Around the turn of our present era – just before and during the life of Jesus – two Jewish rabbis lived and rose to considerable fame. Even if you have heard of one or both of these teachers of the law, you may not know much about them – despite the fact they both had considerable influence on what we read in the New Testament today.
The first of these teachers, Hillel the Elder, also known as Hillel the Great (c. 110 BC – AD 10), lived in Jerusalem during the time of King Herod and became the most famous Jewish scholar of that era. The second scholar was Shammai (50 BC – AD 30), who tradition says was a Pharisee who became a leading Jewish teacher and whose influence was also considerable in the development of Jewish thought.
Although their lives overlapped, Hillel was about sixty years old at the time of Shammai’s birth; but some of their interactions are recorded, and their teachings were completely different. Generally speaking, Hillel’s teachings were more lenient and compassionate, while those of Shammai were more strict and severe. A famous example is that Shammai said it was wrong to tell an ugly bride that she looked beautiful, while Hillel said that all brides are beautiful on their wedding day. While Shammai and his followers believed only worthy students should be admitted to study the law of God, Hillel and his disciples stressed that the law may be taught to anyone, in the hope that the person would grow and become worthy.
Shammai’s strictness could be extreme. He and his followers said that if someone forgot to ask a blessing on a meal and had left the place where he ate, the person must return to that place to recite the blessing. Hillel said, however, that the person could recite a blessing in the place where they realized their omission. But While Shammai could be overly strict, sometimes Hillel could be overly lenient. For example, Shammai held that a man may only divorce his wife for a serious transgression, but Hillel allowed divorce for even such trivial offenses as burning a meal.
This is why Jesus said “anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery” (Matthew 5:32) – clearly distancing himself from the teachings of Hillel on this point. Jesus also phrased the “Golden Rule” of “do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31) in a positive way, in contrast to Hillel’s famous but more negative expression of the same concept. But in other ways, Jesus sided with Hillel over Shammai. While Shammai stressed the importance of the Jewish people and their temple, Hillel – and Jesus after him – was more accepting of non-Jewish people and looked beyond the temple (John 4:21).
But Jesus did not follow either of the major rabbis’ teachings exclusively, and in a sense, his agreement with them was often coincidental. This is seen in the fact that the discussions of the two scholars and their followers contributed to the belief that the oral law – as expounded by Hillel and Shammai – was just as binding as the written law of God. Jesus firmly rejected this approach of many in his day by citing Scripture: “They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules” (Matthew 15:9). Nevertheless, much of what we read in the Gospels is a result of Jesus rejecting or confirming what Hillel and Shammai taught on various points – the major theological views of his day.
The influence of these teachers on the apostle Paul was also extensive – especially because Paul had studied with the scholar Gamaliel (Acts 22:3) who was the grandson of Hillel. The book of Acts relates that Gamaliel intervened on behalf of the apostles of Jesus when they were seized and brought before the Sanhedrin – doubtless because many of their teachings agreed with aspects of his own and that of his grandfather, Hillel. Nevertheless, we see many instances in the writings of Paul where the apostle disagreed as well as agreed with the views of his celebrated teacher, and the views of Hillel and Shammai before him.
Ultimately, we can study and understand the New Testament without the teachings of the great rabbinical thinkers of New Testament times, but knowing something of their views can sometimes help us better understand what Jesus and Paul had in mind when they gave examples of how and how not to interpret the law of God.
* For more information on the historical background of the New Testament, download our free e-book Inside the Four Gospels: Four Portraits, Many Lessonshere.
“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6)
It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of kingship in the ancient biblical world. Kings ruled their people with total power – the king was viewed as either a god himself (as in ancient Egypt) or as the representative of God or the gods (as in ancient Israel and many other Near Eastern cultures). As a result, the birth of an heir to the throne was a symbolically important occasion which was often celebrated in stories of mythic and legendary proportions.
The picture of human rulership painted by these royal birth stories is in stark contrast to Isaiah’s prophecy of the great king who would come. While the “birth oracles” of human kings promised that they would be mighty conquerors destroying their enemies, Isaiah pictures a divine King who would strive for peace. The contrasting nature of the human rulers and the promised King is also seen in their titles. It was common in the biblical world for rulers to take a throne name along with various titles that emphasized their greatness. In Egypt, for example, each pharaoh took five such descriptive titles as part of the coronation ceremony.
The coronation of the King promised by Isaiah is reflected in the statement that “the government will be upon His shoulder” and the four double titles Isaiah gives for the royal child who would be born are kingship titles similar to those used by human rulers, though the second and third stress the true divinity of Israel’s promised King:
Wonderful Counselor: Like the others that follow it, this is a title consisting of two words that convey a single idea. The expression could mean “A wonderful Counselor” or “One who gives wonderful counsel.” The second idea is found elsewhere in Isaiah (see Isaiah 28:29) and is probably what the prophet intended.
Mighty God: In the Hebrew, this title (el-gibbor) is literally “Mighty God” – an expression Isaiah also uses in Isaiah 10:21. While the title “Wonderful Counselor” connects wisdom to the Messiah, “Mighty God” connects strength to him – the two fundamental aspects of good kingship. In Isaiah 11:2 the prophet speaks of exactly these characteristics in “the Spirit of counsel and of might” with which the Messianic child would be born.
Everlasting Father: This title is literally “Father of Eternity,” but it does not mean the promised One would be the Creator of time, or describe the coming King as being eternal. Rather, it means One who continually – eternally – acts as a Father to his people.
Prince of Peace: This last title is particularly interesting as it is almost unique among the titles of ancient Near Eastern kings. Although Egyptian kings often said their reigns would bring about a “repeating of days” or a return to the perfection of original creation, their empty boasts meant little to the people they ruled. Isaiah’s promise of peace in the reign of the coming King is unequivocal, however, and is repeated in the verses following his title, in Isaiah 9:7.
Skeptics have sometimes claimed that the king promised by Isaiah was simply Hezekiah, the son of Ahab – in both of whose rules Isaiah prophesied. However, the titles to be given the promised King could hardly apply to Hezekiah (see also Isaiah 7:14), and he died at a time of great problems and impending national downfall (Isaiah 39:5–7) rather than the greatness foretold by Isaiah.
Nevertheless, many of the people of ancient Judah who heard Isaiah’s prophecy of a coming great King may have believed it applied to Hezekiah. Their country was threatened, and because the ancient Jews doubtless saw the similarities between the names and description of the promised King and those of the physical kings of their time, they looked for a leader in their own time who would be an immediate answer to their physical and political problems. It was doubtless incomprehensible to them that the promised King would not come for centuries after Isaiah spoke, and that when he did arrive he would be born into very humble surroundings rather than a palace, and – perhaps most of all – that he would be very different from the kind of kings with which they were accustomed. But God’s promise to his people held true, nonetheless – and although the promise would not be fulfilled for a number of centuries, it would be fulfilled forever.
* * * You may like the latest blog post on our Living With Faith website here.
Jesus was not the only messianic figure to appear in ancient Palestine. The Jewish people of the first century were waiting for a messiah who would rise up to free them from Roman rule – and a number of seeming messiahs did appear (Acts 5:37). Two of the most important of these supposed messiahs were Simon bar Giora and Simeon bar Kosevah. You may not have heard of these individuals, but for many they were of life and death importance in their day, and their stories carry a message we can all learn from.
Simon bar Giora (died AD 70/71) was probably born during the later life of Jesus or only a few years after Jesus’s death. He was one of the many patriot leaders who emerged in Judea as a result of Roman oppression and misrule, and he eventually rose to prominence as the head of one of the major Judean factions during the First Jewish-Roman War. These patriot leaders gathered large followings and attacked both the Romans and those seen as Roman sympathizers. They appear to have been motivated by religious as well as political concerns and Simon apparently proclaimed liberty for slaves and the oppressed, very likely following Isaiah’s message (Isaiah 61:1) of the Lord’s Anointed who would bring good tidings to the humble and proclaim liberty to the captives – just as Jesus had done (Luke 4:18). But while Jesus did not claim to go beyond this point at his first coming, Simon embraced the following words of the prophecy which were that the anointed would also “proclaim … the day of vengeance of our God” (Isaiah 61:2).
Simon was a physically powerful man, and his victories against the Romans exhibited good leadership and strategic thinking as well. Even the Jewish historian and Roman collaborator Josephus – who clearly hated Simon – was forced to admit that the leader “was regarded with reverence and awe, and such was the esteem in which he was held by all under his command, that each man was prepared even to take his own life had he given the order.” In fact, Simon was acclaimed by the people as their messianic savior, yet when the tide of war turned and the Romans eventually defeated Simon, he was taken to Rome and executed there. In Judea, in the wake of the brutal Roman victory and resulting destruction of the Jewish temple in AD 70, Simon was soon forgotten.
Simeon bar Kosevah – also called bar Kochba – (died AD 135) achieved even greater fame with the Jewish people, convincing them of his anointed status at the time of the Second Jewish-Roman War. This second Jewish rebellion took place sixty years after the first and lasted approximately three years. During that time Bar Kosevah tried to revive the Hebrew language (by then largely replaced by Aramaic and Greek) and to make Hebrew the official language of the Jews as part of his messianic ideology. Although he was widely accepted by many Jews as the messiah who would free them from Roman misrule (he was even said to be the messiah by Akiva, the most famous rabbi of the time), Bar Kosevah also made many enemies. He did not unify the people, and according to the early Christian writer Eusebius, he executed many Christians for their refusal to fight against the Romans.
Bar Kosevah was also not a great military strategist or leader and despite many early victories achieved with an army of over 200,000, his downfall to the Romans was inevitable. After his defeat and death, most Jews soon forgot his messianic status and later Rabbis changed his name – calling him “Bar Koziba,” meaning “Son of the Lie.”
After the disastrous Second Jewish-Roman War, messianic hopes and claims diminished, but when the Jewish Talmud was composed, it made several predictions for the arrival of the messiah, including the year 440 (Sanhedrin 97b) and 471 (Avodah Zarah 9b). Around this time a Jew named Moses of Crete claimed that he was the one the Talmud had predicted. Promising that, like his biblical namesake, he would lead his followers through the water and back to the Promised Land, Moses convinced many of his fellow Jews to leave behind their belongings and march directly into the sea. Moses himself disappeared, but many of his followers drowned. He too was soon forgotten.
But these and other claimed messiahs all teach us something important about the Christian faith. While the death and resurrection of Jesus is often disparaged by cynics and disbelievers as just another messiah story, perpetrated by those who did not want to give up their messianic hopes, it is clearly different. Despite the expectations and whipped up emotions of the followers of the many supposed messiahs, not a single one was believed to have been raised from the dead. The followers of each of these pseudo- messiahs simply accepted their leader had been killed, and their movements disappeared almost overnight. This was not so, of course, with the early Christians who, had they not believed that Jesus had been resurrected, would have simply done the same as the followers of every messianic figure before and after him, and given up.
That the early Christians did not give up their hopes is obviously based on the great many individuals the New Testament tells us were witnesses to the resurrection. As N. T. Wright has written: “We are forced to … account for the fact that a group of first-century Jews, who had cherished messianic hopes and centered them on Jesus of Nazareth, claimed after his death that he really was the Messiah despite the crushing evidence to the contrary” (The Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 562). The followers of no other messiah claimed anything like that. The good news of Christianity is that Christianity is not just another messiah story.
King David’s life and reign are so well documented in the Bible that the many people involved – truly a cast of hundreds – can be confusing at times. But the identity of some of these individuals is important for understanding David’s story.
For example, the individual Zeruiah is named a total of twenty-six times (twice as many times as Nehemiah, for example) in four separate books of the Old Testament. Zeruiah also had three prominent sons: Joab, Abishai, and Asahel (2 Samuel 2:18). But who was Zeruiah?
The answer to this question is found in the genealogy of David, recorded in 1 Chronicles 2:3-16. This genealogical summary records that David had seven older brothers (also mentioned in 1 Samuel 16:10-11) and two sisters. Zeruiah was one of David’s two sisters, and the three sons of Zeruiah (Joab, Abishai, and Asahel) were David’s nephews. This explains a number of otherwise puzzling events or circumstances in David’s reign.
For example, 2 Samuel tells us that when David’s son Absalom attempted to forcibly take the kingship and sought to kill his father, he made Amasa the commander of the Israelite army (2 Samuel 17:25). Even though Amasa led the forces that tried to overthrow and kill David at this time, once Absalom had been defeated King David retained Amasa as commander of the army in place of the previous commander Joab who had disobeyed David by killing Absalom.
We might wonder why David would trust Amasa, but the answer to this question is found in 2 Samuel 17:25 and 1 Chronicles 2:16–17. Amasa was the son of a woman called Abigail (not David’s wife by that name). This Abigail was David’s other sister in addition to Zeruiah (1 Chronicles 2:16). So Amasa was David’s nephew. This is why David asked Amasa, “Are you not my own flesh and blood?” (2 Samuel 19:13).
Unfortunately for Amasa, Joab (the son of Zeruiah) killed his cousin to regain his role as head of Israel’s army. The fact that Joab was David’s nephew explains why David would not execute him despite his crimes, but had Solomon kill him – as Solomon did not have the same direct familial ties to the commander.
Royal politics, as with many other aspects of life in the biblical world, were often driven by such family connections and relationships. Responsibilities to close family members were particularly strong, and it was rare for individuals in power to kill or even punish close relatives unless they were perceived as a direct threat. In the cases we have looked at here, David not only would have had to break this societal attitude if he had executed his nephews Amasa or Joab, but also he would have disgraced his own sisters by doing so.
The identity of David’s two sisters helps us to understand David’s actions or lack of action on several occasions and looking at the family connections involved can often help us to understand the story of this and other Old Testament kings.
When we think of Bible versions we can’t understand, most of us might think of Bibles in the original languages of Hebrew or Greek, or perhaps a medieval Latin Bible. But we often don’t realize how much our own language has changed over the centuries and how difficult it would be for us to read a Bible in English from several hundred years ago. Below, we give the example of the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6 – as it looked in English Bibles every two hundred years from the thirteenth century to today. Before the thirteenth century very little of the Bible was translated into English at all. The first complete English-language version of the Bible dates from 1382 and was credited to the translator John Wycliffe and his followers, so we begin with that time point.
Thirteenth Century – Manuscript in the Library of Cambridge University:
Fader oure that art in heve, i-halgeed be thi nome, i-cume thi kinereiche, y-worthe thi wylle also is in hevene so be an erthe, oure iche-dayes-bred gif us today, and forgif us our gultes, also we forgifet oure gultare, and ne led ows nowth into fondingge, auth ales ows of harme.
Fifteenth Century – Manuscript in the Library of Oxford University:
Fader oure that art in heuene, halewed be thy name: thy kyngedom come to thee: thy wille be do in erthe as in heuen: oure eche dayes brede geue us to daye: and forgeue us oure dettes as we forgeue to oure dettoures: and lede us nogte into temptacion: bot delyver us from yvel.
Seventeenth Century – The King James Version of 1611:
Our father which art in heauen, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdome come. Thy will be done, in earth, as it is in heauen. Giue vs this day our daily bread. And forgiue vs our debts, as we forgiue our debters. And lead vs not into temptation, but deliuer vs from euill: For thine is the kingdome, and the power, and the glory, for euer.
Nineteenth Century – The English Revised Version:
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
Twenty-first Century – The Christian Standard Bible:
Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
The differences between these Bible versions become more noticeable the further we go back, of course, and considering that most of us know what the examples above say before we started to read them, we would probably agree that we would find it difficult to read a whole Bible of the thirteenth, fifteenth, or seventeenth centuries – even if it is in English.
While it may be interesting to see and realize the difficulty we would experience in reading a Bible in our own language unless it were of recent date, we can draw a useful lesson from this. Often, Christians think that the major work of Bible translations into other languages is essentially done. The Bible has, after all, been translated into over 700 languages, and the New Testament has been translated into well over 1200 languages.
While it is true that this means the Bible has been translated into most important languages, it is still equally true that there are many thousands of dialects of these languages that still have no Bible translation. We may think that local dialects are relatively unimportant – for instance, someone in the United States speaking a southern dialect can fairly easily understand someone using an Appalachian dialect – the differences in our dialects are relatively small. But in many language groups the various dialects are just as, or even more, different than what we see in an English Bible of today and an English Bible of the thirteenth century – that you and I would find extremely difficult to read.
The moral of the story is simple. While a great deal of Bible translation work has been tirelessly accomplished by dedicated translators over the past century or so, there are many millions of people who still have no Bible in their own language or only one in a related dialect that is very difficult for them to understand. Understanding this situation can help us to pray more, and more intently, for still-needed translations, and to see the need to support the ongoing work of Bible translators in whatever way we can.
It may sound like a contradiction in terms, but in ancient Rome Christians were often called atheists. Most people in the Roman Empire believed that there were many gods, and the idea of worshipping only one God seemed so bizarre to the Romans that they viewed it as a denial of the existence of all the other gods – their gods – and as a result they labeled Christians as “impious atheists.”
Although Judaism held the same belief in monotheism, the Jews tended to keep their religion to themselves and generally did not attempt to witness to their religion or spread it in the way that Christians did. Because of this fact, the Romans knew much more about the beliefs of Christianity and began to take issue with what they saw as Christian rejection of the Roman deities. Additionally, many did not like the fact that Christianity condemned a number of their socially acceptable behaviors.
So the Christians became known as intolerant of other gods and were soon being accused of being “atheists” along with a number of false accusations. The situation was so widespread that in AD 176-7 the Christian thinker Athenagoras (A.D. 133-190) wrote an explanation or “apology” on the matter that he addressed to the Emperor at the time, Marcus Aurelius.
This work was called the Plea for the Christians and combats the three most common charges against Christians: atheism, incest and cannibalism. The accusation of cannibalism was, of course, a misunderstanding of the Christian idea of eating the “flesh” and “blood” of the Son of God (partaking of the bread and wine – Luke 22:19-20) in the Lord’s Supper. The charge of incest was based on the common Christian practice of referring to all people – including husbands and wives – as “brother” or “sister,” and, as we have seen, the idea that the Christians were atheists was the result of the “intolerant” Christian belief of monotheism.
In an interesting turn of events, as history has progressed to the day in which we live, Christianity is being increasingly viewed as intolerant. This is not only because of its rejection of many socially accepted behaviors, but also because the Christian Faith teaches of Jesus Christ that “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). In today’s inclusive and politically correct world, such an idea seems as bizarre to many modern people as it was to the ancient Romans, and the response is frequently the same – “If you don’t accept my god, you are intolerant and I won’t accept you or your God.”
In ancient Rome the charge of Christian intolerance soon led to intolerance against Christians, and our own time is no different. We see increasing intolerance regarding the Christian rejection of ungodly behavior just as the early Christians did, and we too can take to heart the words of Peter regarding those who are offended by that “intolerance”: “They are surprised that you do not join them in their reckless, wild living, and they heap abuse on you” (1 Peter 4:4).
Perhaps the similarities between the situation at the time of early Christianity and where our own culture is leaning should not surprise us. Paul spoke of the same factors affecting early Christians and believers today: “… everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). In these words we see that persecution involves the world’s response to both Christians’ moral choices (“live a godly life”) and their theological ones (“in Christ Jesus”), as both are seen as evidence of intolerance by those opposed to Christianity, and both become the grounds for persecution.
For many Christians intense persecution at the hands of other religions is already here, of course, and we are reminded again of Peter’s words: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12). Peter was simply reminding his hearers of the words of Jesus himself: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:11-12).
History does, indeed, repeat itself. But as the persecution of Christians becomes more common again – essentially for the same reasons – let us be encouraged to also repeat the outcome of that persecution. Peter tells us: “…if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name” (1 Peter 4:16 ESV). We can glorify God in this context by our good works despite the accusations and persecution we endure, and it is by demonstrating God in us that we best disprove the charges of intolerance and godlessness. Athenagoras understood that well – as he shows in his rebuttal of the charge of Christian atheism:
“…if [Christians] are unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds [they] exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth: they do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck, they do not strike again; when robbed, they do not go to law; they give to those that ask of them, and love their neighbors as themselves …” (Plea for the Christians, Chapter 11).
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