Also we should get a beer sometime, if you're ever in my part of Texas.

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Two powers in heaven preceded Philo in Second Temple writings. He didn't invent it. Philo was synthesizing two extant traditions - Plato, and the OT. Philo was a contemporary of St John - born in 30 BC, died in 50 AD. What's more likely, that they both were formed by the same tradition, or that St John read Philo and said "yeah this seems like the same stuff the Lord was talking about"?

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Ha! So you admit John and Phylo were similarly influenced!

Just kidding. Let me take a step back and reframe. In the world around Second Temple Israel were two major cultures. On the west you had the Egyptian/Greek/Roman culture that valued philosophy and logic as well as performing arts and storytelling. On the East you had the Assyrian/Babylonian/Persian cultures that were much more legalistic and into things like astrology. Not saying these were monoliths, but that a common cultural thread could be followed. Like say, Rome to Britain to the US, or China influencing the culture of all of southeast Asia. You also had the original Hebrew culture at the core, but the big movements in the Second Temple period and after had heavy influence from one side or the other.

When you look at Christianity and rabbinic Judaism, to me it is clear that Christianity had a very "Greek" influence while the rabbi's had a very "Babylonian" influence. For instance, the matter of truth. The Greeks taught and sought truth through philosophy, but they actually believed in a single unified truth that could be discovered.

OTOH, you won't find talks about "truth" in the rabbinical writings. In fact, there is a story in the Talmud where the rabbis are disputing over matter of religious law. God chimes in on one side, and they politely ask Him to butt out of the argument. Rabbinical Judaism is mostly focused on practicality, immediate implementation, and the overall question of "what is the Jewish way to do things?". This is similar to what you see in the Babylonian legal tradition. Case law is situational, immediate and with direct consequences. Little thought is given to broad, sweeping principles when making decisions about particulars. That's also why you can see Jews become very agitated when arguing about things like mealtime prayers, but they will have pleasant disagreements about the afterlife and the nature of the soul for hours. The focus is on the immediate and practical and not the abstract. You can see other signs of near Eastern influences too. Like the easy acceptance of technicalities when deciding cases and the emphasis on astrology

Zobel said:

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Also we should get a beer sometime, if you're ever in my part of Texas.

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I like beer. Beer is great. I have no idea where your part of Texas is, but feel free to hit me up if you're around the Ft Worth area. Hopefully you'll catch me in a work lull

Yes, I agree that St John and Philo were similarly influenced - by the dominant understanding of a trinitarian view of Yahweh in the Second Temple Period. Philo chose to synthesize his Judaism with Platonic philosophy. St John did not. They're both referring to the same Hebrew concept of Logos, the Word of the Lord. St John is saying he met and came to know the Word of the Lord as Jesus Christ. Philo is saying that the Word of the Lord is the same thing as Plato's Logos. It's not the same claim.

I think you're looking at the way things were centuries after Christ and projecting that backwards. "Seeking truth through philosophy" is a very very anachronistic way to describe what Christians taught.

St Paul was familiar with Greek and Greek philosophy and writing. He didn't change religions or beliefs. Same with all the Apostles when they met Christ, they didn't come to a new religion. They continued in the religious tradition they were in. Its hard to suggest St Paul was Hellenized.

I think we're talking past each other. Because I don't see how you can look at Paul who was born and raised outside the Holy Land in Anatolia immersed in Greek language and culture, was a Roman citizen, and was able to easily travel across the entire Roman Empire without linguistic, cultural or legal difficulties (aside from persecution for preaching Christianity) and say he wasn't Hellenized. He wasn't Hellenized in the Maccabean sense of attending nude gymnasiums and baths and eating pork, but he was clearly knowledgable and comfortable with Greek language and culture

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Yes, I agree that St John and Philo were similarly influenced - by the dominant understanding of a trinitarian view of Yahweh in the Second Temple Period. Philo chose to synthesize his Judaism with Platonic philosophy. St John did not. They're both referring to the same Hewbrew concept of Logos, the Word of the Lord. St John is saying he met and came to know the Word of the Lord as Jesus Christ. Philo is saying that the Word of the Lord is the same thing as Plato's Logos. It's not the same claim.

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Do you have any other sources in that time frame talking about the Logos as the mediator between God and man besides Philo? I've never seen any other writings from that time period that are anywhere close to Philo's ideas about the Logos, but then again I'm not the best read person in the world either. When I read of Philo it just lines up so well with the Gospel of John, which was written at last 50 years after Philo's writings, and with later conceptions of the Word in Christianity. It seemed like a clear antecedent to me, and now I'm curious to see any related material dating earlier.

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He wasn't Hellenized in the Maccabean sense of attending nude gymnasiums and baths and eating pork, but he was clearly knowledgable and comfortable with Greek language and culture

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Language yes, comfortable with culture no. Culture was the point of contention in the Maccabean sense so this sentence reads as a bit of a contradiction. I don't think you can draw a hard line between religion and culture at all. St Paul is clearly Jewish, not Greek, in his thinking - regardless of his fluency in Greek.

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Do you have any other sources in that time frame talking about the Logos as the mediator between God and man besides Philo? I've never seen any other writings from that time period that are anywhere close to Philo's ideas about the Logos, but then again I'm not the best read person in the world either. When I read of Philo it just lines up so well with the Gospel of John, which was written at last 50 years after Philo's writings, and with later conceptions of the Word in Christianity. It seemed like a clear antecedent to me, and now I'm curious to see any related material dating earlier.

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No because Philo's ideas are a synthesis of Plato.

What I would point to for what St John is talking about is not Philo but the scriptures. St John's prologue picks up directly on the language of Wisdom in creation in Proverbs 8, on the Word of the Lord being a Person who can come to people, stand by their beds (1 Sam 3:10), touch them (Jeremiah 1:9), who is the Angel of the Lord (Gen 16:11-13, Gen 22, Gen 31, Exodus 3, Judges 6 etc etc) who is also Yahweh who could appear and eat as a man (Genesis 18:1-8) or speak to a man face to face (Exodus 33:11, Deuteronomy 34:10, Numbers 12:8), or touch and push them (Numbers 22) ...who is a man (Exodus 15:3 - "Yahweh is a man of war").

Once you fix all this background of scripture the prologue is clear - this Person who we see who is Yahweh but different (no one can see Yahweh and live but they can see the Angel, who is Yahweh and speaks as Yahweh) who Israel came to know, this Person - The Word - who became Flesh and was seen, known, touched, as Jesus Christ. Contemporary Jews had categories, shelf space, for these beliefs. Philo filled those shelves with Plato's concept of logos. St John and the Apostles correctly filled them with Jesus Christ.

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Language yes, comfortable with culture no. Culture was the point of contention in the Maccabean sense so this sentence reads as a bit of a contradiction. I don't think you can draw a hard line between religion and culture at all. St Paul is clearly Jewish, not Greek, in his thinking - regardless of his fluency in Greek.

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I get the same idea about language and culture. Like I said, we know Paul spoke fluent Greek, grew up in the Anatolia with a lot of Greeks and Romans, was a Roman citizen, was widely traveled, and he was very familiar with the Roman legal system. All of this bespeaks at least a familiarity and I would argue high comfort level of operating in that society. These qualities made him an excellent Apostle to the Gentiles as well as Romanized and Hellenized Jews. He was comfortable with their cultures and was not put off by it. Contrast that with the original Disciples, most of whom were young Hebrew agricultural workers who had never left Israel. We see the clear difference in Acts when other Hebrew Christians showed a revulsion to the gentiles and Paul clearly did not.

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Once you fix all this background of scripture the prologue is clear - this Person who we see who is Yahweh but different (no one can see Yahweh and live but they can see the Angel, who is Yahweh and speaks as Yahweh) who Israel came to know, this Person - The Word - who became Flesh and was seen, known, touched, as Jesus Christ. Contemporary Jews had categories, shelf space, for these beliefs. Philo filled those shelves with Plato's concept of logos. St John and the Apostles correctly filled them with Jesus Christ.

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You say this like the concept of the Logos of the Apostles and the concept of the Logos by Philo are different, but they seem pretty much identical to me. In fact, I don't really see anything about Philo's Logos that would be disagreable to even a medieval or modern theologian, other than it being somewhat unrefined. Is there something I'm missing there that makes Philo's Logos incompatible with the Christian Logos?

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He was comfortable with their cultures and was not put off by it.

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I think this is just semantics perhaps but I don't think we need to oversell it. St Paul was probably used to living amongst gentiles, but their cultural practices (food, dress, worship, ritual, sex) were definitely off-putting to him. He doesn't mince words about them, they're not OK. But he clearly sees the difference between the people and the demonic influence and slavery (Ephesians 6:12) and is disturbed by the idolatry (Acts 17:6). Other Judaeans were not so quick to come to appreciate the once-for-all atonement through which God made clean the gentiles ("What God has made clean, you do not call unclean").

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You say this like the concept of the Logos of the Apostles and the concept of the Logos by Philo are different, but they seem pretty much identical to me. In fact, I don't really see anything about Philo's Logos that would be disagreable to even a medieval or modern theologian, other than it being somewhat unrefined. Is there something I'm missing there that makes Philo's Logos incompatible with the Christian Logos?

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There's always been a debate between the compatibility of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity. The fact that multiple times in history people have set out specifically to harmonize them shows that they are not inherently homogenous.

I would say its about what is influencing what.

OT Scripture + Plato = Philo's Logos
OT Scripture + Christ Jesus = St John's Logos.

The reason Philo is important is because for him, when he encountered Plato's concept of the Logos he said - Ah, this is the Wisdom and Word of God we see in the scriptures. St John did the same when he encountered Christ. Both of these show that Jews of that time had this conceptual space. Modern Rabbinic Judaism does not, it specifically has rejected the idea.

From the Introduction to Daniel Boyarin's "The Jewish Gospels"

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Jesus, when he came, came in a form that many, many Jews were expecting: a second divine figure incarnated in a human. The question was not "Is a divine Messiah coming?" but only "Is this carpenter from Nazareth the One we are expecting?" Not surprisingly, some Jews said yes and some said no. Today we call the first group Christians and the second group Jews, but it was not like that then, not at all.

Everybody then - both those who accepted Jesus and those who didn't - was Jewish (or Israelite, the actual ancient terminology). Actually, there was no Judaism at all, nor was there Christianity. In fact, the idea of a "religion," that is, one of a number of religions to which one might or might not belong, had not come onto the scene yet and would not for centuries. By the third century (or even earlier) Christianity became a name for what Christians called themselves, but Jews were not to have a name for their religion in one of their own languages until sometime in the modern period, perhaps the eighteenth or nineteenth century. Until then terms meaning Judaism as the religion of the Jews were only used by non-Jews.

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I wish us to see that Christ too - the divine Messiah - is a Jew. Christology, or the ideas about Christ, is also a Jewish discourse and is not - until much later - an anti-Jewish discourse at all. Many Israelites at the time of Jesus were expecting a Messiah who would be divine and come to earth in the form of a human. Thus the basic underlying thoughts from which both the Trinity and the incarnation grew are there in the very world into which Jesu was born and in which he was written about in the Gospels of Mark and John.

...One difference I expect this discussion to make is that Jews and Christians will need to begin to tell different stories about each other in the future. One one hand, Christians will no longer be able to claim that Jews willfully, as a body, rejected Jesus as God. Such beliefs about Jews have led to a deep, painful, and bloody history of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. Many ancient Jews simply accepted Jesus as God, and they did so because their beliefs and expectations had led them there. Others, while holding similar ideas about God, found it hard to belief that this particular, seemingly undistinguished, Jew was the one they were waiting for.

On the other hand, Jews will have to stop vilifying Christian ideas about God as simply a collection of "un-Jewish," perhaps pagan, and in any case bizarre fantasies. God in a human body indeed! Recognizing these ideas as deeply rooted in the ancient complex of Jewish religious ideas may not lead us Jews to accept them but should certainly help us realize that Christian ideas are not alien to us; they are our own offspring and sometimes, perhaps, among the most ancient of all Israelite-Jewish ideas.

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For moderns, religions are fixed sets of convictions with well-defined boundaries. We usually ask ourselves: What convictions does Christianity forbid or what practices does it require?...Such an understanding, of course, makes nonsense the idea that one could be both a Jew and a Christian, rendering it a contradiction in terms...this conception just doesn't always fit the facts, and specifically [it] doesn't represent well the situation of Judaism and Christianity in the early centuries at all.

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By now almost everyone recognizes that the historical Jesus was a Jew who followed ancient Jewish ways. There is also growing recognition that the gospels themselves and even the letters of Paul are part and parcel of the religion of the people of Israel in the first century AD. What is less recognized is to what extent the ideas surrounding what we call Christology, the story of Jesus as the divine-human Messiah, were also part (if not parcel) of Jewish diversity at the time.

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Listening to this I was reminded of this convo. Take a listen if you get a chance.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7wDGywOzNtsPUnlQIO9V2h?si=9gkX4wzRRRCHiCW45GkKeA

Will check it out

Finished it this weekend. It was definitely a good listen. I'll admit that I always conceptualized "the Word of the Lord came to *some prophet*" as a vision or a disembodied voice. It makes a lot more sense and is more compatible with the NT to have that phrase mean that Jesus made a personal appearance to them in some sort of physical form.

It was also sort of nice to listen to them break down a lot of different Scripture and context. Even with my sola scriptura upbringing, there was still a vast amount of built-in Protestant tradition. Even now I don't realize that it's baked into my thinking until I hear someone else say something entirely different. That happened a lot during this podcast.

Finally, it seems the amount of Greek influence on early Christianity is a somewhat touchy subject to the Catholics and Orthodox. Apparently the Protestant reformers used this as a line of attack during the Reformation and everyone is still a bit sore about it. Just know that I don't think Greek influence is necessarily a bad thing. I don't think any one culture contains that entirety of God's goodness, even a very Hebrew rooted one. All cultures contain good and bad in some proportion. There's a lot of great things in the Greek culture that aren't in the Hebrew culture. The abstract ideas of universals are a great example. You'd never get capitalized Truth, Goodness, or Love from a purely Hebrew culture. That culture just isn't wired that way.

Greek influence could just as easily be described as pagan influence. That's where the issue lies. There's nothing wrong with baptizing technical language to describe things, but the question is whether it's Christianity being expressed using borrowed words, or a pagan culture blending with the revelation of God to produce a *******ized or diluted or adulterated new thing.

In my mind, the ancient Hebrews were just as pagan as anyone else until Abraham. Then God co-opted Hebrew ideas and culture to make a relationship with his people. I think animal sacrifice is a good example. There's nothing particularly unique or necessary about animal sacrifice when it comes to worshipping God, but that system can be used to express worship for God. Later on, we see a similar example with the Kings. There's nothing particular godly about having a king. Samuel says on God's behalf that this is a pagan idea and they don't need it. They insist and then God works through David to fulfill his promises of conquest, and then he works through Josiah and Hezekiah. So God co-opted the idea of monarchy and used it to His purposes to the extent that those kings cooperated.

The only way a pagan influence becomes anything but a pagan influence is when God co-opts it and makes it holy. So while abstract universals where originally a pagan Greek idea, they were co-opted and used to make more perfect our understanding of God. All cultures are limited. Taking the best parts of each based on what we already know about goodness can help us understand Him better, but even if we incorporated all the goodness of every human culture we'd still fall horribly short of understanding it all. I think the key is discernment. Using what we already know about God and Christ to sift the good from the bad in pagan cultures.

I think we might be talking about different things with the same words.

"Pagan" in the context of the scriptures is synonymous with "demonic". So, no, I don't think God co-opts demonic ideas. But I don't think knowledge in and of itself is pagan, or demonic - meaning, ideas, concepts like universals or philosophical frameworks aren't evil even if revealed by demons, just like music and metallurgy aren't evil even though the scriptures imply they were taught by rebellious angels.

"Unique or necessary" isn't really how I think we should approach these things. When God teaches people how He wants to be worshipped, He told them to eat with Him. Animal sacrifices are just one part, but the core of this worship is food. Killing animals was to make them into food - but there are other sacrifices which were food. What was taught by God was that He desired close fellowship, relationship - and a means to achieve it through managing sin.

I do think there is something Godly about having a King. That's a bit of American-Puritan influence seeping in here. There's nothing wrong with having a King, indeed we Christians have one King in Christ. In Him the Davidic throne and the throne of Yahweh are merged. Just like the Tabernacle was an image of the Heavenly, the throne of the King of Israel was supposed to be an image of the Heavenly. The problem was not with the idea of a king, it was that they already had a king - "they have rejected Me as their king". They didn't merely want a king - read closely - they wanted a king like the other nations had. Even more particularly, they rejected Yahweh as the one who fought for them, they wanted "a king to judge us, to go out before us, and to fight our battles." That was what Yahweh did - "The Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight for you" "it was the Lord your God who fought for you." They wanted a king they could control, to fight when they wanted to fight. In this, I think you have it backwards. There are eternal realities which we image here. Man was to image God, in all ways. Kingship is one way, worship another. Tying both paragraphs together, we should know there are offerings in the heavenly tabernacle - offered by a high priest - who is also a king!

"Culture" as you are using it seems to be a thing not mentioned here. I don't care about what people eat or dress, or some idea about how flexible their language is for expressing theology or complex ideas. Norms of life, religion, national identity are all the same in the ancient world. You can't sift good from bad in a real way. If you stop offering sacrifices to your people's god, you're not longer a part of that people. If you want to be an Israelite, you have to be circumcised and eat the Passover. That's what constituted and continues to constitute Israel as a people. This is why people stopped being pagans when they became Christians. They became a new people. Just like Israel. Because its the same. And we're full circle.

To clarify one thing - God absolutely does reach us or speak to us in ways we can understand. To your point there is a reason that Genesis is written as a long analogy to a pagan temple consecration ritual. Or that the Law was given in the form of a suzerainty treaty between God and Israel. Or that Christ spoke in agricultural parables. But there's a limit to this, I think.

Just for the sake of a good discussion:

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I think animal sacrifice is a good example. There's nothing particularly unique or necessary about animal sacrifice when it comes to worshipping God, but that system can be used to express worship for God.

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I've never understood animal sacrifices, other than for the unusual fact that God seems to require the shedding of blood for the remission/forgiveness of sins. But I don't think that God or the Hebrews coopted the idea of animal sacrifices from other cultures, since it dates to the very dawn of mankind. God himself apparently killed animals in order to clothe Adam and Eve, and then God accepted Abel's offering of the firstborn of his flock but rejected Cain's offering of the fruit of the ground.

Why? I have no idea, but it would seem that the idea was not borrowed from other cultures.

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Later on, we see a similar example with the Kings. There's nothing particular godly about having a king. Samuel says on God's behalf that this is a pagan idea and they don't need it. They insist and then God works through David to fulfill his promises of conquest, and then he works through Josiah and Hezekiah. So God co-opted the idea of monarchy and used it to His purposes to the extent that those kings cooperated.

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Again, I'm not sure that God "coopted" the idea of monarchy. The idea was always there; God simply grudgingly allowed the Israelites to adopt it. Although I don't have the references at hand, and my memory may be incorrect, but weren't there prophecies of an Israelite king prior to Saul? Perhaps I'm wrong on that, though.

What I don't understand is why God considered a kingship wrong. Sure, it always turns to tyranny and evil, but the alternative wasn't working. The Israelites were being destroyed by a bunch of enemies, the Canaanites, the Philistines (who, interestingly, were most likely Europeans and showed up in Canaan just after the Israelites did), and the Amalekites who were moving into Canaan en masse. The old system of the prophets providing military leadership on a "just in time" basis simply wasn't working. The prophets were always a day late and a dollar short and had a difficult time unifying all of Israel to meet the existential threats that were facing Israel. Sure, Israel under the prophets could win a major battle or two, but they couldn't truly remove the enemy and resolve the threats. It wasn't until Kings Saul and David that the Philistines were finally defeated and removed as a threat.

Israel's desire for a king is similar to the reason we have a standing army today - sometimes it simply takes too long to mobilize.

I meant pagan as in anything non-Christian and non-Jewish. It was pretty common early on to refer to Greek philosophy as pagan, even if it didn't get into any sort of theological stuff. I also don't think that God co-opts demonic things.

The King discussion is a little odd. In principle, God was the ruler of Israel, but it wasn't exactly a kingship like what happened later. There was the constant priesthood, and then God would raise up a Judge whenever necessary for political or military reasons. Then things would go back to a loose sort of tribal structure until the next Judge and the next crisis. So while God was definitely sovereign, I think it misses my point to call Him their king. What happened with Samuel is a classic monarchy with a human holding total power and passing that to his children.

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I've never understood animal sacrifices, other than for the unusual fact that God seems to require the shedding of blood for the remission/forgiveness of sins. But I don't think that God or the Hebrews coopted the idea of animal sacrifices from other cultures, since it dates to the very dawn of mankind. God himself apparently killed animals in order to clothe Adam and Eve, and then God accepted Abel's offering of the firstborn of his flock but rejected Cain's offering of the fruit of the ground.

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Some of the modern understanding of the OT sacrifices is a result of medieval theological framework being read backward into the text. I think it's a pretty clear case that at least part of this is just in error. When you strip away the theological accretions and read the text with fresh eyes - or better yet, when you have an alternative understanding to compare and contrast - you can see it in a very different light.

For one thing, it is good to start with the fact that animal sacrifices were only one kind of sacrifice. And even for sin offerings, not all required an animal to die (e.g., Lev 5:11). And further that in every single case no sin was ever placed on an animal which was then sacrificed - this seems to be a peculiar and in my opinion frankly incorrect interpretation of the laying on of hands on the animal to be sacrificed. The only time sin is placed on an animal is in the Day of Atonement ritual, and that animal is explicitly unclean and not to be sacrificed to God but sent away (Lev 16:7-10, 20-22). You can't sacrifice something unclean to God, so sin cannot be on the animal which is then killed.

What all the sacrifices do have in common is that they are food. I think the best understanding of what the purpose is is recognizing that sins breach the fellowship and create a wall or separation between God and man, and the Law is showing ways to restore that fellowship. Which is why they are always contingent upon confession of sin and repentance, and then the sacrifice comes as part of restoration of fellowship with God and the community. This is why unrepentant sin results in the expulsion from the community, because as God dwells there the sin cannot, or God will leave as He says and eventually is forced to do. The meal is fellowship, which extends into the Christian understanding of the Eucharist, and expands beyond sin offerings to all of the sacrifices, good and bad, and the feasts, and manna, and the showbread. To wit: Yahweh is the God who feeds His people, unlike the pagan gods who require to be fed from their people.

God didn't reject Cain's offering because it wasn't meat - Abel offered a better sacrifice, but St John tells us the problem with Cain is that his deeds were evil (1 John 3:12). God approves and even requires grain offerings.

So then you might ask, why the blood? Why is blood involved? The answer to my understanding is that sin is death, a disease of decay, chaos, corruption. The antipole to this is life and order. Christ is the light, and the light is life (cf John 1:4, 8:12, and Genesis 1:3) and sin deprives us of this. Further, the life which God breathed into creation through the Spirit is the animating, binding, continuing force of existence and being (cf Colossians 1:16-17), and for living things this is tied to the blood. As the scriptures says, the life is in the blood (Gen 9:4, Lev 17:11,14) so blood is used as a mean of cleansing, covering, and removing the residual taint, filth, corruption, evil of sins and sin itself - it's sort of sloshed everywhere constantly in the Tabernacle / Temple, and used explicitly for this purpose in the day of Atonement ritual (Lev 16). And with that in mind, you can read John 6:53, Hebrews 9:22 with new eyes.

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What I don't understand is why God considered a kingship wrong. Sure, it always turns to tyranny and evil, but the alternative wasn't working. The Israelites were being destroyed by a bunch of enemies, the Canaanites, the Philistines (who, interestingly, were most likely Europeans and showed up in Canaan just after the Israelites did), and the Amalekites who were moving into Canaan en masse. The old system of the prophets providing military leadership on a "just in time" basis simply wasn't working. The prophets were always a day late and a dollar short and had a difficult time unifying all of Israel to meet the existential threats that were facing Israel. Sure, Israel under the prophets could win a major battle or two, but they couldn't truly remove the enemy and resolve the threats. It wasn't until Kings Saul and David that the Philistines were finally defeated and removed as a threat.

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God did not consider a kingship wrong. He was their king, and explicitly identifies Himself this way to Samuel. The people were rejecting the kingship of the Lord over them. This is the problem.

The reason the alternative wasn't working is because the people were not keeping the Torah. They were not being faithful to Yahweh, they were not living in His ways, they weren't seeking Him to fight for them. He's very clear on the deal in that regard. The story of the Judges is one of a spiraling descent into chaos and sin. Each time the people rebel, they suffer the consequences of this rebellion (cf Judges 13 "the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, so the LORD gave them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years"). They then call out and repent, Yahweh raises a judge to rectify the situation (the scriptural understanding of judgment as restoration of the way things should be, righteousness versus a juridical understanding). But each time its worse and worse. To the point that Jephthah openly recognized Chemosh as a valid god who can give land like Yahweh, and apparently sacrifices his daughter in a way neither asked for nor wanted by God. Later Samson's father doesn't even seem to know who Yahweh is and it's like he wants to worship the Angel of the Lord alongside Yahweh. So the problem is quite clear - what wasn't working was doing evil so that Yahweh does not fight for them. When He does, its always clear that He is the one winning victory, not them. Over and over.

So the solution was not a mighty king. They wanted Saul because he was tall and powerful, but without the Lord that was no guarantee of victory. It says again and again things like Yahweh has the power to help or to cast down (Cf 2 Chronicles 25:8). Saul isn't the one who finally finishes defeating the nephilim - David is. But David wasn't a mighty warrior by appearances, and Yahweh is the one who defeats Goliath - David is clear on this point: "I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the LORD's, and He will give you into our hand." (1 Sam 17:45-47).

The Lord says why they want a king - because they rejected Him as their king. And yet through their rebellion, He uses it for good to raise up a King.

Good responses to both points, Zobel. Thank you.

I especially like this:

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The story of the Judges is one of a spiraling descent into chaos and sin. Each time the people rebel, they suffer the consequences of this rebellion (cf Judges 13 "the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, so the LORD gave them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years"). They then call out and repent, Yahweh raises a judge to rectify the situation (the scriptural understanding of judgment as restoration of the way things should be, righteousness versus a juridical understanding). But each time its worse and worse.

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My take from that is that if Israel had truly stayed faithful to God he would have delivered them from the Philistines, the Canaanites, and the Amalekites, even without any kind of centralized system of military defense. That makes no sense from a military or strategic viewpoint, but that was the whole point of what God was doing with the nation of Israel. He was showing them that his power was Supernatural and supreme and that relying upon what the other nations did, or even logic and common sense, was not what he wanted.

And even though the Israelites were wrong, I understand why they did what they did without condoning it, and even see parallels to today. The Israelites were nomadic or semi nomadic peoples who were living in tents probably all the way through the time of the separation of the kingdom. They were surrounded by extraordinarily wealthy nations. They probably asked themselves why those nations were so wealthy and they were, to their own eyes, so poor. From the logic of that day, the answer probably seem to be the gods that each nation followed. That is, the Canaanites were wealthy because their gods were more powerful than Yahweh.

It seems that Christians today are doing the same thing. We turn away from God for a number reasons, not least of which is the materialism and wealth offered by not staying true to God.

Right - that bit about relying on Him is really deeply embedded. It's in the Law of how they are to do battle - read Deuteronomy 20.

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When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the LORD your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And when you draw near to the battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the people and shall say to them, 'Hear, O Israel, today you are drawing near for battle against your enemies: let not your heart faint. Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them, for the LORD your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.' Then the officers shall speak to the people, saying, 'Is there any man who has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it. And is there any man who has planted a vineyard and has not enjoyed its fruit? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man enjoy its fruit. And is there any man who has betrothed a wife and has not taken her? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man take her.' And the officers shall speak further to the people, and say, 'Is there any man who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go back to his house, lest he make the heart of his fellows melt like his own.' And when the officers have finished speaking to the people, then commanders shall be appointed at the head of the people.

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Another example is the story of Gideon in Judges 7 where God says "The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, 'My own hand has saved me.'" and whittles them down from 32,000 to 300.

The story of the OT is one long cautionary tale. If you read the OT and do the opposite of what the people there do, you'll be pretty safe most of the time.

What always gets me about Gideon is that after all the miraculous stuff that God did for and through him, he ended up worshiping idols anyway.

Which is right in line with the theme of Judges...circling the drain the entire time. Or really the story of Israel to begin with.

Zobel said:

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Which is right in line with the theme of Judges...circling the drain the entire time. Or really the story of Israel to begin with.

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And perhaps the story of Christians and the Church/church as well.

I always keep in mind that only a remnant will be saved.

There is always a faithful remnant. I wouldn't be keen on judging who that is… better to just make sure you're a part of it.

Zobel said:

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There is always a faithful remnant. I wouldn't be keen on judging who that is… better to just make sure you're a part of it.

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Exactly, and you too!

Long video but interesting. If you liked this, Daniel Boyarin's Borderlines covers similar topics - though it is quite scholarly / dense.

Yukon Cornelius said:

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Read Zechariah chapter 12. Clearly what's described there hasn't happened yet. And it specifically talks about the House of David realizing they killed Jesus. Which again hasn't happened yet.

""And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn."
Zechariah 12:10 ESV

At some point in the future they will corporately recognize Jesus as their messiah

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Surely you don't think that is what Zechariah was really referencing?

Yukon Cornelius said:

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"So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather, through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous."
Romans 11:11 ESV

So who are these are now jealous?

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Israel does not include "Judah", not does it include "Israel".

codker92 said:

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Yukon Cornelius said:

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"So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather, through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous."
Romans 11:11 ESV

So who are these are now jealous?

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Israel does not include "Judah", not does it include "Israel".

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I think all of the ancient semitic peoples there intermarried/commingled over time, but the ancient people of Israel included the jews in Judah though the latter only later joined them as something of a state (ostensibly part of the 12 tribes?) eventually, as a nominal nation/culture, no? I don't think it matters much but of course that little section of land has been ruled by/governed by so many different nations/people/cultures since the 10th century BC it is really tough to define "ancient Israel" without a date range.

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Isaiah 5:12-13 And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands. Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.

Isaiah 10:24 Therefore thus saith the Lord God of hosts, O my people that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian: he shall smite thee with a rod, and shall lift up his staff against thee, after the manner of Egypt

Romans 11:1-4 I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.

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From an ethnic or racial/genetic standpoint I don't think there is a real 'jewish' people, and modern israel is a pluralistic republic with no racial/genetic components to it, of course.