{"id":100,"date":"2011-10-01T16:51:42","date_gmt":"2011-10-01T16:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/?p=100"},"modified":"2011-11-09T20:47:46","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T20:47:46","slug":"session-two-history-of-ancient-israel-and-its-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/?p=100","title":{"rendered":"<script type=\"text\/javascript\">    var _gaq = _gaq || [];   _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-25646250-2']);   _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);    (function() {     var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text\/javascript'; ga.async = true;     ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https:\/\/ssl' : 'http:\/\/www') + '.google-analytics.com\/ga.js';     var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);   })();  <\/script>  <\/head> Session Two: History of Ancient Israel and its Book. &#8211;  Held on Sunday, Sept. 25, 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As we begin our second session [09\/25\/2011] Ken remarked that even Pope Benedict XVI is on Twitter.\u00a0 He read one of the Pope\u2019s tweets that seemed appropriate to our online efforts.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I invite Christians with an informed and responsible creativity to join the networks of relationships which the digital era has made possible.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reflection on our conversation from last week, Session One.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The wording of the question from last week proved problematic.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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?\u00a0 ONLY to Christians?\u00a0 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 <strong>everyone<\/strong> as Michael said last week.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 We reached that consensus, however, only after we distinguished between God giving and us receiving. Is there a difference?\u00a0 As last week, we left unanswered the question; can anyone receive the Holy Spirit without a prior gift of that same Spirit?\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>More wondering \u2026 What concretely does \u201ceverybody\u201d mean?\u00a0 One way to answer the question is to approximate a number.\u00a0 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prb.org\/\">http:\/\/www.prb.org\/<\/a>. Like me, you may be stunned by the estimate.<\/p>\n<p>Another aspect of \u201ceverybody\u201d is the many persons whom we might question having the capacity to receive, infants, the severely handicapped, maybe primitive peoples.\u00a0 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,\u00a0anthropologists, etc. have to offer?<\/p>\n<p>We may not recognize it but discussion of this question in today\u2019s world can be very divisive.\u00a0 Does God intend all to be saved?\u00a0 A common response from some Christians is, unless you accept Jesus Christ as you Lord and Savior, you cannot be saved.\u00a0 How can that statement be true and also the affirmation that God gives his Spirit to everyone?\u00a0 Truth matters but \u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Background to the Writing of Genesis \u2013\u00a0<\/strong><strong>\u201cHistory of Ancient Israel and its Book.\u201d Go to\u00a0<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/?p=94\">http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/?p=94<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 And for Christians, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.\u00a0 The first literature we have was written about 30 years after Jesus\u2019 death and resurrection and the last literature of the Christian Scripture was written around 100 AD or 70 years after Jesus\u2019 death and resurrection.<\/p>\n<p>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. \u00a0Minimally the Israelite story is more than 1000 years in the creation, not a 100 years as with Christianity.<\/p>\n<p>When we turn to the Hebrew Scriptures the time between events and their being recorded is certainly of a different scale. \u00a0If we turn to the first words of Genesis we hear the writer say, In the beginning \u2026 Obviously no one was there at the beginning.\u00a0 So when were the words written?\u00a0 Who wrote them?\u00a0 Why were they written?\u00a0 And a host of other questions can be asked. \u00a0A very accessible book which addresses these and other questions is <em>Who Wrote the Bible?\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0written by Richard Elliott Friedman, available on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/\">www.amazon.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>To rise to the level of our times, let\u2019s turn to the bottom of our handout, History of Ancient Israel and its Book.<\/p>\n<p>What is startling is that until the 18<sup>th<\/sup> century, almost everyone assumed the Moses had written the first five Books of the Hebrew Scripture, the Pentateuch.\u00a0 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. \u00a0Maybe you too think or perhaps thought at one time that Moses, of course, wrote the Five Books of Moses. \u00a0To question what \u00a0you have taken to factual, simply the way things are, can be challenging.<\/p>\n<p>What changed?\u00a0 Well investigators first recognized that some of what was written occurred after Moses died.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t have written that.\u00a0 Then they recognized that there were many duplicates, even triplicates, of the same events; often told in different and at times contradictory ways.\u00a0 The more they investigated the more questions they had.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 All of this contributed to answers that began to coalesce around what later became know as the Documentary Hypothesis. \u00a0In summary there were four authors or schools of authors identified by letters <strong>J, E, P, D, and <\/strong>a final editor who put theses accounts together, a redactor,\u00a0<strong>R<\/strong>.\u00a0 More on this as we progress.<\/p>\n<p>What we have to keep in mind as far as we are concerned, we don\u2019t know any of these findings on our own.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know Hebrew.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know Greek.\u00a0 We aren\u2019t archeologists. Etc.\u00a0 So we are in the position of believing.\u00a0 It becomes a question of what is more credible and that depends in large measure on the world in which we live.\u00a0 Many Christians reject this historical method because it challenges their world of fixed truths, unchanging realities, etc.\u00a0 Changes at this level in our lives can create a great deal of fear.<\/p>\n<p>Where are you?\u00a0 What are your questions? Where does it all end? \u00a0That is what we head toward in our next session, Session Three.<\/p>\n<p>Your comments are welcomed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we begin our second session [09\/25\/2011] Ken remarked that even Pope Benedict XVI is on Twitter.\u00a0 He read one of the Pope\u2019s tweets that seemed appropriate to our online efforts. &#8220;I invite Christians with an informed and responsible creativity &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/?p=100\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}