[Dialogue] 4/11/13, Spong: The Birth of Jesus, Part XI. Matthew Weaves Together Proof Texts from Isaiah, Micah, Hosea and from an Unknown Source

Thu Apr 11 11:40:22 PDT 2013

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	The Birth of Jesus, Part XI

	Matthew Weaves Together Proof Texts from Isaiah, Micah, Hosea and from an Unknown Source
	Christianity was born in the synagogue and the original followers of Jesus were primarily observant Jews. They gathered in the synagogue regularly on the Sabbath for worship. A major part of that worship consisted of reading, learning about and becoming conversant with the sacred scriptures as the Jews understood them. Each Sabbath there were three major scripture readings observed by the synagogue pattern of Jewish worship. The first, the longest and the most important, came from what the Jews called the Torah. This part of the Hebrew Bible was also called “The books of Moses.” In Jesus’ day, it was generally believed that Moses was the author of the Torah books, named Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These writings were the Jewish “Holy of Holies” and in the stricter, more orthodox synagogues, the requirement was that the entire Torah must be read in the synagogue on the Sabbaths of a single year. To accomplish this, the Torah lesson would of necessity consist of the reading of five to six chapters of our present text as the first lesson. It would take a minimum of 10 to 15 minutes to read a passage of that length. In more moderate or “liberal” synagogues this requirement was loosened and the Torah was allowed to be read over a three-year cycle.
	The second lesson would come from that portion of the Hebrew Bible that the Jews called “The Former Prophets.” These are the books that purport to describe Jewish history after the death of Moses, and include those works known as Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel and I and II Kings. At an earlier point in history, these latter four books were all called the books of Samuel or I, II, III and IV Samuel. It was a later interpolation to call the last two I and II Kings. These books covered Jewish history from the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, around the year 1200 BCE, to the defeat of the nation of Judah at the hands of the Babylonians and the subsequent exile of the Jewish people in the land of Babylon beginning in 586 BCE. They were not as important as the Torah so there was no specific deadline by which to complete them.
	The third synagogue scripture reading was from what the Jews called “The Latter Prophets.” That title referred to the books we now call Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the books from Hosea to Malachi, which were all on a single scroll and were referred to by the Jews as “The book of the Twelve.” Christians tend to call them “The Minor Prophets.” Please note that Daniel did not come into the canon of Jewish Scripture until about 165 BCE and, as a late arrival, was not generally included in synagogue readings. When one notes the length of these four books: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve, we discover that they are about the same length and each tended to be read one chapter a week, one book a year, so the four books would be rotated over a four year cycle.. The singing or reciting of selected psalms would break up and separate the various scripture readings.
	Following these three readings, the members of the congregation would be invited to comment on the readings. This was the context in which the followers of Jesus began to wrap their memories of Jesus around and into the stories from the sacred text of the Jews. In time, stories originally written about Moses or Elijah would be retrofitted and then retold about Jesus, thus linking him to the spiritual power of his Jewish ancestors. On other occasions, words from one of the prophets or from one of the psalms would illumine an experience they had once had with Jesus and a tradition would be started in which Jesus and the Hebrew Scriptures began to meld into each other. We will see this reality occurring over and over as we work through the gospels. For now all I want to demonstrate is that these themes are a major part of the birth narratives and we cannot read them intelligently unless we recognize the process that created them.
	We have noted already that the story of a wicked king named Pharaoh, who tried to put to death the infant Moses as God’s promised deliverer, was repackaged and told by Matthew as a Jesus story in which a wicked king named Herod tries to put to death God’s promised deliverer named Jesus. Matthew then goes on to wrap his narrative of Jesus around a series of carefully chosen texts that suggest that the history of the Jewish people is somehow being relived through Jesus and that the words of the Hebrew Scriptures find their fulfillment in him. Matthew is much like a country preacher trying to bend the biblical text to the needs of his sermon. In his birth story, Mathew utilizes texts from Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Hosea and, finally, from an unknown or yet to be identified text. I will examine each in brief detail. All of them are, at the very least, enormous stretches in literal accuracy.
	The first one is Isaiah 7:14 that we have heard numerous times in our Christmas pageants. Out of the darkness or even off stage, the voice of the prophet is heard saying, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which means God with us.” The first and major problem with Matthew’s use of this text is that he did not quote it accurately. Was this an honest mistake or a deliberate attempt to make the text say what he needed it to say to suit his literary purposes? No one can finally say, but I suspect the latter when I put these words from Isaiah into their original context. Isaiah actually writes in Hebrew: “Behold a young woman is with child!” It is rather difficult to claim one is a virgin when one is expecting a baby. Indeed, the word virgin appears nowhere in this verse from Isaiah.
	The context is this. Two kings, Pekah from the Northern Kingdom called Israel and Rezin, the king of Syria, are in siege positions outside the walls of Jerusalem. They have made war on Judah and its king named Ahaz, because he has refused to join their alliance against Assyria. Their goal in this war was to topple Ahaz, put a puppet king on to the throne of Judah and then to have Judah’s military strength added to their alliance designed to hold off the Assyrians. King Ahaz is atop the walls of Jerusalem inspecting its defenses when he is met by Isaiah the prophet. First, Isaiah assures the king that Jerusalem will not fall to “these smoldering stumps,” which is what he calls Pekah and Rezin. Ahaz is not convinced. Isaiah then says to him: “Ask a sign of God.” and God will convince you that you will be delivered. Ahaz refuses to ask. Irritated, Isaiah says well you will be given a sign whether you like it or not. “Behold a woman is with child.” This baby soon to be born into the royal household will be the heir to the throne, a sign that this kingdom will endure. Isaiah goes on to say that before this baby is able to eat curds and honey and before he is old enough to choose between good and evil, these kings before whom Ahaz was quaking at this moment will be long gone. The facts of history are that the land of Judah was destined to work out a treaty with Assyria that left Judah a vassal state, but still alive, while both Syria and the Northern Kingdom of Israel were destroyed by Assyria. This text in Isaiah had nothing to do with predicting the birth of the messiah almost 800 years later! Matthew was stretching his interpretive powers wildly by using the text the way he did.
	The second text from the prophets, which Matthew weaves into his story, comes from Micah. When the wise men (I will discuss them in the next column in this series) stop to ask directions at the palace of King Herod, the king consults his chief priests and scribes to determine where it is that the messiah is to be born. One of the images so important to the Jews was that messiah must be a descendant of King David and thus heir to the Jewish throne. Part of messiah’s task was to restore the throne of King David. Micah the prophet refers to Bethlehem as the town out of which David emerged to rule the land of the Jews. The messiah must follow the same pattern. So in the opening narratives of Matthew, the birth of Jesus was shifted from Nazareth, where he was surely born, to Bethlehem, so that the messianic claim can be made and the words of the prophet Micah affirmed.
	Next, when Matthew proceeds to tell the story of King Herod slaughtering the boy babies in Bethlehem in his move to destroy the promised deliverer, he relates this to another tragic moment in Jewish history when the Assyrians conquered and destroyed the Northern Kingdom, made up, according to tradition, primarily of the descendants of Joseph, the son of Rachel, who was said to have been Jacob’s favorite wife. Thus Jeremiah portrays Rachel, the tribal mother of the Northern Kingdom, as weeping for her children who are now lost forever. Matthew sees in that story a prediction of the deaths of the children at Herod’s hand. It was not even a close fit.
	Then Matthew says that when Joseph was forced to flee from Herod’s wrath, he took Mary and the Christ Child to Egypt. Once, God had to call God’s son (the Jewish people) out of Egypt. Now Matthew quotes Hosea, who was referring to Moses and the Exodus, to refer to Jesus, who is also called out of Egypt, since messiah must relive the history of the Jews.
	In Matthew’s final birth narrative biblical quotation Joseph took Mary and the Christ Child to live in Nazareth. This, Matthew said, was to fulfill the words of the prophet that “he will be called a Nazarene.” Such a prophetic expectation cannot be found anywhere in scripture. The closest we can come to it is in Isaiah 11:1 where the prophet writes “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse (David’s father) and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” It is another text used to prove that messiah must be related to David. The word “branch” in Hebrew is “nazir” or “nezer.” It sounds a bit like Nazareth, but “close” is all Matthew needed. Matthew stretched all of his texts, but this last one was stretched to absolute fantasy.
	My point is to show how the debate waged in the synagogue as the followers of Jesus sought to understand him, his relationship to the concept of messiah and his relationship to the Jewish Scriptures. We are reading here a first century Jewish interpretation of Jesus. We are not reading history. There is a difference.
	~John Shelby Spong
	Read the essay online here.

Question & Answer
Robert Dummet via the Internet, writes:
Question:
Let me begin by saying I have a great respect and admiration for you. I have watched some of your debates, listened to your lectures and read some of your books. I can hear the voice of Christ in you. As a result, I know that I have come to a better understanding of the love of God, growing in truth, wisdom and joy.

However, I have a question with a few strands that I hope you can shine some light on as it is very perplexing to me.

I was re-reading the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis and observed that it appears that it was not the serpent that lied but God. I think if one is truthful and not blinded by tradition, that what the story says is the opposite of what tradition holds. In the mythical story, God creates Adam and Eve and tells them not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil because, “in that day thou shall surely die for God doth know in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil: (Genesis 3:4-5). My question is who is lying? God or the serpent? I have fasted and prayed abut this and I keep getting the same answer. The liar here is God. He even admits that the serpent is right when he confirms, “Behold, the humans have become as one of us, to know good and evil.” The promise of the serpent is therefore true. My question is how can this be and why? We are told God cannot lie, but scripture has shown this to be false. What is the story trying to tell us? Has it anything to do with the sins of Yahweh? It sure seems as if there is some sort of savage and evil God in the Old Testament and a gentle loving God in the New Testament.

I know this is controversial big time, but you are not new to controversy and won’t I hope sidestep my questions. Therefore I look forward to your early reply soon.

Answer:
Dear Robert,

Thank you for your letter and for your affirming comments. My mother may actually believe what you say is literally true!

The issue you raise is not, as you suggest, “controversial big time” and I have never heard of any biblical scholars spending time on this subject.

What you are reading in the second chapter of Genesis is not the revealed word of God in which every phrase must be searched for meaning. You are reading a 10th century BCE folk tale designed to help human beings make sense out of the fact of evil. No conversation between Eve and the serpent ever took place because neither Eve as the presumed first woman, nor the serpent, which apparently walked on two feet and spoke perfect Hebrew, ever existed. The dialogue in that story is the dialogue that the original story teller employed. The serpent, as the tempter, was employing its understanding of God to buttress its argument. These are not God’s words, but a story teller’s words, so it matters little who is lying. The serpent is making God say what the serpent wants God to say in order to achieve its purpose. People do that all the time. That is how slavery, segregation, the diminution of women, the oppression of homosexuals, religious wars and religious persecution are developed. People quote God or God’s “Word” (the Bible) to place God on the side of a variety of issues.

So break the literal hold the Bible has on you and begin to study the scriptures for what they are--tribal tales through which people seek the meaning of God.

John Shelby Spong

	Announcements

						Bishop Spong has a full speaking schedule- here are the next few:

						April 12-14, 2013

						UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST

						8787 Pacific Street Omaha, NE 68114

					Event: Eternal Life: A New Vision – Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism. Beyond Heaven and Hell

				Apr 20- 21, 2013 

				THE ELIOT CHURCH OF NEWTON (UCC)

				474 Centre Street Newton, MA 02458-2089

			Event: Lecture, Worship and Forum

		May 3- 4, 2013

		AMICALOLA FALLS STATE PARK LODGE

		18 Amicalola Falls Lodge Drive, Dawsonville, GA 30534

	Event: Lectures
	For Bishop Spong's full calendar and more information on the above, click here

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