[Dialogue] Spong 7-30-08 Bible Part X

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    Thursday July 31, 2008   The Origins of the Bible, Part X
The Rise  of the Prophetic Movement: Nathan – Prophecy's Father  The prophets 
of the Hebrew Scriptures are not  religious versions of Drew Pearson or Jeane 
Dixon. They do not predict  future events. Prophets are those who are in 
touch with values, truth,  perhaps we could call it God, and who thus see the 
issues of life more  deeply than other people see them. Perhaps they are the ones 
who, by  standing on the shoulders of others, can perceive future trends and 
speak  to them before others see them developing.  
We have known artists to whom prescience has been attributed. A well  known 
Spanish painter, for example, painted a scene several years before  the Spanish 
Civil War that portrayed his country torn apart in a violent  struggle. The 
Bible might well have called him prophetic. He saw what  there was to be seen, 
but not everyone was able to see it. The power of  the prophets was also 
derived not from the established structures of the  social order, but from the 
prophet's vision. They were always outside the  lives of either political or 
ecclesiastical authority. As such, they were  what King Ahab called the prophet 
Elijah, "Troublers of Israel." The  established priesthood always resented the 
prophets for they were not  ordained or trained. They were free spirits who 
somehow spoke with an  authority that established figures wished they possessed. 
The ability to  speak to authority in a way that demanded the authority's 
attention was  the signal mark of the prophetic spirit.  
None of this, however, answers the question of just why it was that the  role 
of the prophet was able to rise in Israel to such heights that the  religion 
of Israel was said to rest with equal weight on the law (the  Torah) and the 
prophets. It all began, I believe, in a charismatic  confrontation between 
Israel's most powerful king and a man armed only  with a sense of God's 
righteousness. That story is told in the Second Book  of Samuel and it remains powerful 
today.  
King David lived in the biggest and tallest house in the city of  Jerusalem, 
which meant that when he was out on his roof top he could look  at the roof 
tops of all of Jerusalem's citizens. One afternoon when he was  doing just that, 
he spied a beautiful woman taking a bath in what she  assumed was the privacy 
of her own roof top. The king was smitten with her  charms and at once sent a 
messenger to her with an invitation to visit the  palace to have a tryst with 
her king. The woman came. Perhaps in the power  equations of that world she 
had no choice, perhaps she wanted to come, the  text doesn't tell us and so we 
will never know. The two of them,  nonetheless, became lovers at least for 
this brief time. When the  lovemaking was over, the woman, whose name was 
Bathsheba, returned to her  home. I suspect this was neither the first nor the last 
such affair that  King David had had and so he did not think much about it once 
the  rendezvous had ended. So it was that that weeks passed and memories 
faded  until they were newly called to mind by a message arriving at the palace  
directed to the king's eyes alone. The message read: "King David, I need  for 
you to know that I am expecting your child." It was signed, Bathsheba.   
When David read it, he responded in a typically male, evasive way. "You  are 
a married woman," he said. That is the first time that we learn from  the 
biblical source that this tryst was an adulterous relationship that  the king had 
had with a married woman. "Why do you assume that I am the  father of this 
baby?" To which Bathsheba responded immediately, "I am  indeed a married woman, 
but my husband Uriah is a solder in the king's  army. He has been fighting the 
king's wars under Joab, the king's military  leader, and thus he has not been 
home for months. There is no doubt, O  King, that you are this baby's father." 
 
Still unwilling to accept responsibility, the king decided on an  alternative 
course of action. It was plan B. He would grant Uriah a  furlough so that 
Uriah could then come home, enjoy the privilege of his  wife's bed and then, in 
this pre-DNA testing world, they could say this  baby came early. It would not 
be the first time that tactic had been  employed. So this permission for leave 
was conveyed by a royal messenger  to the field and a very surprised Uriah 
found himself being granted an  unprecedented furlough. What King David did not 
anticipate, however, was  that Uriah had the make up of the "original boy 
scout." He was a soldier  first, drunk with the camaraderie of warfare. "It would 
not be fair or  appropriate for me to enjoy the comforts of my home and my 
wife while my  buddies are bleeding and dying on the battlefield from which I 
have  somehow been removed. Therefore, in solidarity with them," he concluded,  
"I will not enter my home on this leave." Very ostentatiously Uriah set up  a 
pup tent on the walk beside his home and spent his entire leave there.  On 
viewing this, David, feeling trapped, said: "What a turkey" and began  to develop 
Plan C.  
Once again a sealed royal order was conveyed to Joab, the commanding  
officer, this time by the hand of Uriah himself. In this letter David  commanded Joab 
to organize his army into a flying wedge and hurl it at the  gates of his 
enemy's capital city. Uriah was to be placed at the front tip  of the flying 
wedge, where his death was all but inevitable. It was done.  Uriah was struck down 
and killed. Joab then notified the king that his  problem was now solved. 
King David sent for Bathsheba and she became a  member, perhaps the dominant 
member, of his harem. Finally King David felt  that his problem was solved.  
This outrageous kingly behavior, however, did not escape the notice of  a 
highly respected holy man whose name was Nathan. He decided that he must  
confront the king about the king's action. The reputation of Nathan was  such that 
the king, unsuspecting of what was to come, granted him the  audience that he 
requested. It must have been a strange confrontation.  Here was King David in 
his royal chambers surrounded by all the wealth,  power and opulence of royalty. 
Standing before him was Nathan, armed only  with a sense of righteousness 
that is contained in what he believed was       the moral law of God and the 
universe. When the two of them were alone  Nathan said to the king that an episode 
of gross injustice in the king's  realm had occurred and that Nathan felt 
compelled to bring it to the  king's attention. The king encouraged Nathan to 
speak on. Nathan did so in  terms of a parable.  
A certain poor man, he told the king, had a single ewe lamb that was  treated 
as a pet in his family. This lamb was fed from the family's table,  slept in 
the family's home and shared in the family's love. Another man  who lived 
nearby, Nathan continued, was very wealthy and owned great  flocks of sheep. One 
day this rich man had a distinguished visitor that he  was required by the 
mores of his culture to honor by entertaining him at a  banquet. Instead of taking 
a lamb from his own flocks, however, he went to  the house of his poor 
neighbor, took his only ewe lamb, slaughtered,  dressed and roasted it and set it 
before his guest. The rich man and his  guest dined sumptuously while the poor 
man and his family were grief  stricken. Nathan let the pathos hang as he 
finished his story. David, upon  hearing this tale, was filled with anger and 
declared: "The man who has  done this thing must surely die."  
Then in one of the Bible's most dramatic moments Nathan fixed his eyes  on 
the king and said: "Thou art the man!" The king, thought to be all  powerful, 
had been called to answer for his deeds. No one is above the law  of God, he 
learned. That was a lesson rare in the ancient world, indeed it  was a message 
unique to the people of Israel. David might have been  divinely chosen to be 
king, as the biblical story suggests, but the King  of Israel still lived under 
the authority of the law of God and must  answer for his behavior.  
David, to his great credit, did not banish Nathan from his presence,  but 
heard the voice of God through the words of Nathan and publicly  repented. He 
sought to do acts of restitution. When the child of this  adulterous liaison died 
shortly after his birth, David and the biblical  writers interpreted this 
death as divine punishment. Perhaps in a further  act of trying to make things 
right, David lifted Bathsheba out of his  harem and into the public role as his 
queen. Their second child was born a  while later. His name was Solomon and he 
was to be the successor to  David's throne and to solidify the royal line of 
David that was destined  to last, at least the Southern Kingdom, for over 400 
years until it was  destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.  
For Nathan's act of courage to be included in the Jewish Scriptures  meant 
that this episode had entered the annals of Jewish memory. By  becoming part of 
the sacred text of the Jewish people, it was destined to  be read in worship 
settings over the centuries and in time to become  identified as a mark of 
Judaism. In retrospect, Nathan was called a  prophet and because of that the 
prophet's role in Jewish life was  established. It was the duty of the prophets to 
speak for God in the  citadels of power, to claim for God's law a place of 
absolute influence  and to assert that there is no one in the land who is not 
subject to the  law of God. Monarchy was not absolute in Israel from that moment 
on.  
Nathan originated the prophetic role in Israel. He established Israel  as the 
one nation where no one's power would be above the power of the  law. This 
was the reality that made the Jewish nation different from all  the other 
nations of the ancient world. Certainly it was this nation alone  that was destined 
to produce the prophetic tradition that would become so  strong that it was 
not "the law and the Temple" but "the law and the  prophets," that would 
characterize this people. We will look at a number  of the prophetic voices as this 
series on the origins of the Bible  continues.  
John Shelby Spong      
____________________________________
   Question and Answer 
With John  Shelby Spong   
ConnieSprague,from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, writes: "Your  piece about 
Christian art was helpful. I've often thought about how Da  Vinci's "Last Supper" 
has influenced our view of that biblical story. I  know many who believe it 
happened just as his painting depicts it. I had a  discussion recently with a 
friend who was put off by my assertion of the  possibility of women being at the 
Last Supper, if indeed there was such an  event. He said, "Oh, sure, there 
were women — the ones who were serving  the food." I said, "No, there could 
likely have been women followers and  friends of Jesus who were there." He 
dismissed the possibility, and I'm  sure he takes the Da Vinci piece as literally 
true. As for the Last  Supper, of course, John's gospel doesn't even include that 
story. So, I  agree with your premise that Christian art has been a powerful 
force in  giving us our images of Jesus and his life. Thank you for your 
insights."     
Dear Connie, 
Thanks for your letter. I tested the insight about art influencing  theology 
at a conference in Nova Scotia recently and had it reconfirmed.  In the minds 
of most Christians, the Last Supper looks like the Leonardo  Da Vinci 
portrait.  
The biblical facts are that Paul is the first to mention the Last  Supper in 
ca. 56 CE in the First Epistle to the Corinthians (chapter 11).  For Paul 
these things are noteworthy: 1) It is not a Passover meal; 2) It  is dated by Paul 
as happening "on the night in which he was handed over."  That is the first 
mention we have of the idea of a betrayal, for the words  handed over were 
later translated as betrayed; and 3)  Paul has no sense that this "handing over" 
came at the hands of one of the  12. That was the extent of our knowledge about 
the Last Supper until the  writing of Mark in the early years of the 8th 
decade.  
In Mark, the Last Supper becomes a Passover meal and occurs on the  night 
before the crucifixion. Judas has now been identified with the act  of betrayal 
and that new tradition is written into Mark's text. An earlier  biblical story, 
about a traitor named Ahithophel, has shaped Mark's  narrative. Ahithophel 
betrayed King David, who was also known as "the  Lord's anointed," or as the 
messiah, even though he too ate at the table  of the king. Matthew and Luke both 
follow Mark's story line and name the  Last Supper as a Passover meal and 
include their version of the Ahithophel  story.  
When we come to the Fourth Gospel, the story line changes. The Last  Supper 
is not a Passover meal. For John it comes the day before the  Passover. John 
wants to portray the crucifixion itself as coinciding with  the slaughter of the 
Passover lamb.  
None of the gospels suggest that anyone but the disciples were present.  
However, that doesn't commit us to much since the number of disciples  appears to 
be a later messianic designation to portray Jesus as the  founder of the new 
Israel and since the old Israel had 12 tribes, Jesus is  made to have 12 
disciples. The gospel writers, however, do not agree on  who the 12 were.  
One final note: Mark, Matthew and Luke all say that Jesus had female  
disciples who followed him all the way from Galilee. These female  disciples were 
with him in Jerusalem. The leader of the female disciples  was Mary Magdalene, 
who is portrayed as a chief mourner at his tomb in  John.  
It is inconceivable to me that if there was in fact a Last Supper,  whether 
it was a Passover meal or not, these female disciples would not  have been 
present.  
No one knows for certain, including Da Vinci. However, it was the Da  Vinci 
painting that caused one wag to suggest that the final words spoken  by Jesus 
at the Last Supper were, "All you fellows that want to be in the  picture come 
to this side of the table."  
Thanks for writing.  
John Shelby Spong



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