Thin Threads & Library Randomness

JUC Library

This morning in the JUC library, Aubrey, A.Lenore, and I held an impromptu historical theology conversation. A. Lenore was reading through a New Testament abstract book (gives brief summaries of current essays, books, papers, and journal articles) and came across one that was making the case that Jesus never thought of Himself, nor did anyone else around Him, as a Jew.[1] According to the author, Elliott, Jesus would have thought of Himself as an Israelite. Corresponding to this, all of the current translations translate a Greek word Ιουδαιος as “Jew” instead of “Judean”. In other words, what translators have told us = Jew is actually a term referring to people who lived in a political district. For example, back in the States, I would be called an Oklahoman, but that is not my ethnic nor religious identity. The author further argues that “Jew”, and the current definition ascribed to it, is a term that arose during the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods (200-500AD).

This led us to start considering what was going on vis a vis Jesus and the Temple elite in Judea. We have read where it has been theorized that Jesus kept the Torah as prescribed by Galilean standards and not Judean standards. This whole line of thought sets up the contrast between the two political entities in Jesus’ day (Galilee and Judea) and called to mind circumstances on the ground during the Divided Monarchies of the Old Testament.

I have read plenty of arguments that the OT as we have it is just political propaganda for the Kingdom of Judah. Therefore, it portrays the Temple and its system as the only way to worship Yahweh and demonizes anything else, including the common folk of Judah and especially the Kingdom of Israel. All the kings of Israel are portrayed as evil heathen who blaspheme the LORD God. Curiously, the first king of Israel, Jeroboam, is terrified that his people will be swayed to be loyal to Judah if they go to Jerusalem to worship Yahweh, so he builds his own cult centers, ostensibly to Yahweh, at Bethel and Dan (1 Kgs. 12:26-29). Richard Hess also notes that the largest percentage of names found in inscriptions in the Northern & Southern Kingdoms are variants of Yahweh.[2] God also tells Elijah of 7000 prophets who hadn’t bent the knee to Ba`al (1 Kgs. 17:14-18). Also, the only prophet that I know of, who was sent out to the nations, was Jonah, who was from Galilee, in the north.

Perhaps there is a rich undercurrent of irony in the OT text: the monarchy of Israel was spiritually corrupt and evil, usually following Ba`al and Asherah in contrast to the monarchy of Judah, which more often than Israel, followed Yahweh and supported the mechanism (Temple and priesthood) by which to come to Yahweh. But, it seems that perhaps an interesting percentage of the northern population remained loyal to Yahweh, while a large percentage of the southern population were spiritually adulterous.

This seems to mimic the NT as well. Why didn’t Jesus live in Judea, the successor to the Kingdom of Judah, where the Temple was and all the religious apparatus was? Why did He associate with the North and the common, “untrained people of the earth”? Perhaps there was still a historic echo of the circumstances on the ground from the OT times? Perhaps the Galileans maintained more heart fidelity to the God of Israel even though they were without the Temple and its functionaries. Perhaps the Judeans fell into the trap where the Temple, instead of being the means to meet with God, became the end in and of itself.

Just a thought…

1. J.H. Elliott, “Jesus the Israelite Was neither a ‘Jew’ nor a ‘Christian’: On Correcting Misleading Nomenclature,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 5 (2, ’07) London. pp. 119-154
2. Hess, Richard S. (2007) Israelite Religions. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. pp. 269-274

~ by eikonministries on March 31, 2009.