Loading...I have started to discuss the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, in large part to correct widespread misunderstandings of what they were doing and what their books were about, and in part to emphasize just how interesting and important they are. These are Israelite teachers who believe that God was delivering a message through them to the crises they were facing in their time.
To understand their message, we have to know what the particular crises were – there were many different ones confronted by different prophets, and each had a message to deliver in the face of the one he was addressing.
Even so, there is a broad consistency among the messages you will find in the prophets – though it is not at all what most people tend to think. These prophets were not anticipating a messiah to come hundreds of years later or a cataclysmic end of the world to come thousands of years later. They were talking about their own situations and what God wanted to be done – and what would happen if Israelites did not heed their message. Short answer: It won’t be good.
I will take a couple of posts to illustrate how prophecy worked in the Hebrew Bible by dealing here with Isaiah, who is probably the most famous prophet of all. Since understanding what he has to say is completely dependent on the situation he was addressing, the first step in discussing his proclamation is to set it in his precise historical context. This and my subsequent posts on Isaiah will be taken from my discussions in The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Oxford Univesity Press).
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One of the earliest of our “classical” (that is, writing) prophets is Isaiah of Jerusalem, from the 8th century BCE. The book of Isaiah begins, in typical prophetic fashion, by
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Bart,
I have a question about Luke 2:24 – this clearly describes an animal sacrifice of two birds per tradition which were presumably bought at the same Temple Jesus was later said to enter with some type of a whip of cords and cause a scene. So he rebels against the behavior both his parents engaged in. Not surprising given his later views as an adult.
When I bring up Luke 2:24 in talks/debates with Christians almost all are very surprised somewhat bothered and even disturbed the verse is in the NT. I guess its not something they teach in Sunday School. I think its because it sounds primitive and pagan like. And why would Mary do something like this if she knew Jesus to be divine and outside normal humanity? That ritual was designed for us mere mortals was it not?
What are your thoughts on this?
Thank you for your time!
Luke wants to portray Jesus’ family and he himself as faithful Jews who worship in the temple. Jesus’ difficulty was not with the sacrificial system itself or the temple, but with what he thought were abuses of it by others who had made the sacred place a place of business.
“The two countries of Syria and Israel banded together to attack Judah in order to make it join the coalition, and marched down to Jerusalem in full force.”
It seems to me that Israel and Judah were likely never united. Do you think there was ever a united kingdom or were they always separate kingdoms?
I don’t think the accounts in the books of Samuel and Kings are accurate in their details, but I don’t have any trouble imagining that htere wsa some kind of united kingdom early in the history of Israel.
1. What is your guess as to why the united kingdom became separated?
2. It seems that some of the people from the destroyed Israel came down to Jerusalem, right?
I’m not really sure what the actual immediate causes were.
I am particularly interested in this book, Isaiah since many Christians seem to believe that he’s predicting the birth of Jesus. The so-called “Suffering Servant” portion which is so obviously talking about events that had already happened get twisted into Jesus somehow.
I’ll look forward to the further posts on this!
Indeed! The other chapters mention Israel as the servant. That’s a very big hint!
Do most scholars think that Isaiah’s prophecies about Israel and Judah were predictive or that they were ex eventu prophecies? Do you agree?
Predictive, I should think. That’s what I think. He could see the writing on the wall. Just like people today who say that 2024 will not be a good year for Democrats. It doesn’t mean they are necessarily inspired by God. (Or that the events yet to transpire will be!)
And of course, his namesake, Tiglath-Pileser 1 had overseen the final end of the Hittites who were ruled by even better names like Šuppiluliuma, which is like a designer sofa covered in caramel.
As I many years ago lost my decades-long belief in the preterist belief in Revelation in favor of a symbolic and personal-inner view of this book, the understanding of the symbology changed. It accelerated a transformation of how I read and understood OT and its various books.
Isiah is also one of them. I recognize its historical framework, both before and after the exile, and that it may have been put together over many centuries, both before and probably also after the exile. This theme of the fall of God ,,,, the judgment and then return to the New Jerusalem, seems to a non-scholar like me to be biblically universal.
The use of the “term” Israel, as the seed as in ch 7 (I suspects that Israel may be a symbolic term referred to as “ya-shar = straight) and (el = God, ) and even in the Gnostic “On the creation of the world as frames “Israel – which is the” man who sees God ” talking beyond the physical nation itself. Even the” servant “is called “Israel” in chapter 49 who will lead the way to this” new Jerusalem “In addition to the use of cities as in chapters 24 and 25 ,,, as an archetypal state of humanity that will be replaced by a “New Jerusalem”.
I suspect, as a non scholar, that the book expresses a deeper spiritual meaning than (only?) a superficial historical expression of the author(s) agony over the fate of his people.
Hi Dr Ehrman!
1. Were the four gospels solidly in place prior to the testing of other books against criteria for canonicity?
2. From how early on did the proto-orthodox movement begin altering scripture to align with the movement?
3. How important do you think the codex was as a factor contributing towards the creation of the canon?
Thank you so much!!
1. I wouldn’t say “solidly” probably, but certainly there was more widespread agreement about the four Gospels than any of the other sections of the later NT; 2. As soon as we have manuscripts and quotations by church fathers, so second century; 3. I’m not sure there’s a good way to know. Have you read GAmbles book on Books and Readers in te Early Church? It would be a good next place for you to go, once you finish your paper.
Thank you! (I’ll look up that book)
So when Irenaeus came up with his justification for four gospels, they were widely accepted even though they weren’t measured against apostolicity, orthodoxy etc. since Irenaeus’ justification lies apart from these things?
The standard criteria may have been the reason that the communities that Iranaeus was associated with accepted the books (which isn’t the same as saying they were widely accepted; I’m not sure we have any evidence of that one way or the other). He’s giving a clever argument principally to those who were convinced (possibly for other reasons).
Just to clarify: was Irenaeus’ list of four gospels which showed up in against heresies in 180c.e. , the first of its kind?
Thank you!!
Yup!
There is a Sennacherib Prism on display at the Oriental Institute on the campus of the University of Chicago, for any interested Americans who can’t venture across the pond to the British Museum any time soon.
One can do a search online for the Taylor Prism and read its translation. Interesting! (Sennacherib certainly wasn’t a very modest guy, was he?!)
Bart:
What do you think of the work of Francesca Stavrakopoulou as a skeptic, but an expert on biblical research based at the U of Exeter? She has a new book coming out ‘God: An Anatomy,’ that is receiving good reviews. She argues that the Bible wasn’t written as a factual account of the past.
I would appreciate your answer before I decide to order the book. Her degree is from Oxford, so I assume that she is a legitimate scholar. But from your perspective, is she too extreme? I see that she has some lectures on the BBC and YouTube. She is interviewed about her new book at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx9Gj67r1Dc.
I don’t know her or her work, but judging from the people who blurbed her book and other factors (Knopf as the publisher) she appears to be completely bona fide, and the summary of the book I’ve read seems completely plausible.
Bingo! The Syro-Ephraim conflict provides vivid context for the Immanuel prophecy. It’s a great example of your point about the typical kind of thing the prophets were prophesying about. Seems they sometimes used the birth of their children as signs from Yahweh–at least Hosea and Isaiah do. This one seems to advise that the conflict will be over before a child can grow up enough to be weaned or learn about good or bad. It clearly has nothing to do with מְשִׁ֙יחַ֙ or χριστὸν. If עַלְמָה hadn’t been translated παρθένος in the LXX, would Matthew have found Isaiah 7:14 relevant to his purpose of declaring Jesus of virgin birth? I doubt it.
I love how you carefully and succinctly lay out the historical context of Isaiah’s world and the precedence to Israel’s destruction. Very interesting keep em’ coming!