Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] 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 we have a special treat in this episode. With me today is Dr. Lois Tverberg. Hi, Lois.
Lois Tverberg: Hello, Carey. Nice to chat today with you.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, thank you for coming on. I'm really excited about this conversation.
I've interacted with you online for quite a while. I don't know if you're aware of that, but I've been aware of your work for a while and I've really appreciate a lot of your interviews and a lot of your content on YouTube with other people and a lot of your writing and just your general approach to scripture.
I think it's something that is really valuable to the church today. And so I really wanted to have you on for a conversation [00:01:00] that I kind of hope is going to be a bit of a different angle for what I usually talk about, because usually my focus is, well, first of all, it's biblical theology, but I do kind of come across it from the approach of the structure of the canon, right? So you have Genesis at the beginning and it goes on through. And because Genesis is at the beginning, it's kind of a cornerstone for a lot of people. A lot of people understand Genesis. A lot of people have read Genesis. A lot of people are familiar with the stories of Genesis and really love Genesis.
And so when you're reading it from that kind of perspective, you start with Genesis, and then you continue reading, and then you start seeing those echoes that begin in Genesis. But some of what I've seen you push back on is that maybe that's not always the best way to look at the entire narrative and arc of [00:02:00] scripture, and I think that there's some reasons for that, that I want to explore with you today, along with some other things.
And so first, I'd like to kind of just introduce you and introduce your work to my listeners for those who haven't heard of your work. I know that I have a lot of crossover with the podcast of the Two Trees, and you were on there talking about stringing pearls, which is an awesome topic for what I do also talking about the patterns in scripture and the themes and all of that kind of thing.
So could you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and where they can find your work and all of that?
Lois Tverberg: Okay. My name is Lois Tverberg. I'm single, never married. I am a nerd born and lived all my life as a bookish nerd. I live in Helen, Michigan a couple hours north of Chicago, near Lake Michigan, and I have been writing [00:03:00] about the Jewish context of Jesus and the Bible in its ancient context for about 20 plus years now. And I've written several books on Rabbi Jesus. I wrote three books on that. I've actually got one other book it's called Listening to the Language of the Bible. And so I write about like Hebrew words and do quite a bit of cultural Bible study.
The name of my game is what did it mean in its original context? And I would say that my emphasis, especially to I know your folks are more ancient Near Eastern/ Old Testament is that I do quite a bit with New Testament also, and so there's a blend and I read an awful lot of Jewish stuff and there's a lot... some surprisingly really great Jewish stuff that Christians just don't even know about that is incredibly helpful for all sorts of things. So that's my main,[00:04:00] that would be probably for your listeners, what would be unique and surprising about my approach compared to other ones that they're listening to right now.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, and I think that it is true that a lot of my listeners are going to have crossover with a lot of Old Testament scholars, and we know that there's a lot of New Testament scholars who are doing a lot of work, but a lot of them aren't really getting into that particular Jewishness of Jesus and his context. Yeah, no. So that, that's hard. And I'm hoping to kind of open the door for that kind of thinking here.
But this is slightly off topic for what I want to talk about today, but I have to ask you, why do you use the term rabbi in reference to Jesus? Because I hear a lot of pushback about that. Like, Oh, that's good.
That's anachronistic, yeah, and you shouldn't call Jesus a rabbi, because that wasn't actually a formal title in Jesus's time, so [00:05:00] why do you use it?
Lois Tverberg: Great question, and I should, I should my website, I think you told me I should say it, is, it, my website is Our, O U R, Rabbi Jesus dot com it's even in the title, but if you search on the, you can look for a very prominent article on my website, Can We Call Jesus Rabbi?
And I the first answer I give is, well, why don't you get the Greek out of your Gospels? And you will find the word rabbi transliterated directly into Greek 15 times. 15 times. And so they didn't just in, in John it says rabbi means thedoscalos, you know, and so he's explaining its teacher and it's in various other places where it's sprinkled throughout the gospels. The deal is that Jesus [00:06:00] is part of the very beginning of the rabbinic movement. It's, he's in the, they call him a proto rabbinic sage. I could call him our proto rabbinic sage, Jesus. But that would be kind of painful. So the deal is, you hear in the Gospels, you hear his, disciples calling him teacher.
You hear him being called master, and master in Hebrew is rav. A slave calls his master, master, rav. And if you're talking about my master, you say ravi. My master, Ravi. And so you hear them calling him Rav. And so they are calling him Rav , as a honorific, you know, like you might call you know, you meet a pastor and you're maybe you're from a certain area where [00:07:00] they, call him Reverend, Reverend, and you're doing it as an honorific way is to show honor to him.
But you haven't named him Rabbi Jesus. It isn't the title, formalized, before his name. That happens 40 years later after the fall of the temple, but that's only 40 years. And actually really part of the reason why I stubbornly retained that barely anachronistic, you know, title, the way I've used it there, is really because of my, and I would say many, a growing number of scholars who are saying there has been a very strong, honestly, it's roots are in antisemitism, that says we refuse to listen to anything Jewish.
We refuse to. We will not listen to context. We hate context. And the reason why is we hate Jews. [00:08:00] And so, any word, if it has rabbi in it, we don't want to listen to it. Even though, the way I point this out is Jesus parables are some of the most brilliant, earliest parables, and there are thousands of parables in rabbinic literature, but New Testament scholars spend all their time, they say, no, no, no, it must only be pre-70 AD, we can read the Dead Sea Scrolls. We can read philo. We can read Josephus, but we're not touching any rabbinic literature. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are no parables there. You have to go to the Jewish literature in order to read parables.
And some of them are shockingly like Jesus's. So, we cut off our nose to spite our face, and we sit there in ignorance, declaring ourselves purists when we don't realize that we are robbing [00:09:00] ourselves of the knowledge that we need to understand Jesus better. So that's my, thanks for listening to my soapbox from the first point.
That's why I, I don't mind saying Rabbi Jesus, even though he doesn't, it's not quite, you, you should say, Rabi, my master, Jesus. So, and, and also part of it is, you know, the whole premise of how we're reading this, it's being reported by his disciples. And in the Great Commission, we're told, you know, that we should go and make disciples of all nations.
And so, one, we need to know how to be disciples, and then we have to go make disciples. And so, you need to know what was expected of disciples. And there was actually a tradition that was ongoing already that his disciples knew about. And so we're also, by cutting that context out, we just don't [00:10:00] really even know our most fundamental, basic Great Commission. So that's kind of part of my reason is, we need to know Jesus as our teacher in order to help us be better teachers of others.
Carey Griffel: That is a fantastic answer. Thank you so much, Dr. Tverberg. I think that really is very clear. And so to be even further clear, what you're not doing is you're not taking the later rabbinic context and saying that's the same as Jesus's context.
That's right. Yeah. But it's got to shed light because it is that continuation of Jesus's context. And so there's going to be a lot that we can learn about that later context because there's so much writing about this whole thing. And so if you're not even looking at that, then you're, like you said, you're missing a lot of that context.
So thank you very much. I really appreciate your answering that in such a full way, because [00:11:00] that is our focus is discipleship. And that's the whole context of what being a rabbi would even be. And this idea of teaching and all of this. So that's great.
Lois Tverberg: Mm hmm. Yep, that's all of our goals.
Carey Griffel: All right. So to get into our basic topic for today, I was curious what you think of the terms Hebrew Bible and Old Testament.
Lois Tverberg: Well my basic philosophy for my writing, and I write for lay people, maybe nerdy lay people, even, no, I would say, Even non nerdy lay people. And so my basic philosophy is I need to be a bridge, not an island.
I deal, you know, because I'm talking about Jesus' Jewish context, there's actually a big kind of movement of people interested in Jewish context that kind of [00:12:00] adopt a whole new lingo that makes, kind of makes everybody kind of wince. And they're people like. I don't know what you're talking about and you and then you get angry too and I don't understand why and so so the answer about hebrew bible versus old testament is when I'm speaking to a traditional audience, I use Old Testament. When I'm speaking to traditional Christians, I use the terms that are most familiar to them.
Honestly, my own friends and peers, I use Hebrew Bible more. But also, I'm always listening to culture going on. And I'm aware that Western culture and our love and infatuation with newness is not the way of much of the world. And old and ancient are words that are good to a lot of people. And so I think that the people who constantly say, I don't [00:13:00] like old because it's bad.
Well, that's your problem. It's not the Bible. And so the Lord's ancient old words are good words. And so, so, but you know, it depends on who I'm talking to. I have to respect the person who I'm trying to communicate with if I want to communicate with them. So I use my best guess at what their favorite word is.
Carey Griffel: Well, that's a pretty good approach, I think because it is about communication. So with that being said, how important do you think the shape of the Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible is compared to the Old Testament? Does it matter to how we read it? Does it matter how the books are ordered? And would a first century Jew have had a particular order in mind, do you think?
Lois Tverberg: In the synagogue, in the ancient synagogue, books were scrolls, and they were separate scrolls. And our [00:14:00] idea of a codex, a book, you know, front to back, has an index in the front, and you read the beginning before the end, is something that is strong in our minds that is probably not quite so obvious to them, although, but on the other hand, this is, you hear my rabbinic, on the one hand, on the other hand, but your forefathers are everything to people.
They define you. You think in terms and so I'm actually agreeing is that people are listening to the most ancient stories. And so I'm actually congratulating you, Carey, because the ancient stories are so critical because they define us as people and people keep meditating on them forever. And so they really are important.
I think, honestly, I, I'm glad that you are spending a lot of time in Genesis. So okay, but in terms of order in the text, [00:15:00] well, honestly, the Christian scriptures, and of course with Malachi, and, you know, the final prophetic books are pointing straight into the New Testament, and that's on purpose.
And the Tanakh, the Jewish text, it reorganizes it so that the prophets, it's, you know, the Torah and then the prophets and the Psalms or writings. So it doesn't assume that it is being told as a narrative that shoots out into another book that it doesn't know about.
So and honestly you know, you can see I love Jewish stuff, but I also can hear when Jewish scholars were reacting against Christian ideas. One of the things that I can see in the Tanakh is that the Book of Daniel is not among the prophets. It's among the writings. [00:16:00] But you can see that in the New Testament, the Book of Daniel has an awful lot of relevance to Jesus. He's, he's talking about being the Son of Man and that he's getting that out of Daniel.
And so there might be a reason why they decided to put him in the writings, because they don't really want to give him as much authority as the other , older profits. So so that's a couple of the reasons. One other one is, and this is one of your, your passion and mine too, is listening to the echoes over time.
And so you need to know, as you're reading each text, what do they assume that you already know? And so that's really important about the order, is who's quoting who, and so those are things that are really important. I think that would be the main reason why order is important, but probably not the books in the Bible, because that's a later arbitrary codex thing. But it is [00:17:00] in terms of, oh, like Job, is Job early or late? Well, we find Job quoting the Psalms. Hmm. So that tells you at least that, okay, well, and it helps you understand how each one is thinking and building on the ideas that it knows and expects you to know too.
Carey Griffel: That's fantastic. So when we're talking about the shape of the canon, like I think, for Christians, we tend to look at the Bible as that book, right? It has the arc, it has the narrative. And I'm not saying that's wrong, but it seems like in the first century in the synagogues, they were tackling it, not as this stream of thought that went through time, but maybe things that were kind of connected.
So do you want to talk a little bit about the types of readings that they would have in the synagogues where they would have the Torah readings as well as the [00:18:00] prophetic readings?
Lois Tverberg: Okay, sure. Well, to just give a little bit of context here is my most recent book is called Reading the Bible with Rabbi Jesus.
And I posted about it on my blog, and I said to people, Well, what would you like to know about in this next book? What are you most curious about? And then one, somebody wrote in and said, I'd like to know how they're reading the Bible in the synagogue. And I thought, well, that's boring. But now that you've asked that, I guess I have to go look it up now.
Well, that sounds like I guess I have to go research this boring topic and maybe even write a part. Oh, gall. So, with a heavy heart, okay, let's research it. And I was just shocked and surprised that when I looked it up, it was something Christian scholars don't ever write about, and it's something Jewish scholars only discovered about a hundred years ago.
[00:19:00] And what their first comments were, this sounds like the New Testament, and you're wondering what, okay, well, first of all modern Judaism reads the Torah every week in the synagogue. They read it through it in a year, of course, yes, section by section there, they split it into 52 readings. I won't go into, there's a few more details, I don't have to, and then for each one, there is a prescribed reading from, they call it the prophets the prophets that they use tend to be what they call the former prophets, which are like kings.
And it doesn't seem like you'd see the book of like Joshua. They've got Joshua in the Prophets, and so they'll quote Joshua a lot, and what you don't find quoted very much in the modern Jewish readings is Isaiah, Jeremiah, you do a little bit, and not at all Ezekiel, not much at all, [00:20:00] barely at all. So that is how it is done now. And there's a couple of Jewish scholars who said, and they are purposely not choosing anything that talks about Jesus.
If it's a prophecy, that sounds like Jesus, they're not going to choose it. So okay. So , about a hundred years ago, there were manuscripts found. It's called the Cairo Geniza in Egypt, in Cairo, they found a, the Fustat Synagogue that had this huge, this room where they were putting all of their holy texts that you, you must bury them. You don't throw away anything that has the name of the Lord written on it. And so they're very careful. And they found, found about the year around 1899 or early 1900s, and they started looking at them, and then they started realizing they have these lists of readings where what was happening is they were reading they're reading the text through in three or four years, actually.
They're taking much less, [00:21:00] reading shorter chunks, and in the earliest days, which is around the first century, they were having the person who read the text chose a prophetic reading that went with that text, and it was the reader who would pick that and it had to kind of have some thematic tie, but they were very good at textual connections in terms of little quotes, they're called gizira shiva, that means the same cut, you pick text that has the same little phrase in there, and partly because the authors were doing that.
You know, when Isaiah wanted to talk about Abraham or Sarah, he's gonna use little hints out of the text, distinctive words, and he's gonna lace his poems with words that are distinctive to Genesis in that section. And so they know that that thematic thing is going on.
And so people were very [00:22:00] good at that. And in fact, Michael Fishbane, he's the guy who's the one who, everybody says, wow, he's the guy who knows all this. He says, that's probably in the synagogue is how they started doing that. This very practice that we're just kind of discovering now is coming from how they're reading the text.
And so so what they do is when they read Genesis 1 1 about you know in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, they read Isaiah the passage that starts with Isaiah 65 17. For behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. The wo lf and the lamb shall graze together. The lion shall eat straw like the ox and dust shall be the serpents food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.
And this lovely [00:23:00] picture of a new earth, which we have been talking about a lot, you know, in the Book of Revelations, and, you know, this has been kind of the new interest in studying, is instead of going away to some heaven somewhere, but a renewed earth.
You know what? They were reading about that in the synagogue. So what you find is a lot of the readings are asking the question is, you know, God made these promises about the earth being filled with righteousness and about God's kingdom transforming the world. And, and so it's like you're using the prophets to read the Torah.
The Torah is full of promises and the prophets are pointing ahead to how they're going to be fulfilled. And in the New Testament, they do a lot of that. So I gave a talk on this in Jerusalem at a church where there are several scholars that are some of the very best on [00:24:00] Jesus' Jewish context. And they found that really fascinating. So we spent five years reading through all of these readings and there's 150 of them and it takes a long time. A little longer than that.
So but it's in my book, Reading the Bible with Rabbi Jesus, if they want to read more about it. And if you don't want to go buy a book, you can just go to my Our Rabbi Jesus website. And I wrote an article, shorter article, with quite a bit about it. Anyhow, that was a long answer. Sorry, long answer.
Carey Griffel: That was perfect. Because when, so when we are reading the Bible, it's like we're reading it chronologically and propositionally. Like, creation is about creation and the time of the prophets is about the time of the prophets.
But it's like in the context of the Jews of the first century, their main concern was their own history, and where they were as a people and how they were actually actively seeing [00:25:00] or expecting, probably both, both seeing and expecting the promises of God to be revealed, like in their midst, like in their life. In the actual community of the people.
Lois Tverberg: Yes, exactly. So, I mean, just as we, just as we pick up our Bibles and want to understand how to apply it to ourselves, they were picking up their Bibles and wanted to know how to apply it to themselves.
Carey Griffel: It's like for us, though, we have this really strong, strong tendency to look at everything eschatologically.
And that's not necessarily wrong, but at the same time, as you were saying, like it's, the renewed creation. It's the actual working of God within the people on earth and their actual living out of lives that they're kind of thinking about here. And so if you separate the Torah from what the Prophets are, and just [00:26:00] kind of act like the Prophets are just kind of another step or this next thing in chronology, then you're, you're not seeing this integration of history and the text, which, I mean, that's fascinating to me, how you have both that integration of history and the text of the Bible, instead of just going along as a straight arrow, it's like this cycle and this revealing of God in further patterns in the same way, but further.
Lois Tverberg: Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Yeah, that Israel continues to meditate on the things God has taught them in the Torah and you hear it in the New Testament, Jesus preaching from the Torah and honestly, it's been there since the Torah was written, but yet they go, Oh, look at that. Oh, I never noticed that part before.
Yeah. So you're hearing novel things there, [00:27:00] but they're kind of integrating all of their history of experience that they've memorized. Well, they know mostly by heart. The people who are devoted enough to be teaching it know it really, really, really well. And yeah. So that's why they they're really deep and fascinating to do the Bible study that way.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. So if we take the Torah by itself and we just kind of study that, without viewing it in the context of the prophets, then we're not actually reading it the way that the original readers of the Bible would have it, at least by the time of the actual further writings, right?
Lois Tverberg: That's right, yeah, certainly. I mean, it's nice to think about what Abraham was thinking about, but it's more key to us what Jesus was thinking about.
And they have certain things of significance to them that are so key, key issues that become [00:28:00] key to us too. And so you need to actually be thinking more in terms of how did the New Testament readers understand their Bible than how Abraham did. Even though it's nice to think about Abraham, it's more important to think about, how did Peter think about Abraham? So.
Carey Griffel: . That's why it's important to see the Bible as a canon and not necessarily needing a particular order, but the idea that it's a whole and that it should be seen as a whole. So when we're reading the whole Bible and we're seeing certain types of themes and patterns show up, the prevalence of certain ones should be kind of the forefront of our minds instead of trying to force everything into, like, for instance, Genesis 1 through 11, we place this really big emphasis on it that gets, and again, not saying that we can't or [00:29:00] shouldn't, but how often are those passages quoted throughout the rest of scripture? Rather than, say, Exodus and Leviticus and some of these other core passages of the Torah.
Lois Tverberg: Yes, exactly. And it takes a while, you know, when each book as you're reading, you go, wow, look at how important this is. But then you move to the next one. Like, wait, oh, this one's really important too. That's what I've been finding as I've been going along.
Like when Jesus and Paul are arguing about various laws, they pull out Leviticus. They're quoting it a lot. And one of the lines in, you know, we keep talking about, what does it mean to fulfill the law? You know, over and over and over. Well, I studied and wrote about that for decades before I noticed that there's a really key line in Deuteronomy 27 verse 26.
[00:30:00] Cursed is anyone who does not confirm. Actually, it's yakum. Same thing, that means fulfill the words of this law by doing them and all the people shall say amen.
That's the very last curse of all the curses. And so when we're talking about what does it mean to fulfill the law, we're talking about Deuteronomy 27, 26.
And it's like, I didn't know that! You know, maybe it isn't, maybe that isn't what everybody's thinking about, but that probably is where it came from. You know, but so yeah, he, Jesus is often thinking about Deuteronomy and other, it's, that's probably where that conversation got started from, is, well, what does that mean?
What do you mean by confirming the words of this law by doing them? That actually tells you what they're thinking.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, because we think of fulfill as, oh, it's done now. We've finished it. Like we're [00:31:00] done with the test, right? Whereas this whole context is actually doing it, like living it out, actually seeing it happen right in front of you.
Lois Tverberg: So, yes, and I wrote an, that's another article that if people are interested, I have another website, it's my older, earlier one, and it's called the Engedi Resource Center. Engedi is this beautiful oasis with waterfalls in the middle of the Judean desert.
One of the times I was there was like 120 degrees, but it's It's a lush, gorgeous paradise. And so when I first started ministry back in year 2000 with some friends, we wanted to pour living water on their biblical texts so that instead of a dry and dusty wasteland, it was like an oasis. And that's why we, so it's E N G E D I, Engedi Resource Center.
And I wrote an [00:32:00] article about what does it mean to fulfill the law in a Jewish context. So, if you want to read more, go there.
Carey Griffel: And I will definitely be putting all of your links in the show notes so that it's really easy for people to access your work and where to find all of these things.
And you do have so many great blog posts and information there. If you really want to start delving into this more Jewish context, it's a good place to start, because you get a lot of resources, and your books have footnotes, and all sorts of appendixes and all of these things that are really great to kind of delve into.
Lois Tverberg: Thank you. Thank you. Yes, that would be great. I'm happy to help and bless people through my writing. So.
Carey Griffel: Can I ask you, like, what kinds of themes do you think would be at the forefront of the people at the time of Jesus? We are thinking of creation, we're thinking of sacred space, we're thinking [00:33:00] of things like the Tower of Babel, and all of these formative stories of humanity that we see first in Genesis.
Lois Tverberg: Well, okay one that is obviously a big deal is the Kingdom of God, you know, or as the Jewish people say, Kingdom of Heaven. Malchut Shemayim, Kingdom of Heaven, because they're trying to be extra careful with the name of God. And so, Kingdom of Heaven instead of, like, Heaven help me. Instead of God help me, Heaven help me.
But, Kingdom of God. And, as I started reading, you know, we sit there going, Why is Jesus talking about this? I don't quite understand what he's talking about. I don't know where he's getting it from. That would be a main theme that Jesus is talking about. And then when I started reading Jewish scholars on the Hebrew Bible like yeah, that's actually a major big theme throughout the whole text and even[00:34:00] in Genesis 1.
But they're kind of reading it through the eyes of the prophet, kind of like a vector. If you can trace the arrow, the line of the arrow, you can go backwards to figure out what the heck it was saying in the very beginning when you didn't quite understand that. You know, the idea you think, okay, God king, of course, God created us. Of course, he's going to be king, but you find at all times in history and especially when people are an oppressed people group, they're thinking about. Why is the world so awful? And when is God going to come and fix everything?
And so certainly that's an ongoing concern throughout the whole scripture. And what you would call it would be, when is God going to come and become king? When is he going to right the wrongs and judge the wicked and get rid of the oppressors and help us pull ourselves [00:35:00] together?
How can we have shalom in our world and not chaos, you know? So that's exactly what you hear Jesus talking about, the Kingdom of God. And at first, as Christians look at it, like, well, why wouldn't God be king all the time? He created the world, isn't he king obviously already? So something else must be going wrong, and they'd say, no, no, no. All you have to do is read your Torah, and you read about that of course, Adam didn't quite go with what God's command was. There's this image of him sitting down as king to rule over the animals. You know, God told him to name all the animals. And that's what the kings who take control, they appoint people, they name things
And so Adam is or I should say Adam and Eve together as Adam are appointed as the reign, but you know, you've talked about that an awful [00:36:00] lot. And so that image is there, but you're, of course, you read the first 11 chapters and you see the world falling apart. You see, you know, mankind so wicked that it grieves God's heart.
And finally, God declares there's only one person, at least Noah, who's worth saving. Then he says it again later. Okay, Abraham, I've got a new plan. And I would say that as I read the New Testament and the Jewish reading, they're spending more time on Abraham and who is a son of Abraham. You hear Jesus being asked that because Abraham is being understood as a paragon of virtue. Of course, he's not perfect, but they're reading him kind of that way, and so when I hear people kind of just assuming that Abraham's kind of, I don't know what, you know, you're not reading Abraham the way probably they were in the first century, if [00:37:00] that's a help. So that's what they're looking for in the text.
Carey Griffel: Well, and you look at the different genealogies of Jesus, and that's kind of evident in them, I think. So some people will say that if we take the later understandings of Genesis to read Genesis through those lenses, then that's, again, anachronistic, but it seems like they're in the time that they are in.
And that's what they're doing, is they have to be processing their situation in terms of the revelation that's already been given. And so, by the time of the New Testament, we've already gone through probably several cycles of that happening. Mm hmm. That's right. Mm hmm. So, in the sense of it being anachronistic, that doesn't really make sense, because it's this cycle of, God revealing himself in creation, and [00:38:00] he seems to do it in the same, in these similar ways.
For a Christian who picks up their Bible and they start reading Genesis, it might actually be a little bit hard for them to see that theme of kingship in the first chapters of Genesis. Right. Mm hmm. Because it doesn't use the word king. No. Mm hmm. In our picture, Adam doesn't get some crown and coronation and we expect him to get if he was going to be a king, but we have to understand that in a very contextual way.
Lois Tverberg: Great, and here I'll give you one that I have found just in the past couple years were surprising. Hammurabi. Our buddy Hammurabi, you know, there's this lovely Steele, you know with him and the God Shamash and Shamash is appointing him and he writes his laws, you know, right? King writes the laws 'cause [00:39:00] the kings write the laws, right?
And he says, the Gods have appointed me to establish justice and righteousness on Earth. And that phrase, justice and righteousness, is a big deal, and that's what king, that's the job of the king.
So, and, great, for you nerds out there who are listening right now, the person you want to read is Moshe Weinfeld. Social justice in ancient Israel and the ancient Near East. You Old Testament fans. This is a great book, but he points out that it comes up in a key place. It comes up when the three visitors, God and the angelic beings, angels or whatever, come to visit Abraham and he says it's Genesis 18.
And he says, shall I hide from Abraham what I am about [00:40:00] to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation and all the nations on earth will be blessed for him. For I have chosen him so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by, get this, doing what is right and just, so that Lord may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.
God is now saying, I'm going to reign as a king, and I'm going to teach righteousness and justice through a family. And this family is going to learn it from the father. And so it's like, when you know that phrase, righteousness and justice, and know how key it is. And you know, Kings say the gods have appointed me. This is now God saying, I'm going to appoint Abraham and, but I'm going to teach it through a family. You know, it's more of the loving instruction of mother and father, not the legal [00:41:00] pronouncements of a despot and a oppressor. And that's, so God has a very different way of teaching his people.
So isn't that fun? There is ancient Near Eastern. Isn't that fun? Contextual funness. And that's what Moshe Weinfeld, this Jewish scholar, this book is like 80 bucks. Used. Check it out at your local university library.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, so here, okay, that is fascinating because people are starting to see this context of Adam in the lens of kingship and kingdom. And now here we have Abraham in that same lens. But it's not like, it's not like kingship in terms of kingship in and of itself, like by itself.
It's about family and kinship as well.
Lois Tverberg: That's good. And remember, Abraham isn't the [00:42:00] king. God is the king. You know.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you have the king and the vice regent, we might say. And so we, we see that in terms of the image of God, we see that with Adam, we see that just all again, it's all of these patterns, but, and I've heard people say, Well, you can't say that Adam is a king, and why is Genesis even talking about kings, or why is even Exodus talking about kings?
They don't even have kings! Why is Exodus talking about kingship? Because we thought that it seemed like God was telling them they shouldn't have a king. Oh, that's right! Because God is their king, and so, looking at it in terms of, we want a human king to replace God, in a sense, rather than acknowledging God as king.
Lois Tverberg: Yep, that's good. I mean, and you can see the period of the judges, you know, is during [00:43:00] that era of human history when tribal groups you know, constant battles between little groups. And so, it describes the history of Israel in light of what is going on, and there are very few nations that have figured out how to have a king.
And you're right! And so, kings are kind of anachronistic. They're a new invention. It's the latest invention, and we want the latest thing, and if we just let this one guy, because there's going to be a guy, take over and he will win all our battles for us and we'll glorify that guy and make him into a god call him god you're right totally and god says no you'll hate that you really will hate that so you're right is that what's surprising is that it is actually retaining ancient ancient ancient things even though it is, especially new testament, it's looking back through the [00:44:00] of david and kingship
And here I'll show you it's another, it's Nahum Sarna, another Jewish scholar. He points out that when in Genesis 10, where he has all the genealogies, that the names of, let's see, there's Haran and Ur, those names are actually perfectly fitting for the time. They nail it right on the head of the places they lived, the names they had. And these are exactly the right names for that time, and they don't write in names from a thousand years later, which is really surprising.
That's not a thing you can do without actually having handed down that tradition over time. And so, I'm convinced that their memories do live on from the very earliest times. There was a man named Abraham, and according to ethics of what the Lord expected for that time, and he didn't give [00:45:00] them all ethics. He didn't. Okay. He was faithful to God. So,
Carey Griffel: Yeah, it's like when we get a new context for something it's very impactful to our society, like kingship, then it's like, you can't unsee that. You can't undo that framework that we now have of the idea of the king. And so it makes sense that then we can start looking into the past and seeing what's going on in the past in terms of how we understand kingship now.
It doesn't mean that they were kings in the sense that they were kings later. And that's how we can see that kingship isn't always a good thing. Because kingship arose in pretty much like a tyrannical way. Like there is that care that the King has for the people and the reciprocity between King and the people, but it is somebody who is coming in [00:46:00] and like taking over and saying my way or the highway kind of a thing.
And so we can't take everything about kingship and then just apply it to God, cuz he's not a tyrant. He's not saying things like the Kings would be saying it. But we can see all of the past things and all of these things in light of what we now have this framework of kingship.
Lois Tverberg: Yeah, right. Exactly. And there have been some really good books. Sorry, I keep quoting Jewish scholars. Christians are good, but they're a little behind. There's some really good books. I've got my little passion going on here. And, you know, I don't have to be like this, but there have been a, more than one that have been pointing out that the Torah is actually undermining kingship as a whole.
And, you know, and Jesus, of course, too, is undermining. He's the king, but he rides in on a humble donkey. And that's a prophecy in Zechariah. He's, You [00:47:00] know, humble and riding on a donkey. He's not coming in on a war horse.
He's been you know, in Deuteronomy 17. When you enter the land your Lord is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled it, and you say, let us have a king over us like all the nations around us, be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from your own brothers. And the king must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt. He must not take many wives. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.
God has undermined most of the things that kings need to do in order to establish power.
And then it says when he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this Torah taken from that, that the priests who are Levites have written it is to be with him and he is to read it [00:48:00] all the days of his life so that he may learn to fear the Lord, his God, and follow carefully all the commands of this Torah and this decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers. And turn from the law from the right and the left.
You see how Hammurabi says, the gods have appointed me to write the laws and God says, no, the king is going to write down my laws and the king is subject to my laws and the king is not better than any of his companions and that's another, you've heard of the Magna Carta in Britain. It's funny how many historians will say it's shocking and amazing that they made a law that the king was subject to the laws of everybody else because kings were not subject to laws. They wrote the law, they could do whatever the heck they wanted to, they could kill people at will, anything.
And the [00:49:00] deal is, it's here in the Torah, Deuteronomy 17, is the king is just like his brothers. And it's actually, there are Jewish scholars that point out, it's actually pointing ahead to democracy. Or minimizing the powers and the hierarchy of a government. And so, honestly, what we're doing is actually kind of a living out of the Torah when we live in a democracy where we don't have despots , and it comes kind of from the influence of Christianity that came through how they read the Torah and the prophets in the Bible.So, Isn't that fun.
Carey Griffel: That's beautiful. All right, well. Because we're having so many technical difficulties today, I think we'll go ahead and wrap up. But I really appreciate everything that you're bringing out here and I think in all of my interactions with you as you've got me thinking in this Jewish context and thinking in terms of reading the Bible in the way that [00:50:00] the first century Jew would have read it, I'm starting to read Genesis and seeing that, okay, we have these strange things that are going on here in the book of Genesis. How do I understand it? When I do like word searches or thematic searches or things, and then I find the same terms, the same phrases showing up in the prophets, I'm like, I'm like, Oh, well, there you go. That's how they would have understood what's going on in Genesis.
So yeah, do you have any particular tips for people to kind of get their heads in this mindset or start learning about it themselves, aside from just, you know, reading more, looking at your blogs and things like that? Do you have any, particular, like, study tips?
Lois Tverberg: I mean, it's kind of a world of study. Obviously, you start Do not congratulate yourself that you haven't studied much Torah, for it was for this purpose that you were [00:51:00] created. You say things like that, but that doesn't help you. In terms of, well, one thing that was key, fascinating to me is I discovered that Isaiah is a real key in connecting the New Testament to the rest of the Old Testament, especially from Isaiah 46, 40 through 66 is quoted over and over and over in the ancient synagogue.
And it's also, the Jewish scholars kept saying, yeah, and it's also quoted a lot in the New Testament. I wonder why. So those two things are really helpful. That's not, I don't know, I don't know, that didn't really give you any concrete.
Carey Griffel: Well, maybe just , reading the prophets more and reading Isaiah more, just having it in your head more.
Lois Tverberg: That's right. That's right. And don't read it just atomistically, where you only quote three lines out of it. Don't keep doing that. Try to kind of [00:52:00] Isaiah and Jeremiah kind of dig in and try to get overall themes and hear the overall stream of it. And then be listening to where they're quoting.
Isaiah quotes, it starts with Deuteronomy 32, Hadzinu. It is the poem of Moses that he tells them all to memorize, know by heart. And it's the poem of Moses at the end of Deuteronomy and Isaiah starts with that. I didn't know that until my nerdy friends in Jerusalem explained that. So. Yeah , so next time you're doing your thematic studies, start with Isaiah and look at what he's quoting. There's a thought. That's hard. I give you the challenges, but I know you got lots of nerds listening to you, so you can work with it.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really good idea.
Just kind of shifting our perspective of starting in a different spot and saying this is what was core to the biblical writer of certain [00:53:00] times, and then, how do we see everything in light of that, because this is kind of like their main structure of thought, like, and that that's what we're trying to do is get into their heads and think in different terms, because the way we think is just not the way that they thought. And so it's difficult for us, but we have so many rich texts that once we start reading them and looking at it from these perspectives, it's really helpful.
Lois Tverberg: You just remind, I realize now, the one thing I should have said to you before anything is read the rest of the Torah and get very familiar with the rest of the Torah because it's all core.
That is the, it's like a hub and the rest of the text is building on all of the Torah. So I would say, you know, it's not like I, I'm not doing the kosher thing. I'm not talking like I did not join a Messianic synagogue, but I do realize that the Torah, all of it, is [00:54:00] important. So that would be my, I would say that would be probably a core, core, core thing. If nothing else, read the rest of the Torah and get familiar with it.
Carey Griffel: Right. Well, I think that it's about time to start wrapping up things, especially in light of all of the technical difficulties we're having today. But I appreciate your patience with that and your ability to be here and talk about these things.
And I think this is going to be a great conversation for people. I think that there's a lot of little nuggets that people can kind of chew on. And start looking at things in a different way. And I really appreciate that. So thank you so much for coming on and talking with me. Dr. Tverberg.
Lois Tverberg: Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. I, I understand. Honestly, I know technical issues are everywhere and the Lord somehow he sends his angels and somehow the angels have been taking little classes and so they know about audio feeds and they're doing the battle for us and somebody's sitting there [00:55:00] hacking away on our line and so we have to ask the Lord for help with zooms and recordings and podcasts and everything.
So,
Carey Griffel: yeah,
Lois Tverberg: he's smarter than this. He can do this too.
Carey Griffel: Well, it's great that we at least have the ability to converse the way that we do, this global community and being able to get scholarship out to people and just critical thinking and different ways of thinking. It's so enriching.
Lois Tverberg: You bet. I'm in. I'm in. It's really, it is a wonderful gift. I mean, there are a lot of things that we see going downhill because of the disgusting things that people put out there, but God gives us gifts too. And honestly, I think zoom and all of these internet connections have been a world of understanding and helping people who struggle with understanding their Bibles, understand it better. And so. Thank you, Lord. [00:56:00] Praise the Lord for that.
Carey Griffel: So again, I'm going to be putting links to all of your stuff in the show notes so that people can find your work. And I know you're active on Facebook in different groups, so that's really great to see your interactions there and your insights there. Are you working on anything in particular that's going to be coming out new in the future, or what's your focus right now?
Lois Tverberg: I'm so slow. I have on my desktop of my laptop my proposal that isn't really finished, you know, what the way authors do is they write a book proposal and you send it into the companies. And so right now it's called Reading the Torah with Rabbi Jesus. So that was my you know, as much as , I've written a lot about understanding Jesus in this context, what about understanding the Torah in its context, and especially in terms of how Jesus was reading it? What kind of shocking, [00:57:00] earth shattering things it was doing and teaching that ultimately have transformed the world.
I have several Jewish scholars saying, you know what? The Torah transformed the world. We don't even get that. It really, we don't understand what the world was like before the Torah came along. Oh, and then because Christianity you know, it was first the Jews who had to grow as a nation into kind of, you know, doing it in a very imperfect way. And then Christians had to go out and try to translate that through the eyes of Christ, and yet we do it in a very imperfect way. And yet our world is much, much better because of it. So it's a hard book to write. Takes me a while. Might be a little.
Carey Griffel: Oh, yeah. Oh, but that's exciting news for us here. That's for sure.
Lois Tverberg: Yeah. So, Lord willing, Lord willing, Lord willing, we'll see how [00:58:00] that goes. We're working on it. So, okay.
Carey Griffel: Awesome. Well , thank you and we are definitely going to be looking forward to that and praying for all of that to work out for you so that you can get that out for us because I think that's going to be something that's very enlightening. So yeah, thank you very much again for being here and for doing all of the work that you do.
We appreciate it.
Lois Tverberg: Sure. Thank you, Carey, very nice to chat with you and your folks today.
Carey Griffel: All right. Well, thanks again to Dr. Tverberg for joining me for today's conversation. I hope you guys all enjoyed that as much as I did. Next week, I hope to have an episode out about something that is kind of in the same vein of looking at the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible, from the perspective of the concerns of the original readers, particularly the original readers [00:59:00] of the compilated Hebrew Bible, like when it was actually in full form.
Don't get me wrong, I do love to study the Bible in this kind of critical way, where we're understanding the sources a little bit, and understanding the original intent of certain authors. But at the end of the day, we are Christians, and as Christians, we want to be reading the Bible in the way that somebody from Jesus's time would have been reading it.
And those people had particular concerns, particular ideas about their history, particular thoughts about God's relationship to them.
And that all kind of wraps up in the idea of what is the problem that we have to deal with? And what is our hope? I think we don't really appreciate the fact that the way that we talk about it, like if you're sitting through a sermon, what you're going to hear there, [01:00:00] it's not going to be the same as what you would have heard in, say, a synagogue.
And, listen, we're not going to get perfect at that, okay? I'm not going to say that I've got this magic formula, because I don't think any modern scholar today, we're getting a little bit closer to that context and closer to the way that people thought, but there's still going to remain a disconnect and there's still going to be some guesswork involved, but this is why I think it's important to look at the themes of scripture and the arc of the narrative and these kinds of things.
Because they do have application to the way that we're reading it, and they connect to history. Like, if you want the Bible to be a history book, you're in good company here, because it is. It's not some scientific history book in the sense that we should expect it to read like a modern history book, or a modern nonfiction book.
That's simply not what it [01:01:00] is. But it's exceptionally grounded in the actual history of the Israelite people. And because of that, when we look at the work of the Messiah and we ask questions like, why did Jesus have to die? What was the point of his life, death, crucifixion, resurrection, all of that? What does that have to do with us and humanity?
Well, we're missing out on a lot if we don't understand that in some Jewish form, right? Because he was the Jewish Messiah. I mean, he's the Messiah for the whole world. But, he is a Jewish Messiah. And as such, we need to understand that in that context. Not asking the questions that we ask today, but the kinds of questions and the kinds of concerns that an ancient Jew would have.
Anyway, so, you can look forward to some more biblical [01:02:00] theology in that vein for next week. I appreciate you guys listening, and I hope you all enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much to those of you who share the episode with others so that others can also listen, and a really big shout out to my Patreon and PayPal supporters. You guys rock.
For those interested, I do have a newsletter, and you can sign up for it at GenesisMarksTheSpot. com, where you can also find all of my episodes, you can find information about my guests, you can find blog posts, and there is a little tab that says Store. So, if you want to go and look at some of my artwork that I have for sale, you can find that there.
Alright, I guess that is it for now. I wish you all a blessed week, and we will see you later.
