Listen to this week’s podcast to introduce chapter four

Introduction to Chapter Four!

Friends, we’re on to chapter four this week in Professor Levine’s text! Podcast stretched a little long this week—I can’t seem to help myself! Enjoy this intro, and let’s get into chapter four! Were past the halfway point! Of course, I hope you’ll hang around even after the study! See you in the chat!

Happy Reading!

Transcript

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They followed Jesus not because they were seeking freedom from some sort of repressive Jewish system that devalued them. 

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They followed Jesus because he spoke to their heart and healed their bodies, and they found peace in his presence. 

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That is from chapter four of professor. 

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Amy Joe Levine’s text entering the passion of Jesus a beginner’s guide for Holy Week, I’m Adam, and this is notes from the diaspora, the podcast. 

00:00:31 

Friends, thank you for being on this journey with me this six week study under the heading the Jewish history of the Christian season of LINT. 

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I hope that reading Professor Levine’s book, if you are from within the Christian tradition, has given you new meaning and engagement for your practice of the season of Lent. If you are from. 

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Outside of the Christian tradition. 

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I hope this book has helped you to learn more about approaching the biblical material, learned more about the questions to ask, have learned more about Jesus, the purported historical figure of Jesus, and the ways that the Gospels constructed narratives with theological viewpoints and theological aims in. 

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Mind, we have now officially passed the halfway point in the six week study. 

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Let’s see. 

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Where have we been and where are we going? 

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In chapter one, we entered Jerusalem with the triumphal entry of Jerusalem. 

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Some things that you may remember from that chapter, and from that discussion is that Hosanna that was proclaimed as Jesus made the triumphal entry that in fact connects to the Psalms. 

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Hosanna comes from. 

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Popular song that was recited as pilgrims would ascend the steps to the temple in Jerusalem, and so we see how that Jewish cultic practice shows up in a significant way in that constructed narrative about the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. 

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In chapter two, we entered the temple. 

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There were some things that we learned that surprised us. 

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So within the temple, maybe the fact that it was a tourist attraction, it was a large complex. 

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At 12, soccer fields in size, including a court of the Gentiles. 

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So no, you did not have to be a Hebrew. 

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Person a Jewish person. 

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A Judean in order to visit and to worship at the temple. 

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There was a court of the Gentiles. 

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Everyone was welcome to attend the cultic practices at the Temple in Jerusalem. 

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In chapter three, we discussed some of Jesus teachings teachings in parable. 

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We also introduced the idea of putting a fence around the Torah. 

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This is an ancient kind of pharisaic or proto. 

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Rabbinic idea, and we had a chat about putting a fence around Torah and it was requested that maybe we expand a little bit on that. 

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I just want to take the first few moments of this podcast recording just to talk a little more about putting a fence around Torah. 

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And so the idea is that. 

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In an effort not to violate the law, you would make a more strict kind of guideline that would be the fence that you place around the law. 

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So let me provide a real specific and and practical example of this within the kosher dietary laws. 

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So it says not to boil a kid. 

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In its mother’s milk, there were some discussion about just how to interpret that law. Does that mean one offspring, 1 progeny, 1 offspring to a mother? 

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Does that mean within the same species? 

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Does that mean that not any animal should be boiled in milk? 

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Does it merely mean that you should avoid meat and milk and that most strict reading is the reading by which many contemporary Jews practice a kosher eating that they do separate milk and meat completely, and so does the biblical material say to separate milk and meat anytime you eat? 

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No, it does not say that. It says do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk, but placing a fence around the Torah. 

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If all milk is separated from all meat, then you know that you will not violate the commandment to not boil a kid in its mother’s milk. 

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And so that is a great example of placing a fence around the Torah, where the rule has been interpreted to be more strict than what the text may reveal, so that we don’t even tiptoe up to violating the commandment. 

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And so if that’s what you had in mind, if that’s what you answered in the chat, if that’s what you were thinking. 

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Come about. 

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That is the way that I interpret what that means. 

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That concept of placing a fence around the Torah and Jesus does engage in these practices. 

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And So what is, I think, usually called the Sermon on. 

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The amount you’ve heard, it said, but truly I tell you that is really Jesus engaging in some of that negotiation of the biblical commandments. 

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Placing a fence around the Torah to help add some specificity and some precision to the ways that Jesus is recommending. 

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That we abide and follow Torah commandments, and indeed that is what Jesus has in mind. 

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Jesus calls followers to repent. 

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That repent is connected to the idea of teshuvah, or of return, or turning toward the laws and the prophets, the Torah and so repent is not a personal seeking of forgiveness for sin. 

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This is a later development to come out of Christian ex Jesus and hermeneutics. 

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And interpretation. 

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But if we try to read the text authentically within its 1st century context, that would lead us to believe that teshuvah or repentance is turning toward. 

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Fora and that is just the same in the Hebrew prophetic tradition, repent turned toward a turning toward Torah teshuva. 

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And so, at any rate, that is how Jesus is reading the laws, and he is placing a fence around the Torah. 

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And so if that’s what you had in mind, I would affirm that reading. 

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Just a reminder that I am a lay student. 

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Of the text, just as you are there is not a PhD following my last name. 

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In my e-mail signature. 

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That is because I do not have an advanced degree in religion or in classical studies or in biblical Greek, right? 

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These many fields and subfields that many specialists and scholars invest their lives and careers to accomplish and answer these questions. 

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I am a benefit. 

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Of that scholarly work, but I’m reading the secondary sources. 

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I’m a lazy student, just as you are, so you can’t take me at my word. 

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But certainly that is how I read placing a fence around Torah. 

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I wanted to expand on that just a little bit from last week from Chapter 3. 

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That was one of the the central concepts that we had some questions about. 

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Within the chat on the sub stack app. 

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So this week indeed we do begin Chapter 4. 

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And there’ll be some. 

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Pretty interesting things to come out in chapter. 

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And as always, we are reminded that you have got to read the text. 

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We can’t talk about what we think is in the text. 

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We have to 1st read the text. 

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What does the text actually say? 

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And oftentimes because in the synoptic tradition within Mark and Matthew and Luke we remember. 

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That Matthew and Luke share 75% of the content that is in Mark. The 25% of the content in Matthew and Luke that does not appear. 

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And Mark scholars attribute to sayings source and independently circulating source that is referred to as the Q source or simply as Q. 

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That is the German word for source begins with the letter Q so that sayings source is called Q. 

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So what is with Q plus Mark? 

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That we have Matthew and Luke, but because we have those 3 synoptic. 

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And John, the 4th gospel, that may have been derivative from some of the market material, meaning that its origin may be partially in the market material or not at all. 

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There is scholarly debate about just how influenced the Johannine author may have been by the margin. 

00:08:31 

Material you could spend the whole. 

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Dissertation trying to work through that difficult question about the source, critical approach to gospel studies. But for now we just kind of glossed the whole thing by saying, yeah, there’s a synoptic tradition, and then there’s the tradition of the 4th gospel. If you are reading both Professor Levine’s book and my additional. 

00:08:54 

Posts that are on the sub stack. 

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Then you were saying that I’m currently dealing with some material from the 4th gospel from the gospel according to John. 

00:09:02 

So if you’d like more on that, then you can go and read the past couple of weeks of the Sunday Post which you are also receiving. 

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And so you may be here for entering the passion, but you’re also getting all of my additional posts. 

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I hope you like that additional content. 

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And of course, if you don’t, you don’t have to read it. 

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So that’s the nice thing about having this delivered to your inbox. 

00:09:22 

It is just as easy to delete, but I hope you also choose to read and so read the text we cannot conflate. 

00:09:30 

The different traditions and the different accounts we savor each gospel account on its. 

00:09:35 

Own and Professor Levine goes some distance once again in this chapter to help remind us of the multiple supper stories of First Supper, a Last Supper, and multiple characterizations of anointing and even different concepts and definitions of what it means to be anointed. 

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There is an anointing that is a special commissioning. 

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Calling by God, there’s also the anointing of the body, and there are different words that stand behind those different concepts of anointing. 

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And so Professor Levine tell. 

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Says listen, when we’re talking about anointing in the Bible, we have to remember to check is this anointing for a special commissioning? 

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Is this anointing that would be connected to the Greek Christos the Hebrew mashiach, that special commissioning by God? 

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Or is this anointing of a body and so pay close attention to that as you read chapter? 

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I think also one of the things that we should ask ourselves some about the moral questions that the Gospels open to us. 

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See one of the things that I’ve been working through because my take on the Bible is as literature, as human authored literature, and if you do, follow me on some social media platforms, you’ll see that I’ve been. 

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Posting some videos recently about explaining the authority of the Bible, and it is my position that the authority of the Bible is granted by the. 

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Interpretive community that the authority of the Bible is not given divinely by God, but rather the authority of the Bible is granted by the communities that are putting the Bible to service in certain specific ways, and one of the arguments that ioffer in support of that position is that if we imagined that the Bible. 

00:11:20 

Receives its authority from God. 

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Well, then we have to ask, well, whose version of the Bible? 

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Because even within ecumenical within Christian communities, I should say there is no consensus agreed upon single canonical version of the. 

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Table and then what about the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh? 

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Some of those books do appear within the Christian Old Testament, but not all of them. 

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And what about within the Islamic tradition? 

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What about within the Koran where you do have Abrahamic figures who are featured somewhat prominently, but I don’t think we would call the Hebrew Bible the Tanakh. 

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Or the Koran. 

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We wouldn’t call that the Bible. 

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Those are different sacred texts. 

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And so I think that we very quickly get ourselves into trouble if we. 

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Imagine that the authority of the Bible is granted by God its author, because we have to say, well, whose Bible? 

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Whose version? 

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How do we decide who gets to decide? 

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And you see how very quickly this devolves into an exclusivity US versus them, good versus bad. 

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We have the absolute truth. 

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They are absolutely wrong. 

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And those I don’t think are the right conversations and questions to be having about the biblical material. 

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Sorry for that aside just there, but I think asking ourself. 

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Do the Gospels raise moral questions for us to wrestle with, and that is an important question because the rejoinder to my position on the Bible as being literature as being human authored the rejoinder is well, then why even read it? 

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If this isn’t the divine word of God, then what? 

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Is it now? 

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I think that’s kind of a silly question because many of us have our bookshelves full of literature that doesn’t claim to be divine. 

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And yet we read it and study it and apply it to our lives and have a sense of our moral imagination being stretched as a result of engaging with that literature. 

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And so I don’t think it is the case that simply, if the Bible were not divinely authored, that thereby it is meaningless. 

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I think there’s tremendous value we can learn about. 

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The ancient biblical communities we can learn about how they wrestled with their experience in the world. 

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We can learn about in a pre modern society without the sophisticated scientific theories. 

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That we held. 

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How might we make sense of the world around us? 

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And those are fascinating questions, but I think Professor Levine is right, that there are moral questions that are raised from the biblical material. 

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And in fact, maybe we are liberated to engage those questions more authentically when we can sort of divorce ourselves from the idea. 

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That the Bible is the divine word of God and instead say, listen, these are human authors who had a particular theological viewpoint and agenda in mind. 

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What was it for those authors? 

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How might we learn from that? 

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And what pressing questions are raised in? 

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Our time that we might seek some guidance about within the biblical material. 

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So I want you to engage on that this week as you read Chapter 4, what are the moral questions that are raised by the gospel accounts and how might we answer those for ourselves? 

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How might we find peace and presence? 

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With Jesus, if you are from the Christian tradition. 

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If you are not from the Christian tradition, then I think you also find validation and affirmation in Chapter 4 because you’ll notice that there is a power of the outsider that shows up in a couple of stories that Professor Levine shares with us this week, that there’s both risk. 

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In being the outsider. 

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But there’s also power. 

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In being the outsider and how you may have influence and the influence that is more powerful than the influence that may come from within. 

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And so if you are from the Christian community, I hope you will ask yourself some difficult questions about the gospel material. 

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But if you have an outside perspective, not from the Christian tradition, then how? 

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Can you use? 

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That power and influence as an outsider to critique and to correct. 

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Some of the erroneous assumptions that maybe those of us within Christian communities have found for ourselves. 

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And so that’s a lot to do in Chapter 4, but I hope you take some joy and some meaning in taking on those assignments within Chapter 4. 

00:15:41 

As usual, we have an opportunity on Wednesday to engage in the chat. 

00:15:45 

If you’ve not had a chance to do that yet, it is not too late. 

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You can go back to any prior thread. 

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In order to do this, you’ll want to have the sub stack app on your smartphone. 

00:15:55 

Now it. 

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I’m just learning from sub stack that they’re taking the chat online through the web and so I guess it’s all through the web. 

00:16:03 

Do I sound like an? 

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Old person right now I feel like. 

00:16:07 

I tripped over the technology jargon there in kind of an awkward way. 

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Maybe I’m showing my age just a little bit, but I’ve I’ve learned through kind of some updates from sub stack that they are going to have a website version of the chat. 

00:16:19 

So as I learned more about that, if that is an easier way for everyone to engage with some of those. 

00:16:24 

Pets then I certainly will provide those instructions on Wednesday when I send out the prompt for this week. 

00:16:29 

One other housekeeping note is that I will send out a doodle poll to all of the paid subscribers. 

00:16:36 

I said I would do that today. 

00:16:37 

It may have to be tomorrow, but you definitely will get a doodle poll to help me decide on a date. 

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The week of March 27th, so next week I want to have a quarterly live stream event. Our inaugural 1, the kickoff one. And so I think this will be great fun. 

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If you have ideas about the things that you would like for me to talk about in that live stream, of course I want to hear from all of you. 

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It is not only about a one way dialogue, this is about a live streaming event. 

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So we can have a two way dialogue. 

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But if you have things that you’d like me to dig into during that live stream, of course, provide those comments and feedback as well. 

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But that Doodle poll will come. 

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At least by tomorrow, if not before. And so please fill that out and help me pick a date for the week of the 27th, when we can spend about an hour or so together in a live stream format. So that was a housekeeping. 

00:17:29 

OK. 

00:17:30 

So we’ve reached the halfway point of the Jewish history of the Christian season of Lent. 

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I hope you are finding meaning and value in the study I’m finding meaning and value in facilitating the study. 

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Thanks also to the Nice comment that I received about these audio recordings, I do feel awkward because it’s a a medium that I’m not most comfort. 

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People with but I’m working to become more comfortable, so thanks for the encouragement to keep doing these each Monday. 

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I hope that they are providing some amount of value and maybe it is easier to just listen than to read because I can be verbose both writing and speaking and so it’s either a long read or a long. 

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Listen and maybe the long listen is better. 

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OK, so onward to chapter 4. 

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Happy reading. 

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You’ll hear from me Wednesday with the chat prompt and I look. 

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Forward to continuing. 

00:18:20 

The study with everyone thanks so much.