From the Archive: The Enemy of God

Good day! Last time, we revisited an old article in which I explored how the ancient Israelites confronted the age-old concept of evil. Today, I’d like to take that a few steps further with the follow-up that I originally wrote just over a year ago. So step up and brace yourselves, because here comes the devil.

“Last week, I went into detail on how the concept of evil had been personified throughout history. In harsh cultures, evil was seen as a great beast which crushed all who stood in its way. In cultures where different ideas on worship and morality clash, evil was seen as an invasive, polluting force. In our over-commercialized culture, evil is seen as a sneaky salesman trying to lure us in with all manner of seemingly-succulent temptations.

But what of the devil himself? What about that being mentioned in the Gospels and, especially, in Revelation? What about that guy who supposedly creates covens of witches and breeds heretics, and who’s believed to have once been the greatest of angels before his fall from grace? The standard story we’re all taught comes more out of tradition than scripture, and it claims that the devil (also called Lucifer or Satan) was once an angel, and one of God’s closest of confidantes. But then, due to his own pride, he refused to bow to Christ and then instigated a war to claim the throne of Heaven for himself. He lost, of course, and so he and his followers were cast from Heaven where they established dominion over the Earth as the devil and his demons. It’s a fascinating story and the source text is a beautiful read. But unfortunately, that source text is a 17th Century work of religiously-inspired fiction called Paradise Lost.

So what’s the real story, then? First, let me establish that in most of the Old Testament, there is simply no concept of a being we think of today as the Devil, or Satan. The serpent which tempts Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis is only ever referred to as a serpent, and his connection to the devil wasn’t drawn until decades after the death and resurrection of Christ. But there are a few strange areas of Biblical mystery, like the enigmatic Lucifer Passage of Isaiah or the appearance of Satan in the book of Job, and we’ll explore these in a bit more detail.

Lucifer of Isaiah

This passage was one of the primary inspirations for John Milton, the writer of Paradise Lost, and it is one of the most-quoted passages among those who look for Old Testament evidence for the devil’s existence. The issue at heart with this passage, however, is that Isaiah gives no context for it. The words seemingly pop out of nowhere, and the only hint of context is that, in the greater passage, Isaiah is taunting Babylon. This suggests that this “Day Star, Son of Morning” character may have been a particularly harsh Babylonian king, perhaps one who fell from power, as the passage would suggest. Those who take a more astronomical approach have suggested that the “Day Star” is really the planet Venus, which rises for only a few minutes before dawn, seemingly bringing the dawn with it. Lucifer, after all, comes from the Latin Lux-Ferre meaning “light-bringer.” In any case, we have no idea who this enigmatic character was. Was he a fallen angel? Possibly, though the text makes no suggestion to that effect, so the mystery remains.

Satan of Job

Aside from God and Job, who is the most remembered character in the book of Job? That’s right: Satan. But there’s a historical twist to this character. You see, this Satan was not the Satan we think of today. Instead, he was a being known in the times of ancient Israel as The Satan (pronounced Suh-Tahn, as opposed to Say-tin). When Job was written, The Satan was not considered to be an evil figure. On the contrary, he was regarded as an angel whose job it was to test people in order to determine if their faith was truly genuine. He was to put people to the test. So when God points out Job as the most righteous man on Earth, The Satan doesn’t see this as a way of attacking God via his faithful worshiper; rather, The Satan sees someone worthy of being put to the test. So The Satan is tormenting Job not for malicious reasons, but in order to discern whether Job loves God out of true faith or simply out of gratitude for God’s great blessings. When Job ultimately passes the test, The Satan would have been just as satisfied as God, and then he’d move onto the next person. This explains why The Satan is never punished in the book: he didn’t do anything wrong. He simply did the job God appointed him to do.

The Devil

While there was no concept of an ultimate enemy of God in Old Testament times, there was definitely belief in demons and evil spirits. However, there wasn’t any idea of a demonic hierarchy. To the ancient Israelites and, later, Jews, there were simply bad spirits out there who wished to harm humans, similar to how there were lions and bears that wanted to harm humans. But a term that showed up from times unknown (to me) is the term “Devil.” This comes from the Greek Dia-Ballo, meaning “to cast between.” Theologically, this refers to a person, being or entity which tries to cast itself (or some malady) between a person and God. Demons and evil spirits could be considered devils in this regard, as could hatred, strife, envy and the breaking of any of the Ten Commandments.

Now let’s build this into a coherent story. There was not originally any concept of a demonic hierarchy, no arch-demon or devil or Satan at the top. This was the norm for Jewish mythology all the way through the end of the Old Testament. But then, in the late 300s to early 200s BC, there arose a community called Qumran. Qumran was populated by a Jewish apocalyptic sect called the Essenes, and they were adamantly awaiting the end of the world. If you want a historical context, then I’ll say that all or most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were likely written and compiled by Essenes. Anyway, the writings of the Qumran Essenes have been found and they suggest something quite strange: the people of this community seemed to believe that they were living in the presence of angels. But it gets stranger, because in one of their texts, we see the earliest description in all recorded history of an evil angel. This angel was given no name, but was simply referred to as the “Angel of Darkness,” and he was greatly feared by the Essenes. After less than a century, more texts began showing up, describing all manner of fallen angels. One text, called the Book of Enoch, even describes two separate rebellions in Heaven, one led by the fallen angel Shemyaza (an event which is connected with the enigmatic Nephilim of Genesis 6) and another led by the angel Azazel (the name of a likely-demonic character cited in Leviticus 16). Historically, it seems, the Angel of Darkness arises and then all manner of angels begin to fall, at least where apocryphal literature is concerned.

The Devil of Today

Somewhere between that first Qumran text and the time of Jesus, the Angel of Darkness had gained mythological prominence in Judaism such that he came to be seen as standing at the top of a newly and loosely constructed demonic hierarchy. But such a being would undoubtedly need a name for reference, so the Jews began casting all manner of names at him: Satan, Devil, Moloch and Beelzebul (both of which are the names of Canaanite gods), the Adversary and, as we progress into the Christian era, Lucifer. This being incorporated into himself all of these different entities and identities, absorbing and compiling them into one character which appears in the Gospels and Revelation (where he is referred to as The Dragon).

This does, of course, raise a plethora of theological queries. What became of The Satan? Did he lose his name, or did the Angel of Darkness kill him and take his place? Or did he eventually evolve into the Angel of Darkness? And why did this strange fallen angel make no appearance before the days of Qumran? Was that when he fell? Or was he in hiding until the Qumranites found him out? Or did he arbitrarily choose that time to declare himself to humanity? Certainly, some of these answers would have far-reaching effects on our reading of the Old Testament. After all, scarcely a Christian can read Job without mistakenly thinking that the modern Satan and The Satan are the same character, and the Christian mind immediately sees Isaiah as describing a fallen angel, thus forgetting the possible link to a Babylonian king.

All I can tell you is what I’ve learned in my studies. It’s up to you to trust that God has these answers, and that maybe, just maybe, he’ll choose to someday share them with us.”

Until next time, friends…

From the Archive: The Divine’s Opponent

Hello! Considering the response I got from my last series – about the origin of belief in Hell – I figured I’d dive back a year into my archives and dig out this gem. In it, I explored the changes in how the ancient Israelites confronted the problem of evil, and how it, in turn, led to the development of a much darker concept: the devil. It’s a bit long, but hopefully set to fascinate you, as it did me in my research.

“Hello, and salutations! [Last week], we celebrated Easter, and it was a great time to remember what remarkable event happened just under two millennia ago: the force of death, which has plagued mankind since time immemorial, the force to which even the smartest, greatest and most God-fearing of us succumb, was defeated by a man who was three days dead. On that day, Jesus walked from the tomb and demonstrated that not only could he raise new life, but he could even resurrect himself. What a remarkable thing that would have been to see!

Now getting to the topic of today, I wanted to discuss something on the darker side of things, theologically speaking. I wanted to talk about the enemy of God. I’m not planning on repeating to you the same information so often quoted from Paradise Lost or the lone Lucifer Passage of Isaiah; instead, I’m going to share the personification of evil itself throughout history. This personification is something which has gone through radical transformations, and it was, in fact, a component in my Master’s thesis, so what I’m sharing today is essentially what I unearthed in my graduate school research. Let’s dive in.

I’ll begin during the age when Israel had finally settled the land of Canaan. They’d narrowly escaped from slavery in Egypt, then wandered in the Sinai Desert long enough for a whole generation to pass away and now, finally, God’s chosen people were granted the Promised Land. The great Jerusalem Temple was established and divine worship of God was carried out through the nation. And then, the Israelites found trouble. Trouble during this time (approximately 1000 – 586 BC, a time known as the First Temple Period) came in the form of ritual impurity and lack of devotion to God. Before this time, the concept of “evil” was nebulous and often misunderstood. After all, there are passages in the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) which even mention God himself “repenting of the evil he sought to do.” This raises significant theological questions, but that exceeds my area of expertise, so I’ll not explore them. Nevertheless, Israelite mythology during the First Temple Period had no established entity which stood in direct opposition to God. Instead, the opponent of God, that force which ran counter to the divine will, was ritual impurity. Scripture from just before this era records how Moses’ nephews, Nadab and Abihu, were “consumed by fire” for messing up in the ritual worship of God. Idol worship, which God saw as spiritual infidelity, often carried disastrous results, causing God’s temper to flare and Israel to suffer international defeats and internal strife.

Then came the Babylonians. First engaging in skirmishes with the southern Israelite kingdom of Judah in 597 BC, Jerusalem itself fell to the Babylonian Empire in 586, eleven years later. The Babylonian rule was harsh and oppressive, with Jews (the descendants of Judah, almost the only Israelites left) taken in chains to Babylon, their Temple burned and their infants often murdered before them. The Babylonian pantheon was forced upon them, and their children were in many cases to be raised as Babylonians. Now in this time period, known as the Exilic Period, the Jews came to see the Babylonians as God’s enemy, and wherever mythology was concerned, they imagined God being opposed by a great, dragon-like beast. This beast was the symbolic representative of Babylonia, and the reason is that a physical dragon (were it real) would be as oppressive, dangerous, violent and terrifying as the Babylonians themselves were to the Jews.

But time passed, and after approximately forty-seven years, the Babylonian Empire fell to the Persian Empire. These Persians were actually pretty nice to the Jews. As long as the Jews admitted that Persia was in charge, and they paid their taxes, they were mostly allowed to do as they pleased, and Persian mythology was not forced upon them. As a matter of fact, the Persians even allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild their Temple, establishing a period of history known alternatively as the Post-Exilic or the Second Temple Period. So with such a lenient and ideal nation ruling over them, naturally this was seen by the Jews as a time of peace (with a few minor hiccups), and any sort of enemy to God was scarcely mentioned. No dragon, no impurity, just peace among God’s people.

The Persians ruled for about two hundred years before a Greek force (actually Macedonian, but they were obsessed with Greek culture) gained control of the Jews. Intending to Hellenize (or Greek-ify) the Jews, they forced Greek culture on them, which caused a great deal of friction as Jewish morality and Greek culture were at odds in a great many places. So there began to be a resurgence in mythology about an enemy of God, and this enemy took not the form of an oppressive dragon, but rather as a sneaky character who would pollute the “pure” worship of God. There was a great deal of civil unrest among the Jews, who did not want their culture and religion polluted by this new enemy.

Another three hundred years went by and, in 63 BC, a Roman general conquered Israel and brought it into Roman control. The Romans were, like the Babylonians five hundred years earlier, highly oppressive, often carrying out gruesome mass executions against anyone even suspected of rebelling. And in this highly oppressive atmosphere there was a new explosion in mythology about the devil, who was usually seen as a great, dragon-like beast. The book of Revelation even refers to him as “The Dragon.” This symbolism had the same effect in the Roman era as it did back in the Babylonian era: the devil’s characteristics were symbolic of the oppressive characteristics of Rome itself. In an oppressive culture, God’s enemy was imagined as epitomizing that oppression.

But once Rome became Christianized a few centuries later, the beast/dragon imagery lost prominence as the early Church began to focus on rooting out heresies, returning to the symbolism of purity versus pollution. The heretics were viewed as the devil’s agents, polluting the “pure” worship of God. It’s interesting to note that an almost perfect parallel happened in America during the Witch Trials of Salem, Massachusetts in the 17th Century. Those accused of witchcraft were feared as the devil’s agents sent to pollute the religious purity of their Christian community.

So what do we see when we imagine the devil in our culture today? Do we see a great beast, a roaring dragon oppressing all who stand in its way? This is the imagery often clung to in oppressed nations, but it doesn’t really show up here in America. Instead, the Americanized devil is thought of as a clever salesman, trying to trick people into selling their souls and going down dark roads of perdition. We imagine him doing this by the clever mastery of speech, persuasively damning us with psychological wordplay and powerful temptations. Is this because of our heavily-commercialized society? Is this because of America’s charismatic nature, too often compelled to fall into a cult of personality, and thus suffer the resultant paranoia? I’ll leave that up to you to decide, but it certainly seems to be the case. I even did an experiment with my old Sunday school class back in Indiana a few years ago, and this theory held true in that scenario. In any case, I would encourage you to think on these things.

Now before I go, you may have noticed that I never used the term “devil” until the Roman times. If you didn’t notice that, go back and take a look. The reason for that is the mystery which we’ll explore next week.”

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which we’ll revisit the evolution of belief about God’s greatest enemy: the devil!

Afterlife 102: The Development of Hell

Hello, and welcome back! In my previous blog post, I described the growth and change in beliefs about the afterlife in ancient Israel. Originally having little to no actual belief about life after death, they eventually developed the gloomy idea of Sheol, a shadowy realm where ghostly “echoes” of people go upon dying. If you’ve ever sloughed through the terrors of Dante’s Inferno, you’ll find this kind of existence in the outer rings, where Dante placed the “righteous pagans.” But in Dante’s Inferno, things take a definite shift from Sheol into the realms of the truly hellish. So where did these ideas come from? What led the ancients from belief in a gloomy shadow realm to a place of eternal torment?

Well, that change was a long time coming. In the 4^th Century B.C., the Jews (the last remnants of ancient Israel) came into contact with Greek culture and philosophy through Alexander the Great. Here they were met with a coincidental (if you can accept that) Greek counterpart to Sheol: Hades. The two became virtually synonymous. But Greek philosophy had a very deep and profound impact on all aspects of Jewish theology; however, that’d be another rabbit hole that I won’t dive into right now.

Eventually the Greeks declined in power and were replaced with a new rising force: Rome. The Roman Republic became the Roman Empire and, only about 50 or so years before the birth of Christ, it absorbed/conquered the outlying land of Judea. Now faced with oppression the likes of which they hadn’t seen since the days of Babylon nearly five hundred years earlier, the Jews again began revisiting much of their theology, and now, for the first time, we begin to see the concept of Hell, or a place of torment reserved for evil people. Little is said of its details, although the words of Jesus in some places seem to indicate it as a realm of outer darkness, “where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.” It sounds like a far worse version of Sheol, if you ask me.

But there was another image which fed into the belief in Hell: a trash dump. On the outskirts of Jerusalem, there was a small valley where the Jews would go to dispose of their trash. In that valley, called Gehenna, they would often burn the refuse, and it wasn’t uncommon for the fires to go on burning with an acrid smell for days or even weeks. But to add a darker history to Gehenna, the Old Testament records rare occasions when unfaithful Judean kings would, against the dictates of the Levitical Laws, sacrifice children to pagan gods in the valley. Thus, this place which was always stinking and burning, was considered by many Jews to be cursed. Eventually, this dreadful place fed into the new theology of a much more punishing Sheol, and the belief in Hell was born.

Near the end of Revelation, it is recorded that at the Final Judgment, those “whose names are not found written in the book of life” will be cast into a sea of fire and brimstone for all eternity. This passage undoubtedly fueled the fires of Hell-belief throughout the Christian era, including how the place of punishment is portrayed in art and literature all the way up to today. That still leaves a lot of questions in the air, of course. For instance, is the sea of fire literal or metaphorical? Is it where nonbelievers or simply evil people are sent today immediately after death? Or is Hell merely a “holding tank” for those people until they’re judged at the end of the world? As I’ve said, I can’t tell you the truth, only what people have believed the truth to be.

Until next time, friends…

 

Afterlife 101: The Ancient Israelites

Good day, good readers! I hope these days are treating you well. Recently, the daughter of a member of my Sunday School class began asking some questions about the nature of Hell, and – not knowing what my next few blog posts were going to feature – I thought it would be excellent to trace the history of such a belief. First, I’ll trace it throughout the days of ancient Israel. Next, I’ll explain how the concept of Hell arose and was disseminated in Christian dogma. Lastly, I’ll share my own, personal experience and its aftermath, an experience which I have shared with very few people in my life. But the time has come, I think, to share that story. Before we begin, however, I want to make it clear that I’m making no definitive statements on what the afterlife actually entails; rather, I’m tracing the history of what others have believed about it over the past three millennia.

Basic Background

Before we dive into the afterlife, you must first be aware of two distinct eras which scholars have defined for ancient Israel. The first is called the “Pre-Axial Age.” This is the time from undated prehistory (Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joshua and the like) all the way until the days of King David. The Pre-Axial Age is defined by a very worldly focus in regard to religious belief. People back then did not necessarily possess what we today call a “personal relationship with God,” though there were some exceptions like Abraham and Moses. Instead, the people saw God the way they saw kings: as distant rulers to whom they owed great honor and loyalty. They believed that if they served God in the appropriate ways, then he would reward them with health, agricultural success, large families and protection from danger. They followed rigid traditions and engaged in cultic practices like sacrifice, and they prayed often, but God was not a best friend to them; he was a king to be appeased, who would reward them for their worship.

Following the days of King David, scholars have defined what has been called the “Axial Age,” in which the people began to view God in a very different context. No longer a distant overlord to be appeased in exchange for blessings in this life, God was now a much closer and more intimate being, one who cared deeply for his people and who would bless them with greater riches like wisdom and an afterlife. While the idea of having a “personal” relationship with God was still a long way off, the Axial Age was a giant step toward that. And King David, for too many reasons to get into right now, seems to have bridged the gap – or initiated the transition – between the two ages.

The Afterlife in the Ancient World

It may be startling to hear, but there’s very little evidence that Israelites or their precursors had beliefs about the afterlife during the Pre-Axial Age. Yes, they did believe in Heaven (a concept going back to the first verse of Genesis), but it was mostly viewed as a dwelling place purely for God and his angels, not for humans. It was, essentially, like his White House. For humans, however, the only mention of an afterlife was the euphemism of “sleeping with one’s fathers” (2nd Samuel 7, 1st Kings 1). And in a Pre-Axial mindset, wherein humans want blessings from God in this life, the idea of living on in another life held little meaning or importance. You lived and you died, and that’s that.

A change came about during the time of Kings Saul and David, however, in a concept called Sheol. This strange word is used only seven times in the Pre-Axial days before King David, but another 58 times in the Axial Age after David. To explain why it’s used in the Pre-Axial days would require a lengthy discussion on how the Bible was written, so I’ll avoid that rabbit hole for now. In any case, the concept of the afterlife came to be defined in the days around Kings David and Saul as Sheol.

Sheol was not exactly what we would picture the afterlife to be like today. A vague, mysterious, shadowy realm, it was seen as the place where everyone went after death, regardless of how good or bad you were. At death, a shadowy echo of you, called a Shade, was said to depart from the body and thereafter roam around in Sheol for eternity. A few notable exceptions are Enoch and Isaiah, both of whom were taken up to Heaven without dying. Sheol is even featured prominently in the last days of King Saul (1^st Samuel 28). Bothered by the death of the prophet, Samuel, and needing to know how his battle would go the following day, King Saul seeks out a woman known as the Witch of Endor (not the Endor with Jedi and ewoks, but an actual place in ancient Israel). Contrary to the Law at the time, Saul has the witch conjure Samuel’s shade up from Sheol to speak with them. After first asking why he has been disturbed, Samuel then prophesies that Saul will join him in Sheol on the following day as a punishment from God. The next day, Saul’s army is defeated by the Philistines and both he and his son, Jonathan, die in battle.

The concept of Sheol existed for a long time in Israel’s – and later Judah’s – history, and it’s interesting to note its similarity to the Greek concept of Hades, where all but the most noble of heroes are to spend eternity, not in punishment or in reward, but in general gloominess. Now with that happy thought, I’ll end our current discussion and return to you again in two weeks for the next step, in which we explore how the afterlife changed from Sheol into the divergence of Heaven and Hell.

Until next time, friends…

Revelation and John’s Gospel

Hello, all! I hope the past weeks have been treating you well. For me, work has been quite busy, with the introduction of two trainees for whom I’m at least partially responsible. At least, this is what my expectation will be, given that I’m writing this before their training officially starts.

In any case, lately I’ve been talking a lot about politics, and so I instead want to shift into discussing the Bible (shocker, I know!). In the past, I’ve touched on the idea of who wrote the book of Revelation. Today I’d like to dive in deeper and see just exactly why it is that scholars believe the writer of John’s Gospel…did not write the book of Revelation.

Introduction

It’s a long-held Christian tradition that the writer of the Gospel of John is the same man who wrote the book of Revelation. That individual, tradition claims, was the apostle John, one of Jesus’ three primary members of the original twelve disciples. Certainly that lends a lot of credence and power to the words of both books! But there are a few issues with this claim. First, while the writer of John’s Gospel (who for further usage I’ll refer to as “Gospel-John”) claims to have been present at the events described, he never actually claims to be John the Apostle. But to keep from going down a tangential rabbit-hole, I’ll end that discussion here. Now interestingly enough, Revelation opens with the writer identifying himself as “God’s…servant John” (beginning of chapter one). He doesn’t claim to be an apostle, only a servant. From here on out, I’ll refer to him by his traditional name of “John the Divine.”

To complicate things, there are some fairly critical differences – stylistic, linguistic, grammatical and structural – between the Gospel and Revelation. The Gospel reflects a mastery of the Greek language (the original language of both works), whereas the clumsy, clunky Greek of Revelation displays an amateur usage of the language. I don’t mean that to sound offensive, only to show that John the Divine did not have the Greek skills and understanding that Gospel-John possessed. But we’re going to look past these differences and explore what, to me, seems like the real, critical issue at hand: the theological differences.

The Eschatology of John’s Gospel

Eschatology refers to the study of belief about the end of the world, coming from the Greek word “eschaton,” meaning “end.” To have an eschatology means to have a particular belief about how the world will meet its demise. Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, the writers of the immensely popular Left Behind series, conform to a very specific kind of eschatology (click here to see my view of it).

Within the Gospel of John, there is a very distinct kind of belief which is called Realized Eschatology. Realized Eschatology views Heaven and Earth as two completely independent worlds coexisting simultaneously. However, during the life of Christ, God (through Jesus) essentially punched a hole, or a passage, between Heaven and Earth, allowing for humans to go to Heaven. See the diagram below.

In Gospel-John’s view, Heaven is accessible now, and through Christ alone, we can access it. As the Earth eventually fades away and dies, the connecting tunnel will essentially act as a sort of life boat, allowing those who trust in Christ to reach the safety of Heaven. Little is known of the sequence of events leading to the Earth’s destruction as, in Gospel-John’s eschatology, those events aren’t really that important. Heaven is accessible now, and when we’re on the other side, Earthly events will be irrelevant.

Much of this derives from Greek philosophy, including Christ’s identification as the “Word of God.” This comes from the Greek word “Logos,” meaning “word,” and it was developed by a Greek school of philosophy called Neoplatonism. This school saw God alone in the beginning before time. God spoke, and the word (or Logos) he spoke took a form of its own and created the universe on his behalf. Essentially, God created the world by proxy through an extension of himself: his Word. The beginning of John’s Gospel identifies Jesus as that Word, and it is by that Word that the portal was opened between Heaven and Earth, and only by and through that Word that humanity can be saved. Greek philosophy feeds into Christian theology and two millennia later, here we stand. Gospel-John really knew his Greek.

The Eschatology of Revelation

The book of Revelation operates under a very different understanding, corresponding with a belief system called Apocalyptic Eschatology. It’s quite a fascinating topic, and it was the focus of my Master’s Thesis. Anyway, apocalyptic eschatology envisions a world in which Heaven is distant and separated from Earth, very much like earlier. However, rather than having a tunnel or portal connecting the two, there is a much more gradual progression of time, during which Heaven is approaching Earth, and Earth is, in turn, being turned into Heaven. Eventually, at some unknown point far, far in the future, Heaven will arrive on the scene and merge with Earth, and that will be the final reality.  See the diagram below.

So what, in this system, was the purpose of Christ’s ministry on Earth? Glad I asked! You see, according to John the Divine, Christ’s appearance on Earth, and especially his crucifixion, was the catalyst which set in motion the chain of events leading to the fulfillment of his eschatological worldview. Jesus began the whole process, and John the Divine’s book describes what will come about as a result of it.

The worldview of apocalyptic eschatology was very thoroughly Jewish, and at the time Revelation was written, it had at least four centuries of literary and theological development under its belt. There were countless works out there among the Jews, and most interestingly, this whole genre of writing and belief (according to some persuasive scholars) actually arose as a reaction against Greek philosophy and culture. That’s why apocalyptic eschatology is so very, very Jewish, and that may be a contributing factor to John the Divine’s lack of knowledge in the fields of Greek language and philosophy.

Conclusion

So are John the Divine and Gospel-John the same person? Personally, I highly doubt it. While the former was fully entrenched in a thoroughly Jewish belief system which excluded Greek philosophy, the latter incorporated a great many Greek themes and ideas into his own work. Gospel-John’s realized eschatology emphasized the concept of space: there are two worlds existing simultaneously, with no regard to time or history, and Christ built the passage between the two. This emphasis is a reflection of both Greek and earlier Mesopotamian religious belief, in which the focus lay in temples and mountains and physical locations. John the Divine’s apocalyptic eschatology, on the other hand, emphasized the concept of time, with one world slowly feeding into the other over the course of history. This is a reflection of early Israelite belief, in which believers are to set aside not a land or space, but a day to worship God. Israelite and later Jewish believers are to honor God on occasions and days first and foremost.

Does this mean the two systems are incompatible? Of course not. After all, time and space both exist in our world. I remember my good childhood at my parents’ house, a place which helps me to remember moments. John’s Gospel is not incompatible with the book of Revelation, and John the Divine and Gospel-John were both followers of Christ who had messages from God meant to be shared with the world. But it casts a great shadow of doubt on the idea that they were the same person. For instance, an architect can design a history museum, but that doesn’t make him the curator. It just means that both men are necessary to get the full picture of what’s meant to take place.

Until next time, friends…

What is a Leader’s Purpose?

Good day, all! I hope that this month has been treating you well. Now today I’d like to take a look at the question of what a leader’s purpose is, but from a Biblical standpoint. My purpose here is not to argue for politics, but to explore the role of leaders in the context of the Bible. Then, maybe, we can take a look at how we can apply that to modern day.

A few years ago, when the Refugee Crisis was in the news, one of the potential U.S. presidential candidates of the time sent out an article describing the Biblical responsibility of the ancient king. His purpose, of course, was to draw a parallel between the ancient Israelite kings and our current president in order to establish the proper and Biblical course of action. Now in this article (which I was unfortunately unable to locate), the writer claimed that the purpose of the Biblical king was to protect his people first and foremost from those who wish to do them harm. Thus, this writer was arguing that it was Biblical to deny asylum to modern refugees on the grounds that such refugees could be potential threats to the American people. This sounds like perfectly reasonable logic, case closed.

That is, if it were true. This article I read was a fantastic example of how this potential presidential candidate – while likely a God-fearing Christian – was about the furthest thing from a Bible scholar. So speaking as someone who’s actually read the Bible, let me explain the Biblical role of the ancient king.

In ancient Israel, as we find in the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, there was not initially a plan for a king. The people were to be led by the prophets and the priests, and when the occasion called for it, sporadically anointed political leaders called Judges. However, the ancient Israelites decided that they wanted to be like the other nations who had kings, and so God relented and gave them King Saul. Saul, while initially charismatic and faithful, proved to be both brash and unstable, and so the kingdom was given over to the ever-famous King David, and thereafter to his son, Solomon. But afterward, Solomon’s unfaithfulness to God resulted in Israel being split in half during the reign of his son, Rehoboam. The secessionist half chose their own king, Jeroboam, and the rival kingdoms persisted for centuries before being destroyed, one by the Assyrian Empire and the other two centuries later by the Babylonians.

Within that history, there is a great deal of activity by many dynasties of kings, but if you look closely, you’ll find an interesting strain of truth that persists throughout it all: a kingdom is blessed when its king leads the people in being faithful to God; a kingdom is destroyed or harmed when its king leads the people away from God. Jeroboam refuses to take down the “High Places” (small altars and places of worship to other gods), and his kingdom is badly beaten, his dynasty destroyed after only a few kings. This is a pretty standard story which repeats itself over and over in the Northern Kingdom over which he ruled.

But then take King Josiah. As a very young king, he discovered a lost book of the Bible (suspected to be Deuteronomy) laying in the wastes of the Jerusalem Temple. As a result, he renovates the Temple and tears down the local High Places, and as a result God blesses his reign with peace and prosperity. His son does not follow suit and brings the kingdom to ruin. King Ahab, husband of the notorious Jezebel, acts cruelly and corruptly, and he worships foreign gods with his wife. They – and the kingdom around them – come to tragic fates. And just before the advent of the Babylonian Exile, we find King Zedekiah seeking an alliance with Egypt despite God’s commandment to give in to the Babylonians. The alliance collapses, Zedekiah suffers horribly and his kingdom is left in ruins, its Temple burnt to the ground.

So what pattern do we see here? It’s actually quite simple. When a king leads his people to God, God becomes their protection. When he turns away from God, or tries to protect the people by his own power and ingenuity, destruction surely follows. The role of a king, therefore, was not to protect his people at all, at least not physically. Instead, his purpose was to model to the people how they should live, and to lead them in the right relationship with God. Oftentimes, this seems counter-intuitive, like letting into our country the refugee who may be a terrorist in disguise. But think of the great Judge, Gideon. He had a great army to lead against an enemy, but under God’s orders, he whittled that army down to three hundred men, leaving them far outnumbered. But because of his loyalty to God, he and his three hundred won a decisive victory. Is it too farfetched to think that if he had retained his army against the command of God, they may have suffered a catastrophic defeat?

So the king’s role is to lead his people in faith, modelling the commands of God. Protecting his people, as bizarre as this sounds, is secondary to that, but the reason is natural: because if the people are faithful to God, then God will protect them. If we do as God commands, there will undoubtedly be difficult times (as there always are), but we will be secure in the knowledge that God is protecting us. If our leaders – and yes, even our president – will lead us back to the ways of faith in God, then we won’t need a powerful military to protect us. We’ll have the Creator himself on our side. That is the true purpose of a king: to put us on the side of God, however that may be.

Until next time, friends…

Apocalyptic Exultation

Greetings and welcome to 2017! We made it here, a full five years after the end of the world! Does that mean we’re living post-apocalyptically? Meh, who knows. In any case, today I’d like to end my exploration of the four ancient Jewish sects which existed in Jesus’ time. We first discussed the ever-notorious Pharisees, and then the rigid Sadducees (who were so sad, you see?), and then I touched close to home with the intense nationalistic fervor of the Zealots. And now, for our final chapter, I’d like to discuss my personal favorite, the Essenes, who may quite possibly have counted as a member none other than John the Baptist (it’s just a theory).

First, who were they? The Essenes were what’s called an “eschatological sect,” coming from the Greek word eschaton, which means “end.” The Essenes were, in fact, wholly obsessed with the end of the world. They were so focused on this idea, in fact, that they actually pulled out of society and established their own colonies out in the wilderness with the sole purpose of purifying themselves in order to bear witness to the end of time. One of their most popular settlements was in a place called Qumran, where most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. The Dead Sea Scrolls, in fact, were written by none other than the Essenes. These people had a deep focus on Biblical prophecy, and there are many hints that they believed themselves to be living in the physical presence of angels. Now what that means is not well known, but I’m sure it would only fuel the fires of ancient aliens theorists. In any case, the Essenes lived in isolated colonies kept ritually pure and completely prepared for God to set foot on Earth and destroy all but them.

Their influence over the development of Christianity was enormous. In their writings were the first correlations between the devil and the concept of an evil angel, suggesting that they were the first to introduce the “Lucifer was a fallen angel” idea. Their origins go back beyond those of the Pharisees, to the late 4^th Century B.C. at least, when Alexander the Great brought the remnant of Israel under control of Hellenistic kings. It has been suggested that their origin was as an immediate reaction to the influence of Greek culture on Jewish belief, but that theory gets much more complicated as you look into it (trust me, it was the focus of my Master’s thesis). Some have suggested that John the Baptist – who lived in the wilderness and called people to repentance before the Messiah came – was at least heavily influenced by the Essenes, if he wasn’t one himself. The book of Revelation, last in the Christian Bible, was written in the style of Essene eschatological works, and represented an incorporation of Essene theology into the newly-born Christian religion. In fact, while archaeology would suggest that the Essene communities died off after the Jewish-Roman War, many scholars would suggest that the Essenes were, instead, absorbed into Christianity, forming somewhat of a bedrock for the new faith. We cannot know for certain, but it’s interesting to think about nonetheless.

Right off the bat, there are some things to learn from these isolationists. A wholehearted devotion to our faith is one, and an attempt at living our lives – each and every moment – prepared for God’s return is another. We should live pure lives, and be prepared at all times. We should be strongly involved in our churches, helping our fellow brothers and sisters as if they were family. We should create a close-knit community devoted to preparing the way for Christ’s arrival.

But we should not isolate ourselves in the process. No, the Essenes didn’t live as hermits or ascetics, but they did remove themselves from the rest of their world, leaving it to fall apart and be destroyed, as they believed would happen. While we form the familial communities of our local church, we should not become exclusive, denying entrance into this elect to only those who are pure by our standards. On the contrary, we are called to remain in the culture, to actively engage with those around us who are far different. We should reach out to those who are not members of our church, sharing the gospel with them, sharing love and warmth and compassion with them. If we share the love of Christ, the greatest gift of the Messiah, then perhaps in our giving of ourselves to good works, we will unknowingly share that love with angels. As I write this, perhaps now I understand what it means to be living in the presence of angels. Maybe there are angels among us, and by showing compassion to all we meet, we have unknowingly entertained them, and brought more souls to the salvific one they serve.

Until next time, friends…

Christian Zealotry

Greetings, and welcome to the new year! So far, we’ve discussed the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and what we can learn – both good and bad – from each of them. But now it’s time to explore one of the sects of Judaism which is much less publicized to regular Christians, one whose name is far too often misconstrued. I am talking about the Zealots. The Zealots were less populous than the prior two, and their origins are not nearly as well-known due to some of their more shadowy misadventures. But, interesting note, one of the Twelve Disciples was actually a Zealot. He is named in Luke’s Gospel as “Simon the Zealot.” Additionally, there are some theories that Judas may have been somehow related to the Zealots, but more on that later. First, who are the Zealots?

When we think of Simon the Zealot, we often think of him as being very excited and borderline fanatical about Christ. Unfortunately, the Zealots of Jesus’ time were not simply “people with zeal,” but, rather, a militant anti-Roman group. They defaced Roman property, organized protests and riots, and oftentimes even carried out assassinations and ambushed Roman soldiers. They were, in fact, a terrorist cell operating in order to drive out the Roman overlords. You heard me right: one of the Twelve Disciples was a former terrorist. The Zealots were sometimes popular with the common Jews, although their popularity would often dwindle when they unintentionally instigated Roman crack-downs which, more often than not, resulted in the deaths of many, many Jews. It was the Zealots, in fact, who instigated the Jewish Rebellion of 66-73 A.D., after which the Romans burned down the Jerusalem Temple and crucified tens of thousands of Jews all over the country. Some ancient historians claimed that, at the end of the Jewish Revolt, there was a Jew crucified on every street corner. This is likely an exaggeration, but it does explain how the Zealot sect eventually died out alongside the Sadducees.

I also mentioned Judas may have been related to the Zealots, and this comes from the confusion surrounding his last name. If you haven’t noticed, Judas Iscariot (the disciple who betrayed Jesus) is the only one with a last name. Now why is that? One leading theory is that it’s actually “Is-Kerioth,” indicating his birthplace in a place called Kerioth. If this is the case, then it establishes him as the only disciple not from Galilee. However, it could also be a variant of the word Iskarii, a sub-sect of the Zealots who were known for carrying concealed weapons out into crowds and then engaging in random, frenzied stabbings. A terror cell if there ever was one. So was Judas simply a non-Galilean? Was he a terrorist, too? Or, as the gospel of John suggests, was he simply the son of a non-Galilean or terrorist? Unfortunately, we simply don’t know.

I’m sure many of you reading this are immediately thinking that there’s nothing positive which we can learn from a First Century terrorist group. Well, if I can just scrape the surface with a metaphorical approach, I think we can learn from them that we can’t sit idly by as Christians and hope the world gets better. We need to get up and actually start to instigate these changes ourselves. I’d recommend the peaceful Martin Luther King, Jr., approach, mind you, rather than the assassinations and stabbings. I’ll be a little more clear on this, just to be safe. DO NO go out and stab people for God. DO NOT throw in with terrorists, even if they define religion in such a way as to justify their cause. DO NOT DO THESE THINGS.

Now this does bring to mind an issue with our Christian culture today, something which a former Methodist bishop referred to as the “Nationalism Gospel.” We seem to believe that our country is a firm Christian country to which we owe our absolute allegiance. To be a proper Christian, we’re told, you need to be a true-blue patriot, stand for the National Anthem, say the Pledge of Allegiance every day and look down on foreigners. But how odd would it be to realize that in Heaven, with God, in that great multitude worshipping throughout eternity, there will be no America? To know that we will not be Americans, or Texans, or Hoosiers, or bear any sort of nationality other than “of the kingdom of God and his Christ”? There may be no Constitution, no Declaration of Independence in that realm, for God and his Word shall be all that matters. Does this blow your mind? So how does modern patriotism, or nationalism, hold up in light of that eternity? The Zealots committed murder and wrought death due not to their devotion to God, but because of the nationalistic fervor which overcame them. How often do we do the same, letting politics or nationalism cause us to forget our true allegiance to a God of love? This is what I suggest, my friends. Honor the country in which God placed you, but not at the expense of your devotion to Christ and his commandment to love others, even the foreigners.

Until next time, friends…

Rigid Traditionalism

Good day and welcome back! Yesterday was Christmas Day, a joyous time that I’ve always loved. Well, almost always loved. It was often difficult to endure during mine and my wife’s engagement, as I had so little time with her. But we persevered and now here we are! Hopefully you celebrated this special time by attending a Christmas Eve service with a church, officiated by a priest, pastor, minister or even a lay-person who had spent a good deal of time studying the Bible. In any case, there were such people even as far back as Jesus’ time, running the core of Jewish faith, and these individuals were called the Sadducees. The common phrase goes that they “didn’t believe in angels or demons or life after death, and that’s why there were sad, you see” (say the last three words really quick and it produces the same sound as “Sadducee”). If you can believe it, this ancient priesthood really did hold to such beliefs (or non-beliefs), but their reason actually makes sense in their own context. So let’s dive in.

The Jewish sect of the Sadducees predated the Pharisees by roughly three hundred years. During the Babylonian Exile, when the leaders of the Jews were deported from their homeland, the great Temple in Jerusalem was left in the care of unlearned farmers, peasants, the poor and pretty much whoever the Babylonians deemed to be not worth deporting. These people – many of them descended from the priestly tribe of Levi – did their best to continue running the Temple, destroyed as it was. Fast forward forty-nine, fifty-five or sixty years (the timeline’s a little fuzzy based on which deportation at which you begin counting; or seventy years if you want to be poetic) and the descendants of deported Jews were suddenly allowed to return home and rebuild the Temple. But uh-oh, there were people already running it! Well, the returning Jews fought and succeeded in kicking the Levites out of the Temple so that they could run it themselves, and they sought legitimacy by claiming they were descended from ancient King David’s own high priest, Zadok. Thus, they became the Zadokites, which eventually became the Zadokies, then on and on and eventually, the Sadducees. Words change over time, don’t try and fight it. And now you know the origin of this group.

The Sadducees differed from the Pharisees in a number of ways. First, while the Pharisees accepted the entirety of the Old Testament, including prophets, poetry and writings, the Sadducees clung rigidly to the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, Genesis through Deuteronomy) and excluded all others, including the prophets (which is why they never had any messianic beliefs like the other three sects did). Since the Torah never makes any mention of the afterlife, or of demons, and only makes scant mention of angels in such a manner that those angels could, in fact, be regular humans, the Sadducees denied belief in any of these things. They did not believe in the coming end of the world, nor of life after death. What they did believe in was running the Temple in order to please God. They did the prayers, the sacrifices, the reading of the Torah. The Temple was their domain, and it was in that manner that they were extremely strict in matters of purity, sacrifice and worship. They took these duties very seriously.

But it’s an awful truth that power so often corrupts, and he who controls the seat of Jewish belief holds an awful lot of power. As a result, the priesthood was very often riddled with corruption and shocked by scandal. At other times, seemingly righteous Sadducees had to compromise the integrity of the Temple in order to ensure its survival, for the Jews were so often ruled by outsiders, whether they be Persians, Macedonians, Seleucids, Ptolemies or Romans. Some of these allowed the Sadducees to run the Temple unimpeded, but others required that the Sadducees make terrible compromises in worship and culture. The Pharisees, on the other hand, more often than not refused to make such compromises, and so the Sadducees were rarely able to gain the popular support that the Pharisees enjoyed. But they had the Temple, and that held its own power, at least until the Temple was burned by the Romans in 70 A.D., at which point the sect of the Sadducees was lost forever to the pages of history.

The Sadducees stand as a warning to us in ways both obvious and hidden. Of course, we must hold our leaders accountable for the directions which they take. This isn’t just our political leaders, but our religious leaders as well. If our pastors and ministers and priests are leading us closer to God and Christ, then they by all means deserve our respect and following. But if that power becomes too great, if sin and corruption enter into their hearts and set up camp, if their wealth becomes too extravagant and their preaching too far from the love preached by Christ himself, then we must not follow them, for in those days they have sacrificed the spiritual authority with which God has entrusted them. We must not let politics or culture define our faith, but rather, let it be the other way around. If we sacrifice love for purity of worship, then we have lost both.

But secondly, we must not do as some do and regard our faith as something casual. Our faith, our worship, our conduct and our scripture must be approached with a sobering truth. Worship services require ardent preparation, for we are not merely entertaining our fellow man, but we are engaging in worship directed at the divine himself. As with the Sadducees, we must approach our communal worship with powerful purpose and devotion. And we must be willing to sacrifice even that which we hold most precious for the glory of our God in Heaven. These are difficult proclamations, I know, but they are worth the effort, I can assure you.

Until next time, friends…

What Scholars Really Say: Abraham’s Blessing

Hello, there! A few weeks ago, I discussed the name (or names) of God and their origin, uncovering the fact that the names “Lord” and “God,” or “Yahweh” and “El” respectively, entered the historical scene sometime after the Exodus. With this in mind, I ended with the question of what Abraham called God, seeing as how he lived almost half a millennium before either of those names were known or applied.

Today, I’d like to look at a particular event. This appears in Genesis 14, when a group of cities rebel against a powerful empire, and in the process, they end up capturing Abraham’s nephew, Lot, among others. Abraham, a powerful seminomad, gathers an army of 300 men and rescues many of the stolen riches and, most importantly, his beloved nephew. After this victory, Abraham is met by the enigmatic priest-king of Salem, Melchizedek. Melchizedek blesses Abraham “by God Most High, creator of heaven and earth” (Genesis 14), and in return, Abraham gives the priest one-tenth of the treasures he recovered. This story forms the basis of what is today known as the tithe. The king of Sodom (which had not yet been destroyed) is similarly overjoyed to see Abraham return with the stolen treasures and kidnapped people, and he offers to let Abraham keep the treasure for himself. Abraham refuses, citing a promise he made to “God Most High, creator of heaven and earth” that he wouldn’t keep any of it.

This story seems to be straightforward. Abraham achieves victory, he’s blessed by Melchizedek, he gives Melchizedek a tithe and then he refuses the king of Sodom’s offer of treasure. But in my last post, I demonstrated how “God Most High” is, in the original Hebrew, “El Elyon.” But wait…wasn’t El just a Canaanite deity back in Abraham’s time? Didn’t El get absorbed into Israelite mythology over five hundred years after Abraham’s death? So then by what deity was Abraham blessed, and to whom did he make his unrecorded promise? I have three theories here, and for each one, I’ll give its benefits and drawbacks. For the sake of keeping things straight, when I refer to God, the god of the Israelites, Christians, etc., I’ll use the name Yahweh, even though it wasn’t used in Abraham’s time, and when I refer to the chief god of Canaanite mythology, I’ll use the name El, even though it was later absorbed into Israelite religion.

Melchizedek Worships Yahweh

Suppose that Yahweh had somehow interacted with the Canaanite priest-king such that Melchizedek was one of his followers. He, like Abraham, had come into contact with the mysterious Yahweh and, when he and the victorious patriarch meet, they realize it, so Melchizedek blesses him by Yahweh, creator of heaven and earth, and Abraham accepts the blessing, then later cites a secret promise between him and Yahweh.

This theory definitely seems the most attractive. After all, it lines the story of the tithe in with worship of Yahweh, and keeps the mysterious Melchizedek – who is so often cited in the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews – as a devout worshipper of the one, true god. But we need to remember that Melchizedek was, indeed, a Canaanite priest-king, and the scripture affirms that he uses the name El. So can we say that he believed El and Yahweh to be the same god? If so, then we have a lot of very dangerous implications. Chiefly, if Yahweh and El were the same god, then that means the Canaanites were, indeed, worshipping Yahweh, just with a fake pantheon surrounding him. Supposing that this far left-field theory is true, it would carry the possibility that during the Canaanite Conquest, Yahweh traitorously turned on his faithful Canaanites and had them wiped out. Honestly, that is not the God I worship, so I can’t see Yahweh and El being the same god. And as for Melchizedek being a worshipper of Yahweh, I’m afraid there’s just no scriptural evidence to back this theory up.

Melchizedek and Abraham Worship Different Gods

It is curious that Melchizedek worships El, creator of heaven and earth, and then Abraham cites a promise he made to El, creator of heaven and earth. But didn’t Yahweh create the Heavens and the Earth? Perhaps it’s possible that when Melchizedek is worshipping the Canaanite god, El, Abraham mistakenly believes that he’s worshipping Yahweh. Abraham then accepts a blessing on behalf of what he assumed to be his god, then cites a promise to his real god.

Firstly, this theory relies on the idea that Abraham…was stupid. After all, Melchizedek used the name El, didn’t he? Why would Abraham think that he was talking about Yahweh? I’ve never heard people talk about my old pastor, Landon, and thought to myself, “oh, they’re talking about my friend, Ty.” Ty and Landon are very different people, and I don’t know how they could get mixed up, especially when the conversation mentions Landon by name.

As I said in my last blog post, we’re not quite sure what name Abraham used for Yahweh, so it’s entirely possible that when Melchizedek mentions “El Elyon, creator of heaven and earth,” Abraham believes El to be that mysterious god (Yahweh) that met him in the wilderness a couple of times and made some promises to him. But if this is the case, then Abraham would have shifted into being an El-worshipper, and his fidelity to Yahweh would be called into question. Plus, there’s not really much scriptural evidence to support this theory, either.

Abraham Worships El

I briefly touched on this in the last theory, but what if Abraham was, indeed, worshipping El? After all, it’s not for another three chapters that Abraham swears fidelity to Yahweh, so at that time and place, it wouldn’t necessarily be considered unfaithful of Abraham to be occasionally polytheistic (blasphemous egads!). What if Abraham met Melchizedek, accepted a blessing by Melchizedek’s god, El, and then cited a promise he had previously made to that same god? Then, as he later grew closer to Yahweh, he became attached only to him and swore off other gods, including the one by whom Melchizedek had blessed him?

This seems at first a repugnant theory. Abraham worshipping a foreign god? A Canaanite one, no less? It certainly puts Abraham, and also Melchizedek, in a less favorable light than we Christians like to see them. But, as I said, these events happened in Genesis 14, and it wasn’t until Genesis 17 when Abraham set his allegiance to Yahweh and Yahweh only. This would portray Abraham as a man who was steadily converted over time, who got to know Yahweh a few times and eventually became enraptured with the deity, ultimately becoming filled with faith to the point of sacrificing his own son.

But…this still leaves a passage in our Bibles in which one of our oldest patriarchs worships a foreign god, and all across the world, we Christians read that passage as a supposedly faithful event. So this leaves a far deeper mystery, and it’s the mystery with which I’ll leave you today. If you believe in divine dictation (which I don’t), then why do you think God would put this passage in our Bibles? And if you believe in divine inspiration (which I do), then why do you think God would allow and preserve this passage in our Bibles?

So which theory seems to make the most sense to you? And why do you think God may have ensured that this passages found a place in our most holy of texts?

Until next time, friends…