Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Judges 11 and Origen's De Principiis: Book VIII (3)

Judges 11 – Jephthah (c. 1070), a Gileadite and son of a prostitute, is the one called to save them. He had been driven away from his home by two legitimate sons of his father and he had gone to the land of Tob, where outlaws gathered around him and went raiding with him (11:3). When the Ammonites threaten the land, the elders go and try to get Jephthah to help them but he spurns them at first.  He finally agrees to come back if they will make him head over them (11:9).

The fight between the Ammonites and the Israelites goes back to the exodus time and this story is retold briefly, and especially the part about how Israel came to occupy the lands belonging to King Sihon (Ammorite king).  Jephthah sees this conquest as a gift from Israel’s God, so he says to them, “Should you not possess what your god Chemosh gives you to possess?  And should we not be the ones to possess everything that the Lord our God has conquered for our benefit?” (11:24)

Now 300 years have gone by.  The Israelites certainly are not going to return the lands now (11:26). They prepare for war, and in the process of preparing, Jephthah is overcome by “the spirit of the Lord.” He makes a vow and says, “If you [Lord] will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s to be offered up by me as a burnt offering” (11:30-31).

They fight, and Jephthah wins.  But when he returns it is his beloved daughter who is the first to meet him “with timbrels and dancing” (11:34).  He tears his clothes and rues his vow, but he must fulfill it. His daughter is pious enough to wish her father to keep his vow, but she asks to be given two months to go out and “wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity” with her companions.  She does and when she returns, she is sacrificed.  This story is the basis for an Israelite custom of girls going out for 4 days each year “to lament the daughter of Jephthah” (11:40).

What are we to make of this story?  It is full of contrariness of all kinds: apparently approbation of child sacrifice--or at least human sacrifice--by a judge called by God’s own spirit to serve his people and make such a vow. It rings also for me with the echoes of another familiar story, “Beauty and the Beast,” another story about a man who vows to offer up to the Beast whoever meets him on his return home. Eerdman’s point out that these “heroes” of Judges are praised in Hebrews 11:32 as men of faith in their day, so we must be thoughtful about consigning them to the spiritual waste-basket.

Origen (185-254 AD)

De Principiis (First Principles)

Chapter VIII – On the Angels

3 – Origen believes “there is no rational creature which is not capable both of good and evil.” But he is not saying that just because rational beings CAN commit evil, that “every nature has admitted evil, i.e., has become wicked.” Even the devil, according to Origen, cannot be assumed to be “incapable of good.” There was a time when the devil had a CHOICE and “fell away from a virtuous course, and turned to evil with all the powers of his mind.”

“There is no nature, then, which may not admit of good or evil, except the nature of God—the fountain of all good things—and of Christ; for it is wisdom, and wisdom assuredly cannot admit folly; and it is righteousness, and righteousness will never certainly admit of unrighteousness; and it is the Word, or Reason, which certainly cannot be made irrational; nay, it is also the light, and it is certain that the darkness does not receive the light.”

In like manner the Holy Spirit, “being holy, does not admit of pollution; for it is holy be nature, or essential being.”

4 – He concludes this section and the treatise itself with the conclusion that the order of all things emanates from the moral order and that the moral order is rooted in the free choices of rational beings.

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Judges 10 and Origen's De Principiis: Book VIII (2)

Judges 10 – Tola is the next judge God raises up, a man of the tribe of Issachar, but nothing is said of the particulars of his 23-year rule.

Then comes Jair, the Gileadite.  He ruled 22 years.  He had 30 sons who rode on 30 donkeys and they had 30 towns in Gilead.

The Israelites backslide again, and the Lord sells them “into the hand of the Philistines and into the hand of the Ammonites, and they crushed and oppressed the Israelites. . .” in Gilead for 18 years (10:7-8).

They also crossed the Jordan and fought against the house of Judah and Benjamin.  The Israelites confess their fault—“they put away the foreign gods from among them and worshiped the Lord; and he could no longer bear to see Israel suffer” (10:16).

Origen (185-254 AD)

De Principiis (First Principles)

Chapter VIII – On the Angels

2 – Some in Origen’s time believed that there was “a diversity of spiritual natures both among heavenly existences and human souls, and for that reason allege that they were called into being by different creators.” They thought it was irrational to assume that the One God created beings of such totally different natures – both good and evil; and Origen understands their problem, but is trying to show that the diversity of all that is in the creation, differences in moral state, differences in possession of power and responsibility are all things that flow from “merit” and “quality” that God recognizes and supports.

“[T]he cause of the diversity and variety among these beings is due to their conduct, which has been marked either with greater earnestness or indifference, according to the goodness or badness of their nature, and not to any partiality on the part of the Disposer. But that this may more easily be shown to be the case with heavenly beings, let us borrow an illustration from what either has been done or is done among men, in order that from visible things we may, by way of consequence, behold also things invisible.”

He looks at Paul and Peter and the two terrible things they did: Paul and his persecution of the earliest Christian followers of Jesus; and Peter in his denial of Christ when Christ was taken into custody. How is it possible “that these—who, according to those persons of whom we speak, were spiritual beings—should fall into sins of such a nature, especially as they are frequently in the habit of saying that a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruits?” These people [deemed heretics by Origen and others at the time] resorted to the thinking that it wasn’t REALLY Paul or Peter who did these bad things but some “other individual in him” who did them. But if this is true why would Paul say “’I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God?’ Or why did Peter weep most bitterly, if it were another than he who sinned?”

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Judges 8:4-35 and Origen's De Principiis: Book VII (2-3)

Judges 8:4-35 - On the way through Succoth (pursuing the remaining Midianite kings—Zebah and Zalmunna), Gideon asks the people to feed his men, but they refuse.  Then the people of Penuel deny them too.  Gideon vows to return and punish them for their unwillingness to help.

Gideon finally defeats the last two, he returns and exacts the revenge he has promised on the leaders of Succoth and Penuel. 

Then he tells the kings he wouldn’t kill them had they not killed his brothers.  He gives his son Jether the task of killing the two kings, but he hesitates; he’s just a boy.  The kings tell Gideon to be a man and do it himself. He does and takes “the royal ornaments from the necks of their camels” (8:21).        

The Israelites ask Gideon to rule over them, but not just him—his son and grandson as well.  The Israelites are asking him to be their king—the first time they suggest monarchy to one of the judges. Gideon refuses “I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you” (8:23). This is the first time this problem is articulated.  The Israelites want a king, but the core of their identity as a people is acceptance of God’s kingship over them.  This will continue to be a tension throughout their later history.

Gideon collects an earring (from the booty they have gained) from each of his men; he makes an ephod with them and puts it in Ophrah, his town. It becomes an object of worship. All “Israel prostituted themselves to it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family” (8:27). There are 40 years of rest.

Gideon has 70 sons.  He also had a child by a concubine—Abimelech.  When Gideon dies, the people relapse into idolatry.

Origen (185-254 AD)

De Principiis (First Principles)

Chapter VII – On Incorporeal and Corporeal Beings

4 – Origen gets into the issue of whether beings that possess “life and reason, were endowed with a soul along with their bodies at the time of creation, “when ‘God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars also’ or whether their spirit was implanted in them, not at the creation of their bodies, but from without, after they had been already made.” He’s not talking about human beings here; he’s into the question of the “heavenly beings” and I believe he is including not only principalities and powers but the sun, moon and stars!

He suspects the implanting of spirit into them occurred “from without” but he want to look into what Scripture says about it. He refers to the passage that says John (the Baptist) “leapt in his mother’s womb, and exulted because the voice of the salutation of Mary had come to the ears of his mother Elisabeth.” I confess that Origen completely loses me here. Not only do I not understand exactly what he is saying, I have trouble grasping what the importance is of this subject of inquiry.

5 – He quotes a famous passage from Paul’s epistle to the Romans:

Now if [I] do what I do not want, it is no long I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at hand.  For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle that was with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.  Miserable on that I am!” (7:20-24)

How are we delivered from the “bondage of corruption” which Origen sees rooted in “the body” – our “corporeal nature”??

The sun, moon and stars also are corporeal. Solomon, in Ecclesiastes, says “all is vanity” and everything in the created world looks for renewal and redemption – newness of being – those are my words, trying to get at what I think he’s saying.

He asks “what is the freedom of the creature, or the termination of its bondage. When Christ shall have delivered up the kingdom to God. . . then also those living things, when they shall have first been made the kingdom of Christ, shall be delivered, along with the whole of that kingdom, to the rule of the Father, that when God shall be all in all, they also, since they are a part of all things, may have God in themselves, as He is in all things.”

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Judges 5 and Origen's De Principiis: Book VI (4)

Judges 5 – There follows a poetic celebration of the victory of Deborah and Barak—it includes a brief retelling of “the story.

“[W]hen you marched from the region of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens poured, the clouds indeed poured water.  The mountains quaked before the Lord, the One of Sinai, before the Lord, the God of Israel” (5:4-5).

“The peasantry prospered in Israel, they grew fat on plunder, because you arose, Deborah, arose as a mother in Israel.  When new gods were chosen, then war was in the gates . . .Tell of it, you who ride on white donkeys, you who sit on rich carpets and you who walk by the way” (5:7-10).

“Gilead stayed beyond the Jordan; and Dan, why did he abide with the ships? Asher sat still at the coast of the sea, settling down by his landings.  Zebulun is a people that scorned death; Naphtali too, on the heights of the field” (5:17-18).

“The stars fought from heaven, from their courses they fought against Sisera” (5:20). Jael is praised: “Most blessed on women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, of tent-dwelling women most blessed” (5:24).

The mother of Sisera is imagined as waiting for him to return with the spoils of war. “So perish all your enemies, O Lord! But may your friends be like the sun as it rises in its might” (5:31). The land rested for forty years.

Origen (185-254 AD)

De Principiis (First Principles)

Chapter VI – On the End or Consummation

4 – Origen tries to look into what it is that makes something “visible and temporal” while others are “invisible and eternal.” Are things “temporal” because nothing like them will be part of the “coming world” – the second creation or restored first creation? Or are they called that because just “the form of those things. . . passes away” but their “essential nature is subject to no corruption.” He thinks Paul is of the latter view and David as well in Psalm 102: “The heavens shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; and they all shall wax old as a garment, and Thou shalt change them like a vesture, and like a vestment they shall be changed.”

He believes Isaiah also believed this when he spoke of there being a  “new heaven and a new earth.” “'[T]his renewal of heaven and earth, and this transmutation of the form of the present world, and this changing of the heavens will undoubtedly be prepared for those who are walking along that way which we have pointed out above, and are tending to that goal of happiness to which, it is said, even enemies themselves are to be subjected, and in which God is said to be ‘all and in all.’”

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Judges 4 and Origen's De Principiis: Book VI (3)

Judges 4 – King Jabin, Canaanite of Hazor, is the next tyrant Israel must fight.  His military commander is Sisera.  They dominate Israel because of their chariots of iron.

Deborah (around 1125—her song is one of the most ancient pieces of writing in the Old Testament)is a prophetess at this time and also a judge.  As judge, she sat under a palm tree situated in the hill country of Ephraim, between the towns of Ramah and Bethel.  She sends for Barak, son of Abinoam, from Kedesh in the territory of Naphtali to fight against Sisera.  He is to go to Mt. Tabor with 10,000 men from the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulun.  She will draw Sisera to the place and “give him into your hand” (4:7). He insists that Deborah come with him, and she warns him that to do so will mean that the victory he will win will not have the kind of glory it would have without her presence (4:9). 

Then another man is introduced—Heber, the Kenite. The Kenites, it says, were descended from Hobab, the father-in-law of Moses.  Now Moses’ father-in-law is called Reuel in Ex odus2 and Jethro in other places, so who is Hobab?

Sisera comes out with his 900 chariots of iron, but his men panic when Barak attack and Sisera himself flees on foot (4:15) from Barak.  He goes to the tent of Jael, wife of the said Heber - there was peace between King Jabin and the clan of Heber. Jael greets Sisera and invites him into her tent.  She gives him something to drink and covers him with a blanket.  He sleeps, but instead of watching for him at the opening of the tent, she runs a tent-peg through his head (4:21).

When Barak arrives, Jael shows him her work, and the people attribute the victory over Sisera to God.

 

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Origen (185-254 AD)

De Principiis (First Principles)

Chapter VI – On the End or Consummation

3 – Some of the “beings who fell away from that one beginning” fell to such depths of depravity that they are “deemed undeserving” of the instruction human beings are assisted with. They just do not look back to the time of perfection from which they started. These beings are called “the devil and his angels, and the other orders of evil, which the apostle classed among the opposing powers.”

Origen seems to leave undetermined whether any of these “orders” acting under the devil and obeying his commands “will in a future world be converted to righteousness because of their possessing the faculty of freedom of will, or whether persistent and inveterate wickedness may be changed by the power of habit into nature.” He seems drawn to the POSSIBILITY of a universal salvation scenario, but for the present seems to say that the present variety of moral conditions will place all these “beings” into a setting a lot like Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio.

“But in the meantime, both in those temporal worlds which are seen, as well as in those eternal worlds which are invisible, all those beings are arranged, according to a regular plan, in the order and degree of their merits; so that some of them in the first, others in the second, some even in the last times, after having undergone heavier and severer punishments, endured for a lengthened period, and for many ages, so to speak, improved by this stern method of training, and restored at first by the instruction of the angels, and subsequently by the power of a higher grade, and thus advancing through each stage to a better condition, reach even to that which is invisible and eternal.”

He lets his imagination go with the idea that there will be a “new heaven and a new earth.”

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Judges 3 and Origen's De Principiis: Book VI (1-2)

Judges 3 – The nations the Lord leaves to test his people are the following: the five lords of the Philistines, the Canaanites, Sidonians,  the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon and the Jebusites in Jerusalem. Also the Hittites, Amorites and Perizzites.  They intermarried and worshiped the gods they worshipped—the Baals and the Asherahs.

According to the Eerdman’s guide, Canaan was Ham, son of Noah. They were the sedentary inhabitants of Palestine and southern Syria.  Hebrew is a dialect of the Canaanite language (Is 19:18), and Ugarit is related.  The Hittites were an Indo-European speaking people in Asia Minor.  They controlled much of northern Syria in the 14^th and 15^th c. BC.  Their empire was destroyed by northern invaders about 1200 BC.  After the destruction of their empire, some of them migrated to northern Syria where they dominated Carchemish or Cilicia.  They were the ones who lived during the monarchical period. Amorites were inhabitants of the area east of the Dead Sea.  Modern Amman is on the site of their chief city, Rabbah.  These lands were partly occupied by the tribes of Reuben and Gad.  The Ammonites were incorporated into the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian Empires.  They were independent and a threat to the Israelites until Maccabean times when the capital was known as Philadelphia (see 1 Macc 5:6)

The first judge named here is Othniel (Eerdman’s suggests a time around 1200 for him), son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother (Caleb’s nephew). “The spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel” (3:10).  He helped defeat King Cushan-rishathaim of Aram and gave the land peace for 40 years.

Then there was Ehud (a Benjaminite and left-handed, around 1170) who helped Israel gain independence from King Eglon of Moab after 18 years of servitude. Eglon was very fat, and Ehud killed him and then led the Israelites into battle against the Moabites, giving them “rest” for 80 years.

Then there was Shamgar (1150). He killed 600 Philistine with an ox-goad (3:31).

Origen (185-254 AD)

De Principiis (First Principles)

Chapter VI – On the End or Consummation

1 – Origen defines the “end or consummation . . . an indication of the perfection and completion of things.” He reminds us that if you are not used to plumbing into difficult and challenging ideas, they may appear to be “vain and superfluous” or “if his mind be full of preconceptions and prejudices . . . he may judge these [ideas] to be heretical and opposed to the faith of the Church, yielding in so doing not so much to the convictions of reason as to the dogmatism of prejudice.” Amazing to think that “thinkers” back in the 2^nd century ran into some of the same opposition when they departed from the norm in examining “spiritual” matters. He admits that we are not speaking of certainties here; we are just exploring deep notions.

As it was understood back then, the “end of the world, then, and the final consummation, will take place when every one shall be subjected to punishment for his sins; a time which God alone knows, when He will bestow on each one what he deserves. We think, indeed, that the goodness of God, through His Christ, may recall all His creatures to one end, even His enemies being conquered and subdued. Paul says, “’Christ must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet.’” What does it mean though to be “put under His feet”? “I am of [the] opinion that it is this very subjection by which we also wish to be subject to Him, by which the apostles also were subject, and all the saints who have been followers of Christ. For the name ‘subjection,’ by which we are subject to Christ, indicates that the salvation which proceeds from Him belongs to His subjects, agreeably to the declaration of David, ‘Shall not my soul be subject unto God? From Him cometh my salvation.’”

2 – “Seeing, then, that such is the end, when all enemies will be subdued to Christ, when death—the last enemy—shall be destroyed, and when the kingdom what be delivered up by Christ (to whom all things are subject) to God the Father, let us, I say, from such an end as this, contemplate the beginnings of things. For the end is always like the beginning: and, therefore, as there is one end to all things, so ought we to understand that there was one beginning; and as there is one end to many things, so there spring from one beginning many differences and varieties, which again, through the goodness of God, and by subjection to Christ, and through the unity of the Holy Spirit, are recalled to one end, which is like unto the beginning.”

Only in the Trinity “does goodness exist in virtue of essential being.” Others “possess it as an accidental and perishable quality, and only then enjoy blessedness, when they participate in holiness and wisdom, and in divinity itself.” But if through laziness or thoughtlessness we turn away from this goodness, then we see “the just judgment of the providence of God, that it should happen to every one according to the diversity of his conduct.”

“Certain of those, . . . who remained in that beginning which we have described as resembling the end which is to come, obtained, in the ordering and arrangement of the world, the rank of angels; others that of influences, others of principalities, others of powers, that they may exercise power over those who need to have power upon their head Others, again, received the rank of thrones, having the office of judging or ruling those who require this; others dominion, doubtless, over slaves; all of which are conferred by Divine Providence in just and impartial judgment according to their merits, and to the progress which they had made in the participation and imitation of God.”

Those who fell from their “primal state of blessedness have not been removed irrecoverably, but have been placed under the rule of those holy and blessed orders which we have described”; they may recover themselves “and be restored to their condition of happiness.”

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Judges 2 and Origen's De Principiis: Book V (4-5)

Judges 2 – The angel of the Lord reminds the people to make covenants with the inhabitants of the land, but to “tear down their altars” (2:2).  But they do not obey.  For this reason it says, they will be forced to share the land.

At age 110, Joshua dies and is buried in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mt. Gaash.  Another generation comes along “who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and worshiped the Baals; and they abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; they followed other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were all around them, and bowed down to them; and they provoked the Lord to anger” (2:10-12).

The Lord raises up Judges from among the people to help them, but they do not listen to them with any consistency.  During the time of the particular judge, things would be better; but when he died, things would degenerate again.  “So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel; and he said, ‘Because this people have transgressed my covenant that I commanded their ancestors, and have not obeyed my voice, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died” (2:20-21).

Origen (185-254 AD)

De Principiis (First Principles)

Chapter V

4 – Origen feels it is important to reason out the conclusions that he draws not just to rely on “inference alone” or getting his listeners to agree with him on assertions that are merely conjecture. He seems to be examining whether or not the structures of political power that men have always had around them are somehow there “by divine order” or if they actually came into being because of “reasons” that can be tracked.

He starts by examining the Scripture narrative – the story of the prince of Trye from the Book of Ezekiel. Here are my notes on this chapter of Ezekiel where he is prophesying over the kingdoms and powers that surround God’s people:

The prophecy against the kingdom of Tyre – great trading city and center of the region. Tyre is condemned for being proud enough to consider itself “a god.”  But foreigners will be brought against them.

Tyre was created perfect – full of natural riches and guarded by God’s ensigns. But Tyre’s “busy trading has filled you with violence and sin” (28:16). The dishonesty of their trade, however, and the pride they showed has brought them to ashes. They have become “an object of terror – gone forever” (28:19).

        

Sidon too (less important but involved in the political intrigue Ezekiel is condemning here) is addressed God will send the plague to demonstrate His anger. Men will “learn that I am the Lord Yahweh” by God’s bringing down the nations hostile to Judah around it. Similarly, God will replant his people “on the soil . . .I gave to my servant Jacob [and] they shall live there in confidence, build houses, plant vineyards” (28:26).

What Origen calls the “malignant powers” of the world “were not formed or created so by nature, but fell from a better to a worse position” and the “blessed” powers also were not created so but just never fell into negligence regarding their moral state.

5 – In this section, Origen examines a passage from Isaiah (14:12-14), which was understood to be the story of Satan or Lucifer’s origins. Lucifer (helel) is called the “brightness of morning” or the “day star”:

"How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon; I will ascend to the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High’" (Isaiah 14:12-14, NIV).

”[A]t one time he was light”; “he had been at one time in heaven, and had had a place among the saints, and had enjoyed a share in that light in which all the saints participate, by which they are made angels of light, and by which the apostles are termed by the Lord the light of the world. In this manner, then did that being once exist as light before he went astray, and fell to this place, and had his glory turned into dust, which is peculiarly the mark of the wicked, as the prophet also says; whence, too, he was called the prince of this world, i.e., of an earthly habitation: for he exercised power over those who were obedient to his wickedness.”

Job refers to this same power by the name “dragon.” He concludes that “it is evident from all this that no one is pure either by essence or nature, and that no one was by nature polluted. And the consequence of this is, that it lies within ourselves and in our own actions to possess either happiness or holiness; or by sloth and negligence to fall from happiness into wickedness and ruin, to such a degree that, through too great proficiency, so to speak, in wickedness . . . he may descend even to that state in which he will be changed into what is called an “opposing power.”

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Judges (Intro) through 1 and Origen's De Principiis: Book V (2-3)

Introduction to Judges: We learn in Judges that the ban upon the enemies of the Israelites during their wars of conquest were not so thorough as Joshua may have led us to believe.  It is the theme of Judges to show how a remnant of the native peoples remained and how this remnant persisted as a temptation for the Jews.  The point of these conquest stories seems to be to show that God’s people are a people set apart.  Their ways and the ways of the world around them are not to be the same, nor are they to accommodate themselves to other ways.

The stories that make up judges are not all in chronological order.  They seem to come from widely different sources and times.  The last several chapters even seems to predate some of the earlier stories—involving as they do characters within two generations of the wilderness generation.

The Eerdman’s Handbook says the date of the conquest is at around 1240.  The period covered here is about 200 years, but some of the “periods of rest” recounted here might have been times running concurrently in different parts of the region

Judges 1 - In chapter 1, the people of the tribe of Judah (and Simeon, helping out) are the first to go to war with the Canaanites and Perizzites.  They defeat them and catch Adoni-bezek, cutting off his thumbs and big toes, presumably in retaliation for having done this to other kings (70 of them according to him) in the past (1:6-7). 

Then they attack and take the city of Jerusalem, “killing all its people and setting the city on fire” (1:8). Later, in verse 21, it says the Benjaminites did not succeed in driving out the Jebusites from Jerusalem but lived among them.

        

They go on to attack the Canaanite towns in the hill country, the Negeb and the lowlands. They take Hebron and go on to Debir (Kiriath-sepher). Caleb promises the victor there his daughter Achsah. Among the other cities taken are Zephath, Hormah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Ekron with territories around them.  The only people they had trouble defeating were the inhabitants of the plain because of the “chariots of iron” they had (1:19).

Tribes of Joseph (Benjaminites?) also take Bethel.  Men of Manasseh do not succeed in driving out the inhabitants of Beth-shean or Taanach, or Dor or Ibleam or Megiddo.  The Canaanites remained there with them. And Ephraim settled among the Canaanites of Gezer; as did Zebulun at Kitron and Nahalol.  Asher shared the towns of Acco, Sidon, Ahlab, Achzib, Helbah, Aphik and Rehob. Naphtali lived among Canaanites at Beth-shemesh and Beth-anath.

The Amorites pushed the Danites out of the lands they were given, back into the hill country of the north.  Amorites lived among the tribes of Joseph in Harheres, Aijalon, and Shaalbim, but “when the descendants of Joseph became stronger, they forced the Amorites to work as slaves” (1:35).

Origen (185-254 AD)

De Principiis (First Principles)

Chapter V

2 – “[E]very being which is endowed with reason, and transgresses its statutes and limitations, is undoubtedly involved in sin by swerving from rectitude and justice. Every rational creature, therefore, is capable of earning praise and censure: of praise, if, in conformity to that reason which he possesses, he advances to better things; of censure, if he fall away from the plan and course of rectitude, for which reason he is justly liable to pains and penalties.”

This same reasoning applied to those we call the devil and his companions or angels. Who are these characters named in Scripture? Origen goes into what he thinks is referred to by these words – Satan, principalities and powers - and also those beings referred to as “heavenly beings.”

And what exactly is meant when humans are designated as “rational” and then divided into different “orders”: the Lords’ people, the nations?

3 – He means to inquire into whether these various beings were created exactly as they appear or whether they were created with the ability to be “capable of either condition.”  Were the holy angels always holy?

And were the “principalities” and “powers” and “thrones” created to “hold sway over others” or if they were given their powers “on account of merit.”

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Joshua 22-24 and Origen's De Principiis: Books IV and V-1

Joshua 22 – Joshua releases the Gadites, Reubenites and half-tribe of Manasseh to go to their lands east of the Jordan, instructing them “to observe the commandment and instruction that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to keep his commandments, and to hold fast to him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul” (22:5).

When they get there, though, there is a serious misunderstanding.  They construct an altar by the Jordan, “an altar of great size” (22:10). When the other Israelite tribes learn of it, they “gathered at Shiloh, to make war against them” (22:12).

The Ephraimites were in possession of the ark and the sanctuary and opposed proliferation of altars, but each tribe had a sanctuary according to The Jerusalem Bible. They send out Phineas, Eleazar’s son, to talk to them along with ten chiefs.  When they get there they confront them by saying, “What is this treachery that you have committed against the God of Israel in turning away today from following the Lord, by building yourselves an altar today in rebellion against the Lord” (22:16). They compare the offense with the trouble they had at Peor [see Numbers 25] when a plague was attributed to Israelites having sexual relations with the women of Moab.  They tell them rather to come across the Jordan and take lands there if they are tempted to apostasy. 

But the eastern tribes had no intention of rebelling. They do not intend to “offer burnt offerings or grain offerings or offerings of well-being on it” (22:23). What they want is a physical reminder that will establish their connection to the tribes west of the Jordan. “We did it from fear that in time to come our children might say to our children, ‘What have you to do with the Lord, the God of Israel? For the Lord has made the Jordan a boundary between us and you, you Reubenites and Gadites; you have no portion in the Lord,’ So your children might make our children cease to worship the Lord.  Therefore we said, ‘Let us now build an altar, no for burnt offering, nor for sacrifice, but to be a witness between us and you, and between the generations after us, that we do perform the service of the Lord in his presence with our burnt offerings and sacrifices and offerings of well-being; so that your children may never say to our children in time to come, ‘You have no portion in the Lord”’  (22:24-28.) This is satisfactory to Phineas and the Israelites.

Joshua 23 – A long time later, when Joshua is old, he summons everyone to him and admonishes them to be steadfast as Moses did before his death.  He tells them to love the Lord and avoid intermarriage with the women of the region lest they “be a snare and a trap for you,” (23:13).  The blessing has been experienced, but the curse is always there for them to consider.  If they transgress the covenant “then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and you shall perish quickly from the good land that he has given to you” (23:16).

Joshua 24 – Joshua gathers the tribes at Shechem and goes over with them the whole narrative from Terah and his sons, Abraham (who built an altar at Shechem) and Nahor to the present.  And again he asks them to renew the covenant by choosing “this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (24:15).  The people choose likewise, not once but three times (24:16-18; 24:21 and 24:24). 

Joshua wrote their promise “in the book of the law of God; and he took a large stone, and set it up there under the oak in the sanctuary of the Lord. [And he said] ‘See, this stone shall be a witness against us; for it has heard all the words of the Lord that he spoke to us; therefore it shall be a witness against you, if you deal falsely with your God’” (24:27). 

Joshua was 110 when he died and he was buried in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mt Gaash. Joseph’s bones were buried at Shechem in the plot Jacob had bought from the children of Hamor [see Genesis 33:18].  And Eleazar dies too and is buried at Gibeah (his son Phineas’ town).

Origen (185-254 AD)

De Principiis (First Principles)

Chapter IV – On Defection or Falling Away

1 – Origen compares how some “fall away” from the faith with people like doctors or mathematicians who spend so much of their lives learning their crafts, their “art.” A person like this is not going to lose everything all at once. He still may “repair the losses” his negligence will bring and recover the knowledge.

2 – If we wish to examine the “divine benefits bestowed upon us by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” we must start with considering three different natures we are dealing with.

Chapter V – On Rational Natures

1 – There are in Origen’s intellectual landscape different “species and orders” of “rational natures.” We find, he says, in the Holy Scriptures different “orders and offices, not only of holy beings, but also of those of an opposite description” and he intends to examine references to such “beings” in this section as best he can.

“There are certain holy angels of God whom Paul terms ‘ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation.’ In the writings also of St. Paul himself we find him designating them, from some unknown source, as thrones, and dominions, and principalities, and powers; and after this enumeration, as if knowing that there were still other rational offices and orders besides those which he had named, he says of the Savior: ‘Who is above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.’

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Joshua 19-21 and Origen's De Principiis: Book Three 7-8

Joshua 19 – Then the lots of Simeon (within the inheritance of Judah—13 towns there including Beersheba, Hormah and Ziglag, near the Negev); Zebulun (the plain of Jezreel, west of Mt. Tabor); Issachar (the town of Jezreel up to Mt. Tabor and including the towns of Shunem and Endor); Asher (22 towns from Megiddo up the coast of the Mediterranean to north of Tyre); Naphtali (Arabah north of Mt. Tabor up to just north of the river that flows north of Tyre) and Dan—they get land west of Benjamin’s land but when they lose it, they go north and take land at the source of the Jordan River.

Joshua 20 – The cities of refuge are appointed.  In these cities, men who kill without intent or by mistake can take refuge, explain their case to the elders there and remain until “there is a trial before the congregation, [and] until the death of the one who is high priest at the time: then the slayer may return home, to the town in which the deed was done” (20:6). The cities of refuge are Kedesh (Naphtali); Shechem (Ephraim); Hebron (Judah); Bezer (Reuben); Ramoth (Gad); and Golan (Manasseh).

Joshua 21 – The Levitical towns and pasturelands are also set aside: the Kohathites (descended from Aaron) get 13 towns from the tribes of Judah, Simeon [Hebron—excepting the fields given to Caleb, Libnah, Jattir, Eshtemoa, Holon, Debir, Ain, Juttah, and Beth-shemesh], and Benjamin [Gibeon, Geba, Anathoth, and Almon]and ten towns from the tribes of Ephraim [Shechem, Gezer, Kibzaim, and Beth-horon], Dan [Elteke, Gibbethon, Aijalon, and Gath-rimmon].and the half-tribe of Manasseh [Taanach, and Gath-rimmon]; the Gershonites got 13 towns from the tribes of Issachar [Kishion, Daberath, Jarmuth, and En-gannim], Asher [Mishal, Abdon, Helkath, and Rehob], Naphtali [Kedesh, Hammoth-dor, and Kartan]and the half-tribe of Manasseh in Bashan [Golan, and Beeshterah]; and the Merarites get 12 towns from the tribes of Reuben [Bezer, Jahzah, Kedemoth, and Mephaath], Gad [Ramoth, Mahanaim, Heshbon, and Jazer] and Zebulun [Jokneam, Kartah, Dimnah, and Nahalal].

So they had peace. “Not one of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass” (21:45).

Origen (185-254 AD)

De Principiis (First Principles)

Chapter III – On the Holy Spirit

7 – But the words of Genesis, where it says “He breathed into [Adam’s] face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.’ . . . if this be understood as applying generally to all men, then all men have a share in God.”

But if we understand that reference as a reference to the Holy Spirit, because “Adam also is found to have prophesied of some things,” and prophesy is understood by Origen as emanating from the Holy Spirit, then “it may be taken [NOT] as of general application, but as confined to those who are saints.”

“In the Psalms also it is written: ‘Thou wilt renew the face of the earth;’ “ and this refers in Origen’s view to the Holy Spirit “because He will take up His dwelling, not in all men, nor in those who are flesh, but in those whose land has been renewed.”

In the New Testament, when Christ comes to the apostles after His resurrection, “when old things had . . . passed away, and all things had become new, . . . [He says] ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ This is doubtless what the Lord . . . meant to convey in the Gospel, when He said that new wine cannot be put into old bottles, but commanded that the bottles should be made new, i.e., that men should walk in newness of life, that they might receive the new wine, i.e., the newness of grace of the Holy Spirit.

And it is for the above line of reasoning that Origen thinks the words of the Gospel that set sins against the Holy Spirit in a separate category seem understandable: “[H]e who has committed a sin against the Son of Man is deserving of forgiveness; because if he who is a participator of the Word or reason of God cease to live agreeably to reason, he seems to have fallen into a state of ignorance or folly, and therefore to deserve forgiveness; whereas he who has been deemed worthy to have a portion of the Holy Spirit, and who has relapsed, is, by this very act and work, said to be guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.”

Interesting “take” on the Trinity here – understood philosophically rather than narratively:

“There is . . . a special working of God the Father, besides that by which He bestowed upon all things the gift of natural life. There is also a special ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ to those upon whom he confers by nature the gift of reason, by means of which they are enabled to be rightly what they are. There is also another grace of the Holy Spirit, which is bestowed upon the deserving, through the ministry of Christ and the working of the Father, in proportion to the merits of those who are rendered capable of receiving it. This is most clearly pointed out by the Apostle Paul, when demonstrating that the power of the Trinity is one and the same, in the words, ‘There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; there are diversities of administrations, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operation, but it is the same God who worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.’”

8 – So Origen sees the Trinity as the source of everything that brings “salvation” to mankind: “God the Father bestows upon all, existence; and participation in Christ, in respect of His being the word of reason, renders them rational beings. From which it follows that they are deserving either of praise or blame, because capable of virtue and vice. On this account, therefore, is the grace of the Holy Ghost present, that those beings which are not holy in their essence may be rendered holy by participating in it.”

And the progress one makes in the Spirit, though occasionally we slip back, can be restored through repentance.