If pigs become kosher

Hamas’s interior minister Fathi Hammad (above) has admitted that Israel was right about the casualties in its assault on Gaza two years ago, “Operation Cast Lead”.

Hamas has maintained that the vast majority of casualties were civilians but in interview with the London-based Arab newspaper Al-Hayat, Hammad admitted that the 250policemen Israel killed on the first day of the Gaza conflict were combatants, just as Israel had claimed. Human rights organizations have repeatedly dismissed Israel’s claim that the policemen functioned as an auxiliary Hamas army unit. Hamas’s interior minister now, admits: “On the first day of the war, Israel targeted police stations and 250 martyrs who were part of Hamas and the various factions fell.”

“Factions” is a standard Palestinian euphemism for their armed militias.

Fathi Hammad also revealed, “about 200 to 300 were killed from the Qassam Brigades (Hamas’s main fighting force), as well as 150 security personnel.”

Now do the sums: 300 Qassam Brigade members + 150 “security personnel” + 250 policemen = 700; a figure as near-as-makes-no-difference to Israel’s estimate of 709.
So why has Hamas lied about its casualties for almost two years? Because, for terror organisations, lying is standard practice. After all, if someone wants to kill you, it’s not outside the bounds of possibility that they’d lie about you.

Speaking at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federation of North America’s in New Orleans on Monday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report on the conduct of the conflict “a modern day blood libel.” The report accused Israel of targeting Palestinian civilians and also accepted at face value the inflated Palestinian casualty figures. The international community, said Prime Minister Netanyahu, owes Israel an apology for accepting without question Hamas' propaganda about the Gaza conflict and using it to accuse the Jewish state of war crimes.

Will Israel get the apology it deserves? I suspect pigs will become kosher first.

Was St Luke a Jew?

Someone recently took issue with me over a statement I had made to the effect that the entire Bible, including the New Testament,was written by Jews. What about Luke? He wasn't a Jew; he was a Gentile.

First of all, I think most scholars simply assume Luke was a Gentile but among those who seek to defend the Gentile identity of Luke, the only real line of argument they have stems from Colossians 4:7-14, where Paul concludes the letter by listing the various people who were with him as he was writing the epistle. He mentions some who were of “the circumcision” (Col. 4:10-11), which included Aristarchus, Mark and Jesus called Justus. In v 14, Paul refers to Luke, the beloved physician, but because Luke is not mentioned among those of “the circumcision”, it is assumed he was not a Jew. However, in his commentary on Luke, the respected New testament scholar E. Earle Ellis points out that this line of reasoning is far from conclusive:

The large majority of scholars believe that Luke was a gentile. Although appeal is made to Luke’s good Greek, Col. 4: 10f., 14 is the only strong argument for the prevailing view. Luke is excluded from those ‘of the circumcision’. However, the meaning of the passage is not at all clear. One need not, with C. F. D. Moule … and C. C. Torrey … only call attention to the ambiguous wording of Col 4: 11. There is a more important question: who are those ‘of the circumcision’? In some passages the phrase can simply mean ‘the Jews’ (e.g., Rom. 4: 12).But there is no instance with the certain meaning, ‘Jewish Christians’. F. F. Bruce … thinks that outside Acts the phrase refers to Judaizers, that is, Jewish Christians who want to impose the Mosaic Law upon Gentile believers. This meaning fits Gal. 2: 12 and Tit. 1: 10 (‘the circumcision party’, RSV). But it is impossible at Col. 4:11…

Although not provable, this explanation accounts for the New Testament use of the phrase. To identify those ‘of the circumcision’ merely as Jewish Christians does not. Without that identification the evidence that Luke was a gentile disappears. There is no proof, of course, that he was not. But the balance of probabilities favours the view that Luke was a hellenistic Jew. This leaves open the possibility that Luke is the Lucius (Paul’s cousin?) mentioned in Rom. 16: 21. Like Silas and Silvanus, Luke and Lucius were alternate forms of the same name. (E. Earle Ellis, The Gospel of Luke. New Century Bible Commentary, Marshall, Morgan & Scott/Eerdmans, pp 52f)

Mikeal C. Parsons recent commentary, Luke: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist (Hendrickson, 2007), also leans toward Luke’s Jewish identity.

Secondly, there is further support for the Jewishness of Luke in Romans 3, where Paul asks the rhetorical question, “What advantage has the Jew?”. He answers: “Much every way, chiefly because that to them were committed the oracles of God” (Rom. 3:1-2). The Jewish nation was the vehicle of God’s revelation to the other nations. If Luke was a Gentile then most of the New Testament “oracles” were committed to a non-Jew, because Luke and Acts make up over half the New Testament writings.

Fourthly, evidence that Luke was a Jew can be found in the book of Acts. Luke was a constant companion of Paul from the time Paul sailed from Troas to Europe. He accompanied Paul on his last trip to Jerusalem and was an eyewitness to the arrest of Paul in the Temple in Acts 21 after he was accused of taking Gentiles into the Temple precincts.

Luke records that Paul had been seen on the streets of Jerusalem with “Trophimus an Ephesian”. It would seem Paul had taken Trophimus to Jerusalem so the apostles could see some of the fruit of his ministry as the apostle to the Gentiles. Even though the charge against Paul was false, the rumour spread among the people and caused a near riot on the Temple Mount. This was the reason for which Paul was arrested.
This raises an interesting point. When the Jews in Jerusalem accused Paul of taking a Gentile into the Temple, they pointed to Trophimus. If Luke was a Gentile, why didn’t Paul’s accusers use Luke as evidence? The fact that Luke is not mentioned in the accusation is a strong indication that he was not a Gentile.

Fifthly, another argument for the idea that Luke was a Jew is that his Gospel is very Jewish and he demonstrates an intimate knowledge of the Temple, more so than Matthew or John, and certainly more than Mark. When Luke describes the announcement to Zacharias concerning the birth of John the Baptist, he provides considerable detail to describe the service of the Levitical priests according to their families. He describes the place where Zacharias the priest was standing before the altar of incense, when the angel appeared to him (Luke 1:8-20). The fact that Luke alone of the four Gospel writers provides us with this account and does so in such vivid detail, argues for his being a Jew, familiar with the Temple procedures.

A final argument for the Jewish identity of Luke is the close contact he appears to have enjoyed with Mary, the mother of Jesus. Luke relates the story of the birth of Jesus primarily from her point of view and tells us she hid these things “in her heart” (Luke 2:19, 51). How did Luke, of all the Gospel writers, manage to get so close to Mary that she revealed to him what she had hidden in her heart? Given the close-knit nature of the Jerusalem church, it would seem highly unlikely that Luke could have gotten so close to the mother of Jesus if he were not a Jew.

On the basis of these considerations, if we are to make any assumption about the ethnic identity of Luke, it should be that he was Jewish and we should reject his Jewishness only when compelling evidence to the contrary is presented.

Word of mouth

I’ve just been talking to one of our field workers who is in contact with an Orthodox Jewish man via e-mail and she feels frustrated because the man in question draws his teachings from the Talmud, that enormous compendium of rabbinic wisdom contained in over sixty tractates, whereas she wants to refer him to the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures. Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner believes it is impossible for Jews and Christians to talk together meaningfully because, as he puts it in his book Jews and Christians: the Myth of a Common Tradition, Christianity is the religion of the Bible whereas Judaism is the religion of the Talmud. Christianity, he says is concerned with personal salvation, whereas Judaism is concerned with national sanctification. Consequently, there is no middle ground where both can meet. This is just a scholarly way of avoiding confrontation that could lead to Jewish people becoming concerned about personal salvation and exposing them to the teachings of the Bible.

I never come away from any discussion with people of other faiths without asking myself whether they might, however weak their arguments, be right. I suppose that’s because we as Christians are concerned about truth. I get the impression thatsome people defend their religion as they might defend their local soccer team or their favourite rock band. They want to win the argument so you’ll go away and they are prepared to bluster and even make up facts to get you to do that.

The Orthodox man my colleague is witnessing to believes that, at Sinai, God gave Moses not only the written Law but also the Oral Torah, to explain the written law. According to tractate Pirke Avot (Sayings of the Fathers), “Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it Joshua. Joshua transmitted it to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly. They [the Men of the Great Assembly] said three things: Be deliberate in judgment, raise many students, and make a protective fence for the Torah.”

The Oral Law (the Talmud) is the cornerstone of traditional Judaism but the written Torah says nothing about God transmitting a verbal explanation of the Torah. The only evidence for the Oral Law comes from the Oral Law itself.

Of course, if he so chose, God could have imparted a verbal explanation of the Law in order for the Jewish people to know how to order every minute of every day of their lives. He could have explained the minutiae of the Torah in such a way that every case brought before the judges of Israel could have been solved by reference to the Oral Law.

However, there is evidence in the writings of Moses that cast serious doubt on the claim that there ever was an unwritten body of law. Take, for instance, the case of the Sabbath breaker in Numbers 15:32ff:

Now while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron, and to all the congregation. They put him under guard, because it had not been explained what should be done to him.

Maybe I’ve misunderstood precisely what the Oral Torah is, but if God had exhaustively explained the application of the Law to Moses, why did Moses have to enquire of God what had to be done to the Sabbath breaker?

Take again the case of the five daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers 27. It is obvious that Moses did not know what should be done in the light of the request of those five women for property rights in the Promised Land. He had to seek the Lord’s mind.
There is much in the so-called Oral Law that is wise and helpful but the final authority in all matters of faith and practice must be the written word. Whenever tradition, however good that tradition might be, is added to Scripture, it swallows Scripture. This is the case with Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, Christian Scientism and every other sect that sets a body of tradition alongside Scripture.

Our principle for knowing God’s mind and will must always be: “To the [written] law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20).

Dancing in the Dark

Imagine condemned criminals dancing for joy around the courtroom holding up the very documents that seal their fates! That bizarre scenario becomes a reality for the Jewish people every year when they celebrate Simchat Torah: “Joy of the Law”.
Today was “Simchat Torah” and every year on 23 Tishri in the Jewish calendar, Jewish people celebrate the conclusion and restart of their annual Torah-reading cycle with an unbridled joy that surpasses even the joy of Sukkot.

Every year, the books of Moses are read in synagogues, starting with Genesis 1 and concluding, at the end of the year, with Deuteronomy 34. Tishri 23 began last evening and in synagogues tomorrow (Friday 1 October), chapters 33 and 34 of Deuteronomy will conclude the annual cycle of Torah readings. Genesis 1, the first chapter of the new cycle will also be read.

At Simchat Torah, it is customary for every man to take part in the celebration by receiving an aliyah, by “going up” to the bimah in synagogue to read from the books of Moses. Children too receive an aliyah, but the highlight of Simchat Torah is the hakafot, when congregants march and dance with Torah scrolls around the reading table in the synagogue.

On reflection, there is something profoundly sad about Jewish rejoicing in the Torah. At one level, it is wonderful to possess God’s law, or instruction (which is what the Hebrew word Torah means), and we should be grateful for it. But to rejoice with unrestrained joy is another matter altogether, for the Torah is not an unmixed blessing. According to the apostle Paul, the Torah is a curse because it condemns us all, and if Jewish people can read the Torah and rejoice in it, there is only one conclusion to be reached: they simply have not understood it.

Messiah Jesus instructed his Jewish disciples to rejoice that their names were written in heaven (Luke 10:21). Jewish people around the world spent the Jewish New Year, the ten Days of Awe and Yom Kippur seeking to have their names inscribed in heaven, in the Book of Life, but were not able to rejoice. Today, Jewish people rejoiced in the very law that keeps them from being written in the heavenly volume.

Got to get you into the Book of Life

A few minutes ago, the most solemn day in the Hebrew calendar. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, ended. It began on Friday evening and for the next 25 hours Jews around the world afflicted their souls by fasting and spent the day in synagogue confessing their sins and repenting of them in a bid to have their names inscribed in the Book of Life.

An Orthodox friend told me he was trying to make his life “100% fantastic” in preparation for the big day.

I was on a plane to Israel on Wednesday and found myself seated with an Orthodox Jewish family, squashed between the pater familias and his teenage daughter. I wished him Shanah Tovah (a Good Year) and asked if he would be keeping Yom Kippur at the Western Wall. He told me he would be at a synagogue in Jerusalem.

I asked if the prospect of being judged by God frightened him. It did.

When I asked if he knew his name would be in the Book of Life at the end of the Day of Atonement, he shrugged. Who could tell?

I asked about Gentiles, since the rabbis teach that at Rosh Hashanah God judges everyone’s sins, not just those of the Jewish people. What could I do to find a place in the Book of Life?

“Do good things” was the only response I got.

Also on the plane was a friendly, non-religious Jewish man. He heard our conversation and joined in. He told me about two events he had attended to hear Rabbi Shmuely Boteach debate Messianic Jews. The first event he told me about was when Rabbi Boteach took on Dr Michael Brown in London two years ago. He thought Michael Brown got the better of Shmuely and I agreed.

The other debate was about twelve years ago when Shmuely went head to head with Messianic “Rabbi” Philip Sharpe. I was also at that debate and Zev was of the opinion that Rabbi Boteach wiped the floor with Sharpe. I agreed but that was only because Sharpe was an easy target. I asked if he remembered the last question of the evening. When I reminded him that Shmuely had called the questioner a liar, he remembered. The questioner was me.

Rabbi Boteach had stated in his presentation that Matthew, the author of the Gospel, did not understand Hebrew. If he had, he would never have understood Isaiah 7:14 as a reference to the virgin birth, since the Hebrew word almah means “young woman”, not “virgin”. In Greek, claimed Rabbi Boteach, there is one word that serves for both “virgin” and “young woman”.

In my question, I pointed out that Shmuely was factually incorrect. The Greek word for “virgin” is parthenos and “young woman” is neanis. When I asked Shmuely why the Jewish scholars who translated Hebrew Scriptures into Greek 300years before the birth of Jesus also used parthenos to translate the Hebrew almah, he yelled – to the astonishment and horror of the audience – that I was a liar. I thanked him for his opinion but continued to press the point.

Afterwards, when I confronted him, Shmuely angrily insisted that, unlike him, I had no interest in truth but I kept asking why the translators of the Greek Septuagint understood Isaiah to have been referring to a virgin in chapter 7 of his book. Finally, in frustration and anger, he shouted ay me that it was because they were “stupid”.

Please pray for the family on the plane, for the secular Jew and for Shmuely Boteach, that they may discover the "Book of Life" is "the Lamb’s Book of Life" and look to the Lamb of God, who alone can take away their sins.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. find out what it means to me

Okay. We all know that Terry Jones, the pastor of the inappropriately named "Dove World Outreach Centre" was wrong to call for the burning of Korans. Worse than wrong. Pastor Jones' foolishness has already generated hostility and violence in the Islamic world. Even though he has called off the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book, the genie is out of the bottle.

Although I deplore Jones' stupidity, I understand what motivated his ill-conceived project: his anger at the proposed erection of an Islamic cultural centre/mosque across the road from Ground Zero.

But let's not forget that among all those eager to cast the first stone at an easy and soft target, there is a double standard at work. Suppose a Muslim cleric had pre-empted Jones and announced a burning of copies of the Talmud. Would there have been an international outcry? Suppose an imam organised a Bible-burning jamboree? Would he have been denounced on the front pages of the world's dailies?

The hypocrisy is astonishing. Don't offend Islam but allow Islam to offend everyone else. Respect Islam, even though it has no respect for anyone else.

Pastor Jones is indeed a foolish shepherd but he is being denounced for copying the very people the media refuses to censure - whatever they do.

Monty Python's Frying Circus

I always thought Terry Jones was a member of that team of madcap, surreal comics behind Monty Python's Flying Circus. Perhaps he's become a man of the cloth.

Gun-toting Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Centre in Gainesville, Florida has declared Saturday 11th September “International Burn a Koran Day”. He and his little flock have announced they intend to burn Korans this Saturday, on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre nine years ago.

This proposed Koran-frying circus is stupid, ill-conceived, counter-productive and, worst of all, unchristian. Book burning serves no useful purpose except to get up the noses of the people whose books you are burning. I’m no prophet, but I predict the results of the book-burning will be anti-American riots in Islamic countries and increased attacks on US and British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jones may well be putting his own life and the lives of his congregation in danger.

Jones and his flock are stooping to the tactics of the inarticulate and ignorant who, unable to defend their world views, resort to violence and destruction. Battles for truth are won by contending for the faith and exhibiting Christ-like attitudes. What is required in the battle for minds and souls is constructive debate, illumination of facts and reasoned analysis.

The Nazis burned Jewish books, Muslims burn US flags and radical rabbis in Israel burn New Testaments. Now, a professing Christian pastor is going to burn Moslem holy books.

Pastor Jones will have his fifteen minutes of fame (or infamy, depending on your perspective) but he’ll also have blood on his hands and the judgement seat of Christ to look forward to. I wouldn’t be in his shoes for all the oil in Kuwait.

Terry Jones had better keep that gun close. Muslims the world over know where his church is...