#christian exegesis

[jessicalprice]

adventures in christian opinions about judaism

(reposted from Twitter)

So a while back I started writing a thing on the trio of parables that ends with the prodigal son (which I still need to finish) and like MAN OH MAN do Christian commentators insist that Jews hate shepherds.

Like, I can't even count the number of commentaries that insist that shepherds were "despised figures" for first-century Jews and the parables of the lost sheep and lost coin were designed to insult the Pharisees by comparing them first to a shepherd and then to a woman.

So, as is my wont whenever Christian commentators make a claim about what was normal for first-century Judaism, I decided to try to hunt down their source on this.

As I've said many times, when it comes to Christian parable interpreters' claims about what attitudes/beliefs/etc. were normal for first-century Jews, get used to the phrase "no sources are cited."

I mean, first off, as a 21st-century Jew, the insistence that 1st-century Jews hated shepherds rings odd, given that <checks notes> Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Rachel, all of Jacob's kids (the founders of the tribes), David, etc. were all sheep-tenders. The image of God as a shepherd is pretty consistent throughout the Tanakh. That image reappears in the Qumran texts, which as far as I know, are one of the few Jewish sources we have from 1st-century Judaea.

The term "despised" gets used a lot, so I decided to dig into that one.

When I was able to find citations, I traced them back to an 1882 commentary by a guy named Frederic Farrar.

Farrar cites Heinrich Meyer as a source for this, but when I looked up THAT citation, it's Meyer saying that shepherds were a "lowly but patriarchally consecrated class" -- in other words, poor, but with a distinguished history and status.

So that's why everyone's tossing the term "despised" around--because Farrar just made it up. But what about primary sources? I went back on the hunt.

Surprisingly, in a number of reference works, like glossaries and Jeffers's "Greco-Roman World of the New Testament," I found similar assertions about the common attitude toward shepherds, for which they cited...

<drum roll>

Aristotle. You know, the Greek guy who lived 300 years before Jesus? Definitely a reliable source for Jewish attitudes of the time.

Some people cited Philo's On Agriculture. Okay, Philo was at least Jewish and lived when Jesus would have, although he was a wealthy Hellenized Jew living in Alexandria rather than a Pharisee living in the Galilee. But okay, at least it's the right culture and time period. (The reference in Philo turns out to be talking about the section of Genesis in which Joseph's brothers come visit him in Egypt. It talks about how they were proud to be shepherds, and criticizes (gentile) kings who look down on shepherds.)

Then we've got Mishnah Kiddushin, in which a bunch of rabbis are having a debate about which professions make you trustworthy vs untrustworthy, and one rabbi lists everyone from camel-drivers to herders to barbers to shopkeepers as untrustworthy. Another rabbi comes back and is like, nah, all those people are fine upstanding folks; it's doctors and butchers you've gotta watch out for. So they're citing one cranky dude with a LONG list of people he doesn't like, who immediately gets shot down, as evidence of the normative attitude for Jews about a century earlier.

Oh, and we've got a citation of Midrash Tehillim which says that God-as-shepherd doesn't have any of the failings of humans-as-shepherds, which... sure. Also, it was codified in the 1300s?

The most compelling citation is from the Talmud (Sanhedrin 25b), in which the rabbis discuss who's qualified to be a legal witness. They exclude shepherds, because shepherds graze their animals on other people's land, which some of the rabbis see as a type of theft.

The Talmud is a record of debates, but this passage definitely makes it sound like this is a majority opinion. (It should be noted that the passage disqualifies all KINDS of people, from those who lend with interest to those who fly pigeons, as having conflicts of interest.)

But the important thing here is that the Talmud includes records of debates from as late as the 4th or 5th centuries CE (300-400 years after Jesus's time), and the passage makes a point of noting that the disqualification of shepherds as witnesses is a later development.

So in other words, the idea that the Pharisees hated shepherds and would have been insulted by Jesus telling a story in which the protagonist was a shepherd is based either on Greek attitudes that are 300 years too early or Jewish ones that are 300-400 years too late.

But people will twist themselves into citation knots (or just not bother citing a source at all) to insist that this was a common attitude so they can position the Pharisees as hating those charming humble shepherds and their fuzzy little lambs.

As to WHY this idea seems to be so important to them, well, you cannot read about Luke 15 without encountering the word "outcast" roughly 90 times per page.

The framing is Jesus was friend to The Outcasts while the Pharisees despised The Outcasts and the Lost Sheep, Coin, and Sons are all parables about accepting The Outcast.

Never mind that neither the sheep, the coin, nor either of the sons got kicked out of their communities. The sheep wandered off, as sheep are wont to do, the coin was lost by its owner, and the younger son decided to leave to go on a spending spree while the older son declined to attend the welcome back party for him after his dad managed to hire a band and caterers but never thought to let his own son know what was going on and he had to find out from a hired hand.

Moreover, the term "outcasts" gets used as a synonym for "tax collectors and sinners." Tax collectors were usually pretty well-off because they ran a protection racket for the Romans. Outcasts? I mean, I guess? But hardly in the "marginalized and powerless" sense.

As far as "sinners," the NT doesn't usually bother telling us what, exactly, they did to "sin," but on the rare occasions when it does offer that context, it's almost always wealthy people.

But why talk about that when they can present the objection the Pharisees had to Jesus's dining with "tax collectors and sinners" as the Pharisees despising lowly outcasts, and insist that the Pharisees hated the idea of such people repenting and returning, and so Jesus was tweaking their noses by comparing them to shepherds and women.

As if, you know, teshuvah wasn't something the Pharisees were ALL ABOUT. If you want to actually understand, consider that the iconic tax collector in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector shows no inclination to STOP being a tax collector.

The objection wasn't you're having a friendly dinner with poor lowly outcasts for whom we have contempt. It was you're having a friendly dinner with people who are extorting their neighbors on behalf of the invaders who kill us for looking at them funny and have expressed no intention to stop doing that.

Now, there's a good discussion to be had about whether shunning Trump lawyers and Marjorie Taylor-Greene donors or inviting them to dinner and trying to win them over with compassion is more effective, more ethical, more compassionate (to whom?), etc.

But presumably we can see why people of intelligence and goodwill might disagree on which of those approaches is the right thing to do, and why such people might might object to the strategy they don't agree with.

But what really gets me is that Christians have the utter fucking NERVE to paint the Pharisees as inhumanly awful for not wanting to have dinner with tax collectors while viewing Corinthians as Holy Writ:

I mean, Paul's all YOU MUST SHUN ALCOHOLICS AND PEOPLE WHO ARE GREEDY and Christians are like yes, that makes sense, but if the Pharisees are like, no, I don't want to have dinner with that guy who narced on my cousin and got him crucified, Christians are like, they're monsters.

Cool, cool.

Anyway, this has been your weekly edition of Christians Need To Stop Just Making Shit Up About Jews And Then Citing Each Other Like It's Fact.

And there were a lot of "I've never heard anyone say Jews of Jesus's time hated shepherds..." responses: Maybe you haven't, but that doesn't make it uncommon.

Sources in which I've found it:

Craig Blomberg (Denver Seminary, Society of Biblical Literature, Tyndale House, NIV translation committee)

Jared Wilson (professor at multiple Baptist seminaries)

Stephen Wright (Spurgeon College (British evangelical college))

Arland Hultgren (Luther Seminary (ELCA))

Kenneth Bailey (Presbyterian/Episcopalian)

Joachim Jeremias (Lutheran, cited EVERYWHERE)

Bernard Brandon Scott (Disciples of Christ, the Jesus Seminar)

Klyne Snodgrass (Evangelical Covenant Church)

Barbara Reid (Catholic Biblical Association)

That particular trope spans denominations, decades, etc. It's not a fringe viewpoint.

[thinkingonscripture]

Theological Implications of Jesus' Resurrection for Salvation

Jesus’ resurrection is an essential element in soteriology. In fact, every writer of the NT assumes that Jesus was resurrected from the grave and treat it as an event that took place in time and space. Paul wrote that Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:4), that He was “the first fruits of those who are asleep” (1 Cor 15:20), and that “having been raised from…

[man-4-allseasons]

In the beginning was the Word

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. John 1:1-3 DRB

St. John transports us all the way back to the beginning of Genesis to bring the story of Adam to its long awaited closure in Christ. The seeds of our understanding of God's triune nature lay gently within the life-giving soil of these poetic words. Before creation and its countless dramas that would unfold was the Word (Λόγος, - Logos), which was distinct from God the Father, and yet was God.

By these words we are meant to know that Christ was before all else. His existence was not a reaction to deteriorating circumstances, but a necessary precondition for the liturgical procession of creation itself to commence. As God begins speaking things into being in the first chapter of Genesis, we know that Christ too was there.

While the Holy Trinity is indeed mysterious, what is made plain by these opening lines is that Christ was truly sent in the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4). This moment was one of God's choosing that truly could have been made at any point before this since Christ existed before all else.

Our lives are a series of moments, and in the ones that wound us it's hard to trust that this too is part of God's plan. Yet the revelation of Christ came at the exact moment of God's choosing, most intimately shared with only a handful of people, and despite thousands of years between that moment and now, you and countless others have come to hear about it, believe, and be saved by it. You too have come to exist in the fullness of time, so trust in the Lord in those moments "when all other lights go out."

[qvincvnx]

oh GOD i forgot that if i ever need to find the SOURCE TEXT of any BIBLICAL TEXT i will have to GOOGLE BIBLE VERSES

[anarcho-mom-unist]

Some thoughts on interpretation and the need to resist rescuing a text

(The following is not scholarship but getting some of my thoughts in one place)

The goal of interpreting a text is not to save it and make it free of anything harmful or any evidence of bias. The goal is understanding —and that includes understanding that comes from bringing a different perspective to a text that finds meaning and applicability regardless of the author’s intention.

Like as much as there is bad translation and misunderstanding of purpose or context involved in the clobber passages of the Bible (that is, the handful of verses cited by homophobes for why queer don’t deserve dignity and God backs them up on it) and intensity of the homophobia therein, you’re not going to miraculously expunge all homophobia from the Bible —Romans 1:26–27 is not beating the homophobia allegations however you translate it and Leviticus 20:13 is still quite awful if it’s not a proscription on all sex between men just the kind that follows the power relations of heterosexual sex (you’ve replaced blanket antipathy toward all sex between men for conditional acceptability of certain kinds of sex between men, how very progressive and in line with liberation-oriented Judaism or Christianity!)

When you encounter something that goes against human dignity in a text, you don’t have to rescue you it —especially in the case of religious texts. You can recognize that your nominal coreligionists of the past took the same name(s) and authority of their god or gods that they otherwise used to make statements about the necessity of caring for strangers, lifting up the lowly, showing mercy, etc. and also said “but these types of people don’t deserve that, according to that/those which we call holy and divine.” It is, in fact, imperative to say, “that sucks, we need to do things differently.”

This kind of interpretive posture is necessary whether it’s something as high stakes as religion or something as low stakes as a cartoon that you like.

[junebugwriter]

Galatians 3:28 is Transgender Affirming, Actually

An exegetical exploration of the text

I used to be a pastor. That occupation affords a position as a lot of things within the church, an opportunity to be “all things to all people” as Paul would say. 1 Perhaps the one that I was most well suited to and excelled at was being the neighborhood theologian in residence and academic in practice. Now that I am an academic full-time in my graduate studies, I am practically drowning in research, but remarkably, little of it is explicitly biblical in nature. This is something I quite miss, and so I began this blog partly to fill that missing piece of my former life, because I believe that as a Christian, drinking deep from the well of scripture is generally good practice and ideal to work towards.

So, call me surprised when a few weeks ago, I heard a murmur of a discourse on the site formerly known as Twitter, discourse revolving around Galatians 3, specifically Galatians 3: 28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Now, let me say this up front: this passage has meant a lot to me most of my life. It is a message that is designed to unify, to build community, to embolden us to set aside differences for the common good of the Christian community. But also, it has meant a lot to me personally, as it signaled to me that God simply does not regard my being transgender as something to be used against me, that in the end it does not matter to God, because God is beyond all of the binaries and dividing lines we might draw here on earth.

However, this is not exactly consensus. (Not that Twitter is at all an engine for consensus-building—in fact it was engineered to be the opposite!) For every person who argued that Galatians 3:28 was an affirming passage as regards people of the transgender experience, there were perhaps dozens more who said that interpreting it that was robs the passage of its context, and goes against the sacred word of Paul of Tarsus.2

This naturally got my pastor engine burning, because to me, it seems obvious, even with context, that Galatians 3 would be affirming for transgender people. Yet, most likely, there are many that would not see it so. Therefore, allow me to make my case for a queer, trans reading of Galatians 3.

(Note: though I am a trained pastor and theologian, I am NOT an expert in New Testament studies or biblical Greek. Additionally, though I am a queer theologian, Queer Theology as an area of

focus is not my exact specialty, not as much as disability or ethics is. This is my own exegesis and interpretation, make of that as you will.)

The Text in Context

Paul’s Letter to the Galatians is a text with a fraught history, which makes sense considering the letter was written to a problematic church. If Paul was going to write to a church, there was usually a significant enough problem at stake for the foundling churches of Asia. Moreover, if the letter was to be included within biblical canon, it meant that the issue was significant enough for the leaders of early church to have found it essential for the spiritual formation of the church itself. That issue was nothing less than a question of inclusion and discrimination within the church.

Paul was faced with the question: Who is to be included within the church? Who is to be given salvation? It’s a soteriological question with social implications, and to erase the second facet is to do a disservice to the first facet. Paul relates as much in his discussion in earlier chapters regarding his disagreement with Peter, Cephas, and James. To be a follower of Christ, did one need to be a Jew first? They had agreed, and sent Paul with their blessing, that the correct answer is no. One did not need to be a Jew in order to be saved through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. One could be a Gentile or a Jew, and this pivotal decision set in motion the course of the church for the rest of history, one which would ultimately spell final division with our Jewish siblings.

But I digress. The point was, there was confusion among the church as to who was included in the family of God, and Paul emphatically declared in Galatians that this entire line of questioning was out of order. Paul was of course chiefly focused on the Jewish/Gentile divide, but he was not blind to the hierarchical realities of the society in which he lived. The statement he makes in 3:28 is a threefold formulation, one that approaches the chief dividing lines in society as he saw it: Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female.3 This entire letter was birthed by inequality and division occurring socially4, and Christian communities are reflections of their societies and communities. Jim Reiher puts it like this: “...human ‘horizontal’ relationships were not reflecting the ‘vertical’ equality we all have in Christ with God.”

Thus, in response to these divisions among the people of the church, Paul’s response is that it is in the waters of baptism in Jesus Christ that we are given common salvation. Jennifer Slater states that in a post-Christ paradigm, “both men and women share equally in Christ and so become equal members or participants of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.”5 This is not in ignorance of the realities of division, nor a collapse of identity. People remain distinct, and so do identities within the church. To ignore such would

be to ignore reality. Rather, it’s instead not a dissolution of distinction, but rather a negation of difference as a basis for exclusion. 6

In Paul’s day, and in ours, it would be the height of foolishness to state that difference did not exist. Yet despite that, we as the church are called to not necessarily bless the structures that divide us in our society, but reflect a different reality in which those differences do not deny any of us citizenship in the Reign of God through Jesus Christ. Christ did away with those when he took on human flesh and was resurrected from the dead. When we undergo the waters of baptism, we are initiated into that reign, that new reality, and offered salvation through faith.

That Paul knew what he was doing here seems obvious. There was a very strict codification of gender binary within Roman society in that time, with a clear advantage given to men over women. Women had less social status than men, often could not hold property, and even were seen as property of men in every arena. To state “there is neither male nor female” is a direct contradiction of the social order as it stood, and different gender roles were proscribed by society. As such, this disregarding of gender as it affects life in the church is a radical statement indeed, and thus worthy of modern interrogation.

Queering the Text

This is, of course, where the fun begins. I needed to get through that background to get to the question at hand: how is Galatians 3:28 a trans affirming passage?

I am going to state here that queer theory and queer criticism is a relatively new field of criticism, doubly so for theology. Though the interrogation of the text as a gender-inclusive statement can be seen to go back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, queerness as a subcategory of theology can only go back a few decades. Therefore, the scholarship is scant on the matter of Galatians 3:28, but not impossible to find. For a more in-depth analysis, I’ll recommend an excellent paper by Jeremy Punt, full citation in the footnotes.7 His work is excellent, yet it is mostly focused on establishing a basis for a queer reading of Galatians 3, not as much the specific queerness that being transgender poses.

In claiming that in Christ there is “no male nor female,” there is an androgynizing effect to the passage that poses a danger to the male audience, much more than the female one.8 Men stood to lose much in the categorical collapse of gender: social status, privilege, and legal rights. In the bargain, women stood to gain much more than men would lose, and thus this was a radical proposal for 1st century church members. Yet, one could argue that this collapse was potentially less dangerous than the difference collapse between rich and poor, slave and free, and most especially for Paul’s interest, Jew and Gentile. The presence of salvation through the work of Jesus Christ was a radical proposition, and to separate social reality from soteriological would be folly, especially since the social aspect seemed to be the chief problem that was being posed to salvation.

This naturally leads to a significant question for the interpreter: what do we mean by salvation? Is salvation simply something that happens in the great by and by? Is it simply a reality relegated to existence after death? Or does salvation mean something in the present, the here and now? I would argue that for Paul, it absolutely matters. Salvation was a social issue, because the material reality with which the church was faced was affecting their theological prejudices and division. Thus, when Jesus saves, Jesus does not simply save us for later, but saves us right now. When he first speaks in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”9 That’s not a promise of the reign in the future, in some far away time or place that is immediate and urgent. Thus, salvation only makes sense if we frame it in the present, material reality of the listener.

Jeremy Punt wisely stated that “...queer theory is not so much about bestowing normalcy on queerness but rather queering of normalcy.”10 If one takes that task seriously, it is then a very queer thing indeed for Jesus to have proclaimed the arrival of the Reign of God. It very much queered the normalcy of the people he preached to, and Paul is very much queering the normalcy of the people of Galatia in this broad, unifying pronouncement. He is blurring the divisions between ethnic groups, economic groups, as well as gender groups, something that is usually believed to have been an unreconcilable divide. After all, did God not create the two genders in the Garden of Eden? ”Male and female, he created them?” Yet in Christ, we see that this division need not be maintained so strictly, because the things of heaven, the Reign of God, does not seem to care about these divisions all that much.

The case for gender inclusion in Galatians seems straightforward, then. Women ought not be barred from anything within the church itself. The social dimension directly affects this salvation issue, and God is freeing us from division within salvation and society. But this leads to the crucial question:

Does this include transgender people?

The T-shaped Hole in our Text

Our beliefs and understanding about gender, sex, and the social constructs around them have changed in the intervening millennia between our us and our text. There was no way for Paul to have talked about what we now understand as transgender people, because that category did not exist for him in that context.

That does not mean that we did not exist back then, mind you. The existence of transgender people in history is being uncovered on a daily basis. Our journals, our records, our stories exist, but on the margins of social consciousness. The truth of the matter is, we did not simply appear in the last few years, when people started making more of a fuss about us in the public sphere. We simply have learned more about how gender works, and that is a concept and topic that is expanding each day. So, while Paul did not consider transgender people in his writing, that does not mean that we did not exist in his day and age, and that does not mean that this text doesn’t have something to say about us.

If one had to boil down the entire text of Galatians to a single point, it would be that our divisions do not stop us from receiving the love of God through Jesus Christ. Quite the reverse. Jesus

Christ does not care about our divisions. God’s love does not end at an arbitrary dividing wall of our own creation. That love is shared among God’s children equally; how could you make a holy parent like God choose among their creation? Likewise, God does not contain within themselves division. God may be triune in nature, but that triune aspect of God only heightens the communal aspect of love, and the love that God shares within God’s selves is only stronger when it is shared with God’s creation.

When I was a child, I was baptized into the life of the church. There is not a day that goes by where I did not know God’s love for me. It has been a constant throughout my life, and I cherish the fact that I have always had assurance of God’s love for me. God does not suddenly stop loving someone like me when I learn more about myself, about my mind, my identity, and my manner of expression. If, as Paul says, “There is no longer male and female,” then why get hung up on whether or not God’s love is extended to transgender people? You can hop that binary divided at any point, and God’s love for you would not change. You can ride that line all day long if you want! You may say, forget the line! Because the line is only there because we say it’s there.

In the end, male and female are simply categories, and if God is any indicator, categories are meant to be defied. God does not have a gender, because God is beyond the binary. God is beyond every binary, in fact. This isn’t a controversial statement, it simply has been the understanding of the church going back to antiquity. That we call God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and use predominantly masculine pronouns is because of how language works, and how God through Jesus Christ revealed themselves to us. That is the language they used, but any language we use is provably lacking when talking about the divine, because it is a construct of human making, and therefore flawed and fallible. Our understanding of biology is simply what we have so far observed and tested, backed up on documentation, and is liable to change as more information is gathered. Furthermore, gender is different from biological sex, and while both are important—fascinating, even!--they are also more malleable than we might imagine.

Christians are also a people of change. We believe that Jesus came to change the world from how it is to how it will be under the Reign of God. Jesus calls us to repentance, to change ourselves, and be transformed by the love that God has for us. You are changing every day in small, unnoticeable ways. Transgender people are just people who have observed an interior discrepancy in how we are perceived by the world, and work to change that in our lives to better reflect the person that we always were inside. That’s not dishonesty or delusion, it is simply how humans work! It's the height of honesty to be transgender, because the most intimate part of ourselves, our identity, is important, and God honors that. Because of that, God does not really care if we transition. Because God shows no partiality. Man, woman, something in between, something outside the binary completely—there is no longer any division, because all are one in Christ our Lord. If you belong to Christ, you belong to the promise that God will always love you, no matter what.

Conclusion

To me, a theologian and one deeply called to teaching the truths of our faith, are deep truths that cannot be denied. Paul does not want there to be any division among us, as division only sows injustice, infighting, and chaos. Jesus came to both men and women, slave and free, rich or poor, Jew and Gentile. This is a text that is designed to free us from our interior divisions, to work towards a reality in which those divisions do not matter anymore.

The context of the text recognizes the social reality of our world, and then subverts it. The message of Jesus Christ, then, is a revolutionary attitude of inclusion, love, and support. It goes beyond gender divisions, to the very cores of our being. God loves us, God includes us, God celebrates us. God wants us to live in truth and love with one another—and being transgender is a truth that should not be denied.

Look, I have tried to deny it for decades. I tried to be what I was assigned at birth, and have found so much freedom in acknowledging the truth of who I am inside. Ask any transgender person, and they will tell you the same. If it could be denied, we wouldn’t be honest with ourselves, or with God. God wants us to be free, loved, and honored in our communities, especially in the church.

So yes, Galatians 3:28 is a transgender affirming text, actually. It is a text that unbinds us to binaries and reveals a vision of a community that has progressed beyond division to true unity, solidarity, and love. Go therefore and act like God has freed you from your interior divisions. Live in truth, and the truth shall set you free.

______________________________________________

Footnotes:

1- 1 Cor. 9:22 (NRSV).

2 -I quite like Paul, by the way! But he was a human being, and as a human being, his words bear the stain of human frailty and fallibility. Therefore, it is more than acceptable to criticize and/or examine his work as such. He was an excellent writer and theologian, and demands that his work be taken seriously as an academic; I imagine he would want nothing less

3- Slater, Jennifer. “'Inclusiveness’ - An Authentic Biblical Truth That Negates Distinctions: A Hermeneutic of Gender Incorporation and Ontological Equality in Ancient Christian Thought.” Journal of Early Christian History 5, no. 1 (2015): 116–31. Pg. 118.

4- Reiher, Jim. “Galatians 3: 28 – Liberating for Women’s Ministry? Or of Limited Application?” The Expository Times 123, no. 6 (March 1, 2012): 272–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/0014524611431773. Pg. 275.

5- Slater. Pg. 119.

6- Ibid. Pg. 122.

7- Punt, Jeremy. “Power and Liminality, Sex and Gender, and Gal 3:28: A Postcolonial, Queer Reading of an Influential Text.” Neotestamentica 44, no. 1 (2010): 140–66.

8- Punt. Pg. 154.

9- Mark 1: 15, NRSV.

10- Punt. Pg. 156.

[izzythehutt]

Forgive me if you’ve spoken about this before, or if my assumption is incorrect, but I think it would be interesting to hear your opinion on the interpretation of Jesse as a Christ-like figure considering from what I’ve gathered you’re a Christian? A lot of people who I see draw comparison between Jesse and Christ (including myself) are either not religious or have had a negative experience with religion so I think it would be interesting to hear from someone who has a different experience.

I think the main problem with that interpretation is that none of Jesse’s suffering is particularly redemptive or self-sacrificial, which would be the baseline requirement for him to be a Christ-figure.

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of bad things happen to him: but it’s never because he’s consciously choosing that suffering for the sake of another person. The one exception to this might be continuing to cook for Jack's gang to keep them from killing Brock, and even that is a coerced choice between two evils—and Brock’s mother would never have died, Brock would never be in the position of being threatened in the first place, if he was not a pawn in Jesse and Walt’s codependent self-perpetuating psycho-drama.

That’s what it all goes back to. Listening to Walt, being Walt’s partner in crime—gets Jesse beat up by criminals or used as emotional leverage against him. The overwhelming guilt Jesse feels all stems from things he did to help Walt, save him, in service of their mutual criminal partnership or out of wrath/hurt at what Walt has put him through.

It’s because of his cooperation with evil that Jesse (and his loved ones) suffer, and that makes him far more of an Adamic figure than a Christ figure.

For my money, the closest we ever get to a truly Christ-like act in the show would be Flynn throwing himself between his mother and father to protect her, knowing full well that Walt could easily overpower him and acting under the assumption that his father has just murdered another member of their family. Junior is as close to an innocent as Breaking Bad has—the only character more innocent than him is the baby—and if he had somehow ended up injured or dead by Walt’s hand because he was shielding Skyler, that would be truly laying down his life for another person. Respect for Flynn, you were more than breakfast memes.

I don’t necessarily know how useful it even is to think about this particular narrative in this way, tbh. Breaking Bad is not an allegorical or didactic show, nor is it particularly moralistic (though it is keenly interested in morality.) It can be read on a realist, psychological level, and through the lens of noir, crime and western genres. It’s definitely not consciously symbolic.

But, if you were going to make the case for a Biblical symbolic interpretation, the glaringly obvious one is Walter White as the Luciferian figure par excellence. Is there a fictional character who more perfectly exemplifies the sin of pride than Walt? A brilliant scientist (Lucifer was, after all, the Angel of Light—the greatest of all the angels) who makes a spectacular fall from grace and proceeds to drag many others down to his level.

So, if Mr. White is “the devil”, then that would make Jesse his Adam. Exiled from the garden of (comparative) innocence in the pilot because he agrees to the partnership between them (his ‘deal with the Devil’, so to speak) Jesse then spends the next sixty-some episodes making a lot of terrible choices, directly and indirectly leading to a lot of pain and suffering, because of that partnership. That’s the entirety of salvation history (as Christians understand it) in a nutshell. This is Jesse Pinkman’s equivalent of taking the apple of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—his original sin.

Man is made in God’s image, and like Adam and all his sons, Jesse still has a conscience—the spark of divinity lives in him. He still wants to do the right thing, but his relationship with Walt constantly pulls him back into the world of crime and evil. By the end of the show he’s become a literal slave to sin—his ability to make the blue meth, the gift his devilish mentor gave him that helped Jesse attain honor, power and money in the drug trade, now keeps him literally shackled in a hole in the ground. It’s not exactly subtle, is it?

But he does break free in the end. Not from his literal slavery—Walt has to be the one to free him from that—but from evil.

Jesse’s refusal to end Walt’s life at his command is him simultaneously breaking free of Mr. White’s control over his actions and refusing to continue the cycle of violence his old teacher fostered and Jesse enabled at every turn.

He does it all on his own. He makes the choice. After a lot of suffering, so even if there’s not a salvific figure in this universe persay, there is purgation.

(Ironically, Walt shielding Jesse with his body and taking a literal bullet for him would be an almost textbook Christ-like sacrificial death....except Walt was the person who set off the gun in the first place. Also the idea of putting Walter White and Jesus in the same thought, let alone comparing them....repels me for what I hope are obvious reasons, lol.)

What I liked about El Camino was Jesse finally having serious moral growth and maturity (not shocking that Walt had to die for it to happen.) The scene where he calls his parents, absolves them of blame and takes responsibility for his own actions was such exponential growth for him—the boy becoming a man. And his ultimate fate is to spend the rest of his life in a kind of exile. All of this comes at such a high cost, but there is atonement. It does all mean something.

[byzantine-nectarine]

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. (Matthew 1:1)

What Matthew publishes in order of kingly succession, Luke has set forth in order of priestly origin. While accounting for each order, both indicate the relationship of the Lord to each ancestral lineage. The order of his lineage is thus duly presented, because the association of the priestly and royal tribes that was begun through David from marriage is now confirmed out of the descent from Shealtiel to Zerubbabel. And so, while Matthew recounts his paternal origin that began in Judah, Luke teaches that his ancestry was taken from the tribe of Levi. Each in his own way demonstrates the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is both the eternal king and priest, as seen even in the fleshly origin of both of his ancestries. It does not matter that the origin of Joseph instead of Mary is recounted, for indeed there is one and the same blood relationship for the whole tribe. Moreover, both Matthew and Luke provide precedents. They name fathers in order not so much by their lineage as by their clan, since the tribe began from one individual and continues under a family of one succession and origin. Indeed, Christ has to be shown as the son of David and Abraham, so Matthew began in this way: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” It does not matter who is placed in a given order as long as the whole family is understood to derive from a single source. Joseph and Mary belonged to the same kinship line. Joseph is shown to have sprung from the line of Abraham. It is revealed that Mary came from this line, too. This system is codified in law so that, if the oldest of a family should die without sons, the next oldest brother of the same family would take the dead man’s wife in marriage. He would consider his sons as received into the family of the one who had died, and thus the order of succession remains with the firstborn, since they are considered to be the fathers of those born after them in either name or birth.      - Saint Hilary of Poitiers

Matthew wrote for the Jews, and in Hebrew; to them it was unnecessary to explain the divinity which they recognized; but necessary to unfold the mystery of the Incarnation. John wrote in Greek for the Gentiles who knew nothing of a Son of God. They required therefore to be told first, that the Son of God was God, then that this Deity was incarnate. And do not consider this genealogy a small thing to hear: for truly it is a marvellous thing that God should descend to be born of a woman, and to have as His ancestors David and Abraham. But why would it not have been enough to name one of them, David alone, or Abraham alone? Because the promise had been made to both of Christ to be born of their seed. To Abraham, “And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” David was king and prophet, but not priest. Thus He is expressly called the son of both, that the threefold dignity of His forefathers might be recognized by hereditary right in Christ. Another reason is that royal dignity is above natural, though Abraham was first in time, yet David is honour.      - Saint John Chrysostom

Book of Kells. Folio 8r: Breves causae of Matthew I-III

[eli-kittim]

Eli Kittim Theology Group on MeWe

[parse-c]

Nitrogen as a Structural Model of Caelum

Nitrogen (⁷N)

N - the Name (Ha’Shem) tro - trono - throne geni - ЖЕХС, JEHS

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bagsafrshejrs | cxefaexoge | fzhokkien

٠ع إِ ن ة ئ

from the seven spirits before his throne Rev. 1:4

geni - ЖЕХС, JEHS

bagsafrshejrs | cxefaexoge | fzhokkien

A description of the hierarchical structure:

JEHS : bagsafrshejrs | seraphim | beginning at sol (g), seraphim are ever verdant effervescent vessels, messengers of the Lord.

Let's look at a couple forms of the word "vessel" in Hebrew:

>< denotes an approximation most closely related

כּוֹס >< cio - chief information officer }|{ Michael סִיר >< oir - to (en)listen }|{ Raphael ¹ כַּד >< cd - to record }|{ Metatron אַנטָל >< intel/antel }|{ Lucifer EXC : cxefaexoge | "cherubim function as equerries, ferriers and executors of god's estate"

Ж : fzhokkien | from the Bulgarian zh character on kk is enthroned [the] Name; meaning Ж is the throne of Deus, while also the angelic Ophanim, referred to as the "chariot" or "throne of god".

If I remember correctly, Cherubim function as guides and armor in tandem with the Ophanim wheels which provide locomotion fir the Spirit of Deus.

geni - ЖЕХС, JEHS | EXC, JEHS | exegesis EXCJEHS also represents the seven spirits before the throne of god, spirits of genius (geni) , which is general enough to intimate the role of interpretation and critical thinking (exegesis) in any and all the gifts of the spirit (i.e. discernment, interpretation of tongues, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits).

Well, there's three in one here: Angelic hierarchy | the spiritual/intercessory realm The spirits before the throne | the heavenly realm Earthly gifts of the spirit | earthly realm Right on brand for ol' Deus.

Thanks be to the teacher.

٠ع إِ ن ة ئ

¹ I like the motif of Raphael, whose name means "God has healed", lending an ear to mankind's troubles and even taking corporeal form to aid Tobit. Was he the one in need of healing at some point in the time before times? Does he continue to aid us through our struggles out of a compassion stemming from his personal experience of being human? If so, he's probably like a Christ figure among the angels. You know...if they socialize with each other and stuff.

[penhive]

Godmenutics

Godmenutics stems from God and Hermeneutics (interpretation) and it is a method of Biblical Exegesis.

Here I am taking the conversation that Christ had at the well with the Samaritan woman.

I quote the scripture: “Christ met the Samaritan woman at the well and asked her water to drink and then she said that the Jews don’t truck with Samaritans and then Jesus said: if you had asked of water from me, I would have given you water which will never make you thirst again.”

Application of Godmenutics

Historical Cultural Interpretation

From the historical cultural context the Samaritans were despised by the Jews as being as condemnable people. Meeting the Samaritan women was a context for Jesus to open up a dialogue which became a part of his acceptance.  The gap between Jew and the Samaritan became reduced and there occurred a celebration of races.

Figurative Meaning

The water which Christ spoke about is life and is a metaphor signifying life here and life in eternity. Water is a powerful signifier to connote the meaning of life.  Water is the signifier and life the signified.

Anagogical Meaning

Anagogical meaning refers to the spiritual meaning behind it. Christ is constantly reminding people that there is eternity and gives the message of life as celebration for eternity.

[jessicalprice]

it was about right then and it’s still about right now

(reposted from Twitter)

(Image: a Tweet by @ ErinGreenbean that says: “Most of Jesus’ parables confront the listener with moving away from self-sufficiency/individualism and toward the whole/community.”)

This is literally what like every Jew who reads the parables has been trying to tell you,  but y'all keep insisting these stories are about how Judaism is bad.

These are stories from a teacher addressing an audience suffering under a brutal and exploitative occupation and they're literally about "you know how the Torah tells us to take care of each other? if we're gonna survive, we have to do that."

We have a text that uses the language of divine kingship frequently to convey a moral imperative if God is truly your leader, you will follow these laws. Jesus talks about the "kingdom of God" and Christians are like HE IS TALKING ABOUT THE AFTERLIFE. 

No, he's fucking talking about a community that existed in his here and now and was suffering and desperate and being militarily and economically and socially pressured to abandon their principles and exploit each other as they were being exploited by the Romans.

And he's reminding them that while the Romans may be occupying them, they don't have to rule them. Resisting hegemony and not letting it reshape you always involves, in a way, creating and choosing to occupy a different reality. 

In a society that--to use the language of the time, which I will be upfront that I do NOT like--acknowledges God as king, no one starves unless literally everyone is starving, because there are laws insisting that we share. Like, that's the whole point of every Jewish law touching on economics: what we have, even if it doesn't feel like much, can be enough when we understand that we are enough for each other. That’s there in the lost sheep, coin, and son(s) parables: you don't leave anyone behind.

There's the two men on the road to Jericho: The Samaritans are actually our family. We remembered that once, when they put Jewish prisoners on donkeys and sent them home with wine and oil. We have to take care of each other.

Then the men named above proceeded to take the captives in hand, and with the booty they clothed all the naked among them—they clothed them and shod them and gave them to eat and drink and anointed them and provided donkeys for all who were failing and brought them to Jericho, the city of palms, back to their kinsmen. Then they returned to Samaria. (II Chronicles 28:15)

All of these stories are about remembering that we're supposed to be family and taking care of each other and upholding a society that's an alternative to the hegemonic Roman war machine. And then Christian exegesis is all: how do we make these stories about how being Jewish is bad? We're in a whole different millennium and y'all are still insisting that Judaism was the problem Jesus came to solve.

Jesus tells a trilogy of stories about noticing when you've lost track of someone or something and Christians are like, "This must be a story about how Judaism hates the idea of accepting someone's repentance." 

Excuse me while I go build a menorah constructed of middle fingers.

Jesus tells a story about the relationship between two men in the Temple in which the real question is What does each of them do next and what is their responsibility to each other? and Christians are like this is about how the tax collector is good and the Pharisee is bad.

Y'all want so badly to make these stories about an us vs. them when the focus of most of them is just about "how can we do better as an 'us'?"

Like look at the parable of the four fates for seeds--what was actually happening to most of the harvest was that people were taking it, but Jesus puts it in terms of natural phenomena to take focus off that and put it on the hardship itself.

Most of the time, when there is an implied "them" to the "us" he's focused on, he tries to portray it as if it's inevitable/natural/etc. 

The focus isn't on "what are they doing to us?" 

It's on "what are we doing FOR each other?"

And you know what we know now, what we have terms and framing and concepts for? We know that in the wake of disaster, human beings get really good at caring for each other. We suck at being a society when things are good, but if a monsoon hits? We fucking get to work. 

But you know what got documented in heartbreaking detail after the Exxon Valdez spill? When the disaster is human-caused, communities tend to fall apart.

So what's the difference? 

Well, we can frame it in terms of human-created versus natural disasters but we can also frame it in terms of the victims' response.

It seems like, if we feel like it wasn't anyone's fault, it was just chance or nature or whatever, we get energized to take care of each other. If, on the other hand, we feel like it was someone's fault, we fracture.

Now, I don't think people around the Mediterranean in the first century CE were thinking in terms of disaster trauma or spontaneous prosocial behavior, but that doesn't mean they weren't thinking about what to focus on when they were suffering. 

To be honest, I don't see a consistent through-line in 100% of Jesus's parables. I don't even believe that all of the parables attributed to him were actually his, if he even existed as portrayed. But I do see a through-line in most of them. And that through-line is a direction of attention toward the needs of others and away from blame. And I genuinely believe that was because he was trying to keep his community whole and hopeful.

And it's ironic to me that even supposedly progressive Christian interpreters are still sitting there being like "he as calling out problems with Judaism.”

No, he was doing exactly the opposite.

[thinkingonscripture]

The Suffering of Jesus Christ

When God the Son added perfect humanity to Himself, this enabled Him to experience suffering and death with, and on behalf of, humanity. The suffering of Christ may be viewed in at least two ways: 1) His suffering during His time on earth prior to the cross, and 2) the suffering of the cross. As the God-Man, Jesus was perfectly holy in all His thoughts, words, and actions. Such perfect holiness…

[man-4-allseasons]

Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe." The official said to him, "Sir, come down before my little boy dies." Jesus said to him, "Go; your son will live." John 4:46-50 NRSV This royal official (βασιλικὸς - basilikos) likely was a servant of Herod Antipas. 1, 2 This individual probably was someone of greater wealth and influence than the average resident in Galilee. Yet, his son is ill, and at the point of death. All his power and influence cannot save his "little boy". I grew up with the notion, like many of us do, that my success was what determined my value as a person. I believed that if I were able to have a successful career, earn more money, and gain more influence I would be happier. I would have more freedom, be able to sort out my own problems, and become the master of my own destiny! Nothing could be further from the truth, and in this passage we can see the error of this notion made strikingly clear. This royal official should be able to leverage his wealth and influence to get the very best of care for his son, but even this won't save his life. He's probably tried everything in his power, but has been unsuccessful. He needs Christ. I think many of us, myself included, envy the wealth and power of men like the royal official out of a desire for control. When we're faced with difficult circumstances it's easy to believe that having these earthly goods will help us resolve our problems. There is no denying that having money and power can give you access to, among other things, better quality health care, but ultimately our fate still rests firmly in the hands of God (Ecc 9:11-12). This passage reveals that wealth and power do not render us immune to suffering.

[valerielynnstephensauthor]

[anarcho-mom-unist]

can i ask where in the synoptic gospels Jesus has to be 'told off' for having absorbed prejudices of his society? /gen

Thanks for asking, anon! These are the pericopes commonly referred to as “The Syro-Phoenician Woman” (Mark 7:24–30) and “The Canaanite Woman” (from Matthew 15:21–28)

While interpretation may vary, Jesus response to this woman’s plea to heal her daughter in both tellings strikes me as quite indicative of prejudiced views he didn’t realize he had: “He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’” (Mk. 7:27, NRSVue) and “He replied to her, ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’” (Mt. 15:26, NRSVue)

The woman responds “‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’” (Mk. 7:28b, NRSVue) and “‘Yes it is, Lord,’ she said. ‘Even the dogs eat the crumbs from the Master’s table.’” (Mt. 15:27, NRSVue) One may say that the woman isn’t necessarily making the most forceful response to a dehumanizing comment, but she is coming from a position profound disempowerment and she is being “as wise as [a] serpent” in her advocacy for herself and her daughter.

This gets through to Jesus who realizes that he acted quite heinously to someone in dire need, not recognizing the face of God in her’s, and tried to dismiss her concern and her humanity.

The passages are attached in full below!

Peace and Blessings!