Through the Bible -- Mark 11:26-12:44 (Debate Tuesday)

Psalm Sunday
Temple Monday
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1. Tuesday morning begins with the realization that the fig tree had withered. But the bulk of the day is spent around the temple. Jesus teaches at the temple. He could still have escaped at this point. But the day is solidifying the sentiment of the leadership against him. Meanwhile, an undertone of destruction is getting stronger. This temple will be destroyed because of Israel's faithlessness.

We can divide the material for Tuesday in Mark into two parts. The bulk consists of debates that various groups have with Jesus. He is teaching, and they contest his authority and wisdom by trying to catch him with their questions. However, he bests them at every turn. He wins every argument and then finally in the end silences them with a question of his own.

This somewhat rabbinic sparring was part of the culture. Rabbis debated over the proper meaning and application of Scripture. It is a debate about authority. And these are ultimate questions. That section ends with Jesus' observations of a widow who proportionally gives far more than the wealthy people around her.

The second part of Tuesday's material directly has to do with the temple. In Mark 13 Jesus speaks of the context of the temple's destruction, which would take place 40 years later. We will look at that chapter tomorrow.

2. The first match is with chief priests, scribes, and elders -- the leaders of Israel (11:27-33). By what authority is he teaching? He is on their territory. He is causing a disturbance in the temple. Passover is coming.

They find out he is a Baptist -- one of those who is continuing the teaching of John the Baptist. Didn't Herod get rid of him? 

Jesus makes the connection explicit. By what authority did John the Baptist preach? Now they are in a bind. If they say John was from God, they will disqualify themselves from spiritual leadership for not following him. If they say he wasn't from God, they will face the displeasure of the people.

"We don't know." They dodge the question. They lose round one. Jesus outmaneuvers them.

But Jesus is not finished. He goes on to tell the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (12:1-12), which is clearly about the leadership of Israel. God planted the vineyard of Israel. But it's leaders have rejected God as the owner. They have rejected the servants he has sent to them, prophets. 

Finally, the owner sends his son, and they kill him. The end result is that judgment is coming for those wicked tenants. They will be destroyed. Meanwhile, the stone they rejected will become the cornerstone. This passage also comes from Psalm 118, which Jesus echoed several times on Palm Sunday (118:22-23).

3. Some Pharisees and Herodians spar next (12:13-17). Should Israelites pay taxes? They think they can get Jesus into a double bind on this one. If he says yes, the people will reject him as caving in to the enemy Romans. If he says no, he is a revolutionary and so vulnerable before the Romans.

"Whose image is on the coin?"

"Caesar's."

"Then give him his coin back." Jesus implies that the Roman economy has nothing to do with the kingdom of God. Here is all the profundity of his view of the Romans. They have nothing to do with the kingdom. Their money has nothing to do with the kingdom.

This in part is "Christ against culture" in Richard Niebuhr's terms. There is no need to participate in earthly politics. Yes, at the second coming Jesus will rule over all the earth. But it is not the time for revolution yet. Let the Romans do what the Romans will do. They are on borrowed time.

4. The Sadducees take him on next (12:18-27). We have now seen all the major groups except the Essenes. The Sadducees do not believe in resurrection. They think they have a winning argument. A woman is married to a man. He dies. According to the rules of Levirite marriage, six other brothers marry her in order, but she has no children.

Now they get to what they think is the clincher. In their mind, resurrection makes no sense because it would be impossible to know who her husband would be in heaven. It's really a pretty bad argument, the kind that only works well when you're around people who agree with you in an echo chamber.

Jesus pulls the rug out from under their assumptions. Women are not subordinated to men in the kingdom. They are not "given" in marriage. Rather, they have full autonomous authority. They will be like the angels. They will be equal to all the men who were their husbands in this life.

5. The final question seems sincere (12:28-34). It comes from a scribe who has been listening rather than sparring. This is a seeker, not a debater. "What is the greatest commandment?"

Here Jesus gives the core of all ethics: love God and love neighbor, citing Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18. The first is the Shema, the conerstone of Israelite faith. Matthew 22 will go on to say that all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments (Matt. 22:40).

When Jesus sees the genuineness of the man, he declares that the man is not far from the kingdom of God.

6. After all these questions, Jesus has one of his own (12:35-37). Psalm 110:1 seems to have God telling someone other than David to sit on his throne. David, the psalmist, calls the Messiah "Lord" when Yahweh sits the Messiah at his right hand. This was no doubt a known interpretation of the passage at the time even though it has as its unexamined assumption that David is the one speaking in the psalm.

So is the Messiah David's son or not, because David calls him Lord? This question stumps them, and Jesus does not give the answer. What is clear is that he has won the debates of the day. He has won without trying. He has not been the aggressor or the one seeking the debate. Rather, they have brought it to him.

7. But he does respond. He responds in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. And the chapter ends with a critique of the religious scribes. 

The scribes, he says, they like to put on a show. They like to be greeted with honor. They like the seats of honor at banquets. They give long prayers to show how spiritul they are.

Meanwhile, they use their lawyer-like skills to devour the houses of widows. After all, they're just women. Their husband's property shouldn't belong to them after he dies. They're just women.

A widow comes by and gives two small copper coins. She goes by unnoticed by all but Jesus. But proportionately, she has given more than all the wealthy. She has given more than all the scribes. She has given from what little she perhaps had left after the greedy had done their job on her.

She is the one who will reign in the kingdom, and the others won't be there at all.

Through the Bible -- Mark 11:12-25 (Temple Monday)

Our journey through Passion Week continues from yesterday.

1. In Mark, it is on Monday that Jesus takes action in the temple. On Sunday, he arrives late in the day. The next day, he takes the two mile journey from Bethany again. This time, disgusted by what he sees taking place there, he overturns the tables of those who are selling doves and stops commerce from taking place (11:16).

What was so disturbing to him? He quotes Jeremiah 7:11, where the prophet Jeremiah indicted Israel for acting like it was worshiping Yahweh while serving other gods and committing all sorts of injustices. The temple, which should have been a means of approaching God, had become a means of iniquity. 

Accordingly, some have suggested that Jesus' action was bigger than a moment of anger. For example, E. P. Sanders suggested that Jesus was symbolically acting out the future destruction of the temple. [1] However, while Jesus does predict the temple's destruction in Mark 13, there is no hint of that message here.

2. Some have pointed out that this commerce must be taking place in the outer Court of the Gentiles. They thus suggest that Jesus is upset that Gentiles cannot properly worship God because of all the distraction of commerce there. "What do the Gentiles matter?" would be the underlying prejudice in play, and Jesus would be upset at the prevention of their worship.

In Matthew, Mark, and Luke (called the "Synoptic" Gospels for the similar way they look at Jesus), Jesus quotes Isaiah 56:7 in addition to Jeremiah 7. The temple is supposed to be a house of prayer, but the activities of selling doves and other sacrificial animals was getting in the way. Mark alone adds the part of Isaiah 56 that says the temple is supposed to be a house of prayer "for all nations." This addition fits with the likelihood that Mark had a non-Jewish audience. Jesus was thinking of Mark's audience long before they even knew about him.

In general, the sale of sacrificial animals was an important part of the temple's operations. Individuals traveling to Jerusalem from far away would not bring doves or goats with them over land and sea. They would need some way to purchase these items in Jerusalem. Futher, the animals needed to meet a certain standard of purity.

Therefore, something beyond the mere sale of animals must have been going on. It must have been something about the way this buying and selling was taking place that angered Jesus. There is the possible location, as we have mentioned. There is the possibility of abuse -- charging unreasonable prices for the animals. And there is the possibility that their activity triggered some broader issue. 

3. In fact, all three of these suggestions could be true at the same time. Jesus comes to the temple. It should be a place where Yahweh is worshiped. What does he see? He sees people making money off God. Are they abusing the system? Does it trigger Jesus' critique of the whole leadership of Israel? Does it remind him of Jeremiah's critique of the temple some 650 years earlier?

Mark indicates that the chief priests and scribes immediately want to get rid of him. This fact suggests that his action was broader than a moment of anger. It suggests the leaders knew that his action was aimed at them beyond whatever was happening in the outer court.

On a side note, Jesus demonstrates that it is not a sin to be angry in itself. "In your anger, do not sin," Ephesians 4:26 says. The verse implies that, while anger can easily lead to sin, it is not sinful in itself. Jesus act does not hurt anyone, but it is an act of force. While some like John Howard Yoder have tried to downplay Jesus' use of force in this incident, it seems inescapable that Jesus did use force to stop the use of commerce for at least a moment.

4. The incident with the fig tree brackets Jesus' action in the temple. On Monday morning, while on his way to the temple, Jesus is hungry and observes a fig tree. Seeing that it is without fruit, he curses the tree (11:14). Then on Tuesday morning, on his way into town again, his disciples observe that the tree has withered (11:20).

This incident has sometimes puzzled readers. It seems somewhat random and capricious on Jesus' part, especially since figs may not have been in season (11:13). However, the story seems to play a larger role in Mark's account. You could argue that the incident with the fig tree "sandwiches" Jesus' action in the temple.

Jesus is going to the temple. He curses the fig tree. The next morning the fig tree has withered. This sandwich structure is sometimes called an "intercalation." The "bread" of the sandwich helps inform the meaning of the meat in the middle and vice versa.

In this case, the fig tree can be said to represent Israel. It thus becomes symbolic of the coming judgment and destruction of Israel. Just as the fig tree did not bear fruit and was condemned, so Israel largely did not accept Jesus as the Messiah. While John the Baptist brought a message of repentance, Israel on the whole did not repent. So, like the fig tree, Jerusalem stood judged before God.

The temple would be destroyed by the Romans in AD70.

5. Interestingly, Mark shifts the focus of the incident a little with a dialog between Jesus and the disciples on faith. Matthew and Luke move away from the act's political significance even more. It's possible that this teaching on faith was a known saying of Jesus without a context and that Mark has used this incident as a way to include it in the Gospel.

Jesus' teaching is that, if we do not doubt, our faith can move mountains. He thus encourages his disciples to trust in God when they pray. If our will is aligned with God's will, then we will receive whatever we pray for. Jesus also warns that one must not harbor unforgiveness, though, when we pray. "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us" (Luke 11:4). Luke and Matthew incorporate this saying into the Lord's Prayer.

[1] E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism. So also N. T. Wright.

Through the Bible -- Mark 11:1-25 (Palm Sunday)

Today is Palm Sunday. I'm going to try to do daily posts this week on Passion Week in Mark. As an aside, last year I actually published Explanatory Notes on Mark's Passion Week (here's the ebook). This is a verse-by-verse commentary on Mark 11-15. The posts this week are of a more general nature.

Here are links to broader posts on Mark 1:1-13, Mark 1:14-15, Mark 1:16-45, and Mark 2.
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1. Well over a century ago, Martin Kähler described the Gospel of Mark as "a Passion with an extended introduction." The story of Jesus' final week on earth before his death takes up a full third of the Gospel, showing us how important Jesus' death is for Mark. Indeed, while the other Gospels climax with Jesus' resurrection, Mark climaxes with the recognition of the centurion by the cross that Jesus was indeed the Son of God (15:39). 

Mark thus ties Jesus being the Messiah with his suffering and death. This was a highly subversive understanding of what the Anointed One would be. Before that point, all Jews would have seen the victory of the Messiah over Israel's enemies as the hallmark of the restored King of David. Amazingly, Mark ties Jesus' messianic identity to his death for sins.

Mark has been building to this week since Peter's declaration that Jesus was the Christ in 8:29. Since that point in the story, Jesus has told his disciples three times that he was going to Jerusalem to die, giving the second half of Mark a sense of forboding. In the last instance, Jesus gives Mark's theology of the cross in one verse: "The Son of Humanity did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many" (10:45).

2. On the Sunday before his crucifixion, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. This is Jesus' triumphal entry. Luke records that Herod Antipas was also in town for Passover (Luke 23:7). No doubt his entry took place with much more pomp and splendor, leading some to suggest that Jesus was mocking him.

However, Jesus was more likely deliberately fulfilling Scripture. Although Mark does not mention it, Matthew 21:5 will make it clear that Jesus was fufilling Zechariah 9:9. This verse foretells of the restored King of Israel coming into Jerusalem on a donkey. Whether by pre-arrangement or prophecy, Jesus tells two of his disciples how to find a colt in the next village. They find it just as he said.

Jesus' entry into Jerusalem is full of symbolism. Not only does it enact Zechariah, but spreading garments is something that might be done for a king (cf. 2 Kings 9:13). Another passage that Jesus enacts is Psalm 118:25-27, a psalm that was often sung at Passover. The people cry, "Hosanna," which is the "Save us" of Psalm 118:25 (hoshia na). They also quote verse 26 -- "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of Yahweh." Finally, 118:27 mentions branches being used in festal procession.

In short, Jesus' entrance is full of echoes of Scripture that point to Jesus as the Messiah and restored king of Israel.

Jesus' entry into Jerusalem in Mark ends with Jesus going to the temple. It's late. He returns to Bethany. It's interesting to note that Matthew has the "cleansing" of the temple as the end of Palm Sunday. The climax of Palm Sunday in Matthew is thus Jesus' action in the temple, which takes place on Monday in Mark.

Lenten Readings -- Finishing up Jeremiah

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, so I will be turning my attention to Passion Week in the Gospel of Mark. But I wanted to mention some passages in Jeremiah that I didn't get to, especially chapters 29 and 31.   We largely covered Jeremiah's prophecies during the reigns of Josiah and Jehoiakim. But there are a few key passages I want to mention before moving on.

Josiah -- Jeremiah 1-7, maybe 8-10. Died in battle against the Egyptians

Shallum/Jehoahaz -- mentioned in Jeremiah 22:11. He was deposed by Pharaoh Necho II. Reigned for 3 months. Taken to Egypt.

Jehoiakim -- Maybe Jeremiah 8-10. We have looked at Jeremiah 11-20, 25-26, 35-36, and 45 which come from his reign. He likely died an ignominious death outside Jerusalem. 

I would say that Jeremiah 46-47 come from his era as well, but these are part of the Oracles Against the Nations (OAN), which seem to have been grouped together from ancient times. In the MT they are chapters 46-51. In the LXX they are 25-31. They are a key reason why the LXX chapter order is different. 

Coniah/Jehoachin -- mentioned in Jeremiah 22. This chapter is a look back at all the kings up to this point. He is also mentioned in 37:1, 24:1, 27:20, and 28:4. The first deportation to Babylon takes place as he is deposed by Nebuchadnezzar in 597BC.

Zedekiah -- Jeconiah (Coniah) is taken to Babylon after 3 months of ruling. Zedekiah is installed next. Here are chapters relating to his reign: 

• Jeremiah 27 -- Jeremiah says to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, symbolism of the yoke
• Jeremiah 28 -- Conflict with the false prophet Hananiah
• Jeremiah 23 -- has similar themes to Jeremiah 27-28
• Jeremiah 51:59-64 -- Part of the OAN, scroll taken to Babylon
• Jeremiah 24 -- illustration of good and bad figs, possibly drawn on by Jesus/Mark, message to early exiles
• Jeremiah 29 -- letter to exiles, see below
• Jeremiah 21 -- Jeremiah prophesies doom as Babylon moves against Jerusalem
• Jeremiah 34 -- Zedekiah frees slaves in Jerusalem, but his people reverse it.
• Jeremiah 30-33 constitute the "Book of Consolation" after the first deportation. We will look at Jeremiah 31 below.
• Jeremiah 32 -- Jeremiah buys a field as a symbol of future hope.
• Jeremiah 33 -- Jeremiah predicts the Davidic line will be restored.
• Jeremiah 37 -- Jeremiah imprisoned as Babylonians temporarily withdraw.
• Jeremiah 38 -- Jeremiah thrown into a cistern
• Jeremiah 39 -- The fall of Jerusalem
• Jeremiah 52 -- a historical appendix added later 
• In the OAN, the oracle against Edom probably fits during this time frame: 49:34-39

Gedaliah
Chapters 40-41 give the appointment of Gedaliah after Zedekiah is deported and killed. He is assassinated. In Jeremiah 42-43, some survivors flee to Egypt. In Jeremiah 44, Jeremiah prophesies to the refugees in Egypt. 

I want to end with a quick spotlight on two of the most significant chapters in Jeremiah. Earlier, I gave my favorite list earlier as including Jeremiah 1, 7, 29, and 31. Let's slip the last two under the wire.

Jeremiah 29 (36LXX)
This is the chapter where Jeremiah writes to those who were taken to Babylon in the first deportation of 597BC. King Jehoiakim was killed. Nebuchadnezzar deported King Jehoiachin after he had only ruled for three months. Jeremiah tells them to build houses and settle down, mentioning the 70 years in exile again. "Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile" (29:7).

29:11 is the well-known promise of God to those in exile that this is not the end for Israel. "Know the thoughts I have for you," Yahweh says. They are thoughts to give Israel a future and a hope.

While I don't have a problem with quoting this verse about your own life, clearly they were originally about the future return of Israel from exile. Thankfully, there are plenty of other verses that make it clear God loves us too and will guard our eternal destiny. There is never a promise, however, that life will always end up positively in this life. Think of all the martyrs for their faith.

Jeremiah 31 (38LXX)
1. From a New Testament perspective, Jeremiah 31 is probably the most important chapter in the book of Jeremiah. It is here that the famous "new covenant" passage is found. "Days are coming," says Yahweh, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel" (31:31). Hebrews 8 quotes this passage -- the longest quote of the OT in the NT.

We have of course taken it well beyond its original sense. Jeremiah is simply predicting that when Israel returns from Israel, the Law will be written on their hearts. Israel will be faithful to Yahweh without having to be warned over and over again. The New Testament thinks of the age of the Spirit, when those who are in Christ have the Spirit inside us to guide us into all truth and empower us to live righteously (=love God and neighbor).

2. Matthew 2 also connects Jeremiah 31:15 with the deaths of the babies in Bethlehem, "Rachel weeping for her children because they no longer exist." The first meaning in Jeremiah of course was in reference to the destruction of the northern kingdom. The children of Rachel -- especially her grandson Ephraim -- were taken away. This is a good example of the NT reading the OT in a "fuller sense" beyond anything the original authors would have understood.

3. Finally, I have long been struck by 31:29, a saying that also appears in Ezekiel 18. "Our fathers ate sour grapes but it is our teeth that are set on edge." Although the prophecies of Jeremiah show clear enough that ungodliness continued in Israel, there were many who felt like Judah was destroyed because of the sins of Manasseh and those who had come before. Psalm 44 may actually come from this time period -- 

"All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, or been false to your covenant. Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way, yet you have broken us in the haunt of jackals, and covered us with deep darkness. If we had forgotten the name of our God, or spread out our hands to a strange god, would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart. Because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter."

In Jeremiah 31 and Exekiel 18 we see a potential shift in biblical theology. Prior to this time, the sins of the fathers were visited on the sons to the third and fourth generation. But from now on, "the one who does the sinning will be the one who dies" (Ezek. 18:20). This is good NT theology and good Christian theology. We are not judged on the sins of our parents but on our individual sins.  

Jeremiah 52
The last chapter of Jeremiah is a historical appendix. It is virtually word for word for 2 Kings 24:18-25:30. (A similar dynamic takes place in Isaiah 36-39, which is nearly word for word for 2 Kings 18:13-20:19). There is sometimes resistance to a sense that these books in their current forms were edited after the lives of the prophets themselves, but this is unsupported sentimentality. There is no problem with inspiration or inerrancy for the books to have been collected and edited after the lives of the prophets. God can inspire editing too!

I think our problem in part is multiple. One, it means that what we see is not what we get. But remember, these books were not originally written to us. They are for us as Scripture, but Israel was their original audience. If we get the wrong impression, that's our problem, not the Bible's. I think the idea of such processes may also seem less magical to us. But again, that's not the Bible's problem. It's mine.

It simply means that the anonymous people who put the prophets in their current form were inspired as well. In Jeremiah 52, a later canonical compiler has appended 2 Kings 24 to Jeremiah's prophecies for the sake of context. And it makes a wonderful, very fitting end to the book.

Here endeth the Lenten reading, 2025.

"Everyone knows" (Part II)

... continued from yesterday.

8. When we first encounter someone who thinks or behaves differently from us, we can have varied reactions. There are of course those rare souls who are fascinated by difference. They want to learn more. "That's so interesting! So you actually eat the eyeballs?"

I'm not sure that curiosity is the most common reaction, though. For many of us, our first reaction is to think the other person is weird or strange. They're not normal. I suspect that the way I eat is unusual. So if "normal" is the way most people in my world do something, then I am weird.

The more sensitive the issue, the stronger the reaction will likely be. The instinct might be to attack. Someone might resort to name-calling. "You're stupid" or "that's stupid." If you have a different view or practice than I have ingrained in my head, I may consider you unintelligent.

There's actually a name for one example of this dynamic. It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect. It describes how people who don't actually know much about a subject may overestimate their understanding of it. They don’t know enough to realize how much they don’t know. I've seen a number of memes that capture this effect with a sarcastic comment like, "I didn't know so many of my Facebook friends were experts on economics!"

I'll confess that in my study of the Bible, my first reaction to a number of "strange" interpretations was to think the new interpretation was stupid. Often, the more I investigated these "strange" interpretations, the more I would realize that I was actually the one lacking in knowledge. Repeatedly, an idea I thought was crazy made more and more sense as I learned more about it. I have repeatedly ended up feeling pretty dumb after initially having a dismissive, somewhat cocky reaction. 

9. Let me give an example. When I first heard someone say that "inhospitality" was part of the Sodom and Gomorrah story, I may actually have laughed out loud. "Everyone knows" that the story is about homosexuality. "Seriously?" I would still say that homosexual sex is part of the immorality of the story, but there are other key dimensions to the story that weren't on my radar at all. I didn't know what I didn't know.

I should start off by saying that "hospitality" is something foreign to my personality. I think I'm friendly and quite nice to people, but "entertaining" is not my strong suit. The college I went to had a hospitality team for guests on campus. At the time, I thought that was one of the craziest things I had ever heard.

I still don't think it's a good word for what we're talking about in Genesis 19. What we're really talking about is not mistreating outsiders but rather looking out for them. As I'll mention in due time, we humans are a herd animal. We gather in tribes. It's a survival skill. Outsiders are potentially dangerous. We can more likely trust those in our own family and clan.

The downside of this defense mechanism is that fallen human nature is often violent or abusive toward those outside our group. Think "Mean Girls" in a high school. Think about the repeated phenomenon of some government trying to get rid of all the foreigners or immigrants in the land. Think genocide in Rwanda. It's fallen human nature 101.

The Bible is truly remarkable in this regard. A core value of the Old Testament is to treat the stranger, the foreigner, the immigrant with respect. This is highly unusual for any human culture. It goes against our tribal grain. "Remember that you were once foreigners in Egypt," Exodus 22:21 says. Treat others the way you wish you had been treated.

I totally missed this part of the Sodom story. It's helped me to compare it with the very similar story in Judges 19. In that story, a Levite debates whether to spend the night in a Jebusite city or in a town of Benjamin. He thinks it is more likely to be safe in Benjamin because at least they're Israelite.

But the men of the town want to rape him instead, show the outsider who's boss. They end up raping his concubine to death instead. The story isn't about homosexuality because they rape the concubine. It's about violence to an outsider. "Inhospitality" doesn't quite cut it, but you can see what the word is trying to get at.

Notice that when Jesus uses Sodom and Gomorrah as a warning in Matthew 10:15, the context is when his disciples are rejected by a village in which they are outsiders. At some point, it all clicked. I had missed this dimension to the story because it isn't part of my culture or personality. But it was absolutely part of the ancient world.

My first reaction was to scoff and make fun, but it turned out that I was the one with blind spots. There is a homosexual act that is contemplated in this story, but something bigger is going on that I knew nothing about. And even then, it's an act of violence that is attempted rather than homosexuality per se.

10. It is one thing to think that a different understanding is stupid. However, if a new idea or understanding is threatening enough to our sense of who we are, we may see it as downright evil. Of course, some ideas are very dangerous. Some ideas and movements are evil for sure. But it is also fallen human nature to call others evil or morally deficient more or less because they have a perspective that makes us feel insecure.

In these divisive times, we can see these dynamics especially when it comes to politics. If we like someone who is on the "other side," we might chalk their perspective up to ignorance. "They just don't know any better." We might try to give them information. We'll share something on Facebook. We'll email them an article, a link to a YouTube video, or maybe something on Tik Toc. We want to enlighten them. We want them to see the "right" perspective.

If they're an outsider to us, we are more likely to vilify them. They're of the Devil. You may have heard of the "ad hominem fallacy." This is when you attack the person expressing certain ideas rather than the ideas themselves. If someone disagrees with something we feel very strongly about, they must be either ignorant or evil.

There's a term for this way of thinking. It's called "binary thinking." There are two sides -- mine and the wrong one. There's the right perspective that the smart, good guys have. Then there's the wrong perspective that the other side has.

Usually, this way of thinking plays into what is called the "Either/Or Fallacy" or the "Fallacy of False Alternative." It says that there are only two options -- the right one and the wrong one. The options are black and white.

There are instances of two options. "No one can serve two masters," Jesus says (Matt. 6:24). When it comes to Yahweh, you must serve him entirely. Anything less will ultimately lead to a different destination. But most of the time, there is a spectrum of positions in between point A and B.

11. Sometimes, when we first encounter a new idea, we might initially be opposed to it, especially if it catches us off guard or we find it threatening. Binary thinking is a natural response. We can be defensive against the new idea, especially if it exposes our blind spots. 

In addition to "unreflective thinking," I have sometimes called our state of mind before we hear about new ideas "unitary thinking." We have one way of thinking, and we don't really know there are other possibilities. I am pre-reflective because I've never even realized you could think of the subject differently. I have blind spots, and I don't know it. I have unexamined assumptions.

Socrates is known for saying that "the unexamined life is not worth living." [1] I'm not sure I would go that far. Frankly, I think I'd rather live in ignorance than not live at all. But there is freedom in self-awareness. If I don't know there are other options, I am not free to choose or not to choose them. If I know other options, I may still choose the same one, but now I am choosing more freely -- because I have actually made a choice.

As we make this journey together, I will express a sense that the last few hundred years have opened our minds to possibilities that were not as clearly seen before. This is a somewhat unpopular perspective in my circles. Many around me think the world has gotten worse and worse. What's interesting is that there are different reasons for thinking this. On a popular level, many think we are in a state of incredible moral decline. But others around me seem to think that things have deteriorated since the Protestant Reformation. They long for some pre-modern past.

Me? I was born when it seemed like Martin Luther King Jr.'s moral arc of the universe was finally beginning to bend toward justice. I was raised in a time when progress almost seemed inevitable, even if might remind myself that it wasn't. The Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Science -- it all seemed like humanity was entering an age it had never entered before. Even at the turn of the millennium, we were in the digital age and now the age of AI.

We will eventually get to the question of history. Are things getting better and better, worse and worse, or just constantly changing? But that's a conversation for another day. These are all things we will discuss along this journey.

12. In the pages that follow, I want to take you on a journey through these reflections, "Ken's Progress," if you would. I have structured the path in terms of broadening awareness. In this first chapter, I have introduced the concept of unitary and binary thinking. 

The next four chapters will explore a shift from pre-reflective to binary thinking in five areas. We'll start with ethics (chapter 2). Then we look at political and economic philosophy (chapter 3). We'll ask about our philosophy of history (chapter 4). We'll explore the nature of humanity (chapter 5). In the last chapter of this section, we'll start thinking more deeply about God and the Bible (chapter 6). A key theme of these chapters is that there are usually more than just two options.

In chapter 7, we will cross an "epistemological bridge." That is, we will probe more deeply into the question of knowledge. How do we know that we know what we think we know? This will set us up for the second half of the book in which we'll dive into what I call "spectrum thinking." Chapters 2-6 will have opened up the door for these deeper discussions. Once again, we'll look at ethics (chapter 8), political philosophy (chapter 9), and the philosophy of religion (chapter 10). To take a breath, we'll also briefly touch on the philosophy of art and beauty (chapter 11).

The final two chapters will ironically end with two paths. Chapter 12 explores philosophy without God. What conclusions would we reach across the board if we assumed a naturalist or animist universe? Then chapter 13 sketches what a coherent theist perspective on the world might look like given the journey up to that point. 

We've packed our philosophical bags. Let the journey begin. 

[1] In Plato's Apology, where Socrates is on trial for not believing in the gods and corrupting the youth.

"Everybody knows that..."

1. Have you ever been caught off guard by a question that has never occurred to you? "Why is it wrong to eat cat meat?" Children are especially good at asking questions like these. "If God is everywhere, why do we go to church?"

If we spend our whole lives around people who think and act like we do, it's easy not to ask questions about many things. The questions may never even occur to us. We just do what we do without thinking much about it. 

Then maybe you get married. Or you have a "strange" roommate in college. "Everyone knows," the husband once told his new wife, "that you roll the toilet paper from the top." That couple eventually divorced, by the way. "Everyone knows that you squeeze the toothpaste from the end and not the middle."

I was sitting near one of my brother-in-laws once at a dinner table. Out of the blue, he asked why I ate one food at a time on my plate. Frankly, I had never paid any attention to how I ate, but I suddenly realized it was true. I'm not sure what dictated the order. I couldn't give my brother-in-law an answer, but he clearly considered it odd.

2. Where did we learn all these "obvious" things? I suspect that the way I eat is rather individual and psychological. No one taught it to me. It's probably mostly a matter of my individual psychology. 

However, with most things of this sort, we absorb them from our environment as we grow up -- we get them from the culture around us. And that includes the Christian culture around us. Sometimes we talk about culture as if it's something out there, outside the church. But the church itself is a culture. In fact, there are multiple subcultures within the church. We can't get outside of culture. Even if we go live on a deserted island, we take it with us.

We absorb these cultures largely without knowing it. For example, I cannot give you a good reason why it would be wrong to eat cat or dog, but I think I'll avoid it just the same. The best explanation I know is that when we draw lines around the world and categorize things -- putting different items in different "boxes" -- cats and dogs go more on the human side than the "outside animals" side. We've domesticated them, humanized them. They become our friends.

To kill a cat or a dog is thus a bit like killing a human. It's different from hunting a deer. Indeed, one initial sign that someone might be on a path to killing people is killing pets.

We absorb these assumptions from our environment as we grow up. Our families teach them to us. We learn them at school. We learn them at church. We are being programmed, as it were, without realizing it. Then when we are older, we just assume this is the way the world works. These behaviors and beliefs are ingrained in the basement of our minds. 

The more monolithic our background is -- the less diverse it is -- the more unaware we may be that other people think and behave differently. Our lack of awareness works fine as long as no one is hurt by it. It's when we try to force others into our unexamined ways of thinking -- or when we try to eliminate those who are different -- that we especially run into trouble.

3. These are "unexamined assumptions" we have about the world. You may have heard the story about the new spouse who inexplicably chopped the ends off her ham. The husband, in this case, asked her why. Suddenly, she realized that she didn't know. It's just what her mother always did.

They ask the mother when they get the chance. Why did you always cut the ends off your ham? She realized that she had never asked that question either. "My mother always did." They go to the grandmother. "Grandma, why did you always cut the ends off your ham?"

"Because I didn't have a big enough pan." 

I don't know if this story really happened, but it is a good illustration of how we do a lot of things unreflectively. We do them because we have learned to do them growing up. If you ask why, we don't really know. We just do them. "We've always done it that way."

The child asks, "But why?" You give an answer. "But why?" You give another answer. "But why?" Perhaps a little annoyed, the parent eventually might say, "Because I said so."

4. People can get rather irritable when you catch them off guard like this on an issue of some importance to them. Perhaps it is something to do with family. Perhaps it is something to do with politics. Perhaps it is something to do with race. If our identity is wrapped around something about which we have unexamined assumptions, we can get angry when someone touches it!

When you live in an echo chamber -- meaning everyone in your group believes the same things and doesn't seriously question them -- you can get quite defensive when an outsider starts asking questions. You might have stock or pat answers to the questions, answers that the group accepts without much serious examination. What is important for the group is that you have an answer -- not that it's a good one.

I have found this teaching in evangelical contexts all my life. When it comes to many complex issues, I can get by without very deep or penetrating answers because the main thing is not to upset the apple cart. Probing questions make us feel uncomfortable. Then occasionally there will be someone in the class who comes from another denomination or another religion or who dares question the standard answers. That's when it gets interesting.

Predictably, this dynamic of uncomfortable questions happens regularly in the middle school Sunday School I help teach. For example, as we have gone through books like Judges and 1 Samuel, many awkward questions come up. Why did God kill Uzzah for touching the Ark? Why was Jael considered righteous for killing a man with a tent peg? I didn't even cover the story of the Levite and his concubine at the end of Judges.

As I have taught, there are some issues -- and possible answers -- I have often avoided. I'm a people pleaser by nature and don't like uncomfortable situations. Some thinkers seem to hit these thorny questions with delight because they are convinced they have the answers. Unfortunately for me, I haven't always found their answers to be as foolproof as they think. I can't relay their answers with the same confidence they do.

Of course, there are other teachers who hit hard issues without hesitation because they think the job of a professor is to make you squirm a little, to make you think. I remember the shock of one professor when a graduating senior talked about how she almost lost her faith in one of his classes but was stronger for it. It apparently hadn't occurred to him that his intellectual onslaught was so intense.

5. This book is a journey toward knowledge and self-reflection. On many issues, we begin with many unexamined assumptions. We may go our whole lives with them. We pass them on to our children. 

I have called these views of the world "unreflective knowing" or perhaps "pre-reflective knowing." We "know" things because they are in the water around us. We are like the fish that doesn't know it's in water.

I remember a discussion I had with my mother when I was in seminary. I was saying, "We Wesleyans do this" and "We Wesleyans think that." (I come from a denomination in the Methodist tradition known as the Wesleyan Church.) At some point, she found my wording a little alarming. "Stop saying 'Wesleyan,'" she said. "We just read the Bible and do what it says."

In my opinion, my mother was an "unreflective knower" when it came to the Bible. She knew the content thoroughly. She was an absolute master of the content. But she was almost completely unaware of the assumptions she used to organize its materials into a theology and a way of living.

My mother had fundamentally different wiring than I do when it comes to thinking. We both liked ideas, but her approach to truth was, "How can I fit the evidence into my existing beliefs?" In seminary, my approach became, "What is the most likely interpretation of the evidence?"

She was a group thinker. She used her intellect to defend the beliefs and practices of her tribe, her group. She was not an independent thinker. For her, the task of the thinker was to find possible ways to fit the data into what we already believe.

For me to stand outside our group and critically evaluate our perspectives was uncomfortable for her, perhaps even alarming. But at seminary, I was encountering people and thoughts from outside our bubble. Easy answers work great when there's no one around who questions them.

6. Now there's a whole debate to be had here about the extent to which we should question certain things. Some of you may be reading my description of my mother's "epistemology" -- her approach to truth and knowledge -- and you may be thinking she was on the right track. But you might not feel the same way if she had been a Baptist, a Muslim, or a Democrat.

For the record, my official position is that "faith seeking understanding" is the ideal Christian approach to knowledge. We start with the faith we have and move forward from there. However, I believe our understanding of faith needs to be revisable in the light of the journey. We can debate how revisable it should be.

I actually had the thought as a teenager. "It is amazing that I just happened to be born into a Christian family that has all the right answers. What is the probability?!" I was completely sincere and following my family's group epistemology.

But the fact of the matter is that it is doubtful that any Christian group is completely right on everything. We are likely right on some things and wrong on others. We just don't know which is which. I have stayed in the Wesleyan tradition because I continue to think that it is more correct on many issues than other Christian traditions. But even saying so makes me a little nervous. It makes me suspicious of myself.

In my final years of college and into seminary, I began to see holes in some of the views with which I grew up. I debated whether God was testing me. Did God want me to believe things that were false as a test of my obedience? In the end, I resolved that God was a God of truth. God was not against reason even though human reasoning is flawed and finite. The evidence is in theory a reliable path to truth even though we do not always have all the evidence. And we wear "glasses" with filters as we process it.

7. One of the biggest realizations is that we all wear glasses as we interpret the Bible itself. In my first year as a college professor, I taught a course on contemporary philosophy. In the class was a student who had been deeply influenced by another professor who emphasized approaching all questions from a biblical worldview. Yet it seemed to me that this professor had a doozy of an unexamined assumption. He seemed to assume that a biblical worldview was somehow self-evident and obvious.

But a little reflection made it clear that this biblical worldview was as much an interpretation of the Bible as the Bible itself. The Bible doesn't come pre-loaded onto our brain's hard drive. We have to input it. We have to interpret it. That means our unexamined assumptions (and our examined ones) are not only involved -- they steer what we think we see in the text.

The Bible is not a single philosophical work. It is a collection of books written over a 1000-year period to address dramatically different contexts. Words get their meanings from contexts. That means a biblical worldview involves a complex integration of differing pieces. No wonder there are so many different churches with so many different beliefs!

At the time, I would have hypothesized that my dear fellow professor had a "pre-modern" view of the Bible. By this term, I meant that he probably didn't realize his unexamined assumptions. He saw the Bible as a single book with a single meaning, all the while being deeply influenced by the thinking of a particular Christian tradition (especially what might be called Reformed epistemology). 

Yes, the content of his biblical worldview was built predominantly out of the materials of the biblical text. Like my mother, he knew the biblical text thoroughly and completely. But for him, the organizing principles for that content came from a much more recent theological tradition. And I don't think he really knew it. I don't think he knew how thick the glasses were that he brought to the text.  I could be wrong. 

The result is that we quote a lot of Scripture without realizing that the way we are defining and organizing the words comes extensively from ourselves and the water we swim in. The Bible serves as a mirror of our existing beliefs. We read verses the way our group understands the verses or the way the verses strike me given the English "dictionary" in my head. We fit the various parts of the Bible together into a unified whole that is as much of our own making as the Bible itself.

It is deeply ironic that those groups that most emphasize that our beliefs and practices must come from the Bible alone are often those that are the least reflective in their interpretations of Scripture. We see what we want to see -- what we need to see -- in the biblical text. The Bible becomes more of a banner for our group thinking than a real source of truth.

To be continued...

21. Lenten Reading Gaps -- Jeremiah 26, 35, and 45

I have been working to figure out the most likely historical order of the chapters of Jeremiah. For example, the chapters relating to Jehoiakim clearly come before the chapters relating to Zedekiah. So I jumped from Jeremiah 20 to chapter 25 to chapter 36 and back to chapter 22.

However, I missed some chapters. I believe the order I should have followed is 20, 25, 26, 35, 36, 45, 22.  In other words, I missed three chapters. Today, I want to fill in those gaps. As a sidenote, some think chapters 7-10 might also relate to the reign of Jehoiakim.
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1. Jeremiah 26 comes from early in the reign of Jehoiakim (26:1). [1] In Jeremiah 25, the prophet predicted that Israel would go into exile. In this next chapter, Yahweh commands Jeremiah to go prophecy in the temple. Yahweh still holds out hope that they will turn back to him (26:3). See my "next" post on Jeremiah 36 on God's omniscience in Jeremiah. As before, Jeremiah warns that the Jerusalem temple might end up like Shiloh (cf. Jer. 7).

The response is not repentance. Rather, they tell Jeremiah he is going to die for preaching against the temple (26:8). Officials come from the king's house to the temple to say the same. Jeremiah reminds them that he is speaking for Yahweh. It is they who need to change their ways so that Yahweh will change his mind about destroying Jerusalem and its temple (26:13). They can do what they want with him, but they will experience the consequences (26:15).

So in verses 16-19, some more cautious voices respond. They remind them of how Micah prophesied similar things during the reign of Hezekiah (26:18). But they repented and Yahweh changed his mind about letting the Assyrians destroy them (26:19).

Then we hear the fate of a prophet who did not escape like Jeremiah. A prophet named Uriah preached against Jehoiakim and had to flee to Egypt to escape death. They hunted him down, brought him back, and killed him (26:20-23). However, Jeremiah was under the protection of Ahikam.

2. Jeremiah 35 should have come next in the series. In this chapter, Jeremiah gives a test to a clan known as the Rechabites. Perhaps this was a family of Nazirites. An ancestor of theirs, Jonadab, had committed to Yahweh that his family and descendants would not drink wine (which implies that Jeremiah and most in Israel did). Jonadab the son of Rechab lived some 200 years earlier.

Jeremiah tests them. He takes them to the temple and offers them wine. They do not accept the offer. Then Jeremiah praises them, contrasting them with the rest of Judah, which was faithless.

Another commitment they had was to live in tents rather than build houses. However, because of the threat of Nebuchadnezzer, they were staying (presumably with others) within the city walls.

3. I have already looked at Jeremiah 36. In that chapter, Jeremiah sends Baruch to the temple since he has been forbidden from coming there. The chapter to which I should have gone next is Jeremiah 45.

After Baruch had read the scroll of Jeremiah's prophecies in the temple and also taken it to the king, he and Jeremiah are told to go into hiding so that they are not put to death. This very short chapter gives Jeremiah's words thereafter to Baruch. Jeremiah tells Baruch not to expect great things of his life. Judah will be destroyed. Baruch will survive, but he will live in the context of great suffering.

[1] Jeremiah 26 is Jeremiah 33 in the LXX.

[2] Jeremiah 35 is Jeremiah 42 in the LXX.

[3] Jeremiah 45 is Jeremiah 51:31-35 in the LXX.

Introduction to Jeremiah

Scroll I (same in MT and LXX)
Jeremiah 1 (Josiah, 628BC)
Jeremiah 2 
Jeremiah 3
Jeremiah 4
Jeremiah 5
Jeremiah 6
Jeremiah 7
Jeremiah 8
Jeremiah 9
Jeremiah 10
Jeremiah 11 (Jehoiakim, 609BC)
Jeremiah 12
Jeremiah 13-18
19. Jeremiah 19-20

Scroll II (different order in MT and LXX)
20. Jump to Jeremiah 25 (605BC, Jeremiah 32 LXX)
21. Jeremiah 26 and 35
22. Jump to Jeremiah 36 (605BC, Jeremiah 43 LXX)
Jeremiah 45

Through the Bible -- Mark 2

Mark 1:1-13
Mark 1:14-15 
Mark 1:16-45
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1. The chapter divisions of the Bible were added over a thousand years after these scrolls were first written. [1] You might be tempted to separate Mark 1 from Mark 2 in your minds, but there wasn't a significant break here originally. At the end of Mark 1, Jesus cleanses someone with a skin disease. At the beginning of Mark 2, he heals a paralytic man. Both stories are in a single flow of Jesus' healings and activities.

The Gospel of Mark does have a literary structure. That is to say, it is not entirely a collection of stories about Jesus mixed together. For example, the first eight chapters hang together as a clear literary unit.

However, in these first few chapters, it is not entirely clear whether there is a reason why one story comes before or after the other. It seems more like a collection of related stories. In Mark 1, Jesus calls some disciples. He preaches the kingdom of God. He heals some people and casts out an unclean spirit. 

In Mark 2-3, he heals some people. He preaches the kingdom. He calls a disciple. And we hear about the fact that he casts out demons. There isn't so much a progression as a repetition of similar actions.

However, in Mark 2-3, we do have an added dimension to Mark 1 -- conflict. In Mark 2, Jesus begins to get into conflict with scribes and Pharisees. Near the end of Mark 2, Jesus begins to get into conflict over the Sabbath. There are several examples of conflict in Mark 2-3. So, there is a sense of heightening tension as we move forward in Mark, even if these early chapters feel a little like a loose collection of similar events. 

2. The first twelve verses of Mark 2 tell us the story of the paralytic. Jesus is in Capernaum. He is "at home." The wording raises the question of whether Jesus was living in Capernaum at the time. I've already mentioned that Peter may have had a house there, and Jesus may have lived with him.

The house is packed as Jesus preaches about the kingdom of God. The men carrying the paralytic can't get in. They climb up on the roof and dig through so they can lower the man down.

Jesus pronounces that the man's sins are forgiven, which offends some scribes who are present. This is the first instance of conflict in Mark's Gospel. They consider it blasphemy for Jesus to proclaim the man's sins forgiven. 

They are wrong, of course. As Christians, we usually think they are wrong because Jesus is God. He has the divine authority to forgive sins. But they would be wrong even if Jesus were merely human. It was not blasphemy to recognize and announce God's forgiveness. Indeed, in John 20:23, Jesus gives the disciples the authority to declare or reject the forgiveness of sins as his agents on earth.

The point of the incident in Mark is to show that Jesus' authority extended beyond physical healing to spiritual healing. He not only has authority over the physical realm. He not only has authority over the demonic and spiritual world that is the enemy of God. Jesus has authority over sin on God the Father's behalf, and as God's agent can speak and act on behalf of God the Father.

3. Mark 2 tells the story of the calling of Levi as a disciples. Levi is usually equated with Matthew because the Gospel of Matthew uses the name Matthew when it tells this story. Similarly, tradition equates this Matthew with the author of the Gospel of Matthew.

These are assumptions of varying weight here, although we often make them without a second thought. For example, only later tradition equates Matthew with the author of Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew is technically anonymous -- the title was added later. Similarly, the identification of Levi as "the son of Alphaeus" makes us think of James the son of Alphaeus -- Levi is not mentioned in the list of twelve in Mark 3:18. If we didn't have Matthew's Gospel, we would probably think that Levi was this James.

Here we have another instance of conflict. Jesus eats with Levi the tax collector and with other "sinners." The Pharisees question such association, but they ask his disciples -- an interesting avoidance of confronting Jesus himself. Presumably, this is a recognition of his growing status as a prophet. His power makes them think he might indeed be God's representative, but he is not behaving the way they think he should.

Jesus saw the unseen. He saw the "sick" that the healthy usually didn't see or didn't care to see. He saw the possibility of redemption where others saw people getting what they deserved -- or people about to get what they deserved. The Gospel of Luke will especially expand on this dimension of Jesus' mission: "Those who are well do not need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (2:17).

Jesus was filling in the gaps of the kingdom. If he came today, it would be as if the people who go to church were offended that Jesus spent most of his time trying to restore those whom the church liked to talk about as obviously unsaved. He would accept the church people's invitations too, of course. But name some group that is "obviously" lost and imagine how disgusted some in the church would be that Jesus spent time with them or accepted their invitations. Jesus didn't seem to care.

4. The question about Jesus' disciples fasting is yet another point of conflict. Jesus is not behaving the way they think he should. The followers of John the Baptist fast. Those who apprentice with the Pharisees fast. Jesus' disciples don't. The difference is that John anticipated the coming of the Messiah. The Pharisees awaited the coming of God's anointed.

But Jesus was God's anointed. Jesus was the arrival of the kingdom. That called for celebration. Nevertheless, Jesus anticipates his destiny. He will be taken away soon enough. Then his followers will fast, awaiting his return.

5. There is considerable discussion of the meaning of Jesus' metaphors about new cloth and new wineskins, especially in the light of Luke's version of the saying (cf. Luke 5:39). Many wonder if Jesus is aligning himself with the old cloth and the old wineskins rather than the new, and Luke may very well read this way.

However, I'm not sure that Mark does. Mark as a whole aligns more with discontinuity with the old than with continuity. And the flow of the story seems to align Jesus more with the new than the old. On this one, I remain on the side of the traditional reading of the sayings -- at least in Mark.

6. The chapter ends with another point of conflict with Pharisees over the Law. [2] Jesus' disciples are eating some of the unharvested grain in the fields through which they pass. The criticism is that they are doing it on the Sabbath, which these Pharisees interpret as work. This is Jesus' first conflict over the Sabbath in Mark.

Jesus doesn't seem to care. Mark shows no concern to show Jesus as carefully law observant. Quite the contrary. Jesus seems completely unconcerned about the Law. This plays into a sense that Mark was written for a non-Jewish audience. Indeed, we cannot dismiss the possibility that the author of Mark was not Jewish.

Jesus does not say, "They're not really breaking the Law." He seems to accept, at least for the sake of argument, that they are. What he argues is that he has the authority to break the Law in this instance. He is like David in the days before he became king. David ate from he sacred bread in the sanctuary, which was unlawful for him and his men to do.  

At the very least, it shows that Jesus did not treat the Law as absolute, exceptionless. There are circumstances where exceptions to the Law are appropriate. On the whole, Mark pictures Jesus as someone who sat loosely to the Law in the face of the needs of people. People over rules, just like the prophets of the Old Testament. Obedience over sacrifice.

Historically, we can imagine that Jesus himself was generally Law-observant. However, I doubt he was as scrupulous at his Law-keeping as some want to think he was. Indeed, I wonder in general if those in the Galilee were. I wonder if the Jewish populace in general was. The Pharisees and Essenes were always the exceptions, and no doubt Judaism reformulated itself to some extent after the destruction of Jerusalem. [3]

[1] Archbishop Stephen Langdon first added chapter divisions to the Latin Bible in the year 1205. Then the verse divisions weren't added for another 500 years after that. 

[2] I might note that E. P. Sanders thought it unlikely that someone in Galilee would have had many encounters with Pharisees, who were primarily located in Jerusalem. Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People. However, we can imagine a scenario where some came north to investigate Jesus.

[3] There is a puzzle about the mention of Abiathar being priest (2:26) since 1 Samuel 21 says the priest was Ahimelek. Ahimelek was the father of Abiathar, and Abiathar joins David's fighting men soon after this story. It is difficult to know why Mark says it was Abiathar rather than Ahimelek. Was it a different textual tradition? Was it because Abiathar became priest for David?  

I do not worry about harmonizing such details. For one, we are speculating and thus run the risk of creating a "fifth Gospel" that is actually none of the Gospels. Second and more importantly, our concern to harmonize these details is driven by modern concerns more than ancient ones. The inspired point of the text should be the focus, not harmonization, which can become an obsession. Let the text and evidence say what it seems to say, and we'll figure out what to do with it in our theology as a church.

23. Lenten Readings -- Back to Jeremiah 22 (Litany of the Kings)

[I see this is not the right chapter to do next, but I will leave it.]

1. In this fascinating chapter, Jeremiah gives us a moral snapshot of the kings of Judah up to Jehoiachin, the successor to Jehoiakim. All but one of the kings (Zedekiah) of his lifetime are covered: Josiah, Shallum (Jehoahaz), Jehoiakim, and Coniah (Jehoiachin) are all mentioned. That possibly dates this prophecy to around 597BC.

The chapter begins with Yahweh telling Jeremiah to go to the palace to prophesy in relation to the kings of Judah (22:1). Here is the formula he gives them for success:

• Do what is just and right (22:3).
• Rescue the person who is robbed from their oppressor.
• Do not do any wrong or violence to the immigrant.
• Similarly, do not wrong the widow or fatherless.
• Do not shed innocent blood.

Do these things and the kings will enjoy the palace and ride through the gates in chariots with their officials (22:4). If not, the palace will become ruins (22:5), which it did.

2. Then commences Jeremiah's predictions of judgment on the palace. Because they had forgotten their covenant with Yahweh, the line of David will fail (22:30, at least for now). No one will sit on the throne of David. 

However, here for the first (and last) time, we hear positive words about Josiah. Josiah did what was right (22:15) and all went well with him. (Except, of course, for getting killed in battle) He defended the cause of the poor and needy. We have now had the big four in the chapter -- the immigrant, the widow, the fatherless, and the poor.

3. But Josiah's son Shallum, renamed Jehoahaz, only ruled for three months. In those months, he was set on dishonest gain (22:17). He shed innocent blood. He was set on oppression and extortion. Pharaoh Necho II removed him as king quickly. He died in exile in Egypt, banished by the Pharaoh from his land.

4. Then Jeremiah moves on to Jehoiakim (originally named Eliakim), another son of Josiah. The prophecies from Jeremiah 11-20 were all during his rule, and we have seen how he burned a scroll with all of Jeremiah's prophecies on it (Jer. 36). Although 2 Kings doesn't mention it, both in Jeremiah 36:30 and here in 22:19, there are hints that Jehoiakim was killed and at least initially left for dead outdoors in disgrace. He resisted Nebuchadnezzar and paid for it with his life. Of Jehoiakim, Yahweh says that he warned him, but Jehoiakim did not listen (22:21). 

5. Now, here, for the first time, we are introduced to the king that succeeded Jehoiakim -- Jehoiachin his son. He also only ruled for three months before Nebuchadnezzar had him removed and taken in exile back to Babylon (22:25). If Jehoiachin had been a signet ring on Yahweh's finger, he would have taken him off (22:24). So even his mother would be taken away to Babylon, never to return (22:26-27). He is a broken pot.
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Introduction to Jeremiah

Scroll I (same in MT and LXX)
Jeremiah 1 (Josiah, 628BC)
Jeremiah 2 
Jeremiah 3
Jeremiah 4
Jeremiah 5
Jeremiah 6
Jeremiah 7
Jeremiah 8
Jeremiah 9
Jeremiah 10
Jeremiah 11 (Jehoiakim, 609BC)
Jeremiah 12
Jeremiah 13-18
19. Jeremiah 19-20 

Scroll II (different order in MT and LXX)
20. Jump to Jeremiah 25 (605BC, Jeremiah 32 LXX) 
21. Jeremiah 26 and 35

22. Jump to Jeremiah 36 (605BC, Jeremiah 43 LXX)
Jeremiah 45

22. Lenten Readings: Jump to Jeremiah 36 (Jehoiakim burns Jeremiah's scroll)

1. Going in chronological order, Jeremiah 36 clearly dates like Jeremiah 25 to the year 605BC during the reign of Jehoiakim (36:1). [1] Jeremiah takes a scroll of all his prophecies since the days of King Josiah to the king (36:2) -- with Jeremiah's first prophecies starting in 627BC. One can wonder if these prophecies were largely Jeremiah 1-20, with the possible inclusion of Jeremiah 25 as well.

Yahweh sounds hopeful that the house of Judah might turn from its evil ways (36:3). This statement is probably a reminder that the concept of God knowing all the future was probably not yet entirely solidified. If God knows the future -- indeed, if God has deep insight into human behavior -- he would know the overwhelmingly likely response. And he did know.

We seem to have two or three choices. The open theist and panentheist says that the future doesn't exist and so is unknowable or that God chooses not to know the future so we have free will. They take the text too literally at this point.

The orthodox option believes that God knows exactly what Jehoiakim will do because God is truly and really all-knowing and omniscient. God is walking through history with Jeremiah who does not see the future in its entirety. God is reading from a script that he has known for eternity past. He is doing it for Jeremiah's and the later audience of Jeremiah's sake. 

Even in revelation, God meets us where we are. Something along these lines is the historic, orthodox perspective that preserves God as God and not God as some really nice, sooped-up Zeus.

But Jeremiah may not entirely understand this fully yet. The Bible displays a flow of revelation. The earlier parts have a true understanding, but their understanding sometimes is not as precise as later parts, particularly the New Testament. Psalm 139 is generally considered a focal point on this subject, where God is said to know every one of the psalmist's days before he was born (139:16). [2] Going off that comment, God would know the day Jehoiakim burned Jeremiah's scroll.

This can be a scary line of thought, but it is a clear conclusion if one believes that God is all-knowing. If you and I could guess what Jehoiakim would do, then Yahweh certainly would have predicted it -- even if he didn't know the future. If taken with strict literalism, the passage seems to limit God's knowledge inadvertently. For God to be God, we have to take this text as God walking through the situation with Jeremiah even though he knows what will happen. [3]

2. Going in chronological order, this is the first time we encounter Baruch, although he is mentioned in Jeremiah 32:12 as a witness to Jeremiah's land purchase. Baruch is the scribe who writes down Jeremiah's oral prophecies. We can wonder if he was primarily responsible for the initial collection of Jeremiah's prophetic ministry onto scrolls.

Remembering Jeremiah 25, the priest in charge of the temple had beaten Jeremiah. He is not allowed in the temple now (36:3). So, Jeremiah sends Baruch with the scroll instead. Baruch is to read the entire scroll to the people of Judah on a "fast day." It is unclear whether this is a regularly scheduled fast day or whether the religious establishment and king have called a special fast. Probably the latter.

Jeremiah still has hope that they will return to Yahweh (36:7).

3. So Baruch reads the scroll at the entry of the New Gate to the temple. The son of a temple official named Gemariah then goes to king's house and tells officials there about it. It is commanded that Baruch come to them with the scroll to them. Baruch reads it to them at their request, and they seem open to hear it. They clearly consider Jeremiah to be a legitimate prophet.

They question Baruch. Is this truly a dictation from Jeremiah. Yes. Then they sent Baruch away and told him and Jeremiah to go into hiding. They apparently know how the king will respond.

Finally, the king is informed. It is the ninth month (November-December), and a fire is going. The king is not alarmed. None of his servants rent their clothes. Instead, the king has the scroll burned. I think it's hard for us to appreciate how shocking an action this was. Prophets were untouchable.

Instead, the king orders the arrest of Jeremiah and Baruch, as they had anticipated. So, Jeremiah simply dictates the scroll again, even adding to it. He predicts disaster and that there will soon be no one to sit on the throne of David. Jehoiakim's body will be cast out into the street. [4]

[1] Jeremiah 36 in the Masoretic text (MT) is chapter 43 in the Greek Old Testament (LXX).

[2] The headings of the psalms were added after the psalms were written, presumably as the psalms were collected. The headings are traditional but not usually considered inspired. For that reason, this psalm is anonymous even though it came to have David's name on it. It seems rather later than David in its theology.

[3] Nowhere is this dynamic of biblical revelation clearer than in Moses exchange with God in Numbers 14, where God tells Moses he is going to destroy Israel but Moses talks him down. This is a clear case of anthropomorphism where God is portrayed like a furious man wanting to beat up someone. Some Christians may like these passages a little too much and miss the fact that, in them, God was meeting us in human terms to help our understanding. God was painting a picture for us. He was "stooping to our weakness." 

An all-knowing God doesn't literally get angry because he has always known what was going to happen. God's "anger" is for the benefit of our understanding. 

[4] The final fate of Jehoiakim is unclear. 2 Kings 24:6 simply says he slept with his fathers. However, since the prophecies of Jeremiah were collected after the event, it's hard to imagine that this is not how Jehoiakim ended up. Jeremiah 22:18-19 has a similar prediction. Josephus gives a tradition of its fulfillment at the command of Nebuchadnezzar (Antiquities 10.96-97).

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Introduction to Jeremiah

Scroll I (same in MT and LXX)
Jeremiah 1 (Josiah, 628BC)
Jeremiah 2 
Jeremiah 3
Jeremiah 4
Jeremiah 5
Jeremiah 6
Jeremiah 7
Jeremiah 8
Jeremiah 9
Jeremiah 10
Jeremiah 11 (Jehoiakim, 609BC)
Jeremiah 12
Jeremiah 13-18
19. Jeremiah 19-20 

Scroll II (different order in MT and LXX)
20. Jump to Jeremiah 25 (605BC, Jeremiah 32 LXX)
21. Jeremiah 26 and 35

20. Lenten Readings -- Jump to Jeremiah 25

1. The ordering of the text of Jeremiah is a puzzle. On the one hand, there is the chronological order. We are jumping to Jeremiah 25 because it is likely the next chapter in the order in which Jeremiah prophesied. Jeremiah 21, which comes next in the Hebrew text we have, skips to the reign of Zedekiah. 

But Zedekiah's reign started in 597BC. There are clearly more prophecies from the reign of Jehoiakim in the book of Jeremiah. This includes not least Jeremiah 25, which dates to 605BC, the fourth year of Jehoiakim's reign. The ordering of Jeremiah from chapter 20 seems to have prioritized themes over chronology, grouping like material together.

To make matters even more complicated, the order of the chapters in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, often imprecisely called the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX), is quite different from our English Bibles. The order of our English Bibles largely follows that of the Masoretic Text (MT), the main Hebrew text that has survived, dating to around the 900s/1000 in its current form.

The Greek textual tradition of Jeremiah is thus much older than the MT and probably preserves an earlier, more "original" order. We thus face a conundrum. The English text of Jeremiah that we now have likely includes about 13% later material added by Jewish tradition now found in the MT. Meanwhile, the order of the LXX is much closer to the way the prophecies of Jeremiah were originally preserved.

2. The situation reminds me a little of the situation we faced when it became clear that the Greek text behind the King James had verses and a few sections that were not likely in the original version of the Bible (e.g., Mark 16:9-20; John 7:53-8:11). God must not have been too displeased with this material because it was in most Bibles for over 1500 years. Similarly, Jeremiah as we have it has been in the Bibles of Jews and Christians for over 1000 years at least.

The question reveals assumptions we didn't know we had. Is the goal to "get back" to the original or is the text God has preserved just as or more important? Modern assumptions want to "get back" to the original manuscripts or the original voice of the author. But isn't what God is saying to us pretty important? After all -- ideally or not -- it is our understanding of the text today that determines how we live and how the text forms us. Like it or not, I am not shaped by an understanding of the text I do not have -- even if there is a more accurate, more original understanding!

I personally want it all. I want to engage the text of Jeremiah as God has preserved it AND I would like to have insight into earlier forms of the collection of prophecies. In the end, our theories about the earliest ways in which the book's prophecies were collected are ultimately speculative and thus not inspired.

In my opinion, these discussions reveal that the way we often conduct our debates over inerrancy and such are more our problem than the Bible's problem. They are debates that are often more about our desire to control what people today think. Real biblical interpretation is far messier and uncertain. God believes what is true, and we will never get it all right because our brains are finite and fallen. 

We do not have in our minds the Bible as it actually is or was. Inevitably, ultimately, we only have our interpretations of the Bible. We have individual interpretations. We have the collective interpretations of denominations and Christian traditions. We have the collective interpretations of Christians throughout the centuries. None of these are exactly the original meaning.

The first "version" of Jeremiah, probably in the 500s BC, would have been a collection of 3 or 4 scrolls. I think we can plausibly say that chapters 1-20 constituted one of them.

3. So, going in chronological order, we jump from Jeremiah 20 to Jeremiah 25. [1] Jeremiah 25 gives us the date when Jeremiah started prophesying. The chapter is dated to 605BC (25:1). This was also the first year of King Nebuchadnezzar. Jeremiah tells us he has been prophesying for 23 years up to that point (25:3), from the 13th year of Josiah in 628BC.

Here in Jeremiah 25 we find the prophecy that Judah will go into exile for 70 years. This is not a precise number but 7 x 10, where 7 is a special symbolic number. The first group taken to Babylon took place in 597, which would suggest a return around 527 if the date were precise. The actual return was in 538 BC. Again, some individuals take the text more rigidly than it wants to be taken.

But God will not go more easily on the tool he is using to punish Israel than he is on Israel. Babylon will face judgment as well, and they will never return. [2]

4. The image of a cup of wrath is introduced in 25:15. Revelation 14:9-10 and 18:6 will use this image in its picturing of the judgment of Rome. Although the original prophecy took place in 605, Jeremiah 25:18 reveals that the voice of the text as it stands dates to a later time after the judgment on surrounding nations like Egypt had already taken place. An extensive list of surrounding peoples is mentioned as slated for judgment with God using the hand of Nebuchadnezzar to do it.

And Judah would not be spared either. The guilty "shepherds" of Israel would also be judged (25:34). Yahweh is very angry indeed (25:38).

[1] Jeremiah 25 is chapter 32 in the LXX.

[2] Jeremiah 25:14 is not in the LXX version of the chapter, nor is it attested in 4QJer from Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Although it is possible that this absence is because of the fragmentary nature of 4QJer, the text of Jeremiah 25 in this manuscript follows the Greek more than the MT. 25:14 probably was not among the original prophecies of Jeremiah, although it is certainly true.

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Introduction to Jeremiah
Jeremiah 1
Jeremiah 2 
Jeremiah 3
Jeremiah 4
Jeremiah 5
Jeremiah 6
Jeremiah 7
Jeremiah 8
Jeremiah 9
Jeremiah 10
Jeremiah 11
Jeremiah 12
Jeremiah 13-18

Jeremiah 19-20

19. Lenten Readings --- Jeremiah 19-20

My readings in Jeremiah for Lent continue.
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1. Jeremiah's prophecies during the reign of Jehoiakim (609-598BC) continue.

Jeremiah 19 begins with the remarkable challenge of bringing some elders and priests to the Valley of Hinnom for a prophetic word (19:1-2). Why would they go with Jeremiah? It would suggest that Jeremiah had significant cache. It made me wonder if the high priest Hilkiah might actually have been his father.

He is to take them to the gate called "Broken Pots" (probably the Dung Gate on the south side of the city) where he is to break the potter's jar and make his prophetic word to them (19:2). His word to the kings of Judah (presumably Jehoiakim) is that they are going into exile. God is bringing destruction on Judah. The city will become ruiins. The siege will be so bad that they will cannibalize their own children (19:9).

He gives this prophetic word facing the Valley of Hinnom (19:2), where child sacrifices had once been made to the god Molech (19:5). The city would soon be called the Valley of Slaughter because of the death that would take place there at the hands of the Babylonians. Of course, this valley became the metaphorical model for Gehenna or hell. Jeremiah has already mentioned this valley, also called Topheth, in chapter 7.

Smashing the jar is symbolic of the destruction of the city (19:10-11). There will not be enough room for the bodies in Topheth (19:11).

Then Jeremiah returned to the temple court and repeated the prophecy (19:14). It reminds us of Jesus' action in the temple in which he quoted Jeremiah 7:11.

2. In Jeremiah 20, the tension between Jeremiah and the leaders of Jerusalem hits a new level. The priest Passhur, who was in charge of the temple, has Jeremiah beaten for his prophesies and put in stocks at the temple Gate of Benjamin (20:2). When he is released the next day, Jeremiah renames the priest. "Terror on Every Side." Then Jeremiah predicts that the Babylonians will take him and his family as prisoners back to Babylon, where he would die.

3. The chapter ends with Jeremiah venting to Yahweh. Why did he even have to be born (20:18)? Why didn't Yahweh kill him when he was in the womb (20:17)? Then he wouldn't have had to face such trouble and end his days in sorrow? 

The word of Yahweh has only brought him insult (20:8), not the honor he might have thought it would (20:7). But he can't help but deliver it. Even if he would want to stay quiet, it is like fire in his bones (20:9). His "friends" are waiting for him to slip up. How horrible.

But he still praises Yahweh. "Sing to Yahweh" (20:13). He rescues the needy from the wicked.  He is a mighty warrior. He probes the heart and mind (cf. Heb. 4:12-13). He will bring justice on Jeremiah's enemies. 
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Introduction to Jeremiah
Jeremiah 1
Jeremiah 2 
Jeremiah 3
Jeremiah 4
Jeremiah 5
Jeremiah 6
Jeremiah 7
Jeremiah 8
Jeremiah 9
Jeremiah 10
Jeremiah 11
Jeremiah 12
Jeremiah 13-18

Through the Bible -- Mark 1:16-45

Mark 1:1-13
Mark 1:14-15 
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1. The clear impression we get from Mark 1:14 is that Jesus did not commence his earthly ministry until after John the Baptist had been arrested. [1] Mark gives us the background of Jesus' ministry in that of John the Baptist. It tells us about Jesus' preparation in the wilderness. Then when John is arrested, Jesus begins.

Mark 1:14-15 then gives us the essence of Jesus' earthly message, a "gospel" of good news. The kingdom of God is arriving. Get ready. Repent and be baptized in preparation. Prepare your allegiance, for the kingdom is coming.

2. Then Jesus begins recruiting disciples (Mark 1:16-20). These are apprentices, learners. As he started when John the Baptist was gone, they would continue the mission after Jesus was gone. Jesus is training them to fish for people (1:17).

We hear about the four core disciples here: Peter, Andrew, James, and John. They will become the "four pillars" of the church (cf. Gal. 2:9). They are fishermen working near the village of Capernaum along the Sea of Galilee. However, John 1:44 suggests that Peter and Andrew were originally from Bethsaida, about 8 miles further north. Archaeological evidence suggests that Peter eventually would have a house in Capernaum. [2]

We don't know exactly how Jesus ended up in Capernaum. It was about 40 miles east of Nazareth, about a two-day journey. Perhaps Jesus met some from this group during the trip to Judea to be baptized by John the Baptist.  

3. Jesus heals many (1:32-34). This will be a hallmark of Jesus' ministry. He heals many. He casts out demons. Both activities are well illustrated from the very beginning in this chapter. 

First, he casts out an "unclean spirit" (1:21-28). He does so on the Sabbath in Capernaum. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke will make it clear that these exorcisms indicated that the kingdom of God was arriving (Matt. 12:28; Luke 11:20). [3] While Satan had been allowed to wreak havoc on the earth, the coming reign of God would vanquish his authority and bind his power.

4. Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law (1:29-31), a clear indication that Peter was married. The Gospel of Mark has no qualms with the disciples being married nor with Jesus having brothers and sisters from his mother Mary (6:3). There is no trace here of later worries about Mary remaining a perpetual virgin or apostles not being married. Sex is not unclean Marriage does not taint. Children are holy.

Jesus heals a leper in 1:40-45. Jesus is not worried about becoming unclean (Lev. 5:3; Num. 19:22). While in normal thinking, uncleanness "infects" the clean, with Jesus, the clean sanctifies the unclean. Jesus heals the man and sends him to the priest to verify that he is now clean -- an indication that Jesus was not against the purity system per se.

We also get here our first glimpse of a theme in Mark sometimes called the "messianic secret." Jesus tries to keep his power and identity as Messiah somewhat secret. Notably, he fails. He sternly tells the healed leper not to tell anyone who healed him, but the man does it anyway. As a result, Jesus is mobbed everywhere he goes He can no longer enter towns openly (1:45).

5. Jesus' primary mission, however, is to preach the good news of the kingdom's arrival (1:38). He heals and casts out demons as he goes around preaching. He struggles to find alone time to pray (1:35). I suspect Jesus was an introvert, but he will struggle to find time alone to recharge. Crowds will come to him from everywhere. Even his disciples will hardly leave him alone (1:36).

[1] The Gospel of John, perhaps with its own goals, shows some ministry work at the same time as John the Baptist, including baptisms (John 3:26). However, John's purpose is probably to show certain individuals in the late first century at Ephesus -- individuals who followed John's teaching but did not believe in Jesus -- that John was only the forerunner of Jesus. John tells the story in such a way as to make it clear that once Jesus arrived, John's role was effectively over (cf. John 3:30). As is usually the case, John is more theological in its presentation, the Synoptics more likely historical. 

[2] A church currently is suspended in air over the remains of the early church that was there, which stood on the remains of a house.

[3] This saying of Jesus comes from what has sometimes been called "Q" material, a hypothetical collection of Jesus' sayings. In this scenario, Q would be an early source of Jesus material in parallel to the Gospel of Mark.

Lenten Readings -- Jeremiah 18

Earlier chapter posts are now at the bottom. 

There were always going to be more chapters of Jeremiah than days in Lent, and I have been quite busy this week and so have missed five days of writing. I thought I'd skip ahead to chapter 18. Here are some quick notes on the intervening chapters:

Jeremiah 13 -- Jehoiakim -- Some symbolic actions here. He hides a wet linen cloth near Parah, possibly to symbolize the Euphrates river of the Babylonians, which is then ruined. Then there is the symbolism of a full wine jar being smashed. Judah is to be taken into exile -- king, queen, and all. 13:22 talks about Judah being raped. Also an allusion to the skin color of the Cushites and the famous rhetorical question, "Can the leopard change its spots?"

Jeremiah 14 -- Jehoiakim -- Prophesied during a drought. Jeremiah pleads for Yahweh not to forsake them. He knows he is there (14:9). God tells Jeremiah not to pray for them. He will not heed their sacrifices. The later part of the chapter denounces the prophets and priests. The people acknowledge their wickedness and plea for rain and mercy (14:20).

Jeremiah 15 -- Jehoiakim -- Chapter 15 begins by saying that even though Moses and Samuel stood before Yahweh, he would not spare them (15:1). (I'm increasingly wondering if the reign of Josiah involved some of the strongest beginnings of Scripture collection.) As in 2 Kings, Manasseh is blamed for the approaching destruction and exile (15:4). God is sending four destroyers: the sword, dogs, birds, and wild animals. Jeremiah is undergoing persecution.

Jeremiah 16 -- Jehoiakim -- Yahweh instructs Jeremiah to remain celibate. He is not to have children. The future will not be good for the children of the land. They will die of disease. They will die unmourned. God has taken his peace from his people (16:5). A small window into mourning practices. Why? Because their ancestors have turned from him and they have doubled down. Exile it is. The end of the chapter is a little puzzling. At first it seems to talk about return from exile, but it ends with God gathering Israel for judgment.

Jeremiah 17 -- Jehoiakim -- More promises of exile for the way Judah has served other gods "under every green tree." Their wealth will be taken away as spoil. 17:7-8 are reminiscent of Psalm 1. 17:9 is particularly striking. God searches the human heart (17:10). 17:11 is about becoming wealthy through unjust means. He pleas for justice for his enemies. The end of the chapter has striking words on keeping the Sabbath by not doing work (more Deuteronomy parallels). There is surprising hope for redemption for Judah's kings given the direness of earlier chapters. 

And now, Jeremiah 18  
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1. Chapter 18 begins with an image familiar from Romans 9 -- Israel is clay and God is the potter. God can do with he clay as he wishes (18:4). However, far from God's shaping of the clay being unconditional, it is dependent on the choices of Israel. If Israel turns from its evil, it will be spared (18:8). But Israel is insistent on continuing on its path away from Yahweh (18:12). Israel has forgotten its God (18:15).

There are possibly implications for the understanding of Romans 9-11. The sentiment here is similar to what Paul says about cutting out the natural branches and the possibility of grafting them back in. It is not unconditional election but conditional.

2. Jeremiah is an outsider. He is an outsider from the priests and prophets in power. They have formal positions and are officially recognized. Jeremiah seems to be prophesying from the edges. God does that. Those who are recognized. Those who are popular. Those who hold official positions often do not speak for God. God often speaks from the undesirable, from the sidelines.

So the priests tell Jeremiah it's not his business to tell them what the Law says. The officially recognized prophets tell him it isn't his place to speak for God. Yet it seems that he is one of the only ones speaking for God. Jeremiah had once prayed on their behalf, but not any more. Now, Jeremiah prays for justice and for their overthrow.

Introduction to Jeremiah
Jeremiah 1
Jeremiah 2 
Jeremiah 3
Jeremiah 4
Jeremiah 5
Jeremiah 6
Jeremiah 7
Jeremiah 8
Jeremiah 9
Jeremiah 10
Jeremiah 11
Jeremiah 12