Episode 325: Pete Ruins Everything with Amy-Jill Levine
In this week’s episode of Pete Ruins Everything, Pete talks with Amy-Jill Levine about supersessionism and its impact on how Christians understand Judaism and the New Testament. They explore how ideas like “replacement theology” show up in biblical texts, why these interpretations have caused harm, and how readers can engage the Bible more honestly and responsibly. Together, they invite listeners to wrestle with difficult passages and approach both traditions with greater humility and care.
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Pete: This is Pete Ruins Everything, where assumptions come to die and nobody leaves happy. I'm Pete Enns.
Before we get started with our episode today, we wanted to let you know about our April class, “Is This The Apocalypse?” with Dr. Robyn Whitaker.
Jared: To be fair, it's not like we picked this topic for any particular reason. Hopefully a few people will find it relevant.
Pete: Yeah, I hope so. Well, the class is taught by Dr. Robyn Whitaker, an associate professor at the Wesley Center for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy. She specializes in the book of Revelation and the way the Bible gets used and misused in public discourse.
Jared: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But most importantly, and probably the work she's most known and respected for is Revelation for Normal People.
Pete: That will carry her beyond the grave.
Jared: Exactly. Yeah. In the class, Robyn's gonna cover what's meant by apocalypse and why the language we use matters. How American evangelicals learn to read revelation as an end times manual and why that's a problem.
Pete: How Jewish and Christian apocalypses can be harnesses, texts of hope, not just catastrophe, and how texts like Revelation can help us name and combat evil in times like these.
Jared: So if you've been hearing about Armageddon or the Apocalypse in the news, and you wanna know, well, is this the apocalypse? This class is for you,
Pete: Mark your calendars for Thursday, April 30th, from 5 to 6:30 PM Eastern time, and then go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/apocalypse to sign up today.
As always, the class will be recorded so you can watch it back later if you can't make it to the live session. The cost is pay-what-you-can, $1, $5, $10, $15, or $25 until the class ends. Or even better, join our online community, the Society of Normal People for $12 a month to get all of our classes at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join.
You know, every so often someone says something about Jesus or the Bible that is so clear and so confident, and so completely untethered from anything we actually know about Jesus or the Bible, that you almost have to admire it. Today that honor goes to Pete Hegseth, and that means talking about the war in Iran.
This is Pete Ruins the News. So recently there was a complaint lodged to the military religious Freedom Foundation that Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War mind you, believes that Donald Trump was quote, anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to earth.
By his return, I assume he means Jesus, not Donald. But nowadays, frankly, you never know and you can't fault me for asking. So just for clarification, do you mean to tell me that Jesus himself anointed Donald Trump to start a war called Armageddon, and that that war will bring Jesus back? I don't even know where to begin with this.
Well, for one thing, presenting Jesus as a blood-lusting warrior who anoints people to kill other people might be popular in some circles, but it is not the way of Jesus. Full stop. It never has been, never will be. It only shows up throughout history when powerful warmongers need Jesus to press others into supporting their agendas.
Now, Pete uses the term Armageddon as if he knows what it means, but it is a word that is found in the New Testament. Exactly. Once in the Bible's weirdest book, Revelation. Hegseth seems to read this book as a blueprint of secret predictions of events in our day, events he desperately wants to be a part of, but it's not.
It deals in images and symbols. It is not to be taken literally, and it certainly was not written for us to beef up our military maneuvers. It was written to the earliest Christians. And to quote, you know, the very first verse in the book, it is about what must soon take place. Not what will take place millennia later.
And this book is not just about information either. It is written to encourage early Christians to keep their faith in Jesus amid the oppressive economic war mongering machine of the Roman Empire. But without flinching, Hegseth reads the Book of Revelation as a roadmap to contemporary events and more than just a roadmap, but an owner's manual for American politics.
What do we do? Oh, look. Oh, here's the Bible. Look. Armageddon. Yeah, let's do that. This is foolishness and dangerous. It seems that Hegseth, the Secretary of War, is more aligned with the Roman war machine than he is with Jesus, the Prince of Peace. Go figure. Back to that word, Armageddon. Hegseth gets a lot of mileage out of it.
In some Christian circles, Armageddon is like a dog whistle. Mention the word, and people get amped up for the war against evil, a war. They are itching to fight. Now the word itself appears once, as I said in Revelation in chapter 16, verse 16. Armageddon is where the kings of the earth are gathered for battle.
But what does that mean? Well, first let's get some clarity on where that word comes from. The word Armageddon comes from the Hebrew, Har Megiddo, probably meaning mountain of Megiddo. And Megiddo is a real place even today. In ancient times, it was a well fortified city overlooking the Jezreel Valley below in Northern Israel, and it has a long history of wars.
Why is that? 'cause it was an important strategic location. It controlled major military and trade routes, connecting Egypt with the rest of the ancient Near East, and that's huge. Controlling Megiddo meant having resources, wealth, and so guess what? Megiddo saw a lot of battles over the centuries about who would control this strategic city.
Those battles became legendary. Mention Megiddo and you think of war. It's a great symbol. When Revelation mentions Armageddon, it is as a symbol, a nod to its ancient and well-known reputation as a place of war. So it's a symbol. And you know what else is a symbol in Revelation? Everything. We read there about dragons, beasts, four horsemen of the apocalypse, stars falling from the sky, buckets of wrath poured out upon the earth from heaven.
That is provocative, symbolic language. You know, we do something like this in our time. When someone calls an election a battle for the soul of America, no one expects halos and demons. When we turn politics into cosmic battles between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, or call leaders monsters, or describe all controlling systems as Big Brother, no one takes that literally.
We all get the symbolism. Well, Revelation is doing the same thing, but with first century symbols, and those symbols are not predictions of the distant future, but ways of talking about what is happening right then and there. That is how Armageddon functions in the Book of Revelation as a symbol, referring to that time.
It is not predicting a literal war to end all wars at a specific GPS location. And it certainly isn't referring to modern American military conflict involving Iran or any other contemporary nation state. It's part of a symbolic portrayal of the ultimate defeat of oppressive powers, and that would've spoken loud and clear to ancient Christians whose survival was threatened. And it did.
To take Armageddon and map it directly onto modern geopolitics is not just a bad reading. It's irresponsible and dangerous. When someone who sees himself as a modern-day Aries calling himself the God, um, I mean Secretary of War, when such a person misuses this biblical rhetoric, war doesn't just feel inevitable, but desirable.
The end times and the return of Christ are being ushered in. Oh, goody. And if children are bombed, oh well. But if Hegseth wants to claim that the book of Revelation is about what he's doing, well, he should know that in Revelation chapter 16, it is the demonic spirits that assemble the kings of the world to assemble for battle at Armageddon.
I mean, Pal, if you're gonna own Revelation, then own all of it. This is the rhetoric of Christian nationalism. Assume the Bible is about America, and then run rough shot over the Bible until you get it to say something in some passage that you feel supports your nationalist agenda. But Jesus doesn't want anybody to bomb anyone else.
When we drag the Bible into our geopolitics, we have missed the plot. Prove me wrong. And speaking of missing the plot, hegseth is on a roll. In a recent speech to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Pete concluded with the resounding claim, Christ is king. I agree. The issue here isn't whether it's true, but whether Pete's take on it is true. It's not.
Christ is king is not a rallying cry for warmongering Jesus to prop up a Christian nationalist agenda. Actually, “Christ is king” sucks all the wind out of Christian nationalism. In the New Testament, calling Jesus King is not a power grab. I mean, where do we most clearly see Jesus called king? Spoiler alert, at his crucifixion.
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, is written above his head by the Romans and it's meant as mockery. This is what Rome does to would-be kings. Wannabe Messiahs. Watch out. But the gospel writers, see, here's the thing. They don't avoid that potential embarrassment. They actually lean into it because Jesus's kingship doesn't look like Roman power. Military force, coercion, control.
Kingship for Jesus looks like suffering, forgiveness, and self-giving sacrificial love. Mark's whole gospel is about driving home the message that Jesus's crucifixion defines his kingship. It's what makes him the Messiah, the son of God, and that folks is what we call a paradox.
Think about this in Mark's gospel, when Jesus asks his disciples, who do you say that I am? Peter answers correctly, you are the Messiah. A Messiah means anointed. It's a royal title to say Jesus is Messiah means Jesus is king. But when Jesus immediately begins to talk about his kingship in terms of rejection, suffering, and crucifixion, Peter rebukes him.
That's not what kings do. Jesus responds, get behind me Satan, for you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things. Jesus immediately rebukes Peter for not understanding what Jesus's kingship is about. And Jesus, if you're listening, this would be a really good time for you to rebuke this other Peter for also setting his mind not on divine things, but on human things.
To say Christ is king, or Jesus is Lord is to reject all violent claims to authority. It's not a way of backing a political order, it's a way of saying no political order is ultimate, including America. And given the moment, I would say, especially America.
Folks, we've lost the plot if we think Jesus is about nationalism of any kind, Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth and will not be a puppet for small minded men. He wasn't back then and he's not now, and that's all I've got to say on that. Now let's move on to the next segment of our show and bring on my guest for today. None other than Amy-Jill Levine, widely known, respected, and loved New Testament scholar, who has had a long career of writing and speaking tirelessly about the Jewishness of Jesus and fighting against the notion that Christianity renders Judaism null and void, an idea known as Supersessionism.
AJ, welcome to the first episode of the brand new rebranded Pete Ruins Everything thing.
AJ: Gee, I'm delighted to join you.
Pete: Well, I thought, who do you want to have on? I said, I gotta get AJ on first. We, we will have fun talking about stuff that, um, makes everybody upset. And that's just the nature of the beast.
So, and we're talking-
AJ: I can be pastoral. I will, I will put things together toward the end.
Pete: Sometimes pastoral can be the most threatening thing for people though. 'Cause you might put it together in ways they don't like it and that's not passable for them. But that's my experience.
AJ: Thanks for the encouragement, Pete.
Pete: Maybe I'm just not good at it. That's entirely likely and or possible. So anyway,
AJ: So let's do this.
Pete: Okay, so our topic today is supersessionism and all the stuff that goes along with that. So let, let's begin by just giving us a definition of what that long, hard-to-say word means.
AJ: Um, the word was only quite, I think in the 1970s, so it's relatively new.
Pete: Mm.
AJ: Um, so it, it's got two basic definitions. The primary one that people worry about is sometimes called replacement theology. And that's the idea that all the promises that were given to Abraham and to his, his family, according to the flesh, which means Jews, uh, bypasses all of Judaism and goes over to the Gentile church, and the Jews are simply replaced.
They're no longer under covenant. They lost any, any right to the covenant whatsoever by killing Jesus. And that's proven by their temple being destroyed, end of discussion.
Uh, but then there's another type of supersessionism, uh, the theologian, David Novak calls the soft supersessionism.
Where the idea is that Christianity is kind of like, you know, Judaism 2.0, it's Judaism, but one better. So that Jews are still under covenant, you know, because God's faithful to the covenant. Paul says that, uh, the gifts and calling are irrevocable according to Romans, but Jesus really does fulfill everything.
And the only way you can really get to heaven is through Jesus. Even if that only happens at the end of the world when suddenly Jesus comes back and all the Jews goes, oh, you really are the Messiah. And then we kind of get with the program.
Pete: But apparently for some you're too late at that point. If you wait.
AJ: Uh, no. Um, in this, it's, it's, it's actually kind of nice, like, okay, you know, God waits till the end and goes boom. Um, and that's, that's actually a fair reading of Romans.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: That the Jews are temporarily Right. Um, uh, enemies for the, for the sake of, of, of the Gentile nation, so that the word can go out to the Gentiles.
And then when Jesus comes back, as Paul puts it, all Israel, by which I think means Jews, all Israel gets saved.
Pete: Yeah. Well, you know, I, I have to be honest with you, I, I mean, I've struggled with this. The more I've become aware of it over the course of my lifetime and seeing the, you know, the, the harm that comes from this and how, uh, many Christians are sort of, maybe indoctrinated is too strong a word, but they're taught this as, as being biblically faithful that, uh, you know, this is at least 2.0. If not, uh, yeah.
AJ: Well that's why you have this thing called the New Testament, right?
Pete: Right. Exactly. Yeah.
AJ: That you gotta add to what's there.
Pete: I know. So it's, it's, so, it's something that I know people do struggle with and at least some do.
Some, some may not, but those who do, I think it's, this is a very good conversation to have. So maybe we can step into this a little bit. Um. Here, here's the thought and critique it.
AJ: Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Pete: Um, the New Testament is a Jewish document. It's written by Jews.
AJ: Parts of it are, certainly,
Pete: Maybe, maybe the Luke thing is Gentile, but he certainly acts Jewish at times, I think, when he's writing.
But he certainly knows his Old Testament Hebrew Bible.
AJ: Septuagint.
Pete: Yeah, that.
AJ: Yeah.
Pete: That's close. But Philo loved that too, didn't he? So this is just, I don't know.
AJ: But I just don't want to call it the Hebrew Bible. If they're not reading it in Hebrew. That seems weird.
Pete: The Greek Old Testament. I don't like that either though. So what do we call-
AJ: No, I don't like that either. We call it the septuagint.
Pete: The septuagint. Although that's not accurate. Anyway, that's, we're getting off on a rabbit trail here. The point is that, um, you know, uh-
AJ: He knows the scriptures of Israel.
Pete: He does know the scriptures of Israel, how he got to know them. That's another thing entirely. But, so you have all this happening in, you know, let's call it a Jewish matrix, which is unavoidable. It's Helenistic, it's influenced by other things, but it's, it's, it's fundamentally a Jewish thing.
And to think of the New Testament as having some supersessionistic inclinations, whether it's the first kind that you mentioned, which is the really bad kind, or the second one, which is, you know, still not great. Um, how, how do you feel about that? Is it possible for something that is born in a Jewish context, is it possible for it to be, uh, supersessionistic or Judeo-phobic as some, that's a newer term that, that I've heard recently?
AJ: Yeah. Well, Judeo-phobic is, is not so much replacing supersessionism, it’s replacing antisemitism.
Pete: Okay.
AJ: Um, or Jew hatreds. No, I think it's inevitable and I think all traditions are.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: Um, you know, the Methodists are supersessionistic over supers stick over the Anglicans and the Anglicans are supersessionistic over the Roman Catholic church.
I mean, you just, you run the whole Christian spectrum. And every time you have a group that splits off, offer another group, they think they're, they're the 2.0 version of what they were before.
Pete: Yeah. Right.
AJ: Um, and when we look at first century Judaism, um, there are different groups of Jews who, who have pretty much the same attitudes. We are right. And the rest of you got off track.
Pete: Right.
AJ: Um, so if you ask the people who wrote The Dead Sea Scrolls, what do you think about the Sadducees? They're gonna go, nope. Better than they are. They've lost it. We've got it. End of discussion.
Pete: Right.
AJ: Um, so if the whole thing had stayed within some sort of Jewish matrix, that would've been fine.
Uh, but even if we wanna talk about, say Paul within Judaism or Matthew within Judaism, Paul's writing to Gentiles.
Pete: As opposed to against Judaism, right. Or something like that.
AJ: No, Paul's certainly not against Judaism. He's kind of, he trots out his Jewish credentials.
Pete: Yeah.
AJ: Um, but I, I, I think this idea of, if you think you've got something new.
Um, then you're gonna think you're better than what came before that. That's, that's gonna be inevitable. Yeah. So the question is, can you be nice about it?
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: Um, the rabbis are doing the same thing. So if we go to rabbinic literature, the rabbis write out the priests. You know, you priest thought, you thought you were the good teachers, you thought you had the, the correct view, wrong.
We've got it. Um, and they're not real happy about Christians either when they finally get around to talking about them. So I think it's inevitable. Um, you can always think that your tradition is better than somebody else's. I think that's human nature. If you didn't think it was better than somebody else, why would you be part of it?
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: It's just, the question is, can, can you be nice and gracious about that, that so-called anterior tradition?
Pete: Yeah. I guess, you know, it's hard to be excited about something and not say you should have this as well, because I find it to be the perfect conclusion to this whole drama or something.
But it's, it is the trick to be, you know, can we not hold onto these traditions that we value and say, yeah, but I don't know everything either. And, and I could be wrong about some things and, and maybe that's a way of creating some more dialogue instead of building these walls between it.
AJ: But it does create a fair amount of humility.
But that's, that's kind of a rare commodity among religious professionals and certainly among academics.
Pete: I know, I know.
AJ: But look, if, if the whole thing is, is end of the world stuff, that's chronological stuff, like the Jews get with the program when Jesus comes back, right? This is Luke. You know the people in Jerusalem, you'll not see me again until you say blessed is the one is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
So Luke is expecting there to be Jews in Jerusalem to go, oh, you're back. Okay, we get it now. That's what Paul is thinking in Romans, and it's all at the end of the worldly stuff. So let the end of the world take care of the end of the world and the, the Messianic age, take care of that and just work together in the interim.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: Um, and when the Messiah comes, you can say, were you here before? And if the answer is yes, we, Jews will go. Okay. And if the answer is no, you guys can regroup.
Pete: Right?
AJ: But I'm not terribly worried about that. I'm worried about what we do in the present, not so much the far future.
Pete: Right. Which is fueled not by, let's say enlightened, medieval, late medieval thinkers in Spain who hung out together, Jews.
Christians and Muslims and thinking about deep philosophical things. This is fueled by American fundamentalism and the unique American experience, I think where, um, we don't have a magisterium helping us understand the Bible. The circuit writers just went out and said, here, here's the Bible. That's all you need.
And people were left to themselves and, and, and you read it in certain ways.
AJ: Well, they did have the Scofield notes. I mean, they had a couple of things to help them.
Pete: They got that, which were not helpful with the point. Um, so, okay. Um, that, that leads to the next issue for me that I'd like us to talk about is, is there that supersessionistic dimension within the New Testament itself, and can you maybe point to a couple of passages so people can see it for themselves?
AJ: Oh, absolutely. Um, I think it shot through the entire thing. If, if Jesus is not Lord, there's no point in the New Testament.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: Um, so if Jesus doesn't fulfill promises, if Jesus does not, uh, come to provide the definitive interpretation of the Torah, the, the law code, the Mosaic code. Uh, then there's no point in the entire Christian enterprise, of course, it has to be supersessionist.
Um. But I think we can do this in a way that does not need to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus look good. Um, to say this needs to be fulfilled does not mean that the current system is a bad system. It's just, it's just an unfulfilled system.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: And because as noted, we're both unfinished products.
The whole, the whole Christian thing is still unfulfilled 'cause Jesus hasn't come back yet.
Pete: Mm-hmm. Would you say that, that's sort of where Paul is coming from?
AJ: Paul is eschatologically supersessionist, which is just a fancy way of saying that he thinks the Jews are gonna get with the program when Jesus comes back.
Pete: But for the time being, right. When, when, um, I, I mean at least my reading of Romans, for example, is when you know, table fellowship, you know, pretty much eat what you want, but he's not canceling out his Jewish tradition. When he says it, he's not saying Jews should not worry about eating kosher. Do what your conscience tells you to do.
You have to live together
AJ: somehow. Well, he doesn't talk. He actually doesn't talk about eating kosher. I mean, he really doesn't like eating meat offered to idols. He doesn't think it's a great idea. 'cause it can mislead people. He talks about vegetarians. I mean, you don't have to be vegetarian to be kosher.
You just have to cook the hell out of it. Um, the, um, uh, I think Paul is concerned about making sure that his Gentiles, remember he's the apostle to the Gentiles, that's his job description. Um, he wants to make sure that his Gentile, uh, followers of Jesus do not become circumcised, do not practice Judaism.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: Because for Paul, as a good Jew, good Pharisee, and he never gives up being a Pharisee either. Right. He just becomes like a better Pharisee. Uh, 'cause he is a Pharisee with the Messiah.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: He thinks that at the Messianic age that all nations and tongues should come to worship the God of Israel.
Um, and if everybody converted to Judaism, the only nation that'd be worshiping God would be Jews. So he needs his Gentiles to stay Gentiles. He wants his Jews to stay Jews. Um, and when he says negative things about the laws, he does, for example, in Galatians, it's because he's talking to Gentiles who wanna follow this law, and he has to make every argument he can think of to tell them why they should not.
Pete: So would you say that we're more in the Supersessionism 2.0 variety in the New Testament than the first?
AJ: I think Paul is the soft supersessionism to use David Novak's model. Okay. And the covenant with the Jews certainly remains in place. ‘Cause God is faithful to God's covenant. Right. You know, uh, the gifts and calling are irrevocable, all that other stuff that they've got.
Um, I think when we get to texts like John and quite possibly Matthew and potentially Hebrews, now we have a greater problem where I think, um, I think John, for example, simply writes out the Jews.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: Um, John uses the term Ioudaioi like 70 times, and most of the uses except for few, few neutral and one positive ones, they, they're all like you, Jews or children of the devil.
Pete: Can we talk about John a little bit more? 'Cause that that seems to be, you know, Matthew a little bit as well. You know, where the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, right? That's, it's not for you, it's for other people. Um, but talking about John, 'cause I, I think John is the, the, the gospel that people usually go to very quickly to talk about Supersessionism.
And, uh, maybe just let's talk about John, like, like what are you seeing there and, and, and where is, where is John? Um, maybe wanting to, um, again, I don't wanna put words in your mouth or his mouth, but cancel out the validity of Judaism, is that what you're saying?
AJ: I, I think in John, Jesus takes over anything that's, that's part of the Jewish tradition. So John loves all things that are Jewish. John's not just not a big fan of Jews. Um, so Jesus becomes the new locus of the, the sacred. He replaces the temple. So he's the new temple. Uh, he's the new Torah. You know, you get law through Moses, you get grace through Jesus.
You know, the law still stays, but you really want the grace stuff. Yeah. Uh, the people who are faithful to the, the non Jesus tradition are out of the system. So John functions in a very dualistic way. You're either either on team Jesus, which puts you on team God, or you're not. And if you're not on team Jesus, team, God, you're on team Satan.
Pete: You don't wanna be there.
AJ: Well, not if you're reading the Gospel of John, um, right. But if, if you don't, if you don't presuppose John's view that, uh, that, that the Christ was there at the beginning of creation and is coequal to God. Um, then it's not so much of a problem. 'cause you don't have to accept it.
The problem is when people take it literally and then want to kill you.
Pete: Well, that's just it. Right. Okay. The thing about John's gospel, I mean, I, I've heard it explained this way and tell me what you think about this, that, you know. Yeah. John is really hard on Jews. I mean, there's it, it's hard to read the Gospel of John and not walk away with something like, there's something going on here.
Could this be still an intra Jewish conflict with the whole issue of, you know, being kicked out of the synagogues because they're Jesus followers. I mean, that I've, I've heard that again and again and again. What do you think of that?
AJ: Well, three times in chapters, was it 9, 12, and 16? John uses this term Aposynagōgos.
It's a neologism. Which means basically to be out-synagogued or excommunicated, uh, usually expressed in the future, you know, you will be put out. They worried about being put out. We, we have nothing in Jewish sources that, that talk about this. Right. Uh, Paul, for example, is, uh, he's actually dragged in and disciplined.
Um, so even if we wanna talk about, let's say some synagogue somewhere actually did this. Synagogues don't have a, we're, we're kinda like Baptists, we're a free church tradition. Um, there's no head synagogue ruler who tells Jews what to do. And I think if there were, we won't listen anyway.
Um, so let, let's say there, there's one synagogue that's doing this and John is reflecting that. Then the next question is, why would they be doing this?
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: And I don't think they'd be throwing out people because they thought that Jesus was Lord and Savior. And I don't think they'd be throwing out people 'cause they thought Jesus was somehow representing God on earth because you've got other Jewish figures that are doing the same thing.
Pete: Right.
AJ: Uh, for me, I think the greater problem, and this might explain why Paul is getting flack from local synagogues, um, or giving them flack before he has his road to Damascus experience. Um, is because these Jewish Jesus followers are telling Gentiles, they're telling pagans, hey, you guys have to stop worshiping your own gods.
And that in the Roman world is treason.It's like saying you can't salute the flag and sing God Bless America and eat hot dogs on the 4th of July. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it, it, it's inconceivable because the gods protect the cities and if you stop worshiping the gods, the gods are gonna take vengeance on your city.
And it's gonna be the fault of these Jews who are proclaiming this new messianic figure. But I, I see, no, I see no reason for Jews to be tossing out Messianics.
Pete: Right.
AJ: Unless the Messianics are running around saying, you know, unless you worship Jesus, you're all gonna go to hell. That would get you tossed outta my synagogue too.
Pete: Well, I mean, wouldn't there ] be something, and again, I'm riffing here a little bit, wouldn't there be something about the notion that Gentiles as Gentiles, without adopting Jewish practices are, I mean, this is Paul, right? Are children of Abraham, have the faith of Abraham by believing in Jesus.
So, um, is there some validity to that?
AJ: I don't see where that's a problem.
Pete: Yeah.
AJ: I mean, already back in Genesis 12, Abraham is told that you will be a blessing to the other nations.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: Um, you've got God-fearers worshiping in synagogues. You've got gentiles worshiping in the court of the Gentiles in the temple and Jerusalem in the holiest place in, in the Jewish world. Um, so if the Gentile wants to come in and say like, I'm part of this and I'm also part of this group that thinks that Jesus is like coming back a week from Tuesday, you know, you can hang onto that for a while. The problem is Jesus didn't come back.
Pete: Right.
AJ: Um, and now you have what was originally a separate but equal system.
And as we know, separate but equal never works.
Pete: Right. And I, I think when you, when we pull the, the, the scope back and look at historical context, which is something scholars like to do. Um, then you can circle back to the text, like John, for example, and say, why are you so different? Like, why, why, why do you have these issues when that, that polarization, if I can use that word, might not have been really a part of the experience of Jewish followers of Jesus in the first century?
AJ: Right. Um, so I think that John had access to Matthew, Mark, and Luke and John is saying, okay, what, what's, what's, you know, the next version of this. Um, and, and the other gospels had to figure out, well, what went wrong with the Jews?
Um, so, uh, you got Luke who's suggesting that when Jesus comes back, it's all gonna be fine. So you got Matthew suggesting they're misled by their leaders, but that only lasts for like a generation because the Jews chose to follow their leaders like the Pharisees, um, rather than follow the Jesus group.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: Um, so John, for him, it's so obvious that the Christ is God. The, the Christ is the savior. That he can't figure out why somebody who actually knows the same scriptures doesn't come to the same conclusion.
Pete: Right. Right.
AJ: So the logical explanation for him, 'cause this end of the world thing was not working.
'Cause Jesus isn't coming back a week from Tuesday. John's pretty clear about that. Is, oh, they must never, they must have been faded never to get it from the beginning. Um, it's highly dualistic. Yeah. And that, that's what gets you eventually Calvinistic, double predestination.
Pete: For sure.
AJ: They were never gonna get it.
They’re children of the devil. Don't waste your time with them. They represent what you're not supposed to be.
Pete: Yeah. I mean, that sounds a little bit like an inter-Jewish conflict where you're just not get, we're reading the same Bible, you're not getting it. And at some point you, like you said, you just get frustrated and, and that's, maybe that explains where the energy comes from in John's gospel.
AJ: It could be, but the problem is we don't know if it's an inter-Jewish conflict or not. Okay. And we're talking about toward the end of the first century, the Gentile mission has been well underway for a good 60 years. Um, so John may well be coming out of a Jewish environment that wouldn't surprise me any more than it would surprise me that Matthew was coming out of a Jewish environment.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: But that doesn't mean that John is writing to Jews or only to Jews. Okay. And as soon as this thing goes Gentile, now you've got an additional problem.
Pete: Right. '
AJ: Because it's no longer an in-house discussion.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: And as soon as that text becomes part of the Christian canon, then it's certainly no longer in-house because it's not part of any sort of Jewish canon.
Pete: Yeah. So maybe John is, um, defending the Gentile right to be Jesus followers or something like that. And, and his, his, um, you know, his, his debate partners or. I don't wanna say the Jewish system, but the Judaism that he knows and, and, and he's, he's very adamant about Gentile inclusion.
AJ: He doesn't care that much about Gentile inclusion.
There's no mission in John.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: Right. And the Jesus in John doesn't say, Hey, go make disciples of all the nations. Now, if John is, is presuming Matthew, Mark, and Luke, then you can have that in there. Right? But that's not John's agenda.
Pete: What's his agenda?
AJ: Um, I think it's keeping the group together.
Pete: Okay.
AJ: You know, Jesus doesn't come back. You're getting flack from the Roman world. You've got all these Jews running around saying, yeah, we think you're wrong.
Pete: Yeah.
AJ: Um, and we've got other ways of reading the same text that you've got and they don't point to Jesus.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: Uh, so what do you do? You go against your major opponent and you demonize them.
Pete: Yeah. Well, that's the way the world works, I guess.
AJ: Pretty much,
Pete: And I guess this is where, you know, Doubting Thomas comes in maybe as well as, um. In, in terms of, like, he wants to keep the people together. And I mean, in my imagination, I read this story of doubting Thomas and I think, yeah, there's a problem there that he's addressing uniquely of people who are maybe having trouble staying together and they don't know why they believe.
And I never saw this Jesus person. You keep talking about him. So what, what do I do?
AJ: Yeah. Or people who are moving toward what might be, what sometimes gets called gnosticism is this kind of problematic catch-all term.
Pete: Yeah.
AJ: Um, so that when you get that, that problematic verse in John 14 about, you know, I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the father, but by me.
That's actually a response to a question from Thomas who says to Jesus, show us the way to which he responds, parentheses, have you not been with me for 14 chapters? I am the way. In other words, you can't get it through knowledge. You can't get it through gnosis. You can't get it through some secret teaching that's going to get you this God beyond God.
You have to go through the cross, which means you have to go through me. Yeah, and that's probably why it's Thomas who says, I'm not gonna believe unless I can stick my fingers into the holes where the nails went in.
Pete: Right?
AJ: Because the whole gnostic thing is not very fleshy. It's not very, you know, corporeal.
Pete: Yeah.
AJ: So Thomas represents those gnostic folks who think it's all knowledge rather than cross and flesh and all that.
So that's another way of saying, don't go there, stay with me. Stay, stay with this, this group that, that, that I think is kosher to use a problematic term here.
Pete: Right.
AJ: Um, and the rest, the rest of y'all are wrong.
Pete: Mm-hmm. At what point does it get worse?
AJ: Oh, church fathers make it worse.
Pete: Second century already, right?
AJ: Yeah, it gets worse. But I think the problem is already encoded in the New Testament. So for people who wanna say that supersessionism or replacement theology, or Jew hatred, or Judeophobia or antisemitism, or whatever term we wanna use.
Um, that, that's not really in the New Testament. The New Testament is written by Jews, for Jews. It's just kind of in-house, good natured, bantering. Um, and nobody took it seriously. Right. You know, it's just kind of the way people talk back then. I think that's just an excuse to exculpate the text from the problematic stuff that's in there.
Pete: Right.
AJ: I'd much rather Christians acknowledge the problem and deal with it. Rather than try to push it off into the second century. Which by the way, by the way, is an anti-Catholic move.
Pete: Yeah. Maybe an anti-Orthodox move too.
AJ: And an anti-Orthodox move too.
Pete: Right, right. Yeah, I, I agree pretty strongly with you, aj, about, you know, the Bible is what it is, and, and to read it and then to maybe reimagine it if need be, you know, for purposes of living and, and worshiping and being in fellowship and, and being, frankly, just a good world citizen and not trying to hate people.
But it's, I think one of the more disturbing things about this discussion for many people is, baked into our text about Jesus is these tensions and these conflicts that, um, have, have bred, uh, violence in, in the history of humanity. And, um, what do we do about that? Solve this for us AJ, in the next-
AJ: How much time do we have?
Pete: I'm gonna give you two or three minutes, maybe three minutes tops to do this.
AJ: Okay, so the first thing we do is we acknowledge the problem exists in the first place. So when you say you're uncomfortable reading John, I wish more Christians work. Um, I know far too many Christians, including students I have taught who said, I never saw a problem with John, “Jews are children of the devil.” Where does it say that? Oh, John doesn't really mean it, it's just a metaphor, right?
Yeah. Um, so acknowledge the problem in the first place in the same way that Jews can acknowledge certain problems that we have in Torah, for example, you know, uh, exhortations to Holy War, right?
Which, which we have acknowledged and we deal with that in later rabbinic tradition.
Pete: Right.
AJ: Um, uh, that we do not have to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus look good. If Jesus is bringing about the end of the world and saying to people live as if you've got one foot in the kingdom already, that's where you pay attention.
Um, he's not coming to tell you why Judaism is wrong. Fulfillment does not mean something is wrong. Right. Right. Um, so then we do a little bit better on-
Pete: That's key. By the, not to interrupt, but that is key. Fulfillment doesn't mean that something is wrong. It's not a canceled-out process.
Well, yeah, but you know, you say that so quickly, but you've lived with this stuff for so long. But I, I know people, it means fulfillment means we've left the old stuff behind and, um.
AJ: Well, if they're gentiles, they were never under most of that old stuff to begin with. So you can't leave behind what you're never under.
It's like saying I'm no longer under the laws of France. Wasn't a problem to begin with. Isn't a problem now. I think we need to do the work and I think we're just, we're intellectually lazy.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: Um, I've had students say to me things like, you know, why do I need to learn history? 'Cause it's all, it's elitist.
You have to know Greek, you have to know Hebrew. You gotta read stuff. The only thing that's important is what the text means to me. Um, and to be a little bit aware of, of how that text has played out historically in the damage that it's been done.
Pete: Right.
AJ: Um, I think it would be good if Christians took seriously the notion of being Israel and they can call themselves New Israel or whatever.
I don't, they get grafted in, um, right. Well, Israel traditionally means to wrestle with God. And how do you do that? You wrestle with parts of the text that are a problem.
Jared: Yeah.
AJ: So if Christians can deal with slaves, be obedient to your masters, which typically doesn't get preached on Sunday morning.
Although wives be obedient to your husbands does. Then I think they should be able to deal with some of this Jewish stuff and say, you know what, that was a problem. And kind of get with the, I mean the Roman Catholic Church got with the program. Liberal protestants have, I think it's about time some of these other traditions.
Pete: Well, I think, think the, it's conservative Christians as evangelicals or fundamentalists, whatever we want to call them. And I think the barrier. Um, and speaking a little bit from experience here, from way back in the day, but it's frightening to look at these things with intellectual rigor because you're not trusting God anymore.
You're trusting your own brain and you come up with all sorts of crazy things like maybe John was wrong about something. And, and, um, to, to me, the, the big issue there is really a reframing of even what the Bible is and how it functions in the life of faith. And historically how it has functioned in, I think, fairly diverse ways in Judaism and Christianity.
And, and it's all part of the big adventure. And, and we don't have to have those clear black and white lines, um, in order to function. Right?
AJ: So here's, here's another way that we can redeem this text from your ruining everything. Um, it, the worst sermons I've read, except for like uber fundamentalists who aren't gonna be listening to either me or you anyway, um, come from liberal Christians.
Because at least people on the conservative side with a few outliers actually have some respect for the Old Testament, and they have some respect for the Jewish tradition. Um, and I think they also have what might be called a higher christology. I mean, they're perfectly happy to say things like, you know, Jesus really is Lord and Savior.
So what happens if, if you don't think that, you, that's all metaphor. It's like Jesus was like a really good teacher. It's like a super guru. Um, who, who taught wisdom. Well then why follow him rather than the Buddha or Confucius or anybody else, right? Um, so what happens in liberal Protestantism in particular, some liberal Catholics, um, is that they need to make Jesus relevant, and the only way you can make him relevant in terms of the social justice warrior is to make Judaism look bad.
Yeah. So I think if people actually took seriously the idea that Jesus really is God, I mean this is what Christianity typically taught, um, then you don't have to make Judaism look bad. 'cause Jesus is distinct and unique by definition.
Pete: Right.
AJ: And then you can better locate him within his own historical environment.
Pete: But you have to confess him.
AJ: Well, it helps.
Pete: Yeah.
AJ: Because otherwise I can't figure out why anybody's a Christian.
Pete: But, but you know, for Paul, I mean that means Jews as well, his fellow Jews confessing Jesus with them
AJ: Eventually. Yeah. But not now.
Pete: Not now.
AJ: Because this is part of God's plan. Some of them have gotten with the program like Paul.
And that's Israel for Paul now.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: But all Israel, which means all Jews will at this end of time moment.
Pete: They'll see it
AJ: Get with the program, it's eschatological. So look, if, if the world goes to smithereens or Jesus comes back or I die, whatever that end time is, and Jesus happens to be there and he says, I admit that, okay, then I'll get with the program.
I'm just not terribly worried about it right now.
Pete: Right? This, you know, I guess Philippians 2, that hymn right, where every knee shall bow and every tongue confess is, uh, sometimes read as a threat. Like finally you're, you're gonna get yours and you're gonna be forced to do this. And it might just be, oh it was there all along. I just never-
AJ: I, I have a very good friend who, for years, a Lutheran who for years taught New Testament and he once said to me, you know, AJ, um, we're both gonna land in heaven and you and I are both gonna be worshiping at, at the throne of the lamb. And I'm gonna be so sanctified, I'm not gonna say, told you so. You know, I can live with that.
Pete: Well, you know what I think, um. You know, just bringing this to a close here, I, I think, uh, an element of playfulness and humor is, is important for this too, because, you know, we take our ideas about God so seriously. Not all of us, but many people do. And that's what causes a lot of the tension and, uh, an unwillingness to learn from others who think differently because it threatens your own system of thought, which is very ironclad.
And, and I'm hoping at least people watching this and listening to this will, um. Well see now this is something worth talking about and the world doesn't come to an end if you have to rethink some things. And you can do it as slowly as you need to do it. But you know, this is, these are two traditions that are, um, old and, and I would say intellectually robust.
There are, people have thought about these things for a very long time and, and we can do so with a little bit of humor, I think.
AJ: Right, and to recognize that neither tradition stood still. So both Judaism and Christianity, as we know them, come out of Second Temple Judaism, which doesn't exist anymore.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
AJ: So Jews mostly go the rabbinic route and Christians mostly go the Nicene Creed route with, with some outliers on, on both sides. And we gradually defined ourselves over against each other. And I think we're at the point now where we can acknowledge a common origin of Jesus and Paul's first century Jews, uh, dealing with a first century j uh, robust, first century diverse Jewish world.
Right. Um, and recognize that even though we have intractable differences today, that doesn't prevent us from working together. And since we're both unfinished products, we can wait for that Messianic age, uh, and let God worry about that. I'm more concerned about what my neighbors are gonna do.
Pete: Yeah. I mean, we shouldn't usher in Armageddon, so Jesus comes back.
AJ: Um, I, if Jesus says he doesn't know when the end time is, I certainly don't think that somebody in Washington DC is clued in.
Pete: Well, somebody needs to let them know that.
AJ: I've tried.
Pete: I've, they're not listening to, they're not returning my letters. I don't know what's happening here. So I, alright, AJ, well listen, thank you so much for, uh, being the inaugural guest here and having such, uh, great ideas and such playfulness and just some deep thinking, and I really hope people listen. And, uh, can own this for themselves regardless of where they're coming from.
AJ: From your mouth to God's ears.
Pete: And now it's time for You Ask, Pete Answers.
Heidi: Hey Pete, this is Heidi. And my question is, if the gospels were written 30 to 40 years, maybe even longer after Jesus' death, how do we know what Jesus actually said and did, especially if the authors never actually met Jesus?
Pete: Great question. This issue is the ever-present partner with Christian faith in the modern world, and we can't get around it.
Now, here's the thing. Historically speaking, we don't know what Jesus actually said or did. We can't possibly know. No one was taking notes, and most scholars think there were oral origins for the gospel stories. And these stories change over time. Think of the telephone game, and also, here's the thing, the big issue, the gospel writers intentionally adapted the story of Jesus for their own purposes.
That means we have different takes on Jesus that are intentionally different, as if the gospel writers weren't particularly concerned about getting the story straight. I mean, were they even trying to write history as we know it? What we're seeing here in Heidi's question reflects the modern struggle that Christian fundamentalism and evangelicalism or neck deep in. The Bible has to be fundamentally, historically accurate and internally consistent, or else, how can we know anything?
And if we don't know, what good is a Bible inspired by God, we're supposed to get unambiguous information. One of the hardest things for Christians in the modern world is how to navigate this issue, especially when they have been trained to dismiss the question, what really happened, as faithless, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth?
The way forward is to examine this need for the gospels to be historically accurate, and instead embrace what the gospels are actually doing. They're rooted in history in events to be sure, but their purpose is clearly not to record those events accurately, but to reflect on the present impact of Jesus for their communities.
And that meant embellishing or even creating scenes or dialogue that shouldn't shock us too much. Even the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who lived in the fifth century, BCE, did this. He was writing about the long Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta. And mind you, he was there, but he was still unclear about what exactly happened and what people exactly said.
So to tell the story, he freely admits that he has to invent dialogue to get across the meaning and significance, events. Now that's Thucydides who saw these events? The gospel writers were not around while Jesus was on earth, but two or three generations removed from him. They were writing about a historical figure and their stories differ.
Any discussion about what Jesus actually said and did needs to take this fact to heart. The biblical witness presents what Jesus said and did differently. Did Jesus actually steal the storm and walk on water? Or are these theological embellishments for the purpose of tying Jesus to Moses, or to Yahweh who controlled the storms and the floods in the Hebrew Bible?
Which form of the Lord's Prayer did Jesus actually say, Matthew’s or Luke's, or maybe neither? We don't know exactly what Jesus said and did. But what we do know is that we have four distinct portraits of Jesus and they reflect the various ways in which Jesus was interpreted by early communities of faith.
So let me be clear, we can't recover the historical Jesus from the Gospels. People have tried and it ain't gonna happen, but we can get a good picture of what early Christians thought about him. How? By reading the Gospels. Paul. Who wrote before the Gospels were written and other New Testament writers.
Now, I know for some, this may sound like nails across a chalkboard like the Bible's being attacked, but the fact remains that the question, what did Jesus actually do and say naturally arises from the gospels themselves? So why would we be surprised about it? Acknowledging these different voices in the gospels is not an attack on the Bible, but naming plainly a characteristic that is baked into the gospels that we need to deal with honestly and with integrity.
And the best way to begin doing that is to not ignore that fire in the belly that drives questions like the one Heidi is asking. To put a pastoral and maybe theological spin on this, perhaps the fact that we can't pin down Jesus historically suggests that the significance of Jesus is ultimately not captured by historical analysis, but perhaps even transcends history.
Perhaps the value of the various portraits of Jesus we see in the New Testament is a reminder that even the biblical writers got him only in part. That our invitation is to work out for ourselves who Jesus is for us, rather than thinking that we need to first recover the historical Jesus to do so. In other words, make the big shift from ‘the Bible simply has to give me firm historical data’ to ‘it doesn't do that, so how can I connect with Jesus for myself?’
And that is not a hopeless question. Although it will stretch us.
Questioner: Do you think there are things about God we can have a measure of confidence about because of the Bible?
Pete: The second question is a really important follow-up question. If the Bible isn't giving us exact unfiltered access to what God is like, can we still say anything meaningful about God with confidence?
Now I think the answer here is yes, but we have to be clear about what kind of confidence we're talking about. If by confidence we mean objective certainty, tight, precise statements about God, then the Bible actually resists that kind of confidence. 'Cause the Bible provides various perspectives on God.
The Bible does not contain a single unified description of God dropped from heaven. Or of anything else for that matter. It's rather a beautiful, thoughtful collection of diverse writings from different times, different places and communities, all wrestling with the reality of God in their own context.
And because of that, the Bible doesn't speak with one unified voice even about God. You see instead development, you see tension. You sometimes even see debate. In some texts, God is portrayed as a warrior and others as a grieving parent. Sometimes God is distant and hidden, other times deeply present and involved.
The Psalms of lament and the wisdom literature even question whether life with God works the way other parts of the Bible say it does. That's not a problem to be solved or covered up. That's the Bible being the Bible and doing its job. From a scholarly standpoint, what we have is a record of Israel and the early church reflecting on their experiences of God over time, and that means our confidence is misplaced if we are seeking in the Bible a cold, hard list of objective facts.
Rather, we see diverse reflections of God that emerge across a millennium-long conversation that should tell us something about what the Bible is doing. The question of knowing God is never answered simply from reading the Bible, but by our own existential personal involvement of seeking God in our time, as we see the biblical writers themselves doing in their time.
The Bible as it is, helps us to seek God. Well, not by providing textbook answers, but by modeling a process for pondering how God is showing up in our own world. And for Christians, this all comes down to a focus on Jesus. And I don't mean that as a get out of jail free card because Jesus is also complicated historically, as we just saw.
But whatever else is going on in the Bible, the New Testament presents Jesus not just as someone who talks about God, but as the clearest expression of what God is like, and what do we see there? We see compassion. We see table fellowship across boundaries. We see confrontation of power and ultimately we see a willingness to suffer rather than coerce.
Christians are a diverse people engaging a diverse Bible for diverse purposes all in community. That's the kind of power that might seem weak, but it is the kind of power the Bible yields. Now, does that give us certainty? No, but it does give us something real. Wrestling with what God is like is part of the deal.
So maybe the better way to put it is this, the Bible doesn't give us control over God, but it does give us a witness to how God has been encountered, wrestled with, and ultimately recognized. And if there's a kind of confidence we can have, it's this. Not that we can define God perfectly, but that we can be formed by these texts toward a way of seeing and living that has been modeled for us over centuries.
The confidence not in having God figured out, but in being drawn into an awareness of an encounter with God that is deep enduring and at times even unsettling. The Bible is not broken. We just need to let it be what it is and learn what it means to draw spiritual sustenance from the Bible we actually have.
And honestly, that may be exactly the kind of confidence and faith was always meant to have. When we expect something else, we create needless problems for ourselves. All right folks. Thanks for watching and listening, and I'm looking forward to our next episode of Pete Ruins Everything.
Jared: Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show.
If you wanna support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give.
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Jared: And lastly, it goes a long way. If you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode by emailing us at info@thebiblefornormalpeople.com.
