On Matthew 5:10

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Last week, we were hanging out with a man, one part monster and one part Roman military mastermind, named Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.  We discussed Pompey's approach to Jerusalem in 63 BC, his siege of the city, and his siege of the holy citadel within.  We discussed the piety of the Jewish priests during that siege, who continued to do their priestly Temple duties even as Pompey's troops approached them to cut them down from behind.  This was all in the context of a study of ancient paganism and its interplay with ancient Judaism.

At first glance, Pompey might not be the most pertinent figure when we look at the historic space between paganism and Judaism.  The Jews had, after all, descended from pagans*, and the Old Testament is chock full of stories of the Jewish people interacting with pagans of all sorts.  There is also no doubt that the exile of the Jewish people to the pagan Babylon in the sixth century BC qualifies as one of the most powerful collisions between paganism and Judaism ever - enough to rival anything Rome ever did to the Jews.

So why the focus on Pompey and Rome?  Because of their proximity to Jesus, of course.  When Jesus grew up in the Galilee, Rome was the ultimate earthly authority in that area.  When a Galilean said "damn The Man," they were referring to Rome.  The immense cultural pressure Rome brought to bear on her subjects would have been palpable to Jesus and the whole population of Palestine at the time.

Still, we should understand that when Rome arrived in full force in 63, Palestine was already a thoroughly Hellenized place.  The people there had been familiar with Greek traditions and religion since, at the latest, Alexander the Great's conquest of the area in 332 BC.**  Pompey was, by no means, the first pagan to walk into Jerusalem.  He was merely the most powerful pagan to date to have ever stepped foot in the city.

Bearing the gradual Hellenization of the entire Mediterranean world in mind, today we'll continue our study by simply highlighting some of the main practical aspects of Greco-Roman religious belief.

Ten Broad Strokes on Greco-Roman Paganism

1. Greek and Roman pagan practices differed very little.

We call it "Greco-Roman" paganism because, in many ways, Roman and Greek paganisms were indistinguishable.  This statement is true for a vast majority of Greco-Roman history, and it is especially true of the first century BC.  At that time, in Roman towns and Greek towns alike, cult and temple worship of patron gods was the norm.  In Roman towns and Greek towns alike, religion was a transactional thing, wherein the adherent made continuing blood sacrifices to the gods in return for rewards here in this earthly life.  In Roman and Greek towns all over the Mediterranean and the near-east, religion looked pretty much the same.

The religion of the Greeks and the religion of the Romans can be separated from one another, but, for our purposes, Greco-Roman paganism can be viewed as a monolith.

2.  Greco-Roman paganism was not a system of morality, unlike the major modern religions.  

Greco-Roman paganism did not come with prescriptions for morality, generally.  The gods worshipped by the Greeks and Romans were themselves, by tradition, often morally reprehensible, and thus there was no imperative set for human behavior by the gods. For Greco-Roman pagans like Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus or Pontius Pilate, religion was strictly a system by which one appealed to the gods for favors in this earthly life.

This is not to say that the Romans or Greeks were without morality.  They certainly were not.  Their morality was just based on things like civic duty, personal honor, and the politics of war, rather than on duty to the divine.

We can say for sure that Pompey never once laid awake in bed thinking "I really hope Jupiter will forgive me for telling that lie I told earlier today."

Speaking of Jupiter...

3.  Jupiter = Zeus 

Jupiter was the King of the Gods in the Roman pantheon.  He was analogous to Zeus in the Greek pantheon.  Maybe "analogous" doesn't go far enough, though.  You see, the name "Jupiter" is a cognate of the Greek "Zeû páter," or "Zeus, father."  The prime Roman god, then, is literally the prime Greek god by a translated name.

One can actually take any name off the list of the primary Roman pantheon and find the mythological prototype of that character in the Greek pantheon.  The Greek Ares became the Roman Mars.  The Greek Poseidon became the Roman Neptune.  The Greek Aphrodite became the Roman Venus.  The two pantheons can almost be seen as a single pantheon of double-named deities.

4.  The Romans interfaced with the gods through birds and gore.

The Romans had various methods of divination***.  They engaged in practices such as haruspicy and augury.

Haruspicy is an ancient practice that the Romans had picked up from their Italian neighbors the Etruscans.  It involved the inspection of the entrails of a sacrificed animal, most commonly the liver of a bird, for divine signs of the future.  There is archaeological record of statues of bird livers used as reference for liver-readers on the Italian peninsula.

Augury was the practice of observing the flight patterns or other behavioral habits of living birds, interpreting them as messages from the gods.

There's an interesting story about Roman augury that I like to retell.  You see, before initiating battles, Romans had a religious requirement to appeal to the gods for approval through augury.  A Roman commander would have with him in the field, or on his ship, a cage full of "sacred chickens."  When the Roman commander wanted approval from the gods for a battle, he would open up the chicken cage and spread some seed on the ground before it.  If the chickens came out to eat the seed, this was considered "good auspices" and the battle would go forward.  If the chickens did not eat the seed, it was considered a bad omen - a message from the gods that the battle should not be initiated.

During the First Punic War, a man named Publius Claudius Pulcher led the Roman naval forces into the Battle of Drepana against defiant Carthaginian blockade runners.  Before ordering his men into the fray, Pulcher was said to have opened up his cage of sacred chickens and ceremoniously thrown some delicious seed on the deck before them.  The chickens, on that day, may have been somewhat seasick, as evidenced by the fact that they did not leave the cage to eat the seed.  Pulcher, being unwilling to delay the battle on that particular day on account of the chickens, famously remarked "if the chickens won't eat, then let them drink!" and threw the whole lot of chickens overboard into the Mediterranean.  Pulcher's men, no doubt, looked on in horror.  It would have been considered terrible luck to defy the sacred chickens, much less to kill them all in a fit of anger.

Pulcher ordered his fleet to commence attacking the Carthaginians despite the inauspicious chicken reading, and was rewarded for his haste by having 93 of his ships captured or destroyed.  The sacred chickens had been right, and no one who heard this tale dared doubt the chickens for generations to come.

5.  The Greeks interfaced with the gods via Oracles.

The Greeks also had methods of divination.  Most famously, the Greeks heard oracles.  Most famously, the Greeks heard the wisdom of the Oracle at Delphi, also known as the Pythia.

The Pythia was a position held by one woman at a time.  She was one in a line of female seers, and was certainly the most powerful woman in the classical world.  Greek leaders appealed to her wisdom in all manner of inquiry for ages, and her influence is multiply attested in nigh countless ancient authors.  The Oracle at Delphi was established in the eighth century BC and was still used as late as the fourth century AD.

Located a hundred miles west and slightly north of Athens, the Oracle was the place to go for Greeks seeking to interface with the divine.  Generally speaking, at the Oracle, a seeker could pose a question to the gods and receive some kind of divine answer via the Pythia.

Some historians say that the Pythia, upon being asked a question, would inhale fumes coming out of a natural vapor spring.  The fumes would cause her to start speaking an unintelligible gibberish.  The Oracle priests would then interpret the gibberish into an answer in plain Greek for the seeker.  Other historians recall the Pythia intelligibly answering the seeker herself, in Greek.

Some of the most pivotal decisions in Greek history were essentially made by the Pythia, whoever she was at that time.

If the Romans wanted to know if something was a good idea, they could cut open an animal and look at its liver.  If the Greeks wanted to know if something was a good idea, they could go talk to a woman who had possibly driven herself mad with natural inhalants.

Different strokes.

6.  Greco-Roman paganism was tolerant of alternative religiosity.

Greco-Roman paganism, as we've mentioned before, was very tolerant of the religious views of other peoples.  This is probably because most peoples of the ancient Mediterranean world worshipped a non-moralizing pantheon of gods transactionally, just as the Greeks and Romans did.  When Alexander the Great went conquering, then, it was not a big deal for the newly conquered people to mix and match their existing gods with the new Greek gods.  When Rome conquered, it was the same thing.  Pantheons might get added together, and the names of some gods might change here or there, but the overarching structure of pagan religion was the same everywhere.

7.  The pagans originated the belief in an everlasting soul.

Greco-Roman pagans believed in an eternal soul.  Attitudes and beliefs about the afterlife evolved throughout antiquity, but eventually landed on something close to an afterlife-as-punishment-or-reward model.  A person who lived well and was remembered well would be rewarded by pleasure in a place called Elysium.  A person who lived impiously or was remembered poorly by others would have to, at least for a time, experience some measure of suffering in a dark place known as Tartarus.  Again, "good" and "bad" living were not defined by religion here, but were concepts rooted in civic duty and social order.

One can see the origins of the Christian concepts of Heaven and Hell in the Greco-Roman concepts of Elysium and Tartarus.  (One cannot, incidentally, find the origins of these concepts in Biblical Judaism.)

8.  They worshipped and sacrificed publicly at temples.

The temple was the center of public religious life for the Greco-Roman pagan.  Any Greco-Roman town of any importance had at least one temple, if not more.  Most towns would also have other smaller shrines where people could pray and sacrifice.  Most temples were associated with some divine or revered grave.  The space a Greco-Roman temple occupied was more sacred than the edifice itself, and thus the centerpiece of the temple, the sacrificing altar, was frequently located in the open air directly in front of the temple.  This also facilitated participation in ceremony by the locals.

9.  They worshipped and sacrificed privately in their homes.

The center of private religious life for the average citizen of Greece or Rome was the home.  Citizens would create shrines to patron gods in their homes and would personally burn small offerings there on a daily basis.  The patriarch of a family was the default advocate to the divine in any household, and it would have been his responsibility to see these reverences completed for the earthly benefit of his flesh and blood.

10.  Transactional, not salvational

I've said it before, but it gets its own bullet-point here: Greco-Roman religion was transactional in nature, not salvational.  Greco-Roman paganism was "practical and contractual."  The old Roman idiom was "do ut des," or "I give, that you might give."

One practiced paganism because one wanted to increase one's bounty in this life.

---

There you have them. Ten broad strokes about the religious atmosphere that the Jewish people found themselves surrounded by at the time of Jesus Christ's Galilean Ministry.

Next time, we'll look at ancient Judaism broadly in this same way, seeking to find the starkest differences and the clearest similarities between it paganism.  Some of you might be surprised at what we find.  Don't miss it.

For now, let's get back to the gospel.

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Matthew 5:10

10 Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Here we have the eighth and final Beatitude as Matthew records them.

The original Greek word that we have translated into "persecuted" here is "dediōgmenoi" which is a prolonged and more intense form of the verb used to mean "pursue."  I think "persecuted" is a pretty good translation here.

The verb "to persecute," today, means "to subject (someone) to hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of their race or political or religious beliefs."

The original Greek word that we have translated into "righteousness" here is "dikaiosynēs," meaning fairness, equitability, justice, or even levelness.

For me, it is next to impossible to read this Beatitude without thinking about the mechanisms of power and empire as they existed in Jesus' time and as they exist now in modern times.  

Jesus assures his followers that those who labor for equality and fairness to the point that the authorities begin to harass, harm, or expel them are extremely blessed, and will be the rightful heirs of the "kingdom of heaven."

Those familiar with Christ's whole story know him as a political radical.  This verse shows Jesus, from the very outset, encouraging political radicalism in his followers, too.  Jesus tells his followers that they ought to expect to be persecuted for their mode of living.  In fact, in this Beatitude, Jesus offers his people a yardstick by which to measure themselves.  He seems to say "if you aren't being persecuted, you probably aren't advocating loudly enough for righteousness or justice."

Jesus wants his followers to be persecuted for the radical methods by which they advocate for righteousness.  

For a modern example of the persecution Jesus refers to here, consider the establishment's persecution and murder of Martin Luther King Jr for his work in civil rights, his advocacy for the poor, and especially for his work in the anti-war movement in the 1950s and 60s.  Here was a man very clearly "persecuted for the sake of righteousness."

Coincidentally, I will say that there are only a few figures in the history of Christendom that I now find worthy of the title "Christian."  Dr. King is one on that very short list.  I like to guess that the good Doctor took a lot of solace in this eighth Beatitude throughout the trials of his life.

For Jesus and for Dr. King: damn The Man.

Join us next time, and thanks for reading.

Love.

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* Joshua 24:2

** It was during the Hellenizing period between 332 and 63 BC that the Jews first adopted some of the beliefs of the Greek philosophers, like that of the "immortal soul," which did not exist anywhere in the Jewish scriptures.

*** divination: noun - the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown by supernatural means.

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To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:9

Welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.  If you are unfamiliar with the nature of our study, you may become familiar by starting at the Introduction, which can be found here.

As you'll recall, we've got a few irons in the fire right now.  First of all, our reading of the Gospel has brought us to the Beatitudes, or "great blessings," which we have been reading and digesting slowly over a couple of months.  Second, we're in the middle of an open-ended study of paganism and its interplay with Judaism in the first century BC.  Third, within the context of that study, we're in the middle of recounting the tale of Rome's conquest of Judea in 63 BC.

That's a lot.  You'll forgive me for dismissing with pleasantries and superfluous language.  Let's get back into this.

Mr. Magnus Goes to Jerusalem

or...

The Sullying of the Holy of Holies

Part II

Last week, we left Aristobulus and his loyal priests besieged inside the Temple in Jerusalem.  The priests inside have just been duped by the people of Jerusalem, who are on the side of Hyrcanus (Aristobulus' brother) and Aretas, the Arabian king in command of the forces besieging the Temple.

We also left off, in Josephus' Antiquities, with our attention turned to the north, where Pompey has just gotten done mopping up various military forces during the course of a very successful campaign in what is now Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

Pompey began to send men south, and Hyrcanus' and Aristobulus' were both informed of the Romans' advancing.  They both sent envoys to greet Pompey's scout, Scaurus.  Through Scaurus, both of the warring brothers appealed for Pompey's help.  Josephus says they both offered money in the amount of "four hundred talents" for Pompey's favor, and that Pompey decided to help Aristobulus "for he was rich, and had a great soul, and desired to obtain nothing but what was moderate."  It is worth mentioning Josephus' obvious favor of Aristobulus.

What did Aristobulus' four hundred talents afford him?  In exchange for the four hundred talents Aristobulus offered, Pompey sent messengers to Aretas, ordering him and his forces to "depart, or else he would be declared an enemy to the Romans."

Aretas was no dummy, and he knew that his men would be outclassed, outgeared, and outnumbered by Pompey's men.  He immediately began to withdraw his forces, at which juncture Aristobulus' cobbled together an army and gave chase.  Here's how Josephus tells it in Antiquities:

So Scaurus returned to Damascus again; and Aristobulus, with a great army, made war with Aretas and Hyrcanus, and fought them at a place called Papyron, and beat them in battle, and killed about six thousand of the enemy, with whom fell Phalion also, the brother of Antipater.

(It is not entirely clear, by Josephus' account, where Aristobulus got the military forces with which he pursued Hyrcanus and Aretas.)

At this time, Pompey finishes up his business in the north and finally heads to Damascus himself.  As he travels, he lets everyone in the region know that he wants to personally settle any ongoing regional disputes, starting in the spring.  His substantial army was just being mobilized again after winter.

Hearing that Pompey intended to settle regional disputes, Aristobulus and Hyrcanus both sent ambassadors to Pompey's court in Damascus.  Along with the brothers' ambassadors, there also arrived members of a non-aligned Jewish community, which appealed to Pompey against both Hyrcanus and Aristobulus.  

Let's see this ancient court in Josephus' ancient words:

...there it was that he heard the causes of the Jews, and of their governors Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, who were at difference one with another, as also of the nation against them both, which did not desire to be under kingly government, because the form of government they received from their forefathers was that of subjection to the priests of that God whom they worshiped; and [they complained], that though these two were the posterity of priests, yet did they seek to change the government of their nation to another form, in order to enslave them.

This sounds like a complicated case for Pompey to parse through.

"Aristobulus should be in charge!  He's smartest!"

"No, Hyrcanus should be in charge!  He's the oldest son, and his mother left it to him."

"No, neither of them should be in charge!  The priests, and the priests alone, should be in charge."

"But wait... don't Aristobulus and Hyrcanus both descend from priestly blood?"

"Rabble, rabble, rabble!"

I wonder how Pompey felt about all of this.  Not wanting to make a hasty decision, he scolded Aristobulus for his violent and wild ways.  He told the brothers to delay their warring, and that his judgement would not be made until he himself came down into Judea.

Aristobulus did not apparently take Pompey's words all that seriously, and turned his forces back into Judea to continue tearing up the countryside.  When Pompey got word of Aristobulus' behavior, he was angered and began marching a massive military force south toward Judea.

Aristobulus' forces holed up in a fortress on a mountain called Alexandrium, and when Pompey's army approached, he summoned Aristobulus down to discuss the controversy with his brother.  Aristobulus', seeing that he had little choice, came down from the mountain and disputed for a while with his brother about the right to be king.  Then, Pompey let Aristobulus return to his fortress.  Again, in short order, Pompey summoned Aristobulus down for a meeting, and again he went down, talked, and returned to the fortress.  Aristobulus did this, according to Josephus, two or three times, all the while keeping his forces ready for battle in case Pompey decided to rule against him.

Finally, Pompey made a kind of a decision.  He told Aristobulus to give up the fortress on Alexandrium, and to order all the governors in the region who were loyal to him to give up their fortresses as well.  Aristobulus, despite his preparations for war, decided to obey and gave up the fortresses.

If Pompey thought he was done here, though, he was mistaken.*  Aristobulus, angry that he'd had to cede his fortresses, retired to Jerusalem with his forces.  Pompey advanced to Jericho after him.  From Jericho, Pompey leaned in on Jerusalem, and Aristobulus sent word to Pompey that he was sorry for his warlike ways, and that he would give Pompey money and receive him into Jerusalem freely for Pompey's forgiveness.  Wanting to act prudently, Pompey agreed to this and sent his men to receive the money and enter Jerusalem.

The Roman general was enraged when his men returned saying that Aristobulus' men would not let them into the city, nor pay the agreed upon sum.  Pompey immediately had Aristobulus arrested and imprisoned, and prepared to lay siege to the city.

The city was well defended by a wall, but a rebellious faction inside the city allowed Pompey's men in.  Pompey's men took control of Jerusalem and the royal palace, and struggled only when it came to securing the Temple itself, which lay surrounded by a massive defensive trench.

The ancient Roman historian Cassius Dio records the situation thus, in his Roman History:

...by shutting up Aristobulus in a certain place he compelled him to come to terms, and when he would surrender neither the money nor the garrison, he threw him into chains. After this he more easily overcame the rest, but had trouble in besieging Jerusalem. Most of the city, to be sure, he took without any trouble, as he was received by the party of Hyrcanus; but the temple itself, which the other party had occupied, he captured only with difficulty.

The ancient Roman historian Strabo describes the trench surrounding the Temple thus, in his Geography:

Pompey went over and overthrew them and rased their fortifications, and in particular took Jerusalem itself by force; for it was a rocky and well-watered fortress; and though well supplied with water inside, its outside territory was wholly without water;
and it had a trench cut in rock, sixty feet in depth and two hundred and sixty feet in breadth; and, from the stone that had been hewn out, the wall of the temple was fenced with towers.

At this point, all of Aristobulus' supporters end up behind the Temple walls, just as they were when Aretas besieged the city not long before.  Hyrcanus' offers every help he can to Pompey, as Pompey moves his camp inside of Jerusalem and right outside the Temple on its north side.  The city is once again overrun with foreign soldiers.  It is a first-century Jew's worst nightmare on repeat.

The detail with which Josephus describes this is exquisite, so we'll let him keep describing it, from Antiquities:

...even on that side there were great towers, and a ditch had been dug, and a deep valley circled it, for on the parts toward the city were precipices, and the bridge on which Pompey had gotten in was broken down.  However, a bank was raised, day by day, with a great deal of labor, while the Romans cut down materials for it from the places around.  And when this bank was sufficiently raised, and the ditch filled up, though but poorly, by reason of its immense depth, he brought his mechanical engines and battering rams from Tyre, and placing them on the bank, he battered the Temple with the stones that were thrown against it.

The next thing Josephus says here is multiply attested in our sources from this time.  He next relays the means by which Pompey was able to breach the Temple walls in 63 AD - probably one of the most interesting points of this whole ordeal.

As Josephus tells us, the Temple was surrounded by a deep valley, directly behind which were multiple guard towers and a heavy wall.  In ancient times, the siege of a walled and towered area surrounded by a deep valley was perhaps one of the most difficult military procedures.  In order to breach the wall, one must get ladders or, more preferably, siege works of some kind, right up to the wall.  In order to get a ladder to the wall, multiple men would have to attempt to bridge the valley with heavy wooden equipment, and then carry more heavy wooden equipment over that bridge while soldiers shot projectiles of many varieties down on their heads at a constant clip from above.  As long as the forces behind the wall had food, water, and rocks, such a wall was likely to remain impenetrable.

Pompey the Great had made an observation of the Jews early on in all this.  He observed that the Jews were extremely religious, and that they observed as part of their religion a day of rest every seventh day.  Pompey noted that the Jews defending the Temple were certainly allowed to defend themselves if they were attacked on their Sabbath, but that they were not allowed to initiate any attack of any kind on that day.  This allotted Pompey a rare opportunity.  Pompey ordered his men to keep up the projectile attack on the Temple steadily, Sunday through Friday.  Then, on the Jewish Sabbath, Pompey's men would stop their attack of the Temple and would focus all of their efforts filling in the valley that surrounded it.  Since it was the Jewish day of rest, the Romans could work all day on their bridges and structures without a single arrow or rock falling on them.  Aristobulus' loyal men watched in horror on several successive Saturdays as Pompey's engineers and workers filled the valley in with a massive wooden structure that would support all of his siege works from Tyre.

Here's how Josephus tells it:

And had it not been our practice, from the days of our forefathers, to rest on the seventh day, this bank could never have been perfected, by reason of the opposition the Jews would have made; for though our law gives us leave then to defend ourselves against those that begin to fight with us and assault us, yet does it not permit us to meddle with our enemies while they do nothing else.

Strabo says "Pompey seized the city, it is said, after watching for the day of fasting, when the Judaeans were abstaining from all work; he filled up the trench and threw ladders across it."

Cassius Dio continues in his History:

For [the Temple] was on high ground and was fortified by a wall of its own, and if they had continued defending it on all days alike, he could not have got possession of it. As it was, they made an excavation of what are called the days of Saturn, and by doing no work at all on those days afforded the Romans an opportunity in this interval to batter down the wall. The latter, on learning of this superstitious awe of theirs, made no serious attempts the rest of the time, but on those days, when they came round in succession, assaulted most vigorously.

Pompey is memorable during this time, I think, for his thoughtful meticulousness.  He lets time work to his advantage whenever he needs to.  He seems, to me, a patient man.

So now we come to the climax.

Josephus tells us that, as the fall of the Temple became imminent, the priests inside continued their daily sacrifices as if nothing was wrong.  No matter what casualty the priests suffered, they continued their steadfast observance of their tradition.  Josephus says that, as the siege works arrived and did their damage, the largest of the Temple's defense towers was shaken and collapsed.  The collapsing tower destroyed a swath of the Temple's wall, at which point Pompey's men "poured in rapidly."  Finally, on a Sabbath day during the consulship of Gaius Antonius and Marcus Tullius Cicero, Josephus tells us that:

...the enemy fell upon [the priests], and cut the throats of those that were in the Temple; yet could not those that offered the sacrifices be compelled to run away, neither by the fear they were in of their own lives, nor by the number that were already killed, as thinking it better to suffer whatever came upon them, at their very altars, than to omit anything that their laws required of them.

The priests steadfastly continued with their prayers and Temple works as they heard the screams of the dying in the background, and the horrifying sound of Roman foot soldiers approaching them by the dozen or perhaps hundred.

Heads began to litter the Temple floor as Pompey's men exacted harsh discipline on those who opposed the power of Rome.  We can imagine the priests at their altars, perhaps still plunging knives into sacrificial animals, as Roman soldiers approach them from behind, plunging swords into their backs.

What a bloody scene.

"But now all was full of slaughter," Josephus says.

And then...

...Pompey entered the Holy of Holies.

The Holy of Holies was the inner-sanctum of the Temple.  It was the room that was said to house the God of the people Israel.  Only the High Priest was allowed into the Holy of Holies, and even he was only allowed to enter that space on one day out of the year.  The Holy of Holies was shrouded by a large veil that extended from floor to ceiling.  To this day, some Jewish people will not walk in a large portion of the city of Jerusalem, to make sure that they do not accidentally step foot in the spot that used to be this Holy of Holies.

With a veritable river of blood pooling at his feet, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus shocked the entire Jewish world by piercing the veil of the Holy of Holies with his gladius and entering that sacred place in 63 BC.

The collective Jewish heart must have cried out in agony at this moment.  Indeed, Josephus recounts some of the Jews committing suicide rather than face this ongoing Roman insult to God's people.

Josephus says:

...No small enormities were committed around the temple itself, which, in former ages, had been inaccessible and seen by none; for Pompey went into it, and not a few of those that were with him also, and saw all that which it was unlawful for any other men to see but only for the high priests.  There were in that Temple the golden table, the holy candlestick, and the pouring vessels, and a great quantity of spices; and besides these there were among the treasures two-thousand talents of sacred money; yet did Pompey touch nothing of all this, on account of his regard to religion; and in this point also he acted in a manner that was worthy of his virtue.

Amazing.  The general enters the room, as if merely to ensure that Roman eyes had seen all that could be seen, and then simply leaves the room unmolested.

Cicero, in his speech For Flaccus, also notes that “...Gnaeus Pompeius, after he had taken Jerusalem, though he was a conqueror, touched nothing which was in that temple.”  Because of the multiple attestation, we can be fairly certain that this story of Pompey's conduct inside the Temple is true.

In subsequent days, Pompey had his men clean the temple while he bestowed the High Priesthood on Hyrcanus.  He forced the Jews to give up lands that they had not long before gained from Syria, and brought Judea totally under control.  In short order, a steep fee of over ten-thousand talents was exacted from Jerusalem, and Pompey disappeared into the Palestinian sunset almost as swiftly as he had arrived, leaving Roman delegates governing the area.

Josephus lays the blame for the subjugation of Judea squarely on the two brothers:

Now the occasions of this misery which came upon Jerusalem were Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, by raising a rebellion one against the other; for now we lost our liberty, and became subject to the Romans...

The most notable moments of Pompey's life still lay ahead of him, but he had left our region and people of interest forever, and forever changed.

It is true that the Jews had been interacting with pagans of various forms for many centuries, and that Greek paganism had been known all over Palestine for at least a couple of centuries.  It was the arrival of the Romans in 63 BC, however, and the fundamental incompatibility of Jewish theology with Roman paganism, that would eventually lead to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD by a Rome fed up with a people who would not accept abject rule.

When we think about the intersection of Second Temple Judaism and the pagan world, perhaps we ought to think first of Pompey's bloody footprints tracing themselves in, around, and then out of the Holy of Holies.

Next time, we'll compare Roman pagan practice to Jewish traditions, in detail.  For now, let's get back to our Gospel.

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Matthew 5:9

9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.

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What kind of weirdo has a favorite Beatitude?

This kind. *points thumbs to self*

Jesus continues doling out mission-critical moral data in the form of his "great blessings."  Today, he blesses "peacemakers" and insists that they will be children of God.

What does Jesus mean by "peacemaker?"  

Well... the original Greek word written here is "eirinopoiós" which can be alternatively translated "loving peace," or "pacific."  

Peace is defined as "freedom from disturbance" or "a period of time without war."

So Jesus, here at the very beginning of his Sermon on the Mount, blesses those who do not cause disturbances and those who do not advocate for or participate in war - those that love peace.

Jesus offers no exception.  He doesn't say "blessed are the peacemakers, unless someone like Pompey the Great is knocking at your door, in which case the battle hardened Jewish warrior is actually blessed, not the peacemaker."

He doesn't say "blessed are the peacemakers, unless someone knocks down a couple of buildings with a couple of airplanes, in which case the American military are actually blessed, not the peacemaker."

Jesus blesses the peacemaker, and excludes the warrior and the warmonger alike from blessing.  For perhaps the first time, though certainly not the last, Jesus insists that humankind does not have the authority necessary to make war on itself. 

Jesus says this to us through the Gospel while American Christians consistently vote in support of the world's largest and most dangerous military industrial complex.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Twilight Zone.

You need to share this writing.  Thank you for reading it.

Love.

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* I'm sure he didn't.

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:8

Welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, the most exhaustive gospel study you'll ever read.  If you'd like to take a look at our mission statement, I'd refer you to the Introduction, which can be found here.

In our last installment, we introduced a study of paganism as context around the life of Jesus.  An understanding of paganism is important to anyone trying to understand Judaism or Christianity, because, in a sense, Judaism was a refined version of paganism, and, of course, Christianity came directly out of the Judaic tradition.

I'll reiterate that "paganism" is a fairly fluid term, and that we are using it perhaps somewhat narrowly here.  We are defining paganism as "ancient polytheistic religions which were transactional in their mode of interface with the divine."  The term "pagan" applies to myriad cultures and myriad specific theologies, many of which we will study individually by the time our work is done.  For now, we're focusing on the paganism of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire.

Today, along those lines, I'd like to introduce you to a Roman whose name will be spoken by historians for as long as human history exists: Pompey the Great.

Without further ado...

Mr. Magnus Goes to Jerusalem

or...

The Sullying of the Holy of Holies

Part I

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, or Pompey for short, led one of the best attested lives of ancient Rome.  He is best known for being a member of the First Triumvirate, along with Marcus Licinius Crassus and one Gaius Julius Caesar.  Pompey's alliance with Crassus and Caesar is what ultimately gained Caesar the authority to go conquesting in Gaul for ten years, which is ultimately what led to the downfall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Empire*.

As we said, Pompey's life is remarkably well attested, including the years before his alliance with a young man named Caesar and a rich man named Crassus.  That's lucky for us, because today we're focusing in on events that occured just a few years before the First Triumvirate.

In 63 BC, Pompey the Great, without breaking a sweat, made a Roman province of Judea.  We are going to focus in on this pivotal moment in history, for reasons that will become apparent in the context of our study of paganism and of our broader study of the first-century Judeo-Christian world.

Let's start with some background data.  Early in his military career, Pompey fought successful campaigns in North Africa, Spain, and even on the Italian peninsula.  Pompey was the one credited with putting down the rebellion of the escaped slave Spartacus, and of having the Appian Way lined with the crucified bodies of the defeated slave army.  He didn't actually deserve the credit for the crushing of the slave rebellion, however, since Crassus had led several legions against Spartacus for months before Pompey had arrived on the scene.  Pompey took the credit anyway, adding it to his list of victories.

In 66 BC, as he was wrapping up a famed campaign against pirates in the eastern Mediterranean, Pompey was granted sweeping command over the Roman forces that were then engaged in the Third Mithridatic War in what is now Turkey.  Pompey left the sea, relieved one Lucius Licinius Lucullus of his eastern command, and took control of the war.  This was all per the terms of a newly signed law, the "lex Manilia," which was passed because Rome had lost confidence in Lucullus' abilities and/or fidelity.

On the day the lex Manilia was passed, Pompey became the most powerful human on the planet.  He then commanded the vast majority of Roman military forces, both land and sea.  On his way out, Lucullus accused Pompey of being a "vulture," drawing a parallel between Pompey's "victory" over Spartacus and what was his now impending victory over Mithridates.

When Pompey displaced Lucullus at the front of the eastern conflict, he defeated Mithridates VI of Pontus with relative ease.  Mithridates committed suicide upon realizing his defeat.

"I was almost there," Lucullus whines at us through history.

Lucullus' grumbling didn't leave Pompey any worse for the wear.  The general immediately set his sights on Armenia, as the lex Manilia had expanded the purview of the eastern command to include a new offensive against Tigranes the Great of Armenia.

Tigranes easily surrendered to the might of Pompey.  For his surrender, he was allowed to live and to keep the rule of his territory as a paying client of Rome.

After subduing Armenia, Pompey turned back west and waged war against Antiochus I Theos, the king of Commagene.  He subdued Antiochus and made an alliance with him, and then headed back north toward the Caucasus Mountains where he fought Albanians, Iberians, and others, subduing (at least, temporarily) all who opposed him.

When Pompey had the region around the Caucasus Mountains under control, his focus then zeroed in on political instability to his south, which might threaten the longevity of his new conquests.  The land of Syria had been controlled for centuries by the Seleucid Empire, but the Seleucid Empire was in divided tatters in 65 BC, and Pompey was concerned that factionalization in Syria might lead to military action against his newly conquered Armenia.

Further investigation on Pompey's part revealed more discord even further south, in a little place we call Judea.  None of this agreed with Pompey, and he resolved to go south.

We'll now leave Pompey for just a moment to take a closer look at the discord in Judea.

From 76 to 67 BC, Judea was independently ruled by the Hasmonean Queen, Salome Alexandra.  Her husband, Alexander Jannaeus, had died in 76, leaving her the throne.  (History notes that her husband had been diseased from over-drinking.)  Acting upon Jannaeus' advice, upon his death, Alexandra went to Jerusalem and endeared herself to the Pharisees there by granting them some of her regal authority.  This allowed her to maintain her husband's throne and influence for nine years before her death.  When Alexandra, Queen of Judea, died, she left behind two sons: Hyrcanus and Aristobulus.

Josephus describes the sons thusly, in Antiquities of the Jews:

Now, as to these two sons, Hyrcanus was indeed unable to manage public affairs, and delighted rather in a quiet life; but the younger, Aristobulus, was an active and a bold man...

When she died, Alexandra left the throne to Hyrcanus, the oldest son, but Aristobulus immediately made war against his brother until he agreed to cede the throne to him. Perhaps everything would have been ship-shape for the brothers at this point, if not for the nagging of one of Hyrcanus' friends, Antipater.  Antipater whispered in Hyrcanus' ear every day that the throne should have been his, and that Aristobulus was plotting to kill him out of paranoia.  Antipater told Hyrcanus to flee to Arabia to make an alliance with Aretas, a king there.  Hyrcanus obliged, and snuck out of Jerusalem during the night to meet the Arabian king in a place called Petra.

In Petra, Hyrcanus and Antipas begged Aretas to wage war on Aristobulus and to reinstall Hyrcanus as the King of Judea.  In return for their help, the Arabians would receive back several cities that Hyrcanus' father had won from them in battle years before.  Aretas agreed to this proposal, and soon led a force of fifty thousand against Aristobulus' forces.  This was around 67 BC.

Aristobulus suffered an early and crushing defeat in the field against Aretas before retreating to Jerusalem.  He was deeply wounded by the fact that many of his men defected to the side of his brother early on in the conflict.  Aretas' men followed Aristobulus to Jerusalem, and laid siege to the city.  Soon, the only people that remained on the side of Aristobulus were the priests.  Together, they holed up behind the Temple walls as Aretas surrounded them.

As Josephus records it, during the siege on the Temple, the Passover came.  Actually, let's just hear it from Josephus:

While the priests and Aristobulus were besieged, it happened that the feast called Passover was come, at which it is our custom to offer a great number of sacrifices to God; but those that were with Aristobulus wanted sacrifices, and desired that their countrymen without would furnish them with such sacrifices, and assured them they should have as much money for them as they should desire; and when they required them to pay a thousand drachmas for each head of cattle, Aristobulus and the priests willingly undertook to pay for them accordingly.

Can you imagine this sight?  Aretas' occupying army is making a mess of Jerusalem as it lays siege to the Temple.  The citizens of Jerusalem are probably hiding indoors as much as possible, anxious about the troops walking through their city.  Aristobulus' priests are behind the Temple walls worrying about the wrath of God if they don't make the proper sacrifices for Passover in a few days, and the two brothers sit on the edge of their respective seats.

I want to see this movie.

So, the priests shout over the walls at the Jewish civilians.  They say "please, bring us some cows to the wall so we can rope them over for sacrifice on Passover!  We will pay anything.  Yes, even up to one thousand drachmas for one cow!  The sacrifices must be made per our agreements with God!"

The people of Jerusalem respond "ok, we will certainly bring you the necessary animals for the sacrifices.  First, just... throw the drachmas over in a basket, yeah?"

Aristobulus has his men toss the money over.

Hyrcanus' guys pick up the money and walk away, never to return with the sacrificial animals the money was to have purchased.

A bold and sneaky play.

The priests were furious.  We'll go back to Josephus:

...when the priests found they had been cheated, and that the agreements they had made were violated, they prayed to God that he would avenge them on their countrymen.  Nor did he delay that their punishment, but sent a strong and vehement storm of wind, that destroyed the fruits of the whole country, until a modius of wheat was then bought for eleven drachmas.

Amazing.

The very next thing Josephus mentions after this divine storm is Pompey's impending presence in the north, which brings us full circle.  Josephus says:

In the meantime Pompey sent Scaurus into Syria, while he was himself in Armenia, and making war with Tigranes.  

We'll wrap this up for now.  Next time, Pompey, Aristobulus, Hyrcanus, and Aretas all have a date with destiny, in part two of Mr. Magnus Goes to Jerusalem or... The Sullying of the Holy of Holies.

Until then, let's get back to our Beatitudes.

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Matthew 5:8

8 Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God.

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Today we read the Sixth Beatitude.  Jesus has been telling his followers who he thinks are the most blessed of humanity.  Today in Matthew, Jesus tells his followers that the "clean of heart" are blessed.

What would "cleanliness of heart" have meant to Jesus?  Well, the original Greek word used here is "katharos" which could mean "clean," "clear," or "pure," which may give us some indication.

When I read this Beatitude, it makes me think of Jewish culture, and of the Essenes in particular.  Recall that the Essenes, a sect of Jews that existed during the time of Jesus, were obsessed with ritual purity and cleanliness.  They ritually bathed themselves at least once daily, and undertook severe measures to guarantee the purity of their eating and drinking vessels.  They were obsessed with cleanliness so much so that they could not use the bathroom on their Sabbath day.

Could Jesus be referring to a similar kind of anxiously guarded ritual purity?  If so, how does one purify the heart specifically?  The Essenes understood purification of the body as being accomplished by bathing, but one cannot physically bathe one's heart...

This verse also makes me think of the cleanliness or purity of the bloodline that some Jews sought to maintain by only marrying other Jews.  Generally, I would say that cleanliness and purity were ideals of the ancient Jewish peoples.

Perhaps having a clean or pure heart means to have an undivided heart.  Perhaps a clean heart is simply pure in its ambition.  It's difficult to determine fundamental meaning here.

Next week, we'll read my favorite Beatitude, which is somewhat easier to understand.  Until then, let me know what you think "clean of heart" meant.

Thank you for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.
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* Seriously, like, the most important moment in western history.

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:7

Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.  Newbies should visit the Introduction to get a feel for what we're trying to accomplish here.

We're fresh off of a long, perhaps disjointed, series of entries that ultimately focused on the fallibility of the texts of the New Testament.  We didn't argue that the entire New Testament is incorrect, but merely that it couldn't all possibly be taken for granted as "absolutely correct, the word of God."

Before we completely abandon that line of thought, let me try to punctuate it once more: if the texts of the New Testament are not necessarily all one-hundred percent the "word of God," which I believe we have shown adequately, then a faithful person owes every single text of the New Testament the full scrutiny and suspicion that any other ancient historical text would receive, if for no other reason than to try to suss out what is divine in these texts, and what is merely human.

Ok.

Let's change gears to something some of you may find way more interesting.  Today, let's begin an open ended study of the world of paganism as it existed before and during the Apostolic Age.

Here we go.

Paganism: An Introduction

Terms and Context

If you lived in a Roman-controlled city around the time of Jesus' birth - which could have been in what we now call Italy, Spain, France, North Africa, Greece, Turkey or the Near East - you very likely believed that the cosmos, the world, and your life were controlled by the whims of a pantheon of many Graeco-Roman gods.*

Paganism is dryly defined as "a religion other than one of the main world religions, specifically a non-Christian or pre-Christian religion."  Paganism is a broad term, encompassing the faith systems of many peoples from many parts of history.  In function, paganism is a religious system by which adherents attain special favors in real life from myriad unseen divine powers by sacrifices of material value - commonly blood.

Depending on how broadly one defines paganism, nearly every ancient religion across the globe could be considered "pagan."  Key for our understanding is that paganism was not a monolith.  Whether or not a particular religious system might be considered "pagan" is fluid insofar as the definition of the term is fluid.

In the first century, in the Roman Empire's paganism, there were certain deities which had to be worshipped.  For example, sometimes the Emperor himself was considered a living god and a member of the divine pantheon, and would have been worshipped as a matter of law.  Generally speaking, however, as long as adherents to paganism gave lip-service respects to the legally instituted Roman gods, they were allowed to worship whatever other gods they chose.  In this sense, Graeco-Roman paganism could be seen as an extremely inclusive thought system.  The Roman gods did not exclude other gods.  While some pagans focused their worship on particular patron gods rather than actively worshipping an entire pantheon, all pagans still at least believed in the existence of other deities.

To be sure, when Rome entered Palestine, they didn't ask the Jews to abandon their god.  They only insisted that the Jews make room in their belief system for a few Graeco-Roman gods.

Aside from the resistance offered in Palestine, as Hellenism and the Roman Empire spread across the known world during the centuries before Jesus' birth, religious assimilation of newly conquered peoples was generally easy because Graeco-Roman paganism was so much like the paganisms of the peoples they assimilated.

In pagan societies, religious ritual centered around sacrifice at a local temple.  A Graeco-Roman citizen desiring favor from the gods (or a particular god) in 100 BC might take an animal such as a lamb or a bird or a pig to the local temple to have it ritually killed by the temple cultists.  If one didn't have an animal to sacrifice, one could easily buy one from a vendor inside, or in the immediate vicinity, of the temple.  (Here, think about the men Jesus scolds for selling things in The Temple in the gospel.)

After the sacrifice, the animal meat was normally cooked on a big communal fire, and a large portion of it distributed back to the worshippers present for consumption, with only a small portion being totally burned up as sacrifice to the god or gods in question.  In this sense, religious worship in the Graeco-Roman world was somewhat like a barbeque.**

Since there were so many gods, morality didn't necessarily fall under the purview of paganism.  In the modern age, we frequently see religions as morality-systems.  In ancient times, religion was far more transactional than behavioral.  If you wanted to have a good harvest, you needed to make the sacrifice prescribed by the cultists.  If you wanted your baby to be born healthy, you needed to make the sacrifice prescribed by the cultists.  If you wanted your battle with the Persians to go well, you needed to make the sacrifice prescribed by the cultists.  The gods didn't generally hand down rules for human behavior or rules governing human interaction.  The gods were interested in the goings on of their own world too much to care how humans acted toward one another.

Sacrificial cult worship existed in the extreme antiquity of Egypt, perhaps thousands of years before Christ's time.  Herodotus, the Greek "father of history" suspected that the most ancient Greeks had gotten their religion from Egyptians.  We know by archaeological evidence that the semitic peoples that predated the Jewish people practiced pagan ritual sacrifice.  Truly, then, paganism predates history.

I frequently think of paganism as predating humanity.

My cat leaves trinkets by her food bowl when the food gets low - some kind of prototypical sacrificial transaction, perhaps...

"We give, that we might receive."

Next time, we'll explore the collision between paganism and Abrahamic monotheism that occured in Palestine only decades before Christ's birth.

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Matthew 5:7

7 Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.

------------------------------

Jesus' Saying #11 is Beatitude #5 today in our continued reading.  The Fifth Beatitude constitutes the fifth hard clue we have as to Jesus Christ's morality.

Today, Jesus blesses the merciful among humanity, and promises that they will be shown mercy in the future.

Let's go back to the dictionary:

mercy: noun - compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm.

"Compassion or forgiveness."

In a world that values strength through force and the dominion of vengeance above all other things, Jesus' radical doctrine is that the merciful are blessed and justified.  The compassionate and the forgiving are blessed and justified.

Jesus' injunction to forgive our fellow human whatever misdeed they may do to us begins here, I would say.***

As with the other Beatitudes, we can see an opposite side to the coin of this saying.  If the merciful (the compassionate and forgiving) are blessed, then the merciless (the uncompassionate and the unforgiving) are not blessed and are not justified.

Jesus is issuing his moral rule to his followers immediately here in the Sermon on the Mount.  Forgiveness, poverty, meekness, mournfulness, and a desire for justice - all these Jesus elevates as ideals.

We'll soon start a new list to run parallel with our "Sayings of Christ" list.  The new list will be "The Ideals of Christ."  We'll work on that for next time.  In the interim, I will be focusing my inner thoughts on these already revealed ideals: forgiveness, poverty, meekness, mournfulness, and a desire for justice.

If you want to give it a try with me, try focusing on those ideals until next time.

Thank you so much for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.
-------------------------

* pantheon: noun - all the gods of a people or religion collectively.

** The math of this kind of sacrifice still doesn't totally work out to me.  "Hey God, I'm giving you this beautiful delicious pig.  Oh wait... nevermind... I'm eating it.  Yum."  It's like giving your pig, and eating it, too.

*** Yes, Jesus makes an injunction that his followers forgive all human transgressions.  No, there will not be any exceptions to this.  Yes, this undermines all of western civilization.

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:6

Hello, friend, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.  If you are new here, be sure to check out the Introduction to this study first, which can be found here.

Last time, as you'll recall, we highlighted ten stark differences between the synoptic gospels and the Gospel According to John.  Today, we will highlight some of the other contradictions found across the New Testament.  We're trying to highlight the fact that the books of the New Testament do not always agree with one another, and thus cannot all be said to be equally valid, God-inspired, or "correct."  We began this line of inquiry some weeks back, in response to a friend of mine having remarked that Jesus' words are no more important than the rest of the New Testament.

We here at The Moral Vision disagree with the idea that, within the context of a religion based on the teachings of Jesus, anything might be more important than the actual teachings of Jesus.

In the interest of time, let's get started.

Ten Major Differences Between Varying Books of the New Testament

1 - They are a long way off for us, but someday we will read together the accounts of how Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve Apostles, betrayed Jesus to the Roman authorities during the Passover festival weekend in Jerusalem in 30 or 33 AD.  You probably already know the story, so we won't recount all the details of the betrayal here.  Substantive for us, at the moment, are the conflicting stories as to what happened to Judas after he betrayed Jesus to the authorities.

In Matt 27, we read the following:

3 Then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that Jesus had been condemned, deeply regretted what he had done. He returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, 

4 saying, “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? Look to it yourself.” 

5 Flinging the money into the temple, he departed and went off and hanged himself.

So in Matthew, Judas sees what he has done and is overwhelmed with guilt.  He tries to return his money to the authorities - the ransom he'd received for Christ - but they did not want it.  He goes off to hang himself.

Now, let's check out the account we find in Acts of the Apostles.  In Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 1, we read the following words, attributed to the Apostle Peter:

16 “My brothers, the scripture had to be fulfilled which the holy Spirit spoke beforehand through the mouth of David, concerning Judas, who was the guide for those who arrested Jesus. 

17 He was numbered among us and was allotted a share in this ministry. 

18 He bought a parcel of land with the wages of his iniquity, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle, and all his insides spilled out.

Woah!  So which gruesome end are we to believe actually befell this man?  Did Judas hang himself?  Or did he fall down under the apparent weight of some supernatural power and subsequently explode from the abdomen, causing gore to spill out in a large circumference?

How is it that the author of Luke-Acts and the author of Matthew came to disagreement on this? 

And furthermore...

2 - ...Why do the Gospel According to Matt and the Acts of the Apostles differ in regards to who purchases this "Field of Blood" associated with Judas' death?  

Look closely again at the text we just read from Luke-Acts.  Peter tells us that Judas took the money that he'd earned in his betrayal and used it to buy a bit of land - a "Field of Blood."  But recall what the Gospel According to Matthew told us: Judas didn't buy anything with the money he'd earned.  He felt terrible about the deal and tried to return the money to the chief priests and elders who had given it to him.  When they wouldn't accept it, he simply flung the money into the temple.  Later, the chief priests and elders gather the money Judas had flung into the temple and, in Matthew, they themselves buy the "potter's field," turning it into a burial place for foreigners called the "Field of Blood." 

Again: how is it that the author of Matthew and the author of the Acts of the Apostles differ here in their recounting of history, if every word of both texts are equally valid and true?

3 - In Luke chapter 24 we find an account of Jesus Christ's "ascension," or supernatural passage into heaven in body and spirit from the earthly plane.  The author of Luke remembers it thusly:

50 Then he led them [out] as far as Bethany, raised his hands, and blessed them.  

51 As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven. 

52 They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, 

53 and they were continually in the temple praising God.

Let us compare that with the account we find in Acts of the Apostles, chapter 1:

9 When he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight. 

10 While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going, suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them. 

11 They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.” 

12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away.

So, did they go right outside Jerusalem and see the resurrected Christ ascended from Mount Olive?  Or, did they travel more than twice as far outside of the holy city, all the way to Bethany, before they saw the resurrected Christ ascended?  

Did there appear men dressed in white garments, or did Christ simply get "taken up to heaven?"

Is it not strange that the author of Luke-Acts contradicts himself in this regard?

4 - Now we come to the little question of the "law" meaning, of course, the Hebrew Law as it is spelled out in the Pentateuch.  In the New Testament, we see disagreements about whether or not the law is to remain valid in the light of Jesus' teachings.

One opinion is found in the Gospel According to Matthew, chapter 5, wherein Jesus speaks:

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 

18 Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.

Clearly, the author of Matthew believed the old Hebrew Law to be completely intact and valid, even after Christ's ministry.

So what does Matthew's evangelist brother Mark have to say?  The author of Mark records the following, in his chapter 7:

18 He said to them, “Are even you likewise without understanding? Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile, 

19 since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 

20 “But what comes out of a person, that is what defiles."

The author of Mark is very explicit here.  Further research into the manuscript history of this bit of text is warranted, but it is clear that Mark's Jesus is indeed abolishing the law, or at least some portion of the law. 

How can this be?  Jesus, in Matthew, says that not one jot or stroke of the pen of the law will ever be abolished.  In Mark, Jesus abolishes one of the more significant sections of Jewish Law in a matter of sentences.  

Is the Hebrew Law valid or invalid?  As you may know, and as we will learn, this question was one the earliest Christians struggled with almost immediately.

5 - Seasoned readers will remember some weeks back when we learned about the Book of Enoch while we were looking for the nearly non-existent scriptural story of Satan.  To refresh you, the Book of Enoch is a work of Old Testament Apocrypha, that is, a work of Jewish religious literature that was not accepted into the "canon" of the Jewish Scripture.  The Book of Enoch was widely known and read in the first and second centuries AD.

I recall the Book of Enoch here because of a particular passage we find in the New Testament canon.  From the Letter of Jude:

14 Enoch, of the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied also about them when he said, “Behold, the Lord has come with his countless holy ones 

15 to execute judgment on all and to convict everyone for all the godless deeds that they committed and for all the harsh words godless sinners have uttered against him.”

Here, Jude is quoting Enoch.

Does this strike you as odd?

Let's follow the logic through.

If the Letter of Jude is canonical, then to many modern Christians, the Letter of Jude is the inerrant word of God, trustworthy in every way, in every word.  

If the Letter of Jude quotes The Book of Enoch authoritatively, then God himself quotes Enoch authoritatively.

But... why would God quote from scripture that was not correct?  

And... if it is correct, than why isn't The Book of Enoch part of the canon?

I encourage you to ruminate on these questions.

6 - The ritual immersion of one's body in water in order to purify oneself for God, or "baptism," is a fairly unique practice among the world's ancient religions.  One is hard pressed to find ancient instances of this behavior outside of Judaism and Christianity.  Baptism was part of the foundation of Christianity from the very beginning, and there were a diversity of methods among early Christians by which a community might baptize their faithful.

There were a plurality of methods among the early Christian communities in part because scripture presented a plurality of methods.  Again, this time in regards to baptism, we see the New Testament disagreeing with itself.

In Matt 28:19, after his resurrection, Jesus tells his men how he wants things to be done after he is gone.  He tells them to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit."

Compare that with Acts 2:38, wherein we find Peter giving his "Pentecost Sermon," which we've discussed before.  Peter is exhorting the crowd in Jerusalem to become members of the Jesus Movement.  He tells them "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins."

Perhaps this is a thin hair to be splitting, but the baptism that Jesus prescribes in Matthew does not match the one that Peter seems to be offering only a few weeks later in Acts.  One is in the name of Jesus Christ, one is in the name of The Trinity.  Which of the two are valid, then?

Shall we baptize "in the name of Jesus Christ," or "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit?"

7 - You can't get far conversing with many American Christians before you hear them saying emphatically that it is by "faith alone" that they are saved, and not by "works."  They usually say this in order to disparage the habits of other Christians outside of their denomination.

They might cite the oft quoted John 3:16 as evidence of the correctness of their stance on "faith vs works."  Then again, they might cite Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 3, where Paul says "we consider that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law."

The contradiction can be found in James 2:17: "... faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead."

The Epistle of James is traditionally attributed to James, the brother of Jesus.  James died in the 60's AD, which would make this epistle one of the very oldest Christian documents, if tradition were true.  James says that faith without works is dead.  Paul says faith saves, regardless of works.

How can the New Testament be, through and through, the inerrant word of God if it disagrees so obviously about such a seemingly critical facet of Christian life?

How does one attain salvation?  Through faith?  Or through faith and works?

We ask.

8 - According to the New Testament, Jesus appeared to his Apostles after he was resurrected from the dead.  There are multiple accounts of this among our texts, and they do not always agree with one another.  For example, in the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul reiterates to his readers the aspects he deems to be "of first importance" to the Christian faith:

"...that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve."

 Smash-cut to Matt 28:16-17:

16 The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. 

17 When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.

Note the discrepancy in the number of Jesus' followers as mentioned.  Again, maybe this is a thin hair to be splitting, but one text says "eleven" and the next says "twelve."

The two are mutually exclusive.  He can't have appeared to them first in a group of eleven and then appeared to them first again in a group of twelve.  It would have to be one or the other.  It would appear that either A) some percentage of the New Testament was not dictated directly by God or B) God's personality is fractured and has turned against itself.

9 - I am not sure we've had the occasion to discuss the conversion of Saul of Tarsus here yet.  For anyone not in the know, Saul of Tarsus is what the Apostle Paul was called before he decided to change his name and become a Christian.  Long story short, Saul was on the "road to Damascus" to persecute some Christians when he was knocked to the ground by a flash of supernatural light.  The light was followed by the voice of Jesus.  Saul was struck temporarily blind by the event, causing him to convert to the Christian cause.

On the road to Damascus, Saul had travelling companions.  In the Acts of the Apostles, there are two different accountings of Paul's conversion.  Of interest to us here is the reaction of his travelling companions to the supernatural event as it unfolds for Saul.

Acts 9:7, a third person account of Paul's conversion, says:

The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, for they heard the voice but could see no one.

Acts 26:13-14, a first-person retelling by Paul, reads in part:

13 At midday, along the way, O king, I saw a light from the sky, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my traveling companions.  

14 We all fell to the ground and I heard a voice saying to me in Hebrew, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Here we have the same book, let alone a set of books, disagreeing with itself.  

Again, in the face of the claim that The Holy Bible is one-hundred percent the inerrant word of God, we must ask: did Saul's friends fall to the ground with him, or did they remain standing, dumbfounded?

10 - For our last item today, we've dug up a little gem from Romans.  I know that we've spoken very little about Paul's Letter to the Romans before.  Within a couple of years, we will know Romans in and out.  For now, you don't need to know much about it.  Just read Romans 7:1-6.  Here it is:

1 Are you unaware, brothers (for I am speaking to people who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over one as long as one lives? 2 Thus a married woman is bound by law to her living husband; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law in respect to her husband. 3 Consequently, while her husband is alive she will be called an adulteress if she consorts with another man. But if her husband dies she is free from that law, and she is not an adulteress if she consorts with another man. 

4 In the same way, my brothers, you also were put to death to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might belong to another, to the one who was raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5 For when we were in the flesh, our sinful passions, awakened by the law, worked in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, dead to what held us captive, so that we may serve in the newness of the spirit and not under the obsolete letter.

Everything makes some sense up until verse 4.  At that point, things break down, and it becomes difficult to understand the metaphor.  The writing and the thought being conveyed are premature, to say the least.

This selection smacks of what we term, in the modern era, "word-salad."  The beginning of Romans 7 reads like nonsense.  According to many Christians, this word-salad is the inerrant word-salad of the Almighty God.

I defy anyone to make exhaustive sense of this section of text.

This concludes our list.

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So there you have it.  The divided nature of the New Testament shows us that it cannot be taken for granted as being "the word of God," because it is full of disagreement, contradiction, and cognitive-dissonance, none of which should affect a perfect being.

That's a milestone for us, so let's say it once more: the New Testament disagrees with itself so much that it is not remotely believable that it all came from one being, Almighty or not.  The truth must be, then, that the texts at hand were created by multiple distinct minds who wrote freely of their own accord.

Modern Christians say that every word of the New Testament is equally important.  To them, Jesus' words in the Gospels aren't necessarily any more important than anything written in Romans or in Revelations, because the whole thing is divinely dictated.  In this belief, modern Christians are wrong, and their own scriptures prove it.

The truth is that the most important words in the New Testament, if we really want to follow Jesus, are the ones that we can say "probably describe the prescriptions of the historical Jesus."  Since words probably describing the prescriptions of the historical Jesus appear almost exclusively in the Gospels, the Gospels are the most important texts we have when it comes to knowing what Jesus Christ taught, and thus what Christians ought to be doing with their lives.

I'm not sure that we'll pursue this line of thought any further after today.  At least not for a while.  I pray this hasn't offended anyone.  I assure you that I do not take this work lightly.

Back to our gospel reading.

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Matthew 5:6

6 Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.

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The Beatitudes continue.  This is the fourth Beatitude that Jesus gives the world, here at the very outset of his ministry.  Remember that a "beatitude" is a "great blessing," and that "The Beatitudes" are the very first thing Jesus teaches in The Bible.

In today's reading, Jesus blesses those who "hunger and thirst for righteousness."  The original Greek word here is "dikaiosuné," which means "righteousness" but could also be translated as "justice" or "fulfillment of the law."

Today, Jesus blesses those who want for what is right and just.  He conversely does not bless those who do not pine for said justice.  

In this fourth Beatitude, Jesus is telling his followers that they should not be at rest as long as justice has yet to be had.  Jesus is also telling those who have been treated unjustly by the world that a better day is near for them.  

He is saying that he prefers people who have their hearts and minds on the conditions of the marginalized of society.

Isn't it interesting that these Beatitudes are the first things Jesus says in the Bible?

If Jesus thought that there was an eternal hell to be avoided by the following of a series of cryptic and arbitrary rules, wouldn't he open up his teaching with that?  Wouldn't the first thing he said in his public ministry be something like "hell is a real place, and I really don't want you to go there, so here are the concrete steps you need to take to avoid that?"

If Jesus thought he was God, and wanted to be worshipped as God by his followers, wouldn't he start out his ministry explaining that he is God, and the steps that he wanted taken in his worship?

What do you think?

Why does Jesus start out teaching about desiring justice, and being meek, and being poor, and what does this say about his moral vision?

Sorry about all the rhetoricals.  We'll see you next time.  Thank you so much for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.

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