Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Leviticus 4 and Justin Martyr's First Apology 32-34

Leviticus 4 – Sin offerings [“hattat”] Schocken Bible note says “sin offering” is not a good translation.  It is a “decontamination offering” for priests – for inadvertent sins. 

When these are committed by the high priest, he brings guilt on all the people.  He must offer a young, unblemished bull.  Its blood should be brought into the tent and sprinkled toward the sanctuary seven times.  Some of the blood should go on the horns of the altar of incense.  The fat shall be burned, the hide, head and uneatable parts shall be brought outside the camp to a clean place where it can be burned in a wood fire and the ashes left.  The eatable part may not be eaten by the priest according to Schocken lest he profit from his own wrong.  But from other people’s offerings, he may eat.

When the entire community has sinned inadvertently by violating one of the Lord’s commands “but the people don’t realize it, they are still guilty. When they become aware of their sin, the people must” make the “decontamination offering.” For this offering, the “elders of the community” are the ones who make the offering.

If the inadvertent sin is committed by one of the leaders of the community, when he becomes aware of the sin, he must make the offering. The seven-fold sprinkling of the altar is omitted, but everything else is the same.

And if “any of the common people sin by violating one of the Lord’s commands, but they don’t realize it, they are still guilty” too. Then they become aware of the sin, they too can make an offering of a female goat with no defects.

Early Christian Writers

Justin Martyr (100-165 AD) – First Apology

Christ Predicted by Moses

32 – Like so many – Jesus’ disciples and those who came after them – Justin Martyr finds in the prophecies, “types” and “figures” of the Old Testament, the most convincing arguments for the claims of the Christians. I can well understand how they cringed at the demands of the Marcionites that the Old Testament god and the Old Testament itself should not be part of the Christian world view.

Jacob’s prophecy about the destiny of his twelve in Genesis 49 – here mentioned as Moses’ words – are quoted: “’Judah, your brothers will praise you. . . . The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from his descendants, until the coming of the one to whom it belongs, the one whom all nations will honor. He ties his foal to a grapevine, the colt of his donkey to a choice vine. He washes his clothes in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.’”

And then addressing again his Roman addressees, “[A]nd after He (i.e. Christ) appeared, you began to rule the Jews, and gained possession of all their territory.” And in all races of men “there are some who look for Him who was crucified in Judaea . . . [and] the prophecy, ‘binding His foal to the vine, and washing His robe in the blood of the grape,’ was a significant symbol of the things that were to happen to Christ, and of what He was to do. For the foal of an ass stood bound to a vine at the entrance of a village, and He ordered His acquaintances to bring it to Him then; and when it was brought, He mounted and sat upon it, and entered Jerusalem, . . . And after this He was crucified, that the rest of the prophecy might be fulfilled. For this ‘washing His robe in the blood of the grape’ was predictive of the passion He was to endure, cleansing by His blood those who believe on Him. For what is called by the Divine Spirit through the prophet ‘His robe,’ are those men who believe in Him in whom abideth the seed of God, the Word. And what is spoken of as ‘the blood of the grape,’ signifies that He who should appear would have blood, though not of the seed of man, but of the power of God.”

Similarly the prophecy of Isaiah in 11:1 is discussed: “’A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a flower shall spring from the root of Jesse; and His arm shall the nations trust.’ And a star of light has arisen, and a flower has sprung from the root of Jesse-this Christ. For by the power of God He was conceived by a virgin of the seed of Jacob, who was the father of Judah, who, as we have shown, was the father of the Jews; and Jesse was His forefather according to the oracle, and He was the son of Jacob and Judah according to lineal descent.”

Manner of Christ’s Birth Predicted

33 – He quotes the words of Isaiah again: “’Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bring forth a son, and they shall say for His name, ‘God with us.’” For things which were incredible and seemed impossible with men t hese God predicted by the Spirit of prophecy as about to come to pass, in order that, when they came to pass, there might be no unbelief, but faith, because of their prediction.”

Mary’s virginity is significant to the writer in part because it is important to him to distinguish the conception of Christ from other stories of gods that had had intercourse with women – stories that were omnipresent in Greek and Roman times.

“It is wrong, therefor, to understand the Spirit and the power of God as anything else than the Word, who is also the first-born of God . . . and it was this which, when it came upon the virgin and overshadowed her, caused her to conceive, not by intercourse, but by power. And the name Jesus in the Hebrew language means . . . Savior in the Greek tongue. Wherefore, to, the angel said to the virgin, ‘Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.’ “

Place of Christ’s Birth Foretold

34 – “And hear what part of earth He was to be born in, as another prophet, Micah, foretold. He spoke thus: ‘And thou, Bethlehem, the land of Judah, are not the least among the princes of Judah; for out of thee shall come forth a Governor, who shall fee My people.’”

There is such a town thirty-five stadia [term of measurement] from Jerusalem, and this is verifiable from the tax registers of Cyrenius, first procurator in Judaea.

Daily Old Testament and Early Christian Writings: Exodus 9 and The Epistle of Barnabas 5-7

Exodus 9 – God tells Moses to tell the Pharaoh that he must “Let my people go so they can worship me. If you refuse to hold them and refuse to let them go, the hand of the Lord will strike all you livestock—your horses, donkeys, camels, cattle, sheep, and goats—with a deadly plague” (9:2-3). The livestock of the Hebrews will not be touched.

Pharaoh doesn’t yield, so the Lord sends this fifth plague. Still the Pharaoh is not convinced.

Then the Lord tells Moses to take soot from a brick kiln and scatter it toward the sky so that it turns into a fine dust, a dust that will cause boils on man and beast – the sixth plague.  These boils also afflict the Egyptian magicians. Still Pharaoh is unmoved. “[T]he Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (9:12).

Again the Lord sends Moses to tell Pharaoh this: “I could have lifted my hand and struck you and your people with a plague to wipe you off the face of the earth. But I have spared you for a purpose—to show you my power and to spread my fame throughout the earth. But you still lord it over my people and refuse to let them go” (9:15-17). If they do not listen, the Lord will send a terrible hailstorm. Some of Pharaoh’s officials respond with fear and try to shelter their livestock from the storm before it comes, but “those who paid no attention to the word of the Lord” (9:21) suffered great loss in this seventh plague.

“Never in all the history of Egypt had there been a storm like that . . . it left all of Egypt in ruins . . . The only place without hail was the region of Goshen, where the people of Israel lived” (9:24-26).

This time the Pharaoh calls Moses to come to him and he says, “’This time I have sinned. . . . The Lord is the righteous lone, and my people and I are wrong. Please beg the Lord to end this terrifying thunder and hair. We’ve had enough. Ii will let you go; you don’t need to stay any longer.’” (9:27-28). Moses doubts that they really mean it, and, sure enough, once the hail is stopped, Pharaoh’s heart hardens again and he refuses to let the people go.

The Epistle of Barnabas

5 – “Now, when the Lord resigned Himself to deliver His body to destruction, the aim He had in view was to sanctify us by the remission of our sins; which is effected by the sprinkling of His blood” (163).  

Pretty amazing this passage should come up on the very day I am reading about the last plague brought down by God on Egypt – the death of all their first-born., getting ready to post it later in the week. There it is the blood of the sacrificed lamb or goat that is sprinkled on their doorposts so that the Lord will know which houses He is to “pass over.” Again, we have there one of the multitude of “types” and “figures” set forth in the Old Testament Scripture, that helps us better to understand the meaning of Christ’s death on the cross. 

The writer quotes Isaiah, “he was wounded on account of our transgressions, and bruised because of our sins, and by his scars we were healed” (163).

“How deep should be our gratitude to the Lord, who thus gives us an insight into the past, as well as wisdom for the present and even a measure of understanding of the future!” (163). If we know the “Way of Holiness” and do not follow it, ruin justly awaits us.

He goes on to point out how the prophets foretold of Him. By appearing “in human flesh” and permitting Himself to suffer, “He would be able both to fulfill the promises that had been made to our ancestors, and to establish a new People for Himself” (164). He made it clear “during His presence on earth, that it was His intention to raise mankind from the dead, and afterwards to judge them” (164).

Then he says something a little shocking: “But it was in His choice of the Apostles, who were to preach His Gospel, that He truly showed Himself the Son of God; for those men were ruffians of the deepest dye, which proved that He came not to call saints, but sinners” (164, citing Mark 2:17).

6 – He continues to analyze the prophetic writings to undercover other texts that deepen his appreciation of what Christ did and who Christ was: the stone laid at great price in the foundations of Zion, the stone the builders rejected and other Old Testament images from the psalms and Isaiah.

When he looks to the writings of Moses, the author finds other ancient “types” – some I have never heard used before. The Lord’s promise to the Jews of a “land flowing with milk and honey” is seen as a reference to Christ’s mortal body “since it was out of earth that the shaping of Adam was wrought. What, then, is signified by a land that is ‘good, and flowing with milk and honey’? (Blessings on the Lord, my brothers, for vouchsafing to us wisdom and the discernment of His secrets! The prophet is speaking in a Divine figure here, though only a sagacious and instructed lover of the Lord would understand it.) (165-166).

7 – While the Lord has made much clear to us in these ancient writings, so that we would recognize His hand in the life and death of Christ. He examines other texts that “prefigure” events in Christ’s life. Some of the text is really impossible for me to understand. I get the big picture that he is finding prophecies of Christ in all the nooks and crannies of Old Testament writings, but some of the references are not legitimate – not according to the biblical texts that have come down. And some are so convoluted that they are impenetrable. Basically, though, he is simply conveying his conviction that all of Christ’s sufferings were predestined and foretold. The following is a good example of how detailed he gets on a story I am somewhat familiar with.

He mentions the scapegoat narrative in Leviticus. There are two goats spoken of in the story. The “first goat is for the altar, and the other is accursed” (168). The accursed one “wears [a] wreath. That is because they shall see Him on That Day clad to the ankles in His red woolen robe, and will say, ‘Is not this he whom we once crucified, and mocked and pierced and spat upon? Yes, this is the man who told us that he was the son of God.’ But how will He resemble the goat? The point of there being two similar goats, both of them fair and alike, is that when they see Him coming on the Day, they are going to be struck with terror at the manifest parallel between Him and the goat. In this ordinance, then, you are to see typified the future sufferings of Jesus” (168).

Daily Bible Reading: Wisdom 17 and Hebrews 1

Wisdom 17 – “Your judgments are indeed great and inexpressible, which is why undisciplined souls have gone astray. When impious men imagined they had the holy nation in their power, they themselves lay prisoners of the dark, in the fetters of long night, confined under their own roofs, banished from eternal providence” (17:1-2). This passage is very difficult to see at first; it is about the ninth plague suffered by the Egyptians – three days of darkness [see Exodus 10:21-23]. “No fire had power enough to give them light, nor could the brightly blazing stars illuminate that dreadful night” (17:5). The magicians of Egypt could not conquer the darkness, so fear reigned.

“Fear, indeed, is nothing other than the abandonment of the supports offered by reason; the less you rely within yourself on these, the more alarming it is not to know the cause of your suffering” (17:11-12).

While the darkness reigned in Egypt, everyone was paralyzed by fear. 

Introduction to Hebrews: The Epistle to the Hebrews is a very interesting book and one that I think was extremely important to George Fox and early Friends (Quakers). It is full of references to what were seen as "types and figures" [metaphors and allegorical references] in the Jewish Scriptures that  seemed to prepare the way for Christ, for an understanding of his identity and role in the salvation narrative. Fox says in his Journal that "as man comes through by the Spirit and power of God to Christ, who fulfills the types, figures, shadows and prophecies that were of him, and is led by the Holy Ghost into the truth and substance of the Scriptures, sitting down in the author and end of them, then are they read and understood with great delight" (32).

In Christ, in the idea of Christ, and in his substance, a number of things come together: the Hebrew narrative of the creation, and the history and development of God's "chosen people," their Mosaic Law and prophetic tradition; the "Wisdom" literature [rooted in very ancient times and prominent in the Hellenistic times in Jewish history] that saw Wisdom as a female "figure" - beloved consort or spouse of God; and the Logos philosophy that was adopted from the Greeks, fused with concept of "types" and "figures" and articulated by Philo [20 BC to 50 AD] in the time when Jesus was with us on earth and which found its way into the thinking of some of the earliest Christians. 

As I go through Hebrews, I will occasionally make reference to several scholarly studies of the piece: one by Raymond Brown in his Introduction to the New Testament and the other William Barclay's Letter to the Hebrews (1976). Barclay notes in his book that the author and time of composition are hard to determine. The earliest mention of Hebrews is in the 2nd century AD. Early Alexandrian Christians like Clement and Origin loved it, but Eusebius [3rd/4th c. from Caesarea] placed it among the "disputed books." By the 4th c. it was accepted into the "canon" as a work of Paul, but few today think it was written by Paul.

Hebrews 1 – “In the past God spoke to our ancestors many times and in many ways through the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son. He is the one through whom God created the universe, the one whom God has chosen to possess all things at the end. He reflects the brightness of God’s glory and is the exact likeness of God’s own being, sustaining the universe with his powerful word. After achieving forgiveness for the sins of all human beings, he sat down in heaven at the right side of God, the Supreme Power” (1:1-3).

After this introduction, the author spends time arguing that Christ was/is higher and closer to God than the angels. Angels were very much part of the thinking of Jews in Jesus' time and the origin of the belief in then is also very complex. The syncretism or blending of ideas, traditions and approaches to religious "truth" is something that has been going on throughout history. Some people hate it and some - like me - think it enriches the spirit. And I would argue, without it, Christianity would never have been born. The author writes, "God has never said to any angel: You are my Son, today I have become your father; or: I will be a father to him and he a son to me" (1:5). 

The Son celebrated here is the incarnated Son, the one whose kingdom "will last forever and ever (1:8) and who will sit at God's right hand until God "put[s] your enemies as a footstool under your feet" (1:13). The angels "are spirits who serve God and are sent by him to help those who are to receive salvation" (1:14), but the Son is much greater than they are. He has destroyed the “defilement of sin” and “has gone to take his place in heaven at the right hand of divine Majesty” (1:4).

Daily Bible Reading: Jeremiah 5 and 1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Jeremiah 5 - We are dealing here with what the writer insists is universal corruption. God just looks for one righteous man.  It isn’t a matter of not “knowing” what they are supposed to do—God could forgive not knowing.  But even those you expect to know, “the great ones”—they too have “[broken] the yoke, torn off the harness” (5:5) Their faithlessness leaves them prey to the wolf, the lion and the leopard (5:6--images Dante uses in the Divine Comedy). They openly refuse to take God into account, and the prophets “have become wind . . . the word is not in them” (5:13). For these reasons, God tells Jeremiah, “I will make my words a fire in your mouth, and make this people wood. . .” (5:14).  God will bring a brave nation against them to reek devastation.  But He will not permit their total destruction—the point of the destruction will be for people to ask, “Why has the Lord done all these things to us?” (5:19) Like so much that is part of the life of Israel, the Lord sets it there so that people will be moved to ask probing questions, questions that will lead to knowledge of God or repentance.  The Lord is infinitely great and powerful—“should [we] not fear [Him]?” (5:22)

We modern people seem to feel it some kind of offense if something in God’s revelation to us implies that we should feel awe or fear before God--heaven forbid that we should tremble before the creator of the universe!—how absurd is that?

Jeremiah also bemoans the way the wicked seem to prosper. They have no fear of God, no respect for justice. “Monstrous, horrible things are happening in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, the priests teach whatever they please.  And my people love it! [irony – they don’t challenge it]” (5:30-31)

1 Corinthians 10:1-13 – Paul expounds on the lessons Christians can learn from the OT narrative. As Christians enter into Christ through baptism, the Israelites were “baptized into Moses” in their water passage. Similarly they “ate the same spiritual bread and drank the same spiritual drink. They drank from the spiritual rock that went with them; and that rock was Christ himself” (10:3).  The rock that nourished the Jews in the wilderness was Christ typologically present in the water from the Rock, and in the manna.

This Christian lens through which all the Old Testament narrative is seen is so rich; it is the reason we must continue to keep the stories alive in the Church.