Readers Reply

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Happy Memories

I thoroughly enjoyed Professor Philip J. King’s “Exploring the Valleys of Jerusalem,” BR 07:02. More than 20 years ago I was a volunteer worker at Temple Mount dig under the aegis of Professor Benjamin Mazar. Professor King’s article brought back many very pleasant memories.

Does BR Enhance Our Relationship with God?

Christ was God come to earth to provide an example of transformation for us. Christ came to show us a transformation that we each are meant to personally experience.

Christianity is not an interpretation of God, it is not research into who the Essenes were (James C. VanderKam, “The People of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Essenes or Sadducees?” BR 07:02), it is not understanding the correct meaning of a Greek or Hebrew word and it is definitely not trying to make all religions comfortable with one another.

Christianity is working toward, then having a transformational experience, it is developing a personal relationship with God, it is living your everyday life in such a manner that you experience increasing spiritual maturity, it is developing your spirit so that when your body dies you will meet God and be able to experience God more fully than when you were born.

To have a philosophy is valueless unless your personal life changes permanently as a result of applying it. Expertise in philosophy is only valid if the expert can demonstrate a changed life himself. If all the expert has are degrees, accolades, tenure and publications, but no transformational experience, then he is a false prophet.

If your magazine is published to enhance peoples’ relationship with God and assist their personal transformation, then it is valuable. If, however, it is merely a vehicle for mental presentations of intellectual esoterica, it is a hindrance and will be judged as such by God. The three issues that I have read are primarily the latter. I hope and pray that continued reading doesn’t further verify this observation.

Not Much for Jews and Christians to Talk About

Dr. Walter Ziffer is correct when he identifies parts of the New Testament as the “greatest obstacle to interreligious dialogue” (Readers Reply, BR 07:02). These parts really do smack of supersessionism (to use a term discussed in Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR); Eugene J. Fisher, “The Church’s Teaching on Supersessionism,” sidebar to “Dead Sea Scrolls Update: Silence, Anti-Semitism and the Scrolls,” BAR 17:02). The Synoptic Gospels seem to see in the destruction of the Temple the fulfillment of God’s wrath against the Jews for their failure to accept Jesus (compare, for example, Burton L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence [Fortress, 1988]). The fourth Gospel, John, insists loudly and often that only through Jesus can access to God be gained. Paul calls Jews the “true branches,” yet he believes the reason they have not accepted Jesus is simply that God has hardened their hearts. Eventually, the hardening will be removed and they will, presumably, accept him (Romans 11:17–26).

All of this means that Christians can go only so far from supersession before they leave behind their own Scriptures (despite the Catholic Church’s admirable stance articulated in BAR).

Dr. Ziffer suggests that Christians “write … off as nonauthoritative” those parts of the New Testament which are supersessionist but can be shown by scholars not to go back to Jesus himself. We all know how likely this is to happen. Even if it did, would the result not be so different from what we have always called “Christianity” that it might be necessary to come up with a new name for it? I 006wonder whether a nonsupersessionist Christianity is possible.

Perhaps the only realistic option is to seek a recognition by both Christianity and Judaism of their great differences. Writing toward this end, Professor Neusner (“How Judaism and Christianity Can Talk to Each Other,” Dec. 1990) rightly takes Christians and Jews to task for their respective brands of condescension to one another.

I wish, however, that Neusner had gone on to talk about the historical context out of which Christianity and rabbinic Judaism emerged. This context is, of course, the Hellenistic world. Ellis Rivkin has explained how profoundly influenced rabbinic Judaism was by Hellenistic sensibilities (A Hidden Revolution [Abingdon, 1978]). I and others have been trying to explain how thoroughly Hellenistic early Christianity was in some of its most important respects. Christianity and rabbinic Judaism are in fact two separate Hellenistic religions, each of which made claims in its own particular way to the legacy of ancient Israel.

From a historical perspective these claims were motivated as much by the typical Hellenistic urge toward atavism as by genealogical connections. However, this judgment is of little significance to believing Christians and Jews, who tend to regard their traditions’ ties to ancient Israel more as a matter of divine fiat than as human cultural formation.

Christians and Jews must have the courage to face the fact that their claims are, in the final analysis, mutually exclusive. Each group has, all too often, insisted that it is the one, true inheritor of the promises to the patriarchs. Such insistence, when taken to its logical conclusion, invites the urge to exterminate the other in order to maintain one’s own integrity. This urge is the demon that has stalked Jewish-Christian relations for 2,000 years, and it must finally be recognized and resisted

How? Perhaps only by agreeing to disagree, and then leaving each other alone. In the end, there may not be much for Christians and Jews to have a dialogue about. But peaceful silence and mutual coexistence are surely better than theological and sometimes physical, violence.

Who Has a Share in the World to Come?

Pastor William H. Scarle says that he “is willing to live with the fact that Jewish rabbis don’t want gentiles in their covenant with God”. (Readers Reply, BR 07:02). This is simply untrue. As a convert to Judaism, I am all too familiar with the concept of one branch of a religious belief system denying authenticity and salvation to other branches within that system. However, Judaism and its rabbis are not guilty of that. “Salvation,” in Judaism, is open to all mankind, not just to Jews. Gentiles who obey the so called seven laws of Noah—prohibition of murder, incest, adultery, robbery, eating the flesh of a living animal, idolatry and blasphemy—are in the same category as the most pious Jew who observes the 613 commandments (Where Judaism Differed, A. H. Silver, [Aronson, 1987]). Rabbi Meir, in the Talmud, is quoted as saying “Even a non-Jew who is engaged in the study of Torah is like unto the High Priest” (Sanhedrin 59). And Rabbi Joshua said: “The righteous among all nations have a share in the World to Come.” Contrast that with the belief that one can only “be saved” by believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Son of God: “No man cometh to the Father save by me” (John 14:6); “Except a man believe in me, he, cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven” (John 3:5).

Deserves to Be an Article

Dr. Walter Ziffer’s letter in your April 1991 Issue (Readers Reply, BR 07:02) regarding New Testament anti-Jewish texts is a remarkably fine piece of work. It is probably the best concise statement on the subject I’ve ever seen and deserves to be expanded as full-sized lead article in your great journal. I was glad to see Dr. Ziffer’s reference to Norman Beck’s Mature Christianity (Susquehanna Univ. Press, 1985), which deals so forthrightly with the problem of anti-Jewish polemic in the New Testament. Reverend Beck’s thoughts as to how to deal with the problem merit every Christian’s attention.

Your journal gets better with each issue!

Who Is a Bible Expert?

At the end of “Is Everybody a Bible Expert?” BR 07:02, Richard Elliott Friedman suggests that we “check the credentials of those who wrote it. Find out what other qualified persons have to say about it.”

There is a problem with this worth while suggestion: Who is really qualified?

John Allegro seemed to have enough credentials to work on some Qumran (Dead Sea Scroll) material, yet his publication has been severely criticized. As if that were not enough, he published The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (Hodder and Stoughton, 1970), a work which shows that his credentials were not worth much.

Supporters and opponents seem agreed that Julius Wellhausen’s Prolegomena is an impressive work. It certainly provided a significant impetus to the development of the J, E, P, D hypothesis of pentateuchal authorship. Nevertheless, Wellhausen’s simplistic evolutionistic presupposition makes the book a very flawed work.

Friedman adduces enough arguments to undermine the Bloom-Rosenberg position, but he fails to show the scientific soundness of his own presuppositions. Just because the J, E, P, D hypotheses, like the Q-document and the rejection of the Pauline authorship of several letters, has a long and honorable history, that does not prove the validity of the presuppositions, nor does it make its practitioners qualified judges.

So, who is the Bible expert one can turn to?

Renamed as Heresy Review

I read your purportedly, scholarly publication Bible Review issue after issue and inevitably end up asking myself whether it might not more aptly be named “Heresy Review,” or perhaps “Critical Documentary Hypothesis Review.” (See, for example, Richard Elliot Friedman’s “Is Everybody a Bible Expert?” BR 07:02)

I will continue my subscription to “Heresy Review” because I find it instructive to see what Satan has been up to recently. I want the management of this publication to know that those of us who know and believe the Bible are not fooled. This publication does not carry a balanced presentation; rather, it is simply a showcase for writers who subscribe the documentary hypothesis.

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How can you earn the right to call the yourselves Bible Review? Simply by making certain that the forum adequately represents the views of persons who subscribe to the theory that Jesus Christ, being omniscient, did not alert us to any conflicts concerning the sacred texts. He did not suggest that a deutero- or trito-, Isaiah or a school of Isaiahs, wrote that book, nor did he intimate anything that might lead us to believe someone other than Moses wrote the books of Moses. Further there is not one shred of credible evidence to the contrary. The same linguistic arguments that have been used for centuries to ascribe the writings of Shakespeare to other writers are now being used to provide graduate students with a convenient theme for a thesis based on the documentary hypothesis.

It is a simple matter for a graduate student to cook up a thesis which can be defended easily simply because nobody is in a position to produce a notarized first edition scroll penned in the very hand of Moses or Isaiah.

Unbelievers seeking a rationale for their unbelief will seize upon any excuse that can be concocted. The Bible itself predicts that many such persons will teach and lead many astray and do so in prosperity.

Bible Review ought to look in the mirror and ask whether a balanced forum might not serve better. I know hundred of working pastors and to a man they do not support the documentary hypothesis. Yet this publication seems to be saying that the hypothesis is a fact.

I have not seen the tiniest shred of verified evidence to support a single one of the conclusions of this hypothesis and until such evidence is forthcoming one is well advised to hold that the internal testimony of the Scriptures is true and the “experts” are mere opportunists.

In any event, this publication has a duty to present one fundamental/evangelical article for each article from the critical school. Simply because the critical documentary hypothesis happen to be the majority scholarly opinion in no way guarantees its validity. It is especially sleazy to present a forum that leads the uneducated down one path without giving that person the benefit of knowing there is another opinion at the very least that is just as valid.

This is Thanks?

I would like to thank Dr. Friedman for his erudite comments regarding Bloom and Rosenberg’s Book of J (“Is Everybody a Bible Expert?” BR 07:02). I too would be offended if I were a biblical scholar who so often had to hear the base opinions of all those “ignobles.” (I guess that passage regarding man in the image of God has been mistranslated for years. I wouldn’t know.) Since I know neither Greek nor ancient Hebrew, from now on I will try very hard not to speculate about or be wowed by biblical passages I am unqualified to interpret or understand properly. As a matter of fact, I am moved to resign from my duty as Old Testament teacher (Dr. Friedman will not be surprised to learn that I am really just an English teacher since I was trained only in the field English Literature).

I have now returned my copy of the Book of J because I am afraid that would be ruined by the coupling of my ignorance and the book’s faults. I will put the $22 toward Dr. Friedman’s Who Wrote the Bible? [Summit, 1987].

Happy Memories