Re: lesbian bishops

Gareth McCaughan wrote:
[Eric:]
I don't know that the Jewish classification *did* arise long after the
books were written; for that we would need to know when they were
written, and that is an open question.

Sure, it's an open question, but if you have evidence of
the threefold classification that *isn't* much later than
any plausible date for, say, Genesis, then I'd be interested
to hear of it.

I have slightly reordered your post (since it is not canonical!!!) for
convenience of dealing with matters together.

A plausible date for Genesis? If we are talking about the work as we
have it, rather than particular source material within it, then the
presence of the prologue generally regarded as "Priestly" suggests a
date within or after the exile; so does the presence of myths which
seem to reflect those circulating in Babylon and Persia. Ezra appears
to have read the Torah or some part of it to the returned people, and
this could be the first time the whole was seen as an entity. So,
somewhere around 450 seems a plausible date. And, according to the
later book 2 Maccabees, Nehemiah collected the writings about the kings
and the prophets.

The full classification was not complete until the Christian era, but
it is generally held that the Law and the Prophets, as defined by Jews,
were a fully recognised classification in the late Persian or early
Greek period. Alexander lived 356 to 323 and this would be the latest
date for such recognition. (Information from an article in the Jewish
Study Bible) Thus there is not a huge gap between completion and
canonisation in the standard categories. And then, by definition,
everything else was "the rest" or "the Writings."

It would also tend to assume
that any given book was written as a single entity, rather than
possibly being a collection of different writings gathered and edited,
maybe several times before reaching their final form.

I can't imagine what makes you think it would "tend to assume"
that.

To talk about a date for a book, without further elaboration, implies
treating the book as a unity; in fact for most of the books there were
many dates, for different strands of tradition and different stages of
editing and redaction.


For what my opinion may be worth, I think that the Torah didn't reach
its present form until after the return from exile; and since by around
the time of Ezra it seems to have been classified as Torah, the writing
and the classification are almost contemporary.

Not so fast. Calling something "Torah" doesn't mean having the
traditional arrangement of books in place, any more than calling
someone a prophet does.

No. And it is true that Jesus' reference to "the law and the prophets"
doesn't thereby tell us what books he included in each category. But
the fact that he is recorded as using that twofold analysis on more
than one occasion; and on another using it with the addition of
"psalms"; these suggest that the classification as such was taken for
granted. And he does not say, anywhere, the law, the histories and the
prophets. (It also raises a question as to whether he regarded "the
Writings", including Daniel, as canonical scripture. He seems to view
the psalms that way, but there is no suggestion that he does so with
the other works in that category.)



<snipping and compressing the rest, I hope not unreasonably>
The problem is that the way we approach a book may have an effect on
the way we understand it.

That's certainly true, but it isn't a *problem* unless the
traditional Christian classification is inferior to the
traditional Jewish one, rather than just different.

For 2000 years Christians have been dismissing Jews at best and
slaughtering them at worst.

As far as the Tanakh/Old Testament is concerned, far too often
Christians have regarded it as little more than a quarry in which to
find proof texts, even where that may have meant distorting the meaning
or trimming the translation so as to suit our purpose.

Also irrelevant. "Our predecessors often misused these books,
therefore we must order them the same way as the Jews do"?
Nope, that doesn't make sense either.

And yet, what we are talking about is, primarily, the Holy Scriptures
of the Jewish people. Yes, the Church has adopted those scriptures as
part of our canon (though, even there, we can't agree on what that
canon should contain). But unless we recall that they were written by
Jews for Jews, in the context of the Jewish community of faith, we
always run a serious risk of misunderstanding and misapplying them.

Your rhetoric is running away with you. We're talking about the
question "is it wrong for Christians to work with the classification
and ordering of the Hebrew scriptures that has been traditional
for something like two millennia among Christians?", not the question
"should Christians treat Jews as God's rejects and hold them in
contempt?"


I think there are two separate but not unrelated issues.

1. How do we understand the Bible and, in particular, the Jewish
Scriptures within the Bible?

2. What does it mean to show respect to Jews?

In response to the first question, we need to have as full as possible
an understanding of the cultural and historical and religious context
in which the scriptures were written. We may well need more than that,
of course, but that at least we need.

Part of that is seeking to understand why they were written and how
they were viewed by their writers and those who received the particular
works. We may well choose to view them differently, but until we have
some real idea of their provenance, we are likely to go astray. We
should therefore, at the very least, be aware of how the people of
Israel viewed these books in or near the era in which they were
written, how they classfied them, what kinds of genre they thought they
were dealing with, and so on.

If, then, and in full awareness of what we are doing, we then choose to
set aside such understandings for what seems to us good reason, then we
may perhaps do so honestly. Whether we are wise to do so may be another
question; after all, if someone close to the work called it "prophecy"
and we, centuries later, call it "history", then we'd better be very
sure of what we are doing. But at least then we do it with eyes wide
open, rather than just accepting some other classification in
ignorance.

Similarly, if a work has been studied with devotion for centuries, and
we then set aside such studies as not or no longer valid or irrelevant
to us, again we need to be very careful and aware of what we are doing
and why.


Which brings us to the second question, about what it means to have
respect for Jews. I am not simply talking about treating individual
Jews with decency, but about Jews as a group and their entire community
of faith. To me that must involve a recognition of Judaism as a living
faith, built on millennia of tradition and study, and on scriptures
which fed and nourished that community long, long before they were
adopted by the Christian faith community, and which have continued to
feed and nourish them in the centuries since Christianity. And this
means taking seriously how Judaism itself views those scriptures and
being prepared to learn from them.

Many Jews find it highly offensive that the documents which are central
to their belief are treated in what seems to them to be a cavalier
manner by Christians. Respect involves understanding and responding to
this. We reorganised the scriptures for whatever reason - it seems
possible that some of this goes back to the Church's use of the
Septuagint - but with little or no regard for Jewish sensibilities.
Perhaps it is time to try to repair the breach between our communities.
I am not talking about blending faiths or anything like that; it would
be objectionable to both sides. But I am talking about making moves at
conciliation.

To his credit the present Pope is making serious moves in that
direction and I honour him for it. But we have two millennia of
hostility to heal. A move towards a common recognition of the
scriptures and their ordering would be a massive step forward. And,
while we are at it, we might start to use rather less that offensive
term "Old Testament" and find something more acceptable.
.

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