Take the Long Way Home

Okay, I’m spending way too much time today on the Jewish Encyclopedia, but this always happens to me when I read any kind of Encyclopedia.  When I was a kid I would open a World Book to write a report on Massachusetts and find myself reading right on through to Myopia until I stopped myself and went back to writing my report.  Anyway….

There’s an article on the Didache that caught my attention (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=341&letter=D).  The point of the article is proving that the Didache was  not a “Christian original”, but merely a “Christianized” Jewish manual for proselytes.  I’m still not sure why this is put into a negative light.  As far as I’m concerned it makes it even more valuable - who exactly denies the Judaic roots of Christianity?  The knowledge that this “manual” predates the books of the New Testament is fabulous in my opinion.  The knowledge that the Church didn’t throw out the Old when it brought in the New (can I quote Augustine here?  The New is found in the Old concealed, the Old is found in the New revealed) is delightful.  I love, love, love the fact that Christianity was not a throwing over of Judaisism (that’s what the author of this article seems to believe), but a fulfilling.  A fulfilling of promises that God had made centuries before. 

I personally find it incredibly cool that the only things that needed to be changed were the focus of the prayers (if you’ve never read the Didache then run on over to http://www.ccel.org/ccel/richardson/fathers.viii.i.html as fast as you can and read that sucker!  It was a manual for converts in the first couple of centuries.  It tells how the convert should live and gives the order of the liturgy, definitely worth the short read!).  Where the Jewish Didache said thanksgiving over the wine by thanking God for the fruit of the vine, the Christian Didache says a thanksgiving over the wine by thanking God for the “vine” that is Christ.  The Jewish prayers of thanksgiving for the meal were to thank God for the food as well as for the Torah, which served as spiritual food, and for the restoration of the kingdom of David.  The Christian prayers over the Eucharist were thus:

“We give thanks to Thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which Thou hast made known to us through Jesus Thy servant. As this broken bread, scattered upon the mountains and gathered together, became one, so let Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy Kingdom!”

And the prayers over the meal were thus:

 “We thank Thee, O holy Father, for Thy holy name, which Thou hast caused to dwell [κατεσκηνωσας, reference to the Shekinah] in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which Thou hast made known to us through Jesus Thy servant. Thou, Almighty Lord, didst make all things for Thy name’s sake; Thou gavest food and drink to men for enjoyment that they might give thanks to Thee, but to us Thou didst freely give spiritual food and drink and life eternal through Thy servant. . . . Remember, O Lord, Thy Church to deliver her from all evil and to perfect her in love of Thee, and gather her together from the four winds, sanctified for Thy Kingdom which Thou didst prepare for her. Let grace come and let this world pass away! Hosanna to the Son of David”

I was doing a little searching for something entirely different when I stumbled upon this article in the Jewish Encyclopedia (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=283&letter=S&search=temple%20virgins).  It had nothing to do with what I was looking for, but I was instantly fascinated by this one argument:  According to this article,  Paul, aka Saul, was never trained by Gamaliel (or any other “legitimate” rabbi), and in fact was entirely “Hellenized”.  The proof for this claim?  Paul quotes extensively from the Septuigint, and from “Hellinistic literature, such as the Book of Wisdom”.  Let me get this straight, the Jewish (better to be said, this particular man’s) argument against the legitimacy of Paul is because he quotes from the Deuterocanonical Books?  And because he uses the Greek Septuigint, which of course contained the Deutero’s?  This is so hysterically funny!  Protestants deny the authenticity of the Deutero’s and so do Jews.  Luther threw them out because the Jews didn’t like them, and the Jews don’t like them so they throw out most of the New Testament because it quotes these books!!!  I’m dizzy just trying to think through this logic!  How could Luther have kept Paul, but thrown out the books he quotes from?  Especially since he uses the Jewish expulsion of these books as reasoning. 

Now, it’s only fair to point out that this fellow who wrote the article in question doesn’t really “get” Paul.  He has traditional Christian scholarship mixed up with the modern/Gnostic revival mishmash scholarship.  But the point remains interesting.  If Paul used the Septuigint, quoted from the Septuigint, why do Protestants throw parts of it out?  Paul didn’t throw any of it out, neither did the early church.  Who was Luther anyway to think he knew better than Paul?