Reading Wright, NTPG, Chapter 9

This week I continue in The New Testament and the People of God with chapter 9 (pp. 244-79) as Wright discusses the beliefs of Israel. One’s worldview is often evident in the beliefs one holds, and it is to the common first-century beliefs that Wright turns the discussion.

Wright has three categories under which he will discuss a number of subjects and these are introduced here: monotheism, election, and eschatology. This framework will be repeated throughout his works as he describes Judaism, then shows what Jesus does with each, and then what Paul does on top of that.

The primary belief of Israel was monotheism, which Wright divides into creational, providential, and covenantal. Israel believed in one God (think of the great Shema of Dt 6:4-5). This God was the creator and originator of all things. He was actively involved in, and wisely in control of, his creation. And God was covenantal, He had made a covenant with Israel and He is faithful to his covenant. To let Wright provide the details, “If creational monotheism entails an eschatology (the creator must restore that which he had made), covenantal monotheism intensifies this eschatological entailment: the creator remains committed to giving order and peace to his world, and as the covenant god he remains committed to doing so through Israel.” (p 252, emphasis original) It is in the covenant with Abraham that we arrive at election.

It cannot come as a surprise that Israel considered herself to be the chosen people of God. Adam failed and Noah was chosen. Things didn’t work out so well (think of the tower of Babel) and God makes a covenant with Abraham, through Abraham and his descendants all the nations will be blessed (Gen 12:1-3). Israel as seen as God’s ‘solution’ to the Adamic fall. But of course Israel is a mess. Most of the Old Testament describes the failures of this chosen people. But throughout the prophets God continues to repeat his promise that he will redeem his people and restore them (think of Jer 31). But when would this happen? When would God’s covenant faithfulness be expressed, or, to put it in more prophetic and Biblical language, when would God’s righteousness be demonstrated? (p 272) The question of when brings us to eschatology.

In order for Israel to be restored, God would forgive her sins—it was believed by a first-century Jew that they were in exile because they had sinned. There is a distinction to be made here, “The most natural meaning of the phrase ‘the forgiveness of sins’ to a first-century Jew is not in the first instance the remission of individual sins, but the putting away of the whole nation’s sins. And, since the exile was the punishment for those sins, the only sure sign that the sins had been forgiven would be the clear and certain liberation from exile.” (p 273, emphasis original) Previous discussions have covered how the multiple groups within Judaism believed this was to be accomplished. But that was the hope, the expectation. And Wright will spend the next chapter entirely focused on the hope of Israel.

The beliefs of Israel at this time is best summed up by Wright, “There is one creator god, who has chosen Israel to be his people, giving her his Torah and establishing her in his holy land. He will act for her and through her to re-establish his judgment and justice, his wisdom and his shalom, throughout the world.” (p 279, emphasis original)

Temptations, Israel, and Adam

 I was recently reflecting on the temptations of Jesus in light of reading N.T. Wright and seeing Israel’s fulfillment in Jesus actions and message. One of Wright’s contributions to the way I read the Bible, and especially the New Testament, is to think about how Jesus is embodying what Israel (and Adam) could not do. Abraham (and thus Israel) was called to do what Adam failed to do. Israel also fails and thus the need for one who will succeed.

The temptations of Jesus are recorded in two places, Matt 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13. The last two temptations are swapped between Matthew and Luke, almost certainly because Luke places special emphasis on the temple in his Gospel and ancient biography would vary ordering within stories for emphasis [1]. The temptations involve hunger (bread), casting oneself down from the temple (testing God), and the kingdoms of the world (worship). As his response to all three temptations, Jesus responds by quoting passages from the Torah, namely, Deuteronomy.

Israel failed at all three of these in the months following what the Old Testament considered to be God’s greatest work of salvation, the Exodus! So does Adam in the garden, having walked with God.

The first temptation is bread. Jesus is hungry and Satan tells him he should turn stones to bread. Jesus is in the wilderness (like Israel in the Exodus), hungry, surrounded by stones. Jesus quotes Moses’ commentary on the provision of manna in Dt 8:2-3, where Moses tells Israel that God let them be hungry and fed them with manna so they would know “man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds from the mouth of God.” The temptation in the garden of Eden was regarding fruit from a tree and the word that had proceeded from the mouth of God— “did God really say?” asks Satan (Gen 3:1). Sadly, both Israel and Adam did not learn this lesson.

The second temptation takes places at pinnacle of the temple, but it involves testing God. Something that Israel was great at, much to God’s displeasure (Num 14:22; Dt 6:16b). Jesus responds with a quote from Dt 6:16, where God commands Israel not to put him to the test, “as you tested Him at Massah.” In Ex 17:7, it says Israel tested God to see if He was really with them. Bad idea, unless you want a bunch of people to die. Adam in is the garden of Eden, considered by many scholars to be an implied temple—it is a place where you meet with God. Why not test this “you shall surely die” statement of God? Billions of deaths later, it still stands.

Finally, Satan comes right out and demands Jesus worship him—in exchange, he’ll give Jesus the world. No cross, no suffering, here it is. Just a little worship. Jesus responds again with Dt 6:13 that you shall worship God only. Think back again to the Exodus story. While Moses is up on the mountain receiving the ten commandments, the people make a golden calf and worship it (Ex 32). Barely a couple of months (if that) earlier, they had been delivered from Egypt after ten plagues, seen a large body of water part and walked across, and saw Pharaoh’s army drowned. In the Garden of Eden, Satan’s promise to Adam is that he will be “like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen 3:5) No need for Him once you know everything. Instead, Jesus knows kingship will not be found through Satan, but only through submission to and worship of the one true God.

Jesus does what Israel could not do. He does what Adam failed to do. He is the embodied Israel and the last Adam (1 Cor 15:45).

[1] Craig S. Keener, Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2019), 138-42.

Reading Wright, NTPG, Chapter 8

This week I continue in The New Testament and the People of God with chapter 8 (pp. 215-43) as Wright discusses the elements of Israel’s worldview. As he noted in chapter 3, worldviews are visible through story, symbol, and praxis, and it is on these three areas that he narrows the focus.

The great story of Scripture was of creation, fall, and redemption. Abraham’s call was seen as the solution to Adam’s sin—all nations would be blessed through the descendants of Abraham. But things did not go so well. The book of Judges provides a glimpse of the problems. David seems to be the new solution, but he and his descendants don’t do so well either. Israel is finally taken into exile, then returned to the land, but under foreign rulers. “The great story of the Hebrew Scriptures was therefore inevitably read in the second-temple period as a story in search of a conclusion.” (p. 217) To put it in current context, it is as if the stories (and movies) Lord of the Rings and Two Towers were written and made, but Return of the King didn’t exist! We would expect there to be a finale, something that actually completed the story! So did the second-temple Israelites.

As we saw in the previous chapter, the diversities of Judaism were the views of what needed to happen to ensure God’s people were ready for the story fulfillment (separation, greater Torah faithfulness, military resistance, etc). Second temple Jews told themselves stories not only of how they got here, but where they were going. Wright expands on this beautifully, “In helping us to understand how the first-century Jewish worldview functioned, and how the biblical stories which reinforced it would have been heard, it also gives us a grid against which we can measure the alternative stories told, implicitly and explicitly, by Jesus, Paul and the evangelists, and to see their points of convergence and divergence.” (p. 223, my emphasis) This was a key understanding for me.

The second element of a worldview is symbol, visible through temple, land, Torah, racial identity (p. 224). Wright notes that the temple was 25% of the city of Jerusalem (p. 225)! For the Jew, the temple was critical. God had promised Abraham a land and at the present, Israel was in the land, but it was ruled by the Romans. The covenant made with Israel, the Torah, was the guidelines and rules to follow. And the Jews were a distinct people; indeed, you see that Samaritans were despised because they had intermarried with other peoples. 

The third element of a worldview is praxis, or the actions. Festivals, studying the Scriptures, circumcision, Sabbath, and kosher laws were the activities (or refraining from) practiced in the outworking of this unique people. These helped set them apart, and provided a continual reminder of who they were. Wright sums up the importance of these practices by noting that “maintaining the marks of Jewish distinctiveness was quite simply non-negotiable.” (p. 238)

Finally, “the prevailing second-temple belief that the real return from exile had not yet occurred… the entire story… [was] the still unfinished story of the creator, the covenant people, and the world.” (p. 242) This was the expectation in the first century. This was what the scribes and Pharisees searched the Scriptures for. We are the people of God, in exile, waiting for Him to save us. What must we do? When will this occur?

Reading Wright, NTPG, Chapter 7

This week I continue in The New Testament and the People of God with chapter 7 (pp 167-214) as Wright describes the rise and diversity of the strains of “Judaisms” in the first century. While all Jews were united around a set of common beliefs (one God, Torah, covenant people, etc.), the Maccabean revolution and following splintered the people into at least three groups that continued into the first century (as a parallel, think of Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant). Yet these Jewish groups “cherished the hope that the covenant god would again act in history, this time to restore the fortunes of his internally-exiled people.” (p 167) But—and this is the key point—“when Israel’s god finally acted to redeem his people, those who would benefit would be those who had in the mean time kept the covenant boundaries in tact.” (p 168) In other words, a distinguishing mark of these groups was what it meant to keep the covenant boundaries!

The big issue following the Maccabean revolt was that the offices of the king and priest were combined into one person. This ended up being a disaster! Thus you have a rise in diversity, especially as pressure from the outside increased, up to and following conquest by Rome.

Wright speaks of the constant state of revolt, with a number of these occurring between 63 BC and 66 AD. He notes that “revolution of one sort or another was in the air.” (p 176) It is likely that the zeal the Maccabees had shown set an example that later revolutionaries followed, in their attempts to maintain covenant faithfulness (p 180). Wright begins to describe the three main groups, starting with the Pharisees.

“The Pharisaic agenda [was]… to purify Israel by summoning her to return to the true ancestral traditions; to restore Israel to her independent theocratic status; and to be, as a pressure group, in the vanguard of such movements by the study and practice of Torah.” (p 189) In other words, they were both zealous and studious (p 190). Many of the revolts Wright describes were driven by, or at least involved, Pharisees! They went further than most in their attempts to “maintain a purity at a degree higher than prescribed in the Hebrew Bible for ordinary Jews.” (p 195) Ultimately, they believed “Israel’s god will act; but loyal Jews may well be required as the agents and instruments of that divine action.” (p 201)

The Essenes were a group who entirely separated themselves from the Jewish community and lived on their own in the desert at Qumran. They considered the current Jewish lifestyle and the pollution of the culture to require a complete withdrawal from it, including from the temple itself! Rather, “at least one branch [of Essenes] regarded itself not just as the true Israel but as the true temple.” (p 205) This group considered themselves to be true Israelites, truly faithful, and God is acting in and through them (p 206).

Lastly, the Sadducees, which includes the priests and aristocrats. This was the ruling class and most heavily compromised by the culture and Roman rule. Denying resurrection, this group “had no time for laws other than those in the Bible.” (p 211) For them, the temple was central. Maintaining power was a close second.

The ordinary Jew prayed, attended the annual feasts, and attempted to keep the biblical commands (p 214). It is unlikely that they had much time for the nuances of the debates between these groups.

To conclude with a focus on the Pharisees, this is a group who believed that in order to bring about the vindication of Israel and salvation of its people, they must exhibit covenant faithfulness to God by following the Torah and their traditions carefully. So imagine a man shows up and begins to speak as if the Torah should be interpreted and defined by him, one who speaks of vindication through death, and one who rejects the cherished belief that their traditions must be carefully followed. What is a Pharisee to do with such a man? What is a Sadducee to do with a man who redefines the temple to be himself and thus no need for the one in Jerusalem?! As we shall see as we dig deeper, their reaction to him is unsurprising. 

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Reading Wright, NTPG, Chapter 6

This week I continue in The New Testament and the People of God with chapter 6 (pp 147-66) as Wright begins part 3 of his book on first century Judaism with the setting of the story. Chapters 6-10 attempt to orient the reader to the first century by describing how the Jews got here (and what ‘here’ is; ch 6), what is their response (ch 7), what is their worldview and beliefs (ch 8-9), and what do they hope for (ch 10)?

Israel is under Roman rule, in the Second Temple period, in a long-considered ‘exile’ that began (for Judea) in 587 BC, when the first temple (built by Solomon) was destroyed. Though the Jews have returned to the land and rebuilt the temple, the presence of Gentile rulers was still indicative of ongoing exile.

Alexander the Great conquered much of the known world in the fourth century BC and Hellenism spread throughout the region, with Greek language, thought, and culture becoming dominant. Suffering under multiple tyrants, Israel was briefly able to free themselves under the Hasmoneans in the second century BC, only to be reconquered by Pompey (Rome) in the first century BC, barely 100 years later.

Wright emphasizes the multiplicity of cults and the numerous gods and pagan practices throughout the Roman empire (p 154-56). Like some American cities with ‘a church on every corner,’ first century space was “full of reminders of the pagan way of life.” (p 155) To a Jew, this would be highly offensive.

The Jews were distinct among all of the various cultures for worshiping one god; the surrounding cultures considered the Jews atheists because of this odd form (they did not worship ‘the gods’). However, the Jews were given an exception to the Roman law that required sacrifice to the gods. The Romans, like those before them, found the Jews to be quite stubborn in their insistence of worshiping only one god!

Post Jesus, in the latter half of the first century AD and early second century, the Jews revolted twice; the first resulted in the temple’s destruction a second time (70 AD) and the second resulted in a complete loss and dispersal (135 AD).

I think one of the most significant takeaways from this chapter (and it will be reinforced in subsequent chapters) is the perspective of the Jewish people at the time of Jesus: we are in exile, under foreign rule, because of our lack of faithfulness to God. The solution, as we will see in the next chapter, will vary.