As we’ve already seen on previous occasions, the scattering of the Jews in the exilic period meant that many Jews now lived too far from Jerusalem to go up to sacrifice, and at any rate the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. It is thus not surprising that it is to this period that one traces the development of the synagogue. (The synagogue was also sometimes called a ‘(place) of prayer’ or ‘a house of instruction’). The word synagogue is essentially a synonym of the word ekklesia which is used for ‘church’ in the New Testament. Both words simply mean ‘assembly’. Presumably it was because of the fact that the word synagogue had already been taken up by the Jews as a kind of technical term for their meetings, and eventually for their meeting places, that the early Christians opted not to use that term for their meetings, but rather to use a term that allowed them to distinguish their meetings from those of non-Christian Jews. Be that as it may, the synagogue would have provided the most familiar worship setting and environment for the earliest Christians, and it was on this pattern of worship that they styled and structured their own meetings. We are told that Jesus and Paul at least regularly attended synagogue, and we may presume that all the earliest Christians did so for as long as they were welcome (in John we see indications that eventually conflicts arose with the leadership of the synagogue in at least some areas).
In a typical synagogue service, the leader of the assembly would have asked someone to begin with the call to worship – then as now it was an accepted principle that one begin first with praise, and only then move on to prayer. After the initial praise, the Shema (Deut.6:4) would be recited, after which prayer along the lines of the famous Eighteen Benedictions would have been offered. You have the text of these in your textbook on pp.543-544.
After this followed teaching from the Scriptures – that is, what we would call ‘the Sermon’. A strong emphasis was also placed on the reading of the Scriptures. Remember that most people could not read, and even if they could would not have been able to afford to buy scrolls and other materials and pay a scribe to copy out all the Scriptures especially for them. So one generally heard the Scriptures in the synagogue. There would be two readings – one from the Law and one from the Prophets. These would be read in Hebrew and then paraphrased into Aramaic, since few Hebrew well, if at all. There was a cycle of readings, and although the examples we have covering three years are from later rabbinic sources, they probably give some indication of the actual practice in at least some places in Jesus’ time. This way, if one attended the synagogue regularly, one was exposed to the whole of the Law and the Prophets over the course of a year to three years. The sermon would then relate these two passages to one another.[1] Any male who was felt to be able might be invited to deliver the sermon – as we see in the case of both Jesus and Paul.
Thus we can see that many features of the prayers, singing and preaching of the earliest Christians had Jewish roots.
When people are oppressed or believe they are oppressed, revolutionary movements seem to almost inevitably pop up. In Israel in Jesus’ time, the rich and powerful had essentially collaborated with the Romans, and others had become rich and/or powerful precisely by collaborating with the Romans. The ordinary people often harbored resentment. But how does resentment become a revolution? This is a question that is on the minds of many today, and I’m sure that a sociological analysis and comparison with other revolutionary movements down the ages would be useful. But perhaps most interesting is the way religion and nationalism were linked, then as now. Thus I think that looking at this aspect of the background of the NT will help us to see its relevance for today, especially as we see Jesus’ attitude to some of the things that were going on back then.
There were then, as there are now, many different types of activity that we could look at. We’ll try to categorize them into two broad groups:
1) Social Brigands. These are essentially the ‘Robin Hood’ type, those who steal from and attack the overlords and redistribute the wealth in their local agrarian community. Galilee and Judea were full of such people, but as one might expect their names and details are not generally known. The focus of this group was social and economic.
2) Messianic Claimants and Prophets. People who believed they were God’s chosen person either to restore Israel’s freedom or to lead the way in preparing the people for a miraculous intervention by God. This category has a much stronger religious aspect. Among this category one finds:
a) A Samaritan in 36 AD who led his followers to Mt. Gerazim.
b) Theudas in 45 AD who persuades his followers to accompany him to Jordan, expecting it to be parted.
c) In the 50s an Egyptian led his followers to the Mount of Olives to experience the fall of Jerusalem’s walls.
d) During the first Jewish war (66-68 AD) Simon bar Giora is popularly acclaimed as king.
e) During the second Jewish revolt (132-135 AD) Simeon bar Kochba was acclaimed as Messiah and king by as great a figure as Rabbi Akiba. Under him Israel had 3 years of independence and managed to mint coins inscribed ‘Year 1 of the liberation of Israel’.
None of this will be understood correctly unless you have the ‘flip-side’ of what was going on. In 4BC Archelaus massacred Passover pilgrims in Jerusalem. In AD 40, the Emperor Caligula tried to have his statue set up in the Jerusalem Temple. In AD 66 Florus, the Roman procurator, antagonized Jews by taking from the Temple treasury. After the first Jewish war, the Romans banned Jews from Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple site to Zeus.
Regarding the Zealots, it is uncertain the extent to which they represented a clearly defined entity with members in NT times. At any rate, they earned from Josephus the designation ‘the fourth philosophy’ alongside the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. He says that they essentially believed what the Pharisees believed, but with more of a ‘no compromise’ attitude. Thus, for example, the Scriptures seemed to forbid the taking of a census, and thus when the Romans did precisely this aroused the anger and outrage of some Jews. The census carried out by the Romans after they took over Judea in 6 AD seems to have marked the start of the Zealot movement under Judah the Galilean. Likewise the fact that Jews had to use coins with an image of the Emperor on it, when images were forbidden. In order to understand this group, one also needs to read books like 1,2 and 4 Macabees and the Testament of Moses, all of which exalt martyrdom as an ideal rather than compromise one’s faith.
However, this group’s nationalism did not lead to armed struggle until war broke out. A distinct but related group, known as the Sicarii (Dagger-Men) did more to stir up unrest in the second half of the first century AD. They get their name from the fact that they carried small, curved daggers similar to the Roman sicae. This group clearly could be classed as a terrorist group. In a manner similar to the original IRA (not the same as the one that exists today – watch the movie Michael Collins if you want to know more!), they would mix in with a crowd and then carry out an assassination undetected and then merge back into the outraged crowd. The first to die in this way was Jonathan the High Priest, but many others followed. Pro-Roman rulers and collaborators were singled out. This is obviously not the same as the rural banditry of the first category – this is an urban movement, relying on the anonymity of the crowd to strike undetected. The result was that to be expected from terrorism: fear and distrust. Rulers and aristocrats, rather than cooperate with one another, focused on self-preservation and security measures. Thus the fabric of society began to unwind, and this moved the Jewish people towards revolt. The sicarii had a limited role in the actual revolt, and eventually seized Herod’s fortress at Masada and sat out the rest of the war there. When the Romans eventually took Masada in 73 AD, they found the sicarii had already committed suicide rather than be captured.
In a period where there was growing resentment towards Roman rule and mis-rule of Judea and Galilee, Jesus’ teaching comes as striking in its apparent lack of interest in such political and social matters. However, this needs to be put in context. Jesus’ teaching is not about ignoring politics, but about the powerless transforming their world through means other than violence. To look at one classic example, Jesus’ wise answer regarding the payment of taxes to Rome was directly linked to the views of the Zealots. The aim was to catch him out by forcing him to come down either on the side of Rome (thus discrediting himself as a collaborator) or on the side of the Zealots (thus providing them with an accusation by which to bring him before the Roman authorities). Jesus will not play that game. He tells them, essentially, ‘If the Emperor wants back those illicit coins with images on them, why not give them back to him? But you bear the image of God, and thus make sure you do what is more important and give your lives to God!’ Here Jesus, in a time of growing nationalism, sought to turn people’s focus to their inner lives.
This was not because of an opposition of the political and the spiritual. Rather, it was because Israel’s situation was a part of the continuing situation of exile in which Israel found itself. This being the case, it would be like fighting against God to try to overthrow the Romans, when they were God’s instrument of punishment. The only way to bring in God’s kingdom was through submission to God’s righteous judgment and sentence on his people, and repentance. This was what Jesus led the people in doing, going so far as to bear the full brunt of the curse of exile by dying at the hands of the Romans precisely as king and representative of Israel. This seems to be what Paul is getting at in Galatians 2:12-14: Jesus bore the curse, thereby bringing the exile to an end and through his death and resurrection leading his people in a new exodus into the Messianic age.
[I have also been struck by the way Jesus used essentially negative images in relation to God – an absent landowner/tenant, an unrighteous judge. What would people have understood when Jesus on the one hand was friendly not only to non-observant Jews, but even to foreigners and Roman generals, and on the other hand used images of the sorts of leaders that people resented as images of God? Was this precisely a conscious attempt to counter Jewish nationalism, to challenge the common assumptions of the time?]
To understand the mentality of the Jewish people in this time, one also needs to look at the type of literature known as apocalyptic. But before doing that, I suppose it would be appropriate to ask what Jesus would want us to do as Christians in response to recent events. How do we pray about these things? How do we treat people whom we meet who are from the Middle East (not all of whom are Muslims, by the way, so if you mistreat a Palestinian you might well be mistreating a brother in Christ for all you know!)? How do we move from Jesus’ attitude to nationalism in his time to our different but not entirely unrelated situation today?
What is apocalyptic literature? It is fairly easy to recognize, but surprisingly hard to define. Do you have any idea what kinds of writings can be included in this category?
Biblical examples: Daniel, Revelation; perhaps parts of Zechariah, Ezekiel; Mark 13
Extra-biblical examples: 1 Enoch, Jubilees, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, Apocalypse of Abraham, Testament of Abraham; some (other) writings found at Qumran
A seminar of experts has suggested the
following definition: “a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative
framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a
human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal,
insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it
involves another, supernatural world”.[2]
There are a number of characteristics
of apocalyptic writings that also help us to get a clearer idea of what we are
talking about. What sorts of characteristics come to mind when you think of
these books?
- Revelation
- Heavenly journey
- Angel/intermediary
- Symbolism
- Present political system regarded as
incarnation of evil and as demonic
- Nearness of end of history or at least
of God’s intervention
- Determinism/Fatalism
-‘Dualism’
You may be surprised at this attempt to
define this type of literature as a literary ‘genre’. However, at least when
the author of Revelation wrote, if not when Daniel wrote, this was already a
popular type of literature. Most of the examples we have are of authors who
write ‘in the name of’ Moses, or Enoch, or some other such figure, providing an
interpretation of the history and present situation of the people of God under
the guise of a prophecy that is couched in symbolic language. So it is valid to
ask what readers would have understood Revelation to be about, being already
familiar with this type of literature. How would they have read it? What
expectations would they have had? Would they have expected to understand it?
What would they have presumed it to refer to?
Biblical imagery. Think of Daniel: Jeremiah’s 70 years become 70 weeks of years. Apocalyptic thus offered a re-interpretation of Biblical prophecy for a new period in history. Donald Guthrie writes that of the 404 verses in Revelation, only 126 contain no allusion to the OT. Thus we are clearly dealing with a literary genre that derives its imagery from the OT.
Prophecy Past & Present: Daniel’s apocalyptic chapters clearly are focusing on events leading up to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. In fact, his description of the events of history is so accurate that many Old Testament scholars regard Daniel as a pseudo-prophecy, as someone who wrote in that time and only claimed to be Daniel. While this conclusion is unacceptable to most Evangelicals, it does raise an important point. Daniel appears not to be about our future, but about Daniel’s future and our past. This raises the crucial issue of whether we are not in danger of assuming that certain prophecies are unfulfilled because either we misinterpret them or because we are not well versed in ancient history. [Seven horns are seven kings, of which five have fallen and one now is…When does this refer to?!; Did this have an initial, primary reference to John’s time, or must we really expect a reconstruction of the Roman Empire, the Jerusalem Temple, etc.? Could American Christianity ever cope with the idea that its fate is not foredetermined and spelled out in Scripture? It is a huge blow to our ego that the Bible does not mention America, that it is not about us, when we think that we are the focus and climax of history. We can’t imagine that in 5,000 years’ time the United States as we know it might not exist, and history may still be moving forward, and no one will remember that in the 20th century there were people who were convinced that the Antichrist was Michael Gorbachev, or Ronald Reagan, or Saddam Hussein, or, or…]
Literal vs. figurative? [horns/heads = kings; is the New Jerusalem a literal city or the church, the bride of Christ?]
What do we do with Jude 14-15?
The enduring message of apocalyptic: It is literature for the powerless, who see that they must stand firm in a hostile situation, where their faith and their lives are at risk. It offers encouragement, a picture of a God who is in control, who is sovereign over history (not in the sense that all of history is moving as he wants it to, but that he has the power to bring an end if evil rears its head too high). However, we must remember that it was God’s message to a people who did not know and could not imagine democracy. In our time, we may find it more appropriate to emphasize the aspect of our human responsibility in cooperating with God in building a world as he wants it to be. Certainly I am convinced that anyone who uses the apparent fatalism of books like Revelation, taken out of context, to say ‘Well, there is no point in trying to do anything because the end is already set in stone’, will be held accountable for God. In our context we have unique freedoms that the author of Revelation and of Daniel could hardly imagine. It is our responsibility in our context to use those freedoms for the glory of God. Apocalyptic also teaches us trust, faithfulness and even praise and worship for God in the midst of suffering and crisis, in light of the bigger picture of God’s plan for all creation.