As we begin our second session [09/25/2011] Ken remarked that even Pope Benedict XVI is on Twitter. He read one of the Pope’s tweets that seemed appropriate to our online efforts.
“I invite Christians with an informed and responsible creativity to join the networks of relationships which the digital era has made possible.”
Reflection on our conversation from last week, Session One.
The wording of the question from last week proved problematic. A number of the participants responded as though the question was, when do you receive the Holy Spirit? Or how do you know that you have received the Holy Spirit. To focus on the issue at hand, I asked the question in different words, is there anyone who thinks that God the Father gives his Spirit ONLY to Catholics? ONLY to Christians? ONLY to people of the Book, that is ONLY to Jews, Christians, and Muslims? We can turn the question around, Does God give his Spirit to everyone as Michael said last week.
By rewording the question, we were able after a bit more discussion to come to a consensus that God does give his Spirit to everyone. We reached that consensus, however, only after we distinguished between God giving and us receiving. Is there a difference? As last week, we left unanswered the question; can anyone receive the Holy Spirit without a prior gift of that same Spirit? Medieval theologians actually answered this question but only after nearly a century of their own struggle and retrieving their answer for us today will have to wait for another day.
More wondering … What concretely does “everybody” mean? One way to answer the question is to approximate a number. At present there are just over 7 billion [7,000,000,000] persons on the globe. But how many human beings have ever lived that is a complicated question with a reasonable response at the Population Reference Bureau http://www.prb.org/. Like me, you may be stunned by the estimate.
Another aspect of “everybody” is the many persons whom we might question having the capacity to receive, infants, the severely handicapped, maybe primitive peoples. To rise to the level of our times means to be open to the questions that arise in our times and to search out the resources of our times that point to answers. What would psychologists, anthropologists, etc. have to offer?
We may not recognize it but discussion of this question in today’s world can be very divisive. Does God intend all to be saved? A common response from some Christians is, unless you accept Jesus Christ as you Lord and Savior, you cannot be saved. How can that statement be true and also the affirmation that God gives his Spirit to everyone? Truth matters but …
Background to the Writing of Genesis – “History of Ancient Israel and its Book.” Go to http://rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com/?p=94
There is a tremendous difference between the composition of the Christian Scripture, what we call the New Testament, and the composition of the Hebrew Scripture, what we call the Old Testament.
In the most general of terms we can say that Jesus was born at the beginning of our era, lived in Nazareth for most of his life, conducted his ministry over a period of a little more than two years primarily in Galilee, with traditional journeys to Jerusalem for the high Holy Days and some forays into other locations, was crucified under Pontius Pilate when he was perhaps 33 years of age. And for Christians, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. The first literature we have was written about 30 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection and the last literature of the Christian Scripture was written around 100 AD or 70 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Whereas the Hebrew Scripture tells stories of the very beginning of creation, a long period of ancestral times of unknown duration, slavery in Egypt, wandering in the desert, capture of the Promised Land, formation of Kingdom first with Saul, then David and Solomon, a period of divided kingdom, times of the prophets, and repeated subjugation under Assyrian, Persian, Greek and Roman empires. Minimally the Israelite story is more than 1000 years in the creation, not a 100 years as with Christianity.
When we turn to the Hebrew Scriptures the time between events and their being recorded is certainly of a different scale. If we turn to the first words of Genesis we hear the writer say, In the beginning … Obviously no one was there at the beginning. So when were the words written? Who wrote them? Why were they written? And a host of other questions can be asked. A very accessible book which addresses these and other questions is Who Wrote the Bible? written by Richard Elliott Friedman, available on www.amazon.com.
To rise to the level of our times, let’s turn to the bottom of our handout, History of Ancient Israel and its Book.
What is startling is that until the 18th century, almost everyone assumed the Moses had written the first five Books of the Hebrew Scripture, the Pentateuch. They also assumed that the events in which he is portrayed as being involved he wrote from the perspective of a personal witness to the events. Maybe you too think or perhaps thought at one time that Moses, of course, wrote the Five Books of Moses. To question what you have taken to factual, simply the way things are, can be challenging.
What changed? Well investigators first recognized that some of what was written occurred after Moses died. He couldn’t have written that. Then they recognized that there were many duplicates, even triplicates, of the same events; often told in different and at times contradictory ways. The more they investigated the more questions they had. With the advance of linguistic studies investigators began to place the texts in somewhat of a chronological order and that order was not the order of the books as they appear in a modern Bible.
The investigations into the text itself were greatly expanded by archeological finds. This further helped to develop a time line of development. Other texts were discovered from peoples in the Ancient Near East, supporting evidence was discovered for some of the events mentioned in these five books but for other events no evidence to date has been found. All of this contributed to answers that began to coalesce around what later became know as the Documentary Hypothesis. In summary there were four authors or schools of authors identified by letters J, E, P, D, and a final editor who put theses accounts together, a redactor, R. More on this as we progress.
What we have to keep in mind as far as we are concerned, we don’t know any of these findings on our own. We don’t know Hebrew. We don’t know Greek. We aren’t archeologists. Etc. So we are in the position of believing. It becomes a question of what is more credible and that depends in large measure on the world in which we live. Many Christians reject this historical method because it challenges their world of fixed truths, unchanging realities, etc. Changes at this level in our lives can create a great deal of fear.
Where are you? What are your questions? Where does it all end? That is what we head toward in our next session, Session Three.
Your comments are welcomed.
One Response to Session Two: History of Ancient Israel and its Book. – Held on Sunday, Sept. 25, 2011