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 24-25 and Irenaeus Selections

Leviticus 24 –A perpetual flame of olive oil shall burn regularly in the lamp-stand of the sanctuary.  “It shall burn there before YHWH from evening to morning continually. This is a perpetual law for your descendants: Aaron is to see to the lamps on the pure lamp-stand before YHWH, continually” (24:3-4).

Showbread of fine flour shall be baked into twelve cakes and put in two piles on the gold table that stands before YHWH (24:6). On each row, there must be frankincense. They are to be set out fresh each Sabbath, and they shall be eaten by Aaron and his sons in a holy place (24:9).

        

A story is told about a man “whose mother was an Israelite woman and whose father was an Egyptian” 24:10). He got into a quarrel with an Israelite and “blasphemed the name and curse it” (24:11). Moses meditated on what to do and “YHWH spoke to Moses” (24:13) and instructed him to have the man taken outside the camp and killed – stoned to death (24:16). This precedent becomes a law: blasphemers are to be stoned by everyone in the community after everyone who heard him lays hands on his head.

        

Murderers are to die too; killers of animals must make restitution. “Limb for limb, eye for eye, tooth for tooth! The same injury that a man gives another shall be inflicted on him in return” (24:19-20)—everyone, alien and Israelite alike—is to be treated the same.

Leviticus 25 – The land too is to keep a Sabbath for the Lord.  Sow fields for six years, but in the seventh, the land should rest, leaving the after-growth to be eaten by anyone.

        

The Jubilee year comes after 7 times 7 years.  On the 10^th day of 7^th month, let the trumpet sound. “You shall make [this 50^th year] sacred by proclaiming liberty in the land for all its inhabitants” (25:10). There shall be no sowing, nor reaping the after-growth except directly from fields and vines.  Return to your own property, and let there be no unfair dealing in repurchasing lands transferred during the preceding 50 years.  No lands shall be alienated in perpetuity, except in walled towns. No kinsmen may be slaves.  Alien slaves may be bought and sold, but you must not ‘lord it over them” harshly.

Irenaeus (c. 180)

Selections from the Work Against Heresies

The Faith of the Church

10 – Irenaeus’ words are so to the point, it is hard not to just write every word out, so there will be a lot of quoting.

“Now the Church, although scattered over the whole civilized world to the end of the earth, received from the apostles and their disciples its faith in one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven, and the earth, and the seas, and all that is in them, and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation, and in the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets proclaimed the dispensations of God—the comings, the birth of a virgin, the suffering, the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily reception into the heavens of the beloved, Christ Jesus our Lord, and his coming from the heavens in the glory of the Father to restore all things, and to raise up all flesh, that is, the whole human race, so that every knee may bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, to Christ Jesus our Lord and God and Savior and King, according to the pleasure of the invisible Father, and every tongue may confess him, and that he may execute righteous judgment on all.”

The power of wickedness and the “angels who transgress and fell into apostasy, and the godless and wicked and lawless and blasphemers among men he will send into the eternal firs. But to the righteous and holy, and those who have kept his commandments and have remained in his love, some from the beginning [of life] and some since their repentance, he will by his grace give life incorrupt, and will clothe them with eternal glory.”

“Having received this preaching and this faith, as I have said, the Church, although scattered in the whole world, carefully preserves it, as if living in one house. She believes these things [everywhere] alike, as if she had but one heart and one soul, and preaches them harmoniously, teaches them, and hands them down, as if she had but one mouth.”

The languages of the world may be varied, but the message of the Church is the same wherever the faithful are.

It is true that some have more understanding than others of the basic idea, and can articulate it better, but the “faith is one and the same, [and] he who can say much about it does not add to it, nor does he who can say little diminish it.”

He addresses the mistaken view of the Gnostics who “imagine another God above [what they call] the Demiurge and Maker and Nourisher of this universe, as if he were not enough for us.” What the Gnostics called the Demiurge was the Old Testament Creator-God depicted in Genesis. They thought that the narrative of God that in so many ways personifies or “humanizes” him could never really be the eternal and fathomless deity they imagined God to be. But Irenaeus thinks they just don’t get the complex truth of the Old Testament narrative.

“[I]t consists in working out the things that have been said in parables, and building them into the foundation of the faith: in expounding the activity and dispensation of God for the sake of mankind; in showing clearly how God was long-suffering over the apostasy of the angels who transgressed, and over the disobedience of men; in declaring why one and the same God made some things subject to time, others eternal, some heavenly, and some earthly; in understanding why God, being invisible, appeared to the prophets, not in one form, but differently to different ones; in showing why there were a number of covenants with mankind, and in teaching what is the character of each of the covenants; in searching out why God shut up all in disobedience that he might have mercy on all; in giving thanks that the Word of God was made flesh, and suffered; in declaring why the coming of the Son of God [was] at the last times, that is, the Beginning was made manifest at the end; in unfolding what is found in the prophets about the end and the things to come; in not being silent that God has made the despaired-of Gentiles fellow heirs and of the same body and partners with the saints . . .”

He ends the section with discussion of terms that modern people are completely ignorant of – I was at least. Aeons and Pleroma. Gnostics believed that Aeons [30 of them] were emanations from the Pleroma, which is the fullness of the highest God. Irenaeus’ goal in most of his writings was to refute the claims of the Gnostics, so there will be a lot of very detailed discussion of their ideas, most of which I have only the lamest understanding of. I am hoping I will not have to go too deeply into these details. I am just looking forward to his explanation of the apostolic message that he embraced.

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.

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Leviticus 20-21 and Justin Martyr's First Apology 67-68

Leviticus 20 – Penalties for sins: If you offer your children as a sacrifice to Molech – death.

Consulting fortune-tellers – this is called “spiritual prostitution” and is punished by cutting them off from the community.

 If you “act as mediums or . . . consult the spirits of the dead” (20:27), then you must die by stoning.

Dishonoring father or mother – death.

Adultery – death for both.

Homosexual sex – death. Carnal relations with an animal – death.

Forbidden sex – varied, mostly cut off from the community or fined, etc.

Leviticus 21 – This chapter is dedicated to instructions for priests. Priests shall not prepare corpses for burial and thus incur pollution, except for his closest relatives.  The highest priest shall not even do that (21:11).

They shall not do things the Canaanites do to mourn, like bare the crown of their heads, shave the edges of their beard, lacerate their bodies; they have to remain holy, sacred because it is their job to “offer up food to your God” (21:8)—that’s an interesting thought. 

They shall not marry women who have been prostitutes, or who are divorced or dishonored.  The must marry a virgin. A priest’s daughter who brings dishonor shall be burned. 

“No one who has a defect qualifies, whether he is blind, lame, disfigured, deformed, or has a broken foot or arm, or is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or has a defective eye, or skin sores or scabs, or damaged testicles” (21:17-20).

Early Christian Writers

Justin Martyr (100-165 AD) – First Apology

Weekly Worship of the Christians

67 – He continues describing the life of the Christian community. The wealthy in the church help the needy; they are united in all things. On the day we call Sunday, “all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.”

The they rise and pray together and when that is ended, they bring bread and wine and water, “and the president . . . offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen, and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks has been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons.”

A collection is made and people give what they can to the president, who cares for the orphans and widows and those who are sick or in need in some way. They also care for strangers sojourning with them.

Sunday is the day for their common gathering “because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead.”

Conclusion

68 – Justin Martyr’s goal throughout this treatise has been to be “reasonable” and committed to telling the emperor and his officials the truth of Christianity. But he says, if the things he’s said, sound like “nonsense” to them they are still not worthy of a decree of death. Christians have done no wrong to anyone in the Empire.

“[W]e forewarn you, that you shall not escape the coming judgment of God, if you continue in your injustice; and we ourselves will invite you to do that which is pleasing to God.”

He makes reference to a letter by Emperor Hadrian, father of the present emperor, that seems to have specified that only Christians in violation of some law could be persecuted, and he attaches a copy of that letter to the treatise.

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Leviticus 19 and Justin Martyr's First Apology 64-66

Leviticus 19 – There are many more “Holiness Rules.”

-       You must honor your parents and always keep the Sabbath

-       Turn aside from idols

-       Eat all peace offerings by the day following the sacrifice

-       Leave some grains after harvesting for the poor and alien

-       No stealing, lying or defrauding

-       No withholding wages overnight

-       No cursing the deaf or putting stumbling blocks in front of the blind

-       No dishonesty in rendering judgment

-       No partiality either to the weak or to the mighty (19:15)

-       No slander

-       “You shall not bear hatred for your brother in your hearts.  Though you may have to reprove your fellow man, do not incur sin because of him” (19:17).

-       “Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your fellow countrymen.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18).

-       Do not cross-breed animals or crops or mix threads in your garments

-       Regarding sex with female slaves who are committed to becoming another man’s wife (19:20).

-       Fruit trees planted in the land you are to be given—time to wait to eat fruit.

-       No eating meat with blood in it

-       No divination or soothsaying

-       No clipping hair at temples or trimming of beards

-       No laceration of bodies, tattooing

-       No prostitution for daughters

-       No mediums, fortune-tellers, etc

-       Show respect for the old

-       No molesting aliens—treat equally “for you too were once aliens” (19:34)

It is interesting to consider that in modern times, a good many of these rules seem very antiquated – not all for sure but some:  having sex with slaves who are supposed to be marrying someone else? Cross-breeding animals? No tattoos? Certainly everyone must agree that just because a prohibition is stated in the text does not make it something we must accept today. It is more complicated than that. I don’t know how anyone could think all are equally compelling. But I also think those who argue that the Old Testament has no “teaching” on homosexual are not facing up to the reality.

Some early Quakers seemed to have been obsessed with things like divination, soothsaying or fortune-telling; I don’t feel comfortable with these but I don’t think most people feel that way any more.

Early Christian Writers

Justin Martyr (100-165 AD) – First Apology

Further Misrepresentations of the Truth

64 – He returns to his obsession with the ways the “poets” of Rome have borrowed from the Jewish scriptures in crating some of the stories of the sons/daughters of Jupiter: Proserpine – associated with water in the way the Spirit of God is associated with water in the creation story; Minerva, a daughter of Jupiter “not by sexual union but the “first conception” ; and others he doesn’t mention.

Administration of the Sacraments

65 – Returning to the routines of entering into the Christian community, he talks about after baptism has occurred, the new member is brought into the common assembly where prayers are offered up for everyone and for the newly “baptized [illuminated] person.”

When prayers are over “we salute one another with a kiss.” And bread and a cup of wine mixed with water is taken to the “president of the brethren” and he takes them, “gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length.”  The people assent by saying “Amen” – Hebrew for “so be it.”

Those who are deacons give to everyone a bit of the bread and the wine mixed with water, and if someone is not at the gathering, some will be taken to that person as well.

Of the Eucharist

66 – This food we eat is call among us the Eucharist and “no one is allowed to partake [of it] but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined.”

“For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.”

The apostles in their memoirs – called the Gospels – “delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, ‘This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body,’ and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, ‘This is My blood,’ and gave it to them alone.”

He calls those who copied the Christian Eucharist in what they call the “mysteries of Mithras” “wicked devils.”

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Leviticus 18 and Justin Martyr's First Apology 61-63

Leviticus 18 – Chapters 18-26 are known as the “Holiness Code.” The Schocken Bible editor points out that beyond the “heightened moments” of perception that make human beings feel linked to the “primal powers of existence,” the Jews also longed for a perfection and completeness in behavior “in all areas of life, personal and communal (593).

The people are warned NOT to conform to the customs of the people among whom they are settling. “You must not imitate their way of life. You must obey all my regulations and be careful to obey my decrees, for I am the Lord your God. If you obey my decrees and my regulations, you will find life through them” (18:3-5).

Among the many rules are the following:

“You must never have sexual relations with a close relative” (18:6). Close relatives here include your mother, any of your father’s wives, your sister or half sister, your granddaughter, your stepsister, your aunt, your daughter-in-law or sister-in-law. You should have no sex with both a woman and her daughter or granddaughter (18:17-18).

No sex with menstruating women (18:19). It is kind of interesting that the “holiness rules” seem to be addressed only to the men. I guess women were expected to extrapolate from their rules, the rules they should follow.

“Do not permit any of your children to be offered as a sacrifice to Molech, for you must not bring shame on the name of your God” (18:21). Canaanite youth were sacrificed in this way - first killed then immolated.

“Do not practice homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman. It is a detestable sin” (18:22).

And there must be no sex with animals. Here there is a specific rule for women as well.

“So obey my instructions, and do not defile yourselves by committing any of these detestable practices that were committed by the people who lived in the land before you” (18:30).

Early Christian Writers

Justin Martyr (100-165 AD) – First Apology

Christian Baptism

61 – So how do Christians dedicate themselves to God once they’ve been made new? They “undertake to . . . live according (to what they’ve been taught]”; they pray and fast for the remission of the sins in their lives that are past; then they “receive the washing with water” [baptism]. “For Christ also said, ‘Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.’” They try to put away evil doings from their souls and do good things: care for the orphans and widows.

As to why this rite of baptism is so central, “we have learned from the apostles [that] since at our birth we were born without our own knowledge or choice, by our parents coming together, and were brought up in bad habits and wicked training; in order that we may not remain the children of necessity and of ignorance, but may become the children of choice and knowledge, and may obtain in the water the remission of sins formerly committed, there is pronounced over him who chooses to be born again, and has repented of his sins, the name of God the Father and Lord of the universe. . . the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and the name of the Holy Ghost, who through the prophets foretold all things about Jesus, he who is illuminated is washed.”

Its Imitation by Demons

62 – The devils “having heart this washing published by the prophet” have imitated these rites as well. They also make people wash themselves before they enter shrines where their images are set up. And they ask them to remove their shoes. This Justin Martyr also believes is something copied from the teachings of Moses. The removal of shoes is from the story of Moses approaching the fire, “mighty power from Christ,” in the bush.

How God Appeared to Moses

63 – He tells how even the Jews themselves accept the accusation of Isaiah the prophet that they do not “know” God. The Spirit of prophesy in Moses said, “’The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not know Me, and My people do not understand.’”

And Jesus too said, “’No one knoweth the Father, but the Son; nor the Son, but the Father, and they to whom the Son revealeth Him.’” (citing Matthew 11:27).

“[S]o much is written for the sake of proving that Jesus the Christ is the Son of God and His Apostle, being of old the Word, and appearing sometimes in the form of fire, and sometimes in the likeness of angels; but now, by the will of God, having become man for the human race, He endured all the sufferings which the devils instigated the senseless Jews to inflict upon Him.”

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Leviticus 17 and Justin Martyr's First Apology 59-60

Leviticus 17  – Every sheep, goat or ox must be presented as an offering to the Lord in front of the Dwelling before it can be slaughtered for food.  The blood needs to be splashed on the altar and the fat burned. 

Offerings previously were made to “satyrs” [goat-demons] but this shall be no more (17:7).

This differs from Deut.12 where slaughter is permitted as long as the blood is poured out—scholars disagree which practice came first, Schocken says.  What is not disputed is the importance of “the blood.”  It effects a type of “ransom” or redemption—the blood of the animal substituting for that of the sacrificer.

“And if anyone, whether of the house of Israel or of the aliens residing among them, partakes of any blood, I will set myself against that one who partakes of blood and will cut him off from among his people.  Since the life of a living body is in its blood, I have made you put it on the altar, so that atonement may thereby be made for your own lives, because it is the blood, as the seat of life, that makes atonement” (17:10-12)

See reference to this in Hebrews 9 and 10.

“He has passed through the greater, the more perfect tent, which is better than the one made by men’s hands because it is not of this created order” (9:11).  He has “entered the sanctuary once and for all” (9:12), taking not the blood of a sacrificial animal but his own blood and has “won an eternal redemption for us” (9:12). He “offered himself as the perfect sacrifice to God through the eternal Spirit , . . [to] purify our inner self from dead actions so that we do our service to the living God” (9:14).

Early Christian Writers

Justin Martyr (100-165 AD) – First Apology

Plato’s Obligation to Moses

59 – Plato is very respected and Justin Martyr absolutely believes that Plato’s ideas were borrowed from the Jewish prophets.

“Plato borrowed his [the prophet’s] statement, having altered matter which was shapeless, made the world, hear the very words spoken through Moses, who, as above shown, was the first prophet, and of greater antiquity than the Greek writers; and through whom the Spirit of prophecy, signifying how and from what materials God at first formed the world, spake thus: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was invisible and unfurnished, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved over the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and it was so.’ So that both Plato and they who agree with him, and we ourselves, have learned and you also can be convince, that by the word of God the whole world was made out of the substance spoken of before by Moses, and that which the poets call Erebus, we know was spoken of formerly by Moses.”

Erebus was a primordial deity in Greek mythology representing the darkness.

Plato’s Doctrine of the Cross

60 – The Platonic thinker and philosopher in Justin Martyr is very present in this section. And the work of Plato he discusses here is one that sounds very interesting from what I can gather from “google-ing” it, but I myself am unfamiliar with the work.

He basically believes that Plato was using the “Son of God” in his work, Timaeus, “where he says of the primordial deity, “’He placed him crosswise in the universe,’” {in the form of the letter X to represent the “soul of the universe”). He believes Plato got the X idea from Moses, who creates a cross-like figure – the bronze snake attached to a pole in Numbers 21:8 – to provide protection for his people in the desert.

“Which things Plato reading, and not accurately understanding, and not apprehending that it was the figure of the cross, but taking it to be a placing crosswise, he said that the power next to the first God was placed crosswise in the universe. And as to his speaking of a third [person/image of God??], he did this because he read, as we said above, that which was spoken by Moses, ‘that the Spirit of God moved over the waters.’ For he gives the second place to the Logos which is with God, who he said was placed crosswise in the universe; and the third place to the Spirit who was said to be borne upon the water. . . “

The lesson the writer thinks we should take from this is NOT that different people come in different ways to Truth, something most modern believers would feel comfortable with; he believes all the thinkers who have come to even remotely similar truths have come to them because they have all been influenced by Moses.

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Leviticus 16 and Justin Martyr's First Apology 56-58

Leviticus 16 - Day of Atonement—When Aaron goes into the sanctuary he needs to bring a young bullock for a sin offering and a ram for a holocaust.  From the community he shall receive two male goats to the entrance and cast lots to determine which one will be for the Lord and which one will be for “Azazal” - a name for Satan the note suggests—it translates the word as “escaping goat” hence “scapegoat”.  The one for the Lord shall be offered up as a sin offering (hattat).  The other shall be “set alive before the Lord” and then sent into the desert.

The bullock Aaron brings for himself shall be offered up to atone for himself and his family.  Incense from the altar of sacrifice shall be brought inside the veil, placed on the fire so that a cloud of incense covers the propitiatory.  The blood of the bullock shall be sprinkled on the propitiatory. 

Then he offers the people’s sin offering and does the same with its blood—he makes atonement for the sanctuary, the meeting tent, for himself and for the community, for the altar—mixing the blood of both sacrifices. When he comes out he shall place his hands on the head of the other goat and confess the sins of the community.  Then the goat is escorted out of the community, out into the desert.  He leaves his vestments in the sanctuary, bathes and puts them on again and then offers up the holocaust and burn the fat of the sin offering on the altar.

There shall be a fast on this day as well every year in perpetuity.

Early Christian Writers

Justin Martyr (100-165 AD) – First Apology

The Demons Still Mislead Men

56 – Not only did “the evil spirits” rely on their pre-incarnation stories of Jupiter and his sons, even AFTER Christ’s appearance and AFTER they learned of the prophesies regarding Him and AFTER they should have believed, the still continued to set their eyes on lesser men like Simon Magus and Menander.

We pray that the “sacred senate” and you leaders help people to avoid those evil doctrines and destroy the statue set up to honor them.

And Cause Persecution

57 – The devils can’t persuade us that there will be no eventual punishment of evil – just as they couldn’t keep Him hidden after He came.

The only thing “they who live irrationally, and were brought up licentiously in wicked customs, and are prejudiced in their own opinions, should kill and hate us.” But not only do we NOT hate them, we pity and try to lead them to repentance.

We do not fear death; all die. If they don’t believe that we exists after death, they help us by setting us free.

And Raise Up Heretics

58 – These same devils have tried to get us to list to Marcion of Pontus, “who is even now teaching men to deny that God is the maker of all things in heaven and on earth, and that the Christ predicted by the prophets is His Son, and preaches another god besides the Creator of all, and likewise another son. And this man many have believed, as if he alone knew the truth, and laugh at us, though they have no proof of what they say, but are carried away irrationally as lambs by a wolf, and become the prey of atheistical doctrines, and of devils. For they who are called devils attempt nothing else than to seduce men from God who made them, and from Christ His first-begotten; and those who are unable to raise themselves above the earth they have riveted, and do now rivet to things earthly and to the works of their own hands; but those who devote themselves to the contemplation of things divine, they secretly beat back; and if they have not a wise sober-mindedness, and a pure and passionless life, they drive them into godlessness.”

Marcion was not trying to lure men TO THE WORLD but away from all things physical. And that is not what we are about as Christians anyway. Our savior came in human flesh to redeem the lives we live.