Queries & Comments

008

Is Hershel Doomed?

A Bartender Cannot Cure Drunkenness

Hershel, you went to the wrong place to be advised about the Lake of Fire (Adela Yarbro Collins, Biblical Views: “Is Hershel Doomed to the Lake of Fire?” BAR 37:01). Going to Yale for a literal interpretation of Scripture is like going to a bartender to cure drunkenness.

Your Gideon friends were right. There is a literal Lake of Fire, but no one need go there, be he Jew or Gentile.

Jesus explained how to avoid the Lake of Fire. He said, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7). Your first birth was physical and you had no control over it. The second birth, however, is spiritual and is a matter of choice. You can either accept Jesus Christ as your savior or reject him. To accept him is to believe in him. Andrew, one of your fellow Jews, found Christ and excitedly exclaimed, “We have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ” (John 1:41).

Paul said: “I declare unto you the gospel … by which also ye are saved … how that Christ died for our sins … and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day” (1 Corinthians 15:1–4). When the Philippian jailer cried out, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul’s answer was simply, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:30, 31).

Heaven awaits all who believe in Christ, but the Lake of Fire is prepared for those who reject him. My advice to you is to believe in Christ as your savior. Go ahead, then, and join your Gideon buddies. They’re a great bunch of guys.

Collins Ignorant of God’s Word

Shanks should definitely listen to the Gideons rather than to Professor Collins. I am surprised that anyone as educated as she is could be so ignorant concerning the word of God.

Look to God for the Answer

With no disrespect for the columnist [Adela Yarbro Collins], I hardly think she is qualified to pronounce Yea or Nay on where Hershel Shanks will spend eternity. If I were in Hershel’s shoes, I would be looking to God for that answer.

Removing the Supernatural

Professor Collins raises some valid hermeneutical issues.

However, to go into literary and source criticism destroys any meaningful purpose for these texts. To remove the supernatural from a message that is represented as having its source from God is to destroy the message. If we push aside the texts themselves, we are left with nothing but humanistic naturalism; we die and that is it, we have no overriding purpose for our existence.

Listen to the Voice of God

As a Born Again, Blood-Washed child of God, I have used BAR in my teachings. But Adela Collins has told you what you want to hear, Hershel. Please listen to the voice of God who sent his son who died for both the Jew and the Gentile. Jesus paid the price for your sinful nature as well as mine.

I will not be renewing my subscription.

Women Are Members of Gideon Auxiliary

I read with interest the article in Biblical Views by Adela Yarbro Collins that reassured Mr. Shanks that he would not be thrown into the Lake of Fire mentioned in the Book of 009010Revelation. I would like to clarify a point about the Gideons International, of which I am an active member, as well as a long-time subscriber and avid reader of BAR.

The Gideons International does admit women, not as Gideons but as the wives of Gideons, and they are part of the organization through the Gideon Auxiliary. The Auxiliary plays a critical role in the ministry of the Gideons International by praying steadfastly for the work of their husbands as Gideons. Their prayers are considered to be the “backbone” of the Gideons’ work around the world, and whose charge it is to obey Christ’s directive to “go into all the world and spread the Gospel.” The Auxiliary is an equal and indispensable partner with Gideons in that quest.

Forget Adela Y. Collins!

Hershel, forget Adela Yarbro Collins!

You are a man not afraid of confrontation in search of truth. Go to the creator himself, the God of your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Ask him to reveal to you the truth in this situation. Ask him whether Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew—salvation) is really the Messiah who came and is coming again, this time a King of kings and Lord of lords! If this is true, you don’t want to miss it!

Why Paul Went West

Christianity Went East, Too

Doron Mendels’s article “Why Paul Went West” (BAR 37:01) on the two Jewish diasporas, eastern and western, develops some fascinating arguments about the difference in rabbinic influence based upon vernacular usage: Greek/Latin in the west, Aramaic/Hebrew in the east. The implication, however, is that Christianity spread only throughout the western diaspora because these Greek-speaking Jews did not have rabbinic direction to counter Christian evangelism. The fact is that we in the western world are simply not very aware of Christianity’s spread throughout the east. Our ignorance is also a function of language: We are the heirs of the Greek/Latin tradition, and we’re not aware of the eastern Church Fathers or their works. In fact Christianity spread very quickly throughout the Persian empire of the east, using the Aramaic language, which remains today the liturgical language of the “Assyrian” or “Chaldean” Christian churches. These are the churches that look primarily to the apostle Thomas, rather than to Paul, as their founder. Eastern Christianity in the early centuries spread as far as China and India along the trade routes of the Persian empire.

Jews in China, India and Yemen

Doron Mendels identifies two Jewish diasporas—the western and the eastern. A map identifies them. However, the eastern diaspora is seriously flawed. It was in fact much larger. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., Jews moved not only to Babylonia but much further east, to Persia, Afghanistan and through the Silk Road—to China, where their descendants still live, mostly in Kai Feng. Furthermore, there were Jews in Yemen even before the first-century C.E. Jews arrived in Kochin, India, in 72 C.E.

More Answers, Please

I have rarely been as intrigued by an article as I was by Doron Mendels’s “Why Paul Went West.” Still, the ending of the article left me with more questions than answers.

My first questions relate to the respective attitudes of western and eastern Jews toward the Roman Empire. The rebellions of the diaspora communities in the eastern Mediterranean in 115–117 C.E. during the reign of the emperor Trajan must have been mainly carried out by Jews belonging to the western tradition. Was there a difference in the relative participation of western and eastern oriented Jews living in the Land of Israel during the two great revolts of 67–73 C.E. and 131–135 C.E.? More generally, did the western and eastern Jews have differing basic attitudes concerning the relative worth of rebellion versus accommodation with Rome? Did the western Jews, because of their closeness to Greek culture, feel a greater tie to 011Rome or, on the contrary, did their closeness yet continued separation from mainstream Roman society make them even more antagonistic to Roman rule?

Secondly, how great were the inroads of Christianity among the western Jews? Did most of the western Jews become Christians, leaving only a small Jewish remnant, or did most of them remain Jews?

Lastly, I am curious about the fate of western Jewish traditions after the two communities were reintegrated. Professor Mendels notes that by the early ninth century C.E., the rift between eastern and western Jewries was mended as the Oral Law, in written form, made its way to the western communities who were by this time more literate in Hebrew. Did the cultural and religious traditions of the western Jews continue in the spiritually reunited Jewish people, or were they utterly lost to Judaism? Is that Golden Age of Spanish Jewry one indication that these traditions may have persisted? Could the Spanish Jews’ openness to, and participation in, the secular culture of the time been at least partially the result of their ancient Mediterranean heritage?

I would be very grateful if you could suggest some sources that begin to answer these questions.

See above for author’s response.—Ed.

Long-Term Impact of Diaspora

Thanks for your informative article on the East/West split in Judaism. I’d very much like to read a second installment—the longer-term “so what” of the story, if you please. That is, an explanation of the longer-term implications of this dichotomy.

How does it bear on Ashkenazi/Sephardic history? Did northern European Judaism spring from the Eastern tradition? What ultimately became of the Western group? Are there any remnants of this Western form of Judaism?

Finally, did the earlier diasporas (Israel and Judah dispersions to Babylon and Persia) figure in the eventual fracturing of Judaism?

Thanks for sharing your scholarship.

Doron Mendels responds to letters:

We have little information as to the ultimate fate of the so-called western Jews. We can assume that some became Christians; others remained “Biblical” Jews. We can also assume that some of the inherent western culture of western Jews was retained even when the eastern Jewish culture (i.e., Rabbinic) “conquered” western Jewry.

At any rate, the eastern Jewish culture and its Hebrew language became dominant in the west in the ninth–tenth centuries. (Ashkenazi and Sephardic Judaism are a later development, not within the scope of my article.)

Concerning the upheaval of Jews against Rome in 115–117 C.E., most of the eastern Jews were active, whereas western Jewry did not participate. In fact, only in western countries that bordered the east, such as Egypt, Cyprus and Cyrene did 012Jews participate. And western Jewry in Europe was silent.

A great deal of discussion of these reader questions can be found in the two English articles and the German book cited in the article.

Zodiacs On Mosaic Floors

In his letter to the editor (“The Zodiac as Jewish Mysticism,” BAR 37:01), Walter Zanger suggests that several ancient synagogue mosaics portray advancement “from the mundane earth … to higher worlds,” which stand for “a mystical, vertical ascent to the throne of God.” Zanger fails to mention, however, the brilliant interpretation of these mosaics by Ze’ev Weiss after his discovery of the synagogue mosaic at Sepphoris. Weiss’s theory, published in Promise and Redemption (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1996), a title that encapsulates the core of his interpretation, sets out this idea at length. In my more popular style of words, the explanation is as follows:

Entering the synagogue one sees first the promise made to Abraham after he expressed his willingness to sacrifice even his own son: “I will … make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies” (Genesis 22:17). Yet in the time of these synagogues the reality was quite the opposite. Jews were an oppressed culture in a Christian realm. And the memory of the trauma of the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans in 70 C.E. was still fresh.

The hope for the rebuilding of the Temple (“redemption” in Weiss’s terminology) is expressed in the images presented in the innermost part of the synagogue, next to the probable location of the ark with the Torah scrolls in it. Here were depicted objects that were used at the time the Temple stood, like the menorah, the incense shovel and possibly the façade of the Temple itself.

When will the promise be fulfilled? When will redemption arrive? The big zodiac in the middle presents the answer: It depends on he who controls the movement of the stars, the moon and the sun (hence the depiction of Helios). Only he knows the time for this redemption. Only he knows when the Jewish Temple will be rebuilt. The zodiac therefore presents the powers of the Lord: He controls the universe (including the pagan gods), as well as time.

No Deal!

I would be pleased to make a generous donation after you publish my letter of November 30, 2010.

Sorry. You cannot buy your way into our pages.—Ed.

Is Hershel Doomed?