Daily Bible Reading: 1 Maccabees 1 and 1 Timothy 2

-->

Introductory Material on Maccabees from Jerusalem Bible:

These two books are not in the Jewish canon. They are considered deuterocanonical by the Church. They are about Jewish resistance to the Seleucid dynasty of rulers, and about Jewish resistance to secularization in the form of Hellenism. The Jewish community is torn within itself by those who want to follow the dominant culture and those who stand by the traditions. The Maccabeas family leads the traditionalists

-       Judas Maccabaeus (166-160 BC), seeks alliance with Rome

-       Jonathan (160-142 BC) – more political than military also seeks alliance with Rome and Sparta

-       Simon (142-134) – recognized as High Priest, Governor and ethnarch of the Jews

Written originally in Hebrew, only a Greek text remains. The author is a Palestinian Jew writing after 134 but before capture of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 BC

2 Maccabees is a kind of parallel version of the story, but it ends with the defeat of Nicanor by Judas (covering the material in chapter 1-7 of 1 Maccabees.

The books affirm a number of beliefs Christians hold strongly—resurrection of the dead, sanctions in the afterlife, prayer for the dead, spiritual rewards for martyrdom and intercession of saints.

1 Maccabees 1 - It starts with the story of Alexander the Great, son of Philip. It tells of his conquests: “ . . .he advanced to the ends of the earth, plundering nation after nation; the earth grew silent before him, and his ambitious heart swelled with pride (1: 3-4). Then he died and his heirs divided his empire, “bringing increasing evils on the world” (1:10). The note says he died in 324 BC but that the division was not worked out until 301 Battle of Ipsus.

Antiochus Epiphanes was son of King Antiochus (a Seleucid). He becomes king in 175 BC.  At this time a “set of renegades,” Hebrews wishing to reach accommodation with the reigning Hellenistic culture, start to lead people astray. Winning the approval of the king, they built a gymnasium in Jerusalem, “disguised their circumcision, and abandoned the holy covenant, submitting to the heathen rule as willing slaves of impiety” (1:15).

           

Antiochus is ambitious, and seeks to expand his territory by invading Egypt and winning there. Then he turns on Israel (169 BC). He loots the Temple. The people are left stunned, ashamed and desolate. But there is further war and oppression. The king decides “that all were to become a single people, each renouncing his particular customs” (1:41).

Some Israelites [the renegades] go along with this. Then in 167 BC, the king “erected the abomination of desolation above the altar.” This was the altar of Baal Shamem or the Olympian Zeus. Ten days later, sacrifice was offered to this Baal—“Women who had had their children circumcised were put to death according to the edict with their babies hung round their necks, and the members of their household and those who had performed the circumcision were executed with the” (1:60-61).

           

But some stood firm and were executed. “It was a dreadful wrath that visited Israel” (1:64).

-->

1 Timothy 2 – Paul advises Timothy to make sure there is “prayer offered for everyone – petitions, intercessions and thanksgiving – and especially for kings and others in authority, so that we may be able to live religious and reverent lives in peace and quiet” (2:2-3). When he makes reference to the truth as he sees it, it is that “there is only one God, and there is only one mediator between God and mankind, himself a man, Christ Jesus, who sacrificed himself as a ransom for them all” (2:5).

Then he addresses then the issue of women and their role in the “assembly” or “community.” His words are very difficult to deal with as a woman of the 21^st century. Clearly there were conflicts over the role of women in the early Christian communities. Some clearly saw it as inappropriate that women should speak and teach, which to me involves an inference that they were in fact doing these things in at least some of the communities Paul traveled to.

Here Paul writes that women should dress modestly, and not see themselves as leaders in the community. And he makes his argument in part from the Genesis story of Adam and Eve. “During instruction, a woman should be quiet and respectful. I am not giving permission for a woman to teach or to tell a man what to do. A woman ought not to speak, because Adam was formed first and Eve afterwards, and it was not Adam who was led astray but the woman who was led astray and fell into sin” (2:11-13).

While there is continual speculation about whether these words accurately reflect what Paul’s teaching was – some always say there is uncertainty as to whether these thoughts about women were added later by others -- we are clearly dealing with two issues that all Christians have to deal with: one is the level of authority to give to the words of scripture that seem to our differently-rooted cultural eyes to be wrong or out-dated; and the other has to do with whether the vision of truth Paul had was flawed in these matters and whether the Spirit of God has opened others to better insight.

Clearly the culture of the day was weighted against women having a leadership role, but over the years that culture has changed [mostly], and Quakers were in the forefront of that change.

George Fox’s insight was that to make arguments from the Adam and Eve story that Eve had been the one at fault and that Adam had been given authority over “woman” as a result meant that we were continuing to live “in the fall” and to ignore the fact that Christ had given us a way to overcome that “fallen state.” Here are two passages from his Journal that deal with the issue:

“Now this death which Adam fell into was a spiritual death; for by one man’s disobedience or offense, namely Adam’s, judgment came upon all men to condemnation.  So all men are under this judgment and condemnation in Adam in the Fall. . .they that do not believe in Christ; the Light, as he commands, (John 12:36); they abide in spiritual death and darkness, and under the judgment and condemnation in Adam in the Fall, in the perishing state.  But he that believes on the Son of God has everlasting Life, and passes from death to Life, shall not perish in darkness and is not condemned, but comes out of condemnation, etc.” (George Fox, Letters, 464).

“[O]thers . . . asked me whether it was not the command of God that a man must rule over his wife . ..  And did not the apostle say, ‘I permit not a woman to teach’? And where did we read of women elders and women disciples?  And it was an abuse to the elders to set up a women’s meeting.  But I told them that he and they were but elders in the Fall, ruling over their wives in the Fall,  . . .and man and woman were meet [suitable, appropriate]-helps (before they fell) and the image of God and righteousness and holiness; and so they are to be again in the restoration by Christ Jesus” (George Fox, Journal, 667).

To understand better how Fox saw the “life in Christ” as post-fall, you have to get into the idea of the fulfillment of Genesis’ “protoevangelium.”  If you are interested, see the “Genesis and John” paper at http://catholicquaker.blogspot.com/.

Genesis and John

I have done a lot of thinking about Genesis and John in recent weeks, partly because I am leading a Bible study at Westbury Monthly Meeting and we're working on Genesis, but also I am part of an adult study group at my local Catholic Church and we were doing the Book of John all winter; we just finished up about a month ago. In one of those moments that is very mysterious as we were going over the last words of Jesus on the cross, I began to see something I really hadn't seen before. Some things came together for me - some Quaker, some Catholic - a volatile mix. But it was an "opening" for me, a powerful one, so I thought I'd write it up.

OK, so to start, the words of Genesis 3:15 have been seen by Christians from the earliest days as prophetic - that one day the "Seed" [Offspring] of "the woman" would "bruise the head" of the serpent [evil power that alienates man from his creator]. For Fox and early Friends, this idea of the Seed - Christ, the Light and Word of God - meant that the power of evil over us was dashed in a fundamental way. Christ was the "Second Adam":

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

AND again:

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

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

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

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

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

But the Mary part – how did that come to be? It comes down to translations. The translation of 3:15 that I have in my Bible and that Fox had in his Bible [either the Geneva or the King James] was based on the Greek Septuagint [pre-Christian Jewish translation of the Torah from Hebrew to Greek]. Here the passage read, "I will put enmity between you [talking to the serpent] and the woman, and between your seed [offspring] and hers; He will crush/bruise your head, you (serpent) will bruise/strike his heel.” Most modern translations seem to use the word “offspring” rather than “seed” and this is important mainly because the text Fox used probably had “seed” and the idea of the “Seed” of Christ was one of the key terms Quakers used to refer to that indwelling presence of the redemptive power we should be living in. But the key thing here for the Second Adam idea is the use of the pronoun “He” which was seen by the early disciples and later by Fox as a prophecy of Christ’s role.

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

I knew that the opening of Genesis was very important to Fox and Friends. And I knew that the term “Seed” was just as linked to Genesis as “Light” and “Word” but I wondered if the first part of Genesis was so important to the author of John, were there not perhaps other references to it in other parts of John’s gospel. The first other passage I thought of was the miracle at Cana, Jesus first miracle and the beginning of his ministry. There had always been controversy over the question of why Jesus referred to his mother as “Woman” not mother dearest. And the note in my Jerusalem Bible says, “Unusual address from son to mother; the term is used again in 19:26 where there may be a reference to Gn 3:15, 20: Mary is the second Eve, ‘the mother of the living’.” And the only other mention of Mary in John is in John 19:26 when Jesus is on the Cross, and he again calls her “woman” – Jesus, “[s]eeing his mother and the disciple he loved standing near her, Jesus said to his mother, ‘Woman, this is your son’. Then to the disciple he said, ‘This is your mother’. And from that moment the disciple made a place for her in his home” (John 19:26-27). Putting together all of these passages blew my mind. Quakers had gotten the Second Adam insight and run with it, finding in it a theological basis for leading the charge back through the “flaming sword” that kept us out of Eden; but Catholics had seen that in accepting Mary, the woman who was the first to open herself utterly and completely to Christ’s life in her, we too - all of us who were Christ’s beloved disciples – could really join ourselves to them both.

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

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

May 1st Bible Study Meeting

As everyone knows, it was very frustrating trying to just get to the Meeting House last Sunday, with all the roads blocked off. We got there late, but there were four for about a half an hour - not long enough for such important material as is in the first three chapters of Genesis. I felt moved in meeting to pretty much go over the very important Quaker-related material I feel is in the text and I see more and more in these words. But the conversation was great. The following are observations I have made on the QuakerQuaker Blog site on these chapters:

There are many interesting things in the story of the "fall" but the things most interesting to me:

1. The nature of the "death" that Adam and Eve suffer as a result of their disobedience?
2. The "fallen" nature of our lives on this earth, and do we continue to live in that fallen world/nature?
3. What Christians and especially early Quakers understood about what you might call God's "Ur-Promise" [original/first promise made] in verse 3:15? This is called the "protoevangelium" in Catholic circles.

But first, I just want to point out something I think most writers have missed - the fact that there is a whole lot of "irony" and sophistication in the story. First of all, the serpent says to Eve, that the creator God has lied to them. God has told them if they eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they will "die." But the serpent says, "You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (2:4-5). And then when they both eat of the fruit, the text tells us "the eyes of both of them were opened." They see that they are naked and they feel ashamed. But God is not trying to keep them from being like gods; he has created them specifically to be like Him - the one and only God. And when the text tells us that their eyes were "opened" I think we should see this as irony. They have by their disobedience become less like Him and less able to see and less alive. Their fallen condition will be one of spiritual death, spiritual blindness and spiritual debasement. I think early Friends saw that these results of the fall were all internal. They have separated themselves from the divine nature God planted in them.

But then comes the promise (also called by early Latin speaking Christians the "protoevangelium" [original "good news"] - mysterious and embedded in the punishments God imposes - and this needs to be presented in one of the older translations to be appreciated in the Quaker context I am trying to present: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (KJ Version). This promise that someday a descendant of Eve - her "seed" - would defeat the serpent. Early Christians took this to be a prophesy of Christ's victory over sin. Christ was to be the second Adam, and his victory over the seed of the serpent (evil/sin/the fallen condition of man) would permit things to revert to the original intention God had for us - to be His presence on earth, to be faithful in all things to Him. Fox's famous quote -

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

It is because of Christ's victory over the serpent that Friends believed that spiritual "perfection" could be achieved, that the spiritual "death" could become life once more in us and the earth restored to become God's "kingdom" again. The testimonies of Friends are all elements of faithfulness that can only be achieved through this overcoming of our fallen condition: the equality of man and woman as it was meant to be (see Genesis 1), the peaceable kingdom, our ability to walk day to day with God as our guide.