Daily Old Testament: 2 Maccabees 2-3 and My Own Article on "Genesis and John" (Part 4)

2 Maccabees 2 – The author tells how the prophet Jeremiah ordered those who were taken into exile to “hide some of the fire from the altar” so it could be found as they have just found it to rekindle the light of the Temple. He also instructed them concerning God Law and warned them about the temptation of idol worship that they would see in the land they were being taken to.

“These same records also tell us that Jeremiah, acting under divine guidance, commanded the Tent of the Lord’s Presence and the Covenant Box to follow him to the mountain where Moses had looked down on the land which God had promised our people. When Jeremiah got to the mountain, he found a huge cave and there he hid the Tent of the Lord’s Presence, the Covenant Box, and the altar of incense. Then he sealed up the entrance” (2:4-5). No one was to know about the site until the time God would gather his people again and show them mercy. “At that time he will reveal where these things are hidden, and the dazzling light of his presence will be seen in the cloud, as it was in the time of Moses” (2:8).

Nehemiah is credited with bringing together all the “royal records” and all the “writings of David, letters of the kings concerning offerings, and books about the kings and prophets” (2:13).

A Jerusalem Bible note seems to say that all this is not very historically accurate. It is an attempt to show the continuity of orthodox worship – give it higher credentials. He also tries to impress the reader with the massive amount of research he has done, but that the account he plans to give is cursory – an overview.

2 Maccabees 3 – The narrative starts here. It begins when Onias III was high priest and Seleucus IV is ruler of Asia (186-175 BC). One Simon gets into a conflict with Onias over regulation of the markets and Simon uses the Seleucids to get even. He sends rumors of great wealth stashed in the Temple. The king sends Heliodorus, his chancellor, to seize this money – out of all proportion to any money needed for the religious purposes of the Jews. The Lord himself intervenes on Israel’s behalf appearing in a vision to Heliodorus to protect his Temple. He is converted by this experience it says, though he does not seem to be thought of as a good guy.

“Genesis and John”

Part 4

I knew that the opening of Genesis was very important to Fox and Friends. And I knew that the term “Seed” was just as linked to Genesis as “Light” and “Word,” but I wondered if the first part of Genesis was so important to the author of John, were there not perhaps other references to it in other parts of John’s gospel. The first other passage I thought of was the miracle at Cana, Jesus first miracle and the beginning of his ministry. There had always been controversy over the question of why Jesus referred to his mother as “Woman” not “mother dearest.” And the note in my Jerusalem Bible says, “Unusual address from son to mother; the term is used again in 19:26 where there may be a reference to Gn 3:15, 20: Mary is the second Eve, ‘the mother of the living’.”

The only other mention of Mary in John is in John 19:26 when Jesus is on the Cross, and he again calls her “woman” – Jesus, “[s]eeing his mother and the disciple he loved standing near her, Jesus said to his mother, ‘Woman, this is your son’. Then to the disciple he said, ‘This is your mother’. And from that moment the disciple made a place for her in his home” (John 19:26-27). Putting together all of these passages blew my mind. Quakers had gotten the Second Adam insight and run with it, finding in it a theological basis for leading the charge back through the “flaming sword” that kept us out of Eden; but Catholics had seen that in accepting Mary, the woman who was the first to open herself utterly and completely to Christ’s life in her, we too - all of us who were Christ’s beloved disciples – could really join ourselves to them both.

But perhaps the strongest sense of "convincement" I felt about the connection between these Old and New Testament passages came when I read on in John and it said, "After this, Jesus knew that everything had now been completed, and to fulfill the scripture perfectly he said: 'I am thirsty'. A jar full of vinegar stood there, so putting a sponge soaked in the vinegar on a hyssop stick they held it up to his mouth. After Jesus had taken the vinegar he said, 'It is accomplished'; and bowing his head he gave up his spirit" (John 19: 28-30). Yes, the promise made in 3:15 was accomplished.

“Openings” have power. They make us feel that God is working in us, opening our eyes to things we have been blind to; raising to life in us insights that enrich our faith-lives and make us feel the fruits of faithfulness – excitement on an intellectual and spiritual plane, love for those who have witnessed to him and made him live for others. I am thankful.

Daily Old Testament: 2 Maccabees 1 and My Own Article on "Genesis and John" (Part 3)

2 Maccabees 1 – The book begins with two letters; the first one is to the Egyptian Jews:

“May he give you all the heart to worship him, and to do his will, with a great heart and a willing soul. May he throw open your heart with his law and with his precepts, and may he create peace. May he heed your prayers and be reconciled to you and may he not forsake you in the evil time” (1:3-5).

And the second one is to Aristobulus, tutor to King Ptolemy. Aristobulus is known for his allegorical approach to the Pentateuch. It is an invitation to celebrate the dedication of the Temple in 164 BC [40 years older than the first letter]. It is hard for me to understand much of this, but it in part retells the story of the rebuilding of the Temple under Nehemiah [c.430 BC] and of how the light in the original Temple, hidden somehow – in the liquid naptha – in a dry well was rekindled in the Temple by just bringing it out and pouring it over the sacrifice and exposing it to the sun (1:22).

The prayer of Nehemiah is lovely: “O Lord God, Creator of all, terrible and strong, just and merciful, you alone are the good King. You alone are excellent, you alone are just, and all-powerful, and eternal, who frees Israel from all evil, . . . Receive the sacrifice on behalf of all of your people Israel, and preserve and sanctify your portion. Gather together our dispersion, free those who are in servitude to the Gentiles, and respect those who are despised and abhorred, so that the Gentiles may know that you are our God” (1:24-27).

“Genesis and John”

Part 3

I admit I became a little obsessed with this and went to the internet and tried to find out why Catholics hadn't given the "Second Adam" idea the same weight Friends had, and it led to a whole new discovery. I learned something very interesting. The passage at the center of this – Genesis 3:15 – was a foundational passage of the Church’s devotion to Mary (Mariology). OK, go slow.

Inquiry into this, I might add, has led me to be aware that this passage is a veritable quagmire of theological discussion. At bottom, the majority of Christians over the years have accepted the passage as a messianic prophecy. The interesting thing is that I don’t think any Christian group has given the passage more weight than early Friends. That Jesus was for “man” a Second Adam that gave us an ability to overcome all the consequences of “the fall” in a very real way IN THIS LIFE – including an end to the submission of woman to man, an end to the futility of life and expulsion from the spiritual garden that God intended this world to be – these are absolutely fundamental elements of the Quaker Christian vision and tradition.

But the Mary part – how did that come to be? And how come Quakers were not into that? It comes down to translations. The translation of 3:15 that I have in my Bible and that Fox had in his Bible [either the Geneva or the King James] was based on the Greek Septuagint [pre-Christian Jewish translation of the Torah from Hebrew to Greek]. Here the passage read, "I will put enmity between you [talking to the serpent] and the woman, and between your seed [offspring] and hers; He will crush/bruise your head, you (serpent) will bruise/strike his heel.” Most modern translations seem to use the word “offspring” rather than “seed” and this is important mainly because the text Fox used probably had “seed” and the idea of the “Seed” of Christ was one of the key terms Quakers used to refer to that indwelling presence of the redemptive power we should be living in. But the key thing here for the Second Adam idea is the use of the pronoun “He” which was seen by the early disciples and later by Fox as a prophecy of Christ’s role.

What happened though was that sometime in the late 4th, early 5th century AD, Jerome created a Latin version of the Old Testament texts but used some existing Hebrew texts as his main source, not the Greek Septuagint. The few changes he made in the Genesis passage 3:15 were influential in the growth of the devotion to Mary in the church. It wasn’t the only passage that seemed to justify it, but it was important. His translation used the feminine Latin pronoun instead of the masculine singular. In English it reads, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” So in the Catholic “take” on 3:15, the emphasis is on Mary as the New Eve, not Jesus as the Second Adam. The dispute about the passage is very interesting and continues to this day. But for me the issue is not so much which translation is exactly right but how did the people influential in my Christian life see the passage and how did it shape their theology.

It makes a lot of sense that God, in the story, would be talking about “the woman” and “the serpent” – they were the two He was talking to. But my inquiry into this also led me to a somewhat new and equally exciting new take on another related reference to Mary.

Daily Old Testament: Nehemiah 12-13 and My Own Article on "Genesis and John" (Part 2)

Nehemiah 12 – The names of the priests and Levites who came up with Zerubbabel are listed. In verse 31, it goes back to first person narration. Nehemiah says he brought all the leaders up onto the wall and they went in procession, one company to the right with musicians and the whole regalia; the other to the left. Again, particular people are mentioned and their place along the wall. It was a great affair. “They offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. The joy of Jerusalem was heard far away” (12:43).

Nehemiah 13– On that day “they read from the book of Moses in the hearing of the people; and in it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God, because they did not meet the Israelites with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them—yet our God turned the curse into a blessing. When the people heard the law, they separated from Israel all those of foreign descent” (13:3).

One of the priests, Eliashib, is related to Tobiah (an Ammonite) and prepared him a large room in the temple. Nehemiah was not in Jerusalem when this was done. When he returns and discovers the wrong, he was angry. He threw the household furniture of Tobiah out of the room, gave orders that they be cleansed and brought back the other things that had been stored there.

He also discovers some other problems. He prays that his work may not go to waste. He also tries to get a stricter observance of the Sabbath. He commands that the doors be shut at dusk on the Sabbath. He refuses even to permit them to wait in front of the city gates. He contends with some Jews who intermarry with Ammonite or Moabite women. He also “curses and “beats” some of them and pulls out their hair (13:25). “Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign, and I established the duties of the priests and Levites, each in his work; and I provided for the wood offering, at appointed times, and for the first fruits. Remember me, O my God, for good” (13:31).

“Genesis and John”

Part 2

This vision of Christ as the Second Adam was pivotal for George Fox. The overturning of "the fall" as a condition that weighed us down made "perfection" possible - moral perfection. It made possible ALL the testimonies Friends made and have continued to make to this day: equality of male and female – restoration of the original equality, the peace testimony, the ability to love as Christ loved, the end of all worldly obsession with position and power.

I knew the importance Quakers had associated with this vision of Christ’s work. I remember asking the leader of my Catholic Study Group [Emmaus] why Catholics did not seem to give much weight to the “Second Adam” idea: Why was there still an assumption that mankind lived in “the fallen state” that Adam and Eve’s disobedience had led us to? It seemed like Christ’s redemption should be at least as potent in shaping the reality we all lived in as Adam’s “fall”. He responded that as the Church sees it, we have a choice – about accepting Christ and his being the Second Adam or not, but it didn’t change the underlying reality we lived in to start with. I didn’t pursue it, but inside I did feel that somehow something wasn’t right about this. If Christ was in fact that Second Adam shouldn’t we be dealing with a world fundamentally transformed? Please know, by the way, that I know I am dealing with a spiritual reality and not a simple historical reality when I speak of these parts of the narrative. This is a complex thing. There has always been choice.

Daily Old Testament: Nehemiah 11 and My Own Article on "FGenesis and John" (Part 1)

Nehemiah 11- The leaders of the people are now living in Jerusalem. “A tenth of the people from the other towns of Judah and Benjamin were chosen by sacred lots to live there, too, while the rest stayed where they were” (11:1). Most of them stayed where they were.

The representatives of the different groups are named-—Judahites, Benjaminites, Priests, Levites, gatekeepers, an overseer of the Levites, and others. The responsibilities of each “were carried out according tot the terms of a royal command” (11:23). It tells the other villages where people settled as well. The people of Judah “were living all the way from Beersheba in the south to the valley of Hinnom” (11:30).

“Genesis and John”

Part 1

I have done a lot of thinking about the connection between Genesis and the Gospel of John in the past. Among Friends, the Gospel of John has always been referred to as the “Quaker Gospel” – its use of the concepts of Light and Word are part of the deepest Christology of the gospel writers. But the “openings” I am writing about here came about as a result of a steady interest in both of these books during 2012. I was leading a Bible study at our local Monthly Meeting and we were working on Genesis, but also I was also part of an adult study group at my local Catholic Church and there we were doing the Gospel of John all winter. It was there I experienced one of those Quaker moments when I suddenly SAW something in the writings I hadn’t seen before, or hadn’t seen so deeply or powerfully. We were going over the last words of Jesus on the cross as told in John, and I began to see something I really hadn't seen before. Some things came together for me - some Quaker, some Catholic - a volatile mix. But it was an "opening" for me, a powerful one, so I thought I'd write about it.

We all know the Genesis story starts with words that were very central to the author of John: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” and the first thing created is “the light” – in John’s prologue, he says “In the beginning was the Word,” the Christ, the Seed of God. How did that concept come into the story – the Seed? I comes from Genesis 3:15, a passage that has been seen by Christians from the earliest days as prophetic. It comes after Adam and Eve have disobeyed God’s command not to eat the fruit of the “knowledge of good and evil”; God has told them that there will be consequences of that disobedience, and those consequences shall be difficult to live with: the snake will grovel on its belly; there will be enmity between the serpent and the woman, between the woman and the man and the work of man will be pointless and his life nothing more than dust. But there is also a few words that were seen as a promise of hope. In 3:15 these words appear, that one day the "Seed" [Offspring] of "the woman" would "bruise the head" of the serpent [evil power that alienates man from his creator].

For Fox and early Friends, this idea of the Seed - Christ, the Light and Word of God - meant that the power of evil over us was dashed in a fundamental way. Christ was the "Second Adam" – a faithful Adam, one that would give a new hope that man’s destiny was not to be “fallen” forever.

“And when I myself was in the deep, under all shut up, I could not believe that I should ever overcome; my troubles, my sorrows, and my temptations were so great, that I thought many times I should have despaired, I was so tempted. But when Christ opened to me how he was tempted by the same Devil, and had overcome him and bruised his head, and that through him and his power, light, grace and spirit, I should overcome also, I had confidence in him” (Fox’s Journal 12).

AND again:

“Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell . . . I was immediately taken up in spirit, to see into another or more steadfast state than Adam’s in innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus, that should never fall. And the Lord showed me that such as were faithful to him in the power and light of Christ, should come up into that state in which Adam was before he fell, in which the admirable works of the creation, and the virtues thereof, may be known, through the openings of that divine Word of wisdom and power by which they were made” (27).