dispensational lenses
would the story of Jesus overturning the tables of the moneychangers look different to us if it was in the old testament?
(if so... this reflects a particular lens in use...)
i thought this question particularly striking since my church just got out of a series looking at the minor prophets... so this is still fresh in our minds. we enjoyed looking at all the freaky stuff Hebrew prophets did - and we understood the point of doing something uber-freaky was to make you ask "why the hell do you DO THAT?" - the focus was not the act itself.
in the past - i've tended to see the act of overturning the tables as rather violent, and not so pacifist - which, of course, is rather hard to reconcile with the rest of Jesus' teaching and life. perhaps i've heard this story used to illustrate the "he-man that was Jesus" too many times ... the embarrassment that was the 80's lives on...
in this case i would have to agree with brother Borg that this was the act of a Jewish Prophet - and i'm trying to put my freaky-prophet lens back on for this act to make more sense....
(p.s. mike - i will gladly drive for sushi any day of the week... in fact, that hardly seems fair)
(if so... this reflects a particular lens in use...)
i thought this question particularly striking since my church just got out of a series looking at the minor prophets... so this is still fresh in our minds. we enjoyed looking at all the freaky stuff Hebrew prophets did - and we understood the point of doing something uber-freaky was to make you ask "why the hell do you DO THAT?" - the focus was not the act itself.
in the past - i've tended to see the act of overturning the tables as rather violent, and not so pacifist - which, of course, is rather hard to reconcile with the rest of Jesus' teaching and life. perhaps i've heard this story used to illustrate the "he-man that was Jesus" too many times ... the embarrassment that was the 80's lives on...
in this case i would have to agree with brother Borg that this was the act of a Jewish Prophet - and i'm trying to put my freaky-prophet lens back on for this act to make more sense....
(p.s. mike - i will gladly drive for sushi any day of the week... in fact, that hardly seems fair)
posted by P3T3RK3Y5 for meltingearth
4 Comments:
Mmmm...sushi. :-)
I followed the link but couldn't see where Borg reconciled the peaceful image of Jesus with the violent one. I've just started immersing myself in 'peace' literature and also really struggle with the amount of violence in the Bible.
For example, at the end of that beautiful, intimate-seeming Psalm 139, everyone leaves off the last few verses, which are terrible! What is that??! Any ideas??
cori -- uhhh, well - you got me.
mr croghan and i saw Borg live - and that was just a link to that said event. very obfuscatory of me.
Borg's point was that the author of Mark was writing "post-easter" (using Borg's terminology) and so it is inevitable that post-easter we think to ourselves "oh, i know why He did that" -- just because humans are all good pattern matchers.
my point is, it makes sense to me that Jesus' experience of that act was that of a Jewish Prophet - thus Jesus wasn't being violent - he was being dramatic - big difference.
btw - i'm not offering any proofs or anything scholarly or any lines of causality to support my thinking. i'm just blathering here. and i may be off base - but initially i like the thought, and i might play with it a while.
oh, and i totally agree with you about those few verses in psalm 139 - i’m much humbler / sympathetic when i hear about like passages in the Qur'an.
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