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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780687209088 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Abingdon Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/1980 |
| Series: | Series a |
| Edition description: | REV |
| Pages: | 290 |
| Sales rank: | 540,720 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.51(w) x 8.49(h) x 0.62(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
The People of God and the Kingdom of Israel
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK BEGINS THE STORY OF JESUS' MINISTRY WITH THESE SIGNIFICANT WORDS: "JESUS CAME INTO GALILEE, PREACHING the gospel of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel'" (1:14-15). Mark thus makes it plain that the burden of Jesus' preaching was to announce the Kingdom of God; that was the central thing with which he was concerned. A reading of the teachings of Jesus as they are found in the Gospels only serves to bear this statement out. Everywhere the Kingdom of God is on his lips, and it is always a matter of desperate importance. What is it like? It is like a sower who goes forth to sow; it is like a costly pearl; it is like a mustard seed. How does one enter? One sells all that he has and gives to the poor; one becomes as a little child. Is it a matter of importance? Indeed it is! It would be better to mutilate yourself and enter maimed than not to get in at all. So paramount, in fact, was the notion of the Kingdom of God in the mind of Jesus that one can scarcely grasp his meaning at all without some understanding of it.
But for all his repeated mention of the Kingdom of God, Jesus never once paused to define it. Nor did any hearer ever interrupt him to ask, "Master, what do these words 'Kingdom of God,' which you use so often, mean?" On the contrary, Jesus used the term as if assured it would be understood, and indeed it was. The Kingdom of God lay within the vocabulary of every Jew. It was something they understood and longed for desperately. To us, on the contrary, it is a strange term, and it is necessary that we give it content if we are to comprehend it. We must ask where that notion came from and what it meant to Jesus and those to whom he spoke.
It is at once apparent that the idea is broader than the term, and we must look for the idea where the term is not present. Indeed, it may come as a surprise to learn that outside of the Gospels the expression "Kingdom of God" is not very common in the New Testament, while in the Old Testament it does not occur at all. But the concept is by no means confined to the New Testament. While it underwent, as we shall see, a radical mutation on the lips of Jesus, it had a long history and is, in one form or another, ubiquitous in both Old Testament and New. It involves the whole notion of the rule of God over his people, and particularly the vindication of that rule and people in glory at the end of history. That was the Kingdom which the Jews awaited.
Now the Jews looked in particular for a Redeemer, or Messiah, who should establish the Kingdom of God victoriously. And since the New Testament declared that Jesus was that Messiah who had come to set up his Kingdom, we are at once driven back into the Old Testament to consider the messianic hope of Israel. We think particularly of Isaiah, who gave the hope of the coming Prince of the line of David its classic form. There leap to mind the words so often read as the Christmas lesson: "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; ... and his name will be called 'Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace'" (Isa. 9:6). But since the expectation of the coming redemption is expressed repeatedly in the Old Testament in passages which make no explicit mention of the Messiah, it is clear that we have to do with a subject as wide as the entire eschatological hope of Israel. For the hope of Israel was the hope of the coming Kingdom of God.
But we cannot consider that hope in a vacuum, as it were, by an analysis of the various passages that express it. That hope had its roots in Israel's faith and in Israel's history, and we must attempt to trace them. This is not idle antiquarian curiosity, as a moment's reflection would show. Isaiah, for example, although he gave the hope of the Messiah Prince its definitive formulation, and although we may declare that he was surely inspired of God to do so, clearly did not shape his idea out of the blue. Revelation, here as always, was organic to the life of the people, and its shape was hammered out of tragic experience. Before there could have been the hope for a Prince of David's line, there had to be — David. Before the hope of a messianic Kingdom there had to be — the Kingdom of Israel. In short, before Israel's hope of the Kingdom of God could assume such a form, she had first to build a kingdom on this earth. We shall therefore have to go back and consider the rise of the Davidic state and those ideas which it released into the Hebrew soul.
The Davidic state would, however, be a very poor place to begin, for it created neither Israel's faith nor the notion of the Kingdom of God. True it powerfully shaped and colored both for all time to come, but Israel's faith had already assumed its normative form long before David was born. The idea of the rule of God over his people was already there. Indeed, the Davidic state was itself no little limited by that idea, and there were some, as we shall see, who even felt that it was in fundamental contradiction to it. So we are driven back into that earliest and formative period of Israel's history in which both people and religion took shape. There, in the heritage of Moses himself, we shall find the beginnings of her hope of the Kingdom of God. For this was no idea picked up along the way by cultural borrowing, nor was it the creation of the monarchy and its institutions, nor yet the outgrowth of the frustration of national ambition, however much all these factors may have colored it. On the contrary, it is linked with Israel's whole notion of herself as the chosen people of God, and this in turn was woven into the texture of her faith from the beginning. Only so can its tenacity and its tremendous creative power, both in Old Testament and New, be explained.
We have opened a subject as wide as the Old Testament faith itself, and one to which we shall find it difficult to do justice in so brief a compass. But we have no course but to essay it. There is no other way.
I
We must, then, begin our story in the latter half of the thirteenth century B.C., for it was then that Israel began her life as a people in the Promised Land.
Let us look briefly at the world of the day. The long reign of Ramesses II (1301-1234) was moving toward its end, and Egypt's great period of empire had not long to go. Egypt was now an ancient country with well-nigh two thousand years of recorded history behind her. Some three hundred years before, under the dynamic pharaohs of the XVIII Dynasty, she had entered her period of greatest military glory, at the height of which she ruled an empire which stretched from the fourth cataract of the Nile to the great bend of the Euphrates. The instruments of power were in her hands, and she knew how to use them. Her army, based on the horse-drawn chariot and the composite bow, possessed a mobility and a fire power few could withstand. Her navy ruled the seas. And in spite of temporary weakness in the early fourteenth century, as the XVIII Dynasty gave way to the XIX, and in spite of Hittite pressure in the north, the empire had been maintained fundamentally intact. Ramesses II was able to fight the Hittites to a bloody stalemate in Syria and to end his days in peace and glory — and considerable vainglory.
But the great Ramesses died, and under his successors the glory of Egypt slipped away. His son Marniptah came to the throne, already an old man, and in his short reign (1234-1225) had to fight twice for Egypt's life. Hordes of strange peoples, whom the Egyptians called the "Peoples of the Sea," were pressing upon the land down the invasion route from Libya, that route most recently traversed by Rommel's famed Afrika Korps. Only by the most strenuous effort was the pharaoh able to repel them. Then Marniptah died, and there ensued twenty years of weakness and anarchy followed by a dynastic change. Although the XX Dynasty took over and restored order, troubles were by no means at an end. Ramesses III (1195-1164), who might be called the last of Egypt's great pharaohs, had need of all his strength in order to deal with yet further invasions of the "Peoples of the Sea" from Libya, from the direction of Palestine, and by sea.
The "Peoples of the Sea" are an intriguing subject into which we cannot go. Their names: Ruka, Tursha, Aqiwasha, Shardina, Perasata, etc., show them to be Aegean peoples in a great race migration. They interest us chiefly because in the Perasata (Pelasata, biblical Peleshet) we recognize the Philistines — of whom more later. Although Egypt was able to save herself, she was internally sick. Bled white by incessant war, her army depending ever more largely on mercenaries, the drive which had sustained her for so many centuries had nearly played itself out. Apparently the will to empire had been lost. At any rate, under the successors of Ramesses III, the futile Ramessides (IV-XII), all traces of the empire vanished, never to be recovered again. By the latter part of the twelfth century Egypt was but a memory in Asia — albeit a potent one, as later history illustrates.
On the northeastern frontier of Egypt lies Palestine, the stage of the drama with which we are concerned. For centuries Palestine had been an Egyptian province. She had developed no political unity; Egypt had allowed none. Her population, predominantly Canaanite, was organized into a patchwork of petty city states, each with its king, subject to the pharaoh. In addition Egyptian governors, with their garrisons and tax-gatherers, were spotted through the land in a sort of dual control. Since the Egyptian bureaucracy was notoriously corrupt and rapacious, the land went from bad to worse. And when at last the power of the pharaoh slipped away, there remained a political vacuum. Left without a master were the Canaanite kinglets, each behind the ramparts of his pitiful walled town. Virtually every man's hand was against his neighbor in a sordid tale of rivalries too petty for history to notice. No unity existed, and Canaan was incapable of creating any.
Now Palestine is geographically defenseless, as all who have seen it on the map know. Not only is it sandwiched between the great powers of the Nile and the Euphrates and condemned by its position and small size to be a helpless pawn between them; it is also wide open to the desert on the east. Its entire history has been a tale of intermittent infiltration from that quarter. Beginning at least in the fourteenth century, if not as early as the sixteenth, and continuing progressively in the thirteenth, just such a process had been going on. Palestine and the surrounding lands were in course of receiving a new population. The Amarna Letters of the fourteenth century, where some of the invaders are called Habiru, are a witness to this process, while by the thirteenth century Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites had established themselves in their lands east of the Jordan. The Egyptians apparently could not stop these incursions, or did not care to.
In the decades after 1250 B.C., however, utter catastrophe struck Palestine. The Canaanite population sustained one of a series of blows that was ultimately to cost them nine tenths of their land holdings in Palestine and Syria. This is the story that we may see through the eyes of the book of Joshua. It is a story of bloody war; the smoke of burning towns and the stench of rotting flesh hang over its pages. It begins as the Israelite tribesmen, who have already run wild through the Amorite kingdoms of eastern Palestine, are poised on the bank of Jordan in sight of the Promised Land. Suddenly they are across the river dry-shod, the walls of Jericho fall flat at the sound of the trumpet, and Canaanite hearts melt with terror. Then follow in rapid succession three lightning thrusts — through the center of the land (chs. 7–9), into the south country (ch. 10), and into the far north (ch. 11) — and the whole mountain spine of Palestine is theirs. Were it not for the iron chariots (Judg. 1:19) which no foot soldier could face, they would have had the coast plain as well. Having occupied the land, they divide it among their tribes. It is a land made desert: the inhabitants have uniformly been butchered, the cities put to the torch.
Did the Canaanites know who these people were? Probably they thought them Habiru (Hebrews) like others who had preceded them. Perhaps they knew, though, that they called themselves the Benê Yisra' el, the children of Israel. Perhaps they learned, too — first with amusement, then with horror — that these desert men were possessed of the fantastic notion that their God had promised them this land, and they were there to take it!
It is not to be imagined, of course, that the Israelite conquest of Palestine was either as simple, as sudden, or as complete as a casual reading of Joshua might lead one to suppose. On the contrary, that book gives but a partial and schematized account of an incredibly complex process. New blood had, as we have seen, been in process of infiltrating Palestine for centuries. Many of these peoples, no doubt of kindred (Habiru) stock to the people of the conquest, came to terms with the latter and were incorporated into their tribal structure. Nor are we to suppose that when the conquest was over, the land was cleared of its original inhabitants and entirely occupied by Israel. A careful reading of the records will show that Canaanites continued to hold the plain, and even enclaves in the mountains, such as Jerusalem (cf. Judg. 1). Side by side with these people the Israelites had to live. The occupation of Palestine was thus partly a process of absorption which went on at least until David consolidated the entire land. It is clear from this that the nation Israel, which came to be, was not by any means composed exclusively of the descendants of those who had come from Egypt, a fact which partly explains her vulnerability to pagan notions. Still, for all these qualifications, the historicity of a concerted onslaught in the thirteenth century can no longer be questioned in view of overwhelming archaeological evidence. It was then that Palestine became the home of Israel. Of this climactic phase of the conquest the book of Joshua tells, in its own way, the story.
II
So Israel began her history as a people in the Promised Land. That was in itself an event of no great importance, and history would scarcely have remembered it at all had it not been for the fact that these tribesmen brought with them a religion the like of which had never been seen on earth before. Israel's faith was a drastic and, one might say, a rationally inexplicable break with ancient paganism. The father of that faith was Moses. The exact nature of the Mosaic religion is, of course, a vexed question, and we cannot launch into a lengthy discussion of it here. Yet it is important that we pause to point out its salient features.
1. The faith of Israel was unique in many respects. First of all, it was a monotheism. There is but one God, and the command, "You shall have no other gods before [i.e., beside] me," sternly forbade the Israelite to worship any other. Whether the Israelite at this period actually denied that other gods existed is a point that has occasioned much debate. Certainly monotheism was not so early a logically formulated doctrine, and, equally certain, the full implications of monotheistic belief were centuries in being drawn. Further, it is to be admitted that Israelite practice, especially as Israel came into contact with the older population of Canaan, was frequently anything but monotheistic. Yet in that Israel's faith not only commanded the exclusion of other gods from Israel, but also deprived them of all function and power in the universe and rendered them nonentities, it certainly deserves to be called a monotheism. And all this the Mosaic faith did. Its God stands quite alone. It is he who, even in the old creation story (Gen. 2:4 ff.), created all things without assistance or intermediary; his very name Yahweh claims for him this function. No pantheon surrounds him. He has no consort (the Hebrew does not even have a word for "goddess") and no progeny. Consequently the Hebrews, in sharpest contrast to their neighbors, developed no mythology. No doubt their zeal for this newly found faith does much to explain their almost fanatical fury in the days of the conquest.
Furthermore, Israel's faith was aniconic: its God could not be depicted or imaged in any form. The words of the Second Commandment, "You shall not make yourself a graven image," make this clear. No ancient paganism could have said such a thing. Yet it is consistent with the whole witness of the Old Testament which, however much it says about the worship of false gods, affords no clear reference to any attempt to make an image of Yahweh. That a strong feeling against doing such a thing existed in Israel at all periods of her history is clearly illustrated by the fact that archaeology has not yet found a single male image in any ancient Israelite town so far excavated. It is only in the light of such an aniconic, monotheistic tradition, centuries old, that it is possible to understand the fierce prophet hatred of all pagan gods and idols.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Kingdom of God"
by .
Copyright © 1981 John Bright.
Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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Table of Contents
I. THE PEOPLE OF GOD AND THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL,
II. A KINGDOM UNDER JUDGMENT,
III. A REMNANT SHALL REPENT,
IV. THE BROKEN COVENANT AND THE NEW COVENANT,
V. CAPTIVITY AND NEW EXODUS,
VI. HOLY COMMONWEALTH AND APOCALYPTIC KINGDOM,
VII. THE KINGDOM AT HAND: JESUS THE MESSIAH,
VIII. BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: THE KINGDOM AND THE CHURCH,
IX. EVEN TO THE END OF THE AGE,
INDEX OF REFERENCES,
INDEX OF SUBJECTS,