Read Adam’s Take on Sacred Literature

Join the Lenten Study: Friday Text Reflections

Each Friday during the soon-to-start asynchronous study: Jewish History of the Lenten Season, I’ll be sharing a mixed-bag of Biblical interpretation from our study of Professor Levine’s book, with my own secondary sources added for more context. I thought for this first Friday before the study officially kicks off, I’d share my take on this sacred literature.

On the Bible

I don’t think the Bible is factually true, but I do think the Bible offers eternal truths to build communities of care and justice.

I don’t think the Bible is a history book of real-life events, but I do think at least some extra-Biblical evidence and a working knowledge of the history of Southwest Asia (the “Middle East”) helps us to understand the life and times of the ancient Biblical communities and orients us toward the circumstances of the Biblical authors and gives insights into the perspectives of different sources.

I don’t think anything goes in Biblical interpretation, and we should be careful how we pull discreet passages from the Bible, but I do think all interpretive communities “cherry-pick” the texts, and this is inevitable, but it’s not a bad thing, when we approach the Bible with principled interpretative decisions, using consistent methods.

I don’t think a divine messiah in a literal sense will be present on earth to enact righteous punishment or lead a messianic banquet for all nations. But I do think the theological conception of special and anointed status, the Hebrew moshiach and Greek christos, are significant politico-cultural frameworks that call out for our understanding. They represent the hope for a people who are oppressed. And more, we can be inspired by the ancient ideas that a peace-through-justice realm of nonviolence and abundance is accessible to those who live in alignment with these values.

I think we are social creatures whose ancient edicts included that of Tikkun Olam, repairing the world; teshuvah, or repentance, a turning toward ways of justice and nonviolence, and we would not be wrong today to pay attention to these concepts, not because we risk hell otherwise, but because a beloved community is within our midst, when we choose to live towards it.

I don’t think God handed down Torah to Moses at Mt Sinai, but I think the storytelling tradition that constructed this shared narrative is holy! When we understand that holiness, Hebrew kadosh, is to be set apart, from normal life and the pressures it includes, it is good to be part of a holy community, and the origin of Jewish law is to set apart the community as holy.

I don’t think a New Testament replaced an Old Testament, and I don’t think the Old Testament was pointing toward a future Jesus; rather, the Jewish writers of the New Testament studied their texts to draw evidence in support of their teacher, Jesus, who they felt strongly would lead his people toward the end time that was imminently at hand. To that end, Paul is more near in chronology and thought to the earliest Jesus movement than the gospels, yet both some epistles and the gospels themselves are written by authors not claimed by the books’ titles, and each letter or book served rhetorical ends, which rarely, if ever, were intended to be eternal documents of absolute truth. They were documents of the present moment—renegotiated by later editors and interpretive communities, like ours!

I think the writers of the New Testament, especially Matthew and Luke, sought to portray Jesus as a new Moses, for Matthew, and the new Adam of a new creation, for Luke. In these ways, and myriad more, it is impossible to understand anything written in the Greek Scriptures without a grasp of the thought and literature of the Hebrew Bible.

I think the texts of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Scriptures alike are interested in social reform and justice and are anti-monarchy and anti-empire. It is wrong to anachronistically apply modern political labels to ancient texts, but the values I read in the Bible are values concerned with sharing resources, living in community, welcoming strangers from the outside, and not amassing sums of money or power. The Hebrew Bible is concerned with living out religion as a lifestyle, less so as creeds or doctrines to accept.

I think those who call ancestors the people who chose to live in alignment with Torah are related to the ancestors who chose to follow Jesus, and these were people who came before the Book of Life each year on Yom Kippur and provided a sin offering, not always for how they wronged God but often for how they wronged each other. This, too, is supported in the gospel accounts, for example, Matthew 5:23-24.

I think the ancestors of Jews and Christians share a common starting point but their differences are to be noted and celebrated. For all that we see in Christianity rooted Judaism, these are distinct populations. The first century Jesus communities discussed whether Jesus followers are best to adopt all Jewish ritual and law; ultimately, deciding no. And likewise, Paul affirmed the Hebrew covenant and practice did not require any revision for the Jewish people, in light of beliefs about Jesus. 

Because it is the premise from which so much hatred, violence, and antisemitism stems, it is Rome who crucified Jesus in a common act of state sanctioned execution that was a form of capital punishment. Jesus was one among tens of thousands executed in this way by Rome. Neither “The Jews,” “Scribes and Pharisees,” nor the “High Priests” were accountable for the death of Jesus, and where they are implicated as such, it is to serve a rhetorical purpose and not to document historical events.

These thoughts are my response to confront the toxic theology of any religion married to power and convinced of its own certain truth. I am here to affirm your value, and to join you in study. The concept of Torah study from the Jewish seminary (yeshiva) perspective is called chevrusa that demands at least a study pair, if not a small group, for Torah study, so that no one feels too certain of their individual interpretation. I hope that you imagine us as engaged in this practice; my chevrusa. And to that end, I welcome your conversation in response to my reflection.