A Drone Cam Flies over NT Times

[EarlyActs]

A DRONECAM TOUR OF THE 1ST CENTURY
Many difficult sayings and expressions in the NT are not about our spiritual life as much as about those believers unhooking from Judaism
Marcus Sanford, Interplans.net, May 2022

There is a general sentiment that religion has a wayof going overboard, of being irrational. But what the Christian believer may not realize when they read the NT is that most of it is just that: a way of detangling from Judaism. If you take an expression from this detangling and use it some other way—for ex., for a person who needs marriage help—you might end up saying something inside-down-out--forward, whatever that means!

Let me start with two illustrations from modern times, which, though modern, may transport you right back to 1st century times and issues. First, an incident captured about tabaski in Senegal Africa in the 1990s.Tabaski is an annual Muslim feast day inwhich an animal is killed and roasted in a sort of blurred reading of Leviticus, as you often find in Islam. The village is supposed to go outside and all lay hands on it—a transfer of sins. The blood drains into the ground, to “forget” each other’s sins. It is starting to look like ancient Judaism’s day of atonement, and everyone is in a nice holiday mood. However, the travel documentary where I saw this noticed that the very next day, some of the same people were at each other’s necks again. So now the ceremony had only been what the letter of Hebrews calls ‘a reminder of sins.’ The good will was gone. I relate this story so that you can grasp something of what the worship system was like for Jesus’ audience.

Most of what you read in the NT (New Testament) is for people raised that way.

Second, I have a personal and hilarious incident to recount. I had been single several years and was on a dating site and came across a very nice Messianic Jewish woman in a city across the water from me in Washington; she was in Canada. “Chat” was now available so we talked for several hours, and had many common beliefs and visions. It was going great. I turned to the question of trying to meet and the only transportation there was a ferry with a minimum schedule in that season. I would have to stay over night. So when I mentioned coming to meet her and stay over night, she froze and said that wouldn’t be possible; she would have to talk to her elders. Of course, I thought there was some issue about the staying overnight thing. “Well, she said, there’s something I haven’t asked you about. You see, I can’t meet with you if you believe that Peter actually ate the foodmentioned in his vision in Acts 10-11. It’s OK if you believe that he went to Gentile homes, but if youbelieve that, we can’t talk any further.”I don’t think she realized what impact this had on me. I don’t mean romantically; it was disappointing, of course. But I was and am a NT historian and so I also just realized something that took this whole exchange right back to the beginning of the Christian movement in Acts! She and the elders had just done to me what was done to many Christians, usually by Christian Jews who used to be Pharisee! You will find this in Acts 11:1-3. Your fellowship was hung on a condition left over from Judaism. Most readers today would say ‘what on earth?’—and that is because the NT was written to help that kind of people out of that irrationality.So I wanted you to see that these kinds of issues can be real right to today.

And so when reading the NT, we want to bear in mind, that it is not slogans for direct statements modern north American times, but rather often aboutunconnecting from problems like the ones just mentioned here.

Before you dismiss the NT or think I have dismissed it, please bear in mind that many common sense solutions to our problems are available, that don’t need us to mangle a NT line to fix them. Jesus even did this, you know, when he said things like ‘tomorrow will worry about itself.’That is not in Torah (Moses) or Wisdom (Proverbs, Psalms) but it is wisdom.What our modern audience will appreciate much more is knowing that there really was a ‘religious’ layer at work there in a passage and that NT faith was free of that and had moved on. So with that in mind, here are some examples.

First from general life and fellowship. No matter how many times you have heard them repeated one way, you should listen to get closer to them here.

Cont.

 

[EarlyActs]

2:
“I can do all things”This one is from the issue about food that was cooked for pagan idols. Paul was trying to find a way to show that while some people knew the idols were empty, others were incensed that the practice took place and wouldn’t touch the food sold in markets nearby these temples. Now we come to the expression. He meant that there were times that he would not confuse a young believer who thought the practice was evil; he would abstain. At other times he was with strong believers who knew the idols were void. For them, it was a way of ignoring the voided belief, while the weak believers were giving it power. Paul could do both things through his knowledge of Christ, but never just tried to have more knowledge than the other person, because knowledge makes a person proud. Love builds the other person.

The saying has nothing to do with your financial or personal potential, nor really with any other situation you might be in; you need to be in a very similar cultural situation to properly use the expression. I use this example to show how far we might be from the real meaning, all the way through these examples.

“The apostles were uneducated”Our drone will now go from Corinth to Jerusalem and detour to Colossae. On this one, we must understand how the expression was used in the student-training of Judaism at the time. Everyone needed to be listed by a known rabbi and his followers. It would be very prestigious for example to be in the following of Gamaliel, who was a follower of Hillel. If you couldn’t trace your list, you were discredited.All we have in this expression is the statement that was meant to undercut the powerful teaching of Jesus. Jesus was not on a list! He did not stay in the system and was not part of the ongoing string.Yet he was known as a teacher and rabbi.

So what you have is the official system saying ‘these people are outside out the official system.’ It does not mean they avoided training or preparation.Besides the fully-reported years with Jesus, we have the following period that is underreported: for 40 days between the resurrection and Pentecost, the apostles were taught what Moses and the Prophets meant. Where do we find that in detail? In the first quotes of the OT (Moses and the Prophets) by the apostles. By Acts 15, there are some 20 quotes. Romans, Galatians and Hebrews are thick also with quotation. The NT uses the OT 2500 times. It would probably take 2 years of study to get up to speed. The 40 days provided probably about 300 hours of training to the disciples. Jesus waited until after the resurrection for it, as he said.

These early Acts quotes favor Ps 2, 16, 110 and 118, and there is substantial material there. What Jesus said about 110 stopped Judaism in its tracks, because Israel’s prized figure could no longer be David as they knew it. God can use the ‘least of these’ but he does work powerfully through those who are honestly prepared! Notice how much it helped Peter: he is not absorbed in self-pity about his colossal failure. He says nothing about his own experience of change, though he was very changed.

Let’s look a similar one before we leave this topic of learning: ‘be careful that no one discredits you though vain philosophy.’ Once you get familiar with Colossians (this line is from ch. 2), you realize that Paul was contesting what you might call a neo-Judaism. There were people who claimed to have talked to the same angels that delivered the Torah to start with! Paul was not deriding philosophy in general and was familiar with issues of his day; see Acts 17 at Athens. The term discredits you is the best, because it was actually more Jewish Christians like the one I mentioned from my dating experience, who discounted me as a Christian for what I believed about eating. Or more clearly: who don’t accept that the Christ-basis is enough for level fellowship. You are not really a Christian, they said, unless various ceremonial and dietary parts of the Law are kept, no matter how little practical sense they make, Col 2:16-23.

The term philosophy was used for any system of thought—as opposed to someone who had none at all. Christian faith was a system; it had organized, definitive doctrines. Also notice that it is vain philosophy—which clearly means there is useful thought out there in contrast. If someone reads the passage saying ‘take care you are not deceived by philosophy’ and has no intellectual life, they are not talking about the same thing. So opposition to Christian faith that is organized (that is a system) is referred to as a stronghold, which must come down.

(Cont)

 

[EarlyActs]

“Don’t be conformed to the world”We have visited Corinth and Galatia and Colossae. Now here is one where we may depart wildly from the meaning unless the momentum of the previous is surging forward. There are no one-liners in the NT, there is always a context, a nuance. Our drone now lands in Rome. When Jewish Christians came back to Rome after Claudius eviction, Acts 18, they were surprised at how well the Gentile Christians were doing without them. They would have some conflicts with each other. It was similar to Corinth about paganism, in a way, but now the question was how much of Judaism to observe. Paul explained how both parts were meant to become strong branches of outreach of the one olive tree which is not a race-nation but those who have Christian faith. Because of their background, Jews could actually excel, but they often refused. So at the end of the previous chapter, 11:32, Paul tells both that God has bound both groups over to sin (they are equally lost), but now in Christ he has mercy on both, on those who believe. Note the word mercy.

When ch 12 starts, he implores all of them ‘by the mercies of God’ that he had just mentioned. First he tells them to be living sacrifices in the new temple of God which is the growing Christian church in total. It takes some sacrifice to overlook the background of another believer and to see Christ covering them. The Christian movement only advances if this is made essential. And then he says not to be conformed to the world, but transformed. That means not to operate on a race-based way any more, because what matters is faith in Christ. The world divides, either by race, or class, or gender. By the way, he’s not done. In ch 14 he will again talk in detail about things that might divide believers (days, foods, ceremonies), to again swallow up division by unity in Christ’s fulfilled promises to Israel’s fathers that include non-Jews fellowship, ch 15:1-13 is more of ch 14’s topic. You can see when we get close, when the camera of the drone zooms in, the issue is a bitdifferent from what we hear usually at churches.

“You must be born anothen”We now fly back to Jerusalem to that midnight talk with Nicodemus. Most everyone realizes he’s a central character in Judaism; that’s why he comes at night because there is already conflict about Jesus, and he can’t afford to be seen. What you may not recall about Judaism is that lineage, ancestry and birth into the nation is very important. As far as they knew, the kingdom of God would come on Daniel’s schedule, in the time of Rome, for sure; but…God would do this through the lineage and birthlines of Judaism, right?Thus they needed to talk. And notice what happens immediately: Jesus who happens to be a Davidic line member is speaking, not of that birthline and ancestry (Jn 1:13), but of something higher or above or before that in importance. I don’t think Nicodemus could recall anything above it, even though he was ‘a teacher of Israel’!

The critical term is ‘anothen’ and againdoes not quite do it. You can see this in the parley: Nicodemus can’t figure out why a physical birth again would matter; his was perfectly qualified, and anyway, how can anyone do that? But it doesn’t matter and no one could.Jesus meant there was something else in Israel’s past that was above this level. He hadalready referred in John’s account to the next temple (his body 2:21), to Isaac’s ladder (those angels would ascend and descend on Christ himself, 1:51), to the lamb offerings (he had been declared the Lamb of God by his publicizer, 1:29), and to a true Israelite (1:47). He was what all Moses and the Prophets were about (1:45).The thing was, you (meaning Nicodemus) wouldn’t even see the kingdom Jesus was talking about unless you saw those things in their completed form in Christ. Something had now come in Christ and it was the completion of things that the past had suggested. ‘You can’t see the true kingdom, unless you see Christ that way.’

A line like ‘you must be born from above’ is especially true for a leader in Judaism which had unfortunately flattened so much of truth to the ground and to current practice and tradition. Hadn’t Nicodemus ever wondered who the Seed of Abraham, who would bless all nations, was going to be? So the talk ends up with the important redemptive facts of Jesus: he was going to be a gift from God in whom a person would be transferredfrom condemnation in their sins to justificationfrom them, 3:16-21.So again, a person steeped in the importance of his natural birth line in Judaism had to learn something entirely new: about being born of the Spirit. If we haven’t placed this thought next to the physical lineage doctrine in Judaism, we have missed 90% of the action.

The passage is intriguing by its lack of description of Nicodemus from his questions on. The important change is that he grasps the gift of God that has come in Christ. But remember the line back at the beginning of John, that God’s sons were not born in the natural way or of human will or decision? Ooof, I feel bad for Nicodemus. He now had to return to his colleagues in Judaism after letting go of the status and importance of his birth! He had to consider it trash, like Paul would,in his recount of all his abandoned value in Judaism, Phil. 3. I have mentioned all these to give you a cultural ‘taste’ of the NT that is different from what you might expect. It is certainly different from what you usually hear. Not every line in the NT is an allpurpose evangelistic slogan.

When we go down in and close in our drone to the situations, it’s not like in the travel brochures! Most people who know very little about Christian faith will be able to relate to these facts that show a faith that was unreligious. The problem is Christ is nothing in the same way that we know idols are void. In a way, you have a commonality with many people who don’t want to be involved with religion—to learn that the founder of what you believe was very much that way. But by now you should see that he didn’t have trite slogans designed for mass-marketing, and that he was actually saying a lot to detangle a person specifically from Judaism. Which is, of course, what we would expect.

Speaking of slogans: you have probably heard teachers say that Christian faith is not a religion, it is a relationship. True, but let’s improve that to: it is a historic faith undoing a religion—through its own roots.

Interplans.net Studio is mostly Mr. Sanford’sproductions on history, theology, and science sometimes in dramatic form. The most recent major work was ROUND STONES, a 5 min. video explanation of Cascadia stream ravine 225x ratios as a result of the Genesis Cataclsym. Youtube.