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Abraham and the Aqedah: Child Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible (Series Part 1)

November 23, 2024 2 Comments

Fewer biblical passages elicit intense visceral reactions than the Aqedah, the story of Abraham binding his long-awaited son Isaac for sacrifice as God commanded. This enteric rejection is not unique to modern readers, as some ancient readers, such as the prophet Jeremiah, felt just as strongly against child sacrifice. Traditionally, the account is often read as an instance of Abraham finally demonstrating complete reliance on God. This reading is not without merit. After all, Genesis chronicles Abraham’s sinusoidal faith in his journey with God. When called to leave his home country, Abraham obeyed without any questions (Genesis 12). God promised Abraham that he would become the father of many nations and that his descendant would inherit the land of Canaan (Genesis 12:7). Yet when there was a famine in the land, and he journeyed to Egypt for relief, Abraham had no troubles offering up his wife for potential sexual exploitation (Genesis 12:11-15). He did not even seek God for help – whether to go to Egypt in the first place or how to survive in Egypt. So, in one chapter, we see the man go from exercising enviable faith and departing his homeland to prioritizing self-preservation over the well-being of his wife. This wife was to enable him to become the father of many nations, as God promised. This pattern of highs and lows continues in Abraham’s life, as we shall see shortly. So, the traditional reading of the Aqedah is sensible, though not without problems.

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The Face of God in the Bible: From Eden to Revelation

October 25, 2024 No Comments

The “face of God” is a theme from Genesis to Revelation. Not surprisingly, the subject has also piqued the interest of amateur apologists for Islam and atheism. I have, over the years, seen several memes alleging the existence of a contradiction in that Christians both affirm that no one has ever seen God and that Jesus is God. As is often the case, there is a legitimate question behind it.

Recently, I had a friendly exchange with a Patristic scholar who studied the writings of the post-Apostolic Church Fathers some months ago. This individual made a claim that got my attention. He posits that God the Father will remain hidden from glorified believers even in the coming age. He got my attention and motioned the cogs and gears in my head. As it turns out, this is a rather fascinating and rich biblical theme. Below is my exploration of the subject.

In the Beginning in the Garden

The very first page of the Bible introduces a reader to a creator who molded humans and breathed into his nostrils. If this description is taken literally, we may reasonably surmise that the creator has a face – after all, the animated clay is supposed to have been made as an image of the creator, and it has a face. Also, as far as we can tell on Earth, breathing typically requires a face.

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Insights into the Third Commandment: Taking God’s Name in Vain?

October 11, 2024 1 Comment

Background

My six-year-old came running, “Daddy, daddy, my sister is being bad.” When I enquired about what the sister did, the older one said, “she is saying God’s name in vain.” So, I pressed further, “What exactly did she say?“ She answered,” “Oh my God.” I dismissed the issue by saying, “That’s not God’s name.”

I have no idea where my daughter got that lesson from, but it is pretty pervasive in our churches since the King James Bible gave us the following translation of Exodus 20:7,

Exodus 20:7 KJV
Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

There are scholarly debates on how to number the commands. Some scholars believe Exodus 20:7 is the second command in the Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue. In this piece, I shall stick with the common belief that it is the third Commandment.

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On John 10:34-36: Humans or Gods?

October 5, 2024 4 Comments

We have had to study John 10 when we were concerned about something Jesus teaches about salvation. We are back in John 10 in this series for a different reason. Indeed, we have addressed the matter of the gods in John 10 in the past, but that treatment was brief and left much room for misunderstanding. The goal is to build on the earlier material while retaining the earlier blog entry as a standalone article.

Our ultimate aim is to understand Jesus’ comment to his Jewish interlocutors in 10:34 – 36:

John 10:34-36 ESV
[34] Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? [35] If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— [36] do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?

In this passage, Jesus references Psalm 82 to help his claim. This means that we need to understand the Psalm in its context to understand Jesus’ use of it in John 10. That will help us grasp what John 10:34 – 36 is all about. However, in order to understand Psalm 82, we need to address a few relevant points. We begin with the small matter of heaven and hell.

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The Covenant Promise: Abraham’s Blessing, Lost Sheep of Israel, and Jesus

August 28, 2024 7 Comments

Why Abraham?

Scholars have long recognized that the first 11 chapters of Genesis serve as an extended prologue, providing etiological grounding, among other things, for the accounts that follow. Chapter 12 features the calling of Abram. Why did the calling of Abraham become necessary?

Genesis begins by narrating how God, wanting to make creatures that can image him, prepares a fitting environment. He then creates Adam and Eve and gives them instructions to follow – instructions they can carry out. However, other forces are vested in God’s project. Before long, the project was derailed when only two humans were involved. Things only got worse. By the time four named individuals were involved in the project, a murder had occurred. By the time of Genesis 6, things had become so dire that even God regretted having created humans. Clearly, the Project was not going well. What was God to do — scratch the project altogether? No, that would be a resounding victory for the sinister forces that thwarted his original plans. Start afresh? Yes, but not entirely from ground zero. So, in a sense, the restart is a continuation. Abraham would have to do.

What is Abraham’s qualifying attribute for this mission? The most noticeable feature is that he was childless, and his wife was past the age of childbearing. In other words, though God wants a nation of people, he has chosen a barren couple for that mission. God has chosen someone who requires a miraculous intervention to get the project back on track. He said to Abram:

Genesis 12:2 ESV
And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

Of course, becoming a great nation implies having many children and descendants. Sounding like a good deal to the ancient Near-Eastern businessman, Abram obeyed. While he was on his way to where God sent him away from his home country, at the oak of Moreh, and as if to make the point transparent:

Genesis 12:7 ESV
Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

Again, Abram is assured that he will have children of his own. This, especially from Abram’s perspective, is a significant blessing.

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Jesus Goes to Hell: The Gates of Hell in Matthew’s Gospel

May 11, 2024 4 Comments

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:13-16)

Background: The Confession of Peter

The Confession of Peter is a famous passage in which Peter confesses Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of the living God. The Synoptic Gospels all record the event, but Matthew provides more details. In this piece, we shall mainly use Matthew’s account to explore the meaning of the event and Matthew’s literary use of the story in his Gospel.

Matthew’s Gospel is often described as the most Jewish of the canonical gospels. The claim is not without warrant. Matthew’s first step in his Gospel is to provide a genealogy that connects Jesus to both Abraham and David. That move is not trivial. The link to Abraham establishes Jesus as a legitimate, potential, promised “seed” candidate (Genesis 3:15, 22:18). Simultaneously, the connection to David evokes ideas of a messianic king – themes known to people familiar with the Jewish worldview. Matthew also portrays Jesus in ways reminiscent of Moses, the chief Apostle and Prophet of Judaism. Both Moses and Jesus escaped being killed as infants by the rulers of their times; Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount contrasts with Moses’ giving of the Law on Mount Sinai. Also, both men serve as deliverers of their people and perform miracles in the liberation process. Even in our day, the Jewishness of Matthew continues to be appreciated. I have watched several stories of Messianic Israeli Jews who embraced Jesus after reading Matthew.

In popular understanding, the Confession of Peter is important because it conveys divine revelation of Jesus’ true identity as the promised Messiah. That much is undoubtedly true, but Matthew does more in his telling, given the extra details he provides. Besides, we should notice that Matthew has already dropped numerous hints about Jesus’ true identity before Peter’s confession in Chapter 16. Let us consider a few of these hints.

Matthew’s Many Portrayal of Jesus as Yahweh

First, Matthew introduces John the Baptist as one preparing the way for Jesus in this way (3:3): “This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: ‘A voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.” ’ In the original Isaiah passage, “the Lord” was Yahweh. So, Matthew’s use of the passage ascribes the divine name to Jesus. In Matthew’s story, John the Baptist did not know at this point that Jesus was Yahweh. Still, a careful reader of Matthew’s work would have noticed this literary move.

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Revelation 4 and 5: The Divine Council and Christ’s Reign (Series Part 3)

January 12, 2024 5 Comments

Background

As mentioned earlier, John arranged his writing into two major parts based on the judgment motif. The first part deals with the judgment (or warning/encouragement) of the Church. Some of the seven churches of Revelation received rather stern warnings and threats of judgment. For instance, certain members of the Pergamum church have embraced false teaching, leading them to sin similarly as ancient Israelites did when Balaam enticed them towards “food sacrificed to idols” and they “committed sexual immorality” (2:14). In response, Jesus says, in John’s vision, that these members of the Pergamum church should repent, or he will visit them soon and “fight against them with the sword of his mouth” (2:16). That sword kills (Rev 19:21). Similarly, Jesus warns the Philadelphian church about the possibility of losing their crowns (3:11), if they do not continue to hold fast to sound doctrine.

Chapters 6 to 20 contain the second division of the book, which details the judgment of the world, following that of the churches. But this arrangement leaves Chapters 4 and 5 hanging. Why might John do that? Among other things, he does so to make a subtle theological point of presenting Jesus as Yahweh.

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Reading Revelation Right (Series Part 1)

December 31, 2023 1 Comment

The Book of Revelation has been on my mind for a few months now. I have read and re-read the book and consulted with some of the best specialists in modern scholarship. Some things I knew, but there have been so much more I was ignorant of. I am just gonna say a few things here. (I may also walk through the whole book, picking out specific nuggets I found interesting.)

1. If John wrote Revelation as graduate schoolwork today, he would undoubtedly get an “F.” No, it would not be so much because his work would be difficult to understand – Immanuel Kant probably surpassed John on that point and is still praised for it. John would score an “F” because of plagiarism and failing to cite his sources properly. (Of course, John did not do any wrong per the literary standards of his day.)

2. Let us get the simple hermeneutics point out of the way. John wrote to encourage young churches near the first century. So whatever John wrote about was something that, in principle, his audience could/would have understood. Hence, there are no cryptic references to helicopters, missiles, China, Russia, Putin, Trump or any of the other recent lazy readings.

3. Indeed, there is cryptic messaging in the book – it was John’s way of critiquing the empire without its knowledge. The cryptic messaging is of a very different sort from what people now tend to imagine. For example, John primarily referred to Rome as Babylon, and that move is itself pregnant with a whole worldview and dense theology.

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Paul and Women (Series Part 3): Understanding 1 Corinthians 11 Through the Lens of Corinthian Quotations

January 2, 2023 1 Comment

Paul Quotes the Corinthians

As emphasized earlier, we have much-needed data missing from the Corinthian correspondence. Scholars have presented several possible explanations, but not one satisfactorily answers the text’s questions. Each explanatory schema answers a few questions while neglecting the rest. In truth, we may only be able to fully understand the text if archaeology comes to the rescue once more.

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Paul and Women (Series Part 2): Divine Order or Distorted Doctrine in 1 Corinthians 11?

December 19, 2022 9 Comments

Background

First Corinthians 11 is one of those Bible passages that no reader can forget about in a hurry. It is the kind of passage you read and wonder about afterward. The chapter is significant not just for the challenging issues it raises for scholars but also for the impact it continues to have in churches. After all, the passage is full of apostolic pronouncements for the global church. First Corinthians 11 is the famous chapter about hair covering and the claim that “neither was man created for woman, but woman for man” —a passage that the church has subsequently used to treat churchgoing women as “others.” Of course, the othering of women, based on this passage and other similar ones, would not be problematic if, indeed, that is the kind of thing Paul had in mind.