family, the upper-class Romans tried to balance these different households in size and importance. They didn’t care about the lower-class really. The lower-class didn’t really count much. What they cared about-because the Roman republic by this time was basically a bunch of every important households, wealthy men and their households, and they were the members of the Senate, they were the knight class, they were the people who ran Rome. So they didn’t want one king to arise, and they didn’t want a small coterie of leaders to arise. They wanted there to be some kind of balance of power among the several major households of Rome, the families of Rome.
Now slaves, when a slave is freed in the Roman Empire, they didn’t become a free man, they became a freed man, and that was legally different. So the status of salve was lowest, freed persons was next highest in Roman Law; and free people were next; but even though they became freed, they were still considered a member of this guy’s household, as his client and his freedman, and they owed certain duties to him. Only in the Roman Empire could slavery actually start being a way that you can move up in society, because you could=if you were a talented slave, your owner might free you. When he freed you, if he was a Roman citizen, you would automatically become a Roman citizen also, and your children would be Roman citizens. And although you were a freedman, which was lower in status than a free person=there were some privileges you couldn’t have=your children would be, if they were born after you’ve been freed, would be free people, not freed. So within a couple of generations, people could move up from being the lowest slaves to two generations of being free Roman citizens. So Roman slavery and the freedom of that was actually one way that a few people in the Ancient World recognized some kind of social mobility, which was very rare in the Roman Empire. This will be very important, because Christians started out as house churches, and their house churches fit sometimes the model of a Greek ekkiesia, ‘the voting body of the Greek citizens, an assembly,’ but sometimes the model of the Roman household; and so this household structure becomes very important.
It is interestring, about 300 B.C., a man named Zeno, his philosophy was named Stoicism, after the place where he taught it. His teaching and that of his successors was, like Socrates, more concerned with human conduct than with the nature of the universe. He and his successors taught that only matter exists. There is no pure spirit: mind and body are both material. Even god is material; the universe is his body, and he is its soul. Stoicism, therefore, is a sort of pantheism, the teaching that all is god. Man is related to him as a drop of water is related to the ocean, as a spark is related to the fire out of which is shoots. God as the world-soul governs all things, loves men, and desires what is good for them. Since man is related to god, he should follow where the divine reason, called ‘the logos,’ leads. True wisdom and virtue consist in discovering where god’s path for men lies. The truly human person does not resist god’s leading; he surrenders himself to it however painful this may be, for god loves him. Virtue is one and is undivided. The four greatest qualities of character are wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. If one lacks just one of these qualities, he lacks them all; if he truly has one, he truly has all. To be free and happy means to know oneself, to know god’s will for oneself, and to live according to the knowledge. Stoicism was religion as well as philosophy.
Now their is no way one can fit logos into this; watch out for the logos of the Way?
Having that good and bad knowledge is no guarantee that one will choose or incline towards the good. That’s what the serpent omitted in his speech, before Eve ate off the tree of knowledge of good and bad. The serpent said, You’ll become like Yahweh. It’s true in one sense, but false in another, the serpent sort of omitted to point out, that its the power of moral choice alone, that is Yahweh like. The very action that brought Adam and Eve a Yahweh like awareness of their mortal autonomy, was an action that was taken in opposition to Yahweh. Yahweh knows that, that human beings will become like Yahweh, knowing good and bad; it’s one of the things about Yahweh, he knows good and bad, and has chosen the good. For Adam and Eve to have true freedom of will, Adam and Eve have to have the freedom to rebel. This is why this tree is in the garden, next to the tree of life; instead, evil will come about as a result of the clash of the will of Yahweh, and the will of humans who happen to have the freedom to rebel. Human beings, and only human beings are the potential source of evil in the garden of Eden; responsibility for evil, will lie in the hands of human beings. Yet, evil is represented not as a physical reality, it’s not built into the structure of Eden, evil is a condition of human existence, and to assert that evil stems from human behavior. The drama of Adam and Eve’s life should revolve not around the search for eternal life, nor preoccupation with immortality; it was not in Yahweh’s design for this kind of drama. It was Yahweh’s design for the tree of life to have been eaten of, there was no danger to Adam and Eve going on eternally, being immortal. The eating off the tree of knowledge of good and bad, has caused a moral conflict and tension between Yahweh’s good design for creation, and the free will of human beings that can corrupt that good design. Evil is a product of human behavior, not a principal inherent in the cosmos. Man’s disobedience is the cause of the human predicament. Human freedom can be at one and the same time an omen of disaster, and a challenge, and opportunity.
So, despite Adam and Eve’s newfound mortality, humans are going to be a force to be reckoned with. They’re unpredictable to the very Yahweh who created them. Yahweh has to modify his plan, by barring access to the tree of life; that was not something presumably Yahweh planned to do. Adam and Eve had access to this tree up to that point, as long as their will conformed to the will of Yahweh, there was no danger to their going on eternally, being immortal. Once they discovered their moral freedom, once they discovered that they could thwart Yahweh and work evil in the world, and abuse and corrupt all that Yahweh had created, then Yahweh could not afford to allow them access to the tree of life. That would be tantamount to creating divine enemies, immortal enemies. So, Yahweh must maintain the upper hand in his struggle with these humans who have learned to defy him. And Yahweh maintains the upper hand in this, the fact that humans eventually must die. Yahweh stations these cherubim, and a fiery, ever-turning sword to guard the way back to the tree of life, once Adam and Eve were banished from the garden. The tree of life is now inaccessible; no humans have access to immortality, and the pursuit of immortality is futile. So, it might be then that Yahweh really spoke the truth after all, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad, did bring death to humankind.
Yahweh learned immediately after creating this unique being, that he will exercise his free will against Yahweh. Yahweh saw that he had to limit the life span of humans, or risk creating an enemy that was nearly equal to him. So he casts the humans out of the garden of Eden, and blocks access to the tree of life. Yet, humans continue their violent and evil ways, and in desperation, Yahweh wipes them out, and starts again. After the flood, humans prove to be not much better. They forget Yahweh, they turn to idolatry. Yet, the Noahide covenant, which is universal in scope, it encompasses all life on earth. It stresses the sanctity of life, and in this covenant, Yahweh has promised not to destroy all humankind again. So, Yahweh experiments with a single individual of believing; Abraham’s believing withstands many a trial. Yahweh is the owner of the land, Abraham was called to. Yahweh is empowered to set conditions or residency requirements for those who would reside in it, like a landlord. Yahweh is seeking replacement tenants who are going to follow the moral rules of residence that Yahweh has established for his land. Yahweh ‘s promise to Abraham is formalized in a ritual ceremony called a suzerainty covenant. The patriarchical covenant, which is a covenant in which a superior party, a suzerain dictates the terms of a political treaty usually, and an inferior party obeys them. The arrangement primarily serves the interest of the suzerain, and not the vassal or the subject. So, Yahweh has gone from a covenant with all of humanity, to a covenant with a single individual. Yahweh appears as a suzerain. Yahweh is making a land grant to a favored subject, and there’s an ancient ritual that ratifies the oath. In this kind of covenant, the parties to the oath would pass between the split carcass of a sacrificial animal, as if to say, that they agree they will suffer the same fate as this animal, if they violate the covenant. Abraham cuts sacrificial animals in two, and Yahweh, but only Yahweh, passes between the two halves. Only Yahweh seems to be obligated by the covenant, obligated to fulfill the promise that he’s made. Abraham doesn’t appear to have any obligation in return. In this case, it is the subject, Abraham, and not the suzerain, Yahweh, who is benefited by this covenant, and that’s a complete reversal of this ritual ceremony. Their is a moral justification for this grant of land to Abraham, the current inhabitants of the land are polluting it, filling it with bloodshed and idolatry. And when the land becomes so polluted, completely polluted, it will spew out its inhabitants. That process, Yahweh says, isn’t complete; so Abraham’s offspring through Isaac, they are going to have to wait, the lease isn’t up yet.
Abraham is obedient to Yahweh in a way that no one has been up to this point, but ultimately, the model of blind obedience is rejected, too. When Abraham prepares to slaughter his own son, Yahweh sees that blind believing can be as destructive and evil as disobedience, so Yahweh relinquishes his demand for blind obedience. The only relationship that will work with humans is one in which there is a balance between unchecked independence and blind obedience, and Yahweh seems to finally have found the working relationship with humans that he has been seeking since their creation, with a man named Jacob. When Jacob undergoes a change in name, Israel; Israel means, one who wrestles, who struggles with Yahweh. Yahweh and humans lock in an eternal struggle, neither prevailing, yet both forever changed by their encounter with one another. Jacob’s sons; Joseph’s betrayal by his brothers, his decent into Egypt, set the stage, not only for the reformation of his brothers’ characters, but for the descent of all of the Israelites into Egypt, so as to survive widespread famine; threat of famine is overcome by the relocation to Egypt. Yahweh says to Jacob, “I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I myself will also bring you back.” So, in short, there seems to be a plan afoot. Israel’s descent to Egypt sets the stage for the rise of a pharaoh who, didn’t know Joseph, and all that he had done for Egypt. And this new pharaoh will enslave the Israelites, and so embitter their lives, that their cry will rise up to heaven.
Yahweh’s salvation of his people from Egypt, not the Christian sense of personal salvation from sin; that’s anachronistically read back into the Hebrew Bible. It’s not there. Salvation in the Hebrew Bible does not refer to an individual’s deliverance from a sinful nature. This is not a concept that is found in the Hebrew Bible. Salvation refers instead, to the concrete, collective, communal salvation from national suffering and oppression, particularly in the form of foreign rule of enslavement. Yahweh as Israel’s redeemer and savior, is Yahweh’s physical deliverance of the nation from the hands of her foes. But the physical redemption of the Israelites is going to reach its climax in the covenant that will be concluded at Sinai. Yahweh’s redemption of the Israelites, is a redemption for a purpose, for at Sinai, the Israelites will become Yahweh’s people, bound by a covenant. The covenant concluded at Sinai is referred to as the Mosaic covenant. The Mosaic covenant differs radically from the Noahide and the patriarchal covenants, because here Yahweh makes no promises beyond being the patron or protector of Israel; and also, in this covenant, he set terms that require obedience to a variety of laws and commandments. The Mosaic covenant is neither unilateral, it’s a bilateral covenant, involving mutual, reciprocal obligations, nor is it unconditional like the other two. It is conditional; the first bilateral, conditional covenant. If Israel doesn’t fulfill her obligations by obeying Yahweh’s Torah, his instructions, and living in accordance with his will, as expressed in the laws and instructions, then Yahweh will not fulfill his obligation of protection and blessing towards Israel. So the Mosaic covenant, understanding of the relationship between Yahweh and Israel; the history of Israel will be governed by this one outstanding reality of covenant. Israel’s fortunes will be seen to ride on the degree of its faithfulness to this covenant.
In contrast to the land, Yahweh’s sanctuary can be purified for moral impurity by means of a special sacrifice. The blood of the animal, the blood of the sacrifice is the key to the whole ritual. Blood, the blood that courses through one’s veins, represents the life force; the Noahide covenant, you may not spill human blood. And you may not eat animal flesh that has the lifeblood in it, because the blood is the life and that belongs to Yahweh, that’s holy. So the life force is holy and the life force is in the blood; Leviticus 17:11 repeats the blood prohibition, and then it offers a rationale. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have assigned it to you for making expiation for your lives upon the altar.” Yahweh assigned it to them to use in sacrificial practices. It is the blood as life that effects expiation, purging and atonement. The blood of sacrificial animals is assigned by Yahweh as a detergent, if you will, to cleanse the sanctuary of the impurities that are caused by the sinful deeds of the Israelites. Purification of the sanctuary was believed to be critical to the health and the well-being of the community. If the sanctuary is not purged of impurity, it can become polluted to the point when Yahweh is driven out entirely. The purification offering acts on the sanctuary, not on the offerer. It purges the sanctuary of the defilement that is symbolically; it has symbolically suffered from the offerer’s state of ritual impurity or sinfulness. Once the sanctuary is purged, the offerer has settled his debt, he’s repaired the damage he caused. He’s fully atoned, and Yahweh is no longer repelled by the impurity that marred his sanctuary. The defiling effect of lesser transgressions is calibrated to the sinner’s intentionality and the presence or absence of repentance. So inadvertent sins can be purged, the sanctuary defilement that they cause can be purged by bringing a purification sacrifice. Deliberate sins, as long as there is repentance, then they are converted into inadvertent sins, and they also can be purged, or the impurity they cause can be purged with a purification sacrifice. But brazen, unrepentant sins, unrepented sins, or unintentional sins that are never realized, these stand unremedied, and they defile the sanctuary. For this reason, the sanctuary has to be regularly purged of the accumulated defilements accruing to it as a result of such sins. On the day of atonement, a purification sacrifice is brought on behalf of the community to purify the sanctuary of the impurities that have been caused by Israel’s sin. And the high priest loads all of the sins and impurities of the Israelites on the head of a goat, which then carries them off into the wilderness away from the sanctuary.
Every sin pollutes the sanctuary; it may not mark the sinner, but it does mark the sanctuary. It scars the face of the sanctuary. You may think you’ve gotten away with something, but every act of social exploitation, every act of moral corruption, pollutes the sanctuary more and more until such time as Yahweh is driven out entirely, and human society is devoured by its own viciousness and death-dealing. Humans are in control of their destiny, and the action of every individual affects and influences the fate of society. Collective responsibility; sin affects, individual sin affects the entire fabric of society. There’s no such thing as an isolated evil; our deeds affect one another. And when evildoers are finally punished, they bring down others with them, those others aren’t so blameless, because they allowed the wicked to flourish and contribute to the pollution of the sanctuary, the corruption of society. Holy things only exist because of safeguards, rules that keep them separate, that demarcate them. And these safeguards and rules are naturally addressed to human beings. They are the ones charged with the task of preserving the holy in its residence on earth. Although holiness derives from Yahweh, humans have a crucial role to play in sanctification, in sanctifying the world. Take the Sabbath, Yahweh sanctified the Sabbath at creation; he demarcated it as holy. But Israel is the one to affirm its holiness by observing the rules that make it different, that mark it off as holy. So Israel doesn’t just in fact affirm the holy status of the Sabbath, they actualize the holy status of the Sabbath. If Israel doesn’t observe the prohibitions that distinguish the Sabbath as sacred, it’s automatically desecrated. There are two components integral and inseparable in the concept of holiness: Initial assignment of holy status by Yahweh and establishment of rules to preserve that holy status; and secondly, actualization of that holiness by humans through the observance of the commandments and rules that mark that thing off as holy.
The moral and social bankruptcy of Israel at the end of the period of the judges at the dawn, or on the eve, of the monarchy, is Israel’s continued infidelity. A kingdom in which Yahweh is the king and the community is led by inspired judges in times of crisis-that structure, that institutional structure failed to establish stability, a stable continuous government. It failed to provide leadership against Israel’s enemies within and without. In their search for a new political order, the people turn to the prophet Samuel. Samuel warns of the tyranny of kings, the rapaciousness of kings, the service and the sacrifice they will require of the people in order to support their luxurious court life and their large harem, their bureaucracy and their army. The day will come, Samuel warns, when you cry out because of the king whom you yourselves have chosen; and Yahweh will not answer you on that day. The people won’t listen to Samuel, and they say quite significantly, no, we must have a king over us, that we may be like all the other nations, let our king rule over us and go out at out head and fight out battles. This is an explicit and ominous rejection, not only of Yahweh, but of Israel’s distinctiveness from other nations. And what, after all, does it mean to be a holy nation, but to be a nation separated out from, observing different rules from, other nations. The king in Israel was not divine, or even semi-divine; monarchy is at best unnecessary and at worst it’s a rejection of Yahweh. Where the Sinaitic covenant was contracted between Yahweh and the nation, the Davidic covenant is contracted between Yahweh and a single individual, the king.
The Davidic covenant, is an eternal and unconditional covenant between Yahweh and the House of David, or the dynasty of David. Yahweh says that David and his descendants may be punished for sin. They certainly will be punished for sin, but Yahweh will not take the kingdom away from them as he did from Saul. Yahweh’s unconditional and eternal covenants with the patriarchs and with David do not preclude the possibility of punishment or chastisement for sin as specified in the conditional Mosaic covenant. The covenant with David, it’s a covenant of grant, it’s a grant of a reward for loyal service and deeds. Yahweh rewards David with the gift of an unending dynasty, in exchange for his loyalty. Yahweh’s oath to preserve the Davidic dynasty, would lead eventually to a popular belief in the invincibility of the Holy City. The belief in Israel’s ultimate deliverance from enemies, became bound up with David and his dynasty. When the kingdom fell finally to the Babylonians, the promise to David’s House was believed to be eternal. The community looked to the future for a restoration of the Davidic line or Davidic king, or a messiah. The messiah simply means anointed, one who is “meshiach” is anointed with the holy oil. That is a reference to the fact that the king was initiated into office by means of holy oil being poured on his head. So King David was the messiah of Yahweh, the king anointed by or to Yahweh. And in the exile, Israelites would pray for another messiah, meaning another king from the House of David appointed and anointed by Yahweh to rescue them from enemies, and reestablish them as a nation at peace in their land as David had done. The Israelites hope for a messiah; it involved the restoration of the nation in its land under a Davidic king.
Good luck with your logos life, spirit, what a joke; brained washed by the Way, beware!
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Sunesis
Hello Teachme, how are you? :) I did post on another thread regarding the Logos and why it was an important concept for a Greek/Roman person. I stated I believed it was not a coincidence in the time
Sunesis
Very interesting thoughts Teachme. I think Christ was inserted when he was because at that point, most of the "known" Gentile world, including Europe, Asia, because of the thoughts of Plato and other
Sunesis
Thank you Jerry :) I appreciate your kind thoughts. Teachme, you certainly have many thoughts :) I think, if memory serves right, that the OT was translated into Greek because the Jews had been sca
Human without the bean
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teachmevp
I guess the Tanakh is broken up into three parts; the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings? I didn't know this Tanakh thing was
around, I remember hearing of a Torah, i just thought the Torah was the book? One night last year, I was searching for Hebrew
texts on the net, and stubbled across a course from Yale and it was free. Christine Hayes, that woman is mind bidding, the
reasonings coming out of that woman mouth. Through Christine Hayes is how I learned of a Tanakh, I guess Tanakh stands
for the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings; what is that thing called, like Nasa means something, Tanakh means the Torah,
the Prophets, and the Writings? Hope that makes sense?
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Human without the bean
It does Teachme. Thanks! I think I see where you are going?
We (man) keep putting Greek into the text for enlightenment but it is not sufficient because the language in which the scriptures were written were in Hebrew!
John is one of the most beautiful writings in the bible or scriptures. In reading it we can uncover many truths.
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teachmevp
John is a cool read, but to see John in the storyline of the other gospels, is cool too.
Wisdom was in the beginning with Yahweh, that is too cool, These first five chapters
of John are mind bidding, Yeshua goes to that Passover, one year later we read what
they did to Yeshua? The first five verse of John are even more mind bidding, Yahweh's
wisdom is something else, looking back at this in hindsight, Satan should not have killed
Yeshua, Yeshua would have lived for 900 or 1000 or so years, because of that pure
blood, same pure blood Adam had, Genesis 3:16? Logos over looks a lot of these truths
in John, what Yeshua the anointed of Yahweh just went through them 40 days and 40 nights,
then to have go through Satans bullfrogs, look at Yahweh's wisdom in just allowing Yeshua
to go through that, but Yahweh is fair to Satan, didn't Yahweh put the tree of knowledge
of good and evil next to the tree of life? Verse four, Adam's offspring had a shot at that life,
that tree of life produces, but Adam got tricked, and got kicked out of the garden, Satan was
under a lot of pressure, he had to get Adam or Eve to eat of that tree of knowledge of good and
evil, before Adam and Eve had kids, who would have eaten off the tree of life, and they would
have gotten that life, the same life Yeshua got, and the same life we will get? That life is a cool
word study in John?
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teachmevp
I not really hacking on the greek manuscripts, maybe the Romans gave the greeks a
bad name; could they have twisted the greek, to prove their Creed? Maybe their were
seventy or so Woodrow Wilsons gathered, inorder to write that Septuagint? Wisdom is
what should be used, not logos!
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teachmevp
Logos? Are you sure about Alexanders fables?
Alexander the Great, and the beginning of Hellenization; that is, the Grecization of the eastern part of the Ancient Mediterranean. That’s all Hellenization means, making it Greek. Alexander the Great’s father was Philip II, King of Macedonia, King of Macedon, and he conquered different Greek city-states by defeating Athens and its allies at Chaeronea. Alexander himself was born in 356 BC, he was educated by Aristotle, Alexander was made king after the assassination of his father. Alexander defeated the Persian Army, which at that time controlled all of Asia Minor, Modern Turkey, and had even threatened to control Greece. Alexander defeated the Persian Army in Asia Minor at Granicus, that put Alexander and his Macedonian Army in charge of both Greece and Asia Minor. When Darius II died, who was the king of the Persians, Alexander himself took on Darius’s title, which was Great King. After defeating the Persians again, Alexander pushed his army all the way to the Indus River in India, Alexander wanted to go all the way to the Ganges River, but his army forced him to turn back. Alexander died in 323 BC, when he was not yet 33-years-old, and Alexander died in Babylon of a fever. After Alexander’s death, his empire was divided up among four generals of Alexander, although they were Macedonians and spoke Macedonian and not themselves Greek, but they had, just like Alexander, they had adopted Greek language, Greek culture. They educated their children in Greek ways. Alexander, of course, had been educated by Aristotle, when he was young, and so he had adopted Greek language and Greek literature and a lot of other Greek ways. What Alexander had wanted to do was to take all these different peoples, who spoke different languages and had different customs, and use a Greek layer to sort of unite his empire overall.
Now Alexander didn’t really care about the lower class people so much. So they could just still live in their villages and out in the country and do their farming and speak their own local language. But if one were going to be elite= they wanted to establish cities throughout Alexander’s empire that would be actually Greek cities, and he wanted to have the elite people all be able, at least, to speak Greek. We have therefore one world, and in fact this whole dream of Alexander=and it was a very self-conscious, propaganda campaign and a cultural campaign on Alexander’s part. He wanted to make one world. We really have, therefore, for in some way the first time in history, a dream of making all of his empire basically universal, a dream of a universal vision, for one world, under one kind of culture, one kind of language. This really hadn’t been attempted. Other empires, like the Assyrian Empire, or these kinds of=the Egyptian Empire, when people conquered other peoples, often all they wanted was tribute. They just wanted taxes, and food, and money, and that sort of thing. They didn’t really care about turning those people into Egyptians or into Assyrians. And Alexander didn’t really care that much about the lower classes doing that, but he still wanted the elites. And so Alexander would plant Greek cities and settle his veterans in different parts of his empire in Egypt, in Syria, all the way over, and sometimes in the western part of India, and Alexander would take his veterans of his army, and he would drum them out of the army, when they retire, and Alexander would give them land and they’d build a city there, and that city would be just like a Greek city back home. And they all would speak what developed to be a common form of Greek, slightly different from Classical Greek, what is called Koine Greek.
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teachmevp
Yeshua was human and only human; but their are those who suck up to other teachings of man?
Some Christians therefore had to make a decision, is Yeshua human and only human, or is Yeshua human and divine? Yeshua being human and divine, this is the take that most followers of Yeshua end up taking, although there were some followers of Yeshua who existed all the way into the second century who believed Yeshua was purely human. They tended to be Jewish followers of Yeshua, they still wanted to be complete monotheists and have only one Yahweh. So they said, No Yeshua can’t be divine. So some followers of Yeshua chose this route; human and only human.
Others, chose this route; human and divine. Then, though one has to split this up. Was Yeshua always divine or did Yeshua become divine? If Yeshua became divine, Yeshua always was divine. If Yeshua became divine then when did Yeshua become divine? One has different choices again like at his birth, because then you have the songs that all the angels sing, and you take some of those songs at the beginning of Luke, and it sounds like they’re talking about Yeshua’s divine now. Or at his baptism; or at his resurrection. So, Christians again seem to have divided up. Does one take Yeshua as becoming divine at his birth, Yeshua’s baptism, or Yeshua’s resurrection? We’ve seen other Christians say, no Yeshua always was divine, but even then they split up into different choices too, because some of them said Yeshua was divine but also fully human, so Yeshua was both divine but also fleshly; a letter in the new testament insisting that you can’t have Yeshua as divine without also having him as come in the flesh. Apparently some people in the Johannine community were claiming that Yeshua was fully divine, but not fleshly. Then you have, so this became that position, flesh and divine; that is, what came to be a heresy, remember, in the second century there was no organized church that could be able to declare what counted as orthodoxy and heresy. But this idea was Yeshua was not fully flesh, Yeshua was so divine, Yeshua was Yahweh, so that when Yeshua walked along on the wet sand on the beach, Yeshua’s feet didn’t leave footprints, that’s how divine Yeshua was. Yeshua didn’t have any weight about him; Yeshua was not even fully flesh. Notice all of these are choices that followers of Yeshua had to make in the decades following his death. Some of them took the human route, some of them took the human and divine route, some of them believed that Yeshua became divine, and the list goes on?
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teachmevp
What does logos have to do with this covenant?
The Abrahamic covenant is a covenant with a single individual; Yahweh appears as a suzerain. Yahweh’s making a land grant to a favored subject, which is very often how these work. In general, in this kind of covenant, the parties to the oath would pass between the split carcass of a sacrificial animal, as if to say that they agree they will suffer the same fate as this animal, if they violate the covenant. Abraham cuts the sacrificial animals in two, the striking thing about the Abrahamic covenant is it’s unilateral character, only Yahweh seems to be obligated by the covenant, obligated to fulfill the promise that Yahweh made. Abraham doesn’t appear to have any obligation to return; and so in this case, it is the subject, Abraham, and not the suzerain, Yahweh, who is benefited by this covenant Their is a moral justification for this grant of land to Israel; Yahweh is the owner of the land, and so Yahweh is empowered to set conditions or residency requirements for those who would reside in it, like a landlord. The current inhabitants of the land are polluting it, filling it with bloodshed and idolatry; and when the land becomes so polluted, completely polluted, it will spew out it’s inhabitants. That process, Yahweh says, Isn’t complete; so Israel is going to have to wait. The lease Isn’t up yet, Yahweh is seeking replacement tenants who are going to follow the oral rules of residence that Yahweh has established for his land; it’s clear that Yahweh’s covenant with Israel is not due to any special merit of the Israelites or favoritism. Yahweh adds to the promises, that a line of kings will come forth from Abraham, and then, that Abraham and his male descendants be circumcised as a perpetual sign of the covenant. So here there is some obligation for Abraham; so circumcision is here infused with a new meaning: it becomes a sign of Yahweh’s eternal covenant with Abraham and his seed through Isaac.
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teachmevp
More history on that logos junk? How much Hellenization are you into?
Alexander the Great, remember, wanted to set up a one world, a universal empire. He taught a sort of syncretism of religion, he taught a common language, Greek, he set up these Greek cities all around; that process is what is called Hellenization, so the Hellenization of the world in that time, the Hellenistic Period. The reason Hellenism is so important, is because what happened to Alexander's empire after he died. After much confusion and fighting among his major generals, after Alexander’s death, Alexander’s kingdom ended up being divided up into four major empires. One of Alexander’s generals Ptolemy II got the Kingdom of Egypt, and set up his own sort of Greco=Egyptian kingdom there. This Greek veneer when on, then came Antiochus IV reign from 175 to 165 BC; while Judah, though, was under Antiochus control a lot of Israelites tried to figure out, how do you deal with this whole process of Hellenization? In other words, if you want your own kids to get ahead in the world, in this time, and you’re going to have an elite family yourself in a town, in a city, it makes sense for your kids to get a Greek education. You want your sons, for example, to be able to speak, and read, and write Greek. In fact, there was conflict in Jerusalem at this time over how much Hellenization you should go alone with. Apparently, a majority of the priests and the lay nobility supported the Hellenizing group, that is the Israelites leaders who wanted to bring more Hellenization into Jerusalem itself. This high priest at this time named Jason, in 175 BC, he built a gymnasium in Jerusalem. Why did he build a gymnasium in Jerusalem? Well, if you’re going to have Greek education, you have to have a gymnasium. This Jason also founded a Greek polis, that is an Greek city structure, and Jason apparently paid Antiochus for the privilege of having Jerusalem recognized as a Greek city. This would have consolidated the power of those Israelite leaders who wanted to press Greek culture more, rather than those Israelite leaders who wanted to hold back on Greek culture. If you control the gymnasium, and you control the means of education, you actually control the citizenry, because you can’t become a citizen of a Greek polis, a Greek city, unless you yourself have Greek education, so sons would=sons of people would go to the gymnasium. Notice what this would do also, it would disenfranchise those leading families, who didn’t want to have their sons Hellenized. By holding the control of the eduction, you disenfranchise conservative Israelites, who are resisting this Greek influence.
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teachmevp
Against all odds, got to wake people up to this logos cult?
Against all odds, a rag tag bunch of basically guerilla fighters, up against a far superior army of Antiochus IV, they beat them, they retook Jerusalem, they didn’t actually beat them in Syria, they just beat them in several battle in Judah, and Judas “Judah the hammer” was able to recapture Jerusalem and the temple. In the year 164BC, they cleansed the temple of the profanation, the pollution of having pigs and things like that sacrificed, it being polluted as a Greek temple, and so 164BC is the beginning of the celebration of the Israelites holiday Hanukkah. So 164BC in the cleansing of the temple is what Israelites celebrate with Hanukah. The Israelite leaders who wanted to bring more Hellenization into the Jerusalem itself, and in 175BC, a high priest named Jason built that gymnasium in Jerusalem. So this whole process of Hellenization, therefore, sometimes we’ll get the idea that the Israelites were all good loyal Israelites just trying to keep the law, trying to keep Torah, and that Antiochus IV is putting all this on them and forcing Greek religion and Greek culture on them.
That’s not really the way it happened, the Israelites started debating how much do we accommodate the dominant culture, how Greek should we be. The high priesthood was the main ruler of the Israelites at this time; they didn’t have a king, and they didn’t have a direct governor, so whoever controlled the high priesthood was sort of the political ruler also at this time. Antiochus was the one who had the privilege of appointing the high priest, Menelaus, another leading Israelite, seems to have offered Antiochus more money for the priesthood trying to get it away from Jason, and he couldn’t afford it. In order to pay for his own priesthood, he took gold vessels and instruments out of the temple treasury, and this seems to have caused a riot. We have two guys fighting for the high priesthood in Jerusalem, both with Greek names, not traditional Hebrew names, and both of them apparently trying to get in with this Hellenizing process. They get into a big fight. To settle things down in Jerusalem, Antiochus takes control of Jerusalem and he stationed Syrian troops, that is the Greco-Syrian troops, in Jerusalem in 167BC. Now things are heating up, around this time changes were made to the temple in Jerusalem. It may have been basically to accommodate the soldiers. They may have had to house soldiers from the Greco-Syrian Empire, and they may have used the temple mount apparently to house some of them. This caused changes to the temple. At this time Menelaus is in charge, and his Hellenizing party, which we could call the radical reformers, this is the beginning of the anti-Israelite laws. About this time several laws were passed that forbade circumcision, forbidden from observing the Torah; there was a pig sacrificed on the altar in Jerusalem in the Holy of Holies, and renaming it as a shrine to Zeus Olympus. If you’re one of these liberal Israelites, you may not really believe you’re doing anything bad. You’re not forsaking Yahweh, you're just updating Yahweh, you’re just bringing Yahweh up to the modern era. “Well what’s wrong with calling it Zeus Olympus; we all know these are just different names given to the same god anyway, there’s just one supreme god.”
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teachmevp
Maybe we can have a Hanukkah like thing at the GreaseSpot, get rid of that logos greek teaching?
Basic structures are part of any kind of Greek city in the Ancient World. And what Alexander and his successors did was they took that basic Greek structure, and they transplanted it all over the Eastern Mediterranean, whether they were in Egypt or Syria or Asia Minor or anyplace else. One can travel right now to Turkey or Syria or Israel or Jordan or Egypt, and one can see excavations of towns, and it’s remarkable how they all look so much alike, because they’re all inspired by this originally Greek model of the city. Alexander and his successors Hellenized the entire eastern Mediterranean, and that meant, every major city would have a certain commonality to it. It would have a certain koine to it; that is, a Greek overlay, over what may be also be there, the original indigenous kind of cultures and languages. Just what was this high priest named Jason thinking, when he built a gymnasium in Jerusalem in 175BC; he also founded a Greek City structure.
The Greek polis, which is simply the Greek word for city, had several institutions that are very important; They all practiced a certain kind of Greek education. The Greek word paideia, means education, but it also means more than simply role learning or memorization or learning to read, like we think. Paideia is the Greek word that means the formation of the young man. Throughout all this it was mainly young men and boys who were educated, girls could be given some education, if their families were wealthy enough, but the cities didn’t really concern themselves so much with girls’ education. Their family might, but the cities concerned themselves with the education of their boys. So paideia referred to the education of the young man, both mentally, but militarily=so one was taught to fight=and culturally; one might be taught other things about culture. One might even have some music training or something like that. The place where this education took place was the gymnasium. Now a gymnasium doesn’t mean what it means in English, it actually comes from the Greek word for naked, gymnos. And the reason it was called ‘the naked place’ is because, of course, young Greek men always exercised in the nude and played sports in the nude. But this also became the place where one would do other kinds of learning. So if one was learning rhetoric, for example, you might practice giving speeches at the gymnasium. But also men in town would just kind of gather there, it was kind of a place where men gathered and they had gone to school at the same place. One would meet your friends, play games; so this would all take place in the gymnasium.
Another institution was what they called the ephebeia. When one was a young boy, one would have studied just reading and writing Homer. When one got to be 16 or 22 around their, one might enter the ephebeia; one would become an ephebe, and that just meant that one was past their sort of early secondary training and now one was being really in training to be a warrior and a citizen. They would march together in a parade in town. They would go on military training perhaps together. They would also engage in sports together, and they would develop a camaraderie because they were expected then to be the fighting force for their city, their city-state. So the ephebeia was this institution that every boy had to go through in order then to be a full citizen of a city.
Their also was these political structures, the first political structure is the demos. Demos just means the “people,” It’s just a Greek word for “the people.” But it actually referred more politically to all of the male citizens, and in Greek cities, by tradition, only men were citizens of a city. But all the men who were citizens had a vote, and the demos referred to that political body of voting men. Now they kept this idea that the demos=that is, the adult citizen males of a city=were a political body. And that’s when, if you had everybody come to the theater for a big debate about something, you could still have people voting in certain things that the city might decide to do, although they couldn’t rule themselves completely by themselves. Then they had a smaller council that might be 50 people. It varied the size, according to the city. The council was called the boule, and that referred to a smaller council of older men, usually, who made decisions that they then would put before the whole the demos the whole voting population. These are the basic structures that are part of a Greek City, and Jason just brought Alexander’s dream to Jerusalem.
Their was a group of former high priests, who have been dislocated and other priestly families withdrawing from Jerusalem, and apparently going out in the desert, and maybe building a community out there, and we find out about them in the twentieth century when the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in the late 1940’s. So that may have been another way to respond to this increasing Hellenization in Jerusalem, to just pull away and from a different community.
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Ham
let me offer a scary alternative. No, the "old nature" is just a what is the word..
its just an illusion.
how does light shine, within the darkness..
light does what it is..
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teachmevp
Good stuff their Ham,
I been learning that moral choices and actions of humans have consequences,
so action that was taken in opposition to Yahweh, one bears the fruit of their actions.
So the struggle is between producing good fruit or bad fruit?
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teachmevp
Alexander's goals, are they yours?
Alexander also used what is called ‘religious syncretism,’ Alexander took this tendency of syncretism, of mixing together different religious traditions from different places, and he used it as a self-conscious propaganda technique. Alexander even started claiming divine status for himself. Alexander went around passing out rumors that his mother had actually been impregnated by the god Apollo, when he appeared as a snake in her bed. So, Alexander is putting himself forward as divine. Why? This is not a Greek tradition, but it’s very much a tradition in the East for kings to be considered by their people to be gods. Alexander says, “Well, if they can be gods, I can be a god.” So Alexander starts spreading rumors that he is divine himself. Alexander probably even believed it; and so he had a god father, he had a human mother, and so then he would identify himself with whoever was a god in the different places. So Alexander would identify himself as a Greek god with a Persian god. Alexander would identify the goddess Isis with some Greek goddess; and so all the time these different gods from different places were basically all said to be simply different cultural representations, different names, for what were generally the same gods all over the place. Also, though, what they would do is sometimes they wouldn’t try to simply say these gods are the same. What they would just do is add on more gods. They’d get to Syria, “Look at all these god that the Syrians worship. Well, we’ll just add those into our pantheon of gods too.” And this is part of what ancient religion was like, is that people were not exclusive. You didn’t have to worry. Just because you worshiped one god, doesn’t mean you couldn’t worship another god or several gods or five gods or a hundred gods. Gods knew who everybody was-they weren’t particularly jealous, in that sense. So this is the way people did it. But what Alexander and his successors did, was they made sort of a conscious, propagandistic decision to use religious syncretism to bind together their kingdoms.
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teachmevp
Romans just keep that Greek system going on.
The Romans, when they came on the scene, in the East, and they gradually became more and more powerful, they destroyed Corinth in a big battle in 144BC. Pompey was the Roman general who took over Jerusalem in 63BC. So the Romans were in charge of Judah from 63BC on. And this is very important, because the Romans, as their power grew in the East, they simply moved increasingly into the eastern Mediterranean and they adopted the whole Greek system, the Greek world, and they didn’t even try to make it non-Greek. So Romans didn’t go around trying to get people in the East to speak Latin. They might put up an official inscription in an Eastern City in Latin, but they’d almost always, if it was an official inscription, it would also be listed in Greek, So Romans who ruled in the East were expected to speak Greek. And by this time all educated Roman men were expected to be able to speak Greek, well if possible. So the Romans didn’t try to make the East Roman, in that sense, culturally, nor did they try to change the language. Greek language, culture, and religions, different religions and the syncretism, Greek education, the polis structure=all of these things remained in the East throughout the Roman rule of the East, all the way up until the time you had a Christian emperor with Constantine, and later.
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teachmevp
Romans just keep that Greek system going on, with a Roman legal twist.
Now there’s one thing that the Romans made even more of, than the Greeks had made of, and this the patron-client structure. This is a bit more of a distinctly Roman institution, even a legal institution; but it’s important for understanding both the Roman Empire, as well as early Christianity and its patron-client relations. The household structure of a Roman household was this=the Roman household was constructed like a pyramid, not a triangle. At the top of it is the head of the household, the man, ‘the oldest man of the household.’ Under him is his sons, his daughters, and then at the bottom are his slaves, and here are his freedmen, freed persons. And then also we consider, in some ways, free people who may exist as clients. But legally the word client refers to the freed slaves of the man of the household.
Now where’s the wife in this picture, why isn’t the wife and mother in there? Because legally she’s actually not part of this man’s household. She remains part of the household of her father, and she’s legally under the control of her father probably, or her brothers, if her father is dead; or her grandfather, if her grandfather is still alive. But since life expectancy in the Ancient World was much less than ours, they didn’t have usually several generations in these households. The wife though is legally a part of her own household over here. Why did the Romans do that? That’s very different from the Greeks, very different from other people in the Ancient Mediterranean. Why did they want to make sure that the daughters stayed in the households of their fathers? They did this because they didn’t want the upper-class in Rome, who were the elite, they didn’t want anyone household, or any small group of households, to become too powerful. And if you have women marrying off into other families, and then they leave the household of their fathers, and they are officially and legally in a household with somebody else, that may end up increasing those households that have intermarriage coming in and not so much intermarriage going out. By keeping women under the household of the men of their original family, the upper-class Romans tried to balance these different households in size and importance. They didn’t care about the lower-class really. The lower-class didn’t really count much. What they cared about-because the Roman republic by this time was basically a bunch of every important households, wealthy men and their households, and they were the members of the Senate, they were the knight class, they were the people who ran Rome. So they didn’t want one king to arise, and they didn’t want a small coterie of leaders to arise. They wanted there to be some kind of balance of power among the several major households of Rome, the families of Rome.
Now slaves, when a slave is freed in the Roman Empire, they didn’t become a free man, they became a freed man, and that was legally different. So the status of salve was lowest, freed persons was next highest in Roman Law; and free people were next; but even though they became freed, they were still considered a member of this guy’s household, as his client and his freedman, and they owed certain duties to him. Only in the Roman Empire could slavery actually start being a way that you can move up in society, because you could=if you were a talented slave, your owner might free you. When he freed you, if he was a Roman citizen, you would automatically become a Roman citizen also, and your children would be Roman citizens. And although you were a freedman, which was lower in status than a free person=there were some privileges you couldn’t have=your children would be, if they were born after you’ve been freed, would be free people, not freed. So within a couple of generations, people could move up from being the lowest slaves to two generations of being free Roman citizens. So Roman slavery and the freedom of that was actually one way that a few people in the Ancient World recognized some kind of social mobility, which was very rare in the Roman Empire. This will be very important, because Christians started out as house churches, and their house churches fit sometimes the model of a Greek ekkiesia, ‘the voting body of the Greek citizens, an assembly,’ but sometimes the model of the Roman household; and so this household structure becomes very important.
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teachmevp
It is interestring, about 300 B.C., a man named Zeno, his philosophy was named Stoicism, after the place where he taught it. His teaching and that of his successors was, like Socrates, more concerned with human conduct than with the nature of the universe. He and his successors taught that only matter exists. There is no pure spirit: mind and body are both material. Even god is material; the universe is his body, and he is its soul. Stoicism, therefore, is a sort of pantheism, the teaching that all is god. Man is related to him as a drop of water is related to the ocean, as a spark is related to the fire out of which is shoots. God as the world-soul governs all things, loves men, and desires what is good for them. Since man is related to god, he should follow where the divine reason, called ‘the logos,’ leads. True wisdom and virtue consist in discovering where god’s path for men lies. The truly human person does not resist god’s leading; he surrenders himself to it however painful this may be, for god loves him. Virtue is one and is undivided. The four greatest qualities of character are wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. If one lacks just one of these qualities, he lacks them all; if he truly has one, he truly has all. To be free and happy means to know oneself, to know god’s will for oneself, and to live according to the knowledge. Stoicism was religion as well as philosophy.
That logos, wow!
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teachmevp
Now their is no way one can fit logos into this; watch out for the logos of the Way?
Having that good and bad knowledge is no guarantee that one will choose or incline towards the good. That’s what the serpent omitted in his speech, before Eve ate off the tree of knowledge of good and bad. The serpent said, You’ll become like Yahweh. It’s true in one sense, but false in another, the serpent sort of omitted to point out, that its the power of moral choice alone, that is Yahweh like. The very action that brought Adam and Eve a Yahweh like awareness of their mortal autonomy, was an action that was taken in opposition to Yahweh. Yahweh knows that, that human beings will become like Yahweh, knowing good and bad; it’s one of the things about Yahweh, he knows good and bad, and has chosen the good. For Adam and Eve to have true freedom of will, Adam and Eve have to have the freedom to rebel. This is why this tree is in the garden, next to the tree of life; instead, evil will come about as a result of the clash of the will of Yahweh, and the will of humans who happen to have the freedom to rebel. Human beings, and only human beings are the potential source of evil in the garden of Eden; responsibility for evil, will lie in the hands of human beings. Yet, evil is represented not as a physical reality, it’s not built into the structure of Eden, evil is a condition of human existence, and to assert that evil stems from human behavior. The drama of Adam and Eve’s life should revolve not around the search for eternal life, nor preoccupation with immortality; it was not in Yahweh’s design for this kind of drama. It was Yahweh’s design for the tree of life to have been eaten of, there was no danger to Adam and Eve going on eternally, being immortal. The eating off the tree of knowledge of good and bad, has caused a moral conflict and tension between Yahweh’s good design for creation, and the free will of human beings that can corrupt that good design. Evil is a product of human behavior, not a principal inherent in the cosmos. Man’s disobedience is the cause of the human predicament. Human freedom can be at one and the same time an omen of disaster, and a challenge, and opportunity.
So, despite Adam and Eve’s newfound mortality, humans are going to be a force to be reckoned with. They’re unpredictable to the very Yahweh who created them. Yahweh has to modify his plan, by barring access to the tree of life; that was not something presumably Yahweh planned to do. Adam and Eve had access to this tree up to that point, as long as their will conformed to the will of Yahweh, there was no danger to their going on eternally, being immortal. Once they discovered their moral freedom, once they discovered that they could thwart Yahweh and work evil in the world, and abuse and corrupt all that Yahweh had created, then Yahweh could not afford to allow them access to the tree of life. That would be tantamount to creating divine enemies, immortal enemies. So, Yahweh must maintain the upper hand in his struggle with these humans who have learned to defy him. And Yahweh maintains the upper hand in this, the fact that humans eventually must die. Yahweh stations these cherubim, and a fiery, ever-turning sword to guard the way back to the tree of life, once Adam and Eve were banished from the garden. The tree of life is now inaccessible; no humans have access to immortality, and the pursuit of immortality is futile. So, it might be then that Yahweh really spoke the truth after all, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad, did bring death to humankind.
Yahweh learned immediately after creating this unique being, that he will exercise his free will against Yahweh. Yahweh saw that he had to limit the life span of humans, or risk creating an enemy that was nearly equal to him. So he casts the humans out of the garden of Eden, and blocks access to the tree of life. Yet, humans continue their violent and evil ways, and in desperation, Yahweh wipes them out, and starts again. After the flood, humans prove to be not much better. They forget Yahweh, they turn to idolatry. Yet, the Noahide covenant, which is universal in scope, it encompasses all life on earth. It stresses the sanctity of life, and in this covenant, Yahweh has promised not to destroy all humankind again. So, Yahweh experiments with a single individual of believing; Abraham’s believing withstands many a trial. Yahweh is the owner of the land, Abraham was called to. Yahweh is empowered to set conditions or residency requirements for those who would reside in it, like a landlord. Yahweh is seeking replacement tenants who are going to follow the moral rules of residence that Yahweh has established for his land. Yahweh ‘s promise to Abraham is formalized in a ritual ceremony called a suzerainty covenant. The patriarchical covenant, which is a covenant in which a superior party, a suzerain dictates the terms of a political treaty usually, and an inferior party obeys them. The arrangement primarily serves the interest of the suzerain, and not the vassal or the subject. So, Yahweh has gone from a covenant with all of humanity, to a covenant with a single individual. Yahweh appears as a suzerain. Yahweh is making a land grant to a favored subject, and there’s an ancient ritual that ratifies the oath. In this kind of covenant, the parties to the oath would pass between the split carcass of a sacrificial animal, as if to say, that they agree they will suffer the same fate as this animal, if they violate the covenant. Abraham cuts sacrificial animals in two, and Yahweh, but only Yahweh, passes between the two halves. Only Yahweh seems to be obligated by the covenant, obligated to fulfill the promise that he’s made. Abraham doesn’t appear to have any obligation in return. In this case, it is the subject, Abraham, and not the suzerain, Yahweh, who is benefited by this covenant, and that’s a complete reversal of this ritual ceremony. Their is a moral justification for this grant of land to Abraham, the current inhabitants of the land are polluting it, filling it with bloodshed and idolatry. And when the land becomes so polluted, completely polluted, it will spew out its inhabitants. That process, Yahweh says, isn’t complete; so Abraham’s offspring through Isaac, they are going to have to wait, the lease isn’t up yet.
Abraham is obedient to Yahweh in a way that no one has been up to this point, but ultimately, the model of blind obedience is rejected, too. When Abraham prepares to slaughter his own son, Yahweh sees that blind believing can be as destructive and evil as disobedience, so Yahweh relinquishes his demand for blind obedience. The only relationship that will work with humans is one in which there is a balance between unchecked independence and blind obedience, and Yahweh seems to finally have found the working relationship with humans that he has been seeking since their creation, with a man named Jacob. When Jacob undergoes a change in name, Israel; Israel means, one who wrestles, who struggles with Yahweh. Yahweh and humans lock in an eternal struggle, neither prevailing, yet both forever changed by their encounter with one another. Jacob’s sons; Joseph’s betrayal by his brothers, his decent into Egypt, set the stage, not only for the reformation of his brothers’ characters, but for the descent of all of the Israelites into Egypt, so as to survive widespread famine; threat of famine is overcome by the relocation to Egypt. Yahweh says to Jacob, “I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I myself will also bring you back.” So, in short, there seems to be a plan afoot. Israel’s descent to Egypt sets the stage for the rise of a pharaoh who, didn’t know Joseph, and all that he had done for Egypt. And this new pharaoh will enslave the Israelites, and so embitter their lives, that their cry will rise up to heaven.
Yahweh’s salvation of his people from Egypt, not the Christian sense of personal salvation from sin; that’s anachronistically read back into the Hebrew Bible. It’s not there. Salvation in the Hebrew Bible does not refer to an individual’s deliverance from a sinful nature. This is not a concept that is found in the Hebrew Bible. Salvation refers instead, to the concrete, collective, communal salvation from national suffering and oppression, particularly in the form of foreign rule of enslavement. Yahweh as Israel’s redeemer and savior, is Yahweh’s physical deliverance of the nation from the hands of her foes. But the physical redemption of the Israelites is going to reach its climax in the covenant that will be concluded at Sinai. Yahweh’s redemption of the Israelites, is a redemption for a purpose, for at Sinai, the Israelites will become Yahweh’s people, bound by a covenant. The covenant concluded at Sinai is referred to as the Mosaic covenant. The Mosaic covenant differs radically from the Noahide and the patriarchal covenants, because here Yahweh makes no promises beyond being the patron or protector of Israel; and also, in this covenant, he set terms that require obedience to a variety of laws and commandments. The Mosaic covenant is neither unilateral, it’s a bilateral covenant, involving mutual, reciprocal obligations, nor is it unconditional like the other two. It is conditional; the first bilateral, conditional covenant. If Israel doesn’t fulfill her obligations by obeying Yahweh’s Torah, his instructions, and living in accordance with his will, as expressed in the laws and instructions, then Yahweh will not fulfill his obligation of protection and blessing towards Israel. So the Mosaic covenant, understanding of the relationship between Yahweh and Israel; the history of Israel will be governed by this one outstanding reality of covenant. Israel’s fortunes will be seen to ride on the degree of its faithfulness to this covenant.
In contrast to the land, Yahweh’s sanctuary can be purified for moral impurity by means of a special sacrifice. The blood of the animal, the blood of the sacrifice is the key to the whole ritual. Blood, the blood that courses through one’s veins, represents the life force; the Noahide covenant, you may not spill human blood. And you may not eat animal flesh that has the lifeblood in it, because the blood is the life and that belongs to Yahweh, that’s holy. So the life force is holy and the life force is in the blood; Leviticus 17:11 repeats the blood prohibition, and then it offers a rationale. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have assigned it to you for making expiation for your lives upon the altar.” Yahweh assigned it to them to use in sacrificial practices. It is the blood as life that effects expiation, purging and atonement. The blood of sacrificial animals is assigned by Yahweh as a detergent, if you will, to cleanse the sanctuary of the impurities that are caused by the sinful deeds of the Israelites. Purification of the sanctuary was believed to be critical to the health and the well-being of the community. If the sanctuary is not purged of impurity, it can become polluted to the point when Yahweh is driven out entirely. The purification offering acts on the sanctuary, not on the offerer. It purges the sanctuary of the defilement that is symbolically; it has symbolically suffered from the offerer’s state of ritual impurity or sinfulness. Once the sanctuary is purged, the offerer has settled his debt, he’s repaired the damage he caused. He’s fully atoned, and Yahweh is no longer repelled by the impurity that marred his sanctuary. The defiling effect of lesser transgressions is calibrated to the sinner’s intentionality and the presence or absence of repentance. So inadvertent sins can be purged, the sanctuary defilement that they cause can be purged by bringing a purification sacrifice. Deliberate sins, as long as there is repentance, then they are converted into inadvertent sins, and they also can be purged, or the impurity they cause can be purged with a purification sacrifice. But brazen, unrepentant sins, unrepented sins, or unintentional sins that are never realized, these stand unremedied, and they defile the sanctuary. For this reason, the sanctuary has to be regularly purged of the accumulated defilements accruing to it as a result of such sins. On the day of atonement, a purification sacrifice is brought on behalf of the community to purify the sanctuary of the impurities that have been caused by Israel’s sin. And the high priest loads all of the sins and impurities of the Israelites on the head of a goat, which then carries them off into the wilderness away from the sanctuary.
Every sin pollutes the sanctuary; it may not mark the sinner, but it does mark the sanctuary. It scars the face of the sanctuary. You may think you’ve gotten away with something, but every act of social exploitation, every act of moral corruption, pollutes the sanctuary more and more until such time as Yahweh is driven out entirely, and human society is devoured by its own viciousness and death-dealing. Humans are in control of their destiny, and the action of every individual affects and influences the fate of society. Collective responsibility; sin affects, individual sin affects the entire fabric of society. There’s no such thing as an isolated evil; our deeds affect one another. And when evildoers are finally punished, they bring down others with them, those others aren’t so blameless, because they allowed the wicked to flourish and contribute to the pollution of the sanctuary, the corruption of society. Holy things only exist because of safeguards, rules that keep them separate, that demarcate them. And these safeguards and rules are naturally addressed to human beings. They are the ones charged with the task of preserving the holy in its residence on earth. Although holiness derives from Yahweh, humans have a crucial role to play in sanctification, in sanctifying the world. Take the Sabbath, Yahweh sanctified the Sabbath at creation; he demarcated it as holy. But Israel is the one to affirm its holiness by observing the rules that make it different, that mark it off as holy. So Israel doesn’t just in fact affirm the holy status of the Sabbath, they actualize the holy status of the Sabbath. If Israel doesn’t observe the prohibitions that distinguish the Sabbath as sacred, it’s automatically desecrated. There are two components integral and inseparable in the concept of holiness: Initial assignment of holy status by Yahweh and establishment of rules to preserve that holy status; and secondly, actualization of that holiness by humans through the observance of the commandments and rules that mark that thing off as holy.
The moral and social bankruptcy of Israel at the end of the period of the judges at the dawn, or on the eve, of the monarchy, is Israel’s continued infidelity. A kingdom in which Yahweh is the king and the community is led by inspired judges in times of crisis-that structure, that institutional structure failed to establish stability, a stable continuous government. It failed to provide leadership against Israel’s enemies within and without. In their search for a new political order, the people turn to the prophet Samuel. Samuel warns of the tyranny of kings, the rapaciousness of kings, the service and the sacrifice they will require of the people in order to support their luxurious court life and their large harem, their bureaucracy and their army. The day will come, Samuel warns, when you cry out because of the king whom you yourselves have chosen; and Yahweh will not answer you on that day. The people won’t listen to Samuel, and they say quite significantly, no, we must have a king over us, that we may be like all the other nations, let our king rule over us and go out at out head and fight out battles. This is an explicit and ominous rejection, not only of Yahweh, but of Israel’s distinctiveness from other nations. And what, after all, does it mean to be a holy nation, but to be a nation separated out from, observing different rules from, other nations. The king in Israel was not divine, or even semi-divine; monarchy is at best unnecessary and at worst it’s a rejection of Yahweh. Where the Sinaitic covenant was contracted between Yahweh and the nation, the Davidic covenant is contracted between Yahweh and a single individual, the king.
The Davidic covenant, is an eternal and unconditional covenant between Yahweh and the House of David, or the dynasty of David. Yahweh says that David and his descendants may be punished for sin. They certainly will be punished for sin, but Yahweh will not take the kingdom away from them as he did from Saul. Yahweh’s unconditional and eternal covenants with the patriarchs and with David do not preclude the possibility of punishment or chastisement for sin as specified in the conditional Mosaic covenant. The covenant with David, it’s a covenant of grant, it’s a grant of a reward for loyal service and deeds. Yahweh rewards David with the gift of an unending dynasty, in exchange for his loyalty. Yahweh’s oath to preserve the Davidic dynasty, would lead eventually to a popular belief in the invincibility of the Holy City. The belief in Israel’s ultimate deliverance from enemies, became bound up with David and his dynasty. When the kingdom fell finally to the Babylonians, the promise to David’s House was believed to be eternal. The community looked to the future for a restoration of the Davidic line or Davidic king, or a messiah. The messiah simply means anointed, one who is “meshiach” is anointed with the holy oil. That is a reference to the fact that the king was initiated into office by means of holy oil being poured on his head. So King David was the messiah of Yahweh, the king anointed by or to Yahweh. And in the exile, Israelites would pray for another messiah, meaning another king from the House of David appointed and anointed by Yahweh to rescue them from enemies, and reestablish them as a nation at peace in their land as David had done. The Israelites hope for a messiah; it involved the restoration of the nation in its land under a Davidic king.
Good luck with your logos life, spirit, what a joke; brained washed by the Way, beware!
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