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Galatians 3:29, How Gentiles Become Jews, Part I of II

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

//The apostle Paul was known for taking Jesus to the multitudes ... the gentiles. How did he get away with this? By what authority did he steal the Jesus story from a very Jewish setting and give it to gentiles?

Through some very insightful theological wrangling, that's how. The Jews were the children of promise, through the covenant of Abraham. More than that, this covenant dictated circumcision, a practice Paul didn't even bother to try to talk gentiles into. This is hardly a minor issue, as the covenant makes clear:

This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. -- Genesis 17:10-11

Indeed, three verses later, God makes it clear that anyone who doesn't submit to circumcision has broken the covenant. 

Yet in Romans 4 and Galatians 3, Paul twice makes the argument that uncircumcised gentiles can be children of Abraham, too! How can this be?

The answer tomorrow.

Book review: Where God Comes From

by Ira Livingston

★★★★

We humans are a curious lot, aren’t we? Always digging for meaning.

Ira Livingston once found a miracle message in a plate of noodles that tasted so incredibly good it overcame a deep funk. It was as if God had left a pick-me-up message just for him, embedded in noodles. As the Jews and Chinese say, Food is Love.

From noodly transubstantiation, Ira progresses to a million dollar question: Where does God come from?

Do understand that this is not really a book about God. It is an eccentric and intelligent philosophical road trip. The subtitle is Reflections On Science, Systems and the Sublime. The topic meanders around aimlessly like a good philosophy book should, until near the end you realize you've been circling something meaningful, if also something melancholy, the whole time.

"Where God comes from" is not the same question as "Who is God?" Says Livingston's beloved professor, "I've got no particular quarrel with any of these explanations [of God]—inflated parent, synaptic ghost, social glue—all fine, though obviously too reductive—but at the same time, I also don't object to various personalizations of God—an old guy with a beard, or a wafer or whatever." 

The problem with God (or evolution or a mechanistic universe) as a concept is that it casts the miraculously complex as something familiar. Says the professor, "the problem is not in how we use God or evolution or mechanism as ways of thinking about these things but as ways not to think about them."

…and therein lies the problem with Livingston’s book. It makes you think.

1 Corinthians 11:14-16, A Woman's Hair

Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering.  If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice--nor do the churches of God. 

//This is a topic that remains fascinating to me, because I grew up in a Christian sect that emphasized the importance of women not only keeping their hair long, but wearing it up, as a covering, instead of loose. Having been subjected to numerous arguments on both sides of the debate, I can hardly pretend there is an easy answer. This is a complex passage of scripture. Adding to the complexity are the traditions of Paul's day, where attire and hair style demonstrated status, availability for marriage, and in the extreme, prostitution. Not, really, that much different from today! So I can weigh in with what the words of Paul feel like to me. Consider the verses that lead into this discussion to the Corinthians:

And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head--it is just as though her head were shaved. If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head. --1 Corinthians 11:5-6

Paul hardly wanted women to use their public position in the church to advertise their availability, but it goes further than this. A woman's dress and hair, when Christians gather, should reflect well on any position of authority she has been granted (women held leadership roles as well as men in Paul's day). Therefore, when she prays or prophesies, she should be appropriately groomed according to the traditions of the day, showing respect for her role.

I don’t think Paul meant anything more general than this.

Matthew 6:11, What kind of bread??

Give us this day our epiousios bread.

//Lest anyone think that today we have a perfect understanding of what Bible writers meant as they wrote, I provide today's verse as a contrary example. We assume “daily” bread, of course, but who’s to say for sure? It is what's called a hapex legomena, a word that appears only once in the Bible, and which must therefore be interpreted based entirely upon the surrounding context or word construction. While it's true that two books (Matthew and Luke) speak of this “daily bread”, both are quoting the same saying of Jesus.

There are some 1500 hapex legomena words in the Old Testament, 686 in the New Testament. Translations of these words are no more than educated, logical guesses, though they grow more accurate over time as we uncover more ancient documents to provide more context. We still don't know, for example, what gopher wood is (the material used to construct Noah's Ark.)  And as many times as we've repeated the Lord's Prayer, we don't really know what kind of bread we're praying for. Not once have we found that word in any other classical Greek literature.

In the 20th century, we thought we had finally discovered a confirmation of its use, written next to the names of several grocery items on what appears to be an ancient shopping list. Upon reexamination of the papyrus in 1998, however, it was determined that the word was not epiousi but elaiou (oil).

So we still don't know what kind of bread Jesus wanted us to eat. Something gluten-free would be my guess.

Genesis 30:32, How To Breed Spotted Goats

Let me go through all your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark-colored lamb and every spotted or speckled goat. They will be my wages.

//Here's the story. Jacob is discussing the proper wages for his service to Laban. He and Laban agree that Jacob will keep all the speckled animals of the flock.

But Jacob has a trick up his sleeve. He has figured out how to make speckled animals.

He cuts off the branches of trees, and peels the bark back to make white strips on the branches. When the animals are in heat, he places the sticks in the watering troughs so that when they come to drink, they will see spots of dark and white. There, with spots in their eyes, they mate and produce speckled offspring.

This works very well. In fact too well. All of the animals are getting speckled. So Jacob watches to see whether the females in heat are strong or weak. He puts spots in front of the eyes of the strong animals only, and leaves the weak ones for Laban.

Thus Jacob "grew exceedingly prosperous and came to own large flocks, and maidservants and menservants, and camels and donkeys."

Book review: The Swedish Atheist, the Scuba Diver and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails

by Randal Rauser

★★★★★

My kind of Christian apologetics! A friend on Goodreads recommended this book to me, and he guessed right. I loved it.

Rauser leads us into a quaint little coffee shop for an afternoon of friendly argument, where he spies the perfect target: an atheist named Sheridan who is versed in apologetics just enough to make the conversation interesting. Sheridan argues that the geographic distribution of various types of believers proves that religion isn’t objective; he wonders why Zeus isn’t just as likely to be a real god as Rauser’s Most Perfect Being; he insists that morals are an evolutionary accident, with no need for divine intervention; he confronts Rauser with the problem of evil, and in particular the absurdity of everlasting punishment; and he argues that what Christians recognize as signs from God are no more than coincidences. Except for the whole “Yahweh condones evil” thing (where Rauser’s best defense is to shrug and admit that he’s not a defender for the “home team” but rather a pursuer of truth), Sheridan’s objections to Christianity get shot down.

You might recognize already that Rauser’s idea of apologetics is not about debating atheists until they succumb to logic and beg for baptism, but “rigorously pursuing truth in conversation.” This book isn’t going to shoot the moon. None of that “I can prove Jesus rose from the dead” stuff. Just reasonable exploration leading to a reasonable conclusion that Christian beliefs are not unreasonable.

I hope you don’t take this as a spoiler, but here’s my take on the coffee house conversation: Rauser provides some solid argument for the possibility of some sort of unexplained, intelligent creator and guide, who could be just about anyone but Yahweh of the Old Testament (as least the way its writers understood Him, since surely a “perfect being” wouldn’t really condone the genocide that was done in His name). Some arguments are better than others, and like I said, Rauser provides no conclusive proof that Christianity is the One True Religion. So, we’re left with a mystery, but one that should at least keep us from sneering at those who choose a Christian interface with this mystery.

All in all, this is a really fun book. Randal, if you write more, please consider more Dubious Disciple reviews!