Quote of the Day: Sanders on Righteousness

Just read a snazzy quote by E P Sanders on the question of justification, it's a long one, but worth the read. Sanders eloquently captures what I've (even on this blog) spent thousands of words to explain half as well:

The sectarians emphasized (1) that humans were worthless bits of nothing and depended absolutely on God’s grace, and (2) that they were capable of becoming and remaining perfect. These statements are more radical than Josephus’, but they are not fundamentally different.

The world is still full of people who will focus on one of these themes, usually human effort in attaining perfection, and conclude that the sectarians in particular and Jews in general believed in the sort of meritorious achievement that is called legalistic self-righteousness. And they will maintain that holding this position excludes reliance on God’s goodness and mercy. Scholars who work in the area of Bible and related topics are often fixated on the kind of dogmatic consistency that seldom appears in real life: they think that people who believed in human effort and moral achievement must have renounced grace. Ancient Jewish groups, just like modern Jewish and Christian groups, had diverse religious thoughts and practices. To this day, when Jews or Christians pray to God, they thank him for calling them to follow him and for giving them the strength and ability to live as they should, and they recognize that in comparison to God humans are weak creatures who must rely on the strength and goodness of God. Yet when these same people falter, they do not blame God, they blame themselves. They seek to return to the path of righteousness, and they know that they must exert effort to do so. Humans are dependent on grace and they are accountable for their deeds. This is a common and in fact a virtually universal view in both Judaism and Christianity, and it is puzzling that many Christian scholars who accept both aspects of religion in their own lives believe that in the ancient world these were mutually exclusive alternatives. They are simply different perspectives that arise in slightly different circumstances. One set of thoughts arises in prayer or meditation, the other in considering the practicalities and difficulties of daily life. The two can combine in one sentence, as in this passage from the Hymns: ‘No man can be righteous in your judgment or [innocent] in your trial, though one man may be more righteous than another’ (1QH 9:14f.).

E P Sanders, The Dead Sea Sect and Other Jews: Commonalities, Overlaps and Differences in Lim, T. H., Hurtado, L. W., Auld, A. G., & Jack, A. M. (2004). The Dead Sea scrolls in their historical context. (31). London; New York: T&T Clark.

RIP Bobby Fischer

Chess legend Bobby Fischer passed away today at 64 in Iceland. Cause of death is, at this point, undisclosed.

RIP

Biblical Studies Carnival XXV

Biblical Studies Carnival 25 is up over on Chris Brady's 'blog Targuman

Why Did Caesar Cross?

A break from the biblical. . .

It's frequently noted, in the spirit of Schweitzer, that the Quest of the Historical Jesus is not unlike looking into a deep well and seeing your own, somewhat distorted, face staring back at you. The same can be said of the "Quest of the Historical Julius Caesar" (if you use that phrase, I expect royalties).

There is a general tendency in biographies of Caesar to attribute to him great or noble causes in his civil war (or, as Caesar would have it, "civil disputes."). Caesar fought for the betterment of Rome, for justice, for liberty, to collapse the antiquated Senate. Which is why it's so refreshing to find the contrary spelled out in the opening pages of Christian Meier's Caesar: A Biography.

Meier forgoes such romanticism in favour of the obvious: Caesar fought for Caesar, and for Caesar alone. That is what our sources uniformly attest to. On the banks of the Rubicon Caesar weighed his own misfortune against the potential misfortune of all men, and decided it was best to avoid the former at the cost of the latter. It was swiftness of thought, not purity of heart, that made Caesar great.

To be sure, Caesar's war was not with "Rome," per se--it was, at least to him, always a matter between him and his enemies (hence his mandate that those not against him were his allies, which led to a pattern of clemency that helped him tremendously in his victory). He was not out to actively harm civilians, so long as they kept out of it. But he was not terribly concerned about the obvious fact that his actions would be to their detriment.

Caesar's cause was always to avert his own misfortune--there was no other crusade behind it. It is, I suppose, difficult to accept the conscious decision to harm the many for your own gain, which no doubt influences the tendency to exonerate Caesar of such a choice. But it is not without reason that Cicero opined that the civil war lacked nothing save a cause.

Quote of the Day - Jesus Was Not a Covenantal Nomist

For it is historically improbable that, after Easter, Jesus’ disciples carried on a mission to ’the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Mt. 10.6; 15.24) if Jesus himself never thought Israel was lost.

Dale C. Allison Jr., Jesus and the Covenant: A Response to E P Sanders, JSNT 9.57 (1987), p.74.

Allison here eloquently puts to rest Sanders' suggestion that Jesus was a covenantal nomist (eg Jesus and Judaism, p.336). The entire Christian movement is difficult to reconcile with a Jesus who accepted covenantal nomism (John the Baptist seems to have been considered as a forerunner in this regard--Matt.3.9 is a flat rejection of covenantal nomism, as Allison points out).

What the. . .

Huh. According to Wikio, this is the 97th most influential blog related to. . .business? I'd recommend readers get their information from somebody other than Wikio, apparently.

Busy, busy December. More posting in January.

Merry Christmas!

Mini Biblical Studies Carnivalette

Over on MetaCatholic, Doug Chaplin gives us a "little unofficial Biblical Studies Carnivalette" in the absence of an official carnival appearing yet for November.