Differences Between the Jewish Bible & Christian OT? (paradise, Jehovah's Witness, mythology)

[theflipflop]

I've been reading a fascinating book called "the Mythmaker - Paul and the invention of Chrstianity." The author, Maccoby, "proves" using historical and biblical sources that:

1. Paul was not a Pharisee. He was born a gentile and died one, too.
2. Jesus was a Pharisee, but was a regular garden variety failed messiah. He was entirety unfamiliar with all the Pauline Hellinistic/pagan/gnostic ideas attributed to him, and would have refuted those ideas had he ever heard them.
3. James and Peter were Nazarrenes and all their beliefs were indistinguishable from normative Pharasee teachings. They believed Jesus was messiah, but were completely opposed to the outlandish ideas of PAul. And they rejected Paul and his teachings in Paul's lifetime.
4. Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of chrstianity as a new religion. Only Paul and his followers abrogated the Torah - not James and Peter and the Jerusalem church.
5. The entire Saint Stephen story is a hoax.
6. The Ebionites writings were suppressed by the church but clearly show the points above, as well as the fact that Paul began his career as a spurned Jewish convert who joined the ranks of the Sadducees, which was a non normative strain of Judaism that thankfully died out, as a henchman responsible for kidnapping Nazarrenes for the roman government.

A friend of mine going thru. A sincere Jewish conversion process in my shul says in his former Chrstian life, his church leaders banned the reading of this book due to its problematic nature with Chrstian belief.

[JerZ]

Theflipflop, thank you for the recommendation. I have just ordered this book, am fascinated.

[Heavenese]

Originally Posted by whoppers

Please pardon the long reply!


Good - there's definately a difference between Patriarchal Religion and Mosaic Yahwism, the latter being much more codified and specific in its requirements. It was this strict codification that Paul was reacting against and later Christians would reject - to the point that Biblical Scholarship for a long time was missing Jewish scholars due to the extreme anti-Semitism that sprouted from it and Christian teachings about the "New" getting rid of the "Old". The Torah was certainly difficult to follow and it required constant updating to keep it relevant and understandable. This is where the "Oral Torah" came from (though Orthodox Jews still believe that the Oral Torah was given directly to Moses on Sinai) - when the times changed and different circumstances made the observance of Torah difficult or confusing, the Rabbis would weigh in on a law and interpret it, followed by Rabbis after them. It is very interesting to read the Talmud and its legal decisions concerning Torah. Why they did this is because the Torah is not always specific in certain matters and omits many important matters altogether. So the Oral Torah arose as a way of dealing with this.

Paul was a Pharisee raised in the Jewish Tradition and was steeped in both Judaism and the then-prevailing Hellenistic way of thinking of Judaism. He was very similar to Philo of Alexandria in how he saw certain things. Philo was intent on proving that Judaism was just as valid as Greek Philosophy, so he very much adopted Plato's teachings on Allegory and the existence of an unseen world that this present world only imitates. Though after the time of Paul, the following two divergent views can be highlighted as to Abraham's observance of Torah. The 3rd Century AD Rav wrote that "Abraham carried out the whole Torah", while Shimi bar Hiyya later responded by writing "I can say [that Genesis 26:5b refers only to] the seven commandments". These "seven commandments" would be the pre-Abrahamic Noahide Laws, which were supposed to have been observed by both Jews and Gentiles. Many Jews today claim that Gentiles need only follow these laws, and not the Torah. These "seven" laws are traditionally derived from Genesis 9 and are mentioned by Paul as being a requirement, even if the full Torah is not. This was in response to the controversy in which Jesus' claim that Torah must be observed was preached by most of the Disciples until Paul came along - not an original disciple - and decided it would probably be good for business if Gentiles were admitted and did not have to follow Torah. Not many people would have converted if they had suddenly found themselves bound by Torah!

Paul would have been familiar, however, with these following traditions concerning Torah observance and Abraham. Bear in mind that the Canon of the Hebrew Bible that makes up the Tanakh today was not yet fully agreed upon (see my chart earlier in this thread), and that there were other books used by Jews and Christians. One of these - the Book of Jubilees - was a very thorough work that examined Genesis (and others) and tried to figure out various problems. In Jubilees 21, the question of how Abraham observed Torah before Moses is both detailed and given an explanation:

In the sixth year of the seventh week of this Jubilee [2057] Abraham summoned his son Isaac and gave him orders as follows:
'I have grown old but do not know when I will die because I have reached the full number of my days. Now I am 175 years of age. Throughout my entire lifetime I have continually remembered the Lord and tried to do his will wholeheartedly and to walk a straight course in all his ways...

With him there is no favoritism nor does he accept bribes because he is a just God and one who exercises judgement against all who transgress his commands and despise his covenant. Now you, my son, keep his commands, ordinances, and verdicts. Do not pursue unclean things, statues, or molten images.... [What follows are very priestly details that were detailed in the Mosaic Code]

All who eat [meat left over a third day] will bring guilt on themselves because this is the way I found (it) written in the book of my ancestors, in the words of Enoch and the words of Noah.
(Jubilees 21:1-2, 4-5, 10 - Vanderkam)

Jubilees claims that there had been a series of works passed down from which Abraham learned the proper observance of Torah. That books had been passed down is explained elsewhere in Jubilees, with the figures involved being father to son (Enoch to Methusaleh , then to Lamech, then to Noah - this also explains the popularity of the Pseudepigraphical Books of Enoch that both Jews and Christians would read; of course, they are not what the author of Jubilees is referring to here, but the author of the Books of Enoch might have liked to think so). So in Jubilees, Abraham reveals that he observes Torah long before Moses gives it.

But how can such a thing be? How could Torah exist before Moses? Some Jewish Tradition claims that the Torah was eternal, existing before Creation and that God Himself consulted it when creating the world.

Seven things were created before the world, and these are they: the Torah, repentance, the garden of Eden, Gehenna [Hell], the Heavenly Throne, the Temple, and the name of the messiah.
(b. Pesahim 54a, as cited in Kugel: Traditions of the Bible - The Bible as it Was at the Start of the Common Era, p. 54)

But we must move on from Jubilees to Philo, who viewed Torah as being a natural phenomenon that the Patriachs understood from nature and were not taught. People could find and observe Torah if they looked hard enough into the nature of the Unvierse.

In these men we have laws endowed with life and reason, and Moses extolled them for two reasons. First he wished to shew that the enacted ordinances are not inconistant with nature; and secondly that those who wish to live in accordance with the laws as they stand have no difficult task, seeing that the first generations before any at all of the particular statutes was set in writing followed the unwritten law with perfect ease, so that one might properlysay that the enacted laws are nothing else than memorials of the life of these ancients, preserving to a later generation their actual words and deeds. For they were not scholars or pupils of others, nor did they learn under teachers what was right to say or do; they listened to no voice or instruction but their own: they gladly accepted conformity with nature, holding that nature itself was, as indeed it is, the most venerable of statutes, and thus their whole life was one of happy obedience to laws
(Philo, On Abraham 5-6, Colson - as cited by J. D. Levinson, "The Conversion of Abraham" from The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel, p. 26, Brill, 2004)

In this view - contrary to Jubilees - the Patriarchs were, to use Levinson's phrase, "walking Torahs". They did not learn from books or scrolls, from teachers or sages - they simply accessed nature. Now this may sound a little far-fetched, but a similar notion was adopted by Paul concerning knowledge of the Divine

..."the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.
In past generations he allowed all the nationsto follow their own ways, yet he has not left himself without a witness in doing good - giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy."
(Acts 14:15-17, NRSV)

Paul insists that "pagans" always had access to the knowledge of God through nature - God's witness to Himself. Notice the tripartite division of Creation in the first line - heavens, earth, seas - exemplified in Genesis 1, a common view of the Universe.

Other views of Abraham's observance were that Melchizedek taught Abraham the Torah; that he only observed the Noahide Laws; that he observed the entire Torah. This debate continued for a long time - never fully settled.

Paul - fully aware of these traditions, being an educated Pharisee at one time - saw it differently. In Galations, he rejects the notion that Abraham knew Torah and insists that since he had no access to it, but was deemed "righteous", then he must have been righteous for some other reason.

Just as Abraham "believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness," so you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "All the Gentiles shall be blessed in your." For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.
(Galations 3:6-9, NRSV)

Paul was writing this in response to the members of the Galation church who were still practicing Torah. His interpretation was yet another in a long line of interpretations - as we have seen from some of the examples above, and from elsewhere. We can analyze it and see if his conclusion necessarily follows from his premises. Is "righteousness" the equivalent of the state of being that is achieved through Torah observance? Paul admits that this is how people might view it, and then goes on to deny it. He does this by interpreting Genesis 12:3 as a revelation to Abraham of the Gospel of Jesus.

YHWH said to Avram:
Go-you-forth
from your land,
from your kindred,
from your father's house,
to the land that I will let you see.
I will make a great nation of you
and will give-you-blessing
and will make your name great.
Be a blessing!
I will bless those who bless you,
he who curses you, I will damn.
All the clans of the soil will find blessing [or "seek to be blessed (as you)"] through you!
(Genesis 12:1-3, Fox)

This was the inital revelation to Abraham from Yahweh. In it, the conclusion is not clear but can be examined with several possibilities. One I would cautiously reject is the later, Paulistic interpretation that it points to Jesus. This is not anywhere evident in the text and it requires a GREAT deal of creative thinking to wring it out of it. It is certainly possible that it is messianic, but that is also a stretch. I will deal with this issue down below after a preliminary discussion of the passagae. A much better possibility is that it is the culmination of the many disasters that doomed mankind from the beginning, and a return to the initial state of fruitful blessedness that God had declared on mankind:

So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God did he create it,
male and female he created them.
God blessed them,
God said to them:
Bear fruit and be many and fill the earth
and subdue it!
(Genesis 1:27-28)

At the very begining of humanity's existence, a universal blessing is bestowed on all humanity. There is no Israel yet, not chosen people. Humanity is God's concern in the beginning. Through the course of the events of Genesis 1-11 humanity and the rest of "flesh" on earth end up corrupting it. God decides to wipe them all out and pin his hopes on one family who finds favor with him - Noah's. From Noah, it is written, all of humanity is then descended. The very same blessing is once again given to this "new creation", this new "Adam":

God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them:
Bear fruit and be many and fill the earth!
(Genesis 9:1)

The blessing of fruitfulness is given again, but narrowed down to Noah and his family. But Noah's line proves itself to be almost as corrupt as the previous one and the Tower of Babel is another example of humanity being punished for being corrupt and reaching far beyond their means. It is then that Genesis 1-11 ends and God once again decides to narrow his focus to a single family - no longer all of humanity. He chooses Abraham and you can see from the passage above that he once again renews the blessing of fruitfulness, but leaves the enigmatic statement that perhaps the rest of humanity may find "blessing" through Abraham's line.

What does that mean? A plain-sense reading might just see it as another chance for humanity, but filtered first through Abraham as a possible test case. The promise to be fruitful becomes extremely important in the Abraham story (as I pointed out in a previous post) and makes for much of the dramatic tension (how will God fulfill his "blessing" of seed?). That would be the obvious way of looking at, I would think - but it requires seeing what has come before in the blessing motif. One of the names of God used in the Patriachal stories, and almost always within a fertility context, is 'El Shaddai (usually translated merely as "God Almighty" - but this is not certain at all). This name has "God" as the beginning and the ending's meaning has several possibilites. The double meanings of "mountains" and "breasts" may point to a fertility function for this name, and it would then make sense as to why the name was used in the Patriarchal stories - where continuance of one's line was of the utmost importance. That the later Priestly source knew of this tradition is reflected in Exodus where Yahweh reveals his name (supposedly for the first time) and states that the Patriarchs only knew him as "El Shaddai". In the Priestly strata of the Pentateuch, this is certainly true - the name "Yahweh" is not known to the people until the passage in Exodus. In the Yahwist Source, however, the name "Yahweh" had been known from the beginning, apparantly - it is even stated explicitly that around the time of Lamech was begun the practice of invoking the name of Yahweh. Anyways - that's part of the reason the Documentary Hypothesis was adopted and why two of the sources names (the Yahwist and the Elohist) are given those tites: they used certain names for God up until Exodus. Getting back to the point - is that 'El Shaddai makes sense in the context of fertility and the blessing originall bestowed on all humanity, and now reserved for Abraham and possibly extended to the rest of humanity via Abraham.

Apart from that, later interpreters with a messianic eye will see the promise as pointing to the promised Messiah of the post-exillic times who would free Israel from their enemies, and then the glorious rule of God would occur over all the nations. In this way, the nations would be "blessed" through the Israelites - the descendants of Abraham. It is probably this interpretation that Paul adopts, and of course attributes to Jesus Christ. But it is useful to understand how he got to that interpretation. One can assume that he was given it by God, or one can look at the long string of traditional interpretations that influenced Paul's thinking, I suppose. One disturbing feature of Paul's interpretation is that is strips Jews of their status as the Covenanted People, when he speaks of the "true descendants of Abraham". This would not end well for Jewish people over the years, unfortunately.

But what about Paul's conclusion? He concludes - without necessarily demonstrating why this should be so - that "righteousness" is equal to people who merely "believe" in God. This is a strange conclusion to make, since the vast majority of people already "believed" in God through faith - having no other option, such as concrete proof. He suggests that Torah Observance - even though it was commanded by God - is not necessary because "righteousness" is achieved through just "believing". This is, quite frankly, some bad logic. The conclusion does not follow from the premise. I disagree with Paul on this matter, and many others. That's okay - I don't feel as if I am blaspheming the "Word of God" when I disagree with a man who wrote letters that were eventually seen as Scripture. It's dubious as to whether he, himself, saw his letters as ever expecting "sciptural status". If he had - he would have been a bit more consistent in some of his statements. If we accept his interpretation as "scriptural", then why not Jubilees, or Philo, or the rabbis who wrote in the Talmud and the Mishnah? But that's to wander from the point.

You've laid out the basics for how the jewish people and Paul view how righteousness is obtained. One is through observance of Torah (and sprinkled in other's views about Torah, one being Philo's views), and the other by believing in God. You also mentioned, concerning the jewish view, that the people back in the day read other books that aren't in today's canon, or in what most people would consider as canon. That these books they've read, along with the Oral Torah, leads them to believe how they believe concerning Scripture. So the question for me is, why should Paul's view be considered over the others?


Everyone pretty much consider the Pentateuch as legit Scripture. You mentioned the Oral Law came about as a way to expound on the things the first five books left opened ended or didn't go into much detail. Also that orthodox jews believe the Oral Law also came from Moses. Historians date the other books, such as the Book of Jubilees, later and were attempts to explain things mentioned in the Pentateuch. (Such as where Cain got his wife) So pretty much the first five are our foundation, and the later writings are the attempts to explain what is written in them. So I guess this is a brief summary of your post above, which was beautifully written. Here's my case for why Paul's writings should be considered over them.


Actually before I do that, I want to clear up Paul's view. (I don't know if you are stating this was Paul's position, but a lot of people view it this way.) Paul wasn't saying believing "in" God is what makes one righteous. That is, believing God exists. As you mentioned, Paul referenced nature as a witness to God's existence. So at least in those times, everyone knew a higher power existed, just by looking at the world around them. (Of course today, we believe all existence can be explained by the laws of nature, and can be understood through the practice of science) From that, we can say Paul wasn't teaching believing in God's existence, or acknowledging God's existence makes one righteous. What Paul was teaching, and is seen in his reference to Abraham being justified by faith, is believing what God said, is what makes one righteous. Abraham "believed" God, and righteousness was accounted to him. There's a difference in "believing God" and "believing in God". So basically Paul's view was trusting God, is what makes one righteous.


Now, why should Paul's view be considered? As we already stated, the jewish view is that righteousness is ultimately obtained by following Torah. They have their traditions about how Abraham, and the men before him (such as Noah) followed God's commands in some form. Yet before the Noahide laws were given, it is said Noah walk with God and God considered him to be perfect in his generations. So it wasn't the observance of the Noahide laws that made him perfect. Yet I will tell you before it is said Noah was perfect in his generations, something came before that. That Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Favor isn't something you earn, but something you are given. It was God who approved of Noah, and that is what made him perfect in his generations. So after all that, then you have the Noahide laws come about. What happens almost immediately after the laws come, what happens when it's now Noah having to earn God's favor by following the laws He give? Noah gets slam drunk! His son Ham saw his nakedness, and told his brothers about it. Ultimately Ham's descendants are cursed as a result. I think this shows us when we attempt to earn God's favor, ultimately the curses are sure to follow. Not that God's laws are wicked, but that we are corrupt.


Even going back to Adam and Eve, they were originally created flawless. They were perfect before God, as God looked over His finished creation during the first week, and saw that it was very good. (One interpretation is that God saw everything as "very good" because He ended creation with the very best addition, mankind) So they were already blameless before God, and they didn't do anything to earn it. Then you had the command come, to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, as a creationist and one who views the world as now corrupt, Adam and Eve had the power within themselves to keep this commandment, unlike us today as I believe. Yet besides that, once the command came, man failed to uphold it, and the curses came. So what you have in the beginning, it is God who justified man, but as soon as man tried to earn justification, we end up being condemned.


So you see this pattern here in the first five books. What seperated Abraham from Adam and from Noah, is that Abraham stayed in God's justification. That he fully trusted God all the way, even not withholding his beloved son from Him when asked. This is how we know Abraham trusted God fully. Abraham could have easily rejected God's command about offering his son, because God already said Isaac was the seed that He would fulfill His promises to Abraham through. Yet now God is asking Abraham to sacrifice his son? That doesn't make sense, and Abraham could have rejected it. However, Abraham already witnessed what God has done for him. The situations He brought him through, that God called him His friend. Abraham was established in the fact that the only reason he even had Isaac in the first place, was because God gave him. It was God who brought him thus far, and it was God who justified him thus far. Why would God now do him harm? Abraham fully trusted in God justifying him, and I believe Abraham knew God was able to raise Isaac from the dead. (And you mentioned how the Scriptures make it seem like Abraham did sacrifice Isaac, because he is not mentioned when Abraham and the two men who went with them returned. Yet of course, Isaac is alive and well in the proceeding Scriptures. Perhaps that is not a coincidence. Maybe that is a result from the documentary hypothesis, but I would say that is just another picture of Jesus being seen in the Tanakh.)


So this is what Paul was saying in a nut shell. Scripture shows us the people find favor in the eyes of the Lord in the beginning, that is not earned. Then the law comes, and once we try to earn it, we end up condemned. Yet Abraham stayed in God's favor, he stayed in God's justification. It was because of that, he was able to do anything God commanded. Yes, Abraham lied, and Abraham did doubt (when he presented Ishmael as the heir), yet those things aren't attributed to him as the mistakes of the other Patriarchs are. This is because it was God who justified him, because Abraham trusted God fully, and had no trust in his own justification. (The Book of Hebrews tells us that Abraham didn't consider his own body, being dead and past the time of production, but he held fast to the promise, God's promise to him)


Overall, I find it's this view that best portrays what the Pentateuch is saying. If you look elsewhere, at the Book of Job for instance, Elihu was mad at Job because Job justified himself, and not God. Obviously, this interpretation was correct, because God didn't have a problem with Elihu's statements. God did have a problem with Job's friends, because they didn't speak correctly concerning Him. It is stated that Elihu was mad at Job's friends, because they condemned Job, but couldn't back up that condemnation. So what that book really reveals to us, is that it is God who justifies. (Now there is a lot I want to talk about concerning the Book of Job later, I think one of my original questions in this thread concerned that book, but I'll do that later)


When it comes to the Law, Moses already prophesied the people would turn away from God. So this kind of tells you right there, trying to keep the Law ultimately ends up condemning you. Again, not that the Law is wicked, but that we are from our very nature. The Torah ultimately says don't do, what you want to do. Our hearts aren't right before God. Yet inspite of all this, jewish tradition is that the people can keep the laws. Even the best of them (David and Solomon), broke the laws. Solomon, who's consider by Israel to be the wisest man to have ever lived, broke the very first commandment in the Ten. Most people who try to keep the commandments would brag and say they at least kept the first couple of them or so, but the wisest man on earth breaks the very first one! If he broke the very first one, no one should be bragging and no one should say they kept God's Law. I'm sorry, if this last bit came out a bit preachy, but this is my case as to why Paul's view is right.


P.S.- Of course, I don't think this is just Paul's view, but what Jesus Himself ultimately taught, as well as the disciples. Granted, the original disciples were hesitant to reach out to the gentiles, but they didn't teach that we should observe the laws. For one, sacrifices were constant in the observing of the laws. Yet they didn't teach nor did this, because Jesus was the final sacrifice. They observed feasts like Passover, but they observed them in new light. I also imagine they kept doing the traditional stuff of the Law, because that was just their culture. Yet whatever they did, they did it with new light, with Jesus in mind. Jesus said He came to fulfill the Law, and not to destroy it. That much is true. Yet notice His words in that not one jot or tittle would pass from the Law, till all was fulfilled. There are many things Jesus said during His ministry, that were said to people who were under the Law. He brought out the truth of the Law to them, so they could come to the end of themselves. Jewish tradition made the Law "keepable". Yet Jesus said that if you hate your brother, you are a murderer. If you lust in your heart, you are an adulterer. What other rabbi taught like this before? So Jesus taught the people who were under the Law, that if someone strikes you on your cheek, to turn the other also. That if someone stole you clothes, give them your cloak also. If a roman soldier commanded you to carry his things for one mile, walk another with him.


Basically, all of the people have broke the Law. No question, hands down. Jesus is telling them to have grace on others who offend you, so that God would have grace on them, for their offense of breaking the Law. This is what Jesus taught to the people concerning the Law. He didn't tell them to not keep them, but to have grace on others, so God will have grace on them for breaking the Law. It all comes back down to grace! Jesus' prayer was like that, telling the people to ask for God's forgiveness as they forgive those who offend them. It's a plea for grace. Yet once Jesus fulfilled the Law, and died on the cross, the new covenant was complete! Now we forgive others, because God has already forgiven us. We no longer have to pray for God's will to be done on earth in one sense, because God's will has been done when Jesus completed His mission. (As noted in Jesus prayer that His will be done) His will now, according to us Christians, is that every man put their trust in His grace, which is found in Jesus. That by trusting His plan, we receive His righteousness. Just like Abraham received God's righteousness, God's justification by trusting Him.

Originally Posted by theflipflop

I've been reading a fascinating book called "the Mythmaker - Paul and the invention of Chrstianity." The author, Maccoby, "proves" using historical and biblical sources that:

1. Paul was not a Pharisee. He was born a gentile and died one, too.
2. Jesus was a Pharisee, but was a regular garden variety failed messiah. He was entirety unfamiliar with all the Pauline Hellinistic/pagan/gnostic ideas attributed to him, and would have refuted those ideas had he ever heard them.
3. James and Peter were Nazarrenes and all their beliefs were indistinguishable from normative Pharasee teachings. They believed Jesus was messiah, but were completely opposed to the outlandish ideas of PAul. And they rejected Paul and his teachings in Paul's lifetime.
4. Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of chrstianity as a new religion. Only Paul and his followers abrogated the Torah - not James and Peter and the Jerusalem church.
5. The entire Saint Stephen story is a hoax.
6. The Ebionites writings were suppressed by the church but clearly show the points above, as well as the fact that Paul began his career as a spurned Jewish convert who joined the ranks of the Sadducees, which was a non normative strain of Judaism that thankfully died out, as a henchman responsible for kidnapping Nazarrenes for the roman government.

A friend of mine going thru. A sincere Jewish conversion process in my shul says in his former Chrstian life, his church leaders banned the reading of this book due to its problematic nature with Chrstian belief.

Most scholarship rejects Maccoby's views. I think from my own examination of the NT, the disciples did not disagree with Paul's teachings. Also, from my understanding of how the jewish people determine if someone is inherently jewish, if your mother is jewish, then you are a jew. It was Paul's mother who was jewish if I'm not mistaken. So I'll trust scholarship concerning Maccoby's views, but I may read his book as well someday, to look at his words and understanding for myself.

[Woodrow LI]

Originally Posted by Heavenese

You've laid out the basics for how the jewish people and Paul view how righteousness is obtained. One is through observance of Torah (and sprinkled in other's views about Torah, one being Philo's views), and the other by believing in God. You also mentioned, concerning the jewish view, that the people back in the day read other books that aren't in today's canon, or in what most people would consider as canon. That these books they've read, along with the Oral Torah, leads them to believe how they believe concerning Scripture. So the question for me is, why should Paul's view be considered over the others?


Everyone pretty much consider the Pentateuch as legit Scripture. You mentioned the Oral Law came about as a way to expound on the things the first five books left opened ended or didn't go into much detail. Also that orthodox jews believe the Oral Law also came from Moses. Historians date the other books, such as the Book of Jubilees, later and were attempts to explain things mentioned in the Pentateuch. (Such as where Cain got his wife) So pretty much the first five are our foundation, and the later writings are the attempts to explain what is written in them. So I guess this is a brief summary of your post above, which was beautifully written. Here's my case for why Paul's writings should be considered over them.


Actually before I do that, I want to clear up Paul's view. (I don't know if you are stating this was Paul's position, but a lot of people view it this way.) Paul wasn't saying believing "in" God is what makes one righteous. That is, believing God exists. As you mentioned, Paul referenced nature as a witness to God's existence. So at least in those times, everyone knew a higher power existed, just by looking at the world around them. (Of course today, we believe all existence can be explained by the laws of nature, and can be understood through the practice of science) From that, we can say Paul wasn't teaching believing in God's existence, or acknowledging God's existence makes one righteous. What Paul was teaching, and is seen in his reference to Abraham being justified by faith, is believing what God said, is what makes one righteous. Abraham "believed" God, and righteousness was accounted to him. There's a difference in "believing God" and "believing in God". So basically Paul's view was trusting God, is what makes one righteous.


Now, why should Paul's view be considered? As we already stated, the jewish view is that righteousness is ultimately obtained by following Torah. They have their traditions about how Abraham, and the men before him (such as Noah) followed God's commands in some form. Yet before the Noahide laws were given, it is said Noah walk with God and God considered him to be perfect in his generations. So it wasn't the observance of the Noahide laws that made him perfect. Yet I will tell you before it is said Noah was perfect in his generations, something came before that. That Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Favor isn't something you earn, but something you are given. It was God who approved of Noah, and that is what made him perfect in his generations. So after all that, then you have the Noahide laws come about. What happens almost immediately after the laws come, what happens when it's now Noah having to earn God's favor by following the laws He give? Noah gets slam drunk! His son Ham saw his nakedness, and told his brothers about it. Ultimately Ham's descendants are cursed as a result. I think this shows us when we attempt to earn God's favor, ultimately the curses are sure to follow. Not that God's laws are wicked, but that we are corrupt.


Even going back to Adam and Eve, they were originally created flawless. They were perfect before God, as God looked over His finished creation during the first week, and saw that it was very good. (One interpretation is that God saw everything as "very good" because He ended creation with the very best addition, mankind) So they were already blameless before God, and they didn't do anything to earn it. Then you had the command come, to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, as a creationist and one who views the world as now corrupt, Adam and Eve had the power within themselves to keep this commandment, unlike us today as I believe. Yet besides that, once the command came, man failed to uphold it, and the curses came. So what you have in the beginning, it is God who justified man, but as soon as man tried to earn justification, we end up being condemned.


So you see this pattern here in the first five books. What seperated Abraham from Adam and from Noah, is that Abraham stayed in God's justification. That he fully trusted God all the way, even not withholding his beloved son from Him when asked. This is how we know Abraham trusted God fully. Abraham could have easily rejected God's command about offering his son, because God already said Isaac was the seed that He would fulfill His promises to Abraham through. Yet now God is asking Abraham to sacrifice his son? That doesn't make sense, and Abraham could have rejected it. However, Abraham already witnessed what God has done for him. The situations He brought him through, that God called him His friend. Abraham was established in the fact that the only reason he even had Isaac in the first place, was because God gave him. It was God who brought him thus far, and it was God who justified him thus far. Why would God now do him harm? Abraham fully trusted in God justifying him, and I believe Abraham knew God was able to raise Isaac from the dead. (And you mentioned how the Scriptures make it seem like Abraham did sacrifice Isaac, because he is not mentioned when Abraham and the two men who went with them returned. Yet of course, Isaac is alive and well in the proceeding Scriptures. Perhaps that is not a coincidence. Maybe that is a result from the documentary hypothesis, but I would say that is just another picture of Jesus being seen in the Tanakh.)


So this is what Paul was saying in a nut shell. Scripture shows us the people find favor in the eyes of the Lord in the beginning, that is not earned. Then the law comes, and once we try to earn it, we end up condemned. Yet Abraham stayed in God's favor, he stayed in God's justification. It was because of that, he was able to do anything God commanded. Yes, Abraham lied, and Abraham did doubt (when he presented Ishmael as the heir), yet those things aren't attributed to him as the mistakes of the other Patriarchs are. This is because it was God who justified him, because Abraham trusted God fully, and had no trust in his own justification. (The Book of Hebrews tells us that Abraham didn't consider his own body, being dead and past the time of production, but he held fast to the promise, God's promise to him)


Overall, I find it's this view that best portrays what the Pentateuch is saying. If you look elsewhere, at the Book of Job for instance, Elihu was mad at Job because Job justified himself, and not God. Obviously, this interpretation was correct, because God didn't have a problem with Elihu's statements. God did have a problem with Job's friends, because they didn't speak correctly concerning Him. It is stated that Elihu was mad at Job's friends, because they condemned Job, but couldn't back up that condemnation. So what that book really reveals to us, is that it is God who justifies. (Now there is a lot I want to talk about concerning the Book of Job later, I think one of my original questions in this thread concerned that book, but I'll do that later)


When it comes to the Law, Moses already prophesied the people would turn away from God. So this kind of tells you right there, trying to keep the Law ultimately ends up condemning you. Again, not that the Law is wicked, but that we are from our very nature. The Torah ultimately says don't do, what you want to do. Our hearts aren't right before God. Yet inspite of all this, jewish tradition is that the people can keep the laws. Even the best of them (David and Solomon), broke the laws. Solomon, who's consider by Israel to be the wisest man to have ever lived, broke the very first commandment in the Ten. Most people who try to keep the commandments would brag and say they at least kept the first couple of them or so, but the wisest man on earth breaks the very first one! If he broke the very first one, no one should be bragging and no one should say they kept God's Law. I'm sorry, if this last bit came out a bit preachy, but this is my case as to why Paul's view is right.


P.S.- Of course, I don't think this is just Paul's view, but what Jesus Himself ultimately taught, as well as the disciples. Granted, the original disciples were hesitant to reach out to the gentiles, but they didn't teach that we should observe the laws. For one, sacrifices were constant in the observing of the laws. Yet they didn't teach nor did this, because Jesus was the final sacrifice. They observed feasts like Passover, but they observed them in new light. I also imagine they kept doing the traditional stuff of the Law, because that was just their culture. Yet whatever they did, they did it with new light, with Jesus in mind. Jesus said He came to fulfill the Law, and not to destroy it. That much is true. Yet notice His words in that not one jot or tittle would pass from the Law, till all was fulfilled. There are many things Jesus said during His ministry, that were said to people who were under the Law. He brought out the truth of the Law to them, so they could come to the end of themselves. Jewish tradition made the Law "keepable". Yet Jesus said that if you hate your brother, you are a murderer. If you lust in your heart, you are an adulterer. What other rabbi taught like this before? So Jesus taught the people who were under the Law, that if someone strikes you on your cheek, to turn the other also. That if someone stole you clothes, give them your cloak also. If a roman soldier commanded you to carry his things for one mile, walk another with him.


Basically, all of the people have broke the Law. No question, hands down. Jesus is telling them to have grace on others who offend you, so that God would have grace on them, for their offense of breaking the Law. This is what Jesus taught to the people concerning the Law. He didn't tell them to not keep them, but to have grace on others, so God will have grace on them for breaking the Law. It all comes back down to grace! Jesus' prayer was like that, telling the people to ask for God's forgiveness as they forgive those who offend them. It's a plea for grace. Yet once Jesus fulfilled the Law, and died on the cross, the new covenant was complete! Now we forgive others, because God has already forgiven us. We no longer have to pray for God's will to be done on earth in one sense, because God's will has been done when Jesus completed His mission. (As noted in Jesus prayer that His will be done) His will now, according to us Christians, is that every man put their trust in His grace, which is found in Jesus. That by trusting His plan, we receive His righteousness. Just like Abraham received God's righteousness, God's justification by trusting Him.





Most scholarship rejects Maccoby's views. I think from my own examination of the NT, the disciples did not disagree with Paul's teachings. Also, from my understanding of how the jewish people determine if someone is inherently jewish, if your mother is jewish, then you are a jew. It was Paul's mother who was jewish if I'm not mistaken. So I'll trust scholarship concerning Maccoby's views, but I may read his book as well someday, to look at his words and understanding for myself.

I can not speak for all Jews but the ones I know personally, seem to have good reasons to believe Paul was not Jewish.

Jewishness is not as simple a concept as us non-Jews think it is. Technically I am more Jewish than Paul was, However any Jew will immediately tell you I am Muslim no matter what my Mother's family tree is.

[whoppers]

Originally Posted by Heavenese

Also, I looked at your PDF reference concerning the camels today. Does it cost to download it?

No - it's free to download.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

I'm continuining to do some research on it on my own, and I've found the bactrian (spelling) camel was domesticated in central asia for some time, before the domestication of the dromedary camel in the middle-east. From the sources I've looked at (without the downloaded source you gave me), there seems to be debate as to when the dromedary camel was domesticated. Personal opinion as of now, could it be that the physical evidence as far as bones go, which would suggest a timeframe of wide usage of domesticated camels, only depicts the time that they were widely used as a pack animal? Considering it might take time to domesticate an animal, could it be the actual process of domestication have began thousands of years before they were widely used? In the Scriptures, it seemed like only the very wealthy had camels. (Job/Pharaoh/Abraham who was given camels by the Pharaoh) So the theme was wealth, equaled having an assortment of domesticated animals, including the domesticated camel. Is that a possibility? I just kind of doubt that there was a time when there are no domesticated camels, and then all of a sudden in 1200 BC or so, you have a wide usage of domesticated camels.

Of course I'll continue looking into it. One PDF writing said (this one kind of being apologetic) it was possible the kings of the middle-east imported the bactrian camel in and around 3,000 BC. That reminded me of a favorite quote of mine from the first movie of the series "Men in Black" stating, "Why don't you show him the new imports, Jeebs."

Check out the section on how domestication happens, and the specific section on camels in Palestine. I'm not sure whether you read the entire thing or not? Many things are possible, but when recontructing history - we have to go with what was most probable. If we move away from what was most probable, to accomodating works that were probably written late with anachronistic elements included - we are leaving the realm of the probable.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

I looked up the definition of the words eisegesis and exegesis. After looking at them, I find my position is unique in itself. My position is, I want to examine the Bible using both forms. To prove it eisegesis wise and exegesis wise. Your last sentence in the above paragraph fits me well. Yet with me, if examination terminates my previous held notions, I would leave the texts of the Hebrew Bible to the Israelite people. My notions are the Bible holds my origin, part of my history is in it. No, I'm not jewish, but if the Bible is correct, I'm a descendant of Noah, who's a descendant of Adam, and Adam being God's creation. If none of that is true, the Bible is completely Israelite in terms of origin. I know plenty about the Bible, but know very little of my own ancestors and their stories. Somebody should tell their story to, of course we can all relate because we are humans after all.

Though if the Bible is true, and contains my origins and the origins of the human race, the culture of my ancestors should still be told. One day I want to composite a complete telling of everyone's history in some fashion.

There are many works of "history" that are much, much older than the Hebrew Bible. If one is to consider a search for history, then one must also consider that perhaps a Sumerian history might offer more truth, or an Akkadian or Egyptian one. It's just our luck that we happen to have been born into a modern society that privileged the Biblical account for many thousands of years as the "oldest" history. I say "privileged" in the past tense since the discovery and decipherment of cuneiform and hieroglyphic works in the 1700s-1800s have vastly exapanded our view of the world and the people who have lived and written about it, and the Bible no longer holds prominence of place in that area. This can be looked up under the Babel/Bible Controversy, if you're interested.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

The only thing that would kind of help my hypothesis, is to present evidence the exodus happened. I think that is firstly what I'm looking for, though I'm very limited concerning archaeaological work in the Middle East and so on. I don't know if it was you or someone else who mentioned the dangers of doing that kind of work over there, how politics and disputes have disrupted any kind of archaeaology.

I mentioned the physical dangers, as well as the methodological dangers of searching for something with a priori assumptions, yes. If your hypothesis is based on unproven data - well...not to be callous, but that makes it very shaky. Hypotheseses must be based on data, even if the conclusion is shaky. Not the other way around.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

You mentioned before the etiological understanding of these verses, that if the "seed" is referring to only one person, then it would lose meaning. However, why does it state the seed would crush the serpent's head, and not the head of the serpent's seed instead? The verse reads like this:


I will put enmity between you and the woman,
And between your offspring and hers;
They shall strike at your head,
And you shall strike at their heel.


My question is if the enmity is between the snake's offspring and the woman's offspring, why aren't the snake's offspring mentioned in striking the heel of the woman's offspring? Perhaps that is why most english translations have it as "He", because the one who's head is being crushed is in the singular. Maybe that is the english language limitation, but the hebrew language could handle such a comparison?

I think it's because the curse is addressed to the snake personally, but also includes his offspring in the sentence prior to the one you're focusing on. So it's included naturally. Compare the other curses, which are individual - yet obviously explain why humanity operates in a certain way (pain in childbirth, patriarchism, the need to work, death, etc.). If we are to understand the curses as specific to the individuals cursed, then none of us would be affected by the actions of this human couple. I personally don't believe that Original Sin is a doctrine taught in the passage, but for Christians who DO believe in such a reading - focusing on the grammar in the way in which you have suggested would remove that. It is good that you're digging in deep - but the context and story must also dictate how grammar is to be understood.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

Besides that, I can agree about the etiological understanding. Yet what if Genesis is literal history? Then it becomes more than etiological, it becomes more than just trying to explain what they see. I believe it's both etiological and possibly prophetic. (That is the last statement about the crushing of the head and the biting of the heal)

It's strange that you can agree with me on the etiological meaning but still see a hidden prophecy, to be honest with you. Why search for something that requires an additional step that isn't present? Occam's Razor is a good measuring point for such situations (that's the philosophical and logical rule that states that "among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected" - from Wikipedia). I hope you can agree that the Razor makes sense and is a good guide to investigating things.

If Genesis is literal history - then it is in disagreement with everything we know from the geological, archaeological and other sciences. As I previously pointed out concerning the Bable/Bible Controversy, it has become increasingly difficult to privilege the Biblical Account as literal history. And one of my favorite quotes concerning it comes from Martin Luther (I think I quoted it in another thread) in which he states that the story of Eve being taken from Adam is ridiculous and at first glance a fairy tale - but that we must believe it because of Scriptural Authority. Luther recognized the fantastic nature of many of the Biblical tales (especially those of Genesis 1-11) and basically said that if one didn't already believe in Scriptural Authority, there was no possible way any reasonable person could read that story with a straight face and believe it to record literal history. You see the accomodation and apology he had to engage in, however. He began with an assumption (Scripture is the Word of God and tells a literal history - this was a feature of the Protestant Reformation that rejected allegorical interpretations of Scripture) and arrived at his conclusion - no matter how silly he saw it. It's good to remember that the understanding of Genesis 1-11 as literal history long lost its vogue for thousands of years, and only with the advent of Sola Scriptura and the Protestant reaction against Catholicism did it regain a foothold, especially among modeern Fundamentalists. This is important - something that is not reazlied: the Bible has not often been seen as literal in all things. Those Funadementalists who claim they are reading the Word of God as it has always been read are just incorrect, I'm afraid.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

On an aside, you mentioned about Elohim having a plural meaning behind it. Of course we know about the doctrine of the Trinity, and with that in mind, the name Elohim would make sense. In Genesis, Elohim is mentioned, and the statement that God said concerning Himself while making man, "Let Us make man in Our image." It's jewish tradition that God was kind of in a way including the angels in creation, that God was humbling Himself. That the "Us" was referring to God and the angels. Yet that's tradition. Did the Israelite people worship God and angels for creation? Then how can one say God was referring to the angels in that statement? A plain reading of Scripture, without tradition, suggests God is one, but there's plurality about Him.

Hmm. You appeal to a plain sense reading of Scripture - yet you invoke the Doctrine of the Trinity which is not explicitly spelled out anywhere in the New Testament, and is certainly not a teaching of the Hebrew Bible.

Elohim is a word that has a plural form. In Hebrew, masculine plural words end in "ym" - the "y" is a matres lectionis (a helping letter that was used in the primarily consonantal script of Biblical Hebrew to denote a long vowel by using a consonant) that sounds like "eem" in "seem", usually transliterated into Roman letters as just "im". To use one of the most common words used to demonstrate Biblical Hebrew, I will use the word "horse" to quickly demonstrate it. "Horse" is "sws" in BH with the "w" again being a matres lectionis that stands for the long vowel "u" as in "rude". Like many languages, BH assume that many base forms of words are masculine. To turn "sus" into a feminine word, we would add "sus-ah" and arrive at "mare". For the plurals, the root is given affixes at the end again: "sus-im" for masculine ("horses") and "sus-oth" for feminine ("mares"). Easy, huh? There are exceptions, but that's the basic gist of it. Sus, sus-im, sus-ah, sus-oth. Notice that the "ah" in the feminine is removed before the plural "oth" is affixed.

So now we can look at "Eloh-im" and its grammatical form - it is a masculine plural word, possibly relatec to "Elohe" - a BH word used for God. The mystery that still surrounds this word is that it is used with both plural and singular meanings, but that in most cases singular verbs, etc. are used with it when referring to "God". It would be a lot of work to go into the subject here - and I think there are some good threads in this forum that go into some detail on the matter (look up Daniel McClellan under search) - so I will refrain from repeating them here. Suffice it to say, it's still a bit of a mystery in many ways. What are some of the explanations?

1. Some explain it as the "plural of majesty" or the "royal we" - as when a King says "we find this news to be most disturbing". He is speaking for the many, in a way. This is problematic however, since Biblical Hebrew is not Shakespearrean English and no attestations of this usage are found in BH.
2. Some see it as conisisting of the Trinity. This is a late Christian reading and is severly anachronistic, as well as having no evidence in the text.
3. It referred to the angels. This is slightly anachronistic, since "angels" as the winged messengers of God were a late development in Judaism and the term "angelos" is a Greek translation of the simple BH word for "messenger". There are references in the Hebrew Bible to a "Divine Council" that consisted of God (Yahweh at one later point) who held court in the heavens over the other gods - who ruled the various nations. In Psalm 82 Yahweh seizes power in the Divine Council and overthrows the power of the other gods, who have not been governing their nations correctly. A passage in Exodus illustrates how God apportioned out the nations to the gods, with Yahweh having his portion as Israel. Now this may sound far-fetched, but it is a biblical teaching. See this page for some links (http://michaelsheiser.com/TheNakedBible/divine-council/) and helpful information. Again - another subject too deep to be entered here and covered elsewhere on this forum quite nicely. The question - I suppose - is whether the Priestly author of Genesis 1 would have still held to such a concept. He already demonsrated his tendency to demythologize the older Israelite stories concerning the Chaos Motif of Creation and the divinity of the Sun, the Moon and the Stars - so is it possible that he believe this?

It's a complicated subject and I don't have an easy answer for you. The way in which the Exodus passage has been retranslated, however, to remove the connotations of such an idea has an interesting history. The passage (from our oldest manuscripts) concerning the nations being numbered has "the sons of the gods" ("gods", basically), while the Greek translation inserts "the angels", and then the final Masoretic Text has "the sons of Israel". Obviously, tradition grew uncomfortable with this idea and altered Scripture to accomodate doctrine. Again - one can think of the Chronicler changing "Yahweh" to "Satan".

Originally Posted by Heavenese

How long did it take you to learn Hebrew and it's roots?

I am still learning (for the rest of my life I will be learning), as the language is still not fully understood (another thing to bear in mind when reading a translation - some words we simply do not know their meaning and have to make guesses from context) and its a constant area of study for those interested. To get the basics, one can spend a year. Another year will help expand those basics, and then after that one can spend may long years studying. It's not that difficult, however - it was much easier than I thought it would be (even though many students will tell you that they learn Greek first because they feel it is easier or more "important" to them; there is a high dropout rate of Hebrew students in many cases, which is unfortunate) and has been endlessly fascinating. I highly encourage it! Learning roots can become monotonous if one takes the memorization process - one root consisting of just consonants can start looking like another root very quickly when you are working with a large amount. I prefer the comparative approach - learning a root and then trying to trace its history through the cognate languages. It helps to burn it into my mind, as well as giving a better understanding of the concept.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

I hear what you're saying, and I don't have much to add to it. Yet what's interesting is the first five books according to tradition are based on the writings of Moses. Moses himself wasn't around when Abraham was living. So we can't say this history is from first hand accounts. The only one who had first hand information about the things that happened in Genesis, would be God Himself.

Oral tradition may have contained stories without the need of God remembering them. Many cultures are very oral by nature, and only later become literate - if ever. Of course, oral tradition changes stories - that's part of the game. Many people used to assume that oral tradition and story-telling retained stories in their original form - but they assumed this because moderns have such a fixation on printing and the exactness it prouduces. Ancient cultures did not have this. They embellished stories, changed them, altered them, and brought them up to date so that they would have relevance to the listeners. Nobody wants to listen to a story that doesn't speak to them.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

As we see from Scripture, Moses would have wrote down the things God told him about. I think this is the basis for what the ancient Israelite people would consider to be Scripture, or at least to the Pentateuch, that it was God inspired.

It has a much more complex evolution than that. Where does it say that Moses would have written down an account of the history of Israel? The references to Moses writing down what God said are referring to the laws that were given to him on Sinai. Part of why the idea of Inspired Scipture arose is exactly because people expanded on references to Moses and the law and assumed that the "law" ("Torah") referred to the entire Pentateuch ("Torah"). But that is just concerning Moses. The actual history of how and why Scripture came to be seen as Scripture has much to do with the people losing their Temple and becoming "the people of the Book".

Originally Posted by Heavenese

Perhaps the people who wrote the Pentateuch (whether my view that these writings are based on writings of Moses, or is the collection of word by mouth stories), had more incentive to be as truthful as possible, because these writings were based on God inspired stuff. I'm babbling on here, and I might be giving you a little bit of my views while looking at the Bible. More historical evidence would help my case.

A late idea - the Inspiration of Scripture. If you want to be technical about it, the actual words that are really attributed to God are mostly prophetic ("and Yahweh said:") - these were supposed to have been the Word of God. The authors of the Torah probably were not thinking in this manner, and actively disagreed with each other on many points (remember the Priestly author's refusal to portray various cultic activities such as sacrifice prior to the Mosaic Covenant?).

Originally Posted by Heavenese

The Biblical idea that lying is bad, came with the Law.

If you're referring to the command to not give "false witness" - that is a legal situation that is being regulated. Since much of the law was concerned with legal cases, it was a prohibition against lying in a legal matter brought before elders. It was not a wholesale prohibition on fibbing, let's say. A similar situation occurs in the command to "not kill" - the Hebrew word used there is almost exclusively used in the context of "blood vengeance", in which a person would avenge the death of a family member by killing someone from the offending "family". It is not a wholsale prohibition against "killing" as we understand in English. Basically, we cannot extend what was a specific reference to lying in court to lying in general.

If you're referring to a proberb - well, a proverb is a proberb. Not a law. Many proverbs were actively criticized in the Bible (just see Job or Ecclesiastes).

Jeremiah has a problem with telling false tales, it is true, and he condemns other Biblical writers in his passage:

How can you say, "Why, we are the wise,
For we have the law of Yahweh"?
Now do but see - the deception it's wrought,
The deceiving pen of the scribes!
Shamed are the wise,
Stuned and trapped;
Why, look! They have spurned the word of Yahweh,
So what manner of wisdom have they?
(Jeremiah 8:8-9, Ab 21)

These are pretty strong words. He is reacting to a written work of law and calling it a lie. Here is a confrontation between what I was talking about above: the Word of God via the prophets verses the "Word of God" contained in the Torah, or part of the Torah. He was probably referring to at least one form of the Book of Deuteronomy here (another subject for investigation, but very probable) - perhaps not its final form. Various books just "showed up" during Israel's history. During the the time of Josiah a book magically was "found" (or written for the occasion!) as well as during the time of Ezra in which the "Torah" was read to the people -yet they hadn't heard many of the things in it. Why? Well, this is why many posit Ezra as one of the final editors of the Pentateuch. Some even posit Jeremiah and his scribe, Baruch, as editors of Biblical books (see Friedmann, Who Wrote the Bible? and his very informative entry under "Torah" in the Anchor Bible Dictionary - the scholarly version of the popular book first mentioned).

Jeremiah is dealing with people who claim that they know God's will because they have a book of the Law. But Jeremiah calls this book a lie. He tells them that this book (whatever it is) is NOT the word of God, but that he is reporting to them the actual Word of God directly. This is strong and controversial stuff - but nicely illustrates how certain Biblical books were viewed at one point. The people are referring to a part of the Torah that promises them certain things, while Jeremiah is telling them that they are dead wrong. Jeremiah was not - by the way - a popular prophet ha ha!

Originally Posted by Heavenese

The writers of the first five books, wrote their books under the Law. Again even if these writings are based on some original writings of Moses, Moses also wrote with the Law in mind. So would you say from an exegesis standpoint of Scripture, the writers had great incentive to be as truthful as possible? (As we know under the Law, lying is an abomination)

First of all, I would bear in mind what I wrote above conerning lying in a legal sense, and Jeremiah's words. Then, I would not assume that the writers were writing "under the Law" - the final editing of the Pentateuch together was a late endeavor and it is no guarantee that the people had access to all of it, or even to the law given to them at Sinai. We just cannot assume such a thing, unfortunately. Even if they had access to the teachings of the Law, Jeremiah demonstrates that this is not necessarily the Word of God as we would understand it today - direct messages from God. So we are in a pickle. One way of seeing the late nature of a book such as Deuteronomy, for example, is that in the other law books there is no prohibition against where one can worship and set up altars, but that in Deuteronomy it is stated that there is only ONE place to legitimately worship God - later to be the Temple. So it's a safe assumption that the Israelites had been worshipping God in a variety of ways in different places, but then Deuteronomy was produced and gave prominence to the Temple. Is a conincidence that this book also contains legislature concerning Kings - long before a King was grudgingly given to the people if we understand it as being written by Moses? So who is right? Centralized worship or non-centralized worship? This might have been just one thing Jeremiah was reacting against. See the problems this centralization created for Israel when they split into Judah and Israel.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

As for the disagreements in Scripture, can you provide some quick examples I can look at.

I've given a few in this post to help. The Centralization of Worship in one official place. Jeremiah and whatever book he was condemning. The priestly creation story of Genesis 1 (it disagrees with the Yahwist Account in Genesis 2-3 - which is earlier and more primitive; Gen. 2-3 is not just a more detailed look at Creation. See when the animals were created in each account, for example). The entire Book of Job disagreeing with the Deuteronomic Theology of Retributive Justice, especially as found in the Proverbs. Why and when was Beersheba named? We start with Isaac after his encounter and oath with Abimelech and that whole situation in which they duped him:

Yitzhak [Isaac] sowed in that land, and reaped in that year a hunded measures;
thus did YHWH bless him....

Now it was on that same day
that Yitzhak's servants came and told him about the well that they had been digging,
they said to him: We have found water!
So he called it: Shiv'a / Swearing-Seven;
therfore the name of the city is Be'er-Sheva until this day.
(Genesis 26:12, 32-33, Fox)

Notice some key elements - the number seven, Abimelech and the whole wife/sister motif, a treaty, a well. But notice this earlier story about his father:

It was at about this time that Avimelekh [Abimelech], together with Pikhol the commander of his army, said to Avraham:
God is now with you in all that you do.
So-now, swear to me here by God:
If you should ever deal falsely with me, with my progeny and my posterity....!

...Then Avraham set seven ewe-lambs of the flock aside.
Avimelekh said to Avraham:
What means these seven ewe-lambs that you have set aside?
He said:
Indeed, these seven ewe-lambs you should take from my hand,
so that they may be a witness for me that I dug this well.
Therefore the place was called Be'er Sheva / Well of the Seven-Swearing,
for there the two of them swore (an oath).
Thus they cut a covenant in Be'er Sheva.
(Genesis 21:22-23, 27-32)

Notice that there are two accounts of Beer-Sheba being named, and two accounts of Abimelech being tricked by wily Patriarchs. Another thing you might notice is the name of God in each account. Notice in Abraham's story that "God" is primarily used, while in Isaac's story "Yahweh" is used. Now - this is known a doublet: the same basic story being told serveral times (in fact, the story is a rare "triplet" since it is also told of Abraham and the Pharoah technically). Both cases have Abimelech, both have the naming of Beer-Sheba and the other motifs I pointed out. We can easily resolve this however, by noticing that the story comes from two different sources: the Elohistic Author (E) for Abraham's (who primarily uses "Elohim" to refer to God), and the Yahwist Writer (J) for Isaac (who primarily uses "Yahweh"). This illustration of the different sources being edited together removes what could be seen as a big problem in the narrative concerning a doublet, and removes any cannon fodder a critic may have when he attempts to "disprove" the Biblical Account by positing the doublet as proof of an error. Sure - it is kind of an error in a way, but no insurmountable. Have a quick glance at the Genesis 1 story and notice that "Elohim" is used (but this time by the Priestly Writer (P) while in Genesis 2-3 "Yahweh" is used by the J Source, but with the strange combination of "Yahweh Elohim" (probably a linking device by a redactor).
Then one can notice the difference in when the animals were created, and it is no longer a huge problem - just two different Creation Accounts.

This solves many problems in the Biblical text.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

You mentioned David and the census, at first glance that looks like to be a disagreement. Yet I've found in the Samuel account, it seems to disagree with itself. It reads as though God moved David to count the people, yet then God is mad at David for counting the people? What's your take on that?

Very good! I was hoping you would notice that inconsistency! There are numerous problems in this chapter concerning the census. Perhaps these inconcsistencies prompted the Chronicler to "fix" them in his account? For an excellent summation of the problems in this chapter, P. Kyle McCarter Jr. writes

In the story as it has come down to us the cause of Yahweh's wrath is not given. It is, to use Caspari's expression, "anger for an unknown reason" (cited also by Hertzberg). And, in fact, the cause may not have been known. The king ordered a census, thus imperilling the people...and the order was given, we are told, on divine instigation. The result was a terrible plague. The conclusion was invetiable, therefore, that Yahweh was angry with Israel. In the course of the literary growth of the account, however, attention was focused on David's responsibility and guilt. The result is that in the final form of the story, Yahweh incites David to order the census (v. 1), then offers him three dire punishments for having done so (vv. 11-13)! It is no wonder that the Chronicler (or his tradition) resolved the contradiction by substituting Satan for the wrath of Yahweh in v. 1....

The connection between census and plague mentioned in Exodus 30:12 [due to purity requirements that were necessary for those counted as soldier - whoppers] suggests that in the original version of our story the census was followed spontaneously by an outbreak of pestilence. Yet we are told that Yahweh offered David a choice of disasters (v. 13). This is only one of several inconcinnities that the reader of chap. 24 will observe. A series of questions arises as the story unfolds. Is Yahweh's anger (v. 1) or David's sin (v. 10) responsible for the plague? That is, is the plague a punishment for some unnamed offense in Israel of for David's sin in taking the census? If the latter is the case, as vv. 10ff. seem to state clearly, how can this be reconciled with the statement in v. 1 that Yahweh incited David to order the census? What moved David to repent of the census in v. 10 before the plague began? Did Yahweh stop the plague before it reached Jerusalem (v. 16a) or did it continue (vv. 16b-17)? Did it stop when Yahweh was satisfied that the punishment was sufficient (v. 16) or when he heeded David's supplication after the erection of the altar (v. 25)? Did David build this altar in response to his vision of the divine envoy on the threshing floor (v. 16b) or in obedience to the command of Yahweh delivered by Gad (vv. 18-19)?
(II Samuel: A New Translation With Introduction and Commentary, AB 21, New York: Doubleday, 1984, pp. 508-509, 514)

I do agree with him that the Chronicler was both trying to "fix" the contradictions in the text, but also that he was generally very apologetic for David and his house -another reason for painting David in a better light. Notice that in the Chronicler's account of David many of the more unsavory episodes in his career are entirely ommitted or glossed over. This is not accidental, methinks. So my take is basically the above, without getting into all the questions that were raised above (which are interesting puzzles to try and figure out, with no definite answers unfortunately). What do you think of it, after having read the above?

Originally Posted by Heavenese

As we see in many instances in the Tanakh, there are references to books about the works of both David and Solomon. (And many other books that are lost) Maybe one of those books would possibly clear up the confusion there, instead of the view that the writer of Chronicles wasn't okay with God moving David to sin. Of course this could be seen as dodging the problem, but it's a possibility. Again, II Samuel's account seems to disagree with itself.

After the above, I think it's dangerous to use an argument from silence. It's possible that the account was compiled from several sources, thus resulting in the rather confused form we have it now. Remember the accounts of both Abraham and Isaac both getting into trouble with Abimelech? We do not need to posit an imaginary lost source in those cases - we can simply see that it was the result of the combining of separate sources by an editor at some later point. The same could be operative with the story of the Census. We do have two different accounts, yes - but the ideological and theological motivations of both were different. The writer of Samuel was not afraid to depict David in an unfavorable light (and he does this MANY times), while the writer of Chroniclers was keen on depicting David favorably? Why? What motivated each author? These are the interesting aspects of Biblical scholarship that I enjoy - trying to get into the minds of the authors and seeing what motivated them. Nothing comes out of a vacuum, so it as not as if they just sat down and decided to write a history for no reason. People just didn't do that. I'm reminded of The Patriot's Guide to American History (I think that was the name) - a book that is very conservative and anti-liberal in its approach, but contains historical accounts. These accounts, however, are colored to the extreme by the ideological biases of the author and his political beliefs. Biblical authors were not immune to their own ideological "spin" on stories and accounts. Just consider how the simple story of Esau being duped by his trickster brother into a moral tale of Esau's wickedness and Jacob's righteousness in fulfilling what God somewhow already wanted. Somebody spent a lot of time absolving Jacob of his sins! Many still do this today - they excuse virtually any behavior of a well-loved Biblical figure. I recall the outrage I received once from a friend who adored King David, especially after I mentioned that Joab might have been his personal mafia-type enforcer who did things to keep David's hands clean ha ha!

Originally Posted by Heavenese

Would you say these four distinct sources for the first five books, were aware of each other, that each author in their own sources tried to smooth the uncomfortable parts over? Or was it the final draft we have in our Bible's today, that tried to meld these thoughts together, to soften the uncomfortable parts?

Though there are many divergent views, I would personally say that some of the Sources were aware of the previous ones. For example, I think the P Source was fully aware of the J Source and was actively writing his own account to "fix" it, to perhaps even supercede it. He might have thought that the Yahwist's account contained far too many paganistic practices concerning sacrifice, the existence of gods other than Yahweh, etc. and actively set out to supplement (or replace) that account with one more inline with a priestly theology. Others view the Priestly Source as having been an entirely separate document that narrated it's own full history - with many parts removed by a later editor. I do not agree with this view.

So yes - I do think that in many instances, later sources actively engaged in smoothing out difficult parts or supplementing them. The Editor - or final Redactor (usually known as R) - of course did his own "smoothing out" of sources, but he also curiously kept many accounts that directly contradicted each other. The explanation given for this by many is that he had access to divergent traditions that were important to various different faith communities (say, the Northern Israelites vs the Souther Judahites, or the different competing priestly families claiming descent from either Moses or Aaron, or Zadok even, or the prophetic types vs the law types) but was too respectful of all of them to just thrown them away. He included them all. And the most fascinating thing about this is that the combination of the part created a much greater whole - wouldn't you agree? We can read through the Yahwist Source pretty well and get a complete story by itself, but its missing the near sacrifice of Isaac and other interesting stories. Likewise, if one just reads the Priestly material - one misses many of the interesting stories in Genesis 1-11 and is stuck with just Genesis 1, some genealogies and part of the Flood Narrative. It's always been a fascinating aspect of the Bible that - if used properly - can illuminate many things that were once obscure, or fix many problems that were once used against the Bible. It's a godsend for those dealing with doublets and contradictions.

Of course - one must slowly begin to realize the very human nature of the composition of the Bible, which is problematic for many. Many scholars still believe that the Bible is Divine - it had access to the Divine - but do not believe that God sat a writer down and said "Ok, start writing". To claim the latter is to make God look like a forgetful, ignorant story-teller (I say that NOT to offend) who is not that omnipotent. It's much more respectful to God's Glory to claim that while he may have "inspired" the authors to write about them, he did not tell them how or what to write (unless we understand the Prophets as relating directly the Word of God).

When you have time, check out the entry "Torah" in the Anchor Bible Dictionary. If it's too obscure and obtuse with it's verbiage, try to pick up the much more accessible book Friedmann published: Who Wrote the Bible?

Originally Posted by Heavenese

From my view that the Scriptures we have today are based on the original writings of Moses, it's expected to have some edits such as Abraham obeying God's commands. Yet not that he followed the complete Torah. There's jewish tradition that says God gave Adam one command, and to him that was the Torah in a sense. Then Noah had what the jewish people call the Noahide laws, and that was his kind of Torah. It could be the mention about Abraham following God's commands, is not necessarily saying Abraham followed the Law Moses received, but that He followed what God told him. Yet the complete Torah, the complete revelation came later, by Moses. So because Scripture was written down by writers who had the Ten Commandments and all the laws, I can see them putting in some terminology they can understand, but not that Abraham kept the laws given by Moses.

Very possible. As I pointed out and now what you are seeing - it's difficult to say what that single verse was referring to. Perhaps we'll never know. But it had a profound impact on how Judaism viewed their founding Father, as well as how Paul reacted against it with his own interpretation on it - again, just a single verse. Ask a Muslim, and they will point to the Koran, which discuesses this very argument between Jew and Christians. The Muslim answer is that Abraham was the very first Muslim who had faith in God and followed him by "submitting" to him (the essence of what the Koran teaches about one's relationship to Allah - to submit). So we actually have 3 main interpretive traditions that all claim their heritage from Abraham -but in vastly different ways. The essay I quoted in a pervious post by J. D. Levinson is extremely informative in this area, and I urge you to check it out sometime. If you need access to it - just let me know.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

I think we agree with most here. I do want to mention that Abraham did laugh at God telling him Sarah was going to give birth to the seed. That in and of itself isn't bad, because it could have been a friendly laugh and not a "Man you must be crazy" laugh. (Both Abraham and Sarah laughed)

Here the Documentary Hypothesis helps us again. Both Abraham and Sarah did not laugh in the same source, and that is possibly why it is treated differently at each occurence. Even the Hagar story is composed of multiple accounts (really, did she run away or been sent away twice?). Here - see the birth of Ishmael from the Priestly Source, interwoven into the J source (and notice that in the ANE it was the legal responsibility of a barren wife to provide children to her husband, even through the substition of a "handmaiden" or another wife. In a Patriarchal and polygamous society, this was normal and we have extra-Biblical legal documents attesting to this practice:

Priestly Source:
...and they parted, each man from the other:
Avram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled in the cities of the plain,
(Gen. 13:11b-12a)
[And] Sarai, Avram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian-woman, her maid, and at the end of ten years of Avram's being settled in the land of Canaan,
and gave her to her husband Avram as a wife for him. (Gen. 16:3)
And Hagar bore Avram a son,
and Avram called the name of the son whom Hagar bore:
Yishmael ["God-Hearkens" - notice it is a theophoric name, like Isra-El containing the name of God. Any Biblial name which has "-el" at the end is theophoric, much like names that end in "-yah", usually transliterated as "-iah" (Isaiah)].
And Avram was eighty years and six years old when Hagar bore Yishmael to Avram.

Now when Avram was ninety years and nine years old
YHWH was seen by Avram and said to him:
I am [El] Shaddai.
Walk in my presence! And be wholehearted!
I set my covenant between me and you,
I will make you exceedingly, exceedingly many.
Avram fell upon his face. (Genesis 16:15-17:1-3)

From 16:15 to the end of chapter 17 is all the Priestly Source. In it the covenant is established in which Abram will be a father of many nations, his named is changed from Abram ("Exalted Father") to Abraham ("Father of Many"), the land of Canaan is promised to him and his posterity as a holding for eternity with the stipulation that Abraham and his descendants are to keep the covenant of Circumcision. That's all - just one requirement. Sarai's name is changed to Sarah ("princess") and she is promised a son. Notice the blessing motif related to El Shaddai that the Priestly author was so fond of:

I will bless her, and I will give you a son from her,
I will bless her
so that she becomes nations,
kings of peoples shall come from her!

But Avraham fell on his face and laughed,
he said in his heart:
To a hundred-year-old man shall there be (children) born?
Or shall ninety-year-old Sara give birth?
Avraham said to God:
If only Yishmael might live in your presence! (Genesis 17:16-18)

Abraham demonstrates his love for his son - because after all, he IS his son no matter whence he came. God assures him that Sara will nonetheless bear a son and that he should be called Yitzhak (Isaac) - "He Laughs" and that his covenant shall be established with him through the ages. But Yishmael is not forgotten and is in fact blessed:

And as for Yishmael, I hearken to you:
Here, I will make him blessed, I will make him bear fruit, I will make him many, exceedingly, exceedingly -
he will beget twelve (tribal) leaders, and I will make a great nation of him.
But my covenant I will establish with Yitzhak, whom Sara will bear to you at this set-time, another year hence. (Genesis 17:20-21)

Notice the curious notice that Yishmael will have 12 tribes (very similar to Israel), and also that Sara will give birth in one year from the oracle of El Shaddai. Abraham then sets about circumcising himself and Ishmael and all the members of the house. Ishmael at this point is 13 years old. This is important, as the later Aqedah (the "Sacrifice" of Isaac) will introduce problems with his age. The next Priestly notice skips over the events of Sodom and Gomorrah rather quickly:

Thus is was, when God brought ruin on the cities of the plain, that God kept Avraham in mind and sent out Lot from the overturning,
when he overturned the cities where Lot had settled. (Genesis 19:29)

This makes a reference directly back to the Priestly mention that Lot separated and settled in the Plain. The promise to Abraham and Sara comes to fruition in the next P passage:

And YHWH dealt with Sara as he had spoken...
At the set-time of which God had spoken to him.
And Avraham called the name of his son, who was born to him, whom Sara bore to him:
Yitzhak / He Laughs.
And Avraham circumcised Yitzhak his son at eight days old, as God had commanded him.
And Avraham was a hundred years old when Yitzhak his son was born to him. (Genesis 21:1b, 2b-5)

Notice that "whom Sara bore to him" is emphasized and the Priestly author really, really likes geneologies and dates. This is a priestly mark as it would later be used in the time of Ezra to determine Jewish legimitacy. The story also reads fairly continuously in the examples above. What is missing are the stories of J and E from here. And most importantly what is missing - is the doublet of God's promise to Abraham that his wife Sara shall be the one who bears the son of the Covenant, again with laughing. This occurs in the story leading up to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in which Abraham demonstrates his courteous receival of visitors (an important theme in the Bible and the ANE, and the main reason Sodom was destroyed - the story of Abraham's treatment of his guests is meant to directly contrast the following story and the townspeople's treatement of their guests) - even when he does realize that Yahweh is among them at first. For those who really like intersting tidbits (no pun intended), Yahweh actuall eats some food in the account.

Abraham receives the promise of a son in the Yahwist Account and Sara laughs. Did she even know that it was Yahweh? It took Abraham a while to realize that his guests were no ordinary guests, so it's not impossible that she was merely laughing at some strangers promising her a child at her advanced age. The important thing to notice here is the doublet of the promise. It makes NO sense unless one posits multiple sources. God is not likely to repeat himself like a broken record, yet if we read the Torah without awareness of different sources and traditions - he seems like someone suffering from Dementia, which he probably isn't. It's just the result of the combination of sources.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

However once you combine the laughter in his heart and then Abraham's strong presentation of Ishmael being the seed after hearing God's plans, Abraham straight up doubted God there.

I'm not sure where he presents Ishmael as the seed once he has learned about God's plans. What he did was natural from an ANE perspective. The promise to Abram had been that a descendant would come from HIM. Sara had not yet been mentioned as part of that promise - and he barreness had already been emphasized earlier in chapter 11. Only after the promise was specific: "Sara will bear a child in a year who will be the recipient of the Covenant" does Abraham aquiesce. I don't think we can blame him for his actions with Hagar - for he did not go against God's will in any way that I can find. It's important to follow the promises and their increasing specificity concerning WHO would bear the child. Very important.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

The testing of Abraham pretty much established Abraham's trust in God. How can Isaac be the seed of promise, and yet he's dead? Yet Abraham, already seeing all of what God has done, including the impossible birth of Isaac, proved he trusted God by following Him fully.

We forget the horrible nature of this story. Other Biblical characters did the same thing. Even the law in Exodus in which the first-born was to be dedicated to God (and this DOES mean sacrifice) was later amended to show that they could be "redeemed". Jephthah's actions with his daughter show that human sacrifice was an acceptable means of achieving a goal, and the later prophets would condemn the Israelites for this practive while admitting that they did it. The prophets claimed that Yahweh gave them this command in Exodus in order to bring sin upon them, basically. Another prophet - horrified by this - claimed that Yahweh NEVER ordered sacrifice in this manner. Who are we to believe? It was obviously seen in different ways, especially with the law from Exodus.

Now how can Isaac be the seed if he's dead? What if Ishmael had been meant as the seed all along? Its' certainly possible that later tradition did not like this one bit (an Egyptian woman's son) and included Isaac - that there was an Ishmaelite tradition based in the South. It's possible, and there are some good arguments for it. An interesting thing to notice is that within the Sacrificial story of Isaac, it is primarily from the Elohistic Source. Notice the name of God in the story. The Elohistic narrative stops at exactly "And Abraham put out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son." (22:10). All of a sudden, language using "Yahweh" intrudes, and the messenger of Yahweh stops the sacrifice. The Elohistic narrative resumes with "Because you did this thing and didn't withold your son, your only one, that I'll bless you.... (v. 16) and later Abraham descends with only his two serving lads. In the Elohistic strand of the Pentateuch - Isaac NEVER again appears after this story. Food for thought.

[whoppers]

My original post was too long (what a surprise), so here's part 2

Originally Posted by Heavenese

Again, I think we agree concerning how traditions tried to explain these things. Yet I would again say, Christian tradition best seems to answer these things.

I think that a Muslim would also say that Islam best explains these things. From a person's viewpoint, their own tradition always seems the best and superior one. Many Christians must imagine that Jewish people were entirely confused by their own writings until the New Testament came around and finally figured it out. This is a very egotistical way of viewing things.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

For instance, did Abraham believe God would resurrect Isaac had he been sacrificed? The text doesn't say that was on Abraham's mind, but that is very logical thinking if Isaac is the promised seed. If the seed stayed dead, the one God already mentioned as the promised seed and there was no other, how would the promised be fulfilled that God made to Abraham? If Isaac died and stayed dead, that would make God's promise a lie.

There actually are Jewish traditions that yes - Isaac was raised from the dead after he was sacrificed, so from a certain point of view Abraham might have hoped this. But these traditions arose later than the text, and the idea of resurrection from the dead really wasn't a working model when Genesis was finally completed. Even the author of Ecclesiastes (or Qoheleth) was wrestling with the then-new Hellenistic idea of a life after death in Heaven, when he wrote "who knows whether the spirit of man goes up, or the spirit of an animal goes down"? He was dismissing the very idea that many Jews had adopted that ran counter to the previous writings about Sheol and "sleeping with one's fathers". Much of Ecclesiastes is a reaction against Greek Hellenistic ideas, a clue as to its author and time. It is amazing that it entered the canon in the first place. It was so depressing that an editor had to add an ending to it that gave some sort of hope to the very bleak picture of existence that Qoheleth painted.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

So it is plausible if this is a depiction of real events, Abraham expected for Isaac to be raised again.

Though the subject of life after death in the Hebrew Bible is a large one, with the only real reference to it coming from the very late Book of Daniel - I would personally not see Abraham (if he existed) as hoping for a bodily resurrection of Isaac. The importance of children and fertility was exactly becauase the ancient Israelites (and the general ANE) believed that this was the only way of "living forever" - they did not yet believe in an afterlife. Even the great Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh dismissed the idea that humans were like gods and could live forever, or even rise from the dead. The Epic is an amazing early work that very nicely sums up what it means to be human: mortality. And this mortality is what made childbearing such an important focus of people, and the presence of fertility gods so important. A woman's only purpose in life (as seen in the eyes of the ANE Patriarchal systems) was to bear children. If she could not do that - she was viewed as worthless. This is why the story of Sarai's barenness was so riveting and suspenseful. To anyone listening to the stories, they must have been amazed that Sarai had waited so long before providing Abram with another wife, or that Abram himself waited so long - since he technically did not need permission to marry an additional woman.

My point is that it would be out of place in the Hebrew Bible to expect Isaac to have been raised from the dead. This critique applies just as well to the later traditions that said he was. It just was not an ANE concept. We like to read it back into the text because we are now familiar with the idea, but a perusal of Scripture will show the definite finality of death. One example:

My days go swifter than a shuttle;
They run out without hope.
Remember my life is mere wind;
My eye will not again see good.
They eye that looks will not spy me.
Your eye will be on me, and I'll be gone.
A could evaporates and vanishes,
So he that goes down to Sheol does not come up;
He returns to his house no more,
His home never sees him again.
(Job 7:6-10, AB)

Job tells God that even he will not be able to find him once he dies and ends up in Sheol. This idea is repeated several times in the book, highlighting the notion that not even God can bring people back from the dead. This was in a time when the concept of a "soul" was not present, and the word "nephesh" meant - in it's basic and well-known form - "life", as in "my nephesh was destroyed". Only later, again under the Hellenistic ideas of a life after death, was the Hebrew concept of a "nephesh" seen as a "soul" that lives on beyond death and is separate from the body. Thus why it was translated as "soul" or "spirit" and understood in that sense. The idea, however, is alien to the Hebrew Bible. When you died, you died. The very few people who did not die were "taken" - whatever that may mean.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

Now we have Abraham's statement to Isaac when he questioned his father about the sacrifice, that God would provide the lamb for sacrifice. It was a prophetic statement, and I don't think I'm reading my personal views into the author's intent here. However, what God provided Abraham on that mountain, wasn't a lamb, but a ram. If Abraham's comments were prophetic, the author would have had a lamb show up. This tells us Abraham's statement didn't totally refer to what was going on here, but as it is said, "In the mount of the LORD it will be seen."

Hmmm... let's take a look at the passage. I think it's dangerous to take an idea of Christianity that is based on Jewish sacrificial practices (as when the author of the Gospel of John saw Jesus as the Passover Lamb - against the other Gospel writers, who give a different day for his death since they were not trying to draw this connection) and then find any reference in the Bible to a "lamb" as foreshadowing Jesus. Those who see Jesus in this passage do have a good reference from their own traditional view, but it was probably the furthest thing from the author's mind. This idea is based on two of the "Four Assumptions" - that Scipture is crpytic and relevant (cryptic, as in the passage has a hidden meaning, a hidden prophecy; relevant, as in the passage MUST have some meaning for us today, thus insert prophecy of Jesus here). These assumptions are commonly used, but are not necessary. The story is just as powerful and dramatic without cheapening it and turning it into a prophecy, as if events narrated in the Hebrew Bible were just "preparing the way" or Christian foreshadowing. That's a very selfish way of looking at it, without any evidence from the Hebrew Bible that it was it's intention. Again - Islam can claim similar things for both the "Old" and the "New" testaments - Jesus was just another prophet, like Mohammed. What's wrong with this? Well, I'm sure you will have a problem with it for many reasons, but then apply that thinking to Christian views of the "Old" Testament.

Another point to notice is that Isaac is never referred to as "unblemished" or "perfect" - which one would expect if it were a prophecy of Jesus. But again - it is the Gospel of John who first makes this reference to Jesus as "The Lamb" of the Passover, not just any old sacrificial lamb. Also, that in the final form of the story Isaac is NOT sacrificed.

Now after these events it was
that God tested Avraham
and said to him:
Avraham!
He said:
Here I am.
He said:
Pray take your son,
your only-one,
whom you love,
Yitzhak,
and go-you-forth to the land of Moriyya / Seeing,
and offer him up there as an offering-up
upon one of the mountains
that I will tell you of.
(Genesis 22:1-2, Fox)

So the initial command is to offer up his "only son" (what happend to Ishmael?) as an "offering-up". The connecting line between "offering" and "up" in this translation is to let the reader know that the original Hebrew was just one word (‘ōlāh), rather than two. This is helpful for those who want a sense of the original Hebrew, and also why I usually prefer this translation over others when citing the Torah. The specifics of the "animal" is not named since the very detailed laws of Sacrifice were not yet supposedly known. The word used is the normal word for a "burnt offering" (‘ōlāh)- Fox translates it as "offering-up" because that is its literal meaning, or "an ascending offering". The verb used in the passage is the normal verb used in relation to "offering-up" and in conjunction with the noun can be literally rendered as "to make ascend an ‘ōlāh". It was a burnt offering in which the entire animal is consumed and the smoke "ascends" to the heavens - thus why Isaac mentions the fire. This term was also used for child sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible. It has been convincingly argued that this was the oldest Biblical form of sacrifice, and was even used by the author of Job to help give the book an archaic sense -when Job "offered-up" an ‘ōlāh for his children. It was seen as an offering that had atoning value - the offerer could appease the deity with such a sacrifice. In the days when gods were viewed as actually living in their temples, and burnt offerings were seen as food-gifts to them, this ended up being the basic offering format. With Leviticus and the Priestly Author, the sacrifical system gets much more specific and more types of offerings are specificed for various funtions - but the ‘ōlāh still remained the standard atonement, gift-sacrifice. This shouldn't be surprising in the story of Isaac since it was common to offer a child (especially the first-born) to a deity to appease him/her. There is the story of the Israelites attacking the Moabites in which the Moabite King - out of desperation - sacrifices his first-born son, his heir, and this sacrifice is so effective that "a great wrath fell upon the Israelites" from Chemosh, the Moabites main god. The Israelites were forced to retreat. Jephthah vows to offer a sacrifice to Yahweh if he Yahweh grants him victory, and he does: his own daughter. Sacrifices of this type had to have some value or they weren't truly sacrificing anything. Isaac was a valuable sacrifice since he was "his only son" and part of the entire dramatic story involving the Promise.

A problem arises with the "only son" part of the narrative, which might help the idea that Ishmael was unknown to the Elohistic author. Jewish tradition sees it differently and supplise an additional dialogue between Abraham and God - since the dialogue is so spares and Abraham is so silent. For every line that God utters, they have Abraham asking for more details in a possible attempt to forestall the sacrifice.

"Pray take your son,"
"My son? Which one?"
"your only-one"
"But I have two - Isaac and Ishmael"
"whom you love",
"I love them both"
"Yitzhak" [Isaac]
"Oh"

Jewish tradition couldn't imagine that Abraham, the same man that argued and pleaded with God to spare Sodom for the sake of fifty, then twenty five, etc.. innocent people, would be so silent when commanded to sacrifice the son of the Promise so they came up with the above delightful dialogue. It also helped to solve the problem of the troubling "your only son" words. They were also worried that he started immediately, as if eager to get the deed over with. Notice how often "his son" or "my son" is used in the narrative - hammering the point home to the listender or reader:
Avraham started-early in the morning,

he saddled his donkey,
he took his two serving-lads with him and Yitzhak his son,
he split wood for the offering-up
and arose and went to the place that God had told him of.
On the third day Avraham lifted up his eyes
and saw the place from afar.
Avraham said to his lads:
You stay here with the donkey, [what - no camel? ]
and I and the lad wish to go yonder;
we wish to bow down and then return to you.
(Genesis 21:3-5)

Abraham tells them that they are just going to worship - which is an outright lie if read without the knowledge that in the end of the story they actually do worship and return. But in the immediate context, it is a deception. Would he really tell them his purpose? Did he even tell his wife? She is dead after this story - perhaps from the heartbreak of losing Isaac or from the heartbreak of learning that her husband was willing to just sneak off and sacrifice their son. Did Abraham know that God would stay his hand, as you suggest? Is this verse evidence of that? If so - I propose, it would not have been a "test" if he had known the outcome, and the entire point of the story would have been lost: Abraham's willingess to obey God no matter what.

So with this deception in mind, we can go on. Some Jewish Tradition says that Isaac knew he was going to be sacrificed and agreed to it, otherwise there was no way an elderly Abraham could have overpowered him and tied him up - judging from at least on Source's indication of his age. It even goes so far as to state that Isaac demanded he be tied up tightly lest he flinch and therefore not be worthy of being the sacrifice. There is so much tradition behind this story because it's a very powerful and memorable story. In the following, the fire had probably been prepared and transported in the form of coals - unless one wants to envision Abraham carrying an actual fire, which is also possible if it was some sort of torch, but the journey up the mountain argues against the latter. Again - Jewish Tradition states that he only gave Isaac the wood because he was trying to keep all the dangerous things away from him - the knife and the fire -, thus again demonstrating Abraham's love for his son.

Avraham took the wood for the offering-up,
he placed them upon Yitzhak his son,
in his hand he took the fire and the knife.
Thus the two of them went together.
Yitzhak said to Avraham his father, he said:
Father!
He said:
Here I am, my son.
He said:
Here are the fire and the wood,
but where is the lamb for the offering-up?
Avraham said:
God-will see-for-himself to the lamb for the offering up, my son.
Thus the two of them went together.
(Genesis 21:6-8)

Again, it appears as if Abraham is deceiving his son - whether he realizes or not that an animal will actually be produced in Isaac's place. The final form of the text, of course, knew that one would be - so this may be a foreshadowing of that event. Or it could simply be (as is the most likely) an attempt on Abraham's part to not reveal to his beloved son that he was about to offer him up as a sacrifice. I don't know about you, but Jewish Tradition aside - most people aren't willing to let themselves be killed simply because their parents have talked to God. So I think it's reading too much into it to claim that since the "lamb" mentioned by Abraham does not match the "ram" later provided, it is a prophecy. Using the narrative so far - it's plainly a deception on Abraham's part.

Now, an interesting way of reading this passage is not "God-will see-for-himself to the lamb for the offering up, my son" but actually "God-will see-for-himself to the lamb for the offering: my son"! This absolves Abraham from telling an outright lie or deception, but cages it to a point where Isaac can still be unaware of the intent. The suggestion is an interesting one (not my own, but a fairly famous one) and shows the variety of ways in which a line can be read in the Hebrew Bible, producing different meanings.

E. A. Speiser, in his well known translation and commentary on Genesis (Anchor Bible 1, 1965) writes concerning "Thus the two of them went together" that "This short and simple sentence ...covers what is perhaps the most poignant and eloquent silence in all literature". Finally, we get to the deed:

They came to the place that God had told him of;
there Avraham built the slaughter-site
and arranged the wood
and bound Yitzhak his son
and placed him on the slaughter-site atop the wood.
And Avraham stretched out his hand,
he took the knife to slay his son.
(Genesis 21:9-10)

Abraham binds him (thus the Jewish way of referring to the story as "The Binding of Isaac" - The Aqedah - rather than the Christian misleading title "The Sacrifice of Isaac") and gives further evidence (again, discounting Jewish later tradition) that Isaac wasn't really a willing participant. The narrative then slows to a crawl - almost like a modern movie in slow motion - with the references to Abraham stretching out his hands...... taking the knife up to slay his son...... The drama is increased in this way. Everyone waits for the outcome! The "messenger of Yahweh" appears and stays his hand, and

He said:
Do not stretch out your hand against the lad,
do not do anything to him!
For now I know
that you are in awe of God -
you have not witheld your son, your only-one, from me.
(Genesis 21:12)

Again we can notice the intrusion of a Yahwistic figure in the midst of an Elohistic narrative, which might argue of the exclusion for the first 3 lines above since it reverts back to "God" shortly. This is conjecture, but it has some basis. Also arguing for it is the mention of Isaac as his "only son" again - the Yahwist fully aware of Ishmael, but the Elohist perhaps not.

Avraham lifted up his eyes and saw:
there, a ram caught behind in the thicket by its horns!
Avraham went,
he took the ram
and offered it up as an offering-up in place of his son.
Avraham called the name of that place: YHWH Sees.
As the saying is today: On YHWH's mountain (it) is seen.
(Genesis 21:13-14)

A ram is caught in the thicket - but considering the deceptions that Abraham had been involved in when speaking to both the serving lads and Isaac, this shouldn't cause any problems to the point where we must needs posit this entire story as a prophecy of the Gospel of John's Christ! Too many details in the story argue against it - which I have mentioned previously: Isaac wasn't sacrifice, he wasn't unblemished, etc. and the very plain fact that the author of Genesis never mentions a "Messiah" or even "Jesus". While later tradition may have invoked a prophecy from this passage, this is simply another example of interpretation - NOT reading what the text actually says!

Originally Posted by Heavenese

So from that, even though the authors of the Pentateuch (who's work I believe is based on solid writings of Moses) didn't necessarily had Jesus on their mind, that they sought to seek salvation from sin and such, Jesus best answers their writings.

Perhaps from what I wrote above I do not have to answer that I feel that Moses wrote the Pentateuch or even a large portion of it, but I will point out that the sacrificial system worked just fine as an atonement for sin and ritual impurity. This is one of the least-understood aspects of the Hebrew Bible by Christians - the Sacrifical System - and it suffered many critiques by the Christian scholars of the 1800s and early 1990s to the point that the anti-semitism involved was quite involved and apparant. Julius Wellhausen - that great scholar who first brought together the disparate ideas of the Documentary Hypothesis into the basic form we know today - called Judaism a "twisted branch" because he envisioned Israel's history as consisting of 3 basic steps: Patriarchism, in which a personal relationship with God was available directly; Prophecy, in which the Prophets represented the best examples of how one could relate to God; and then the Sacrificial System that became important to Judaism - which he believed took the simple and honest worship of God and turned it into an unnaproachable system of laws and prescriptions that put a great barrier between the people and God. This was a very anti-semitic way of viewing Judaism, which was very common in Germany in the late 1880s and early 1990s finally culminating in the Holocaust, and its Protestant roots are evident. Catholocism had been a religion of rituals and priests and traditions, and the Protestant Reformation was a direct rejection of all of these aspects of religion. The Protestants promoted Sola Scriptura and made the Bible available in the common tongues so that each person could be his own "priest" and read Scripture for himself - giving him a more direct access to God. The cultic features of Catholocism were viewed just as badly as the cultic features of Judaism and seen as "perversions" of God's Will. This Protestant Christian view was very much in favor of a new theolgy, one that would "reclaim" the Prophetic times and fully supersede the ritual aspects that they found so distasteful. This presented a great barrier to Jewish Scholars entering into Biblical Scholarship and engaging in the conversation. They have no finally joined and have been a welcome addition - as they should always have been!

However - the Sacrifical System in the Hebrew Bible DID achieve its goals, no matter how we want to distatstefully view it through the lens of later ideas of "Heaven" and a "soul" and the "Lamb of God" becoming the final sacrifice - thus somehow negating the Torah, which was to be "eternal" according to the words of the Torah. One must remember Jesus' words in Matthew to help mitigate against this very negative view of Judaism and the Hebrew Bible.

Originally Posted by Heavenese

I can understand the scholar's view of Scripture, and the textual criticims, but I think I can provide some historical evidence for my hypothesis. Also some thought experiments concerning what the writers could have had in mind, to present my case. I'll stop right here for today, and let you finish responding to my other posts. Then I'll try to respond to all your posts in a more condensed form.

Okay, I would be interested in your historical evidence - but please try to accomodate some of the things I have written (if you see the logic in them) into it and see if it helps or hinders it. I apologize for the very long post - but, sometimes its inevitable!

[whoppers]

Originally Posted by theflipflop

I've been reading a fascinating book called "the Mythmaker - Paul and the invention of Chrstianity." The author, Maccoby, "proves" using historical and biblical sources that:

1. Paul was not a Pharisee. He was born a gentile and died one, too.
2. Jesus was a Pharisee, but was a regular garden variety failed messiah. He was entirety unfamiliar with all the Pauline Hellinistic/pagan/gnostic ideas attributed to him, and would have refuted those ideas had he ever heard them.
3. James and Peter were Nazarrenes and all their beliefs were indistinguishable from normative Pharasee teachings. They believed Jesus was messiah, but were completely opposed to the outlandish ideas of PAul. And they rejected Paul and his teachings in Paul's lifetime.
4. Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of chrstianity as a new religion. Only Paul and his followers abrogated the Torah - not James and Peter and the Jerusalem church.
5. The entire Saint Stephen story is a hoax.
6. The Ebionites writings were suppressed by the church but clearly show the points above, as well as the fact that Paul began his career as a spurned Jewish convert who joined the ranks of the Sadducees, which was a non normative strain of Judaism that thankfully died out, as a henchman responsible for kidnapping Nazarrenes for the roman government.

A friend of mine going thru. A sincere Jewish conversion process in my shul says in his former Chrstian life, his church leaders banned the reading of this book due to its problematic nature with Chrstian belief.

Originally Posted by Woodrow LI

I can not speak for all Jews but the ones I know personally, seem to have good reasons to believe Paul was not Jewish.

Jewishness is not as simple a concept as us non-Jews think it is. Technically I am more Jewish than Paul was, However any Jew will immediately tell you I am Muslim no matter what my Mother's family tree is.

I have his 1973 work Revolution in Judea: Jesus and the Jewish Resistance and it a fascinating work with much material worth repeating. Some of it is questionable, but it is an excellent book. Heavensee is correct in pointing out the scholarship has shown very convincingly that his views that Paul was not Jewish are far-fetched, old-fashioned and extremely apologetic. I cannot agree with him on this point, but on many of the other points that were mentioned - I do agree.

1- Paul was a Jewish Pharisee until his conversion to Christianity. He had Roman citizenship, but the available evidence indeed shows that he was Jewish and a Pharisee. Seeing as Pharisees were the main Jewish group that believed in an afterlife (as opposed to the Saducees who were very strict in their observance to the written Torah, as opposed to the Pharisees habit of expanding upon it) - this fits Paul's views perfectly, especially his well-known reinterpretation of Torah.

2- Jesus might have been a Pharisee - he certainly had many Pharisaic notions - but from the accounts of his family and social status, it is highly unlikely that he was a full-blown Pharisee in the strictest definition of the term.

3- I agree that James and Peter were completely at odds with Paul's revision of both Torah and the mesasge of Jesus as found in some of the Gospels. Of course - since Paul was not a direct disciple and his seizure on the road resulting in his conversion is highly suspect - it makes sense that one would rather refer to James and Peter for more factual views on Jesus and Torah. Add to that the fact that his letters are the earliest Christian writings in the New Testament and the Canonical Gospels started reaching their final form around the time of the 1st Jewish Revolt of the 1st Century with the Gospel of John coming much later, and he gives very little "historical" information concerning Jesus besides the fact that he was killed - it's highly probable that he didn't have access to any Gospels, but just some oral stories circulating. If he had more access, we would expect more details - and perhaps he would not have been so insistent that Jesus did away with the need for Torah observance for Gentiles.

4- I do agree that without Paul, Christianity would never have become the Torah-rejecting religion that is has become. I also feel that without Paul, Christianity would never have become a popular religion in the first place - especially appealing to Gentiles. For all Paul got wrong in interpreting Scripture, he sure would be a good choice as a CEO for a struggling startup company!!

5- The story of Saint Stephen might well have been a forgery, seeing as Acts is full of historical problems when compared to Paul's actual letters detailing his ministry. I'm not an expert on Acts, however, so I cannot definitely claim whether it was or not. I can merely point out that Acts is problematic historically in many areas. Either that - or Paul is a liar in his letters, which is quite possible since he claimed that he would - for the sake of Christianity - take on the guise of a Greek to the Greeks and a Jew to the Jews.

6- The first part of the statement, concerning the Ebioinite writings being suppressed, is certainly backed up by scholarship - but the rest of the comment.... not so much.

Maccoby is certainly an interesting writer, and I highly reccomend his earlier work I mentioned - but his theories on Paul must be taken with an enormous grain of salt: they have not survived the peer-review process intact or simple fact-checking. They are highly subjective and have obvious motivations that have colored his results. This is not good scholarship.


"Jewishness" today is not a simple concept, but that is because of the secularism that is rampant in today's world which has seen the idea of Jewish people (is "Hebrew" better?) split into concepts of both race and religion. Plenty of people are "Jewish", but are not "Jewish" ha ha - if that makes sense. In the ancient world, one who was Jewish usually practiced Judaism - even if it was in one of the many different traditions that Judaism had back then. I don't think the separation that we use today was that applicable back then.

[Heavenese]

Thanks for you responses Whoopers. I'll take some time to study them and get back to you. I will also take a look at that PDF download on the camels. I do want to respond to one thing I've scanned over in one of your responses, concerning the Bible not being the oldest historical writing. How Sumerian writings are older, and how it could from that hold more truths than the Bible about our origin. Based on that, you would be right. Yet my view is the writings of Moses (which the Pentateuch is based on in my view) were based on real conversation with God. God knowing our origin of course, would know everything that happened since the very beginning. My view is that the other writings before the Bible, are distorted views concerning the past. I believe there are truths in them, but the Bible is the whole truth.

So that is just a nugget there. I'll be back possibly tomorrow or the next day, and respond to your posts.

[theflipflop]

Originally Posted by whoppers

1- Paul was a Jewish Pharisee until his conversion to Christianity. He had Roman citizenship, but the available evidence indeed shows that he was Jewish and a Pharisee. Seeing as Pharisees were the main Jewish group that believed in an afterlife (as opposed to the Saducees who were very strict in their observance to the written Torah, as opposed to the Pharisees habit of expanding upon it) - this fits Paul's views perfectly, especially his well-known reinterpretation of Torah.

The "proof" Maccoby brings are a number of "legal" arguments Paul makes in his writings. Paul's ability to make a concise, Talmudic-style arguement are shown over and again to be on about the level of my eleven year old, who has been studing Talmud in his Jewish day school for 2 years now.

I don't say that to critisize (particularly since my 11 year old is a pretty talented Mishnaic "scholar" among his child peers), but Paul's claim is that he studyed with the greatest Talmudic scholar of the time, perhaps ever, Rabben Gamenliel. Only the finest scholars of that time period would have had access to such a great Talmudic mind, and if it's true that Paul ever did meet or study with Rabben Gamenliel, Paul's total utter lack of Talmudic talent just proves the point made above that Paul was an angry, spurned Jew (or convert) who had a serious personal ax to grind with the Jews, who rejected his fantastic claims to notariety.

When angry and spurned, what would many people do? Attack! Create a new religion that deligitimzes the Jews and kicks them out of their own tree by canceling their heritage. And then acuse them of deicide (even if indirectly) to ensure the entire world one day will join the attack.

[whoppers]

Originally Posted by theflipflop

The "proof" Maccoby brings are a number of "legal" arguments Paul makes in his writings. Paul's ability to make a concise, Talmudic-style arguement are shown over and again to be on about the level of my eleven year old, who has been studing Talmud in his Jewish day school for 2 years now.

Hey, I'm totally with you on your view of Paul's interpretational ability! As I pointed out in the passage concerning Abraham's "righteousness" - he just wasn't that good at following an argument to its logical conclusion ha ha.

Originally Posted by theflipflop

I don't say that to critisize (particularly since my 11 year old is a pretty talented Mishnaic "scholar" among his child peers), but Paul's claim is that he studyed with the greatest Talmudic scholar of the time, perhaps ever, Rabben Gamenliel. Only the finest scholars of that time period would have had access to such a great Talmudic mind, and if it's true that Paul ever did meet or study with Rabben Gamenliel, Paul's total utter lack of Talmudic talent just proves the point made above that Paul was an angry, spurned Jew (or convert) who had a serious personal ax to grind with the Jews, who rejected his fantastic claims to notariety.

When angry and spurned, what would many people do? Attack! Create a new religion that deligitimzes the Jews and kicks them out of their own tree by canceling their heritage. And then acuse them of deicide (even if indirectly) to ensure the entire world one day will join the attack.

This is all very possible (and interesting!) - but is it very probable, given the data that we have? If Maccoby wasn't so insistent on showing that Christianity sprang forth and had nothing to do with Judaism, then I wouldn't be so wary of his conclusions. But it seems that Maccoby has an axe to grind as well.

The birth of Christianity definitely had Judaic roots - that's pretty hard to deny. But it also had Greek Hellenistic roots. The importance of Paul to early Christianity, and the uneasy relationship between early Christians and the Hebrew Bible, was best illustrated by Marcion - a Paulist who produced his own canon of Scripture which was basically everything written by Paul, the Gospel of Luke and none of the Hebrew Bible. He recognized that Paul's teachings were incompatible with the Hebrew Bible. This was in 144 CE. But why was he then branded a heretic? Becuase the Christians retained the Hebrew Bible in an effort to demonstrate to Rome that their new religion was older than it appeared, most likely. This had a great appeal to the Romans, who mistrusted anything new and respected the old. It was probably for this important reason that the Hebrew Bible was kept (but given the derogatory term the "Old" Testament/Covenant), despite Paul's influence: for stability.

It may be a confusing mishmash of teachings and traditions, but I cannot go as far as Maccoby in some of his conclusions which try to neatly delineate a large wall between Judaism and the birth of Christianity.