Above the Coffee Shop

This Spring Dr. Lowery is allowing me to do a readings course through New Testament background material.  The bulk of my semester will include reading through all or parts of:

Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
Old Testament Apocrypha
Josephus
Philo
Mishnah
Dead Sea Scrolls
Tacitus

I really am looking forward to digging in to this material and I’m hoping that this blog will be a place to post a lot of reflections, as well as dialogue with others about the significance of these works. 

Happy Reading!

For those of you interested tonight is the first night of meeting with our core group for City of God Church.

As I’ve continued to work on my thesis on the meaning of the Olivet Discourse in Matthew I’ve become convinced that the controlling idea throughout the entire passage is the “coming of the son of man” (Mt. 24:27, 30, 37, 39, 44; 25:31).  Jesus also uses similar language throughout the parables of Matt. 25 in describing how the disciples should act until the “master or bridegroom comes.”

This fact has led me to several conclusion:

1.  It becomes almost impossible to artifically draw a line in the sand between the supposed events of 70 AD (Matt. 24:1-35), and those events that pertain to the “second coming” (Matt. 24:36-25:46).
2.  It seems to make much more sense that if Jesus speaks of the coming of the Son of Man throughout chapters 24 and 25 then he is probably referring to the same event.

The question then becomes how would a first century Jew have understood the phrase, “the coming of the Son of Man?”

While not going into too much detail there are several important references within 2nd Temple literature:

1.  Jesus favorite way of speaking about this coming was to combine a reference from Dan. 7:13-14 with Psalm 110:1.

“You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 26:64; cf. 24:30).

Interesting enough there are several references within Rabbinic literature (admittedly not contemporary with Jesus usage) that combine the same language (b. Sanh 96b-97a; Num. Rab. 13:14; Midr. Pss. 21:5; 93:1).  If this was a “technical” way of referring to the coming of the Messiah in Rabbinic literature is it not possible that Jesus was similarly addressing the coming of the Messiah with this type of language?

That’s all for now.  Have at it.  I hope to have more soon.

As I’ve continued working on my thesis dealing with Jesus’ teaching in the Olivet Discourse I’ve been continually pressed toward trying to understand Jesus’ own words and actions within the setting of Second Temple Judaism.  In his book “The Challenge of Jesus” Wright states…

“If we really believe in any sense in the incarnation of the Word, we are bound to take seriously the flesh taht the Word became.  And since that flesh was first-century Jewish flesh, we should rejoice in any and every advance in our understanding of first-century Judaism and seek to apply those insights to our reading of the Gospels” (p. 26).

If this is true of Jesus, the same is true of Paul.  This has led me to again consider the arguments of a group of scholars promoting something known as the New Perspective on Paul.  While there is no “ONE” New Perspective, this involves a group of scholars who are attempting to situate Paul within the world of First Century Judaism (not the other scholars not considered NPP are not), and has led them to several conclusions that would be different than the conclusions of traditional Protestant exegesis.

At the heart of their argument is that when Paul talks about “works of the law” in his writings he is not speaking against the law as this moral code where by people “climb the ladder” to earn their salvation.  Rather they define works of the law in Paul’s thought as those uniquely Jewish acts which functioned as boundary markers (e.g. Torah, Sabbath, Circumcision).

I still have a long way to go in my own understanding of this, but as I just finished reading Wright’s article on Galatians in his book “Justification” I had a couple of thoughts.

1.  Defining works of the law as boundary markers within Judaism does make good sense of the text.  In particular in 2:11-4:7.
2.  Wright seems to do a good job of attempting to understand a particular text within the larger arguments and flow of though in Paul.
3.  There are very few instances, at least in Galatians, where Wright does away with a traditional understanding of a passage.  Rather he highlights new areas of understanding, and how a traditional understanding may just be scratching the surface of the depth of a particular passage.  For example, while Galatians 2:15-21 is concerned about the way in which God has dealt with human sin, it is more importantly an argument flowing out of 2:11-14 in which Paul has denounced Peter’s action of separating from Gentiles.  Justification by faith is thus the grounds of entering into God’s new family for Jew and Gentile, and it addresses the major concern in Galatia of whether or not Gentiles need to be Jewish to be Christian.

These are just a few thoughts.  Hopefully comments and questions can help clarify this issue.  Happy studying.

Finding way too much good stuff in this opening chapter. Hopefully I can remember these.

I think we have enough churches being planted by means of music, drama, creative scheduling, sprightly narrative, and marketing savvy. And there are too few that are God-centered, truth-treasuring, Bible-saturated, Christ-exalting, cross-focused, Spirit-dependent, prayer-soaked, soul-winning, justice-pursuing congregations with a wartime mindset ready to lay down their lives for the salvation of the nations and the neighborhoods. There is a blood-earnest joy that sustains a church like this, and it comes only by embracing Christ-crucified as our righteousness.

John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ : Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness? (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2002), 33.