Question 141, from John, United Kingdom

I was wondering when the churches began to separate the bread and wine out of the context of the Passover Seder, and how the “Bread and wine” became “the Lord’s Supper”. Can you help?

It is generally accepted that the ‘Last Supper’ that Jesus shared with his disciples took place around the time of the Jewish Passover. In the synoptic gospels, the ‘Last Supper’ certainly appears to be during Passover week, but John’s gospel implies it takes place beforehand. In John chapter 13, the Last Supper is set “just before the Passover feast” (verse 1), and the disciples assume Jesus is giving Judas instructions regarding preparations for Passover (verse 29). In addition, none of the gospels mention (more…)

Question 129 from Annmarie, Ireland
Would you please give me your understanding of what it means to ‘worship the Father in spirit and in truth’ as mentioned in John chapter 4 verses 21-24?

The context of this statement attributed to Jesus is a conversation between Jesus and a Samaritan woman who raises the question of whom is correct in their worship – the Jews who worship God at the Temple in Jerusalem, or the Samaritans who worship God on Mount Gerizim. Jesus replies by saying a time is coming when “true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth.”

There are a number of different reasons why the author of John’s gospel records this saying. The author is very fond of words like ‘light’, ‘truth’ and so on and this is why some people see ‘gnostic’ tendencies in John’s gospel. This saying of Jesus is one of many which lets a person, including the reader, in on a ‘secret truth’, or to put it another way, offers them a revelation that not many other people know.

It is generally agreed that John’s gospel was probably the last of the four gospels to be written, at a time when the early Christian church was (more…)

Question 104, from JV, United Kingdom

I am currently looking into the Hebrew roots of Christianity, I was wondering as to whether we need to study the Talmud (oral laws), as God gave them, as well as the commandments on Mount Sinai. Jesus is said to be the fulfilment of the law not the abolisher of it, does that include the oral laws? I find there is great wisdom in them and the fact that Jesus himself studied the oral laws and argued with them show to me that they are of value!

The Talmud (technically Talmuds, because there are two of them) are systematic commentaries on the Mishnah, which is the rabbinical law code of proper Jewish practice. The final version of the Mishnah is generally dated to the second century AD, after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (AD70) and the ‘diaspora’ as the Jews made their home in other countries. The Talmuds are usually dated two to three centuries later.

The general consensus is that as the life of the Jewish community adjusted to the upheaval of the dislocation from Temple-centred religion, a revised law code was needed to ensure that Jews were still living according to the customs and rituals that marked them out as God’s chosen people. The Mishnah, based on the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, also called the Pentateuch), therefore enabled Judaism to continue despite the Temple being razed to the ground on the orders of Titus Caesar.

Unlike the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament, the Mishnah is arranged systematically by topic, rather than by author. It is divided into six broad parts: Agriculture (mainly farming according to the principles of Torah), Appointed Times (how to celebrate the holy days of Judaism), the role and status of Women, Damages (dealing with governmental issues and conflict resolution), Holy Things, and Purities (including lists of things that make a Jew impure).

The Palestinian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud each develop the teaching of the Mishnah, although neither expand upon the Purities section. The Palestinian Talmud omits Holy Things, while its Babylonian counterpart does not reference Agriculture. As such the Talmuds fill in some gaps that have been left out of the Mishnah.

While the Torah, and later the rest of the Hebrew Bible, was regarded as divinely inspired before the Mishnah was compiled, it was not long before the Mishnah was regarded as being the embodiment of an oral tradition that was alleged to date back to the time of the exodus. There is no way of proving whether this belief has any truth to it, although historians tend to assume that it does not. However, the Mishnah, and the Talmuds, do contain material which probably had a long folk-history before it was ever written down. Jesus therefore was probably aware of, and may have been influenced by, this material, but chronologically he was unable to engage with the Talmud during his earthly ministry.

The Talmuds also refer to extra material not found in the Mishnah, including previous commentaries on the Torah. The two Talmuds also contain references to the Mishnah as the ‘oral Torah’ and, because of their inextricable links to the Mishnah have thus taken on a semi-canonical status in Judaism themselves. In fact, the sixth century Babylonian Talmud is regarded as the authoritative encyclopedia of Judaism.

While the Mishnah and Talmuds provide Christian theologians with valuable insights into Christianity’s Jewish roots, it is generally held that these works are not authoritative. The New Testament in its current form dates from a similar time, and it could be argued that the Talmud and the New Testament represent two diverging views. One was a retreat back into the legalistic world of the Torah; the other looking outward beyond the confines of one people group into a wider world.

Thanks for your question JV.

Question 101 – from JG, United Kingdom

What would have happened if the Jews had accepted Jesus as their Messiah? It follows that if they had, then Jesus would not of died, thus there would be no salvation.

This kind of consequential (‘what if’) question is very interesting. Of course, it does depend on how you view the life and death of Jesus in terms of God’s plan of salvation. For theologians who emphasise God’s foreknowledge, this question is irrelevant because it was God’s pre-ordained plan that the messiah would be rejected and crucified. So this is only a relevant subject if it is assumed that human beings have genuine free will and so there would have been an option for ‘the Jews’ to accept Jesus.

It is worth remembering that many Jews did accept Jesus. In fact, as far as can be deduced from the text, it must be assumed that every believer present at the ‘birth of the Church’ on Pentecost was Jewish. There is definitely a sense that these early believers were ‘called out’ from among the chosen people, and many New Testament commentators note the theme of the earliest Church being the ‘true Israel’ as differentiated from their fellow Jews.

Over the centuries the view has developed in Christian thought, that salvation hinges solely on the death of Jesus. In classic protestant evangelical terminology, Jesus’ death ‘pays the price’ for human sin and thus negates the effect of sin on human beings (the effect being eternal separation from God). This is not the only view of salvation ever promoted across the Christian denominations, but a variant of this idea is probably the most common. However, in some senses this ‘substitutionary’ theory (Christ dying in the believer’s place) is one that has been reached ‘after the fact’. Because the historical events of Jesus’ life, as recorded in the gospels, happened a certain way, it has been presumed that salvation had to happen that way.

There are several views on what would have happened had Jesus been accepted, or enthroned, as the messiah. One view, that has been voiced in Christian Zionist circles, is that there would have been no salvation for the Gentiles. Israel would have become the prime mover among nations and the Jews would have been the only people ever to be saved.

Another possibility is that Jesus would have been installed as a kingly ruler over Israel. Certainly it would seem that this was how some of his followers thought the Kingdom of God would be established, even after his resurrection (see Acts chapter 1, verse 6).

The covenant God made with Abraham in Genesis includes the promise that “all nations will be blessed through him” (Genesis chapter 18, verse 18). Traditionally, Christians have interpreted this verse to mean that form the nation of Israel the messiah would come to save the world (through his death), but equally it leaves open the option for the messiah to rule the world. Despite emphasising the ‘chosen’ status of Israel, the worship of Yahweh always had a universalistic edge, with a special place in the Temple given to the gentiles. The prophetic idea that the Temple would be a house of prayer ‘for many nations’ (found in Isaiah 56, verses 6-7, and quoted by Jesus when he caused a riot in the court of the Gentiles in e.g. Matthew chapter 12, verse 13) indicates this potential ‘political’ salvation.

One final option is that the Jews, as a race, accept Jesus as their messiah – they just haven’t done it yet. This theory is frequently found in dispensationalist teaching regarding the end of the world. According to dispensationalist predictions, after the Church is raptured, the Jews convert en masse and recognise Jesus as their messiah, and then evangelise the world during the reign of the Antichrist. Certainly it would seem from Paul’s statements in Romans chapter 11, that he believed that eventually “all Israel will be saved” (chapter 11, verse 26), once certain other events have happened.

So, maybe this question should not be ‘what would have happened…’, but ‘when will it happen…’ The answer to that is best summed up by Jesus in Acts chapter 1, verse 7: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.”

Thanks for your question JG.

Question from BC, Singapore

Did God regret the selection of Israelites as His people, because all the books of prophets seem to be against the Israelites?

While the prophetic books are often very critical of the way the Israelite people ‘forsook’ Yahweh and worshipped, for example, Baal and other Canaanite gods, it should be noted that the prophets generally sought to call Israel back to worshipping Yahweh, even while predicting terrible judgement.

In one sense the Old Testament contains the prophetic books that came true. In the stories surrounding Jeremiah there are several ‘prophets’ who ‘prophesy’ positive outcomes, in contrast to Jeremiah’s warnings of doom. It was Jeremiah’s predictions that happened and so, with the vantage point of history, the later compilers assumed he was a genuine prophet and his oracles were preserved, unlike the sayings of his contemporaries.

This is quite a cynical view of Biblical formation, but it must be borne in mind. Many of the prophets operated outside the rigid religious caste system. They usually did not belong to the priesthood and were often very critical of the organised religious activities. The fact that they were proved right in the end has played a very big part in their subsequent acceptance as ‘speaking from God’.

Within Christianity, the heritage of these prophets has been a sense that the Church has replaced Israel as God’s chosen people. Certainly there have been prominent theologians and writers who have virtually said that the Church has taken on this role because the Israelites ‘blew their chance’. The concept of ‘developing revelation’, where God reveals his will through the covenant with Abraham, the Law given to Moses, the Temple religion of the nation of Israel and finally the Incarnation, often explains the disobedience and disloyalty of the Israelites as a part of God’s plan. By showing that human beings could not succeed in living according to God’s directions, whether through the Law or the ‘witness of the prophets’, the necessity for God’s personal involvement in the world through the Incarnation was made clear.

Thanks for your question BC.