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The Three I's: Inspiration, Interpretation, and Implementationby Rabbi Michael Bugg Introduction
It's the latter problem that I really want to get into in the next series of posts. Park is clearly from the liberal school of Biblical scholarship, which should have been destroyed over a century ago by the work of Sir William Ramsay. That is to say, Park accepts uncritically the belief that the books of Acts and Luke (and, one assumes, the other Gospel accounts, though they don't enter prominently into this book) were written sometime in the Second Century CE, and that they are rife with inaccuracies. Sir Ramsay came from a similar school of thought, and spent two years in Anatolia trying to disprove Luke's account. He could not. In fact, he found so many confirmations of Luke's fine details that he became a Christian and wrote numerous books in defense of the faith, including Pictures of the Apostolic Church: Studies in the Book of Acts. Why do liberal schools of Biblical criticism keep flailing around the coffin a century after the good knight put a stake through their heart? While the unwillingness to accept the traditional Biblical narrative does, perhaps, lead to digging deeper into the Greek than many who are convinced of Biblical inerrancy might, Park's work is so full of caveats, ifs, ands, and buts that I developed a severe strain of the superior rectus from rolling my eyes so much. It is obvious that Park doesn't believe in the inspiration of Scripture, but rather treats Scripture as the words of men about God rather than the Word of God, and therefore subject to being rewritten or ignored at will by the "prophets" of the ivory tower. I've had a couple of students fall into this trap. It is, after all, easier to be politically correct if one can ignore the words of Scripture. This isn't just a Christian phenomenon, either. I recently read The New Rabbi by Stephen Fried. It's primarily an account of how one of the largest synagogues in North America, Har Zion, went about seeking a replacement for retiring rabbi Gerald Wolpe, one which reveals the mistakes made and how they were overcome. In the process, it grants the reader a marvelous glimpse into not only synagogue politics (which really aren't much different from church politics), but also synagogue life. In one aside, the author mentions how Rabbi Wolpe's son gave a sermon in the wake of an archaeological expedition that had failed to find evidence of the Exodus. Rather than addressing the fact that they were looking in the wrong spot (Mt. Sinai is not in the Sinai Penninsula), the younger Rabbi Wolpe gave a sermon about re-evaluating the Jewish faith in light of the lack of evidence that Fried simply discusses for the controversy it caused. For my part, I am more than happy to stand on the fact that the entire Bible, as it was originally delivered in its original languages, is the Inspired Word of God. Why? Simply put, because prophecy is my passion, and men talking about their ideas about God cannot prophesy. But what do we really mean when we say that "all Scripture is God-breathed"? Does this mean that every single word was directly dictated by the Holy One to His prophets, who took the function of copyists? Or does it mean, as the Chaos and Old Night blog affirms, that only the general, overall message is inspired, but that the authors might have gotten some small, incidental details wrong? Is all Scripture inspired in the same way, or are there different levels of interpretation? And once we have understood the manner of Scriptural inspiration, how do we interpret this Inspired Text? Literally or allegorically? Do later books override earlier books, or do we seek to reconcile the whole? How much do we factor in the Jewish predilection for hyperbole when interpreting prophecies of God's judgment? Is there only one true way to interpret Scripture, or are there many ways? And once we have interpreted the Scriptures, how do we internalize it to our lives? How do we apply it? When we, as Messianics, claim that the Torah is still God's rule for our lives, do we really mean that we are supposed to keep all 613 commandments? How do we apply passages and commandments about Temple worship to our lives? This series on the Three "I"s is intended to be pretty open ended and may go back and forth among the "I"s depending on how the Spirit leads. Hopefully it will help to explain to some of my Sunday brethren where we as Messianics come from in regards to our theology. Please note that this will be an ongoing, but irregularly-updated series, and while I'm archiving the work here for easy readability, one should always check the Return of Benjamin blog for new entries. Inspiration and Authority In Christianity, Scriptural inspiration is pretty much a binary proposition: It's either inspired or it ain't. And if it's inspired, it must all be inspired equally, right? After all, "All Scripture is inspired by God (lit. "God-breathed") and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work" (2Ti. 3:16f). In this mindset, whatever Scriptures were given last are actually given the greatest weight and authority. Since all Scriptures are inspired equally, it follows that whatever came last is God's final word on the matter. Thus the writings of Paul are curiously sometimes given greater weight than the words of Yeshua Himself. Rabbi Derek Leman noted this early in his walk with Yeshua, and found it curious. And indeed, we should find it curious--and dangerous. It is the core mistake that opens the door to all manner of false prophets and apostles. After all, if God could come along and override what He had said in the days of Yeshua's disciples, why couldn't He do it again in our own day? Judaism has a more layered approach to Scriptural inspiration: The most foundational level of Scripture, and that which carries the highest authority, is the Torah, followed by the prophets, followed by the writings (the psalms, proverbs, and some of the latter historical books). This does not mean that the "lesser" books are less inspired or less revered--the Song of Solomon was called the Queen of the Tanakh by Rabbi Akiva, for example--but it does mean that a "lesser" book cannot be read in such a way that overrides a more authoritative book, though they will, of course, help us to grow in our understanding of those more authoritative books. The Scriptures themselves suggest such a layered approach to inspiration and authority. When the authority of Moses was challenged by Aaron and Miriam--a priest and a prophetess, respectively--the Holy One answered them:
In other words, the things that the later prophets only knew by riddling verse and difficult-to-comprehend visions, Moses was given clearly. Therefore, if we think we see a contradiction between the Torah and a later prophet, we are to assume that we have misunderstood the later prophet's riddling vision, not the Torah's plain presentation of the Holy One's will. Ergo, when we see Jeremiah and Amos declaring that God despises the Feasts, we should not interpret this as a change in the Law, but as a response to the misuse of the Feasts by men of uncircumcised hearts. The New Covenant Scriptures have a similar three-fold structure: At the top level of authority are the Gospel accounts, the words, deeds, and teachings of the Prophet like Moses--indeed, of the very Word and Torah made incarnate. The second two levels, the equivalent of the Prophets and Writings, are somewhat more difficult to discern, but for the sake of illustration, let us suggest that the Revelation and the letters written by original members of the Twelve (1-3 John, 1 & 2 Peter) would stand in the place of the Prophets and the other Epistles, written by those who were not chosen as among the Twelve (Paul, Acts, Hebrews, James, and Jude) would stand in the place of the Writings. Of course, our nice, neat categories begin to experience difficulties when we begin comparing the Tanakh to the Sh'lechim (the writings of the Emissaries, or Apostles; i.e., the New Testament). On the one hand, all of the Apostolic authors cite the Torah and the previous prophets for direction and authority; that would suggest that they stand in a position of lesser authority. On the other hand, the Twelve--like Moses--were taught "mouth-to-mouth" by the Sh'khinah of the Holy One in their midst. That would suggest that they too were more than prophets, having received plainly what the prophets received only in imagery (John 16:25-29, Php. 2:6-8). Regardless of how one understands the precise relationship between the Twelve and the Prophets, one thing is clear: While Rabbi Sha'ul, aka the Apostle Paul, was very clear that his own call and authority was not given to him by the Twelve (Gal. 1:1), nevertheless, his calling and authority was certainly not greater than theirs. Or, to put it in an org chart:
My Christian brethren might wonder why I put the Jewish Assemblies under the Rabbis in authority. Simply put, because we are taught in Scripture to do so. Yeshua Himself told us to follow the rulings of the Pharisees (Mat. 23:3), and when Paul writes, "Let every soul be in subjection to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those who exist are ordained by God" (Rom. 13:1), do we think for one moment that he meant only the pagan, Roman authorities, and not the duly-appointed authorities of the Jewish people? Therefore, if one is going to call one's self a Messianic Jew and say that he or she considers himself or herself part of the Jewish people, then that person must be willing to follow Jewish societal and authoritative norms as long as those norms do not contradict the Scriptures, whether those held universally by our people or those given to us by the Messiah and His immediate disciples. This does not mean that we regard the rabbis on par with Inspired Scripture, but that we recognize their authority as given by Scripture. Only when we recognize the correct lines of authority that the Holy One has given us can we avoid the errors of the last two thousand years in which Paul has become the last word on any subject and Paul's writings were seen as setting the authority of the earlier Scriptures aside in favor of a "new law." When, on the other hand, we look at Paul as one having only a derived authority, and that less than the previous Scriptures, we realize that he cannot have contradicted or changed the Torah without himself being an apostate and heretic--and therefore, we interpret his writings in such a way that compliments and explains the earlier Scriptures rather than conflicting with an annulling them. Interpretation in Judaism
An old Christian adage states, “When the plain sense makes good sense, seek no other sense, lest you end up with nonsense.” This sounds like good advice on the surface; the only problem is that it’s not Biblical. There are numerous instances in the New Testament where the Apostles very deliberately interpreted passages from the Tanakh in ways that defy a “plain sense” interpretation. For example, Matthew 2:15 ascribes Hosea 11:1 as a Messianic prophecy even though a plain-text interpretation that takes the context into account makes it clear that the prophet had the whole nation in mind, even pointing out our later idolatry. Does this mean that Matthew was in error? Not at all! Rather, he was looking beyond the surface of the text to make the point that Messiah’s life encapsulates all of Israel’s history, even to the point that He too went down to Egypt before being called out again—only where Israel sinned and failed, Yeshua succeeded in perfection! The Rabbinic ways of interpreting the Scriptures are deeper and, to the Western mind, less intuitive that Christian hermeneutical rules. The rules that the rabbis have followed have been variously ennumerated, expanded, and reordered, from R. Hillel's Seven Rules, to R. Ishmael's Thirteen, to the Thirty-Two Rules of R. Eliezer b. Jose ha-Gelili. R. Hillel's probably best describe the methods of First Century Pharisaic Judaism, and so are listed here:
In Romans 3:1-2, Rabbi Sha'ul writes, "Then what advantage does the Jew have? Or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way! Because first of all, they were entrusted with the oracles of God." In other words, only by studying the Scriptures with Jewish eyes can we really understand them. This is not a genetic advantage, but a cultural one that can be learned by one of Gentile birth or forgotten by the assimilated Jew. The Levels of Paradise
Pashut (“to spread out” or “make a road”): This is the simplest and plainest interpretation. For example, in the Akedat Yitzchak, the narrative of Abraham’s “sacrifice” of Isaac, the pashut is simply what the story says: That God tested Abraham’s faith by having him offer up his long-promised son in sacrifice, and that Abraham passed the test. The Pashut of Scripture must be understood first to provide a “road through the wilderness” that will keep one from getting lost as one goes deeper. Remez (a “hint” or allusion): A remez is a hint of something deeper in the text, usually marked by something unusual, like a strange action, a misspelled word, or some other anomaly that can’t be explained in the P’shat. In the Akedat, we see that hint in Abraham’s confident statement to Isaac, “God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering” (Gen. 22:8) as well as in his naming of the place of sacrifice, “HaShem Yireh; as it is said to this day, ‘On the mountain the Lord is seen" (v. 14). Abraham knew that he was acting out prophecy. And indeed, two thousand years later, God offered His own Son as an offering on that very same plot of land, offered Himself as a Lamb in Isaac’s—and everyone else’s—place, and on the Mount of the Lord the Holy One was indeed seen and our redemption was provided. That prophetic fulfillment is an example of a remez. We can understand it only by cross-referencing the key words wherever they appear in Scripture: The Lamb of the Akedat brings to mind the Passover lamb, the one who is silent as a lamb in Isa. 53:7 . . . and ultimately, Yeshua, the Lamb of God. Derash (“to follow,” “to dig,” or “to seek and ask”) or midrash (“teaching” or “learning”): This is the homiletic meaning, the way the passage can be applied to our own lives. In the Akedah, the midrash of the story is that we can trust God completely. Abraham knew that the Eternal One had made a promise that through Isaac a great nation would be born (Gen. 17:19), so if He commanded Isaac to be killed, then He would just have to resurrect Isaac to fulfill His promises. Abraham was so certain that God would do exactly as He said that he was willing to trust Him even with the life of his son. “For he had concluded that God could even raise people from the dead! And, figuratively speaking, he did so receive him" (Heb. 11:19, CJB). A midrash may be developed by building a story around a seemingly innoculous detail in the text. For example, in Exodus 20:18 typically reads, “And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings . . .” The actual Hebrew words mean “voices” and “fires (as if from torches)” respectively. The rabbis, asking why the people heard multiple voices, what it meant that we saw the voices, and what the fires were there for, envisioned the Eternal One speaking His commandments and covenant in all the languages of the world, His voice striking the mountain like a hammer on an anvil, and the sparks flying off to settle on each individual Israelite. The parallels to the account in Acts of the Shavuot (Pentecost) after Yeshua’s Resurrection are clear (see Exo.R. 5:9; b. Shabbat 88b; see also Lancaster, Mystery, pp. 128-135). Sod (the mystical meaning): This is esoteric interpretation, the mystical conjecture, the hidden meaning. The sod is almost always found in a coded form, like the oft-abused equidistant letter sequences (the so-called “Bible codes”) or in comparisons between the numerical value of different words. There is a danger in pursuing the sod interpretation if one abandons the plain text in pursuit of mystical conjectures. A true sod would never contradict the plain Scriptures, nor will a true remez or drash—they will only deepen our understanding and will be confirmed by a pashut elsewhere, just as the prophetic type of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is confirmed in the plain interpretations of the latter prophets, and fulfilled by the plain interpretation of Messiah’s work on the cross. For the most part, one is far better off seeking the plain meanings, the hints of deeper things (e.g. the prophetic types), and the personal applications of the Scriptures than in seeking non-confirmable mystical conjectures, and those are what we will focus on in this volume. Understanding that a given Scripture can have multiple levels of meaning brings a fresh insight to the discussion about which view of Revelation is correct. A few years ago, this author had the pleasure of interning at an internationally-known apologetics ministry. Those within came from a wide variety of theological opinions and backgrounds, from pre-millennialist to amillennialist, Arminian to Calvinist. During a casual conversation with one of the senior members, a well-known speaker in his own right, the subject of prophecy came up, and he said something that rang true long before I learned anything of Jewish hermeneutics: “Michael, to be honest, I think that when Christ finally does come back, we’ll find that all three viewpoints will have turned out to be true.” Perhaps he was just trying to avoid an argument, but his words struck me and still strike me as profound. Survival and Community in Jewish Thought
However, while we take that as axiomatic, we don't always do a good job of conveying just what it means to "think like a Jew"--in particular, a Jew of the first century, since Jewish culture (as with all other cultures) has changed somewhat over the last two millennia. In this series of articles, I am indebted to J.P. Holding, webmaster of the Tektonics website (which I mentioned in my last post), as well as to D. Thomas Lancaster, author of The Restoration and King of the Jews (both available from Beth HaMashiach's website here). Holding draws a number of key points of comparison between Japanese and Biblical culture: Group-oriented identity and morality, an honor-based culture, a circular view of time, an emphasis on client/patron relationships, and the importance of ritual (and by extension, racial and cultural) purity. This stands in direct odds with our Western ideals of rugged individualism, guilt-based morality, linear view of time, an emphasis on free and equal friendships, an an egalitarian rejection of the notion of purity in any group. That's not to say that our culture is necessarily wrong on these points, but that it is so radically different from the culture the Bible was written from and to that we can very easily misunderstand the nuances of what it is trying to say or why the Apostles made certain rulings. The first two pieces of baggage that we must leave behind as Christians in the West is our plenty and our individualism. The fact is that we live in a truly blessed nation in a truly blessed time, on that is probably unique in history. We have plenty of food, no lack of leisure time, and (in theory, if not always in practice) an acknowledgement of "universal" rights. Compare that to the situation of one living in the ancient world, whether Jew or Gentile: One good famine could lead to the starvation of hundreds of thousands. Only the Jews had the concept of a "weekend"--everyone else worked every day except for sporadic festivals (and many had to work even on those) just to hold down a job and make ends meet. And there were no universal rights, only the privileges afforded by belonging to various groups. Indeed, without the protection of a group, such as a family, town, nation, guild, or religion, a man had no protection at all and would swiftly find himself ruined and even dead. Let's take Sha'ul (Paul) for an example: On one occasion, he and his companion were flogged without a trial, and by virtue of their Roman citizenship could force the apologies of the town's leaders (Acts 16). On another occasion, he invokes his citizenship to prevent a soldier from beating him (Acts 22:25f). Had he not had citizenship (which was not a given; one had to pay a large sum to be a full citizen, as opposed to a subject, in those days), the authorities could have scourged him without a thought. As a result, where we have the luxury of being individualistic, concentrating on individual rights, happiness, and destiny, the ancients were collectivists, concentrating on the survival, destiny, and honor of their groups. (The importance of honor in the ancient world will be dealt with in the next part of this series.) When the High Priest sanctioned Yeshua's death by saying, "Now consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not" (John 11:50), we might think that opportunistic and cruel, but to his audience, concerned as they were with the survival of Judea rather than the survival of any one man, his words were the simplest of wisdom. Suddenly, this puts a whole new light on the Apostles' teaching that they would accept Gentiles as full members of the then-Jewish Messianic Community based simply on their belief in Yeshua, imposing "no other burden" than that they "abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood" (Acts 15:20). First, understand the radical nature of what they were proposing. In the ancient mind, either you were a part of the group, or you were a potentially-dangerous alien. Imagine having a neighborhood full of children who need protection, and suddenly a creepy-looking stranger moves in. Might you not watch him with a special caution, especially if you had no means to conduct a background check? That's the kind of caution the ancients had--the survival of the community took precedence over that of outsiders. The exception to this would be if a member of the community decided to grant "guest-status" to said outsider (we'll come back to this in another article). If you were not born into the group, but wanted to enter it, you had to submit to living your life in every way that they did for an extended period of time to gain their trust, and then undergo a ritual which formally bound you to the group before they would accept you as a member and offer you the group's protection. (This might be compared the the hazing and ritual tests many college fraternities force their members to undergo today.) This made it very difficult for God-fearers, Gentiles who worshipped the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but who had not (yet, in many cases) undergone circumcision and become fully Jewish proselytes. The Jews were given special privileges by the Roman Empire: They were permitted not to work on the Sabbath, for example (though many mocked them and called them lazy for it) and to forgo Emperor-worship. God-fearers lacked that protection, and if they refused to participate in the standard pagan rites of their family, town, and/or guild, they could wind up lacking any protection at all! What the Apostles did was to turn that on its head: No longer did they force someone to earn, by their works, the group's acceptance and protection. Instead, they accepted as full members any Gentile who was willing to accept Yeshua as Lord and who gave up idolatry (which is what the four stipulations in Acts 15 are designed to do), granting them the immediate protection of the group--a group which they not only saw in temporal terms, but in spiritual terms as well. In the eyes of the ancients, that was an utterly absurd thing! That was precisely why there was dispute in the early Jewish Church over whether members should be circumcised before being accepted: They were afraid of losing the group's identity and of letting potential enemies in. And yet, moved by the Ruach (Spirit), that's exactly what the earliest believers in Yeshua did, thus demonstrating their love for their neighbors as themselves. This is not to say that they did not expect that once within the Community, the new believers would never progress beyond simply avoiding idolatry. For example, Acts 15 says nothing about forcing new believers to honor their parents, yet Paul tells the Ephesians (the very ones to whom he had just emphasized that salvation is by faith, not by works), "Honor your father and mother; (which is the first commandment with a promise)" (Eph. 6:2). Clearly, there was an expectation of growth and keeping God's commands after entering the Community--the Apostles just didn't want the motivation for the obedience to be wrong (i.e., fear of being cast out of God's Kingdom), and they were willing to let the Spirit work on people at their own pace. Understanding the importance and emphasis on the community, group, and/or family in the ancient's life is just the start. We also have to understand the importance of honor in the Biblical world. Honor and Obligation
There are two broad categories into which the moral center of any culture can be classified: Honor-shame cultures, and guilt cultures. An excellent summary of the two can be found here: Shame-Culture and Guilt-Culture. The essential difference between the two cultures is very much along the same lines as that between a collectivist vs. an individualistic culture: In an honor-shame culture, a person's morality is defined by the group, and if one transgresses--or is even thought to have transgressed--that moral code by his peers, the person is shamed. In a guilt culture, such as our own, everyone is expected to have their own internal moral compass--their own conscience--and a person feels guilt when they believe they have violated that moral compass. If they are accused of something that they believe they have not committed, or that they believe is not wrong, the person is expected to defend themselves rather than to feel guilt or shame. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. An honor-shame culture has the advantage that morality is not based on a person's emotional whim; however, while the desire to avoid being caught may lead a person to live the kind of life where no one would ever suspect them of dishonorable behavior, it can also lead to a cynical pragmatism, where anything is permitted as long as one doesn't get caught. A guilt culture has the advantage that a person will try to avoid violating his conscience even in private, and would be expected to feel guilty even if not caught, but it has the disadvantage of submitting morality to the whim of the individual. "Follow your heart" is the mantra of the guilt culture, and if your heart says that there's nothing wrong with, for example, sleeping around, you should go do that guilt-free. Holding provides the testimony of a Chinese Christian who describes growing up in just such an honor-shame culture here. The Bible is based upon and assumes knowledge of an honor-shame culture. However, it also introduces a new twist into the honor-shame culture: The realization that an omnipresent and omniscient God is watching us, and therefore we cannot escape the shame of our sins against His code. However, the response is based on shame, not guilt. When we read our own ideas of guilt and conscience back into the Scripture, we commit an anachronism and set ourselves up to misunderstand God's message to us. For example, how many people have questioned whether six hours of agony on a cross could somehow counterbalance anyone's eternity in hell? In fact, as a result of this conundrum, many Christian authors will try to devise explanations for how Yeshua suffered an infinite amount spiritually on the cross. Such explanations are not only unnecessary, but miss the point entirely. There is a reason the Bible says that Yeshua despised not the pain of the cross, but its shame (Heb. 12:2). To quote Holding:
While I have posted some of the highlights of the article here, I believe that everyone should read it in its entirety, including the articles it links to. I happen to disagree with Holding on a number of issues, mostly involving eschatology, but his insights into the apologetic applications of truly understanding the culture of the Bible are extraordinarily valuable and must-reading. Shalom! |
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