DISCERNING WHAT IS "REASONABLE"
1 Cor 2:14 [LITV]But a natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
It seems to me that many of the arguments raised by so-called skeptics, agnostics, and other counter-apologists stem largely from the fact that they evaluate biblical data from a very "Western" viewpoint.
We must first consider that if there were New testament autographs – and I emphatically believe there were – they were probably written with a fairly-conservative Jewish audience in mind. In the Gospels and Luke there are clear distinctions between the conservative, Hebrew-speaking Jews, whom Edersheim calls the "Palestinian Jews;" and the Greek-speaking "Alexandrian Jews" of the Diaspora. (The New Testament consistently calls the latter, "Greeks" and "Gentiles" – so, where I use the term "Jew," here, I am referring to the "Palestinian Jews")
03064 Y@huwdiy {yeh-hoo-dee'} patronymically from 03063; AV - Jew 74, Jew + 0376 1, Judah 1; 76. 1) Jew
03063 Y@huwdah {yeh-hoo-daw'} AV - Judah 808, Bethlehemjudah2448 Iouda {ee-oo-dah'} of Hebrew origin 03063 or perhaps 03194
AV - Juda 3; 3
Judah = "he shall be praised" 1) the fourth son of the patriarch Jacob; 2) the tribe that were the offspring of Judah; 3) the region occupied by the tribe; 4) a city of the tribe of Judah, conjectured to be Hebron, which was a city assigned to the priests and located in the hill country, and the native place of John the Baptist according to Jewish tradition
2453 Ioudaios {ee-oo-dah'-yos} from 2448 (in the sense of 2455 as a country); adj
AV - Jew 193, of Judea 1, Jewess 2; 196
1) Jewish, belonging to the Jewish nation; 2) Jewish as respects to birth, origin, religion
1672 Hellen {hel'-lane}
from 1671;
AV - Greek 20, Gentile 7; 27
1) a Greek either by nationality, whether a native of the main land or of the Greek islands or colonies; 2) in a wider sense the name embraces all nations not Jews that made the language, customs, and learning of the Greeks their own; the primary reference is to a difference of religion and worship
"Gentile" in John 7:35; Rom 2:9-10, 3:10; 1 Cor 10:32, and 12:13
1675 Hellenistes {hel-lay-nis-tace'} from a derivative of 1672;
AV - Grecians 3; 3
1) a Hellenist; 1a) one who imitates the manners and customs or the worship of the
Greeks, and use the Greek tongue; 1b) used in the NT of Jews born in foreign lands and speaking Greek. Acts 6:1, 9:29, 11:20
So the people who wrote the New Testament scriptures undoubtedly wrote to a conservative Rabbinical Jewish audience; therefore it is probably safe to believe, also, that much of Jesus' and His disciples' understanding of the
Old Testament scriptures was probably consistent with the prevalent
halakah (and to a lesser extent
haggadah) of the day.
The Gospels in several places suggest that the Jewish Rabbis in Jesus time accepted him as one of their own – even inviting Him to teach in the local synagogues, wherever He went. Jesus' discourses with the "doctors" (Gr. 'didaskalon" – Teachers), in Luke 2:46-52 is reminiscent of the common practices of the ancient rabbis, sitting around the Temple and/or the synagogues discussing the halakah (and to a lesser extent haggadah) of the (Old Testament) scriptures.
It does not seem unreasonable, then, that Jesus and His disciples approached the interpretation of Scripture with the common rabbinical halakah in view.
About twelve years ago I started working on a book. In my research I encountered Alfred Edersheim's The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.http://philologos.org/__eb-lat/ This is where I first heard the terms halakah and haggadah[/I]. It is also where I first encountered the "LIST OF OLD TESTAMENT PASSAGES MESSIANICALLY APPLIED IN ANCIENT RABBINIC WRITINGS" http://philologos.org/__eb-lat/appen09.htm This " ¼ list contains the passages in the Old Testament applied to the Messiah or to Messianic times in the most ancient Jewish writings. They amount in all to 456, thus distributed: 75 from the Pentateuch, 243 from the Prophets, and 138 from the Hagiographa, and supported by more than 558 separate quotations from Rabbinic writings."
This list gave me an altogether new viewpoint about biblical exegesis, and brought another very simple truth sharply into focus: that there is far more to biblical exegesis than meets the eye.
Then about four years ago I joined the Rabinnical Mishnah Study Group, moderated by r. Simcah Roth of the Jerusalem Rabbinical Assembly (kinda the modern Jerusalem Sanhedrin). Over the years, since then, I have really had my eyes open about the halakhic processes that gave rise to the Talumd, Gemara, and Mishnah – processes which would have been in play in the writing of the New Testament scriptures. Time does not permit me to delve into the details of what that means, right now, but suffice it to say that trying to do exegesis with an English-language Bible is like trying to fly a Boeing 767 – when you've only been trained on a crop duster.
More, Later.
Keep the Faith
RAY
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