[Dialogue] Spong 7/18 Bible History and "defining GOD

[KroegerD at aol.com]

June  18, 2008 

The Origin of the Bible, Part VIII: 
The Priestly Revision of the Jewish  Sacred Story (B)  
 
While the first wave of Jews entered the Babylonian Exile around the year  
596, a second wave came in 586 after a rebellion was put down by the Babylonians 
 and all of the identifiable descendants of King David were executed. Both 
groups  of captive people carried with them their sacred story, which at that 
time  consisted of the merger of the Yahwist strand from the dominant land of 
Judah,  the Elohist strand produced by the breakaway Northern Kingdom and the 
book of  Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic revisions of the entire text carried 
out  probably by Jeremiah and the Deuteronomic writers with the encouragement 
of King  Josiah. When they left their Babylonian captivity, which they did in 
waves from  50 to 150 years later, that text had been completely rewritten and 
greatly  expanded by a group of priestly writers, one of whom appears to have 
been the  prophet Ezekiel. Now the Jewish sacred story reflected two things: 
the Jewish  struggle for survival, which they had accomplished by making 
isolation from  their captors a primary religious requirement, and a new 
understanding of their  ultimate mission in this world, which was to return someday to 
their sacred  soil, rebuild their capital city of Jerusalem and restore their 
ordered life of  worship centered, as it had previously been, in the Temple. It 
was the stated  mission of the priestly writers to create such a deep sense of 
what it meant to  be Jews that their identity would never again be 
compromised individually or  corporately. This could only be done by asserting that 
their sacred scriptures  were in fact the absolute law of God, that these 
scriptures expressed the will  of God for them and that their obedience to the Torah 
must be total and  complete. So the priestly writers edited the sacred text of 
the Jews to  illustrate that the story of their ancestors included the 
mandates of Sabbath  observance, kosher dietary laws and the absolute requirement 
that all of the  males of the tribe be circumcised. They also wrote into the 
Torah rules that  were to govern every aspect of their common life. Representing a 
monumental  revision, the priestly writers set about to accomplish this 
literary task, and  accomplish it they did.  
The opening segment of the Torah was rewritten to reflect God's command at  
the beginning of the world that all Jews must obey the Sabbath. This was a new  
creation story, actually modeled on a Babylonian story of God creating the 
world  in a specific number of days. It suggested that creation was accomplished 
in six  days so that God could obey the Sabbath by resting from the divine 
labors on  that day, thus setting the pattern for all Jews to follow. This 
creation  narrative moved from the idea of the spirit of God brooding over the 
chaos of  darkness to bring forth life to the story of how light was separated 
from  darkness on the first day. On the second day a firmament to be called 
"heaven"  was made to separate the waters above the earth, from whence the rains 
came,  from the waters below that presumably at that time covered the entire 
planet. On  the third day the waters of the earth were gathered into one place 
and called  the seas, and thus separated from the dry land which was to be 
called the earth.  This enabled the dry land to bring forth grass, herbs, fruit 
trees and  vegetables to be used for food as soon as living things arrived. On 
the fourth  day God created the sun to light the day and the moon to light the 
night,  dividing day from night and creating both seasons and years. God was 
also said  to have made the stars on that day. On the fifth day the fish of the 
sea and the  birds of the air were created and ordered to fill the sea and the 
air. On the  sixth day God made the beasts of the fields and "everything that 
creeps in the  earth." Finally, on that same day as the last divine act, God 
made the man and  the woman, together, instantaneously, both in the image of 
God. These human  parents were also ordered to be fruitful, to multiply and to 
fill the earth. The  work of creation was now finished and God pronounced it 
to be complete and good.  So on the seventh day God inaugurated the Sabbath of 
rest, blessed it and  hallowed it; enjoining its observance upon the 
subsequent generations of the  Jewish people as their sacred duty. This whole creation 
story was the product of  the priestly school in the Babylonian Exile and was 
designed, not to inform  people about what happened at the dawn of creation, 
but in order to make  observance of the Sabbath the original and defining mark 
of Judaism. It was the  opening salvo of the priestly writers' campaign to 
reshape the sacred story of  the Jews in order to aid their goal of tribal 
survival as a distinct group of  people living in and through a critical experience. 
 
Once that purpose in the creation story is understood, then the other  
priestly editorial changes can be noted and understood. In the story about God  
providing manna to the hungry Jews in the wilderness on their original trek from  
slavery in Egypt to what they believed was their Promised Land, the priestly  
writers inserted new details to reinforce the Sabbath. The manna from heaven 
was  said now to have fallen only on six days of the week so that neither God 
in  sending, nor the people in gathering up this heavenly gift had to work on 
the  Sabbath.  
When the priestly writers came to the story of the Ten Commandments being  
given by God at Mt. Sinai, they added their creation story motif to the Sabbath  
Day Commandment as commentary. The earlier reason for the Sabbath (see  
Deuteronomy 5) was that the Jews were to remember from their days of slavery in  
Egypt that even slaves are entitled to a day of rest. It had nothing to do with  
a creation story since that story had not yet been written. Now, however, t
hat  was the reason the Commandments gave for a strict observance of the 
Sabbath.  
The priestly writers then sought in their revision to locate each of the  
distinctive marks of Judaism in the earlier narratives in order to attribute  
them all to Moses. So the kosher dietary laws were written into the Book of  
Leviticus as the commands of God through Moses. Circumcision was placed into the  
stories of both Abraham and Moses as something mandated by God. The elaborate  
rites of Jewish worship were spelled out in detail and adapted to their exile 
 status, so that they could be observed even in captivity. Synagogues, as 
local  teaching centers, were established to compensate for the loss of the 
Temple.  Even the story of Noah was adapted so that Noah would have on board 
sufficient  animals to carry out all of the required ritual sacrifices without 
jeopardizing  the future of any species of which there was supposedly only a single 
pair that  made it into the ark.  
The revision process of the sacred story went on for perhaps as long as 200  
years. It was thus not the product of a single author or even of a single  
generation, but it accomplished its stated purpose. It stamped an identity on  
the Jewish people that became indelible. The Torah or Sacred Scriptures of the  
Jews was now the Jahwist-Elohist-Deuteronomic-Priestly version. The text had  
more than doubled in size. Great chunks of new material had been added, mostly 
 to govern worship and behavior. Priestly additions included almost all of 
the  Book of Exodus after the story of Sinai (Exodus 20), all of the Book of  
Leviticus and significant parts of Numbers, as well as editorial revisions of  
the entire text. It may not have come into its finished form until as late as  
the fourth century BCE. There is a narrative in the Book of Nehemiah (Chapter 
8)  in which a group of the Jewish people, having returned from the Exile and 
having  rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem, were gathered "before the Water 
Gate." There  upon orders from the Governor, Nehemiah, Ezra the priest had brought 
to him "The  book of the law of Moses" and he proceeded to read it to them in 
its entirety.  This reading occurred, we are told, on the first day of the 
seventh month of the  Jewish year. That was the day on which the New Year or Rosh 
Hashanah was to be  celebrated and the people covenanted to be bound by this 
law. What Ezra read on  that day was in all probability pretty much the 
substance of the Torah, the  first five books of the Bible.  
Two results of this new text of the law of God through Moses would soon  
affect the pattern of Jewish history. First, the passion to keep separate from  
Gentile infiltration in order to survive as a recognized people in exile got  
interpreted, when they returned to their homeland, to be a passion for ethnic  
purity. Genealogies were kept so that people could demonstrate their blood 
lines  and prove their unpolluted Jewish heritage. This led to purges of those  
husbands, wives and children who were not demonstrably full blooded Jews, as  
well as to the judgment, found in New Testament times, that Gentiles were by  
definition unclean and thus to be avoided. It also led to the violent prejudice  
against those who came to be called Samaritans. These were the descendents of 
 the people who had been brought in to resettle the land after the Jews had 
been  exiled to Babylon, who had intermarried with those few Jews who had been 
left  behind. Not only was their Jewishness compromised, but their religion 
was also  corrupted by foreign and thus pagan elements. This meant that 
prejudices went  deep and were justified by appeals to the "word of God" found in the 
Law of  Moses. In time this prejudice against both the unclean Gentiles and 
the  heretical Samaritans would reach such high levels of intensity that it 
produced  protest books like Jonah and Ruth that somehow managed to remain in the 
Jewish  Scriptures. Jonah expressed God's concern for Gentiles and Ruth 
suggested that  even King David would not have passed the racial purity test.  
The other result was the elevation of the Torah into the status of being the  
"Holy of Holies" in the Jewish Scriptures and this led to the synagogue 
practice  of requiring the Torah to be read in its entirety on the Sabbaths of a 
single  year in the stricter observing congregations and over three years in 
those less  strict. The essence of Judaism was said to be the "law and the 
prophets." The  Torah was the law. We will turn to the prophets when this series 
continues.  
John Shelby Spong 
 
____________________________________
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____________________________________

Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Fred Berthold, from Dartmouth College, writes:  
I've been much concerned over what seems to me great damage done by those  
religious leaders who believe that they KNOW the mind and will of God — usually  
based upon a literalistic and uncritical bibliolatry. I wonder whether you 
would  agree with, disagree with, amend, or consign to oblivion the following 
line of  thought.  
As Immanuel Kant showed quite well, I think, we humans cannot claim knowledge 
 of anything that transcends the realm of our ordinary spatio-temporal 
condition.  I think this is so, and it helps to explain why, in matters of theology 
having  to do with gods or God, there are so many different and conflicting 
views  prevailing in various human traditions — traditions of humans who are 
obviously  quite rational beings. On the other hand, I find it interesting that, 
when it  comes to basic moral rules, the major world religions come up with 
rules or  principles that are astonishingly similar. They are not identical, but 
there is  much overlap and agreement, I believe, on the most important 
things. But our  basic moral principles are learned through ordinary human 
experience — becoming  aware of the consequences of this or that sort of behavior. Even 
St. Thomas  Aquinas believed that revelation was not required for humans to 
learn what he  called the "natural virtues." To conclude, as I have, that one 
cannot claim to  KNOW the nature, mind and will of God, does not, however, mean 
that one may not  EXPERIENCE a reality that calls forth one's reverence and 
commitment. I have  come to the point of regarding much of what is in the Bible 
as myth, as legend,  as tribalistic propaganda — and, indeed, some passages 
that if taken as  God-inspired, would imply a God that is not worthy of our 
devotion. There is in  the Bible, however, a great deal that inspires an 
awareness of that which is,  indeed, worthy of our ultimate commitment and devotion. I 
think in this  connection of the basic message of the great prophets, and of 
what Paul Tillich  called "the picture of Jesus Christ." A renunciation of 
absolute and dogmatic  claims of knowledge and an appeal to our ordinary 
experiences of what makes life  sublime might, I think, lead to greater tolerance — 
and openness to the  spiritual riches of other traditions.  
Dear Fred,  
You have hit the biggest issue in the contemporary theological debate  
squarely on the head. I could not agree with you more.  
The word God is a human construct. The attributes we connect with the  word 
God are human attributes. All of our creeds and doctrines of God are  human 
creations. It could not be otherwise. We are human beings. We can only  think 
with human minds. Vocabulary is a human creation.  
If God is real, as I believe God is, I can experience God but I can never  
define God. I can never escape the limits of my human mind. Try to imagine an  
insect, limited, as insects are, to the consciousness of an insect, trying to  
describe what it means to be a bird! Try to imagine a horse, limited as a 
horse  is by the consciousness of a horse, trying to describe what it means to be  
human. Try to imagine a human being, limited as human beings are to the  
consciousness of a human being, trying to describe what it means to be God, then  
you will begin to understand this issue perfectly. Unfortunately, great 
numbers  of religious people, including religious leaders, are not able to do this.  
Human beings can discuss our God experience, but that does not equip us to  
discuss who God is. When Hindus, Buddhists, Moslems, Jews and Christians meet  
together, they cannot debate the nature of God, since none of them is privy to 
 God's true nature. All they can do is to debate the validity of their varied 
 human experiences and the conclusions to which they have arrived based on 
that  experience. They can wonder whether their experiences of God are real or 
are  delusional but that is as far as the human mind can go. If we realized 
just  that, then interfaith disagreements would not be about who God is, but 
about how  each believes he or she has experienced God. That would make for a 
radically  different conversation. It would be more humble and less arrogant, more 
a search  for truth than the claim of already possessing it. I yearn for that 
level of  honesty. I rejoice that you see it so clearly.  
John Shelby Spong 



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