Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Numbers 1-5 and Irenaeus Selections: Scripture and Tradition

Introduction to Numbers:

The common Hebrew name for this book is “bemidbar” (in the wilderness). It seems to collect everything relevant relating to the wilderness travel of the Jews. Schocken Bible editors see it as a narrative about “the death of the old and the birth of the new.” It starts with life in the camp, goes on to stories of rebellion and challenge, both from within and later from without.  It ends with preparations to enter the Holy Land.  The book is bracketed by two censuses—the first when they start, the second as they prepare to enter Canaan—hence the name “Numbers” (647-648).

        

The first ten chapters cover the camp life of the Israelites.  It is centered on the ark and primarily a military ordering, based on a head count of men over twenty. An Egyptian mustering would have been around the king’s throne Schocken says (653). Much discussion has gone on with respect to the numbers of men given—600,000.  This would put the entire population in the millions.  It may also have represented a number system we are not aware of, a purposeful exaggeration.  We don’t know.

Numbers 1 - Today’s reading concerns Moses’ preparations for his departure from the encampment at Sinai where the Israelites stayed for the first two years after their deliverance.  It shows how the many tribes and households of the Israelites were organized.  The main principal behind the system of organization was military.  Each of the twelve tribes was counted according to the number of males. Leaders are named for each tribe: Reuben – 46,500; Simeon – 59,300; Gad – 45,650; Judah – 74,600; Issachar – 54,400; Zebulun – 57,400; Joseph (Ephraim) – 40,500 and (Manasseh) 32,200; Benjamin – 35,400; Dan – 62,700; Asher – 41,500; Naphtali – 53,400.

Levites are not counted.  They attend to the Tent of Dwelling. Omitting the Levites, the family from which Moses and Aaron came and the least numerous of the tribes, there were 603,550 men.

Numbers 2 - The camp is ordered physically around the meeting tent.  The companies of Judah, Issachar and Zebulun are arrayed to the east of the tent (the place of pride); the companies of Reuben, Simeon, and Gad are situated to the south; the companies of Ephraim, Manasseh and Benjamin are on the west and the companies of Dan, Asher and Naphtali are on the north.  Looking at a map of how the various tribes of the Israelites were later arrayed in the Promised Land, one sees a very rough correspondence to this desert arrangement. 

Their organization includes an “order of march” when they break camp beginning with the companies in the east, then south, then west and finally north.  This order of march is set in motion with prescribed trumpet alarms and is fully described in chapter 10.

Numbers 3  – The sons of Aaron are set aside—but the sons Nadab and Abihu were killed for offering “profane (outside) fire” (3:4).

Eleazar and Ithamar inherit their responsibilities.  The Levites under them care for the tent of the Dwelling, but there is an order of service within among the clans of the Levites. 

The Gershonites are housed behind the Dwelling to the west and have responsibility for the Dwelling tent, its covering and the curtains and hangings. 

The Kohathite clans camp to the south of the Dwelling and have charge of the ark, the table the lampstand, the altars, utensils and the veil. 

The Clans of Merari, camped to the north of the Dwelling take care of the boards of the Dwelling, its bars, columns, pedestals and fittings; and to the east of the Dwelling, east of it (towards the sunrise) lived the families of Moses and Aaron and they were priest of the sanctuary.  One can see that nothing in the ordering and placement of the clans and tribes was left to chance.  Everything was ordered around the holy sanctuary of the Lord’s presence and religious and military order governed it entirely.

It is interesting that the Levites were considered to take the place of the first-born among all the other tribes.  Because they were saved from death during the Passover, they were considered to be the Lord’s and dedicated to him.  But the establishment of the priesthood was thought to be a redemption of these first born who were properly thought to belong to the Lord.   As the number of Levites was less than the total number of first-born sons among the Israelites to be redeemed, the ransom for the surplus of first-borns was a payment of five shekels silver to be given to Aaron and his sons.

Numbers 4 – Kohathites aged thirty to fifty have charge of the most sacred objects.  Aaron and his sons have charge of taking down the veil and covering the ark with it.  Over the veil they shall put a cover of tahash skin (tanned leather in Schocken) and an all violet cloth. (blue-violet in Schocken, made from a mollusk)  A violet cloth shall be spread of the table of the presence, a scarlet cloth and tahash skin.  Violet cloths shall also be spread over plates and cups, etc., over the lampstand and containers of oil, over the cleaned altar.  Only after all the sacred objects have been covered as prescribed shall the Kohathites enter to carry them off on a litter.  They cannot touch any of them or they will die.

The Gershonites have other tasks and things to carry.  So also the Merarites—either the boards or the sheets, etc.

Numbers 5 – The “unclean” are to be expelled from the camp.  If people wrong others, it is God they have broken faith with.  They must restore ill-gotten goods and pay a penalty of 1/5^th their value back as well or to the priest if there is no next of kin.

        

If a man becomes suspicious of his wife’s faithfulness, he can bring her to a priest with an offering of cereal.  The priest performs a ceremony intended to uncover any guilt in her conscience—she is to hold the cereal offering in her hands while the priest holds bitter water that brings a curse and he says to her, if she has been unfaithful, “May this water,. . .that brings a curse, enter your body to make your belly swell and your thighs waste away!” (5:22).  Then he puts the imprecations into writing, washes them off into the bitter water and has her drink it.  If she is guilty she will suffer the swelling and become infertile.

Irenaeus of Lyons (c.180 AD)

Selections from the Work Against Heresies

Book III – The Faith in Scripture and Tradition

Preface – Irenaeus says he is called to bring the teachings of the Gnostics into the open and to show how they are linked to Simon, whom he calls “the father of all heretics.” He believes he can refute all of them.

He will use arguments from Scripture, and he hopes he will demonstrate to others how these heresies can be dealt with. We “will be able to resist them faithfully and boldly on behalf of the one true and life-giving faith, which the Church has received from the apostles and imparts to her children. For the Lord of all gave to his apostles the power of the gospel, and by them we also have learned the truth, that is, the teaching of the Son of God—as the Lord said to them, ‘He who hears you hears me, and he who despises you despises me, and him who sent me.’”

The Traditions of the Gospels – “[W]e earned the plan of our salvation from no others than from those through whom the gospel came to us. They first preached It abroad, and then later by the will of God handed it down to us in Writings, to be the foundation and pillar of our faith.”

Some of the Gnostics try to convince us “that they preached before they has come to perfect knowledge” and that THEY “are the correctors of the apostles.”

We believe that after the Lord has risen from the dead, “they were clothed with the power from on high when the Holy Spirit cam upon them, [and] they were filled with all things and had perfect knowledge.”

Matthew went to the Hebrews and wrote a gospel in their tongue, while “Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel at Rome and founding the Church.” Mark handed down what Peter had preached and then Luke, a follower of Paul, recorded everything in his gospel. “Finally John, the disciple of the Lord, who had also lain on his breast, published [his] Gospel while he was residing at Ephesus in Asia.”

“All of these handed down to us that there is one God, maker of heaven and earth, proclaimed by the Law and the Prophets, and one Christ the Son of God.” People who do not accept this gospel are “resisting and refusing his own salvation.”

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Leviticus 26-27 and Irenaeus Selections: Gnostic Writers

Leviticus 26 – There can be no idols or sacred pillars and the Sabbath must be honored.

Then comes the setting forth of blessings and curses—this was common in contracts in the ancient Near East according to Schocken (632]. The reward for obedience will be God’s care—rain, harvests, food in abundance, security in the land, peace (26:5-6).

“I will set my Dwelling among you, and will not disdain you. Ever present in your midst, I will be your God, and you will be my people; for it is I, the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of the Egyptians and freed you from their slavery, breaking the yoke they had laid upon you and letting you walk erect” (26:11-13).

        

But if you reject me, “then I, in turn, will give you your deserts” (26: 16)—no crops, devastation, war, pestilence.  Five stages of disobedience and punishment are described, the last of which will be that the Lord will scatter them among the nations (26:33).  

But then, “when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they make amends for their guilt, I will remember my covenant with Jacob, my covenant with Isaac, and my covenant with Abraham; and of the land, too, I will be mindful.  But the land must first be rid of them, that in its desolation it may make up its lost Sabbaths, and that they, too, may make good the debt of their guilt for having spurned my precepts and abhorred my statutes.  Yet even so, even while they are in their enemies’ land, I will not reject or spurn them, lest, by wiping them out, I make void my covenant with them; for I, the Lord, am their God” (26:41-45).

[The Book of Leviticus ended here once.  The next chapter is an appendix, meant to go over how the sanctuary was to be supported monetarily]

Leviticus 27 – Covers the price of “redeeming” people or offerings of other kinds (houses, fields, made or  “dedicated” (given in a “vow of offering”) to the Lord.  These are offerings other than “first-born,” which are necessarily dedicated to the Lord. It refers to human beings that are “doomed” (27:28).  They cannot be redeemed.

Irenaeus of Lyons (c.180 AD)

Valentinus, Secundus, Cerdon and Marcion

11 – Irenaeus notes that there are a number of different gnostic thinkers – “two or three of them anyway” and they don’t necessarily agree on the ideas they have. Valentinus seems to be his greatest concern. He goes on to outline the key concepts of Valentinus’ approach. There are many names associated with the different parts of the system: the “unnamable Dyad” [Ineffable and Silence], “a second Dyad” [Father and Truth]; a “Tetrad” from which come “Logos and Zoe [Wisdom], Anthropos [Man] and Ecclesia [Church].” There are powers that come from these. This is just to give you all a flavor of what he is trying to explain. He obviously does understand their entire system of thinking. I think the key things are the following: Gnostics like Valentinus thought that the God of the Old Testament was only what he called a “Demiurge.”

The other gnostic thinkers see things somewhat differently but use the same big concepts – Ogdoad, Tetrad, Aeons, Proarche, Monad – Look them up - they are interesting but way beyond what I can analyze here. He makes fun of the complexity of their thinking. They all believed that only those who immersed themselves in the mystical and deeply complex “truths” they saw could ever “come to salvation.” The body “cannot be saved.”

The gnostics denigrated the Jewish scriptures. Marcion “dared publicly to mutilate the Scriptures, and more than any others to malign God shamelessly” but Irenaeus seeks in his treatises to refute them, “convicting him from his own writings, and from the words of the Lord and the apostles, which he preserves and uses, I will overthrow him, with the help of the Lord.”

He says that “all those who corrupt the truth and injure the teaching of the Church are the disciples and successors of Simon Magus the Samaritan. Although, in order to deceive others, they do not confess the name of their teacher, yet they teach his views. Setting up the name of Christ Jesus as a kind of decoy, but in one way or another introducing the impiety of Simon, they bring many to destruction, spreading their evil teachings under a good name . . .”

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Leviticus 22-23 and Irenaeus Book I [1 - 3]

Leviticus 22 – Priests must respect the offerings made by the people by remaining clean, sacred.  Laymen may not eat of the sacred offerings.  Such offerings—holocausts, votive offering or free-will offerings—must be unblemished males, at least eight days old.

Leviticus 23 – The holy days that must be observed are listed in this chapter:

Sabbath – “You may work for six days, but the seventh must be a day of complete rest, a day for the sacred assembly on which you do no work at all. Wherever you live, this is a Sabbath for YHWH” (23:3).

Passover – It “begins at sundown on the fourteenth day of the first month” (23:5).  Seven, the number of perfection par excellence, days of unleavened bread.  On the first day a sacred assembly; oblations offered each day; another assembly on the seventh day.  Bring a sheaf of the first fruits to the priest who will wave it before the Lord.  At the same time, you shall offer an unblemished yearling lamb as holocaust, a cereal offering and libation (23:5-8).

        

First Sheaf – The first sheaf of your harvest should be offered to the priest “and he is to present it to YHWH with the gesture of offering, so that you may be acceptable” (23:11). There is more detail to the kinds of holocaust offerings that are to be made, but I am leaving out a lot of this detail.

Pentecost (The Feast of Weeks) – seven full weeks after the sheaf is offered (above), bring a new cereal offering (two loaves of bread of the new harvest), a holocaust of seven yearling lambs, one young bull and two rams.  One male goat as sin-offering and two yearling lambs as peace offering (23:15-22).

        

New Year’s Day– The first day of seventh month—Sabbath rest and sacred assembly, offer oblation (23:24-25).

        

Day of Atonement – The tenth day of seventh month.  There is to be a sacred assembly. “You must fast, and you must offer a burnt offering to YHWH. You are not to do any work that day, for it is the Day of Atonement, on which the rite of atonement will be performed over you before YHWH you God” (23:27-28). If you fail to fast you “shall be outlawed from his people” (23:29).   

Feast of Booths or Tabernacles – The fifteenth day of the seventh month, and it shall last seven days (23:34). There shall be a sacred assembly on first day, with no work; gather foliage of trees, palms and myrtle boughs.  Make merry for a week and dwell in booths to remind everyone of the exodus.  Offer oblations each of seven days and on eighth another assembly and offer oblation and do no work (23:35-36).

Concluding Note on Justin Martyr: Justin Martyr wrote a second Apology and a very long Dialogue with Trypho, a Jewish man he met. The dialogue is a very interesting piece but much too long and repetitive to track on this blog. I identify very much with the mind-set of Justin Martyr. His philosophical training and approach to the gospel makes him very easy for a modern reader to identify with. The opening of his Dialogue with Trypho has such a modern feel  – discussing the deep questions about the meaning of human life and how to approach such existential matters. I can’t do ALL the writings of any of these 1^st and 2^nd century Christian writers, though. What is clear is that it was the Old Testament “prophecies” and the array of “types” and “figures” that won Justin Martyr over to Christ.

Irenaeus of Lyons (c.180 AD)

Introduction: Irenaeus was raised in a Christian family in Asia Minor – probably in Smyrna on the western coast. He is said to have studied under Polycarp. He moved before 177 AD to Lugdunum in Gaul (now Lyons in France). In 177, philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius, authorized or approved a severe local persecution of Christian in that region, but at the time it happened Irenaeus was en route to Rome with a letter concerning Montanism. Upon his return to Gaul, he was made Bishop of the city.

Irenaeus’ writings are almost all on the different “heresies” that were plaguing the church during this time. He wrote against Gnosticism and Marcionism. We don’t really know how he died. Jerome, and some others after him, thought he had been martyred, but we really don’t know.

Irenaeus’ writings are very lengthy, but I found a compilation of his writings on different heresies that I thought would introduce people to him, without making it all too long. The numbering of the sections corresponds to the parts of his 5 major treatises on heresies that the snippets were taken from.

Selections from the Work Against Heresies

Book I: The Heretics

Preface

1 – He expresses his concern that people “are introducing among us false stories and vain genealogies, which serve rather to controversies . . . than to God’s work of building up in the faith.” Their rhetoric confuses the inexperienced, and they lead people “away by the pretense of knowledge from Him who constituted and ordered the universe, as if they had something higher and greater to show them than the God who made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them.”

It is difficult for “simple hearers” to distinguish the truth amidst all their lies.

2 – Their errors are “craftily decked out in an attractive dress, and made to seem truer than the truth itself to the inexperienced because of the outer appearance.” Like a piece of glass that is put forward to resemble a emerald, what they present needs to be tested.

“So then, lest some should be made prey of through my fault, like sheep by wolves, not recognizing them because of their outwardly wearing sheep’s clothing—whom the Lord warned us to guard against [Matt.7:15]—and because they talk like us, through thinking very differently” Irenaeus thought it important to familiarize himself with their thinking so he could show us their sinister ideas.

So “as well as I can, then, I will briefly and clearly describe the position of the present false teachers, I mean the followers of Ptolemaeus, who is an offshoot of the school of Valentinus.” As well as I can, I will try to “how foreign to the truth  are the things they say.”

3 – He says he is not an expert in rhetorical skills, but he affirms that “what I write to you out of love, plainly and truly and simply, you will surely receive in love” and will be better able to understand. He is writing someone he is sure will be able to grasp the importance of what he is saying and that he will pass it along to others, “according to the grace which the Lord has given you, so that men may no longer be ensnared by” these ideas.