Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel. And this week, we are going to continue our purity series, and I'm gonna be talking about a book by Matthew Theissen. It is called Jesus and the Forces of Death, the Gospel's Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First Century Judaism.
[00:00:34] This is a really interesting book and I think is very useful to help us get our minds into the first century concept of ritual purity and what that means, especially because as you know, I have been emphasizing this fact that it's very difficult for us to wrap our minds around. We don't really quite grasp the importance of it or how very crucial this would be to the first century Jew. That is of course, Jesus's world.
[00:01:04] So I will be talking about this book, but I'm also gonna be talking about atonement in general as well as the apocalypse genre and the context of that in comparison to the genre of prophecy. But I hope you'll see how interrelated these topics are and why I am going to be talking about the atonement as well as purification and the genre of the apocalypse.
[00:01:35] Now Theissen's book is really centered on the rejection of many theologians through time of the Jewish ritual purity system and the idea that many scholars have still today, that Jesus was specifically rejecting the Jewish ritual purity system.
[00:01:58] The argument in the book is that that is not the case and that we really need to seat what Jesus is doing and saying within that actual ritual context, and if we don't understand it and appreciate it and take it seriously, as far as the context of Scripture goes, then we're really going to miss out on what Jesus is doing and why.
[00:02:23] Our historical context is really not that Jewish ritual context, and so it makes sense that we struggle to understand it well. It is a thing that we have to wrestle with as we approach Scripture, especially when we do so through a biblical theology lens.
[00:02:41] I mean, the early church and the apostles lived in Jerusalem. It was centered there to begin with, and they still worshiped in the temple. They still kept the festivals and Sabbath and the food laws and although there are ways to see that being adjusted through time, if we're trying to argue for the rejection wholesale of that entire system, then we're really not reading the New Testament well.
[00:03:10] So Matthew Theissen is going to argue that Jesus rescues people from forces of ritual impurity and that he does that through his direct ministry on earth.
[00:03:23] Thiessen says, quote, " I am persuaded that we often misunderstand the gospel writers' depictions of Jesus because we naturally and unthinkingly transfer him and the people of the literary world of the Gospels into our own conceptual world. When coming across something foreign or different, it is natural to translate, often unconsciously, whatever is foreign into something understandable. But modern readers of the Gospels will not rightly understand Jesus apart from a more thorough comprehension of ancient Jewish and non-Jewish ritual purity concerns, precisely because these purity concerns map out the reality of the world as the gospel writers conceived it." End quote.
[00:04:16] So basically what Theissen is talking about is the conceptual world of the first century and before that. This is frame semantics, okay? If we don't understand the whole concept being brought out by the author of the text, we're not gonna understand the message of the text.
[00:04:37] And it's very common for scholars and theologians to pit Jesus against Judaism. Thiessen provides a chart that explains this dichotomy that scholars often have. Presumably, there is the Jewish elite at least, and then there is Jesus on the other side. A lot of theologians will say that the Jewish elite, their core value is God's holiness. But Jesus's core value, on the other hand, is God's mercy. And so these scholars think that the New Testament is presenting a conflation between these two things and that they are opposites or that Jesus is preferring God's mercy over God's holiness.
[00:05:24] These scholars will go on to say that the Jewish elite have a particular mission that is about political control, but Jesus on the other hand, is not concerned about political control in the form of what we see on Earth, but rather he's inaugurating Israel's theocracy in a different way.
[00:05:45] These scholars will say that the implications for the Jewish elite is very exclusive, right? They provide boundary lines and markers so that there are some people who are in and some people who are out, and that is as opposed to Jesus, who is very inclusive and he doesn't have any boundary markers.
[00:06:08] These scholars will also say that the Jewish elite focus very much on the law, whereas Jesus focuses more on Genesis and the prophets.
[00:06:18] Now, while there is some truth to some of this chart, I would say, there is a dichotomy between the Jewish elite and Jesus. I think there is certainly a conflict there, but to map out the whole New Testament as providing this framework as being against God's holiness and things like that, I agree with Theissen that that goes too far.
[00:06:45] Okay, so let me give you a little brief outline of this book. We're not gonna go through the whole thing, so I'm gonna provide a little bit of an outline, and then I'm going to get into some of the specific details that I find really interesting.
[00:07:01] So Theissen starts out in chapter one with a really useful chapter. He talks about the distinction between the holy and the profane and the pure and the impure. He lays out some different types of impurity. He talks about priests and the relationship of priests with these categories.
[00:07:22] Chapter two goes into the early context of Jesus in his early life, his baptism and his family's law observance, including purity rights. And Theissen argues that Jesus' family was committed to the temple and to Torah observance.
[00:07:42] Then chapters three, four, and five are on three general sources of impurity. This is kind of the core of the argument. Theissen focuses on lepers. He then talks about genital discharges, as well as corpses.
[00:08:00] And he describes how Jesus destroys the source of these impurities. And so it's not just about removing the impurity, but it is about removing the source of the impurity itself. And Jesus embodies a "contagious power of holiness that overwhelms the forces of impurity."
[00:08:22] Interestingly enough, he also gets into some Sabbath context as well as food laws. I don't know if we'll get into any of that today, but this book is a very easy read. It's very accessible. It does provide a lot of context. It provides footnotes and things like that. So it is a scholarly book, but it's not a scholarly book that is outside the realm of most people's reading comprehension. So that's why I chose to introduce this book and talk about it.
[00:08:52] Oh, right. And another thing that Theissen gets into is demonic impurity. So there's going to be divine council worldview points that we'll get into today in our conversation. We'll talk about unclean spirits and a couple of different options for those. I know for those who follow the divine council worldview information you're gonna think of that in a certain way and it's gonna connect back to Genesis six.
[00:09:18] It does not have to be an either or. I mean, yes, there's the Nephilim answer, but we also have to pay careful attention to ancient exorcisms at large, and the point of the ritual system, and holiness and purity is the removal of anything that can't stand in God's presence, right?
[00:09:42] So we have to understand a whole lot of things in order to understand why they're called unclean spirits. It's not just a matter of reading First Enoch and saying, oh, here's our explanation, now we understand it fully because that is not the case. We have to understand the actual point of the ritual system, at least to some degree.
[00:10:05] I don't think we ever really quite get there fully because a lot of these things are steeped so far back in history and it's not like people were coming up with systematic explanations for it. They did come up with explanations at times, but I think a lot of times it may just have been the case that people were doing these rituals because they had been doing them for hundreds or even thousands of years.
[00:10:34] And I've described how health and disease is not seen to be caused by evil spirits or Satan.... outside of God's sovereignty in the Bible. And that's an important point. It's a very distinctive point in the Bible as compared to the ancient Near East at large. In the Bible, it's not the kind of control that others in the ancient world would presume. And here's a really hard point. There does not seem to be a single answer as to why these are called unclean spirits. The mere general logic of forces of sickness being not part of God's holiness and thus in need of purification, is really another reason for the label "unclean," because these unclean spirits were possessing people, and in that possession, they were affecting their health, right? So it's not really that far of a step from just the general ancient Near Eastern conception of disease and spirits and all of that.
[00:11:42] Also, the fact that they demonized are sick and not whole, and that they're related to places of death, they're hanging out in tombs. Those are also reasons to call these spirits unclean. Again, this does not undo any of the Nephilim connection. If we argue only for Nephilim answers, we may miss the core meaning of impurity and the ancient context of exorcism that is related to impurity.
[00:12:14] Also, just because the Bible is not the same as the ancient Near East, according to exorcism and ritual, it doesn't mean they did not have a connection here. The polemic of Leviticus against other ritual systems does not undo everything in all of those systems fully. It just reorients it.
[00:12:37] Now, Thiessen's basic conclusion is that Jesus' life and his mission was connected to his death and resurrection. I mean, that should be obvious, but a lot of times in our theology, we separate out these things as if they have nothing to do with one another.
[00:12:56] Thiessen says, quote , " Jesus's skirmishes with these various ritual impurities, all forces of death, as I shall argue, foreshadow his crucifixion in which death takes over Jesus's body. At the very point where death seems to have overwhelmed Jesus, Israel's God raises him from the dead, setting him eternally triumphant over even death itself." End quote.
[00:13:28] If you're on social media or you pay attention to a lot of academic conversation or the conversation between the academics and the lay people church, you might have heard about this book, Lamb of the Free. It's a very hot topic at the moment, and I'm not gonna get into it specifically here.
[00:13:50] I'm doing a deep dive of it in my biblical theology community, On This Rock. So for those who are interested in that deep dive study, I'm formally kicking it off here in January 2026, although even if you come in later, the material is still gonna be there.
[00:14:11] We're gonna be doing Zoom meetings, we're gonna be just doing conversation. I'm going to be providing visuals and charts and as much information as I can to help people get through that book. It's a hard read. It's very difficult to get through for a lot of people if you don't already have your head in those spaces and kind of understand part of what he's talking about.
[00:14:34] Now, the Lamb of the Free is a very anti PSA book, and by PSA I'm talking about penal substitutionary atonement. Andrew Rillera is very clear that he wants to take down the idea of PSA in the church, and so I'm presenting Thiessen's book as a little bit of a bridge to get to that point of understanding where Rillera is also coming from.
[00:15:03] Although I really want to be clear that Jesus and the Forces of Death is not an anti PSA book. In fact, there's a little bit of drips and drops in it, which indicate that there is still a PSA understanding of the author. So he's not trying to take anything down or remove any theology that is normal in the evangelical church.
[00:15:29] But nonetheless, I do think that understanding this book is going to help you understand the lamb of the free. because a lot of times people who get PSA yanked out from underneath them, they don't know what to do about what Jesus did and Jesus' mission, why Jesus had to die, what is atonement for and what is atonement about and all of those kinds of things.
[00:15:56] And so I just suggest that for those who want an answer as to why did Jesus have to die if it's not because of penal substitutionary atonement? This is a good book to look at because it gives you a framework to still see that Jesus' death actually accomplished something. There was purpose and a logic behind it. There is intentionality there.
[00:16:22] So Lamb of the Free is very specific about focusing on the atonement technically, like the Levitical system and the atonement there, whereas Jesus and the Forces of Death. It's talking about the ritual system in general, so there's crossover in the two books, but they really are very different as well. They are complimentary to understand each other in, I think.
[00:16:51] Now I will just take a moment here to give a little bit of a layout. One of the most important things to understand in the quote unquote atonement debate is to understand that the word that is underlying our English word atonement in books like Leviticus, so where you see atonement in the Old Testament, it's talking about something very specific, and that is related to purgation or purification, usually purification of sacred space.
[00:17:28] This is why we have the context of Leviticus, because Leviticus is the beginning of the tabernacle, and so people have to understand how we're going to be doing atonement or purifying that sacred space. So it's a very technical term that is related to the ritual system.
[00:17:51] But there's another use of the word atonement in English that is not always, or even necessarily connected to this very technical atonement/ purgation word in the Old Testament.
[00:18:09] Basically, it was a made up English word to describe the relationship of humanity and God in Jesus. It's literally at- one- ment. So Jesus makes people and God at one or creation and God at one, right? This is a story of reconciliation and there's a lot of things that go under the atonement, or at- one-ment, concept that have nothing to do with the ritual purity system and purification of sacred space.
[00:18:48] So it gets very complicated to talk about these things because we are using the same English word for different concepts, and when we talk about purgation or purification in the sense of atonement, that might not have anything to do with some of the ways that Jesus provided reconciliation for the world and creation.
[00:19:12] Theissen isn't really going and explaining all of that. But it's a good framework to have in mind. And if you haven't heard of it before, I feel like it's one of those things that it's really helpful to hear multiple times in different places to kind of wrap your mind around it. So anyway, if you're interested in joining my Lamb of the Free study group, come and join us at On this Rock.
[00:19:40] The specific study is for the paid members, which it's only $5 a month, and again, I'm gonna be doing in-person Zoom meetings that will be recorded so that you can all watch it later if you can't make the Zoom meetings. We'll be talking about the book, but also we'll be talking about critiques of the book and we'll be talking about problems that I have with the book and that other people have with the book.
[00:20:07] So I think it's gonna be a really good study. It's going to be very deep, very much into the weeds, but I hope that it will be accessible to all of you. If you don't understand all the technicalities, it's fine. That's why we're here. That's why we're gonna walk through it together slowly, intentionally, and with a lot of data behind it.
[00:20:31] And if you have questions, come on over and ask me. I would love to hear them. I hope that what I've been talking about on the podcast for quite a while now is also going to be helpful. Simply understanding, on some level, the logic of holiness and life and impurity and common and impurity and death, that should really get you a lot of the way to understanding Leviticus.
[00:21:00] And we're going to be entering into a new year where a lot of people are gonna start right back at the beginning of their Bible reading. And this year, I don't want you to skip over Leviticus. I really don't. I think you can do it. I think you will love the book of Leviticus once you understand some of this context and you see it so deeply embedded in that book.
[00:21:24] Okay, so before I get more into the specifics of the book, I do want to ask, how does all of this connect to the book of Genesis in particular, because this is, after all, Genesis Marks the Spot.
[00:21:39] Well, I think obviously it connects in the start of death, but we also have the context of childbirth and childbirth is going to connect into death in some interesting ways that we'll probably talk about today. We're gonna talk about childbirth in Genesis, but also childbirth and impurity in the second temple period.
[00:22:01] And when Adam and Eve are kicked outta the garden, they're kicked out of the first sacred space that they are familiar with.
[00:22:09] And of course, the idea of Sabbath is very much from Genesis. Theissen does get into that context as well.
[00:22:19] Now, we might ask, as I've done several times before, if and how the second temple period and New Testament logic fits, or doesn't, within the context of Genesis?
[00:22:34] Depending on how you see the dating and the writing of Genesis. But it's calling back to the very beginning. So we should presume a difference between the New Testament context and the context of Genesis.
[00:22:49] Now, there's two mean options here. The first option is that we take Genesis as being written by Moses. So we have Mosaic authorship, and in that option, the context of people who understand Genesis is still going to be in the shadow of Leviticus. Leviticus and Genesis are very related.
[00:23:15] Okay, so our second option for understanding Genesis and the context of it is within the shadow of the exile. Both of these options, the Mosaic authorship option and the exile context, mean that impurity and consequences are integral to the core of Genesis.
[00:23:38] The second temple period went a good deal beyond the original Genesis context, whichever that was. But generally it did not contradict it. It's just that the specific speculation within second temple literature, we can't necessarily presume that that comes into play in the actual Genesis text, so we do need to take some caution as to very specific things there.
[00:24:09] The problem with this speculation in the second temple period as well as today, is that many speculative ideas can and do technically fit within a wider logic of something in the past, but speculation and even our interpretation is not inspired. However, it can and is often helpful to our situations and our perspectives and the way that we're thinking of it. We just need to really be careful to distinguish our interpretation with the actual text and intention of what God is revealing.
[00:24:49] Hopefully those are one and the same, right? That our interpretation is what God is wanting to reveal to us. But maybe sometimes that might be revelation to us in time versus all the way across time, meaning that our interpretations might be so time bound and current- context- specific that they might not really be helpful to another person in Christianity at another time.
[00:25:25] Now, what is truly interesting to me is how Genesis does not have an overabundance of emphasis on things we'd kind of expect, like ritual impurity. But there's really good reasons for that. There is no, or at least not very much, dedicated sacred space in the way that we have in Leviticus, right? Now, I would say that Genesis is all "proto." It sets up things to come, and so it doesn't have to have all of the elements of the later things.
[00:26:03] In fact, next week I'm going to try to release my conversation I had on my community about Genesis and atonement.
[00:26:12] But let's get into this book. Let's talk about the two separate binaries of the holy and the profane, or the common, and the pure and impure. One of the important things to keep in mind is that holy is not the same thing as pure and profane or common is not the same as impure. There is not necessarily crossover in these things, but they do relate to one another.
[00:26:44] Thiesen does say that, quote, " The category of the holy pertains to that which is for special use." End quote.
[00:26:55] And I'll agree with that if we're only talking about things in creation. But as I've said before, I would like to specify that holy is not just things that are set apart, but that it is actually embedded in the nature of God himself.
[00:27:14] So things and creations can be in the realm of holy because they are set apart. But I don't like using "set apart" as a definition of holy, because that's really only for creations that are holy and so "set apart" defines holy in terms of creation, whereas I think that holy should be defined strictly in the category of who God is, which is beyond creation.
[00:27:46] Now we have these two words. We have profane and common. We might think of the word profane as being something like that's really wicked and bad, right? And that's not what this word means in a technical scholarly sense. That's why we have the word common . Something that is profane just means that it's not holy.
[00:28:09] Now, the common or the profane can be pure or impure, but it can also be the case that things that are holy here on earth can be pure or impure. Now, how can a holy thing be impure? Well, this is why things need the act of purification or purgation or atonement because they do get sullied, but that doesn't make them not holy. It just makes them impure and in need of cleansing.
[00:28:43] Thiessen gives a really helpful chart in his book that has four separate quadrants, so you can think of a box that has four blocks in it. On the top left, we have holy and pure. On the top right, we have holy and impure. On the bottom left, we have profane and pure. And on the bottom right, we have profane and impure.
[00:29:09] So everything that exists can be found within this quadrant. If it's holy and pure, then that means it can be in sacred space with no problem. But if something is holy and impure, then it's going to require purification.
[00:29:28] But on the bottom part of the chart, something that is common or profane can also be pure. But that doesn't mean it belongs in holy space because it doesn't, because it's only common. But you still want profane or common things to be pure, because there's implications and things that happen when they are profane and impure. So we will see various things that have nothing really directly to do with sacred space, they also are in the need of purification at times when they become impure.
[00:30:06] Now, this pretty much well establishes a set of boundaries. Where does something belong? If it belongs in a particular place, does it need cleansing or not?
[00:30:19] Now, as I said, Theissen is writing this book in relation to other people who contrast compassion and mercy versus the idea of ritual purity and saying, well, we don't need to worry about purity anymore because Jesus is all about mercy.
[00:30:38] And that's really a false dichotomy because these two things are not opposites, although they could be related at times. But purity is about mercy in a sense, because it teaches people how to have the presence of God in their midst, and it points to the defeat of those things at their core, and that defeat is fully revealed in the person of Jesus.
[00:31:07] Okay, so another thing that I didn't particularly like about this book is that Theissen talks about two types of purity. And this is very common in scholarly circles. And he kind of has a reason for doing this, but they're not really biblical categories.
[00:31:26] So scholars like to talk about ritual purity and moral purity as if they're two separate things.
[00:31:34] Now, there are some distinctive differences here, it's just that I don't think the Bible presents categories like this. Let me give you another chart that Theissen gives for the ritual and the moral.
[00:31:48] The ritual category is unavoidable. These are things that you become impure just throughout the course of normal life, and you're pretty much going to have something to do with these things at some point in time. They're unavoidable sources of impurity in life. But on the moral side of things, those are avoidable because they're attached to behavior.
[00:32:13] Ritual impurity supposedly has to do with a natural substance like you're touching a corpse, or you're sick, or you had intercourse, or something like that. Moral impurity comes from action or behavior, as I said.
[00:32:29] Ritual impurity is communicable. You can pass it along to other people, whereas moral impurity is not.
[00:32:39] Ritual impurity can be washed away. Moral impurity requires atonement slash punishment. So this is that PSA context I told you was in the book. He doesn't shy away from it. It's still here. But this is a really important point. Like if ritual and moral impurity are not actual biblical categories, then we can't also make these two different distinctions either.
[00:33:09] Now, ritual impurity is not an abomination, it's never described as an abomination. Whereas moral impurity is. Ritual impurity is not about sin. It has nothing to do with sin. Whereas moral impurity does have something to do with sin.
[00:33:27] And so if I were going to distinguish these two categories that I don't think are categories at all, but there are again distinctions because a woman giving birth is not going to be seen in the same light as somebody who is committing a sin, and that's why they're impure. So I think there are distinctive differences here, and I can appreciate that he wants to focus his book on ritual impurity because we focused so much on the moral side of things in Christianity.
[00:34:05] And so he's trying to show something that we don't see. And so I get that point and I can appreciate that point very much. But I really do think that these two categories are more connected than most people suggest.
[00:34:21] And I also think we make sin out to be the main thing that is being dealt with. And that's really just not the case throughout the book of Leviticus.
[00:34:31] Now Theissen draws upon the work of Jacob Milgrom in his idea of death logic. So all of these things that he's gonna be talking about in the book, like leprosy, the loss of life in blood or semen, and death itself, all have something to do with this death logic. Okay? And that's why there's a problem here. That's why these things make somebody impure.
[00:35:00] I think that this really is rather speculative because we don't have anything in the ancient world that lays all of this out in some analytical fashion. But I will say that the way that this all connects to exorcism rituals and demonic forces is really very important for us to see.
[00:35:22] So we have the quote unquote death logic, which is one way of putting it. This is just me kind of speculating here myself, because we do have a kind of binary. We have on the one hand, our holy God who wants to dwell with us, but he can't dwell with us, or there's problems with him dwelling with us because of certain things going on that prevent that, right? So he's not gonna dwell in something that's common, that is not dedicated to him. He's not gonna dwell in something that is not clean.
[00:35:58] And look, this is just the logic of the ritual system. I'm not saying that this is some constraint upon God that he has some actual ritual rules that he has to follow somewhere. This is just the way that they were thinking at the time. We need to understand the internal logic and the internal thinking of these things in order to grasp them.
[00:36:22] One way of describing this other than focusing on life and death is focusing on God versus forces that are against God. God is holy, but the profane or the common, it's not anti-God; there's no suggestion that the common all has to become holy in the Levitical ritual system. There's something wrong with other things that truly are against God and his creation.
[00:36:53] Another way of talking about it, I think, would be order versus chaos.
[00:37:00] And we focus a lot on death because honestly, we know the end of the story, don't we? As Christians, we know the end of the story is bodily resurrection. That's the purpose that has been from the beginning.
[00:37:15] And I would argue that the people of the Old Testament, at least early on, the people of the Torah, did not understand the goal of bodily resurrection. I'm not saying that resurrection doesn't follow from the stuff in the Torah. Originally, though, there's a progression of thought that leads up to that. It doesn't contradict anything in the Torah. The Torah leads to it, but that does not mean that we should presume that everybody back in the day was thinking the same way that we are.
[00:37:49] So I don't think it's wrong to see this life versus death dichotomy here in the whole system and the logic. It's just that eternal life for the person in the Torah would have a different framing in their minds.
[00:38:03] And as I said, these are just multiple options to categorize this, and we don't have to just pick one. It doesn't have to be an either or. Life versus death is a really good way to look at it because it is practical.
[00:38:20] Righteousness versus sin, justice versus injustice. All of those are dichotomies that I think are linked together. It's just that death is more physical and evident and practical, and I think that the ritual system is very practical for the ancient world.
[00:38:42] And admittedly, it can be hard to fit things like sickness and healing into all of the categories I just gave you. Death takes everyone, no matter your state of righteousness or worship. So there's also that.
[00:38:58] However, I do really want to point out the worldview of God versus the gods, like the divine council worldview. I don't think that the Old Testament's providing exorcism in Leviticus. It's not giving us a very apparent polemic against it, but surely people would still connect those bad things to bad spirit beings because this was just the thought process of the ancient world.
[00:39:26] I do wanna say though, that we're kind of getting a little bit systematic with all of these ideas, and I think that systematic explanations either fail or they are weak in some way. I don't think the divine council worldview is a system. But it's a logical conception and it's a very narrative, which is helpful because I think most of the way that people think is in a narrative function, and that's why we do need to have some sort of internal logic that we understand with all of this, because all narratives have internal logic. All worldviews have internal logic. So it is important to look at these things even if we shouldn't push it too far.
[00:40:14] Why is childbirth and death connected? Like how would those things be connected? Because to us, when we think of childbirth, we think of that as being one of the prime instances of bringing forth life and not bringing forth death.
[00:40:33] So if the Levitical system is focused on things that are associated with death, then why does a woman who gives birth to a child, why does she need purification? Although honestly, if you ask me and you try to think like an ancient person, well, first of all, how often would childbirth end in death? It would happen so often that I can really see why these two things would in fact be connected.
[00:41:04] And in fact in one of the texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls, it says, quote, "Children come through the waves of death." End quote. So we have specific connection here between childbirth and death. And so it is not just a systematic conception of what we see in the logic of the Levitical system. People were literally thinking this. And the ancient Near East broadly made that connection as well in other texts outside of Scripture and the context of Judaism.
[00:41:40] Now, why would intercourse make somebody impure? Well, not all seed grants life, so is that seed dying in a sense?
[00:41:50] Another option might be, rather than looking at childbirth and death as connected, it just might also be about mortality in general. If you have a beginning as well as an end, then those two things are connected.
[00:42:07] If the purpose is God with us, then that's the logic in a nutshell, really. So we have life with God and thus we do have a matter of life and death, whatever, and however people are thinking of life and death.
[00:42:26] Now, of course, in the Old Testament, we have priests themselves who profane holy space. And in this case, I am using the word profane in a negative way. If you treat the holy like the common, then you are doing damage to it. But the answer was not to get rid of the system, but to actually maintain the proper boundaries.
[00:42:50] And this is moral in the sense that it's all about rightly ordered worship. Idolatry, and behavior, as I've described, are connected. Idolatry is a perversion and a desecration. Idolatry and cults of death and cults of sex and curses, including disease and death.
[00:43:14] Really the ancient world had no separation between all of these things, right? Your worship life connected to your practical life in a very real way.
[00:43:24] But what we have in the Levitical system is that the ritual removed the effect, but did not remove the cause of these things.
[00:43:34] Something I don't think that Theissen points out himself is that healing has to happen before the purification. So if you're sick, you have to be healed before you can be purified, and that would be the same with a moral impurity. You first have to repent and make restitution, and then we have the purification or the atonement being made.
[00:44:02] They're not one and the same. Like there's very few things in Leviticus that have to do with intentional sin. There are a couple of things, but all of the things that happen require restitution where possible. So if something is done inadvertently or not, and restitution needs to happen, then that has to happen before the atonement or purification can be made.
[00:44:31] So it's not like those two things are the exact same thing because they're not, you have to have things rightly ordered, whether that be your health or relationships before atonement can happen.
[00:44:45] Now I said I would get into a little bit of the context of apocalyptic literature here. And the reason I decided this was because Theissen talks about the apocalyptic transformation of the Jewish world. And if you only think of apocalypse as end of world stuff, boy do you have some interesting things to learn.
[00:45:07] Because even though I don't think that the Levitical system and Jesus's sacrifice are quite connected in the way that a lot of evangelicals will connect to them, that doesn't mean there's no connection and it doesn't mean that Jesus wasn't doing something new. So let's take a moment and talk about the difference between apocalyptic genre and the genre of prophecy.
[00:45:34] There's a lot of evangelical scholarship on this, a lot of current stuff coming out on it. A lot of it has to do with Pauline studies and things like that. So I'm not any kind of an expert on all of this stuff, but I have noticed that this emphasis on apocalyptic literature, it kind of seems like a lot of times evangelicals are taking it in a bit of weird direction. It is like a lot of these apocalyptic scholars see the problems within evangelicalism and they're trying to fix the issues internally instead of just going back to the original source, the Bible, and understanding things in a biblical theology way.
[00:46:21] That's kind of why I do my podcast, because I'm not against systematic theology or all evangelical theology, certainly, or certainly not evangelical scholarship. But there is a sense where a lot of people are really embedded in that tradition and they can't see outside of it. So they're trying to fix problems within it without just dropping the whole system, even just for a moment, going back to the original source, understanding it in context, and then going back to our evangelical theology and saying, is any of this even helpful anymore? My position currently is that biblical theology and the understanding of progressive or increased revelation through time and the distinctive differences of genre means that it's not necessary to presume a whole apocalyptic Paul- kind of idea that a lot of people are trying to get to.
[00:47:23] I think they're dealing with very specific evangelical problems that really they don't need to even deal with because you just go back to the source and see what that says, first of all, rather than starting with our evangelical theology. Maybe we just need to deal with the thing at its root and ditch the false systematic theology categories sometimes.
[00:47:48] But anyway, I want to give you kind of a big picture view. Again, I'm not an expert, but I think the difference in genre and audience in particular between apocalyptic literature and prophecy, I think it's really clear if you look at it.
[00:48:07] Apocalypse is, again, it's not strictly end of the world stuff, although it often does have something to do with it. Apocalypse just means something like revelation, and of course, oh, does that mean all revelation is apocalyptic? No, because then the word becomes meaningless, so let's not make the word meaningless. There is a distinctive genre that we see happen within time, either late Old Testament times or just strict second temple period. There's an obvious genre here.
[00:48:43] Now, one of the interesting things about apocalyptic literature is that it really kind of contrasts or steps away from the idea of history. There's a lot of talk about this age versus the age to come, and those two ages aren't always related. It's like the apocalyptic writer looks around himself and says, huh, this really isn't going the way that I thought it would. So maybe it just means that all of that history is just going to be done away with, and God's going to break into the world and do something amazing. And it's all going to be on account of God and not strictly on account of the course of history.
[00:49:31] Now again, I do want to say that what I'm presenting here is pretty broad, and you're gonna be able to find exceptions to anything that I say. Okay? So this is just, I'm talking generally, I'm giving you a broad overview of the genre. It doesn't mean that all apocalyptic literature has nothing to do with actual history and salvation history in particular, but it does present this idea that God is going to have to put his foot down and say, okay, fine. I'm gonna do something here. I will do it directly. And I'm going to break into history in order to do that.
[00:50:14] Okay, so that is, as opposed to the prophetic genre, and we've talked a little bit about that lately, we've talked about the prophetic lawsuit. Prophecy is not just foretelling events. It can involve those things because foretelling events is how signs are given so that people can tell that the prophet is legitimate.
[00:50:39] Prophecy is very embedded into the current state of the people. The people are in rebellion, and so they're getting warnings about the consequences that are going to be coming. A prophet is trying to correct the people, trying to bring the people back into covenant relationship. a prophet is a covenant enforcer.
[00:51:02] So the genre of prophecy is towards the people of God who are in rebellion, or if they're not in rebellion, they're caught up in the people who are in rebellion, and that is the faithful remnant who will last through time. Right? So it's a very current, very historical genre, very embedded into salvation history.
[00:51:28] And the consequences and prophecies are not about God necessarily miraculously breaking into history in a way that is abnormal to history. But rather it's God working within the state of history in pretty normal ways. But the prophet can foretell an event. That event will come to pass, and that will prove the prophetic lawsuit.
[00:51:56] All right, so here's one of the differences between apocalyptic literature and prophecy. Apocalyptic literature is often about visions and things like that, whereas a prophet is a man standing there giving you the word of God directly.
[00:52:12] So Revelation or apocalypse is not focused on covenant violation necessarily, but it's often about signs and proof and evidence and hope given that the wicked are going to be destroyed and the faithful will be saved. So it's a genre meant for hope and the audience is people who are faithful. The message is justice for the people of God being unfairly oppressed.
[00:52:44] So you can see how there's a lot of crossover between apocalyptic literature and prophecy, but prophecy, again, its audience is people in rebellion or people who are caught up with others who are in rebellion. They need to be called back to faithful covenant living.
[00:53:04] An apocalypse is addressed to an audience who is faithful and in need of restoring justice against their enemies. There is forgiveness offered for those who repent. Wrath is for those who refuse and keep oppressing God's people.
[00:53:23] So absolutely there's crossover in both of those things, but they are different. The mere fact that we have different audiences gives us a different genre and a different focus. One is warning. The other is more aligned with hope.
[00:53:40] And just like with fire and glory, just because things look the same or look similar doesn't mean that they are. There is nuance found in the whole conceptual frame, not just a limited definition or one aspect of it. People making too many speculations and over connecting the dots, disrespecting genre, and different authors.
[00:54:04] Well, we have systematics with the same kind of problem.
[00:54:09] Another idea we'll be talking about in the future is whether or not the lake of fire and the refiners fire are one and the same. Are they the same or are they different? Do they have the same target? Do they have the same purposes? And I am gonna suggest there is a difference, although again, there's gonna be overlap, but we'll talk about that in the future.
[00:54:32] So some of the focus I would suggest looking at in relation to the genre of apocalyptic literature versus prophecy is just what I laid out here. If the New Testament is at all apocalyptic, and I believe that it is, then we need to understand it in its day versus within the frame of later eschatological systems which don't really understand this level of nuance.
[00:54:58] Now look, here's the difference again in eschatology. Prophetic eschatology fully expects the kingdom of God to arise out of this world within the course of history. And apocalypse despairs about the world and despairs about history, and has God breaking in in a way that is more direct and not quite so historical.
[00:55:23] In fact, it can sound downright gnostic at times with talking about this evil age versus the age to come. And we can see how the Jews may have felt after their exile, or at least amidst the return of the exile. They're like, Hey, we fixed things. We obey the law. We got rid of idolatry, so why aren't we in the messianic age? They couldn't quite grasp what was going on, so they thought, well, maybe God just has to act directly.
[00:55:55] Now, my suggestion when it comes to Jesus and his first coming is that it is very apocalyptic as well as his second coming will also be. It is a literal breaking in of God into this world.
[00:56:09] But we discount the deep aspect of Jesus that is Jesus the prophet. The apocalypse is God breaking in, but he is breaking in within real history and a real person. So I just find that really interesting and very helpful to frame this whole conversation in. The new revelation and the mystery that is revealed in Christ in the works of Paul, is focused on how all of creation, gentiles included, is reconciled, and how the view of the elect and the chosen expands in ways previously not seen.
[00:56:49] Dr. Heiser, for instance, talked about Messianic expectation and how that was not seen. And how really people could not have guessed what was going on, and that there was reasons for that. It had to be hidden so that those things could not be stopped. And that's prophecy, but you can't just add up all the prophecy and arrive at the Messiah.
[00:57:13] So part of what's going on with Jesus is truly apocalyptic. It's truly a revelation of God that was not seen before and could not have been anticipated. It is literally revealed, as in being unveiled, previously unseen.
[00:57:31] Now the question is, how do you trust new revelation? Well, I mean, within Christianity, we trust that because of the person of Jesus. It's not like you can just compare Jesus with Muhammad or Joseph Smith or even Buddha or Moses and come away with not seeing a difference there.
[00:57:51] There's a reality of what Jesus did and the resurrection and everything that he did was revelatory. It was shocking and it was true revelation. People did not know it before but it is all in alignment with Torah. It doesn't change anything, but it adds to it.
[00:58:09] We wanna make sure we aren't trusting in speculation, but the life and work of Jesus is not theory and it's not speculation. I also want you to note the importance of ritual practice. Those who are embodying true practice, It becomes evident because of the proof in the pudding. Those being changed via sanctification, purification in the spirit via discipleship in Christ.
[00:58:38] False participation and false ritual and false worship and false embodiment is also clear. Like it's not like true mystical experiences don't happen. We have Jewish Kabbalah, we have pagan practices, and those things can fake it to a point, but it doesn't create, and it doesn't transform us into the image of Christ.
[00:59:03] And so all biblical theology themes, I think, are centered on the same thing, the gospel and work of Christ Jesus, active in the world, in his life, in the church, in the body of Christ.
[00:59:19] One thing I do wanna talk about before I end here today is the idea of demonic impurity. Again, I'm not gonna get into all of the specifics brought out in the book, but again, if we understand the context of demons and i that doesn't just rely on the book of first Enoch.
[00:59:39] First enoch is an apocalyptic work. It applies to what we're talking about today, certainly, but the idea of the unclean goes far beyond what Genesis six gives us.
[00:59:51] And so I'm gonna say it. We need to go beyond one Enoch to understand this context fully. Are we allowing the various voices of Scripture to speak or are we only insisting on our favorite text and our favorite explanation? I mean, certainly that can be part of it, but we need to be flexible enough to realize that in biblical theology, it's not a simple systematic answer because we have various contexts.
[01:00:22] We have different writers, and even within Judaism of Jesus' day, people were thinking different things. Not everyone had the same framework of importance.
[01:00:35] Now the text and ex and its context provides information. So we should be careful not to treat it like a scientific taxonomy as we would get today, perhaps. Again, all of those specific details do not have to be the thing that we should focus on, but these things do help us understand individual authors in individual contexts, of which there are many at the time.
[01:01:04] We have Josephus, for instance, who talks about demons and evil spirits. We have later rabbinic context, which draws upon some of this material, and that talks about demons influencing people to sin. We don't get that context in the New Testament, by the way.
[01:01:22] And so the rabbinic context is connecting the tabernacle and the Shekinah glory to the eradication of evil spirits directly. Leviticus doesn't do that. The New Testament doesn't seem to do that. But we do get that idea eventually. And that's fascinating because of how it connects back into that ancient Near Eastern context. The New Testament does not have demons tempting people, except for Satan, but they do affect people's bodies. And that's important to note because of that context of impurity.
[01:02:01] The gospel of Mark, right at the start of Jesus's public ministry, Jesus encounters the demonic. We have the impure spirit versus who? The Holy One of God, and that Holy One will immerse people in the Holy Spirit. That's what we see described at Jesus's baptism, and the idea that people will be purified by that holy fire.
[01:02:29] Jesus's exorcism of demons was a " preeminent sign of the coming of God's kingdom and of the end of Satan's rule over humanity." End quote.
[01:02:41] And that's why an apocalyptic understanding meets real historical prophecy.
[01:02:48] God breaks in, in real history, and Satan is described as the god of this world, right? That's a very apocalyptic- sounding phrase. In fact, the demon's response to Jesus, Have you come to torment us before the time? As in, they thought that they had free reign in this age or this world, and Jesus shows them otherwise.
[01:03:14] There is so much more I could say about this book, about the particular context that I'm sure you're all very interested in for the demonic and impurity and all of that. But I will just point you to the book for now as I wrap up the episode today.
[01:03:30] What's really fascinating to me is all of these interrelated concepts that for us, it's really hard to wrap our minds around. The idea of death and sickness and evil spirits and sin, and how all of those things are deeply, deeply connected.
[01:03:50] Again, referencing Andrew Rillera's book, Lamb of the Free, and this idea of penal substitutionary atonement. Now, PSA has the idea that it is God who is inflicting death and punishment and justice in all of these things, and certainly within the spectrum of Scripture, where we have the idea of God as sovereign over all things, even over the entire spiritual realm. And that includes the bad guys too.
[01:04:21] We do have this idea that, you know, there's a connection there, but the ancient world, even within biblical context, they see a very distinctive difference between the good and the bad, the pure, the impure, the holy, the common.
[01:04:38] And so when Jesus comes and he's addressing all of these very specific concerns that people would have, and Jesus himself is overturning the causes of things. Then basically that means that Jesus isn't undoing the ritual system. He is affirming it. He has to be affirming it in order to overturn it in the way that he is, but he undoes the problems at their core.
[01:05:07] Now, of course, we still die, don't we? We still have physical death. We still fall sick. We still sin even, and so it's not just a one and done event. I will be talking in the future about the church and its place in all of these things as well. What does it mean that we are the focus of God's holiness now in God's sacred space, but we are not perfect? What does that mean and how do God's purposes get meted out in the world in a circumstance like that?
[01:05:44] I'm sure you guys have already thought a lot about those kinds of things, so I'll be talking a little bit about that in the future, as well as getting to the lake of fire and things like that as well before we wrap up our series on flame and fire.
[01:06:01] Like I said, I had no idea that this little mini series would be not quite so mini. But I hope it's been helpful to you guys. I think there's a lot here, and I hope you're seeing this interconnected nature of it all, because once you start seeing that, you can start distinguishing the various frames, finding the nuance and not overly conflating the things, but hopefully seeing how they layer with each other and are in conversation with each other, right?
[01:06:30] This is not the same as the speculative dot connectors and having the really crazy chart behind us with the yarn that connects all of the points. Like you could actually do that to some extent, but we can't miss the beauty and the narrative layers. But most importantly, we should not be missing the person of Christ in all of that and his impact in the world and with each of us individually as well.
[01:07:00] Thank you guys for listening. I really appreciate it. I cannot hardly believe that I've been podcasting for three years now. It does not seem like that long, even though this year has been quite a long one for me personally. But here's hoping and praying for good things this next year.
[01:07:19] I would ask you guys to pray for the podcast and pray for the other things I'm working on that it will all glorify God and build up the body of Christ. Thanks for sharing the episodes and thanks to all of you who are supporters, whether financially or you're subscribed on my community platform.
[01:07:39] Again, I welcome you all over to have that conversation in that study on the book Lamb of the Free. I think it's going to be a really interesting one and I expect to learn a lot in it as well. But at any rate, I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.
