Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Prophetic condemnation of Jews within Judaism before Jesus Written by Bart Ehrman read by Ken Teutoich over the past few decades, scholars have become loathe to label Jesus actions in the temple. Mark 11, 14, 17, also in the other three gospels with the traditional phrase the cleansing of the Temple.
[00:00:27] One reason is the hateful afterlife of this phrasing, because it makes it sound as if Judaism at its very heart was foul, dirty, unclean and vile and Jesus is the one who purified it. In other words, this phrase can be and has been taken to mean that God hates Jews and their religion and sent Jesus in order to show the true path of holiness.
[00:00:51] The social and political implications of that view are stunning.
[00:00:55] They stand at the root of horrible acts of violence over the centuries leading to the Holocaust.
[00:01:01] The problem, however, cannot be solved simply by insisting that Jesus was a Jew and was not at all opposed to the worship of the Jewish God. That is completely true, of course. He was Jewish in every way conceivable, as were his followers.
[00:01:16] But that does not mean, however, that he approved of the Temple and the sacrificial system it embodied.
[00:01:22] The historical truth is more complicated and textured. The choices are not simply binary that either A Jesus hated Judaism and wanted to destroy it, or B Jesus was thoroughly Jewish and enthusiastically embraced it.
[00:01:36] In fact, by the time of Jesus, there had been a many centuries old opposition within the Israelite tradition of both the Temple and its cultic practices.
[00:01:47] That may seem weird for those who assume that Judaism was a single thing focused on Temple worship, or that Jews everywhere must have affirmed religious practices prescribed in the law of Moses itself.
[00:01:59] It is one thing to have divine instructions for worship and another thing to see how well they are followed. Opposition to the Temple cult is deeply embedded in the Hebrew Bible tradition, particularly in the writings of the Hebrew prophets.
[00:02:14] Jesus is standing within this prophetic tradition, as did many other Jews of his own day. John the Baptist and the Essenes who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls are examples familiar to many Christians today.
[00:02:27] You can read them for yourself to see.
[00:02:30] Jesus himself knew them and in the Gospels both quoted and alluded to them. With them. He insisted that reliance on the Temple cult and sacrifices is not what the God of Israel ultimately wants.
[00:02:42] He wants his people to behave in the ways he demands, helping those in need, caring for those who are marginalized and impoverished, widows, orphans, foreigners, the destitute. Those who think they can be approved by God by their ritual behavior, but not by their committed love to others, are strictly condemned.
[00:03:02] The kind of analogy that I often think of is Christians who faithfully go to church, read their Bibles and pray, but who intentionally, blithely or blindly live in ways that completely ruin the lives of others without seeing the problem.
[00:03:17] To save you the trouble of rifling through the text yourself, you should do so. Of course, I'll provide some of the key instances for you here in the NRSV New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition.
[00:03:32] I include selections of three of the 8th century BCE and thus earliest prophets we Isaiah, Amos and Micah, and one of the most outspoken and passionate prophets of the sixth century BCE, Jeremiah. Others could be included, notably Ezekiel Isaiah 1:1117. Read the entire chapter. It's extremely moving and powerful. God doesn't want your sacrifices and religious rituals. He wants you to live for others. The rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah he is addressing are the rulers of the southern kingdom of Judah.
[00:04:10] Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah. What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices, says the lord. I have had enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fed beasts. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me. Who asked this from your hand?
[00:04:34] Trample my courts no more. Bringing offerings is futile. Incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath, and calling of convocation, I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals, my soul hates. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you, and even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean. Remove your evil deeds from before my eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
[00:05:20] Amos 5:2125 A similar message in a short but amazing book not read enough.
[00:05:27] Read chapters three. Five Very powerful Justice is what God wants, not sacrifices and rituals. This addressed at about the same time to those in the northern kingdom of Israel.
[00:05:41] I hate. I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. And the offerings of well being of your fatted animals, I will not look upon Take away from me the noise of your songs. I will not listen to the melody of your harps, but let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.
[00:06:09] Micah 6:6 11. Same theme, different prophet, about the same time, speaking to those in the southern kingdom of Judah.
[00:06:18] With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?
[00:06:23] Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
[00:06:33] Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
[00:06:39] He has told you, O mortal, what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
[00:06:50] The voice of the LORD cries to the city, and he shall save those who fear his name. Hear, O tribe, and assembly of the city. Can I forget the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked and the despicable false measure? Can I tolerate wicked scales and a bag of dishonest weights?
[00:07:10] Jeremiah 7:1 34, from the sixth century, one of the most famous condemnations of Judeans who believe they can trust in the efficacy of the temple and its sacrifices to save them from their enemies, even though they are living immoral lives of oppressing others and even worshiping other gods.
[00:07:30] The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, stand in the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim there this word, and say, hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah, you who enter these gates to worship the Lord.
[00:07:45] Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words. This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the lord.
[00:08:00] For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly with one another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave to your ancestors forever and ever.
[00:08:22] Here you are trusting in deceptive words to no avail.
[00:08:26] Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house which is called by my name, and say we are safe, only to go on doing all these abominations.
[00:08:45] Has this house which is called by my name become a den of robbers in your sight?
[00:08:52] I too am watching, says the Lord. I will cast you out of my sight, just as I cast out all your kinsfolk, all the offspring of Ephraim.
[00:09:02] Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave. Obey my voice and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. Walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.
[00:09:28] Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but in the stubbornness of their evil way, they walked in their own counsels and looked backward rather than forward.
[00:09:38] From the day that your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have persistently sent all my servants, the prophets to them day after day. Yet they did not listen to me or pay attention. But they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did.
[00:09:56] For the people of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord. They have set their abominations in the house that is called by my name, defiling it.
[00:10:04] The corpses of this people will be food for the birds of the air and for the animals of the earth. And no one will frighten them away.
[00:10:12] And I will bring to an end the sound of mirth and gladness, the voice of the bride and bridegroom in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, for the land shall become a waste.
[00:10:24] This is the prophetic line Jesus was standing in. It is obviously not anti Jewish in the way anti Judaism developed after the beginnings of Christianity by followers of Jesus who came to think that non Christian Jews were inherently sinful and following a false religion, condemned because they did not believe in Jesus. A view that eventually led to the horrible acts of violence through the Middle Ages up to eventually the Holocaust.
[00:10:52] This is a kind of prophetic opposition to the way Judaism was being practiced by those who had a different vision of what it was supposed to be in Jesus day. This prophetic condemnation was often adopted by apocalypticists who did not think that military defeat and national collapse was to come per se.
[00:11:11] They believed that God was soon to put an end to the current system altogether and start anew with a kingdom to be ruled by his Messiah.
[00:11:21] It would be a cosmic event, not a geopolitical one. The Essenes thought so, John the Baptist thought so and Jesus thought so. They were all passionately committed Jews, but they thought that their people, not to mention the rest of the world, had gone astray and God was soon to intervene.
[00:11:41] The so called cleansing of the temple. A term that I too really don't like. But if you say Jesus's actions in the temple, most people don't know what you mean.
[00:11:50] Needs to be understood in that light.
[00:11:52] As I will explain in my next post.
