(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
Loading...QUESTION:
Would it be accurate to say that after Jesus’ death the first-century Christians turned him into an enduring symbol of the very sacrificial system that he himself rejected in life? By ‘sacrificial system’ I’m referring both to the ancient lamb/goat-based traditions surrounding Yom Kippur, as well as to the later lamb sacrifices conducted by the Jerusalem temple priests during Jesus’ day, etc. And, by the word ‘rejected,’ I’m wondering if Jesus having upset the moneychanger’s tables at the temple was his way of disparaging the very notion of paying money to buy a lamb for a priest to sacrifice in order to atone for one’s sins.
RESPONSE:
This is an interesting question, with several intriguing aspects: 1) Did Jesus reject the Jewish sacrificial system? 2) Did his followers borrow their imagery for the salvific character of his death from the Jewish sacrificial system? 3) If so, were they not embracing precisely what he abandoned?
I think the easiest question to answer is #2: Yes, I think the early followers of Jesus did see his death as an atoning sacrifice, and for this imagery they relied on what they knew. Since they (the very first followers of Jesus, even before Paul) were Jewish, what they knew about atonement came from their own religious experiences, practices, and Scripture. Jesus’ death for them was an atonement for sin, the perfect sacrifice that – eventually they came to think – replaced the sacrifices in the Temple. I should hedge a bit and say that it is not clear that the earliest Christians thought that there was no longer any need for Temple sacrifice. The book of Acts, at least, indicates that they continued to attend the Temple and there is nothing to suggest they did not offer sacrifices still. But after a while, it came to be thought that with the death of Jesus, further sacrifice was no longer necessary. Paul himself has this sacrificial understanding of Jesus’ death clearly in mind, as evident from such passages as Rom. 3:24-25, and Paul’s somewhat peculiar statement that “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us.” (The reason it’s peculiar is that the Passover lamb that was sacrificed was not understood to be for atonement.)
The answer to question #3 – isn’t it ironic that the Christians embraced what Jesus rejected – hinges on the answer to #1 – did Jesus reject the Jewish sacrificial system?
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Bart, so do you think Jesus would have been ok with a statement like this one?
Hebrews 9:22 In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
*without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness*?
I wish I knew!
” But the event itself is independently attested in a remarkably wide range of sources ..” . Are any of these sources non-Christian ?
No, there are no non-Christian sources that deal with the details of Jesus’ life. (No one else noticed apparently!)
It was my understanding that Roman coins were not allowed in the Temple and that the role of the money changers was to exchange Roman coins for Temple coins to be used for the purchase oh sacrificial animals. Were the money changers raking off a little for themselves? Is this what Jesus meant when he said, “you have turned my Father’s house into a den of thieves?”
Yes, that’s right. And yes, I imagine this is how they made a modest living. Jesus may not have appreciated it.
A Church oh Christ friend explained to me thay Adam’s sin was so egregious in the sight of God, that animal sacrifices were not sufficient, that a human sacrifice was needed. And like the Paschal lamb, the human would have to be spotless. Since no human qualified, it was necessary for God to send Jesus, who by being born of a virgin was free of the stain of Adam’s seed, so we could crucify him and be free of the Original Sin. Therefore animal sacrifice was no longer necessary.
Am I the only one who has trouble with this? Yet even in mainstream churches the Eucharistic liturgy contains words such as, “full and sufficient sacrifice.”
No, I don’t think you’re the only one with this problem!
I remember a TV show a few years back, that had supposed “experts” arguing over the events of that Passover week. I don’t recall who any of the participants were; to represent a variety of opinions, they’d probably included some with no real academic credentials.
Someone argued that Jesus had wanted to attract attention, in a big way. That he’d sought to antagonize the Romans by riding into town on a white donkey (the assumption being that the Romans knew a man doing that meant to fulfill a prophecy about the Messiah), and to antagonize the Jewish priests by creating a “scene” in the Temple. If that *was* his intent, he might have seized on a pretext that wasn’t significant in itself.
I don’t remember how much further the debater took that idea. But I have to ask: why do you (and, I assume, most scholars) not accept *as one possibility* that Jesus actually wanted to be arrested and executed, because he’d convinced himself God would raise him from the dead? If he was capable of believing he was the Messiah, couldn’t he have believed that as well? It would explain Judas’s motivation (Jesus actually had ordered him to “betray” him). And his closest followers really might have expected he’d be resurrected; that would explain *their* convincing *them*selves it had happened, on the flimsiest of evidence.
My sense is that Jesus did not have death as his ultimate mission, at *all*. He was really all about something else. I lay this out in several places, most fully in Jesus: Apocatyptica Prophet of the New Millennium.
In this context, are “atonement’ and “salvation” the same thing?
No, atonement is a way to have salvation. Salvation broadly just means “acquiring a right standing before God” (and so being “saved” — from his wrath, from hell, from the bad consequences of one’s own sins, or whatever). Atonement refers to the “placating of an angry deity” (in Christian thinking traditionally, God has a good reason to be angry!)
Elsewhere you’ve shown how Mark portrays the Last Supper as a Passover meal, while John has it occurring the night before Passover, presumably for John to have Jesus being slaughtered along with the other lambs in preparation for Passover. Does this change reflect a growing understanding of the sacrificial nature of Jesus that developed between the time Mark and John were written? In other words, is it possible that this notion was not present among the earliest followers of Jesus but possibly took decades to develop?
It probably did take a while to develop, but it’s already in Paul; and I think it’s in Mark too (Mark 10:45, e.g.); it just isn’t in his Passion narrative the same way it is in John.
You wrote: “So probably *something* happened. But it’s hard to know what Jesus was objecting to. Our sources are so biased and so late on the question that it’s difficult to reconstruct a plausible historical scenario.”
If the Markan Jesus figure is an allegorical portrayal of Paul/Simon of Samaria, then the reason the Jewish sacrificial system was rejected was because it prescribed the use of material things in worship. For him all prescriptions of the Law that involved material things were from the stoicheia and to be rejected. Those who held the key to the Markan riddle would understand the hidden meaning of, “He did not permit anyone to carry *anything* through the temple area.” (Mk. 11:16) But “to those on the outside everything comes in parables, so that they may look and see, but not perceive.” (Mk. 4: 11-12)
Paul/Simon probably openly confronted the Jewish authorities with this only on his final visit to Jerusalem. But the sole non-allegorical account we have of the ruckus he caused is the sanitized version in chapter 21 of Acts of the Apostles. The author of Acts, in the interest of keeping his Paul orthodox, changes the cause of the ruckus. He makes the Jews responsible for it. They flip out just seeing Paul in the Temple and they claim he defiled it by bringing a Greek (Trophimus) into it.
Instead of flipping out over Paul’s presence in the Temple, the Jews should have recognized it as the sign to get out of town. For, as Markan insiders would have delightedly appreciated, Paul/Simon’s presence in the Temple was the foretold “abomination of desolation.” Simonians regarded Simon as Zeus (See “Against Heresies” of Irenaeus, 1.24.4). The presence of a statue of Zeus in the Temple was the original abomination of desolation (Dan. 9:27). Most Jews failed to recognize the second abomination: the presence of the Simonian Zeus standing in their Temple around the year 60.
Hey Bart, Paul does not talk much about the temple sacrificial system, or of Jesus being the final sacrifice for sins. Unless of course you think he wrote the book of Hebrews, which I know you do not. I just find it kind of strange that he does not have much to say about, or does he and I have just missed it. Of course I know he talks about Jesus being an atonement for sins, but no talk of a temple. What do you think about his silence concerning this, or do you think anything about it at all.
It’s a great question. It’s one of a lot of things that Paul doesn’t talk about that you wish he did. It’s hard to know if he didn’t care, or if instead it simply had no bearing on the reasons that he was writing these particular letters of his that we still have.
You say “Jesus’ death for them was an atonement for sin, the perfect sacrifice that – eventually they came to think – replaced the sacrifices in the Temple.” What source makes you deduce “after a while” the Apostles came to this view? When is “After a while?”
Surely not between AD 33 and 62, when James led the Church and continued to be accepted at the Temple – as a sacrificing PRIEST who was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies, says Hegesippus. Hardly likely that a “Jesus sacrifice” was taught by him or other Apostles in Jerusalem, otherwise, how would they have been allowed to remain ALIVE, let alone go onto Temple grounds while they publicly mixed the Holy metaphors of sacrifice – Passover or otherwise – with the life of Jesus, their rabbi?
What about after AD 62? Then, the theory that the Apostles (or a Christianized Jerusalem Church) accepted a Christ Sacrifice seems more plausible, since James was killed for some reason around 62, perhaps for preaching an Atonement or some other theory publicly.
After AD 70 is an even more plausible date, since as you note, NO Jews sacrificed at the now-destroyed Temple, and new interpretations surely arose to fill that gap, and the Jerusalem Church fades from history and Christianity is defined by Paul from that point onward.
The Atonement bears Paul’s fingerprints. He actually has a superficial grasp of Jewish imagery and scripture (he constantly misquotes/misconstrues the Torah, as in Rom. 10:6-8, and as you note, speaks of a Passover lamb as an atonement, which is wrong.) This, combined with his likely knowledge of Pagan Sacrificial Deities, makes it just as likely he created the Atonement’s imagery independent of the Apostles, towards whom he was VERY negative, calling them “so-called Pillars” who thought they were “something.” Clearly, they were rivals, not his teachers. Besides, he, himself says he received his teachings about Jesus from “no man” but on by revelation from Christ himself (Gal. 1:12.)
You seem to be more invested in this issue than I am! But I will say that there is absolutely no way that James could have been a priest who was sacrificing in the temple (let alone the high priest who could enter the holy of holies! No one by the high priest could). To be a priest required a man to be a direct descendant of Aaron (descendant of Levi). Jesus’ family was from the line of Judah. James wasn’t a priest.
My sense is that Paul did not invent a whole lot of his basic theology, but refined what he learned (as he admits in 1 Cor. 15:3-5) . The idea of an atonement I think was very early, pre-Pauline.
Well, I have done a lot of thinking about this – though I can’t imagine I’ve done more than you have! LOL
Great point about James and the priesthood, which shows the poor quality of the historical sources and traditions from which ancient historians drew.
But about Paul, how can we accept that he’s telling the truth in 1 Cor. 15 when he says he “received” that material? He might have, but from WHOM must remain unknown, and even in Acts (purporting to record the early Church’s beliefs) there’s literally nothing about an Atonement tradition. And HOW MUCH he received is also unclear, and must forever remain so, with the information we have (which I guess was my point.)
I think we can trust him precisely because it’s against his best interest in many respects to claim dependence on others. Yes, Acts is missing the atonement; this is one of the most striking features of the book for me. And in that it stands very much at odds not only with its predecessor Mark but with its hero Paul.
The theology of atonement is a challenge for me. That someone can substitute for us is an odd theology if you are not raised on this theology. Moreover, if Jesus were God, then this suffering is masochistic torture and if Jesus were the son of God, then God sadistically tortured his Son. Either way is odd. It’s amazing to me how readily people accept such an extraordinary theology and the history of this theology is of considerable interest to me. Thanks for the explanations.
Exactly.
“The reason it’s peculiar is that the Passover lamb that was sacrificed was not understood to be for atonement.” What was it understood to be for then? There’s an entry on chabad.org that implies it was an insult to the former Egyptian oppressors, and on Frontline Elaine Pagels makes it out as a meal shared with God. What’s your take on it for our purposes here?
It was sacrificed in commemoration of the lamb sacrificed on the night of the tenth plague against Egypt. Not sure about Elaine Pagels’ view….
This issue of sacrifice goes to the heart of one of the main issues I have with the belief in Christianity. Although I was raised in a fundamentalist environment, the idea that a sacrifice of God’s son, redeems us all for eternity, if only we believe it, has always been difficult for me to accept. If, in our modern culture, one was to investigate another religion whose cornerstone is a human sacrifice, it would make that person perhaps recoil in their rejection. Yet a human sacrifice seems to be the cornerstone of Christian belief and few people seem to be bothered by this. This notion of Christ’s “sacrifice” seems to me another instance of wishful thinking, another in a long line of trying to explain the historical facts of an unusual narrative to make them palatable to the many who want such a belief system.
I hope you can find some time to explore this notion of sacrifice in the Jewish and Christian traditions. When did it finally fall from disfavor?
It necessarily stopped for Judaism with the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Most Christians still hold on to the idea….
Bart,
Thanks for posting this interesting three-part question and your thoughtful (as usual!) reply. Indeed, it seems all the more reasonable to posit that without their preexisting OT template of Jewish belief, scripture, and practice, those first followers of Jesus we read of in the NT would never have even thought to interpret his death as the perfect atoning sacrifice on our behalf. And so, moving backward in time, what if these OT beliefs, scriptures, and practices were also purely human constructs to begin with? This viewpoint could surely be argued in light of religious parallels in other ancient cultures, no?
Regarding Christian doctrine in general, and that of atoning sacrifice in particular, I am reminded of a quote from a recent book entitled *Religion in an Age of Science* by Professor Ian Barbour. He writes:
“Theological doctrines start as human interpretations of individual and communal experience and are therefore subject to revision. [Accordingly,] we can have a theology of nature which is based primarily on religious experience and the life of the religious community, but which includes some reformulation of traditional doctrines in the light of science.”
The doctrine of atoning sacrifice comes readily to mind in this regard, and in case anyone on the blog is interested, a new book on this very topic has just come out . Entitled *Models of Atonement: Speaking About Salvation in a Scientific Age*, this thoughtful book is written by George L. Murphy, who is both a Lutheran pastor-theologian (from NE Ohio) and a PhD physicist (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore). Murphy makes a worthy effort to move us all beyond the inevitable limits of prior theological interpretations, while still remaining respectful of the Christian tradition. As a professor and scientist myself, I would have gone a bit further than Rev. Murphy in expounding a theology of nature, but that little quibble aside, I highly recommend this little book to anyone who is interested in gaining a modern perspective on the ancient notion of atoning sacrifice.
Thanks again for this post and your reply, which go right to the heart of Christian theology.
Yes, without a world view of sacrifice, the doctrine of atonement would never have come into being, and yes, this world view is a purely human construct — just as every idea, perspective, worldview, understanding, and interpretation is!
Dr. Ehrman,
I’m curious, who all (other than Jesus) predicted the 2nd temple would be destroyed?
Well, there were a number of others, including the Essenes and Jesus son of Ananias. (I’m actually not remembering offhand if the Essenes thought that that physical structure would be destroyed, or just the priests who ran it. Maybe someone else on the blog knows?)
In Mark 11:11 Jesus goes into the temple looks around at everything and then leaves as it was already late. To look around at “everything”, he must have spent most of the day there. The next day he goes back to the temple and creates a disturbance. Did he see something the day before which upset him and after stewing over it for the night, went back and took action?
Yup, I think that is the clear implication.
Do you see a relationship between the the idea of Jesus’ sacrifice and the idea of martyrdom?
Yes, if Jesus willingly went to his death “for the cause,” then it certainly would be a martrydom — as it was later interpreted by his followers.
Hi’ i know that God hated human sacrifice in the OT. What did the early Christias do with.this information?
I suppose they thought that with Jesus it was different.
I think the sacrificial system was the work of the priests and not of God. I think the priest wrote the book of Leviticus in the name of Moses and the Lord to make sure they got their share. Lev 7:34-36
Jeremiah reveals this truth as THE WORD OF THE LORD to Jeremiah and commands him to stand at the TEMPLE GATE and proclaim it to all Judah. (Jeremiah 7:2)
In Jeremiah 7:21-22 while standing at the temple gate consider what Jeremiah speaks as “The word of Lord”
Jeremiah 7:21-THUS SAYS THE LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat flesh. 22-“For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices.
NOTE: What Jeremiah records as the Lord’s words in V:22: The Lord did not speak or command the children of Israel concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices in the day he brought them out of the land of Egypt. My question: if the Lord did not command them then who did?
Jeremiah continues to reveal by “The Lord’s Word”, (That is God Himself is speaking here through Jeremiah) What the Lord actually commanded them. But they were stubborn and did not obey, and followed their own counsels . READ BELOW IN JEREMIAH 7:23-24.
Jeremiah 7:23-“But this is WHAT I COMMANDED them, saying, Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you will walk in all the way which I command you, that it may be well with you.’ 24-“Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in THEIR OWN COUNSELS and in the STUBBORNNESS of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward.
NOTE: They were stubborn and disobedient from the time they were rescued from slavery in Egypt even until Jeremiah is speaking to then the word of the Lord. READ BELOW
JEREMIAH 7:25-“Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have sent you all My servants the prophets, daily rising early and sending [them]. 26-“Yet they did not listen to Me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck; they did more evil than their fathers
Also The Lord speaks through Isaiah 1:11-14- and reveals that he’s tired of bearing their sacrifices and worthless feasts. He tells Israel that he’s had enough and that he takes no pleasure in the blood of animals. And asks, “who requires of you this trampling of my courts”? PLEASE READ BELOW WHAT THE LORD SAYS THROUGH ISAIAH THE PROPHET SAYS:
Isaiah 1:11-“What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?” Says the LORD. “I HAVE HAD ENOUGH of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle; And I TAKE NO PLEASURE in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats. 12-“When you come to appear before Me,WHO REQUIRES OF YOU this trampling of My courts?
13-“Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies—I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. 14-“I HATE your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become A BURDEN to Me; I AM WEARY of BEARING them.
Perhaps the prophets did not fully comprehend in their time what the Lord was commanding them to speak. However it’s crystal clear that the Lord did not want sacrifices. That He tolerated them and bore them. And that HE came to hate them. But as Jeremiah says in another scripture about gathering again, a second time, with His own hands, the children of Israel to their land: You’ll clearly understand this in the last days.
Psalms 40:6-Sacrifice and meal offering You have not desired; My ears You have opened; Burnt offering and sin offering You have not required.
speaking of death do you think the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen is an actual parable of Jesus? (its in mark and Q). if so what do you think it means if the evangelic spin isnt correct?
thank you as always
Sorry — I’m away from my books and can’t look up what I would need to. And I’m not sure how it is normally interpreted by evangelicals.
If Jesus wasn’t opposed to the Temple, he wouldn’t have advocated its destruction. He may have objected to those who were running the Temple and/or the way it was run, but he wouldn’t have objected to the Temple itself. I can’t believe that he predicted or wanted the Temple to be destroyed.
I think Jesus’ alleged prediction about destruction of the Temple was attributed to Jesus after the Temple was destroyed so that he would look like a prophet. Paul (writing before the Temple’s destruction) didn’t anticipate the destruction of the Temple. He didn’t seem to know of any such prediction by Jesus.
According to Acts, James told Paul to go to the Temple. So, James and Paul didn’t seem to have any objection to the Temple. Apparently, they had no animus toward the Temple and no expectation of its destruction. The Jesus sect in Jerusalem accepted the Temple and visited there. So… Jesus didn’t predict the destruction of the Temple. That’s just another Christian fairy tale.
Hi Bart, I don’t really understand why Jesus had to die from a Jewish perspective. I guess I would say from a Christian perspective Jesus died to atone for sins. But in the Old Testament it seems that God forgave/covers sins in some cases without any need for a sacrifice. For example, it looks like God forgives Isaiah’s sin (Isa. 1:18), Davids sin (2 Sam. 12:13) and Psalm 103:12 says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”
From a Jewish perspective I don’t really see why Jesus died for sins if people could already be forgiven. What are your thoughts on this?
I think the same thing can be said about the Christian perspective. Why does their need to be a death for atonement. Why can’t God just forgive. Presumably he made the rules — so why that rule?? We ourselves can forgive others without requiring them to perform a blood sacrifice. Can’t God?
did paul innovate the lords supper? did he introduce the flesh and the blood parts?
was consuming flesh and blood in a symbolic way unknown to jesus’ disciples ?
He claims he “received” it from others, and since that is not a common claim of his, it is usually taken to be right.
are you saying that there were jews in israel, in pauls time, symbolically eating flesh and drinking blood? who are “the others” identified as? disciples or followers?
“The Didache contradicts 1 Corinthians and the Gospels so it can;t be drawing from them in that respect. The Didache does not connect the meal to the crucifixion in any way, so it appears to be a more primitive and more Jewish version of the Eucharist.”
so this document seems to have an INDEPENDENT line of transmission ?
why would the didache want to disconnect flesh and blood from the ritual?
Yes, my guess is that the Didache has a separate but comparable tradition, and understands the meal in a very Jewish way.
The earliest followers of Jesus understood that the bread and wine of their meals together were to remind them of Jesus’ sacrifice for them. I don’t think they imagined that these were literally his body and blood.
but one has to imagine consuming blood and human flesh before one gets to the sacrifice. i think pagans did this, right?
I’m not sure I’m following your question.
Is there a scholarly consensus that at least one of the main reasons Jesus stormed the temple was to express his moral condemnation of what went on there?
I read one of Sanders’ book a long time ago, and I vaguely remember him arguing that Jesus was mainly concerned with creating a parable to show the imminent return of God, which would include the destruction of the Temple, rather than trying to make a moral statement. But like I said, I read that a long time ago.
I’d say probably most scholars (I guess?) would agree that htere was some kind of moral critique involved.
If Jesus is the lamb, is he a male or a female?
Leviticus 4:32 New International Version
“‘If someone brings a lamb as their sin offering, they are to bring a female without defect.
Are you asking if Jesus was a man or a woman?
If Jesus is the sacrificial lamb which is supposed to be offered as a “SIn Offering”, then shouldn’t he be female? Is this a contradiction between the NT and the OT?
I’m not sure I follow. Are you thinking that lambs are always female? A lamb is just a young sheep.
No, Sir.
According to Leviticus 4:32, “‘If someone brings a lamb as their sin offering, they are to bring a female without defect.”.
So in this particular verse, ANY LAMB which is brought , has to be female? Correct?
That is the lamb for the sin offering. JEsus is portrayed in the NT as the *passover* lamb.
I’m like 8+ yrs getting to this question, as I’d never seen it posted before, now. How in the WORLD did even 1st-century Jewish followers of Jesus come up with believing Jesus’s death atoned for our sins, when Hebrew Scriptures are clearer than clear that YHWH doesn’t require human sacrifice (not to mention a man hanged on a tree is considered accursed)? Is it ‘possible’ that this theology was written back INTO the Gospels (even into Mark), by Pauline influence on those writings after-all, since (I believe, personally) that Paul’s version of Judaism must’ve had some already seriously Hellenistic influences in it (and didn’t most of his converts come from both Hellenistic Jews of the Diaspora AND ‘observer’ types of Gentiles who hung out on the periphery of Diaspora synagogues)? I’m wracking my brain to figure out WHO among even 1st century followers (especially among the JERUSALEM church) could have come up with such an odd theology that clearly conflicts with OT teaching. You likely won’t have a chance to answer this, since I’m responding to such an old post – it came up when I Googled ‘Jesus and the Jewish Sacrificial System’. Best, MVH
I do talk about this in some of my writings, and here on the blog. The very briefest explanation is that ancient people, whether Jewish or pagan, believed that the death of a living being (whether a plant or an animal) could be pleasing to God if dedicated to him. Once the followers of Jesus believed Jesus was completely pleasing to God in every way, and they believed God had raised him from the dead, they had to explain then why JEsus had been executed in the first place. THeir default solution, given their background, is that he was some kind of sacrifice. God had not required a human sacrifice before, but sacrifice in Judaism was the way to atone for sin. And so JEsus’ followers developed the remarkable idea that his death was an atonement for sin. But it was different from other human sacxrifices because God himself had ordained it, for his own Son, who went willingly. IT certainly can seem bizarre from the outside, but within “the system” it has a rather forceful logic to it.
Bart,
reg: animal sacrifice
As I prepare to goto relatives and help consume a big Turkey feast this seemed like a good (or bad if the Turkey) day to ask this…yes my mind works in strange ways…I stumbled onto this old post and it dovetailed with something I had been thinking, reading about so thought I would post it here
This a short except from P. Fredriksen’s – When Christians were Jews (highly rec) :
“After purging a man of leprosy the synoptic Jesus says go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded (Lev 14) as proof to the people…involved physical exam, immersions, and offerings…2 pigeons, 2 lambs, 1 ewe”
She leaves this here and moves on to other examples to show how important Temple was even to Jesus and other Jews that may not have been happy with the leadership there…
but to this reader this is an example of Jesus de facto recommending animal sacrifice – the only one I’m aware of in the NT.
What are your thoughts?
TY – Happy Thanksgiving!
SC
Good question. NOw that you mention it, I can’t think of any other places either. The text (Mark 1:44) doesn’t actually mention animal sacrifice, but that’s clearly what’s in mind since it’s what Moses commanded.