And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you [Abraham] have obeyed my voice.
(Genesis 22:18)
Troki believes that this cannot refer to Jesus, since Troki takes the term "seed" as a collective term which cannot apply to any individual. Troki gives numerous prooftexts for this, including Genesis 28:14, 18:18, and 12:3. God raised the patriarchs to spiritual bliss for their obedience, and will do so to the children of Israel as well. I completely agree did appoint the reward of bliss to the children of Israel for following the commands of God. That is the whole point of Deuteronomy 28.
Troki says "Christians generally argue in favor of their religion from detached portions of the prophecies, without going deeply into the sacred subject and studying the context." This is one of my many points of agreement with Troki. Modern Christianity often engages in bad prooftexting, plucking verses out of context and stringing them together. An example is arguments for the pre-tribulation rapture. Proponents will do a word search for phrases like "day of the Lord" and simply assume that all verses that include the term speak of the same event. This is far from obvious.
Troki then goes on to commit the exact same error for which he chastizes [sic] modern Christians.
It is true that the plain literal meaning of the verse is that it refers to Abraham's offspring generally. Rabbinical Judaism, Reform Judaism, and Karaite Judaism have failed to make any significant impact on the non-Jewish world. While the Jewish people themselves have done a great deal of good for the world, these religious denominations have done next to nothing to spread the knowledge of God to the Gentiles.
Instead, it has been Christian Jews, and later, Gentile Christians who have systematically spread the knowledge of the God of Israel to the whole world.
Troki indirectly attacks Paul's interpretation of the promise in Galatians 3:16. "Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed. It does not say, 'And to seeds,' referring to many, but referring to one, 'And to your seed,' who is Christ."
Jews who give this objection forget that Rabbinical interpretations of the Scriptures take greater creative liberties than this. Sanhedrin 37a where Tana Kama states that the term "bloods" in Genesis 4:10 has a special and different meaning and therefore refers to the blood of Cain's descendants. Did the rabbis not know that the term "bloods" is used all the time to indicate blood shed by violence?
Or what about Ketubot 37a? In this passage, the rabbis make the same kind of argument that Paul makes in Galatians. They make an inference from the fact that the term "wickedness" is used in Deuteronomy 25:2, rather than "wickednesses" even though "wickedness" does not have a plural in ancient Hebrew.
http://biblesuite.com/hebrew/7564.htm
Or how about the Mishnah Sabbath 9.3 which states:
"How do we know of a garden bed, six handbreadths square that five different kinds of seed may be sown into it, four on the sides and one in the middle?
Since it says 'For as the earth brings forth her bud and as the garden causes seeds sown in it to spring forth.' Its seed is not said, but seeds."
Paul's homiletic use of the term "seed" is no different than that of the rabbis, who had a literal interpretation of the verses, but also recognized that verses could be interpreted homiletically to make additional points.
Drew, I would like to bring a point to your attention that may clear up the "double standard" attack that you dub upon the rabbinical interpretations. The NT classifies the gospel writers as prophets. I'm sure you would concur with the idea that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, etc. are all prophets, just as much as Moses, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, etc. were prophets. However, Pharisee rabbinical thought does not acknowledge the Talmudic writers as being "prophets" at all! The writings do not claim to be prophetic writings, nor do the rabbis of today acknowledge them as such. Therefore, the accusation that the rabbis use a "double standard" to evaluate the validity of the NT writers, doesn't seem to fly so well. The "loose, midrashic, typological," interpretative style of the NT writers seems to be crucial to the theological core of Christianity. If I disagree with Paul's interpretation of "seed" or Matthew's interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 or "out of Egypt I called my son," I would be deemed a heretic under Christian theological understanding. However, the rabbinical interpretative style is not so cut and dry. For example, if a rabbinical interpretation of a particular verse/passage loosely associates it with Messiah, (ex. Daniel 7:13-14) and I disagree with that particular interpretation, I am not considered a heretic. It is not essential to the theological core of rabbinic Judaism that I accept every single loose Messianic interpretation that the rabbis set forth. Therefore, I would argue that it is not the rabbis who are setting a "double standard," but the defenders of NT doctrine, who wish to dub their writers both "midrashic/typological," in a similar fashion to the rabbis, while simultaneously acknowledging them as prophets like Moses, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, etc. Rabbinical interpretations do not do this at all.
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