Is N.T. Wright smacking down Jim West or what?

In a quote from N.T. Wright's short rebuttal to the CT piece that claims he is at fault for the protestant exodus to Rome, Wright has this to say:

"It reminds me of the fine old German NT scholar Heinrich Schlier, who found that the only way to be a Protestant was to be a Bultmannian, so, because he couldn’t take Bultmann, became a Roman Catholic; that was the only other option in his culture. Good luck to him; happily, most of us have plenty of other options."

Now who among us loves Bultmann? Perhaps this is why Jim West has yet to ask N.T. Wright into his heart.

When dogmatics get in the way of scholarship

A panel of "NT Scholars" at Southern Baptist Seminary have gotten together to warn students, pastor's, and congregations alike of the evil ogre that is Tom Wright.

Michael Gorman, has a nice summary, which I could not agree with more!

He sums up the panel as saying, "Wright has some good things to say, but he has strayed from the true faith, he has forgotten the gospel, he is dangerous to students, pastors, and congregations."

When I think of Southern Baptists, this is who I think of..., I know it is not fair but... but where did all the old school Southern Baptists go after the Mohler and Patterson purges? Jim West has a lot of work to do in reforming this denomination.

I am well aware of Jim's distaste for Wright, but his distaste is for very different reasons! Namely Wright's project is rather anti-Bultmannian (is Bultmannian even a word?)

Exile and the Problem of the Diaspora

Exile and the Diaspora

A far more profound challenge for the exile and return motif is raised when the evidence is read in such a way as to call into question any use for the exile. More specifically does the exilic element in Second Temple Judaism(s) loose all its ability to resonate, if it is discovered that the Jews of the diaspora were not languishing in the constant reminder of national sin and thus longing for an idyllic restoration?

This new perspective of the diaspora argues that even though the Greek term for ‘diaspora’ may mean ‘scattering’, and while it has been argued that in ancient Jewish usage the term generally had connotations of ‘exile’, which was brought about by divine judgment,[1] we now know that some, perhaps most, Jews in the ancient ‘diaspora’ did not think of their location in that way, nor did all necessarily regard Palestine as their ‘homeland’ in any meaningful sense.[2] Many Jews were integrated into their respective cities of residence, and this did not mean the abandonment of active attention to Jewish distinctiveness. It was as Jews that they were involved in, and part of, the life of the cities in which they lived.[3]

The issue is often too readily conceived of in terms of mutually exclusive alternatives: either the Jews regarded their identity as exilic and the achievement of their destiny was wholly dependent upon re-entry into the Land; or they clung to their heritage abroad, shifting attention to local and regional loyalties, and cultivating a permanent attachment to the diaspora.[4] Those alternatives, of course, have continuing contemporary resonance, but the Jews of the Second Temple period did not confront such a stark choice.[5] The diaspora was not something to be overcome.[6] It was not as if pinning away for the restoration of their homeland was the single ideal which Jews embraced to remain faithful.[7] As a matter of fact, the Jews living around the Mediterranean were unapologetic and not embarrassed by their situation. They did not describe themselves as part of any diaspora. They did not suggest that they were cut off from the center, leading a separate, fragmented, or unfulfilled existence. People from communities and nations everywhere settled outside their places of origin in the fluid and mobile Hellenistic world without abandoning their identities as Athenians, Macedonians, Phoenicians, Antiochenes, or Egyptians. The Jews could eschew justification, rationalization, or tortured explanation for their choice of residence, for they felt no need to construct a theory of diaspora.[8] The Jewish communities abroad still paid respect to the holy land while standing in full harmony with and allegiance to the Gentile governments. Diaspora Jews did not bemoan their fate or pine away for the homeland. Nor, by contrast, did they ignore the homeland and become people of the book, which became a surrogate for the temple.[9] Palestine mattered, and it mattered in the territorial sense, but it was not a required residence. Just as the Jews made pilgrimages to the Temple in Jerusalem, they likewise announced a devotion to the symbolic heart of Judaism and had singular pride in the accomplishment of the diaspora. Jewish Hellenistic writers were not driven to apology. Nor did they feel obliged to reconcile the contradiction, for as they saw it, there was none.[10]

The advancement of this corrective concerning the ability of Jews in the Second Temple period to live faithfully in foreign lands is needed and welcomed. And while we agree that it is simplistic to view the various Jewish rehearsals of the biblical history of exile as automatically proof for exilic thought in the Hellenistic diaspora, it seems that Gruen is alternatively too quick to gloss over any mention of exile during the period as having any present day ramifications. When we view the use of exile as shorthand for the multifarious ideas that restoration is still future, we are able to hold together the present day resonances of exile, without the doleful picture in which Gruen seeks to eradicate.[11] It is true that during this time the Jews did very little about their desire to be free from Roman rule and create a Jewish state in Palestine. But as James C. Scott has shown us it is dangerous to interpret passivity as equal to the idea that Jews had no hopes for a Jewish state at all.[12]

The crux of the issue resides in the questions that Gruen so carefully raises: does exilic theology have to be a theology of despair, a theology of national corporate guilt, where the righteous individual bemoans the fact that the nation is not what it ought to be, that the Temple is not functioning as it ought, or that Israel is not under self-rule?[13] Could it be that a man like Yeshua Ben Sira, while possibly being content with the religious autonomy the Jews enjoyed at the time, nevertheless dreamed that the Jewish nation would regain the political grandeur it had once enjoyed in the past (whether this be described in terms of political nationalism, or as discussed earlier in terms of the eschatological end of time)?[14] In fact exile could be interpreted metaphorically as Neusner postulates, in order that an ‘Israel’ might never take its very existence as a permanent condition; rather, the paradigm of exile and return might remind the Jews that ‘the life of an Israel was never to be taken for granted but always to be received as a gift.’[15] In this manner all Judaism(s) became a reworking of exile and return, alienation reconciliation, a group troubled by the resentment of that uncertain past and of that future subject to stipulation.[16]

Whatever the term exile meant to the various Judaism(s), it was obviously still a powerful symbolic term, with a potent array of meanings. It was the type of concept that was malleable enough for the variegated Judaic groups to use in diverse ways without talking about completely different concepts. It does not follow that all Jews were waiting for restoration in a literal sense (land), and it does not follow however that all Jews mourned their national sin and eagerly awaited God’s vindication (although no doubt some did). And while the remnant theology offered a way for the individual to be holy despite the larger sin of the nation, it did not diffuse the use of the exilic narrative as a powerful narrative.

Our task in this section was to offer enough plausibility to warrant our looking at Paul through the lenses of exile and return, through the lenses of a powerful biblical and extra-biblical motif in which the ‘second exodus’ was prevalent.[17] We have seen that neither the existence of a remnant theology nor the perspective of an assimilated faithful necessarily negate the powerful symbolic images of exile and return. We have also acknowledged that not all the Jews of this period believed that they were still in exile, and among those Jews who did, there was even more diversity as to how they thought the restoration would be consummated.[18] Whatever the Jew on the ground actually believed, we may never know for certain, but there are enough texts which have come down to us, that speak of a continued state of exile after the (re)building of the Second Temple, and its subsequent destruction, so as to speak of a plausible shared cultural background of exilic thought, albeit malleable enough to speak in many different ways.[19]

Technorati tags: Exile, Diaspora, Second Temple Judaism(s), N.T. Wright, Exile and Restoration, Exile and Return

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[1] See, Unnik, Das Selbstverständnis Der Jüdischen Diaspora in Der Hellenistisch-Römischen Zeit, 89-147.

[2] Barclay, "Diaspora Judaism," 48. It is important not to understand the encounter with Judaism and Hellenism as being one of only enmity. Furthermore, it follows that hellenization is not a single entity, and so if you are hellenized in one aspect it does not follow that you are hellenized in every respect. Perhaps a more nuanced view of diaspora Judaism is to recognizes that the object was not to ape Greek culture so much as to re-express Judaism within it, sometimes even with a significant polemical edge against non Jews. So Barclay, "Diaspora Judaism," 49, 51, 53. See also Thomas Kraabel, "Unity and Diversity among Diaspora Synagogues," in The Synagogue in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine (Philadelphia: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1987), 57-58, who argues that over the centuries many Jews left the homeland voluntarily, just as did other people of the Mediterranean, to seek their fortunes in the centers of power of the Hellenistic and Roman world. These individuals did not understand themselves to be in exile, but rather welcomed and desired immigration as part of a new situation that was also under the control of Providence. The diaspora was not exile; but in some senses it too became a holy land.

[3] Paul R. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 187.

[4] Many who view the diaspora in this way view the Jewish people as no longer people of the ‘Land’ but as people of the ‘book’.

[5] Gruen, Diaspora, 235.

[6] Gruen, Diaspora, 233.

[7] Gruen, Diaspora, 234. cf. Deuteronomy 30.2-5; 1 Kings, 8.33-34, 8.46-51; 2 Chronicles 6.24-25, 36-39; Jeremiah, 29.10-14.

[8] Gruen, Diaspora, 243; Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 Bce - 117 Ce), 418-24, also argues that the attachment of the motherland could coexist with fidelity to the regions abroad, although he regards the degree of attachment as dependent upon the circumstances of the community.

[9] A popular alternative to an exilic understanding of Second Temple Judaism(s) is to posit that the Jews where in no way interested in a territorial sanctuary or national legitimation because through the Babylonian diaspora they had become ‘the people of the book.’ In this view their homeland resides in the text—not just the canonical scriptures but in a wide array of Jewish writings that help to define the nation and give voice to the sense of identity. Thus for these Jews the diaspora is no burden, but rather a virtue in the spread of the word. This justifies a primary attachment to the land of one’s residence, rather than the home of the fathers. See S.D. Ezrahi, "Our Homeland, the Text...Our Text, the Homeland," Michigan Quarterly Review 31 (1992): 463-97; G Steiner, "Our Homeland the Text," Salmagundi 66 (1985): 4-25.

[10] Gruen, Diaspora, 252.

[11] Gruen, Diaspora, 239.

[12] Doron Mendels, The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism: Jewish and Christian Ethnicity in Ancient Palestine (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 7.

[13] See, for example, the puzzling criticism of Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness, 22-25, who bemusingly argues that an exilic interpretation of the Second Temple texts is just a ‘mere variation’ of an introspective psychologizing of Paul. Only the burden of personal guilt (sin) carried around by Paul, is replaced by the onus of national guilt (sin). Seifrid mistakenly views guilt with sin, the two may go hand in hand, but not necessarily. Why it follows that Jews of the Second Temple period who were expecting the return from exile, necessarily had to be guilt ridden seems to import the vary framework of introspective guilt on to the whole of the nation, a concept that Stendahl has vigorously tried to shed. See Krister Stendahl, "Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West," in Paul among Jews and Gentiles: And Other Essays (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), 78-96.

[14] Mendels, Jewish Nationalism, 6. Obviously there were Jews who accepted Roman rule and who were quite content with it. They may have actively supported the Romans because they believed either that God had justly deprived them of their state or that the Jews no longer needed an independent state.

[15] Neusner, Judaism When Christianity Began, 58.

[16] Neusner, Judaism When Christianity Began, 59.

[17] Of course there are those who deny or downplay the exile/return motif by offering an alternative narrative altogether. Most notably in the essay ‘See How They Go with Their Face to the Sun’ John Howard Yoder, For the Nations: Essays Evangelical and Public (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 51-78., sets out the history of diaspora Judaism as a means for God to accomplish the world mission that was impossible when Israel was settled in Judea. Thus instead of the theology of exile/return, the normative theology according to Yoder is that of the diaspora found in Jeremiah 19.4-7. The new pattern for the Jews was to live well among a foreign people, because in their ‘welfare you will find your welfare’. See also Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 242-60; John Howard Yoder, Michael G. Cartwright, and Peter Ochs, The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited (Radical Traditions; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). For a recent biblical theology of exile that incorporates many of these ideas see Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, A Biblical Theology of Exile (Overtures to Biblical Theology, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002).

[18] This is to say that the invention of single coherent grand narrative, like Wright suggests, which controls the range of Jewish expectations during this period is probability untenable. See the criticisms ofJames D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 473-77.

[19] Certainly enough evidence exists to move forward with a reading attuned to the motif of exile and return, even if such motifs were never part of the larger shared cultural background. See also the discussion in, J. Ross Wagner, Heralds of the Good News: Isaiah and Paul in Concert in the Letter to the Romans (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 29-33.

Exile and The Problem of the Remnant

Exile and the Remnant

During the tenuous times of the ‘historical’ exile, the proliferation of what might be termed ‘remnant’ theology was developed. It was most likely developed in an effort to make sense of the delay of the second exodus and the ongoing tribulations felt by those Jews in captivity. The theology of a remnant can be traced to the canonical book of Isaiah, especially chapters 56-66. This theology of a remnant dealt with the issue of exile through the obedience and faithfulness of a few.[1] The general thinking was that if God was indeed going to be faithful to his covenant then he would have to preserve at least some of Israel. So even though the nation experienced the punishment for her sins collectively, there was still a reason for the individual to be faithful to the covenant. A careful reading of several texts of the Second Temple period seem to point to the developing view that only a remnant would survive to see the blessings of the restoration.[2] At its core this theology consisted of this basic story: the people transgress against yhwh’s will and thus anger him; yhwh is said to destroy the godless among the people; while yhwh spares the remnant.[3]

The existence of a remnant theology has recently been used to call into question the power the concept of exile and return had over the Judaism(s) of the Second Temple period.[4] It is argued by Seifrid, in rather syllogistic fashion, that a belief in a continuing exile demands that generally the Jews regarded themselves under a corporate guilt (guilt for Seifrid is equivalent to sin) and lamented their condition; but since remnant theology insists that Israel is divided into two groups, the pious and the wicked, the sin of the people as a whole can no longer be considered absolute, as an exilic reading would require; no corporate sin, no continuing exile.[5] Seifrid essentially wonders how the nation as a whole can be under sin, while at the same time the remnant, still under the umbrella of the nation can be considered faithful.[6] But Seifrid’s critique seems to be flawed on at least two fronts. Firstly, no one who argues for a continuing exile thinks that this state is due to the Jews sense of guilt. But as the prophets in the Scriptures of Israel are fond of saying, the exile is because the nation has failed to live by the covenant and failed to be obedient to yhwh.[7] Secondly, his notion that the concept of national sin can not coexist with remnant theology seems to be a quarrel with the idea of remnant theology itself, rather than that of a continuing exile. If Seifrid is right then why did these Jews hold to any view of restoration at all? What value would they see in nurturing any hopes related to ethnic or national Israel?[8]

It is possible, of course, that restoration was simply such a strongly held traditional belief, clearly expressed in the Scriptures, that removing it completely from the theology of these groups would have been impossible.[9] There is, however, another motivation that would make sense of the inclusion of the theology. The continuation of Israel in some form, even after judgment, offered the opportunity of vindication for the teachings or 'way' of the remnant group. Elliott writes:

It is a feature of these writings…that Israel would eventually come to the knowledge that the righteous were correct all along, even openly honoring them. Since Israel was the larger unit over against which these groups defined themselves, since Israel was the group they argued with and protested against, and since Israel shared with these groups similar claims on a common inheritance, it can be seen how a fuller restoration would grant to the cause of the remnant groups an especially satisfying, and ultimate, vindication.[10]

The faithful remnant of the present, having perceived an unprecedented degree of apostasy in the nation, and having voiced its protest against the present state of things and against Israel, firmly believed that its message of protest and teaching about the true righteousness would eventually be vindicated. This vindication would not only be by the Gentile nations being brought into the fold, but even more significantly, by the ‘elect’ nation itself, as they would come to honor the remnant group and eventually join their cause.[11]

But in most of these texts, while a return from exile is acknowledged, the teaching is that exile is an ongoing condition, one that may never end in historical time. The burden of these authors consequently fits within the same framework of an exilic narrative; i.e. to provide the necessary information and consolation so that the readers of their messages are able to cope with the discouraging course of history and to renew their confidence in the God who governs and directs all of history.[12]

But even if these texts only envision a return from exile within the sectarians own group, the wide variety of texts certainly would speak then of competing groups who would view themselves as the true remnant. Thus showing that the exile and return motif was a strong way to talk about who was the true remnant, and thus proving that the motif still carried strong currency in the Second Temple period.

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[1] On remnant theology see, R. E. Clements, ""A Remnant Chosen by Grace" (Romans 11.5): The Old Testament Background and Origin of the Remnant Concept," in Pauline Studies: Essays Presented to Professor F.F. Bruce on His 70th Birthday, ed. Donald Alfred Hagner and Murray J. Harris (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 106.

[2] In Hebrew tyrav or hljylp, the concept of remnant, following the usage in the Hebrew Bible, assumes that sectarians at Qumran were the true representatives of the biblical remnant and it is they who will therefore survive into the end of days. This notion appears in 4Q393 (Communal Confession) frag. 3.7, where the author sees himself and his fellow (sectarians?) as the remnant of the patriarchs in accord with God’s covenant with Abraham. See Schiffman, "Concept of Restoration," 207.

[3] See the discussion in Antti Laato, Who Is Immanuel?: The Rise and the Foundering of Isaiah's Messianic Expectations (Åbo: Åbo Academy Press, 1988), 88-94.

[4] Mark A. Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness: Paul's Theology of Justification (NSBT 9; Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2000), 21-25.

[5] Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness, 22.

[6] Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness, 23. Ironically, the idea of a remnant theology might have been the impetus for a more individual conception of restoration, an idea that suggests the covenant endured through those individuals who despite the rebellion of the nation as a whole remained faithful to yhwh. See Gary W. Burnett, Paul and the Salvation of the Individual (Biblical Interpretation Series 57; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 81-82; Géza Vermès, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin Press, 1997), 68-9.

[7] Seifrid seems to think that the conception of national sin is highly superficial when compared to Paul’s view of sin. Seemingly setting up the continuing exile as a foil to the heart of Paul’s real thought on sin. See Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness, 22.

[8] Not to mention Seifrid’s assumption that the sin of Israel is somehow their quilt, and not their disobedience? So Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness, 22, 24-5.

[9] According to Neusner the motif of exile and return itself was a self fulfilling prophecy which all Judaic systems have incorporated, regardless of whether it ever meshed with reality. See Jacob Neusner, "Exile and Return as the History of Judaism," in Exile: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian Conceptions, ed. James M. Scott (JSJSup 56; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 221-38. One of the main reasons for this was the authoritative nature of the scriptures Jacob Neusner, Judaism When Christianity Began: A Survey of Belief and Practice (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 63. Neusner posits that this paradigm of exile and return, even when the Jews in question had no experience of exile and return, tells us more about the power of religion not merely to respond to world, but rather to define the world. See Neusner, Judaism When Christianity Began, 58.

[10] Elliott, Survivors, 636. cf. 1 En. 90.30; Jub 1.25

[11] Elliott, Survivors, 637.

[12] Vanderkam, "Exile in Jewish Apocalyptic Literature," 109.

Technorati tags: Remnant, Exile, Seifrid, N.T. Wright

The Concept of Exile during the Second Temple Period: Part 4 Qumran

The evidence for a continuing exile from the texts of Qumran.

Probably the least controversial group of texts that speak of the potency and power of exilic ideas and restoration are those texts discovered in the Dead Sea.[1] While the concepts of exile and restoration are prevalent at Qumran, they oscillate between the restoration of the land of Israel, the restoration of Jewish people, the restoration of the temple, and the restoration of sacrificial worship, and restoration to a ritual purity and perfection.[2] Furthermore it is often hard to distinguish from the concept of restoration and the overlapping concepts of remnant, eschatology, and messianism. Such fluidity found within these texts ensure that any evidence given for continuing exilic thought must admit to only being a partial picture of the texts and certainly nothing like a theology. [3]

That being said the texts found at Qumran do show that the community[4] itself may have been modeled after the exodus traditions.[5] With this insight it can be readily appreciated just how central the theme of exile was to the authors of the Qumran manuscripts. Martin Abegg, Jr. states that:

While the sojourn in Egypt and exile of the northern tribes was still reflected in the writings, it was the Babylonian exile which had captured the corporate imagination. In a very real sense it had become a new paradigm which spoke of how god dealt with his people Israel. The new going down to Egypt was the deportation to Babylon in fulfillment of God’s warning of Judgment (CD 7.9b-15). The return was followed by an important albeit unknown event which led to a lengthy wilderness wandering (1QS 8.12b-14)—the new Sinai—so as to prepare for the coming of God. The New Moses was the Teacher of Righteousness. The Faithful then waited for God to bring them into the land of promise—the iniquity of the Amorites not yet being full—and establish them in their rightful place (4Q171 1-10 ii 26-iii 2).[6]

It is possible that the Qumran community believed that it was already living in the eschaton (cf. CD 1.12), and that the eschatological salvation was, already present and able to be found by following the Teacher of Righteousness whom God had raised for this purpose.[7] The Damascus document gives the impression of a community which thought of itself as the continuing faithful remnant of returnees from the Babylonian exile (CD 7.20-8.2). By framing the eschatological beliefs in the ‘historical’ return from exile it could be argued that the community themselves thought that they were indeed the first-generation of the 'new Israel' to return from exile.[8] In fact when the Damascus document speaks of the returnees (CD 3.21-4.4) it ignores the historical return of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Zerubabbel, since in the sect’s eyes the exilic period would continue until the sectarians took control of the Temple’s ritual at the end of days. In other words the restoration is not an event that had already taken place in the Persian period, but rather a part of the eschatological future being played out already in his own day.[9] Although the texts make reference to the restoration as in the process of happening, this was still only a kind of prototypical return in which they modeled their vision of the future.[10] In this sense there was still a future element that had not yet taken place.[11] And at least for this segment of Judaism(s), as far as these texts represent a community, the matrix of exile and return was not only very powerful, but central to their own self-understanding.

Another interesting set of texts found at Qumran that speak of restoration in terms of the past exodus are the liturgical and hymnic texts. It has long been realized that because these texts do not betray sectarian terminology they may in fact have already been in use before the sect came into existence and may have been used by much wider circles of Jews in the Second Temple period.[12] One of the most interesting aspects then of these texts is that they include prayers for the restoration of Jerusalem and the ingathering of the exiles at a time when Jerusalem and its Temple actually stood and when the bulk of the Jewish people remained in the Holy Land. Clearly, this is an example of how the restoration does not necessitate purely physical conditions, but restoration also rests on religious and political dissatisfaction with the state of the nation and its religious life.[13]

In The Words of the Heavenly Lights (4Q504), which are a collection of prayers for each day of the week, we find a particularly strong recollection of Israel’s past, in an effort to stir up hope in a future restoration. The prayer itself reads as if it could be found in Isaiah 40-55 asking God to “Remember Thy marvels which Thou didst for the poor of the nations,” asking God to heal them from the sin which caused the exodus, calling for the restoration of Israel so that the nations might see God’s glory. This text looks to a time that is yet future, where there will be “neither adversary nor misfortune” but “peace and blessing.” In Zion God’s holy city, they call for God to remember his Covenant, asking him not to forsake Israel whilst in captivity, seeking God to save them from all the nations of their exile, near or far, as has been promised in Scripture. Likewise, in frag. 6 6-8, in a clear reference to Isaiah 40, God is asked to bring His people back on the wings of eagles. [14] These strong allusions to the Isaianic second exodus in 4Q504, and fragments, surely betray a strong longing for a future restoration that speaks of a still future restoration from sin and exile even at a time when the Temple stood and many Jews resided in the land.

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[1] When discussing exilic thought in the texts found at Qumran it is important to recognize that despite the fact that most scholars identify these texts with the Essenes, the texts themselves betray a wide diversity of thought on a number of areas, especially that of exile and restoration. See Lawrence H. Schiffman, "The Concept of Restoration in the Dead Sea Scrolls," in Restoration: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian Perspectives, ed. James M. Scott (JSJSup 72; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 205.

[2] Schiffman, "Concept of Restoration," 203. Furthermore once we begin to examine specific features of the sectarian ideology of restoration in the Qumran documents it is not clear whether only the sectarians will share in the ultimate eschatological restoration, or whether all the people of Israel as a unity will be restored. Cf. The Pesher Psalms’ (4Q171) 3: 10-13 with 4Q385 (Pseudo-Ezekiel) frag. 2, 4Q386 (Pseudo-Ezekielb) frag. 1, and 4QMMT.

[3] Schiffman, "Concept of Restoration," 205.

[4] I hesitate to speak of a Qumran community here because the exact nature these texts played within the community is open to debate. Thus I speak of community knowing that any conclusions cannot definitively speak of the views held by one group, especially the Essenes, but rather may only be evidence of minority views within these texts.

[5] Frank Moore Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 56 n. 36a, notes that the camp of the sons of light is ordered according to the prescriptions of the mosaic camp in Num 2.1-5.4; 10.17-28; (1QM 3.12-4.11). The Law of the camp (Num 5.1-4) is kept (1QM 7.3-7). The victory of God in the final war is compared with the first exodus (1QM 11.8). The typology of the Mosaic camp lies close to the surface in CD, 1QS and 1QSa.

[6] Martin G. Abegg Jr., "Exile and the Dead Sea Scrolls," in Exile: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian Conceptions, ed. James M. Scott (JSJSup 56; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 125.

[7] On the variety of eschatological views at Qumran see, e.g., Philip R. Davies, "Eschatology at Qumran," Journal of Biblical Literature 104 (1985): 39-55; John J. Collins, "The Expectation of the End in the Dead Sea Scrolls," in Eschatology, Messianism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Craig A. Evans and Peter W. Flint (SDSSRL; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 86-88. On the problems of interpreting the ‘age of wrath’ see, Philip R. Davies, The Damascus Covenant (JSOTSup 25: Sheffield Academic Press, 1983), 61-69.

[8] Mark Adam Elliott, The Survivors of Israel: A Reconsideration of the Theology of Pre-Christian Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 542-43, states that, ‘This could mean that the sect considered themselves later returnees, to be distinguished from those who returned at the time of Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah, or that they discounted this earlier return as entirely ineffective or incomplete, or at best conditional on the faithfulness of the returnees.’ See also Shemaryahu Talmon, "Between the Bible and the Mishna," in The World of Qumran from Within: Collected Studies (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 48.

[9] Schiffman, "Concept of Restoration," 208. See also CD 6.11-14; 20:20-21, 32-33.

[10] Shemaryaha Talmon, King, Cult and Calendar in Ancient Judaism: Collected Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1986), 214-15.

[11] Davies, "Eschatology at Qumran," 52; Collins, "The Expectation of the End in the Dead Sea Scrolls," 90.

[12] Schiffman, "Concept of Restoration," 219.

[13] Schiffman, "Concept of Restoration," 217-18.

[14] Schiffman, "Concept of Restoration," 218. The ingathering of the exiles also features in the Festival Prayers (4Q509 frag. 3 3-5) and also appears to be mentioned in 4Q528 (Hymnic or Sapiential Work B) 3.

Technorati tags: Exile and Return, Restoration, Qumran, Secound Temple Judaism(s), N.T. Wright, Exile

The Concept of Exile during the Second Temple Period: Part 1

A popular approach to the Second Temple period in respect to Pauline literature is to understand the Jews of this time as still experiencing in some aspects the ramifications of the exile.[1] Within this approach it is common to draw a bitter and doleful picture of the Judaism(s) of the Second Temple period.[2] The Jewish existence of this period is often described as both one of despair and as one of continuingly conjuring up the distant dream of restoration.[3] This perspective is often over generalized by insisting that whenever Jews were away from the Promised Land and whenever the land was not under the independent rule of a Jewish king, they would perceive themselves to be 'captive debtors' regardless of their actual status in the diaspora or in the land; economically, politically, or socially.[4] The thesis of a continuing exile has most often been applied to those Judaism(s) that found themselves in the diaspora, but recent proponents have gone so far as to declare that even for those Jews living in Palestine the experience of exile still persisted. N.T. Wright a proponent of this view, succinctly describes it in terms of worldview:

Most Jews of this period, it seems, would have answered the question 'where are we?' in language which, reduced to its simplest form, meant: we are still in exile. They believe that, in all the senses which mattered, Israel's exile was still in progress. Although she had come back from Babylon, the glorious message of the prophets remained unfulfilled. Israel still remained in thrall to foreigners; worse, Israel's God had not returned to Zion.[5]

This new twist has led scholars to re-evaluate the evidence of both diaspora and Palestinian Judaism(s), calling into question the notion of whether the themes of exile and return where prolific enough to capture the imaginations of the various Judaism(s) of this period. Thus it is our intention in this section to listen carefully to what these critics are saying about the subject of exile, in an effort to discern whether or not the themes of exile and return were still evocative enough for the various Judaism(s) to use in order to make sense of their present condition. We will further investigate whether there is traction in viewing these themes as either simple narratives of the past, thus being static and concrete, or whether these themes were more open narratives, being more fluid and open to different interpretive conclusions.

In re-examining the narrative possibilities of the exile we will look at the most recent project on the subject undertaken by N.T. Wright.[6] According to Wright most if not all Jews would consider themselves still in the exile as the quote above details, but it is posited that no ‘faithful’ Jew would ever imagine that the exile could last forever; God certainly would not allow his people to suffer under pagan oppressors without end. If he did, then the problem of the exile would have been answered in the negative, yhwh was indeed only one tribal god among many, and he had truly lost the last battle. The texts of the Second Temple Period however betray a hope, a hope based upon the ‘historical’ actions of yhwh in the past, which according to Wright predicate a future restoration. Until then Israel was to wait in faith and hope, if not puzzlement and longing.[7]

Wright explains this hope to be based largely upon the faithfulness of Israel’s God to fulfill his covenant, which would ultimately result in re-establishing the divinely intended order in the cosmos. Israel's present plight of exile was to be explained, within the terms of this divine covenant faithfulness, as the punishment for her sins. The apparent inactivity of god at the present moment to act was explained by the fact that he was delaying in order to give more time for his people to repent. The obligation of the covenant people was therefore to be patient and faithful, to keep the covenant with all their might, trusting that he will vindicate them in the future. [8]

Not until yhwh acted decisively to change things and restore the fortunes of his people would the exile come to an end. At the present time, the covenant people themselves were riddled with corruption, still undeserving of that redemption.[9] It was the prophets of old who had warned that the nation was accumulating a large onus of debts, which she would not be able to repay, and as a result she would be taken into captivity until she had paid double for all her transgressions.[10] As we have seen in the previous chapter, Isaiah 40-55 looks forward to a ‘second exodus,’ a return that in many ways would outdo the first. And despite the return of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Zerubbabel, to the land and the rebuilt Temple, there was still a sense in which the exile was yet ongoing, in which the words of Isaiah 40-55 still resonated.[11] This is evident from the speech attributed to Ezra, where he declares: “From the days of our ancestors to this day we have been deep in guilt, and for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been handed over to the kings of the land, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame, as is now the case.”[12] Note that here Ezra includes his own time and circumstances in the desolate period that the people had brought on by their sins. Thus it is likely that the author envisioned the audience as still in captivity, albeit in a different sense then for those who remained in the lands of the dispersion.[13] So despite the return to the land, Wright maintains that the ‘exile’, as a period of history with certain characteristic features, not merely geographical reference, was still in fact pertinent. The texts that declared a ‘second exodus’ spoke of the return from exile in a more eschatological manner. These texts remained unfulfilled, unless they are relegated to mere fanciful metaphors.

But recent studies of diaspora Judaism(s) which have sought to approach the literature on its own merits, and not for what it might have to contribute to the study of the New Testament, have concluded that the texts themselves betray a much more complex situation then the one Wright reveals.[14] These studies of the diaspora have looked at the life of various Jewish groups in a much more holistic manner, arguing for a much more sympathetic view of the role these various Jewish communities played in the wider world.[15] No longer is it effective to view Jewish existence in relation to only religious ideas and themes, rather we must take into account how these communities interacted within the wider society. In the recent research on the diaspora there has been a concerted effort to dispense with the common either/or dichotomy between assimilation and faithfulness for a both/and framework which is said to better fit the evidence of the texts in question.[16] The implication drawn from this new perspective is that the Jews would have had little reason to seek restoration, for they were on the whole content with their role in society and by in large with the status quo. So if the Jews of the diaspora where contented and contributed to the maintenance of the societies they lived in, then in what ways could the narrative of exile and return evoke meaning for them? And more pointedly does a diaspora Judaism that is both assimilated and at the same time equally committed to a Judaic religion, then completely undermine Wright’s basic thesis of exile and return? Does the conception of restoration naturally infer that the Jews have to be ‘wallowing’ in exile in order to long for restoration?[17] In order to determine whether or not this thesis can still be maintained in light of the new data, it will be helpful to rehearse some of the texts that speak of the exile during the Second Temple period itself.

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[1] This thesis is of course not limited to the Pauline corpus, but to the wide spectrum of Judaism(s) of the First Century, including that of Primitive Christianity. See for example on the Jesus traditions, Craig A. Evans, "Aspects of Exile and Restoration in the Proclamation of Jesus and the Gospels," in Exile: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian Conceptions, ed. James M. Scott (JSJSup 56; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 299-328; N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 126-27, 203-04; D. J. Verseput, "The Davidic Messiah and Matthew's Jewish Christianity" (paper presented at the Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, 1995), 102-16.

[2] I use the plural noun Judaism(s) instead of the singular noun, more for effect, as I feel the plural jars a reader into recognizing what Barclay describes as, ‘the different nuances given to the term “Judaism,” which can be viewed primarily as a web of beliefs, with multiple variants, or, perhaps more realistically, as an ethnic community whose shared symbols were powerful and enduring precisely because they were open to diverse interpretation.’ See John M. G. Barclay, "Diaspora Judaism," in Religious Diversity in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Dan Cohn-Sherbok and John M. Court (BS 9; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 56. Although he himself hesitates to use the plural noun, it is my opinion that the singular noun is unfortunately deficient in conveying the ‘web of beliefs’ that Barclay wishes it to convey, primarily because it can be read without causing the reader to question the ideas of orthopraxy and orthodoxy of the various Second Temple Judaism(s). However, Neusner’s view that all texts should be taken as evidence for distinct Judaic systems seems to be a bit extreme. See Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner, Judaism in the New Testament: Practices and Beliefs (London: Routledge, 1995).

[3]W. C. van Unnik, Das Selbstverständnis Der Jüdischen Diaspora in Der Hellenistisch-Römischen Zeit, ed. Pieter Willem van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 89-147., Unnik gives credence to such attitudes, by stating that the very term diaspora usually connotes negative connotations of sin and punishment, both in its biblical usage and in its later Second Temple contexts. Erich S. Gruen, Diaspora: Jews Amidst Greeks and Romans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 232, in a re-examination of the texts argues that this view is unrepresented by the actual participants of history.

[4] George Wesley Buchanan, Revelation and Redemption: Jewish Documents of Deliverance from the Fall of Jerusalem to the Death of Nahmanides (Dillsboro: Western North Carolina Press, 1978), 7.

[5] N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 268-69.

[6] See especially,Wright.

[7] Wright, People of God, 270-71.

[8] Wright, People of God, 271.

[9] Wright, People of God, 272.

[10] See, for example, Deut 15.8; Jer 16.18.

[11] cf. Ezra 9.8-9; Neh 9.36-37

[12] Ezra 9.6

[13] James C. Vanderkam, "Exile in Jewish Apocalyptic Literature," in Exile: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian Conceptions, ed. James M. Scott (JSJSup 56; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 89.

[14] In fairness, much of this could be due to the nature of Wright’s project: a synthesis of Second Temple Judaism in order to explain the New Testament. It is likely that any synthesis that reads the texts in order to gain a composite picture of the times, as a consequence will overlook the variegated nature of the Judaism(s) which it seeks to explain. Yet it does not necessarily follow that such a broad interpretation is completely without merit, it just may be that it only tells part of the story.

[15] See John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 Bce - 117 Ce) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996); Barclay, "Diaspora Judaism", 47-64; Gruen, Diaspora, 232-52.

[16] See especially Gruen, Diaspora, 232-52.

[17] No where to my knowledge does Wright insist that the Jews necessarily had to be wallowing in their exile, it is rather an implication by critics, who undoubtedly fail to recognize the fallacy of the excluded middle, that to yearn for restoration is to necessarily bemoan exile.