Bethlehem 2007 and 2004

National Geographic has an article in their December 2007 magazine on the modern day city of Bethlehem, the house of bread. Like all good subscribers, I have only looked at the pictures so far. They have an amazing one showing how close Bethlehem rests in the shadow of Herod, literally with the giant ruins of Herod's desert fortress in the background, the Herodium. Archaeologists recently found what appears to be Herod's tomb at the Herodium. The birth and death of two great kings. Bethlehem is about 3 miles (4.75 km) from the Herodium. All these places within an hours walk of one another.

Back in 2004, I spent a night at Ramat Rachel in Jerusalem. I woke up the next morning to a view of sun rise on the Herodium.

Figure 1 -- The Herodium (or Herodion) is in the background , the flat-top shaped hill.

Figure 2 -- Panning to the right, to the east, you can see more of the nearby land.

Figure 3 -- Panning to the east slightly more, you can see the towers of Bethlehem in the middle ground.

Rejoice always--David Scholer

There is a great article in the LA Times on professor David Scholer of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. It's encouraging to see God's faithfulness in how this man has faced hardship and his struggle with cancer, and how he has been strengthened to continue teaching and rejoicing in life.

Notes on "Jesus" by Flusser, Chapter 1

Flusser begins "Jesus" with comments on the sources. His goal is to "write the story of Jesus' life (pg. 18)", and to "simply server as a mouthpiece for Jesus' message today (pg 16)". Key points of chapter 1 include:

• The only important Christian sources are the Gospels.
• The three Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, Luke) are based upon common historical material
• The fourth, John, is primarily theological in nature.
  
• The most genuine sources of a charismatic personality are their own utterances and the accounts of the faithful--read critically of course. Outside references serve as a control.
• Without much detail, Flusser states that "the early Christian accounts about Jesus are not as untrustworthy as people today often think (pg 20)".
• The only Gospel that teaches a post-Easter Christology is John's.
• In the early church, for Jewish Christianity, Jesus' role as miracle-worker, teacher, prophet and Messiah was more important than the risen Lord of the kerygma.
• He dates the Gospels to around 70AD, which luckily was after the "dynamic creativity" of Pauline congregations had died down.
• He concludes that with an unbiased mind, the synoptic Gospels are seen as more focused on Christian platitudes rather than kerygmatic statements.
• A intimate few of first century Judaism is vital to understanding Jesus. In light of this Jewish background, the Synoptic Gospels preserve a picture of Jesus which is more reliable than is generally acknowledged.
• Based on R. L. Lindsey's work, Flusser feels Luke preserves a more original tradition than Mark, and when combined with Matthew provides a more authentic view of Jesus (pg 21,22).
• In a foot note, Flusser thinks that Jesus' crucifixion quote of Psalm 22 is a creative invention by Mark. More in a later chapter.
• Flusser has "no axe to grind", and "seeks to present Jesus directly to the reader".

Return to "Jesus" by Flusser

I recently realized I had never finished David Flusser's book, Jesus, and have returned to read it in depth. Flusser was an Orthodox Jew who lived in Israel and was an expert in Jesus and nascent Christianity. He was a founding member of the Jerusalem School of Synpotic Research. His book, Jesus, 2001, searches for the historical Jesus and "reflects the truism that Jesus was a Jew and wanted to remain within the Jewish faith but argues that, without the long preparatory work of contemporaneous Jewish faith, the teaching of Jesus would be unthinkable (Preface, Jesus)."

My goal is to take notes on this book and reflect on its conclusions. I lack the skills to read this critically and will approach the book as a novice student. I am particularly interested in Flusser's view of Jesus since as he says, "[I am] a practicing Jew and not a Christian, I am independent of any church. I readily admit, however, that I personal identify myself with Jesus' Weltanschauung, both moral and political, and I believe that the content of his teachings and the approach he embraced have always had the potential to change our world and prevent the greatest part of evil and suffering."

Losing Faith?

Faith and scholarship are discussed in a recent BAR article, Losing Faith: How Scholarship Affects Scholars: 2 Who Did and 2 Who Didn't. In this article, Hershel Shanks, editor of BAR, interviews four scholars to probe the effect of their sholarship work on their faith. Did it help, hinder, or destroy?

Several interesting themes resonated among the participants.

• Is the Bible inerrant? If the products of scholarly research conflict with a literal reading of the text, how does a person's faith deal with it? Does it shatter or take it in stride? They discussed the approach (and brittleness) of typical Protestant fundamentalists and the flexibility of a typical Jewish approach. Shanks--"Well, then your scholarship did destroy your faith?" Dever--"Absolutely. Next year will be the 50th anniversary of my first trip to Israel. I worked there for 49 years and let me tell you something: Seeing Judaism and Christianity and, God help us, Islam up close and personal does not help."

• Many of their faith struggles dealt with the evil in the world. If God is good, and he interacts with the world, how does evil still exist? Schifmann--"Any person who says that he can give an explanation for the Holocaust is crazy. So the bottom line is that we all go along living with the fact that this horrible thing happened and we can’t explain it."

• Faith is a process, a journey.

From the article, here are a few quotes that will linger for awhile:

Strange--Faith in the Judeo-Christian tradition has a God who intervenes. That's what the Exodus event is, that's what the crucifixion is: its a God who intervenes, and when I look around this world, I don't see a God who intervenes.

Dever--Right now the Christian tradition does nothing for me and the Orthodox Jewish tradition does little for me. In my own experience, I find this God so distant that it doesn’t make any practical difference. And, for me, I guess the final straw probably was the death of my son five years ago. If I had believed in God, I would have been very angry, but I didn’t and I survived.

Schiffman--In Judaism there is actually a commandment to believe. What does that mean, a command to believe? Well, it wouldn’t be a commandment if it were so easy. There has to be a struggle that a human being goes through in this complex world, in which we don’t really know what’s going on.

The article ended with notes of humility that are worth humming now and then.

Strange--I think I would say that faith/unfaith is sort of a false dichotomy. I think faith always contains elements of unfaith and vice versa. So in a way, we can’t avoid it.