Michael S. Heiser's Blog, page 77

Naked Bible Podcast Latest Episode Uploaded

Just a heads up; I uploaded the third episode of the podcast just now. It continues the series on baptism. Remember, you can get the file directly through the link and iTunes subscription right away, but it may take 24 hours for the archive located on this site to be updated.

Technorati Tags: Baptism, catechism, creeds, doctrine, Heidelberg, podcast

The Greek Apocryphal Gospels in Digital Form

My employer, Logos Bible Software, recently put the Greek Apocryphal Gospels on pre-pub. My colleague, Rick Brannan, blogged today over at the Logos blog about that product and those gospels.

These gospel documents are not canonical. As Rick points out, they provide a lot of insight into what early Christians were hearing and thinking about Jesus and the apostles. They are also useful for Greek grammatical research. Rick breaks them down into three types:

Infancy Gospels. These include stories about Jesus' youth and even earlier. The Protevangelium of James includes a much fuller story about Mary and Joseph with all sorts of details (even about Mary's midwife) that are not canonical by any stretch, but insightful nonetheless.
Passion Gospels. These are gospels about the trial, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. They have similarities with the canonical gospels, but include expansions and embellishments as well.
Post-resurrection Gospels. The Greek extant for the Gospel of Mary is fragmentary, but insightful; one of the available fragments has a snippet of a story where Peter turns to Mary and asks her to relate what she knows of Jesus.

Check out Rick's post for more details!

Technorati Tags: apocryphal, database, digital, gospels, greek, software

Polygamy and Old Testament Law

This post topic comes recommended by a reader who asked the following:

It seems as though polygamy was not viewed as sinful by God in the Old Testament. And while monogamy seems to possibly be suggested in the NT as a more ideal situation . . . I wonder if polygamy was still tolerated as a non-sinful situation like it was in the OT?

Good observation and good question. Polygamy is another illustration of how easily something can be understood if the Bible is allowed to be what it is, and how disturbing something in the Bible seems when its contents are presumed to derive from a modern European worldview (and contemporary evangelicalism to boot).

Let's start with the obvious points – points that anyone who has spent serious time reading the Old Testament would have stumbled upon:

1. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament view extra-marital (a key term) sex as a heinous sin, one dealt with in the most serious way under the Mosaic law (death penalty if the sin was by consent; cp. Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22). John 7:53-8:11 (its text-critical uncertainty set to the side for sake of this discussion) also suggests that extra-marital sex could still (at least in theory and in Jewish law) be punished with death.

2. Despite severity of the above, the Old Testament descriptions of patriarchal life assumes that men had more than one wife (e.g., Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon). This is known as polygamy, but is more accurately called polygyny (one husband, more than one wife), as opposed to polyandry (one wife, more than one husband). There are no examples of the latter in the Bible.

3. The Old Testament narratives also describe concubinage (e.g., Abraham and Hagar), which was not quite the same as marriage. It was also distinct from utilizing the services of a prostitute.

Let's walk through the material and dispense with some myths and get our bearings. I have heard (in sermons and poorly-informed conversations) that the act of sexual intercourse (here defined as vaginal intercourse) constitutes, in and of itself, a marriage. This is an unbiblical idea. The glaring fact that the Old Testament uses different terms (wife, concubine, harlot) for women with whom men had intercourse (and in some cases the same man) and only one of those terms met the social, cultural, and legal parameters of "wife" (e.g., one would not hold a marriage celebration for all three) tells us clearly that the act of intercourse did not constitute a marriage in biblical thinking or theology.

Terminology for "adultery" is actually infrequent in the Old Testament. The term in the ten commandments (na'aph; Exo 20:14; Deut 5:18) occurs only one other place in the Mosaic law (Lev 20:10). Other terms are used to describe illicit sex (e.g., sex with a prostitute – zanah; e.g., Gen 38:24; Lev 21:9). Permissible (non-violent and consenting) sexual relationships with multiple wives or concubines are not described with either word. Rather, the normal euphemisms for marital intercourse are employed (the man "went in to" or "knew" his wife or concubine). Consequently, the biblical material does not consider those relationships adulterous or as prostitution.

This terminological parsing is not accidental, for the Old Testament (and the patriarchal culture in which it was produced) defined adultery very strictly as sexual intercourse with a woman already married (or betrothed) to another man.  This means that, in the Old Testament world, polygamy was not adultery; it is not treated as such in the Mosaic law.

The reason adultery (taking the wife of another man) was so detested in the ancient world was that the act violated property rights and, more importantly, intruded on inheritance rights via illegitimate paternity. As property and its transmission through bloodlines was the primary means of economic survival in a patriarchal pastoral-nomadic culture, and later a predominantly agrarian culture, violation of inheritance lines was a serious offense that could mean (economic) life or death. Since children were obviously linked to the household of their mother, strict boundaries on women and their sexual activity were the logical focus in such a culture. There were no scientific ways to evidence paternity, and once a woman had a child by another man (even if unknown), that child (especially if male) became an inheritance threat should his biological father at some point assert rights of ownership over the property of the son and his mother. The Anchor Bible Dictionary notes:

Israel viewed extra-marital sexuality in the severest light, prescribing death for adultery. As in the rest of the ANE, there was a double standard: males could have sex outside marriage, most notably with prostitutes: "adultery" meant copulation with a married woman. Beyond concern for property rights or clear paternity, the demand for sexual exclusivity for wives sought to prevent married women from establishing bonds that could weaken the family unit . . . Adultery was a capital crime according to Lev 20:10 and Deut 22:22. Both parties must die. The reasons for the gravity of this crime are never explicitly stated in the OT, yet the patrilineal nature of Israelite society strongly suggests that mistaken paternity would surely be dreaded. If an act of undetected adultery produced offspring, a likely result would be the bequeathal of the family inheritance to this illegitimate heir. (ABD, 5:1144; I:82).

These economic concerns are also reflected in laws about (consensual) pre-marital sex (Exo 22:16-17; 22:28-29). These passages required payment of the marriage dowry to the father (as though a betrothal was taking place). If the girl's father refused to let her be married to the man, the offender still had to pay since the woman's economic value (upon her loss to her parents household) was lost (i.e., it would be unlikely that someone would later want to marry her due to the cultural stigma – note that virginity was highly esteemed and expected). Once married, no divorce was permitted in such cases. And if the woman did not consent to the sexual relationship (i.e., she was raped) the man would suffer the death penalty. These laws were designed to discourage promiscuity.

So, does the Old Testament "approve" of polygamy? Yes, in the sense that (a) it was part of the culture at the time God chose to call Abraham and create a people through him and his wife Sarah and (b) God didn't care to outlaw the culture of the time. But this is somewhat misguided. The Old Testament also holds monogamy as an ideal, and makes no effort to argue that polygamy was a desirable situation for men in general. Polygamy just "was" and God didn't care about the culture in which he initiated the next phase of his salvation plan. Polygamy had no vital theological place in that plan and would ultimately become even culturally irrelevant when Israel was replaced as the circumcision-neutral Church as the people of God. 1 It just wasn't an issue.

These points also answer the question, "Is polygamy for today then?" No, it isn't. It's nor more "for today" than any other cultural element tied to patriarchal Israel would be for believers in any era after the patriarchal Israelite kingdom was replaced – in the divine design no less – by the Church. We aren't living in the second millennium B.C.  Frankly, the question is utterly pointless and destitute of theological sense since it completely ignores what happened in the New Testament with the Church, where Israel and the Mosaic theocracy expired by divine design. On what basis would we ever assume the Church was a new form of Mosaic theocracy? Apparently the apostles didn't get that memo since we don't see them setting that up in Acts or assuming they should.

Lastly, the New Testament says nothing directly about polygamy. Only a preference for monogamy is evident, along with the thorny issue of divorce and remarriage. Judging by extra-biblical material, polygamy seems to have all but disappeared in first century Judea.2 It certainly existed in Jewish (and Gentile) culture in the Mediterranean, but urban life undermined the economic need and rationale for polygamy.3 The New Testament might contain hints of polygamy, depending on how the plural ("wives") is understood in several verses (Acts 21:5; 1 Cor 7:29), but the plural may simply be collective, reflecting each male in the intended audience and their (one) wife. It's hard to tell.

And please, don't assume I mean anything specifically eschatological about that. The Scripture is clear – Gal 3 – that the Church inherits the promises given to Abraham but despite what well-meaning dispensational interpreters want to say, really isn't the key eschatological question. The real question is not "Did the Church replace Israel as God's people?" but "Does God still have an eschatological future planned specifically for national Israel?" The two questions are not the same, though they are related. I'm not going to respond to mind-numbing questions about eschatology here. Please see the multi-part series I did on that earlier. ↩
A telling example seems to be the Jewish community associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Qumran texts 11QTemple 56:17–19; 57:17–19 and CD 4:20–21 apparently forbid polygamy and even remarriage after divorce. ↩
The Dictionary of New Testament Background ("Marriage: Marriage, Childbearing and Celibacy") notes: "Some peoples on the periphery of the empire reportedly practiced polygamy, including Thracians, Numidians and Moors (Sallust Iug. 80.6; Sextus Empiricus Pyr. 3.213; cf. Diodorus Siculus Bib. Hist. 1.80.3 on Egypt); writers also alleged that some distant peoples merely held children in common (Diodorus Siculus Bib. Hist.. 2.58.1). Although a few Greek philosophers supported group marriage (Diogenes Laertius Vit. 6.2.72; 7.1.131; 8.1.33), Greek culture as a whole forbade it (e.g., Euripides Androm. 465–93, 909). Likewise, Roman law prohibited polygamy, which bore as its minimum penalty infamia (Gardner, 92–93; Gaius Inst. 1.63; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 11.28.4); Roman wives found the notion of polygamy abhorrent (Aulus Gellius Noc. Att. 1.23.8). Although the practice was not common, early Palestinian Judaism allowed polygamy (m. Sanh. 2:4), and it was practiced at least by some wealthy kings (Josephus, J.W. 1.28.4 §562). The early sage Hillel reportedly complained against polygamy, but mainly because he felt wives could be dangerous, especially in large numbers (m. 'Abot 2:7). Nevertheless, the vast majority of Jewish men and all Jewish women were monogamous, and some conservative sectarians forbade polygamy, including for rulers (CD 4:20–5:2; 11QTemple 56:18–19)". ↩

Technorati Tags: concubines, inheritance, intercourse, law, marriage, Mosaic law, Old Testament, patriarchal, polygamy, property, sex

Seattle Times Article on Logos Bible Software

Just saw this article (its making its rounds in the company) and thought I'd share it with readers.

Technorati Tags: Bible, company, Logos Bible software, Pritchett, software

Naked Bible Podcast Episode #2

I just uploaded the second podcast episode. The subject of baptism is continued, as the series begins looking at the conflicting language regarding the gospel and baptism in well known creeds.

Technorati Tags: Baptism, circumcision, creeds, gospel, infant baptism, salvation

Podcast Note and Thanks

Thanks to all who visited the podcast site for the first episode. My goal is to post an episode a week. Look for the second installment this weekend. Please tell your friends (and maybe a few people you want to irritate) so it grows. I've added the feed to several podcast directories this weekend to start that process as well.

Thanks as well to those of you who have subscribed to support the podcast and this blog at $3/month. This opportunity is in response to the survey results several months ago about this idea. If enough people wind up supporting the podcast, I'll be able to pay someone to edit the scripts instead of that falling to yours truly. That would mean more than one episode per week.

Naked Bible "Recommended Books"

I just posted over at PaleoBabble about a new site I discovered a couple days ago called Shelfari. I am using it to build a better "recommended books" page for this blog and PaleoBabble.  I've put nearly 150 books on my shelf for readers to browse and posted the widget here as well. The titles focus on ancient history, religion, languages, and biblical studies. Have a look!

Dr. Heiser Video Lectures

In another technological spasm, I thought I should create a Vimeo Channel to archive some of the Vimeo videos of various lectures in one handy location. To that end, you can subscribe to my channel on Vimeo, or bookmark this page on the Naked Bible blog. There are a few more videos on the Vimeo Channel, and I'm more likely to keep that archive more updated than this page.

I also added a couple of the videos to my divine council site (click on "Video Lectures") and one to my Two Powers in Heaven site ("Materials").

Technorati Tags: creation, divine council, Genesis, Jesus, Psalm 82, two powers, video

Moses and the Law of Moses in the New Testament

In this final post on the issue of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, I want to examine a couple items in the New Testament. As noted before, my position is that "law of Moses" is an appropriate designation for the Torah/Pentateuch despite sound evidence that Moses did not write all or even most of it (see here). This position is akin to the phrase "Psalm of David" (le-dawid) very obviously meaning "Psalm about David" or "Psalm for David" in light of the contents of certain psalms that bear that attribution. The Hebrew syntax allows for this interpretive flexibility (in both cases).

In this post I want to take a look at the New Testament. I have no problem with Jesus or anyone else associating the Torah or parts of the Torah with Moses in light of the above. But I have a question: Does Jesus or anyone else ever specifically quote anything in Genesis and attribute it to Moses? I raise this because in my earlier (and admittedly unsystematic) description of where I'm at on all this in light of the biblical data, I suggested that it was possible that none of Genesis came from Moses' hand. Instead, Genesis seems best understood as the result of activity during the exile (Gen 1-11) and oral traditions about the patriarchs later codified at a time after Moses was dead.1 Obviously, Moses lived after the events of Genesis, so there's no necessary expectation that he'd be the writer of that book, but the phrase "law of Moses" includes it, however that phrase is understood. There's just no specific indication in any other part of the Pentateuch that he wrote anything in Genesis.

So how about the New Testament in that regard? After all, the name "Moses" does appear 80 times in the New Testament. Any clear indicators that Moses wrote something in Genesis?

Not really — at least nothing without uncertainty.

Although many assume it, in the confrontation with the Pharisees over divorce (Matt 5, 19; Mark 10) Jesus does not mention actually Moses in connection with Genesis. He asks what Moses commanded, and the answer (the "bill of divorce"; e.g., Matt 19:7-8) comes from Deut 24. Jesus then talks about the first man and woman, but never actually says that Moses wrote it.

I think the best possible candidate for attributing something in the Torah to Moses directly is this exchange in John 7:21-23 21:

Jesus answered them, "I did one work, and you all marvel at it. 22 Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. 23 If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man's whole body well?

The wording is odd. At first, the institution of circumcision (Gen 17) is said to be "from Moses" (v. 22). But then Jesus clarifies (?) that circumcision was not "from Moses," but "from the fathers" (a very literal rendering, I might add; v. 22). I have yet to find a commentator that explains this language well, or that even considers that the comment might be an allusion to the kind of oral tradition that I and other OT scholars believe is behind the patriarchal narratives. If John was talking about some extraneous rule about circumcision *in verse 22*, he certainly could have made his language much clearer. But verse 23 actually makes it clear Jesus is not talking about a Pharisaical addition to the law, since his point is that one must still obey the law of circumcision (to circumcise the baby on the eight day) even if that happens to be the Sabbath. So how is it that this law is from Moses but not from Moses, being "from the fathers"?

I think my take on Genesis as oral tradition works quite well here, but a view that insists on Moses writing every word has a problem. And this is (surprise) the only passage in the New Testament that gets even close to having Moses responsible for something in Genesis. And lest I be misunderstood, I am not saying that all this means that first century Jews would have denied complete Mosaic authorship. It was their tradition. But that doesn't mean it is factually coherent. But I doubt they would have cared in any event, as a clear association of the Torah with Moses was something everyone would have affirmed whether Moses wrote every word or not.

Lastly, I think this issue is a good example of where ancient apathy toward pseudonymity provides some helpful context. Recall that back in February I posted about this issue — the fact that many books in the ancient world are named after people who didn't write them, even though (in many cases) they are written as though the named person was the author. People in ancient times were accustomed to this practice — designed at least in part to garner readership. They didn't have our modern sensitivities in regard to things like copyright or correctness in citation. The practice wouldn't have been viewed as an issue of honesty since it was familiar. Most readers would have known better than to think 1 Enoch was written by Enoch, for example, being content to know it was an ancient work about Enoch though it contained material that cast it as the product of Enoch. That was good writing back then; the "incongruity" didn't dissuade people from taking such a work seriously.

What's my point? That "law of Moses" would not necessarily have been reflexively understood as "Moses wrote every word" in this cultural context. Modern people immediately take the phrase in only one way, but that is unnecessary.

Readers of course know that I view this in the context of a process of inspiration, the unseen hand of Providence working through very human authors and editors to produce the intended result. I do not view inspiration as a series of paranormal events. ↩

Technorati Tags: authorship, Jesus, john, law of moses, New Testament, Pentateuch, Torah

Inaugural Episode of the Naked Bible Podcast

Well, finally pushed the button!

You can listen to the first episode by going to the podcast page on this blog site, going to the podcast site itself, or going right to iTunes.

Check out all three locations!

Feedback is appreciated!