Christmas in the First Century BCE

When we attempt to grasp the meaning of Christmas today we approach a conceptual event loaded with 2000 years of traditions, cultural baggage, misconceptions, faux images, and layered worldviews. It’s difficult to pull back the layers and see the event in the way first century Jews would have understood it. I think there are three primary ways – all interrelated – in which one would have understood the Christmas story: 1) coming of the Messiah, 2) fulfillment of Yahweh’s covenant to Abraham, and 3) the end of exile. I want to focus on the latter because I think it was the most relevant to the first century Jew.

The Babylonian exile (597-539 BCE) was one of the most important events in the history of Israel. It was seen as the time when Yahweh had abandoned his people because of their sins, allowing gentile enemies to conquer the Promised Land, destroy the house of God, and rule over Yahweh’s people. Yet God through his prophets had promised an eventual end to this exile and salvation for Israel from its enemies. Indeed, the Israelites did eventually return to Palestine, but while the physical exile had ended, the Jewish people believed that the spiritual exile had not ended. While Yahweh had returned his people to their homeland, there were things that indicated that the exile was not yet over. What things? For one, Israel was still being ruled over by pagan gentiles (first the Persians, then the Greeks, the Syrians, and, in the first century, the Romans). For another, the Temple had not been rebuilt to its former glory. Most importantly, many of the prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah had yet to be fulfilled, particularly those that foretold the return of Yahweh to his people. So what was preventing the complete ending of exile? The answer was sin against God. The very thing that caused exile in the first place. The first century Jews believed that exile continued because God had not yet fully forgiven Israel for its corporate sin.

So note the proclamation of Gabriel to Zechariah concerning John the Baptist in Luke 1:16-17 (cf. Mark 1:1-3):

“He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

This prophecy concerns the corporate forgiveness of the corporate sin of Israel still in exile. This is about Israel repenting of their sins because Yahweh (the Lord) is returning to his people as he promised that he would (Isaiah 40:3; Malachi 3:1-2). This is about the end of exile.

Now note the prophecy of Zechariah at the birth of John (Luke 1:68-79):

“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us — to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

Again, Yahweh is returning to his people, Israel. He will bring salvation, specifically salvation from Israel’s enemies, i.e., the gentile rulers, i.e., Rome. John is preparing the way for this salvation by telling the people to repent of their sins. Yahweh is offering the forgiveness of sins to his people to end exile, and he is doing it primarily first through the ministry of John.

For the first century Jew who had ears to hear and eyes to see, he would have understood the Christmas story first and foremost as an end to Exile. That Yahweh was forgiving the sins of his people and returning to them to bring salvation by delivering them from their enemies. A first century Jew would have understood references to “forgiveness of sins” as denoting the specific sins that caused and continued the exile. “Salvation” would have been understood, not as an individualistic rescue of “going to heaven when you die”, but as a corporate rescue for the nation of Israel from its pagan enemies. There are various subset issues of this conception, but it would be the general thrust of how the original audience would have understood the good tidings of great joy.

 

Acts of God

"I see that your home insurance policy covers Acts of God. However, we’ve determined that this specific hurricane was an act of Ba`al. Unfortunately, with your current policy, you’re only covered for Yahweh. So unless you are willing to invoke the Jeroboam Clause of your policy - see section 12, lines 28-30 of 1 Kings – and equate Yahweh with the Ba'al cult, then I’m afraid we’ll be unable to help you. Granted, while pantheonic religions like Ba`al worship offer wider coverage over weather-related claims like lightening, wind, rain, and fertility, the premium is first fruits of the harvest and the deductible is a human sacrifice. So not much different from standard ACA healthcare coverage. Given your situation, though, I would advise you to remain with the Yahweh plan. It has a great life insurance policy, covering all claims. And your public adjustor has already negotiated a settlement on your behalf."

The Investigation by Peter Weiss

The other day I finished reading The Investigation by Peter Weiss. This play took the actual transcripts of the 1963-1965 Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials and arranges the material into 11 cantos giving witness and defendant testimonies of the concentration camps experience from beginning to end. Obviously, this is a tough read but an interesting experience.

I’m very interested in how people think and why people believe what they believe. The next step beyond that interest is why people behave the way they behave. How does power work, particularly within an organization, be it a nation, corporation, or business? How does power dominate individuals within a system?

Theologian Walter Wink assessed the nature of power in the Bible in his Powers Trilogy, discussing how a minority of people can dominate a vast collective through fear. He called it the delusional-dominating system.

So what was most interesting to me in this play was how the system dominated the soldiers, guards, administrators, doctors, and prisoners to perpetuate such evil. So say that they were all just evil is incorrect and an over-simplification. The clichéd excuse we now mock, “We just followed orders”, is also a rather more complex scenario than we would like to think. It seemed that a system was created in which every individual was given tasks that in of itself was not horrendous but when set in motion as an aggregate committed these crimes. Every person could claim that they were simply engaged in a detached task, by orders, on threat of punishment, which could be considered individual and morally removed from collective result. Blame was everywhere and blame was nowhere. There was a practical, rational, moral, and psychological disassociation inherent in all the parts of the system that kept it working, that propped it up. The system could not have maintained itself any other way.

Even concentration camp prisoners were forced to carry out these tasks on fear of death. Should they be held responsible for their actions within this system? If not, then what about concentration camp guards who were forced to carry out tasks on fear of death? Auschwitz had a specific prison block to punish guards.

So I am continuing my studies into how people think and believe and how this relates to the theory of the delusional-dominating system. I am re-reading Tom Stoppard’s play, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, about the Soviet practice of treating political dissidence as a form of mental illness.  I’ve also begun reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago about the forced labor camp system of the Soviet Union. A number of Solzhenitsyn works are probably in order. He himself used the term “The Great Lie” to designate the method by which the Soviet leaders dominated the Russian people. Socialist systems (like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany) tend to be excellent areas of study for this subject.

Marginalia on Casanova (Saint Orpheus’s Breviary, Book 1)

Thursday night I finished reading Marginalia on Casanova, which is Book 1 of Miklós Szentkuthy’s Saint Orpheus’s Breviary series. In this book and through the character of St. Orpheus, Szentkuthy uses the exegetical techniques of Karl Barth’s magnum opus Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans as the basic structure to provide commentary on the Memoirs of Casanova as the starting point for synthesizing 2,000 years of European culture, religion, philosophy, art, etc. The aim of the entire series is to find the human ideal and an acceptable lifestyle that a thinking mind in search of happiness can hope for after the broadest possible circle of historical, cultural, and religious experiences.

Given this expansive aim it should be no surprise that the subject matters of Marginalia are extensive, profound, and meandering. A summation of its contents would be both impossible and pointless.

I will note, however, one passage in the book in which Szentkuthy correctly states that the ultimate endgame of the Christian hope for the future is not a disembodied existence in heaven but resurrection of the physical body for an existence on a redeemed earth. It’s nice to see someone get this right.

Tithing

The concept of the tithe, the giving of ten-percent of something, paid either as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to the government was a widespread practice in the Ancient Near East. It is found in documents all over Mesopotamia, not just in Israel. The Old Testament shows that it was practiced by the Patriarchs even before the Law of Moses was given (Genesis 14:18-20; 28:12-22). The Law of Moses established the tithe in Israel which functioned more like taxes and were mandatory, not optional giving. This tithe was distributed locally "within towns" to support the Levites and assist the poor (Deuteronomy 14:28). So the tithe in Israel was specifically directed towards supporting the Levitical priesthood and the Temple system. This is why no specific command to tithe appears in the New Testament. Without the priesthood/Temple system, the tithe becomes meaningless, certainly not mandatory.

However, the New Testament does promotes giving while not requiring a tithe. 2 Corinthians 9:7 talks about giving cheerfully, 2 Corinthians 8:12 encourages giving what you can afford, 1 Corinthians 16:1–2 discusses giving weekly (although this is a saved amount for Jerusalem), 1 Timothy 5:17–18 exhorts supporting the financial needs of Christian workers, Acts 11:29 promotes feeding the hungry wherever they may be and James 1:27 states that pure religion is to help widows and orphans.

So while tithing is not required for Christians, the New Testament encourages giving for the purposes of the Kingdom of God. If someone wants to tithe as the basis for their giving, that is fine as well. There is nothing that prohibits a Christian from doing so. Just like there is nothing that prohibits a Christian from eating kosher if they so desire.

How Big is Your Worship?

How big is your worship? When you worship the creator of the universe, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus, does such worship appear big or small in your estimation?

I’ve written before that “worship is a lifestyle which one reveres and honors God. It is an ongoing act which should never cease. However, there are times when one puts a special emphasis on worship (bowing down on one’s face and such). There are also times when groups of people put a special emphasis on collective worship (i.e., worship services).”

This remains true. Worship is a broad concept encompassing the whole of the Christian life. It involves our devotion to God as our creator and our allegiance to his plans for both the world and for our personal lives.

As I’ve also written, “Too often, Christians think worship is simply and only going into a room once a week to sing songs, pray, and hear a sermon.”

We too often fall into the trap of pale reductionism when it comes to worship, mistaking the part for the whole. It’s akin to walking into the Sistine Chapel and focusing one’s attention completely on the Creation of Man while ignoring the magnificence of all that Michelangelo has created.

But even if we reduce worship to one building, one room, once a week, we still find that the act of worshipping God is multi-formed and multi-tasked.

We worship God with singing (Psalm 68:4), with bowing down (Psalm 95:6), with pipes and trumpets (Psalm 150:3, 4), with stringed instruments (Psalm 81:2; 150:3, 4), with dancing (Psalm 149:3; 150:4), with drums (Exodus 15:20; 1 Samuel 18:6; Psalm 81:2; Isaiah 30:32).

We can also worship God with our service. The word latreuō (λατρεύω) is found throughout the New Testament and is translated as either worship or service (Philippians 3:3; Luke 2:37; 2 Timothy 1:3; Acts 24:14; Revelation 7:15; 22:3). It is related to latreia (λατρεία) which is the service of God connected with the sacred religious services (Romans 9:4; Romans 12:1; Hebrews 9:1, 6).

All this is what Scripture teaches, but too often we allow our traditions and personal preferences to limit our worship experience and, even worse, to dictate how we expect others to praise their creator.

We can’t all play musical instruments to worship God. Why then are we all expected to sing? Are we all required to bow down as an act of Sunday worship? Are we all required to dance? Why do we consider worship the sum total of sitting down to listen to a sermon but not the act of serving God?

Again, it’s like a tour guide escorting a group of people into the Sistine Chapel and demanding that they everyone focus their attention exclusively on the Creation of Man or else they will be accused of not appreciating art.

When one expects others to adhere to a particular method of worship and to conform to a particular pattern, then that is legalism.

When one mistakes the part for the whole, then we limit our potential to experience authentic worship of God and hinder others from a greater experience.

Then again, if our conception of worship is small, then maybe it is because our conception of God is small. How big is your God?

Top Albums of 2015

Top Albums of 2015

8-Track, Soulfood76 (1998)

Above, Mad Season (1995)

British Steel, Judas Priest (1980)

Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Stevens (2015)

Evergreen, Echo & The Bunnymen (1997)

Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, Belle and Sebastian (2015)

Menace to Sobriety, Ugly Kid Joe (1995)

Modern Vampires of the City, Vampire Weekend (2013)

Tell Another Joke from the Ol’ Choppin’ Block, Danielson (1997

Thirty-Three & 1/3, George Harrison (1976)

 

Honorable Mentions:

Brother is to Son, Danielson (2004)

Guitar, Frank Zappa (1988)

Lazaretto, Jack White (2014)