Tag Archives: Old Testament

How old of a path should we seek?

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I want to pause this discussion for a while. All of the good comments have left me with lots to think about, and I want to work through some of this in my mind before proceeding. More than once I’ve been accused of beginning a series like this with my mind made up, with my final conclusions preset. That’s just not true.

I want to leave you for now with one big question: how do we deal with the Old Testament passages on worship?

The traditional argument I always heard was that the Old Testament was nailed to the cross and has nothing to do with the practices of the New Testament church. Or as Thomas Campbell eloquently put it in his Declaration and Address:

That although the scriptures of the Old and New Testament are inseparably connected, making together but one perfect and entire revelation of the Divine will, for the edification and salvation of the church; and therefore in that respect cannot be separated; yet as to what directly and properly belongs to their immediate object, the New Testament is as perfect a constitution for the worship, discipline and government of the New Testament church, and as perfect a rule for the particular duties of its members; as the Old Testament was for the worship discipline and government of the Old Testament church, and the particular duties of its members.

Others say that the Old Testament moral law is still in effect, but all of the ceremonial law was abolished.

Another view is that the Old Testament shows us what is pleasing to God; unless a practice is specifically said to be discontinued, it should be a part of our worship.

And there’s a multitude of nuances from there.

What’s your view? In what ways should worship in the Hebrew Scriptures inform the worship of the church?

The Bible & War: Old Testament Prophets

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It should be obvious to anyone and everyone by now that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew in this whole endeavor of walking through the Bible gathering insights about war and violence. Nowhere will that be so apparent as in my analysis of the prophets.

The Old Testament prophets lived during the time of the divided kingdom. War was a constant reality for God’s people, usually an ugly reality. Because of their lack of trust in Him, God punished the descendants of Israel through foreign invaders. The prophets make it clear time and again that it is God’s will that these foreigners oppress His people (Isaiah 10:5-6, 22:1-8, 28:1-22, 29:1-4, 30:8-17, Amos 3:1-2, 5:18-20). The prophets don’t call for the Israelites to arm themselves and throw off these invaders; they call for the Israelites to return to God. Would they then be called to take up arms in defense of their people? That question goes unanswered. The key is that they get God to fight for them.

God is seen at times as a warrior God, leading the hosts of heaven against His enemies. (Joel 3:9-11, for example) The understanding is that one day He will march against His enemies. For now He uses earthly armies, both human and insect (see the imagery in Joel of the locust invasion).

The prophets foresee a day when war will be no more (Isaiah 2:2-4; Micah 4:1-3; Hosea 2:18; Zechariah 9:10). God will destroy all weapons and declare peace throughout the world.

What other themes relative to our discussion can you think of that come out in the Old Testament prophets?

The Bible & War: United Israel

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The next stop along our way through the Bible is the united kingdom of Israel. If we’re extremely generous in defining this period (including Samuel and maybe Eli), Israel was truly united for all of 150 years. There is a disproportionate amount of material in the Old Testament about this time period, so it can seem longer.

During this time, especially under David and Solomon, Israel had great military success. The borders of Israel were expanded to basically take in all of the land which had been promised to Israel. Under David’s rule, idolatry was suppressed, if not eliminated.

We find some interesting comments on war in this section:

  • In 1 Chronicles 20:1, we find the comment “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war…,” with an implied criticism of David for not going out with his army. There’s no record of Solomon ever going out with the army, so it’s hard to know how strong of a custom it was that kings went to war in the spring. But we can imply, at least, that it was David’s custom.
  • 1 Chronicles 22:8 “You have shed much blood and have fought many wars. You are not to build a house for my Name, because you have shed much blood on the earth in my sight.” Solomon, in 1 Kings, says that David couldn’t build the temple because there was no peace in his lifetime. David, however, says it was because of the blood he had shed. (See also 1 Chronicles 28:3) That is not an implication of guilt; I think it has more to do with the ceremonial cleanness needed for those dealing with the tabernacle/temple.

Some have also pointed to the celebrations of victory during this time as being parallel to Christians celebrating military victories today. I’ll throw that out there and see if anyone has any comment on it.

Maybe someone can help me with this: I can’t remember a time when David fought battles outside of the promised boundaries of Israel. (Num 34:3-12) I’m open to correction on that one. My theory is that his warfare was only for securing the Promised Land; please poke holes in that if you are able.

The Bible & War: The time of the judges

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Continuing our look at what the Bible has to say about war, we come to the time of the judges.

As we mentioned, the Conquest had been incomplete. As horrified as we may be at the instructions God gave the Israelites, we should be just as horrified at the cost of their not following those instructions. The Promised Land did not become what it was meant to be, because the Israelites spared some of the people that were living there and because they failed to destroy the idols of those people.

During most of the period of the judges, Israel was a nation only in the loosest sense of the word. The best description is “the twelve tribes of Israel,” for this was basically a loose confederation of tribes. The Law established no government, and, as the writer of Judges describes it, “there was king over Israel and each man did what was right in his own eyes.” It wasn’t meant to be that way, of course. As Gideon rightly recognized, God was intended to be the ruler of Israel, and each man should have done what was right in God’s eyes. But that didn’t happen.

They were basically polytheistic, with brief moments of revival and turning to God. During most of this time, they were oppressed by other peoples. God would raise up judges, deliverers of his people who would fight the enemy and free Israel from this foreign domination. At times the judges basically acted alone, like Samson. At other times, they led the entire nation, like Ehud. Most of the time, they directed a few of the twelve tribes, leading them to military victories.

Most of the fighting in the book of Judges is defensive, trying to expel foreign invaders. Some of it, particularly at the beginning of the book, is a continuation of the Conquest. That can be said for almost all of the fighting we see in the Old Testament.

The formation of the canon: Old Testament

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Well, I tried to sneak it past him, but Adam Gonnerman called my hand. I read an excellent article that he posted on his web site and that article got me to thinking about the canon. I’d been wanting to discuss that a bit, and now seems like a good time. His presentation is better written and much more scholarly, so I hope you’ll take a few minutes to look over it.

But let’s talk canon. For a long time, God’s people didn’t spend a lot of time identifying which books were inspired and which were not. The Jews honored the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy) above all other writings, including those that we typically accept as being of equal weight. They would not place Job, for example, alongside Leviticus. Both were seen as helpful, but one was The Law.

The concern with identifying the canon arose after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Much of what the Jews considered to be their identity was lost, and they struggled to define themselves in the light of what had occurred. Part of that struggle was to identify the writings that were truly “God breathed.”

It was a given that they would reject the Christian writings. They also rejected the “Second Canon,” the Deuterocanonical books like the books of Maccabees. There were two stated reasons for rejecting these books:

  1. The Pharisees taught that divine revelation ceased with Ezra; the Talmud identifies Malachi as the last prophet. Either of these dates (which basically coincide) would exclude the books known as the Apocrypha.
  2. It was also determined that the holy language of Scripture was Hebrew. Books that were not written principally in Hebrew were not accepted. (Daniel, Ezra and Jeremiah have sections in Aramaic, but were considered “Hebrew enough”).

There was another important reason, which tended to go unstated: these books were seen as teaching certain ideas which were used by Christians, like teachings about life after death.

Some scholars believe that there was a council of Jamnia at the end of the first century which established the Jewish canon. However, no concrete historical evidence has been found for the existence of such a council.

It’s worth noting that there was no uniformity among the Jews on the subject of the canon until well after the time of Christ. With Jews scattered across the known world, different groups would accept different books as being canonical.

I know some of you have studied this more than I. What other light would you shed on the formation of the Old Testament canon?