Archive for the ‘Current Events’ Category
The incredible story of the late NFL football star Reggie White, who turned in his last years from preaching Christianity to a quest for Torah faith, as powerfully documented in this ESPN video:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090924093355.htm
Jewish Priesthood Has Multiple Lineages, New Genetic Research Indicates
ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2009) — Recent research on the Cohen Y chromosome indicates the Jewish priesthood, the Cohanim, was established by several unrelated male lines rather than a single male lineage dating to ancient Hebrew times.
The new research builds on a decade-old study of the Jewish priesthood that traced its patrilineal dynasty and seemed to substantiate the biblical story that Aaron, the first high priest (and brother of Moses), was one of a number of common male ancestors in the Cohanim lineage who lived some 3,200 years ago in the Near East.
The current study was conducted by Michael F. Hammer, a population geneticist in the Arizona Research Laboratory’s Division of Biotechnology at the University of Arizona. Hammer’s collaborators in the study include Karl Skorecki of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Rambum Medical Center in Haifa and colleagues and collaborating scientists from Tel Aviv University and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The July 2009 issue of Human Genetics has published the Hammer team’s newest findings in their article entitled “Extended Y chromosome haplotypes resolve multiple and unique lineages of the Jewish priesthood.”
Hammer and Skorecki were part of the first research group 10 years ago that found the DNA marker signature of the Cohanim, termed the Cohen Modal Haplotype. Today, Hammer and his colleagues are able to use a much larger battery of DNA markers and consequently able to develop a more fully resolved Cohen Modal Haplotype called the extended Cohen Modal Haplotype. The smaller number of markers used in the original Cohanim studies did not allow for full resolution of the history of the Jewish priesthood.
“These findings should motivate renewed interest in historical reconstructions of the Jewish priesthood as well as additional high resolution DNA marker analyses of other populations and ‘lost tribes’ claiming ancient Hebrew ancestry,” Hammer said.
Using the new data, Hammer and his team were able to pinpoint the geographic distribution of a genetically more resolved Cohen Modal Haplotype and tease apart a multiplicity of male lines that founded the priesthood in ancient Hebrew times. The more fully resolved Cohen Modal haplotype (called the extended Cohen Modal Haplotype) accounts for almost 30 percent of Cohanim Y chromosomes from both Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Jewish communities, is virtually absent in non-Jews, and likely traces to a common male ancestor that lived some 3,200 years ago in the Near East.
Additional Y chromosome lineages that are distinct from that defined by the extended Cohen Modal Haplotype, but also shared among Cohanim from different Jewish communities, reveal that the priesthood was established by several unrelated male lines.
Journal reference:
- Michael F. Hammer, Doron M. Behar, Tatiana M. Karafet, Fernando L. Mendez, Brian Hallmark, Tamar Erez, Lev A. Zhivotovsky, Saharon Rosset and Karl Skorecki. Extended Y chromosome haplotypes resolve multiple and unique lineages of the Jewish priesthood. Human Genetics, 2009; DOI: 10.1007/s00439-009-0727-5
Just this week I became aware of the amazing work of Shmuel Greenbaum and his efforts with Partners In Kindness. I spent some time browsing the Web site and found it incredibly moving. I remember very well the bombing at the pizza place on Jaffa road in 2001 but I had not heard of the response and subsequent efforts of this widower who lost his wife Shoshana to find kindness in our world of darkness and light.
I just subscribed to the e-mail newsletter called “Kind Words” and I have also just ordered the book, A Daily Dose of Kindness. I have written and talked a lot about YHVH’s self-proclaimed “character description” in Exodus 34:5-7 (see my full discussion in Restoring Abrahamic Faith, pp. 23-26). In that formulaic statement, subsequently repeated in the Torah, Prophets, and Writings, YHVH is described as both Rav-Chesed and Notzer Chesed–full of loving-kindness and “keeping” kindness. In my studies of the word Chesed I have come to the view that we have no precise English equivalent. Our English world “love” is unfortunately used in so many ways that it can hardly serve to carry much specific meaning. “Kindness” works quite well I think, but perhaps the notion of loyal-kindness should be included–thus “keeping” kindness, or even “guarding” kindness. It is not feeling alone, but something that involves work, commitment, and action.
A recent statement titled “A Note on Ambiguities Contained in Covenant and Mission,” issued by the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is rightly causing lots of stir and controversy among Jewish leaders. Despite what had come to be seen as progress based on the 1965 Second Vatican Council declaration, Nostra Aetate, with its assertion that the Jewish people collectively are not to be blamed for the death of Jesus as well as a general understanding that interfaith dialogue should not have as its purpose the conversion of Jews, this latest statement from the USCCB makes clear that the Catholic Church stands firm in its historic position that Christianity has superseded and thus effectively replaced Judaism:
“The long story of God’s intervention in the history of Israel comes to its unsurpassable culmination in Jesus Christ, who is God become man.” According to the document, “we also believe that the fulfillment of the covenants, indeed, of all God’s promises to Israel, is found only in Jesus Christ.”
Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamantion League (ADL) has issued for formal statement of protest, highlighted on the ADL Web site:
ADL Troubled By U.S. Bishops’ Statement That Appears to Green Light Missionizing Of Jews
The Catholic News Service (CNS) has also posted a story:
Jewish leaders say bishops’ June statement could hurt dialogue
A more pointed story was just posted by Israel National News ISN):
US Jews Enraged by Catholic Document Urging Missionizing of Jews
Despite Pope John Paul II’s language about the Covenant with Israel being one that was “never revoked,” the Bishops were keen to make clear that such language does not in any way preclude “supersessionism,”that is, the notion that this “Old Covenant” has in point of fact become obsolete. Jews remain valuable as “historic witness” to God’s previous dealings with humankind, but there is nothing in the Roman Catholic understanding of salvation, past or present, that declares the Jewish people, short of accepting Christ, as enjoying a fulfilled relationship with God. Accordingly, the historic Christian insistence on the “conversion of Jews” remains central to the Christian mission, despite any progress in ecumenical dialogue and exchange among Rabbis and Bishops.
It has become somewhat fashionable in our time, and particularly among certain circles of biblical scholarship, to argue that the documents of the New Testament, and those associated with Paul and John in particular, do not in fact support the subsequent Christian doctrine that Israel’s covenant with God has been superseded and made obsolete. New Testament scholars are familiar with the work of Loyd Gaston (Paul and the Torah 1987), supported by John Gager (Reinventing Paul 2000) and the late Kirster Stendahl, who argue that Paul upheld Israel’s Sinai covenant as eternally valid for Jews, while Gentiles are part of a new covenant through Christ. According to this view when Paul seems to speak negatively about the Torah, or the insufficiency of Israel’s covenant for salvation, he has in view only attempts by his opponents to force such upon his Gentile converts. As attractive as such a view might be for modern ecumenical relations between Christians and Jews, I am convinced that Alan Segal (Paul the Convert 1992), Ed Sanders (Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People 1983) and any number of others, have adequately demonstrated that for Paul both Jew and Gentiles find hope for salvation only in the New Covenant brought by Christ.
In that sense there is really “nothing new” in this latest clarification by the Catholic Bishops. They are simply saying clearly what orthodox Christians have said now for nearly 2000 years, despite some hope by Rabbis and Jews interested in Jewish-Christian dialogue that things might have changed. The fact remains, Paul’s view that his Jewish brothers and sisters are accursed from God, cut off from Christ, having a “zeal for God, but without true knowledge” could not be more clear. They are branches broken off the Olive Tree of Israel, God’s true people, for their unbelief in Christ, while Gentiles who do accept Christ are “grafted in,” as wild shoots (Romans 9-11).
In my book The Jesus Dynasty I maintain that Jesus was and remained a Jew and never entertained the establishment of a new religion. In contrast, it was Paul who might actually be called the “founder” of Christianity, with its distinctive theological doctrines. Even though Jews disagreed on how one might reflect and live out all the teachings and commandments of the Sinai revelation, especially regarding what came to be called halacha (literally “the way” or “the walk”), that is how to fulfill the various commandments, in general religious Jews, who took seriously the revelation of Torah, agreed on the obvious point that Israelites of all persuasions were obligated to live according to the commandments in order to be faithful to the Covenant.
Historians and scholars seem to be in almost universal agreement that what is called “the Jesus movement,” as represented by the teachings of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth, was a movement within Judaism/s of its time and is most properly understood in this way, rather than as a “new” religion, separate from the mother faith. Likewise, I think there is general agreement, as far as I am aware, that James the brother of Jesus, leader of the Jesus movement after Jesus’ death, remained an observant Jew himself (Acts, letter of James, Josephus, Hegesippus, etc.).
To be “observant” in this broader context does not so much imply a uniform “orthodoxy” such as later developed within Rabbinic Judaism, but that whatever one’s halachic view, one remained “in the camp” in terms of covenental identity with the Jewish people and a concerted attempt to embody the teaching and commandments of the Sinai revelation. Judaism, as it developed, was understood as a religion, a people, and a culture, so matters of “definition” could be quite complex, i.e., you could have one who was born as a Jew, spurning the religion, or living immorally, or even turning to another faith, and yet, technically, remaining “Jewish.” In the same way non-Jews might take up Jewish customs and observances and still, nonetheless, not be considered “Jews” in a formal sense. E. P. Sanders, in his book Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, might be one of the best summaries of this entire matter. He exhaustively explores the various “Judaisms” of the period, showing ways in which they differed, but also what gave them their essential identity, something he terms “covenantal nomism.”
Non-Jews, in most of these forms of emerging Judaism, were not expected to “convert” to Judaism in order to have a spiritual relationship with God. They could function within the more universal “Noahite” covenant, and the notion and even social existence of the “righteous Gentile” or the “God-fearer” has been extensively documented, particularly during the late Roman empire. Here I recommend the monumental study of my teacher Louis Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Roman World. One way of putting it was the adage “The righteous of all the nations will have a place in the world to come.” Jesus appears to share this openness to the non-Jew and the messianic vision of the Prophets was that all nations would learn to walk in the light of the Torah’s essential ethical teachings.
If Paul did indeed redefine the people of Israel (what he calls the “true Israel” ) as those who had faith in the heavenly Christ, thus excluding those he called “Israel after the flesh” from his new covenant, and if he also held the view that the Torah given to Moses was valid “until Christ came,” so that even Jews are no longer “under the Torah,” or obligated to follow the commandments or mitzvot as given to Moses but a new “Law of Christ,” then most historians have agreed that we are not merely dealing with a movement “within Judaism,” but the makings of a “new religion” that comes to be called Christianity. This is not to deny Paul’s “Jewishness,” in the cultural sense of that term. He surely believes in the God of Israel, Jesus as the Messiah of Israel, and the Torah and Prophets as Scripture. But in Paul’s thinking, instead of humanity divided as “Israel and the nations” which is the classic understanding of Judaism, we have “Israel, the Gentiles or “non-Jews,” and the new people called “the church of God.” This does not mean that Paul advocated immoral living, he surely did not. In all his letters he takes pains to enforce and reinforce the essential ethics revealed in the Torah as applicable to Gentiles upon his followers.
The rub comes for Jews–if it is now okay for a Jew who is “in Christ” and thus part of this new spiritual Israel, to fail to circumcise his or her children, to ignore observance of the Sabbath and the festivals, to eat anything set before them, and to generally “live as a Gentile” in terms of observing such marks of Torah observance then Paul’s position takes him outside of “Judaism” or observant Torah faith. Such a view implicitly leads to the abolition/replacement of the mother faith. It was upon that basis that the entire super-sessionist/replacement idea that became so current in Christianity developed. Paul takes the position in Romans 9 that any Jew who does not share his faith in Christ is “lost” and cut off from God, no matter what might be his or her spiritual devotion, Torah observance, or even reliance upon the grace of God.
Then there is also the matter of “justification by faith.” Judaism in all its forms has taught that all humans are sinners and can only be accepted in God’s eyes through repentance and faith. Psalm 51 would be the most classic expression of this, the Thanksgiving Hymns in the Dead Sea Scrolls reflect the same for the Qumran community, as srict was they were in their legal interpretations, and Rabbinic literature reflects the same. As a Jew Jesus expressed these very ideas when he speaks of the two men praying in the Temple, one of them a “sinner” who smites his breast and turns to God, and is thereby “justified,” and the other self-righteousness, thinking he had no need of justification. E.P. Sanders is very good to make it clear that the notion that Christianity depends on “grace” and Judaism on “works” is a terribly unfortunate misunderstanding of Judaism. What divides Paul from Judaism is his insistence that this grace bringing justification is only extended to those who accept his Christ faith.
With these three elements based on Paul’s perceptions and heavenly visions: a new definition of Israel, the abrogation of the Sinai covenant, and the restriction of God’s grace to those who “accept Christ as savior,” we truly have a “new religion” and by no theological, cultural, or historical definition could it properly be called “Judaism,” but even more to the point, it must ever stand opposed, by its own self-identity, to all forms of Judaism as expressions of faithfulness to the God of Israel. Talk about irony. But such are the ways of the history of religions when it comes to the Abrahamic faiths–with each successive manifestation, first Christianity, and finally Islam, seeking to invalidate that which went before, while offering lip service to superseded obsolescence. For a full discussion of this point, and particularly the ways in which a more universal view of Hebraic faith addresses the issues of super-sessionism, see the treatment in my recently republished book, Restoring Abrahamic Faith.
This past Thursday morning, July 23rd, Nehemia Gordon, Keith Johnson, and I were guests on the NPR interview show “Charlotte Talks” with Mike Collins, talking about their new book, A Prayer to Our Father: The Hebrew Origins of the Lord’s Prayer. I thought it went exceptionally well and is worth taking time to listen. Lots of important information both from the new book, and related thereto, is covered. For those of you who are outside the Charlotte area you can listen now on-line by downloading the Podcast or streaming it live. Just go to the Web site for details and click on “Listen to Show”:
On Sunday July 26th, Keith Johnson and Nehemia Gordon, authors of A Prayer to our Father, will talk about their book at a special event sponsored by United Israel and hosted by Dr. James D. Tabor at the Doubletree Inn & Suites located in South Park (6300 Morrison Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28211 Tel: 704-364-2400). This meeting will be from 4-6pm in the Barringer room. The public is invited and there is no admission charge. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
Two billion Christians worldwide consider the Lord’s Prayer the ultimate expression of their faith—but few know the stunning story of its Hebrew origins. A Prayer to Our Father (175 pp., tpb, $19.95) is the true story of an exciting journey of faith of a Jewish Bible scholar and an African American pastor who join forces to uncover the truth about the most beloved prayer in the Christian world.
Their provocative new book reads like a detective novel. Written by two most unlikely collaborators, the charismatic personalities of the authors are as riveting as the story. Former chaplain to the Minnesota Vikings, Keith Johnson has ministered to some of the top names in the NFL and NBA. Jerusalem-based Jewish scholar and author, Nehemia Gordon, has spent his career translating the Dead Sea Scrolls and studying the deep mysteries of the Jewish religion.
Johnson and Gordon’s gripping adventure begins in the ancient city of Jerusalem and takes them to the very spot in Galilee where Jesus taught the multitudes to pray. Along the way they discover a Hebrew version of the Lord’s Prayer, preserved in secret by Jewish rabbis for over a thousand years. Their riveting journey and extraordinary relationship are chronicled in A Prayer to Our Father.
See the Website: http://www.aprayertoourfather.com/ for further details on the book and the background of the authors.
Nehemia Gordon holds a Masters Degree in Biblical Studies and a Bachelors Degree in Archaeology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Gordon has worked as a translator on the Dead Sea Scrolls and as a researcher deciphering ancient Hebrew manuscripts. He has been invited to speak in synagogues and churches around the world and has led groups of pilgrims and visitors on tours of biblical sites. A native of Chicago, Nehemia has made his home in Jerusalem, Israel for the last fifteen years.
Keith Johnson earned his Masters of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and has spent nearly two decades in Christian ministry. As an ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church, Johnson has served as pastor of Park Avenue Church in Minneapolis and as chaplain of the Minnesota Vikings. Johnson was also chosen as one of only 40 chaplains from around the world to serve the athletes of the 1996 Olympics Games in Atlanta. Keith lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife and sons.
James Tabor’s second interview with Tovia Singer is now on-line and can be listened to or downloaded. Here is the description and the link:
Professor James Tabor, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina and author of “Restoring Abrahamic Faith” (available through http://genesis2000.org) explores Christianity’s foundational break with Judaism and Paul’s role in this monumental schism. Tabor emphasizes the apocalyptic and thus “temporary” nature of the original Jesus movement and how it quickly sought to replace Judaism.
For more information, you can find the schedule and location info on this page
http://universaltorah.com/programming/speaking-schedules/
James Tabor’s interview with Tovia Singer on May 7th over Israel National Radio is now archived on the Web site for one week. You can download or listen over the Internet.
Tabor discusses the Pope’s visit to Israel next week, the Vatican claim on the holy places on Mt Zion, as well as his work on the historical Jesus and his latest book, Restoring Abrahamic Faith.
Here is the Internet link:
The 66th annual meeting of UIWU will be held next week in Charlotte, NC at the Doubletree Guest Suites at Southpark, April 24-26th. The meeting is open to the public and there is no registration charge. Below is the tentative program:
Friday, April 24th
5:00pm Registration and Welcome
7:00pm Welcoming Shabbat: Candle Lighting and Kiddush
7:30pm Celebrating 65 Years of UIWU: James Tabor
Sabbath, April 25th
9:00am The Three Greatest Chapters of the Hebrew Bible: James Tabor
10:30am Our Incredible American Hebrew Heritage: Ralph Buntyn
Noon Break and Open Time
1:30pm Amazing Treasures of the Mishnah: Joseph Good
3:30pm Open House at the UIWU Offices: Archive Display & Reception
7:00pm After Hours: Musical Program with David & Patty Tyler, their band, and our talented musical performers at the Hampton Inn nearby
Sunday, April 26th
9:00am UIWU 66th Annual Business Meeting
Presidential Address by James Tabor: Presiding: Ralph Buntyn
10:00am The Three Greatest Chapters of the Hebrew Bible: Ross Nichols
Noon Break and Open Time
2:30pm ‘Let Him Go Up’: Connecting to Israel in our Time: Hanoch Young with John and Carin Carlson
4:00pm A Surprise Announcement: James Tabor