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We’re almost done with genre studies, I promise, so next week will be it. But this time, we have to look at the differences between the Sermons that Yeshua/Jesus delivered and the letters to specific congregations written by Paul, Peter, James, and others. When we read a letter (aka epistle) as though it is a simple sermon, it can lead to some really bad problems. Maybe most importantly, how are we supposed to read the “law codes” in the Bible?
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Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I usually teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. But not right now, right now I am doing a series about how to not waste your time with bad study practices, bad resources, and just the general confusion that I faced when I started studying the Bible and was trying to figure out what to do and whose books I should read. Bottom line, I read a lot of nonsense and spent a ton of money on it. I am going to give you some basics on how to avoid a lot of the pitfalls, save money, maximize your time and effort, and get the most out of what you are doing.
My master book list can be found on my website theancientbridge.com here and I will add to it as needed. Scripture this week comes from the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible. We’re actually coming to the end of this series because next week we will talk about the Psalms and how they need to be treated and understood, and the week after that we will tackle the minefield of inerrancy. That’s a word that most people have an idea about and assume everyone else has the same definition when they absolutely don’t. I want to help you to have a conversation about it—a real conversation where everyone understands what everyone else is actually saying when they claim that the Bible is inerrant. Then we are going to do a month of Psalms and a month of Matthew and we will switch back and forth until we run out of one or the other. That will probably take me the rest of my life but as the Psalms are a reflection of our relationship with the divine and one another and the Gospel of Matthew is the story of Yeshua/Jesus as the greater Moses, I think they will mesh well together.
So, let’s start out with the basics this week. A sermon, like the Sermon on the Mount, is generally given in public and has to do with teaching right behavior or expounding on Scripture in such a way that it directs the life and understanding of the audience. A sermon, at its heart, is guidance. A sermon can be angry, concerned, compassionate, a warning, or encouraging. The Bible is full of sermons not only from Jesus, Paul, and James but also Moses and the Prophets. In fact, Deuteronomy is the absolute, undisputed longest sermon in the entire Bible. Nothing else even comes close. Moses, before his death, delivers his “swan song” (for lack of a better term). It’s his last chance to tell Israel what they will need to know in his absence. All the warnings, encouragement, reality checks, and last-minute wisdom he can muster up. It’s almost like the telling-off one gets for stepping on the lawn of a grumpy, elderly man. Okay, not that bad. Moses wasn’t just venting—it was given for the purpose of attempting to save the nation (he had all but founded) from the sins that he knew were coming in the future once they were fat, happy, wealthy, and comfortable. He knew that they would forget the Lord because they had done so repeatedly even with the Tabernacle and the cloud of smoke/fire in their midst for forty years. If that wasn’t a deterrent, then what on earth would be?
Moses didn’t direct his sermon to a small group but to an entire nation. Yeshua preached to large groups, even groups of thousands, but they had chosen to hear Him whereas Moses spoke to absolutely everyone, from youngest to eldest. The content of their preaching was also very different—no “thus saith the Lord” with Yeshua, who instead preached His sermons by His own authority. Moses spoke the oracles of God as a mediator and not as a source, as Yeshua did. Moses spoke mainly in terms of wisdom sayings, attempting to teach the people basic principles of right-ruling within the ancient Near Eastern setting in which they lived. Moses’s guidance was far from exhaustive and covered very little as far as the variety of situations people found themselves in. Yeshua, on the other hand, raised the bar exponentially and yet, He was talking to an audience who were not part of the New Creation existence and so His words must have seemed very “pie in the sky.” Paul, Peter, James, and the others, when they wrote sermons, it was to an entirely different audience who did have the Torah increasingly written on their hearts. How we read their sermons changes based on whom they preached to, when, and why. Sermons aren’t just given in a vacuum, they come from a place of need. Moses spoke to a once mixed multitude who, over the course of forty years in the wilderness, had become a more uniform and cohesive people than they had been at first where former outsiders had undoubtedly intermarried with the children of Israel. The prophets gave sermons on the necessity of repentance in the face of gross national idolatry as they were warned of imminent exile from the Land if the people failed to respond properly. Yeshua spoke to an oppressed population living in their own land but under the rule of the last in a series of pagan empires. Unlike the well and miraculously-fed audience of Moses, and the far too comfortable audience of the prophets, Yeshua preached to a downtrodden, defeated, impoverished, and hungry excuse for a people group. Paul, Peter, James, and the others preached to groups of Jews, Gentiles, and mixtures of the two. Sometimes the material was generic and suitable to be read to absolutely anyone and at other times it was directed only toward certain groups or people going through certain things and who were in need of guidance. Certainly, advice to former pagans is going to look a lot different than advice to those who were born into observant Jewish families, and diaspora groups would have different concerns from Jerusalem-based congregations. Differences in audience can often illuminate the meaning of what has been written. For example, I will say entirely different things when teaching adults than I would when teaching children—not always but often. Knowing whether you are listening to Character in Context or Context for Kids will change the way you hear or read what I am saying. The advice I give to kids and adults is different because of differences in life experience and circumstances. Same exact things with the Sermons and Correspondences in the Bible.
The message of Romans concerning the “weak and the strong” changes radically depending on whether you assign strength and/or weakness to the Roman Jews or the Roman Gentiles. It is important to know that the letter to the Galatians was written to Gentile converts, and that Corinth was a Roman Colony and not Greek. Although the message of the fruit of the spirit and the works of the flesh work exactly the same way no matter who you are, what are we to do with instructions telling people not to keep honoring special days? And what sense do some of the instructions Moses gave in the wilderness even make outside of the culture of the ancient Near East or within a non-Temple centric society?
Sermons tend to be far more applicable to generic or mixed audiences than the correspondence we find in epistles and by correspondence I mean the portions of the writings (especially of Paul) which seem to come out of nowhere and counteract things he has ruled in other letters. It would seem, from reading what he writes about women that one day he is all gung-ho about allowing women to lead without restrictions in the congregations, and then all of a sudden in Ephesus they can’t even ask questions. If we fail to recognize the parts of Paul’s writings that are likely answers to specific questions he has been asked by specific congregations dealing with unique troubles, and we attempt to read the entire epistle as a generic, face-value sermon, we do get into all sorts of problems with consistency. But, you know, that’s what happens when we read someone else’s mail! Here’s an example I have used a lot in the past to illustrate this problem:
Dear Sam,
Well it was great hearing from you again, and I can’t wait until we can come visit! Seems like forever since we were in Liverpool, and the chips we had at that place downtown were just THE BEST! I was so shocked to hear about Charlie in prison! But then, not really much of a surprise once I thought about it – he was always awkward around the kids, wasn’t he? Maybe he can get things turned around for the better. Give me his address so I can send him a Bible, will you please? We are praying for him. As for Violet, I agree that she should not be teaching men like that! Let the men do it. It would be entirely inappropriate for Violet to be a part of anything like that. Her heart is in the right place, but she would be better off with the women and children.
Best Regards, Your brother Paul
Now honestly, I want your first impressions. Question #1: what country is Sam from, and what sort of food is Paul referring to? Question #2: what can you discern of Charlie’s character, and his past and present situation? Question #3: why doesn’t Paul approve of Violet teaching men? The answer to all three should be – “I have no idea, there is not enough information given.” Now it would be easier if we had the letter that this was a response to.
Dear Paul,
How are ya’ll doing in Chicago? Everyone here in Texas sure misses you–and Trudy down at the deli says she has a bag of those Takis all put aside for you. She still laughs about how much you loved them, like you’d never seen a Mexican chip before! You are not going to believe this, but remember Charlie the youth group leader? Well, come to find out–he hated it and was only in it to please his parents. So Greg got him started in prison ministry and he loves it! He has started a Bible drive and everything. I think he is going to make a big difference there! Here is the issue though, and I want your honest opinion. His sister Violet, well, you know what a heart of gold she has, and I never met anyone so trusting. Well, she wants to go in there teaching right alongside him. I’m against it because she’s always falling for some sob story and getting herself into deep trouble. Now, if it were Pat, their mom, that would be one thing–that sister is tough as nails, but I think Violet is absolutely the worst possible candidate for men’s prison ministry. And this isn’t a white-collar facility, these are violent felons! She has been offered a chance to teach at the local women’s shelter, which I think she would be great at, with her compassion–but for some reason she is always wanting to save guys who end up walking all over her. I know she takes your advice really seriously, so can you please put in a good word?
Thanks. – Sam
Now be honest. You probably thought or at least strongly suspected that Sam was from Britain, they were talking about french fries, that Charlie was in jail for child molestation, that the Bible was for his salvation, and that Paul was saying women shouldn’t teach men at all, but instead should stick to teaching women and children. That’s because my fictitious Paul had no obligation to write detailed accounts of what questions he was answering – after all, he was writing to the person who asked the questions in the first place. You filled in the blanks logically with details from your sphere of reference, just like we all naturally are inclined to do. (And yes, there is a Liverpool in Texas). If that response letter had been taught in church by itself, what sort of doctrine could be built around it? And just think of poor Charlie’s reputation, way worse than Thomas’.
Anyway, we have to be very careful with the epistles because they were sometimes sermons and were at other times letters and generally they were both at the same time. No one alive today was part of the original audience and as John Walton always says, the Bible was written for our benefit but it wasn’t written specifically with ourselves, our culture, or our modern rules of communication in mind. Nor should it have been as it would have died out as a needlessly ineffective and confusing book that wouldn’t have made sense to anyone until after the Enlightenment. The beauty of the Bible is that it said what it needed to say to the original audience and that is why it survived and not only that, but why it has changed the world.
One more thing I want to talk about, and this is a bit controversial but it is also gaining more and more scholarly acceptance in both Jewish and Christian circles. Namely, what do we make of the Torah? I am not talking about the narratives, of course, but the sections that most would call legal. For a law code, if we are going to be honest, it is utterly inadequate because it just doesn’t cover a lot of situations and there really isn’t a lot of clear guidance in it for specific problems or crimes. This is why the Talmud happened, in recognition of this fact. The Talmud is made up of two parts, produced at different points in time. The Mishna, compiled by 200 CE, contains the legal rulings of the Sanhedrin (the Supreme Court of Israel). It is reflective of case law, which is the law of the land based on former rulings. It’s a “this is how we do it based on such and such a case, like “Brown vs the Board of Education” which set the standard that considers State sponsored segregation to be a direct violation of the 14th amendment, which guarantees all citizens equal protections under the law. But, if we wanted to read what the different justices had to say and how they came to their conclusion, and what arguments are and are not considered authoritative, then we would look at the transcripts of the deliberations—and that is a good way to look at the second half of the Talmud, the Gemara, which was compiled by 600 CE. And this is why you find messed up stuff in the Gemara which never saw the light of day as far as practice goes—stuff like the one Rabbi who was shot down for saying that it is only sex between adult males that is forbidden by Lev 18:22 and that pedophilia is okay. No one agreed with him, but it is included in there as shot down just in case someone tries to make that argument again!
When the Greeks took over Galilee, Samaria, and Judea, they brought some really good things with them. The Rabbi/disciple relationship comes straight out of the Philosopher/disciple phenomena of ancient Greece. The way they used law codes instead of wisdom literature to guide judges, ensuring (or supposed to) fairer rulings than when things are simply left up to individual judges. Our own law codes come from the Greek system. And so do the rulings we see in the Talmud. Once a society becomes large enough and complicated enough, wisdom codes tend to become very problematic—and that’s what the instructions of the Torah represent wisdom codes. The “law codes” of Hammurabi, Lipit-Ishtar, the Hittites, and the surrounding ancient Near Eastern nations generally relied on wisdom sayings instead of law codes. Rulers would write of the decisions made during their reign that reflected righteousness and justice and those sayings were more guidelines and really not always hard and fast rules. I mean, even Yahweh breaks those guidelines on a regular basis because wisdom is situational and it cannot be legislated. Is all stick collecting prohibited on the Sabbath—no, wisdom understands that people have different reasons and different motivations. Doing it because you are trying to get ahead on the week’s work is entirely different from having a child suddenly take sick and needing to keep a blazing fire going to keep the child alive. Heck, everyone would be gathering sticks in that situation! I sure would!
Firstborn laws are routinely disregarded by God, who chooses whom He wants and when He wants. Boaz was able to marry Ruth because the ban on Moabites was a wisdom ruling and not a legal ruling—and David was only able to become King for that same reason. Wisdom rulings are about principles. In principle, the Israelites shouldn’t have intermarried with the Moabites, but in practice, sometimes it is the right thing to do. Speeding laws, on the other hand, do not recognize circumstances when it is okay to go 80mph in a school zone. And we are all okay with that, right? Was the sexual prohibition list of Lev 18 a legally binding and complete list of sex crimes one shouldn’t commit? Absolutely not, and many cults have exploited the lack of mention of children so as to say that sex with a child isn’t forbidden. A law code would have been amended to deal with that but a wisdom code tells us that sex outside of heterosexual marriage is forbidden and all the examples are just driving that concept home. No one should have ever gone looking for exceptions.
The presence of polygyny (multiple wives) is acknowledged as a reality and controlled but never legislated as good or even okay. The wisdom of Torah as a whole shows polygyny to be a hot mess and not an ideal. But if we are misusing Torah as a law code, we are free to do whatever isn’t expressly prohibited as long as we can argue that it wouldn’t bother us if it happened to us. Which is nothing but a hypothetical argument of convenience. Wisdom demands more of us, and so the wisdom codes of Torah were written down for the benefit of those who had proven themselves worthy and capable of judging their neighbors. The wisdom codes of the Torah didn’t lock the judges in (usually) but gave them principles from which to derive situational wisdom. That’s what we see with Solomon, as he asked for wisdom and not a comprehensive understanding of all the do’s and don’ts. Law codes don’t allow wisdom. Juries aren’t supposed to allow themselves to be compromised by extenuating circumstances. The way we view laws in the modern world, therefore, doesn’t represent the world of the Torah at all. A fantastic book on this is John Walton’s The Lost World of Torah (affiliate link). A community can run according to wisdom rulings as long as the judges are impartial and honest and merciful to all parties involved. But a nation can’t. That’s why we had some states absolutely outlawing slavery from the start (Vermont) and other states created for the express purpose of being slave states (Missouri). It’s why hate crimes had to be made federal crimes so that local law enforcement could no longer prosecute or legally ignore lynchings according to their own sensibilities. The Emmet Till lynching is a good example of why that sort of law was needed and long overdue because, without it, a community can decide that murder is okay as long as everyone approves but that whistling at a white woman is grounds for state-sanctioned mob violence.
This is why the greatest two commandments aren’t “Do not murder” and “Do not—whatever” and instead are the commands to love God and neighbor. Because when we are honest, wisdom doesn’t allow us to harm a neighbor and therefore pretty much covers everything and anything oppressive and cruel and unfair. It is only when we decide to treat the Torah like a modern comprehensive law code that we look to it to see how we can and cannot legally get away with violating the command to love others. But in the first century, as we see from the teachings of Yeshua, that’s exactly what they were doing. The Hillel Pharisees were endorsing “divorce your wife for any cause” while the Shammaite Pharisees were sticking to the wisdom of the code and saying, “Dudes, it’s obvious that it is only allowed for major transgression.” The Pharisees were marrying their nieces because there was no specific prohibition, which is super gross, and the Qumran community was outraged over it. So, when we read the Sermon on the Mount (coming full circle here), Yeshua was directly contradicting an interpretation of the Torah that is focused on using it to see what you can get away with. He took the wisdom of Torah to a whole other level that, frankly, the original audience couldn’t have dealt with. I mean, they had enough problems with the very few that they were given in the first place. Heck, they had problems with just the ten commandments.
Yeshua commanded that we be guided by wisdom, love of neighbor, and love of God and so His sermons weren’t just commentary on Torah, they were a restoration of Torah to the category of wisdom literature where to do certain things allowed by Torah loopholes becomes unthinkable. Why would any man who loves his wife give her a rival and her children rivals and divide family resources? It becomes a non-option. Why would someone sin against their neighbor and then go apologize to God about it and think that’s enough? Why would a person governed by love and self-sacrifice consider it okay to look at other people as sexual objects, and especially when we know how many men and women involved in the porn industry are trafficked and abused? Who would come up with a complicated set of rules for when it is okay to break an oath? And where is the wisdom or shalom (peace and wholeness) in a world where revenge is the norm and there is no forgiveness? Jesus is the fulfillment of the Torah not because He struck it down but because He brought it back to its beginnings as wisdom—and living by wisdom is a lot harder than living by a law code. Living by wisdom is more restrictive and requires mature character. This is why we actually prefer law codes and have tried to force Torah into that sort of box.
Next week, we are going to talk about the Psalms and the categories that help us read them as intended. See you then.
