INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Year A - PROPER 22

EXODUS 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20. Of all passages in the Bible, this may be the most familiar. Perhaps more surprising to us now is the scholarly opinion that these Ten Commandments were by no means original to the Israelites. Similar codes existed long before the Jewish tradition developed that this code was delivered by God to Moses and the Israelites on the sacred mountain of Sinai.

This Decalogue set forth the eternal covenant relationships between God and Israel, and between human beings in a relatively small community. Yet the constitutions and laws of many modern nations are based on this ancient code, particularly the last six commandments.

PSALM 19. The creative power of God in nature and God's sacred covenant with humanity expressed in the Torah became the centrepiece of Israel's religious heritage as set forth in this psalm. The two distinct parts of the psalm cause some to wonder if they were originally two separate compositions. Even if so, the Hebrew sense of the majestic beauty of creation and the divinely ordered Torah make it easy to understand why they were united as one.

ISAIAH 5:1-7. (Alternate) These poetic lines express a moving sense of God=s disappointment with God=s chosen people. The striking metaphor of Israel as God=s unfruitful vineyard is a profound message of judgment against them.

PSALM 80:7-15. (Alternate) In another reference to Israel as God=s vine the psalmist laments that God has allowed it to languish and pleads that God restore it to favour once more.

PHILIPPIANS 3:4b-14. Although as a Pharisee Paul was familiar with the Torah as were few other New Testament authors, he rested his spiritual authority on his experience of and obedience to Jesus Christ, not on his achievements in keeping the moral code of Israel. Knowing and following Christ above all was his only goal, a purpose for which he had made great sacrifice.

The quotation about a cornerstone being rejected (vs. 42) comes from Psalm 118:22- 23. As used there, it did not refer to the Messiah being rejected. That was a new interpretation imposed on the reference by the early church. Its appearance in three other New Testament books (Mark 12:10-11, Acts 4:11 and 1 Peter 2:7) shows that it was an important part of early Christian preaching as the church struggled to understand why Jesus was crucified.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

It may also come as a surprise to many that there are variations in the way different religious communities enumerate them today. Jews, Roman Catholics and Lutherans treat worshiping other gods and making graven images as the first commandment, while Reformed and Orthodox Christians separate them into two. Roman Catholics and Lutherans separate coveting into two prohibitions, as nine and ten: nine - the household; and ten - the remainder of the list.

This Decalogue set forth the eternal covenant relationships between God and

humanity and between human beings in a relatively small community. Yet the constitutions and laws of many modern nations are based on this ancient code, particularly the last six commandments. Some interpreters would prefer to divide the Decalogue into four parts, as does Professor Emeritus Walter Harrelson, of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, in The Oxford Companion to the Bible:

The first three demand the worship of God alone, prohibiting image-making and the use of God's name to do harm to others. These not only stress God's exclusive claim over the lives of people, but also demand total commitment, thus preserving people from divided loyalties and protecting the community from misusing God's power.

The next two call for the observing of the seventh day as a day of rest and for

honoring parents when they may no longer be of significant economic value within the community. These institutions provide protection for some of the basic elements of society, in their emphasis on labor, rest from labor, and human dignity.

The following three commandments focus on the life of the individual or the family

within the larger community. They insist on the sanctity of human life, marriage and sexuality, and the necessity to maintain a community in which the extension of self one's into property is recognized and respected. Women were then regarded as property too. The last two deal more with social relationships, assuring that truth is the basis of justice and that community life is not corrupted by lust for another's goods or lives.

A recent cartoon depicted the giving of the Ten Commandments with a modern public relations twist. A bewildered Moses stands looking up at a cloud through which the hand of God thrusts the tablets of stone toward him. A voice sounds out of the cloud saying, AThese are your talking points.@ That is very much the way it has been throughout history.

As the remaining parts of the Pentateuch demonstrate, these were by no means the only commandments which the Israelites sought to obey. Nor have Jewish communities through the centuries looked to the Torah (our Pentateuch) as the only source of law governing community and personal ethical behavior. The long developing oral tradition written down in the Misnah and the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds during the first five centuries of the first millennium CE is also regarded as having equal authority.

It is likely that the Ten Commandments were used extensively for the instruction of the young in the dominant values of the community as well as in public worship. It has been suggested that their number was limited to ten because they could be easily memorized and enumerated on the fingers of two hands. Note too that they are all negative; AThou shalt not Y.@ Jesus chose to summarize them in two very positive commandments: love for God and for neighbor.

In his unique paraphrasing of the Psalms, Jim Taylor, author of many books on

religious topics and formerly a partner in Wood Lake Books, (Everyday Psalms: The Power of the Psalms in Language and Images for Today, Wood Lake Books, 1994) has given a different picture of what this poem now says to us. He concentrates on "scientific study" of the universe and "the universal law of interdependence" as the main emphases of the psalm. Taylor also gives an interesting rendition of the final prayer (vs. 14): "Keep us always open to wonder, to beauty, and to mystery, oh greatest of mysteries."

With a similar objective of putting "the psalmists bold, free prayers ... in the words and phrases and looks of today," Leslie Brandt has lifted up the two dominant subjects of the psalm. (Psalms/Now. Concordia, 1973) Brandt identified these as the power and presence of God in the grandeur of nature and the ultimate value for humanity in the ordered purpose of Torah. He sees Torah as "a path ... to walk in." Brandt prays with the psalmist that through our acceptance of and response to these, we may "realize anew the security and serenity of (God's) loving presence."

It is unfortunate that for many centuries, the Hebrew word Torah has been given

the English connotation of "law". The late Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Professor of

Comparative History of Religion at Harvard University, wrote in his What Is Scripture: A Comparative Approach (Fortress Press, 1993): "An argument can be mounted that for the Jewish case the term betrays a double misreading: from Hebrew torah into Greek nomos and later from Greek nomos into English "law" - as the two most consequential mistranslations in human history." Smith further noted that "the word Torah is from a verb signifying to instruct, to teach, to guide, and is so used in the Bible.... The verbal noun, torah, could be rendered either "instructing: or, less dynamically, "instruction".... As a category in Jewish religious thought, the word Torah, meaning the divine Torah, may denote either the fact of God's mercifully guiding His people, or the guidance with which He has done so; or, eventually, the words in which the guidance is formulated; or again, the books in which those words are written....It would not be too far-fetched to say that Torah for Jews means revelation - whether this be taken as the term for a theological category, or for the content of the revelation: the fact or the act of revealing, or what is revealed, or both."

The prophet makes abundantly clear in vs. 7 that his vivid metaphor was directed at both the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and the Southern Kingdom (Judah). It is likely, therefore that his prophecy was uttered just before or just after the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians in 721 BCE. On the other had, vs. 3 appears to refer only to the citizens of Jerusalem and Judah, so it may have already been too late for Israel to be saved from its doom. Thus it could date from the period between the fall of Israel=s capital, Samaria, and the failed seige of Jerusalem by Sennacerib in 701 BCE.

One can only imagine how those who first heard it may have reacted. But prophecy was never uttered with predictive intent. Rather, it warned that the current moral and spiritual conditions pointed to a destructive end unless dramatic changes in behaviour followed the prophet=s utterance. Such conditions existed on many occasions during the history of the Jewish people.

PSALM 80:7-15. (Alternate) In another reference to Israel as God=s vine the psalmist laments that God has allowed it to languish and pleads that God restore it to favour once more. At the same time, he expresses a very strong view of God=s sovereignty over history in a lament composed for congregational worship.

In a metaphorical if abbreviated recapitulation of Israel=s history, the psalmist appeals to God to save God=s holy people after some unstated period when events indicated that they had been sorely troubled by hostile enemies. The two major events of the nation=s history are recalled: the Exodus (vs. 8) and the expansion the united kingdom under David (vs. 11).

It would appear, however, that the psalmist lived in a later period, possibly in the late 8^th century BCE after the destruction of Samaria in 701 BCE. References to Joseph (vs. 1), Ephraim and Manasseh (vs. 2) lend weight to this. It might even be that he was a refugee from the Northern Kingdom living in Jerusalem lamenting the loss of his home territory. Could that be the reason for his references to Benjamin, directly in vs. 2 and by allusion in vs. 17?

PHILIPPIANS 3:4b-14. Although as a Pharisee Paul was familiar with the Torah as were few other NT authors, he rested his spiritual authority on his experience of and obedience to Jesus Christ, not on his achievements in keeping the moral code of Israel. Knowing and following Christ above all was his only goal, a purpose for which he had made great sacrifice.

We can never know exactly what Paul meant by wanting "to know Christ and the

power of his resurrection" (vs. 10). This undoubtedly had a close relationship to his conversion experience on the road to Damascus, when he had a vision of the risen Christ and heard Christ's call (Acts 9:1-19). It would appear that the initial vision came to him in a manner similar to a hallucination, a common psycho-spiritual reality in numerous conversions before and since.

This in no way denies the actual event of meeting the risen Christ as Paul frequently testified. The intensity of the experience and the historically impressive mission resulting from it need no other explanation. In other words, Paul gave himself to Christ and for the remainder of his life endured great suffering for his Lord. His goal, however, was not merely to serve as long as his strength lasted, but to "attain the resurrection from the dead" (vs. 11). That was his great hope and he urged all the congregations to which he ministered that this was the sine quae non of faith in Christ as Lord and Savior 9 (1 Cor. 15:17-19).

As he wrote or, more likely, dictated this letter, he was facing imminent martyrdom. Yet he did not feel that he had already obtained his goal. Was there still an element of doubt in his mind as he waited the verdict? Who on pondering the same circumstances - death by crucifixion, beheading, burned at the stake or the victim of wild animals in the arena, all of which known to be Nero's methods of execution - would not have wondered what lay beyond the veil no human vision has ever pierced? Who could fail to be agnostic about what really lies 'over there'?

Life beyond death is a mystery to all understood only in rich scriptural metaphors. Only faith can help us see through the darkness and moved courageously toward it.

Such faith rings true in the closing sentences of this passage. Had Paul not heard over and over again the other apostles telling of the death of Jesus as they had seen it, and then meeting him face to face, talking and eating with him before he vanished from their sight? However, it may have happened, he too had met Jesus, and that years after the resurrection and ascension to which the apostles testified. So, behind this ringing declaration of his very human desire to live lies Paul's own simple conviction that "as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be made alive." (1 Cor. 15:22)

MATTHEW 21:33-46. Jesus tells a devastatingly obvious parable against the religious authorities who so obstinately opposed him. They fully realized what he was saying and made plans to destroy him as the ultimate threat to their authority. One may well ask, however, whether this comes from the lips of Jesus himself or from Matthew writing to the apostolic community in the 80s CE. At that time, Jewish Christians especially were undergoing rejection and banishment from their synagogues by their fellow Jews. Whatever its origins, the parable and the pointed accusation which followed in Matthew's narrative would resonate with the members of that community.

The quotation about a cornerstone being rejected (vs. 42) comes from Psalm 118:22-23. As used there, it did not refer to the Messiah being rejected. That was a new interpretation imposed on the reference by the early church. It also appears in Mark 12:10-11, Acts 4:11 and 1 Peter 2:7. This shows that it was an important part of early Christian preaching as the church struggled to understand why Jesus was crucified.

The practice of reading the Hebrew scriptures from a messianic perspective did not

occur to the Jewish rabbis then or since. This was a new creation by the apostolic church, perhaps initiated by Paul. As a highly trained Pharisee, he had all the necessary intellectual skill to undertake such a task after his conversion. One wonders if this could have been Paul's undertaking between the time of his conversion and early meeting with the apostles in Jerusalem and his return to Antioch from Tarsus at the biding of Barnabas. (Acts 9:26-30; 11:19-26; cf. Gal. 1:18-2:1)

The didactic narrative of the resurrection appearance on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) and Luke's comment in Acts 2:42 that the earliest Christian community "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching" also points in the direction that such revisionist views of the Hebrew texts came from the early church. Many scholars would attribute this to Jesus himself. Yet even such a conservative scholar as Alan Richardson confessed that such didactic narratives "are doubtless founded upon fact, but the stories as we have them have been made into such superb parables, charged with profound theological teaching, that we cannot tell what could have been their original form." (An Introduction to the Theology of The New Testament. SCM Press, 1958, p. 194.)

In his The New Testament As Canon: An Introduction, Brevard S. Childs

comments on Matthew's use of OT quotations. (Fortress Press,1984, 69-71) He deems it an error to simply deconstruct such references in the debate to discover their specific origins. He allows that they are very different from the use made of the Hebrew scriptures by other Jewish interpreters of the time such as the Essene community of Qumran. He sees them instead as providing "the theological context within the divine economy of God with Israel by which to understand and interpret the significance of Jesus' life and ministry....(and) a form of Christian proclamation....(They) serve as a means of actualizing the presence of the promised Christ who is now experienced as the resurrected and exalted Lord.... The hope for which the Jews wait is already being experienced by Christ's church."

Thus the parable, the quotation from Psalm 118, and the setting in the narrative for these had a significant place in Matthew's Gospel as a prelude to the Passion story.

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