Anyway, I babble and I miss the point. He is definitely after my own heart. The paper's title? "The Biblical History of the Israeli and Palestinian Conflict." Right down the center of my academic studies... The primary focus of his paper was the history of the Abrahamic and Davidic Covenants. Damn. I love that boy. It wasn't even my idea! He came up with it on his own.
It reminded me of a paper I wrote back in 2005, dealing with the covenants. I thought I'd dig it up and take another look before passing the hell out. Another long day. Another long week...
Link to PDF: The Decline and Fall of Free Will: JE to the Evangelists
April 16, 2005
The Decline and Fall of Free Will: JE to the Evangelists
The concepts of free will,
responsibility and the punishment of sin in the Hebrew Bible and in the
Christian New Testament transform slowly over the course of the text,
reflecting the views of different writers living in different societies and
times. Essentially, the Israelites’
covenant with Yahweh, binding them to a god who delivers divine guidance and
punishment for their actions and failures, is defined early on by the J
(Yahwist) and E (Elohim) writers, is modified by the Deuteronomists who live in
a new social situation, and then is completely replaced with a new covenant by
the Evangelists in the New Testament Gospels, resulting in the redefinition of
the nature of sin, the revocation of Torah law, and the essential elimination
of the concept of free will.
In the early JE texts, the first
humans and then the Israelites have more free will coupled with the lightest
responsibilities to God than at any other time in the course of the Bible. These writers cover the creation of the
Abrahamic Covenant and Mosaic Covenants, covering the first limitations on
humanity’s free will, but the original demands of these covenants and the
punishment for violating them is light compared to what follows. In Who Wrote the Bible?,
Richard Elliott Friedman writes, “[Wilhelm] Vatke … concluded that J and E
reflected a very early stage in the development of Israelite religion, when it
was essentially a nature/fertility religion” (25). A religion in this stage is not concerned as
much with obeying God and his representatives on earth, nor in the fate of a
dualistic immortal soul, as it is with the cycle of the seasons, prosperous
crops and herds, and the general well being of the tribe. And in the JE texts, we see that Yahweh’s
major concerns are not with making rules and punishing sinners, but with the
second creation myth, cult legends (especially when relating to future centers
of Israelite worship), etiologies ranging from the salt pillars near the Dead
Sea to the foundation of Israel’s claim on Canaan, and fertility issues, where
many women, starting with Sarah, require Yahweh’s divine aid to conceive.
Though the themes of sin and
punishment are secondary in the J and E texts, they are still present, and J
begins to explore these concepts almost immediately. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve have
almost complete freedom. There is only
one rule and it is punishable, supposedly, by death. Joseph Campbell, in The Masks of God:
Occidental Mythology, expresses the idea that having at least one rule was
necessary, enabling God and his creation to have a relationship. Such a relationship requires “an absolute
distinction in being between Creature and Creator, which can be bridged, and
even then but precariously, only by man’s obedience to a particular, quite
specific, schedule of announced rules” (Campbell 109). While the one rule in the garden may have
been necessary for precariously bridging Adam, Eve and God, it also initiated a
series of covenants, laws, sins, and punishments that would eventually, by the
time of the Evangelists, lead to the loss of all free will for humanity. For, “in the case of Adam and Eve, the announced
rule was of a type very popular in fairy tales, known to folklore students as
the One Forbidden Thing,” and as the folklore students can attest, abiding by
this rule is impossible (Campbell 109).
When the couple ate the fruit of “the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil” (Gen. 2.17) and “the eyes of both were opened” (Gen. 3.7), God’s
retribution is immediate. He punishes
the sin by expelling humanity from the garden and, while not limiting their
freedom, arguably he expands it. Due to these events, Adam and Eve’s
descendants now have the ability to discern right from wrong; the ability to
recognize and follow laws, and the ability to choose not to follow those laws. Even more, by the time of the Evangelists,
this violation and its consequences will be seen by Christians to be so severe
that all of humanity has been tainted with sin by it.
Moving from the mythic stories to
the legendary stories in the JE texts, after much sin and much punishment, the
concept of the covenant community is introduced with Abraham. The covenants may have an etiological
background, since contract religions did exist in the region in ancient times. Eliezer Oren, a prominent Middle East
archaeologist, offers the following description in Bruce Feller’s book Walking
the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses:
…from all the records we know, in
the ancient Near East the relationship between gods and man is always
contractual. Every single one of them:
the Hittites, the Mesopotamians, the Assyrians.
And a contract is binding. Every
partner has its obligation. If man
behaves in a certain way, then he assures the prosperity of his family, his
tribe. The gods, meanwhile, must make it
rain and make the land bear fruit. In
this respect, the Bible is beautifully embedded in its surroundings. (73)
Oren continues on to point out that another such written
religious contract has been discovered, “In Mari. Up in Syria, we actually
found similar contracts written down” (Feller 74). In this region, it appears that covenants
were an integral part of a religion’s expression, so the necessity of free
will, tempered by divine retribution for betrayal, was defined in the cultural
traditions responsible for the myths and legends that J and E were
recording. But these early Hebrew
contracts were still fairly basic, dealing more with generalities than with
complex systems of morality and punishment.
In fact, it appears that “the great majority of the laws … were not a
part of life in the days of Moses,” let alone earlier (Friedman 25). The vast lines of law in the later books of
the Pentateuch were not guiding the lives of the Patriarchs or Moses and the
Israelites in the desert. Their
covenants were simple, little more than the worship of Yahweh. Because of this, mortals defined most sins
and mortals handled most punishments. The covenants, being the structure on
which the Jewish faith was based, are also important because they require that
humans have free will. For there to be
any meaning in a mutual contract, humanity must have the freedom to join with
it or to break with it, and the characters of the JE texts exercise great
amounts of free will. They were free to
argue and disagree with Yahweh, and the punishments for their rare
transgressions, though at times terrible, were usually directed only at those
who committed the actual sin, not against the entire covenant community. Also, the covenant creates a situation where
God is not limiting the people’s free will to the terms of the covenant, but
the people take these limitations upon themselves.
The first covenant defining the
chosen people is the Abrahamic covenant.
When describing the covenant to Jacob, in the J text, God stands above
the ladder to heaven and says:
I am the LORD, the God of Abraham
your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you
and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the
earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north
and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the
earth bless themselves. (Gen. 28.13-15)
In exchange for allegiance to Yahweh, Jacob and his
descendants not only receive the Promised Land and great fertility, but they
also will be a blessing among men. In
addition, Yahweh promises to protect Jacob on his journeys. But at this point, Jacob has the freedom to
add his own conditions to his entry into the covenant. In an E text, he says that “the LORD shall be
my God” only “if God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go,
and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I can come again to
my father’s house in peace” (Gen. 28.20-21).
Through the remainder of the JE texts to the creation of the Mosaic
Covenant, this exchange fairly well exemplifies the relationship between God
and his chosen people. The punishment
for breaking this covenant is apparently the loss of the special privileges and
fertility offered by Yahweh, but since no one is shown breaking it, we do not
know if Yahweh holds any special fury for the transgressors. People are relatively free to act on their
own and any sins committed are punished either by God or by humans arbitrarily,
since there is apparently no codified religious law at this point. When free will is manipulated by Yahweh to
move his people along towards the fulfillment of his promises to them, it is
with a soft touch or by acting against his people’s enemies, such as in an E
text, where God repeatedly “hardens” the
Pharaoh’s heart during the plagues, even after, through his own free will, he
declares, “I have sinned against the LORD your God, and against you,” he begs Moses
and Aaron for forgiveness, and he attempts to free the Israelites (Ex.
10.16-20). Earlier, Joseph eases his
brothers’ concern over their ignoble treatment of him by telling them, “do not
be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent
me before you” (Gen. 45.5). Three times
he tells his brothers this, that “it was not you who sent me here, but God”
(Gen. 45.8). In these J lines, the
obvious implication is that there is no free will and that humanity’s fate lies
in God’s will. However, such a reading
seems contrary to the general themes in J’s text. In The Book of J, Harold Bloom agrees
that these lines do not conform with J’s theological philosophy and, while
attributing them to him or her in his commentary, he omits these problematic lines
from his reconstruction of J’s hypothetical scroll. In his commentary, Bloom consistently
maintains the idea that J “does not allow Yahweh to intervene directly in
Joseph’s story” (34). He feels that “we
should be wary of literalizing J: when she says of Joseph that Yahweh was with
him, she is giving us a complex metaphor for Joseph’s persuasiveness”
(235). In these specific lines, Bloom
sees not a message about God’s divine hand pushing humanity towards the
fulfillment of his plan, but a simple literary touch. He writes,
We would lack literary tact if we
confused Joseph’s graceful suggestion that Yahweh sent him to Egypt to prepare
the brothers’ way before them (Gen. 45.5-8) with a serious theological
reflection on J’s part. It is a realistic
touch that the gracious Joseph cannot forbear reminding his brothers that once
they sold him down to Egypt; no one who is human could say well less. (237-38)
And we see in the text another occasion where Joseph gives
credit to God for actions that he knows were his own. On his brothers’ first departure from Egypt,
he secretly “gave orders … to replace every man’s money in his sack” (Gen.
42.25). However, when his brothers
attempt to return the money, Joseph lies to them, stating that “your God and the
God of your father must have put treasure in your sacks for you; I received
your money” (Gen. 43.23). With this
precedent, I agree that these problematic lines do not indicate that J has
suddenly changed his or her worldview.
If this is true, then the primary example in the JE texts of God enforcing
his plan at the expense of an Israelite’s free will disappears from
consideration. Pretty much what is left
is that the covenant members generally do well in life, especially Jacob while
working for Laban and Joseph while working for the Pharaoh, and that they are
fruitful and they multiply. What is left
is an incredible amount of free will. In
fact, in Mesopotamian and Hebrew mythology and legend, the “victory of the principle
of free will, together with its moral corollary of individual responsibility,
established the first distinguishing characteristic of specifically Occidental
Myth” (Campbell 24).
Setting the stage for the trials
and tribulations dealt with by the Deuteronomists, the J and E texts are the
earliest texts dealing with the creation of the Mosaic Covenant. Though the E writer, according to Friedman’s
chart in Who Wrote the Bible?, added three chapters of detailed
law, compared to nearly entire books added by later writers, the J writer
essentially limits his or her covenant commitments to the version of the
Decalogue outlined in Exodus 34.14-28.
These laws and commandments bound the Israelites to the will of God in a
new way and, for the first time, the people become “active participants in the
covenant, agreeing publicly to follow the dictates of God” (Feller 258). They
commit themselves to laws that can be broken, and wrath can be visited upon
them for their transgressions. It didn’t
take long for transgressions to occur, but they still managed to find their way
out of the desert and to take Canaan.
After the establishment of the
Kingdom, and then the Kingdoms, of Abraham’s descendants, the Deuteronomic
writers, or writer, defined their texts by basing the success or failure of
Jewish society on its adherence to the Mosaic Covenant. Free will was still essential to the faith
illustrated by the Deuteronomists, since the survival of the state depended
upon their choice to keep the terms of their covenant with God, though this was
mostly reduced to worshiping Yahweh and not worshiping the idols of “foreign”
gods. In Understanding the Bible,
Stephen L. Harris writes that in Deuteronomy 32, near the end of the
Pentateuch, in a Deuteronomic text:
In truly “winged words,” Yahweh
emphasizes the people’s freedom of choice.
Setting before them “life and prosperity” or “Death and disaster,” he
urges them to choose a life in which they and their descendants can live to
enjoy the love of their God. (154)
The need to freely enter the covenant is reaffirmed after the
conquest of Canaan when Joshua gives his followers a choice.
Now therefore fear the LORD, and
serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods which your
fathers served beyond the River, and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. And if you be unwilling to serve the LORD,
choose this day whom you will serve … but as for me and my house, we will serve
the LORD. (Jos. 24.14-15)
As in the JE texts, free will was critical to the formation
of the covenant, but it could be taken away by God to meet his goals. Unlike the JE texts, in the Deuteronomic
History the goals do not involve the fulfillment of God’s plan; they involve
the punishment of those who sin. One of
the clearest examples of this comes in 2 Samuel 24 when “the anger of the LORD
was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them,” forcing him to
take a census of Israel and Judah, providing God with an excuse to punish
Israel for their transgressions (2 Sam. 24.1).
And God punished the Israelites
often. In the eyes of the
Deuteronomists, this had little to do with Judah and Israel being weak states
surrounded by more powerful empires that often conquered and subjugated them,
but with the people of Judah and Israel constantly breaking the covenant and
worshiping the wrong gods. As Campbell
states, “In the period before the fall of Jerusalem … the stress of prophetic
teaching had been on the requirement to adhere to the statutes of the Lord,
that is to say, live as Jews, not as gentiles” (208). Regardless of this belief, many of the
Israelites, including many of the kings, found themselves assimilating into the
local, non-Hebrew cultures and worshiping other gods along with Yahweh. For these sins, God punishes the Jewish
kingdoms by inspiring their more powerful neighbors to strike. Campbell illustrates this concept by pointing
out the following examples from Jeremiah and Isaiah. The prophet Jeremiah, who, Friedman
speculates, may have worked closely with the Deuteroniomist, announces God’s
intention to punish the Hebrews’ wickedness by sending
For the tribes of the north … and
for Nebuchadrez’zar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them
against this land and its inhabitants … I will utterly destroy them, and make
them a horror, a hissing, and an everlasting reproach. (Jer. 24.8-9)
In 586 BCE, Nebachadnezzar II (r. 604-562 BCE) conquered
Judah, destroyed the Jerusalem temple and forcibly migrated much of the native
population to Babylon, beginning the period of the Babylonian Exile, which
ended after the Babylonians fell to the Persians and their king Cyrus the Great
(Campbell 214). After the release of the Israelites from their captivity by
Cyrus, we see God being credited for a positive development in Jewish
history. Though generally considered to
be a later writer than the Deuteronomists, Second Isaiah give credit to God for
Cyrus’s military achievements, which allowed the Hebrews to return to Jerusalem
and to build the Second Temple. The Lord
tells Cyrus, “whose right hand [he has] grasped, to subdue nations before him,”
that
I will go before you and level the
mountains, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut asunder the bars
of iron … I the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name … I gird
you, though you do not know me. (Is. 45 1-5)
This principle of statewide sin, punishment and redemption,
established by the Deuteronomists, continued on with the Prophets and the later
Hebrew texts. As Campbell states,
“Natural evil (catastrophe) was in the eyes of the prophets the result of human
evil. God, the creator of nature, cannot
be the source of evil … The deeds of man are, therefore, the source of evil in
both society and in nature” (207). While
war may not be a natural disaster, the weakness of the Hebrews compared to
their neighbors meant that they had as much control over their fate in war as
they did when facing an earthquake, or a flood.
Destruction, though at the hands of men, was still destruction inflicted
upon them by God.
According to the Deuteronomists, only one king, Josiah, was written of
as being truly successful in the eyes of the Lord. “Before him there was no king like him, who
turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his
might, and according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after
him,” the Deuteronomists wrote of Josiah, the most glowing judgment of all of
Israel and Judea’s kings (2 Kg. 22.25).
It was also during Josiah’s reign, in 621 BCE (Harris 230), that the
“book of law” was found in “the house of the LORD” (2 Kg. 23.8). This book is believed to be, by most
interpreters, the Book of Deuteronomy itself.
Josiah, after renting his clothes and weeping, “made a covenant before
the LORD to … perform the words of this covenant that were written in this
book; and all the people joined in the covenant” (2 Kg. 23.3). Unfortunately, this tremendous expansion of
the Israelites’ duties meant that abiding by the Mosaic Covenant became a much
more complicated endeavor, and choosing to continue to abide by the covenant
meant choosing to sacrifice a tremendous amount of personal freedom. Maybe it was too complicated since, four
kings later, God struck down Judah.
Israelite sovereignty came to an end and there would not be another
truly independent Jewish state until 1948 CE (Ochsenwald 749). The Jews had exercised their free will too
often and failed to meet their responsibilities to God.
Between the fall of Jerusalem in
587 BCE and the rise of Christianity, the nature of Jewish writing changed
tremendously. The Apocalyptic writings
of the Prophets, the spread of Hellenism, the influence of Persian
Zoroastrianism and many other factors led to the creation of a new world view
where such black and white views of contractual religion, free will and divine
punishment were no longer valid, or relevant, for the Evangelists. Heavily apocalyptic and eschatological in
their theology, the Evangelists create a new covenant where free will is
essentially eliminated, sin is the original state of humanly being, and reward
and punishment is reserved for the afterlife in the spiritual world.
Later Jewish writers attempted to
reconcile themselves with God’s apparent violation of the Davidic Covenant,
allowing for a descendant of David to rule in Jerusalem forever, and the
Evangelists turn to these writings to define their New Covenant. This covenant is inspired by the revisions of
the Davidic Covenant, “which became a promise only that the throne was
eternally available to David’s family … that a descendant of David, a messiah,
might come someday and rule justly” (Friedman 143). They were also influenced by the apocalyptic
writings, where the “vast majority of people walk in spiritual darkness and are
doomed victims of God’s wrath” (Harris 319).
In addition to the ethical dualism of these writings, we also see a
strong turn towards predestination, where “apocalyptists view history as
progressing in a straight line toward a predetermined end” (Harris 319). Because of this, “human efforts, no matter
how well intended, cannot avert the coming disaster or influence God to change
his mind” (Harris 319), a dramatic shift from the Hebrew Bible where we see
many people successfully accomplishing these very things. Predestination was reinforced by the
influence of Eastern mythologies on the increasingly cosmopolitan Hellenistic
world. Where free will was a defining
principle of Western mythology, Eastern spiritualists saw “a fixed world of
fixed duties, roles and responsibilities … There is no concept, or even sense,
of either will or mind as a creative force” (Campbell 6). In Eastern spirituality, there was only the
option of “engagement” or “disengagement,” the latter leading to devastating
consequences. In this, we can even see
imagery that would be reflected, in greater and greater detail, in Christian
texts. Campbell offers this description
of the results of engaging and disengaging in the fixed Eastern cycles:
…the wise … “Scorched,” as we read,
“with the fire of an endless round of birth, death, and the rest- like one
whose head is on fire rushing to a lake-” either retired to the forest, there
to plunge beyond the non-being of being, or else remained in the fire, to be
burned willingly to naught through an unremitting giving of themselves, without
hope, but with compassion, to futility. (191)
A fourth influence on the development of the Christian texts
was the Hellenistic Mystery Religions, where faith was a secret held closely by
the initiates, hidden from the surrounding community. According to Harris, the followers of these
religions “took oaths never to reveal their secrets” (364). As for their influence on the Christian
community, Harris states, “Although scholars question the extent to which these
esoteric cults anticipated Christian rites, in some cases participants shared a
community meal in which their god was invisibly present, perhaps allowing them
to absorb the divine body into themselves and thus partake of the deity’s
immortality” (364). Essentially, in
these religions, we may find the possible roots not only of some of the most
important Christian rituals, but also the roots of the exclusive, almost
secretive, aspects of the New Covenant.
Due to these influences, we do not see humans negotiating with God over
the terms of the New Covenant in the Gospels, nor does it seem to matter if the
majority of the community is even aware of the New Covenant.
Mark, the first Gospel written, and
Matthew, the first Gospel in the canon, provide an interesting look at how
these factors all came together. With
Mark, probably written between 66 and 70 CE, before the Roman destruction of
Jerusalem (Harris 20), “so persuasive is [his] eschatology that some scholars
regard the entire Gospel as a modified apocalypse” (Harris 411) while Matthew
focuses more on linking the new scriptures with the Hebrew ones, “writing in
about 80-85 CE to answer Jewish criticism of Christian claims about Jesus and
to emphasize Jesus’ adherence to the Mosaic Torah” (Harris 401). This also means that Matthew was writing
after the destruction of the Second Temple, when Jews and Christians alike were
struggling to redefine their faith.
In Mark, we see that the New
Covenant, unlike the old one, is not based on free will. First of all, there is
now a dualistic worldview where the mortal world is less important than the
spiritual world and the mortal world is tainted by sin. This sin, in the Christians’ eyes, dates back
to the Garden of Eden, and has been burdening humanity ever since. As Campbell explains,
All mankind
has inherited from the revolt of the first couple a corruption of nature that
has so darkened understanding, so weakened the will, and inclined to evil, that
without the miracle of God’s merciful assumption to himself of the guilt and
punishment due to that sin, the human race would have forever divorced itself
from its proper end in the knowledge, love, service and beatitude of its
creator. (114)
With such complete corruption “divorcing” mankind from their
ability to serve God, any desire they may have, in the Evangelists’ view, to
uphold the covenants is made moot by the burden of their sin. In other words, they may have the freedom of
will to pursue the Lord, but they do not have the capability of exercising this
will because “there is nothing within, according to this view, but a corrupt
creaturely soul, neither godly in itself, nor capable of achieving, of itself,
any relationship with God” (Campbell 114).
Paul discusses this principle in his letter to the Romans, written
before the Gospels in 56 or 57 CE (Harris 20), where he writes,
For I know that nothing good dwells
within me, that is, in my flesh. I can
will what is right, but I cannot do it. (Rom. 7.18)
Because of this massive corruption, the mortal world is
unimportant spiritually. It is a world
of sin and everything in it is secondary to being saved from sin and to
reaching the spiritual plane of God’s kingdom, where true life begins. This mortal realm is so insignificant, when
compared to the spiritual realm, that, in Mark’s gospel, Jesus says, “if your
hand causes you to sin, cut it off: it is better for you to enter life maimed
than with two hands to go to hell, to unquenchable fire” (Mk. 9.43). This seems to imply that, though doomed to
fail, humans can still exercise some degree of free will and that there are
rewards and punishments involved with following the New Covenant correctly.
There is one major change in the
New Covenant, however, that is devastating to the principle of free will. There is no choice on whether or not to enter
into God’s New Covenant with humanity. One can attempt to accept the soul over
the body, the spiritual world over the mortal world, and therefore choose
whether to accept eternal life or unquenchable fire, but this is the only
choice, and even this choice is not necessarily in mortal hands. Since Jesus speaks to the uninitiated only in
parables, it is not clear if the masses are ready or able to understand the
message. At one point Jesus claims,
There is nothing hid, except to be
made manifest; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. If any man has ears to hear, let him hear.
(Mk. 4.22-23)
Though, a few lines earlier, he tells the Apostles, “To you
has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside
everything is in parables; so they may indeed see but not perceive, and may
indeed hear but not understand; lest they turn again, and be forgiven”
(Mk.4.11-12). Considering these things,
much later on after being asked who can be saved, Jesus replies, “With men it
is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God” (Mk.
10.27). It is revealed that God decides
who can be saved and prepares them if they are ready. If God does not choose them, they are not
allowed into the spiritual kingdom. It
is not a choice humans can make for themselves.
Matthew, who may have used Mark’s
Gospel as a pretext, along with a lost collection of Jesus’ sayings labeled the
Q source and other lost sources, focuses more on linking the new scriptures to
those of the Hebrew Bible by quoting heavily from the Septuagint and by “taking
great pains to show that Jesus both taught and observed the principles of the
Mosaic Torah” (Harris 424). However,
“like the Essenes of Qumran, Matthew interprets the Hebrew Bible as applying
exclusively to his group of believers, whom he regards as the true Israel”
(Harris 424). While he shows Jesus
proclaiming that the Mosaic Covenant remains in effect, in the antitheses he
drastically reinterprets many of the laws, though without “contradict[ing]
Torah rules” (Harris 433). Still, in
Matthew’s depiction of Jesus, it is clear that the old covenant is subservient
to the New Covenant. Though Jesus does
say that, “Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and
teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven,” they shall
still be allowed into the kingdom of heaven (Mt. 5.19). Only the truly unrighteous in his eyes, the
“scribes and Pharisees” will be denied (Mt. 5.20). This denial does not mean absolution from the
New Covenant; it means unquenchable fire.
In fact, in the Christian tradition, “at [Jesus’] death … the Mosaic
ritual law, which up to that time had been the vehicle of God’s purpose in this
world, ceased to be so” (Campbell 114).
While much of this doctrine arises from the Pauline Letters, these
passages in Matthew helped legitimize the abandonment of Torah law by the
Christians, and Matthews’s words, ironically, achieved the opposite of their
originally intended effect. Matthew
continues on to dismantle the principle of lex talionis, a concept that
culturally predates even the Mosaic Laws, where it was codified. Jesus says,
You have heard that it was said,
“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist
one who is evil. But if any one strikes
you on the right cheek, turn him the other also. (Mt. 5.38-39)
Although this is an important element when looking at
biblical themes of free will and punishment, this reinterpretation of the
Mosaic Law may have less to do with the evolution of the Christian theology
than with the political realities of the early Christian era. As Harris states:
In ancient society, the lex
talionis served to limit excess revenge: Simply receiving an injury did not
entitle one to kill the offending party.
In the world inhabited by the … members of Jesus’ audience … retaliatory
actions of any kind against those who exploited them automatically led to
severe reprisals, including torture and death. (Harris 434)
Essentially, all aspects of retaliatory punishment have been
taken out of the people’s hands and placed into God’s hands, to be dispensed in
the spiritual world, not in the mortal world.
Since all people are working, whether they know it or not, towards the
fulfillment of God’s plan, only God can truly judge the value of humanity’s
actions on earth. Finally, individuals
no longer suffer due to the failings of the community. Community responsibility to God has been
replaced by individual responsibility to God in the worldview of the
Evangelists, a complete reversal from the Deuteronomists’ views. Still, it is
difficult to talk about the concept of responsibility at all when free will has
been eliminated.
Over the course of hundreds of
years of development and the works of many different writers working in vastly
different societies with vastly different cultural beliefs and political
systems, we find a God that has essentially grown tired of dealing with his
constantly faltering children and has taken away their ability to fail
him. Or we see a religious movement that
has constantly adapted itself to build hope for its faithful when the very foundations
of their belief systems were shattered. For many reasons, as the followers of
Yahweh changed over the years, their ideas on what a god was were transformed,
along with their ideas on how to worship God in general. Essentially, J and E wrote books that would
have been impossible for the Evangelicals to write, and vice versa. Yet today, we still try to view all of these
works as a whole and, by doing so, we are able to experience the remarkable
transformation of a people and a faith over the course of thousands of years.
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold and David Rosenburg. The Book of J. New York: Grove Press, 1990.
Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. New York: Penguin Books, 1964.
Feller, Bruce. Walking
the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses. New York:
Harper Collins, 2001.
Friedman, Richard Elliott.
Who Wrote the Bible? New York: Harper Collins, 1987.
Harris, Stephen L. Understanding the Bible. 6th
ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003.
May, Herbert G. and Bruce M. Metzger, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the
Apocrypha.
New York: Oxford University Press,
Inc., 1977.
Ochsenwald, William and Sydney Nettleton Fisher. The
Middle East: A History. 6th ed. New York:
Mc Graw-Hill, 2004. 
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