Latest / The Podcast of Jewish Ideas / 76. Biblical Attitudes | Dr. Ethan Schwartz (Universalism & Particularism #1)

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76. Biblical Attitudes | Dr. Ethan Schwartz (Universalism & Particularism #1) · The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

0:20
Speaker 1: Greetings friends, and welcome back to the Podcast of Jewish Ideas,
0:23
Speaker 1: a tor in Motion production. I'm jj Kimbley.
0:26
Speaker 2: Here on the.
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Speaker 1: Podcast of Jewish Ideas, we are starting a multi part
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Speaker 1: series on the thorny and intriguing issue of Judaism and universalism.
0:34
Speaker 1: In pursuit of enlightenment and insights on this topic, We'll
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Speaker 1: be journeying through the full sweep of Jewish intellectual history
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Speaker 1: from the Bible down to our own day, inviting our
0:42
Speaker 1: area digests to reflect on the many questions that are
0:45
Speaker 1: brought to the fore in the discussion of this topic.
0:48
Speaker 1: For our very first episode, we will be journeing right
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Speaker 1: back to the origins of Judaism through exploring universalism in
0:54
Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible. As has often been noted, the various
0:56
Speaker 1: books that comprise the Hebrew Bible reflect a wide array
1:00
Speaker 1: of attitudes towards universalism and particularism, thereby providing us with
1:04
Speaker 1: a complex web of ideas on this topic which we
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Speaker 1: must do our best to unravel. To guide us through
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Speaker 1: this endeavor of unraveling, we are fortunate, indeed, to be
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Speaker 1: joined by doctor Ethan Schwartz, Assistant Professor of Hebrevival at
1:17
Speaker 1: Villanova University. Doctor Schwartz received his PhD in Hebre Revival
1:21
Speaker 1: from Harvard University, and whilst research focuses primarily on the
1:24
Speaker 1: prophetic literature of the heat Revival, his expertise includes a
1:28
Speaker 1: wide array of topics, including the comparative study of texts
1:31
Speaker 1: across the ancient Near Eastern world, as well as Jewish
1:33
Speaker 1: Christian dialogue in the modern era. It is a pleasure
1:36
Speaker 1: to welcome Professor Schwartz to the podcast and Jewish Ia
1:38
Speaker 1: Is today.
1:39
Speaker 2: Professor, thank you for joining us.
1:41
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.
1:43
Speaker 1: Excellent excellent, So I very much sim forward to this conversation.
1:46
Speaker 1: But let us dive in and start with a few
1:48
Speaker 1: basic definitions. Perhaps, so the term universalism, it is a
1:52
Speaker 1: little bit perhaps vague and unclear exactly what one means
1:56
Speaker 1: by it. So how would you define universalism for the
1:58
Speaker 1: purposes of a conversation about this topic in the Bible?
2:02
Speaker 4: So I think if you were to ask someone just
2:07
Speaker 4: kind of for an off the cuff definition of these
2:10
Speaker 4: two terms, right, that have to be dealt with in tandem,
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Speaker 4: universalism and particularism. The sort of default that a lot
2:18
Speaker 4: of people would give you who have some basic knowledge
2:20
Speaker 4: of religion and this topic in general. Their basic answer
2:24
Speaker 4: would be that these are two types of religious world views,
2:28
Speaker 4: where universalism is a religion that is addressed to humanity
2:35
Speaker 4: as a whole, and that particularism is a religion that
2:38
Speaker 4: is addressed to, or we might say, privileges a particular
2:41
Speaker 4: group over against humanity as a whole. And so it's
2:45
Speaker 4: often treated as if these are kind of like two
2:48
Speaker 4: boxes or two categories into which we then thought particular
2:54
Speaker 4: maybe not the right word joice in this context, specific
2:56
Speaker 4: religious traditions. Right, so you know, somebody might say, oh,
3:00
Speaker 4: Judaism is a particularist religion and Christianity is a universalist religion. Now,
3:07
Speaker 4: for reasons that I hope will emerge over the course
3:10
Speaker 4: of our conversation, that kind of like category approach is
3:16
Speaker 4: problematic because there is basically no religion that is entirely
3:24
Speaker 4: universalistic or entirely particularistic.
3:27
Speaker 3: Right.
3:27
Speaker 4: In practice, all religious traditions combine elements of these two things.
3:32
Speaker 4: And so what I would prefer to speak of is,
3:35
Speaker 4: rather than boxes that we put religions into, I would
3:38
Speaker 4: rather talk about sort of aspects or features where universalism
3:42
Speaker 4: denotes an orientation. As we were saying before toward all
3:47
Speaker 4: of humanity over and above specific groups, and that you
3:51
Speaker 4: might have a religion that has elements of universalism and
3:56
Speaker 4: then particularism similarly, but on the other end of the
3:59
Speaker 4: spectrum features aspects that are oriented or prioritized or privilege
4:05
Speaker 4: a specific group over against all of humanity, and you
4:10
Speaker 4: might have religions that have elements of that. But so
4:13
Speaker 4: what we're talking about here, I think if we want
4:15
Speaker 4: to have a nuanced conversation and frankly, an accurate conversation
4:19
Speaker 4: that really gets the complex realities of the texts and
4:24
Speaker 4: the traditions that we're going to be talking about, we
4:26
Speaker 4: need to avoid the temptation to think about these as
4:29
Speaker 4: sort of absolute labels that you can just kind of
4:31
Speaker 4: slap on entire traditions and say, Okay, this is universalist,
4:34
Speaker 4: this is particular as. You could do that, and a
4:38
Speaker 4: lot of people do, and there can sometimes be heuristic
4:41
Speaker 4: value to doing so, but you always have to remember.
4:44
Speaker 3: That it is heuristic.
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Speaker 4: It is it is something that we're you know, you
4:46
Speaker 4: can do it for the sake of argument, but it's
4:49
Speaker 4: not necessarily the key to sort of essence, And the
4:53
Speaker 4: reason why that is so important is because as we're
4:57
Speaker 4: going to see right, a lot of the when we're
4:58
Speaker 4: talking about Judaism and and Christianity, the Bible, this particular
5:03
Speaker 4: complex of texts and traditions, the ways in which in
5:06
Speaker 4: our culture we talk about like, oh, we're gonna say
5:09
Speaker 4: that this element of this religion makes it universalists, this
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Speaker 4: element of this religion makes it particular. Is those terms
5:16
Speaker 4: are already reflecting a Christian bias. They're already reflecting a
5:19
Speaker 4: Christian mindset. So that is with these specific cases why
5:26
Speaker 4: it's so important that we recognize that these these are
5:28
Speaker 4: heuristic definitions that you know, we shouldn't essentialize into into
5:33
Speaker 4: sort of absolute categories.
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Speaker 1: Interesting, and I'm pleased to you open to that because
5:38
Speaker 1: this applies very well, I think, to the Tana, to
5:41
Speaker 1: the Bible, because often the sort of the truth that
5:45
Speaker 1: has strown out there is that there is and and
5:47
Speaker 1: you know, I want to ask to what extent is
5:48
Speaker 1: there an element of truth in this?
5:49
Speaker 2: To what extent can we say this to the acurate?
5:51
Speaker 1: Is that you know, there are tensions running throughout the
5:54
Speaker 1: ten between particular texts that emphasize let's say, Israel's an election,
5:59
Speaker 1: but this is universes texts that emphasize a broader moral
6:02
Speaker 1: or spiritual vision. And that's sort of, as you say,
6:05
Speaker 1: slapped on those as two nice easy categories. So let
6:08
Speaker 1: me phrase the question is as such, in what ways
6:10
Speaker 1: canon should one think slightly differently or more nuanced about
6:14
Speaker 1: these these kinds of text almost examples of text that
6:18
Speaker 1: appear one or really are you know, have elements of
6:21
Speaker 1: the other? Or in what ways is this neat and
6:25
Speaker 1: easy sort of heuristic pair of labels as you mentioned,
6:28
Speaker 1: that's what I said, should and could they be complicated?
6:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, So let's start with the most obvious issue, which
6:34
Speaker 4: is that we can immediately dispense with the idea that
6:39
Speaker 4: the Hebrew Bible the Tana is as a whole a
6:42
Speaker 4: particular as text, right because of some of.
6:44
Speaker 3: These Christian.
6:46
Speaker 4: Framings that I was alluding to a second ago that
6:48
Speaker 4: will get to more more in a little bit, Right,
6:51
Speaker 4: there is a common idea that you know, in the
6:53
Speaker 4: same way you've got like the angry God of the
6:56
Speaker 4: Old Testament and the loving God of the New Testament. Right,
6:59
Speaker 4: A sort of parallel to that is you have the
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Speaker 4: sort of particularist, ethnocentric, solid stistic, parochial focus of the
7:07
Speaker 4: Old Testament, and then the broad, open, inclusive, you know,
7:12
Speaker 4: approach of the New Testament, and right away with you know,
7:15
Speaker 4: the very first words literally of Tanah. We can see
7:19
Speaker 4: that that is nonsense. Because one of the remarkable things
7:22
Speaker 4: about the Hebrew Bible, especially when we think about it
7:26
Speaker 4: against the backdrop of broader ancient your Eastern literature, is
7:30
Speaker 4: how universalistic its purview is at the beginning, right, the
7:35
Speaker 4: creation narrative with which the Bible begins, and which I
7:39
Speaker 4: think is fair to say is probably the most famous,
7:41
Speaker 4: most culturally influential aspect of the Hebrew Bible, at least
7:45
Speaker 4: in terms of like what people think of initially.
7:47
Speaker 3: Right, that seven day creation story.
7:49
Speaker 4: That's like what your your average American who might be
7:52
Speaker 4: not especially religiously literate, like, that's probably what.
7:55
Speaker 3: They know happens in the Bible. Right.
7:57
Speaker 4: That is an incredibly universalistic creation story. Right. It focuses
8:02
Speaker 4: on all of humanity, right, and it concludes with all
8:08
Speaker 4: of humanity as such being the capstone, the pinnacle of
8:14
Speaker 4: the cosmos.
8:15
Speaker 3: Right.
8:15
Speaker 4: That is quite different from the parallels that we see
8:20
Speaker 4: most famously, for instance, in the Babylonian creation story, where
8:25
Speaker 4: the culmination of creation is Babylon right, and specifically Marduk's Temple. Right,
8:32
Speaker 4: that is a version of creation that points inexorably toward
8:41
Speaker 4: a particularist sort of end. And it's true that if
8:48
Speaker 4: you play the long game and you look at how
8:50
Speaker 4: tanaf unfolds, right, we're gonna get a constant sort of
8:53
Speaker 4: whittling down of the focus, right until we're looking at
8:58
Speaker 4: one specific people, or you could even argue within that
9:01
Speaker 4: one specific people, a very intense focus on one specific
9:04
Speaker 4: group within that people, that is to say, the priests, right,
9:08
Speaker 4: because so much of the Torah is preoccupied with the
9:10
Speaker 4: special obligations of the priests.
9:12
Speaker 2: Right.
9:13
Speaker 4: But if you just look at the parts of these
9:16
Speaker 4: texts that we would consider creation narratives, right, compare Genesis
9:21
Speaker 4: Genesis one through eleven. Right, Let's say this creation in
9:25
Speaker 4: the broad sense, primordial narratives in general, the stuff that
9:28
Speaker 4: happens before it really feels like history is getting started
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Speaker 4: right with Abraham, Right, it's all about humanity as a whole.
9:34
Speaker 4: Whereas the Babylonian creation narrative, which has so many point
9:39
Speaker 4: by point parallels with especially Genesis one, has this very very.
9:44
Speaker 3: Different conclusion in terms of the focus.
9:46
Speaker 4: On this particular group in this particular place. So, right
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Speaker 4: from the get go, the Bible establishes an interest in
9:56
Speaker 4: all of humanity that I think is best described as
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Speaker 4: a certain kind of universalism. Now, then I said, up
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Speaker 4: until chapter eleven, right immediately, then when we begin with
10:09
Speaker 4: what you know, for liturgically for Jews is Parshat Lefaja,
10:12
Speaker 4: right the beginning of the Abraham story in Genesis chapter twelve, Right,
10:16
Speaker 4: suddenly things get complicated because now it's sort of like, Okay,
10:19
Speaker 4: we have the whole framework of humanity. We've established, we've
10:24
Speaker 4: some basic terms about what the human being is as
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Speaker 4: a creature, the basic history of humanity's early days, and
10:30
Speaker 4: now we're going to kind of narrow in on the
10:33
Speaker 4: particular person and his defendants, the people that will come
10:37
Speaker 4: from him that were actually interested in So obviously that
10:40
Speaker 4: is a particularistic turn, although that universal framework, that universal purview,
10:46
Speaker 4: never really goes away, because right from the get go, right,
10:48
Speaker 4: Abraham is told that his significance is going to be
10:52
Speaker 4: in terms of other nations being depends on how you
10:56
Speaker 4: translate the Hebrew here, it's very complicated. Blessed in him,
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Speaker 4: blessed them by him? Right, there is an interplay there
11:03
Speaker 4: between the particular and the universal, even when we dive
11:07
Speaker 4: into that more specific focus. So already, just with like
11:12
Speaker 4: the first few chapters of Genesis, we can see that
11:15
Speaker 4: any attempt to kind of pigeonhole the Bible into one
11:18
Speaker 4: of these categories is going to run into some problems
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Speaker 4: very quickly.
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Speaker 2: Interesting.
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Speaker 1: And however, I would, perhaps playing Devil's advocates, let'd say
11:29
Speaker 1: that it nonetheless remains quite clear. I think if you
11:32
Speaker 1: you know, tell me if you agree with disagree, that there
11:34
Speaker 1: are some texts that are more apt to be put
11:38
Speaker 1: or to be associated with the universes and category and more,
11:41
Speaker 1: and others that are decidedly not so I.
11:43
Speaker 4: Mean, oh yeah, no, for sure. And once we get
11:47
Speaker 4: into the collection of of of scriptures that you know
11:51
Speaker 4: constitutes the Bible, right, once we once we get into
11:54
Speaker 4: that collection as a whole, right, yes, I mean, there
11:56
Speaker 4: are definitely going to be texts that that are better
12:03
Speaker 4: described as one or the other. And yeah, yeah, I
12:08
Speaker 4: think on the on the level of sort of individual passages,
12:11
Speaker 4: individual books, even in some cases it isn't inappropriate to
12:15
Speaker 4: do that sort of like categorization that I was talking about.
12:18
Speaker 4: I think where you you know, but I mean there
12:20
Speaker 4: are going to be texts that, even within themselves, are
12:24
Speaker 4: are blending the two and where it's more appropriate, I
12:27
Speaker 4: think to speak about elements or or features, but then
12:30
Speaker 4: certainly the collection as a whole, right, because when all
12:33
Speaker 4: these pieces get added up together, you get a very
12:36
Speaker 4: complex intermingling of these two.
12:39
Speaker 3: Yeah.
12:40
Speaker 1: Right, So then let me switch the lens a little
12:43
Speaker 1: bit to the historical, right, because, as you all know,
12:47
Speaker 1: the is a complicated athology of text written different times,
12:51
Speaker 1: different different people, different eras of history. Let me ask
12:54
Speaker 1: the following of that particular times in the history of
12:58
Speaker 1: engine Israel, which would let's say, be more conducive to
13:01
Speaker 1: the composition of universalistic texts and more you know, specific
13:05
Speaker 1: events that would precipitate the sort of thing, and other
13:08
Speaker 1: times which perhaps would be more of a stimulus to
13:13
Speaker 1: a more particularistic wab of looking at things that can
13:15
Speaker 1: we map? I know it's always a little bit dicey
13:17
Speaker 1: to try and date these piblical texts of very sort
13:20
Speaker 1: of but is it possibilities broadly to map where and when.
13:24
Speaker 2: These different types of attitudes might have taken root.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, So, as you've already alluded to that, it's it's
13:33
Speaker 4: very complicated, but I think that I think that we
13:36
Speaker 4: can speak generally of some some trends that that I
13:41
Speaker 4: think we have to keep in mind are are definitely generalizations,
13:45
Speaker 4: and we can find exceptions in every case. But I
13:49
Speaker 4: think that there is always going to be perhaps paradoxically
13:53
Speaker 4: although honestly if not so paradoxically or surprisingly if you
13:57
Speaker 4: think about the later history of Judaism, but there's going
14:01
Speaker 4: to be a way in which sovereignty and stability are
14:05
Speaker 4: in some ways going to lend themselves more naturally to
14:09
Speaker 4: a kind of universal purview. Because I think that maybe
14:14
Speaker 4: it'll be easier to explain this the opposite way that
14:16
Speaker 4: when groups feel that they are disempowered and that their
14:21
Speaker 4: identity and that their group cohesion is threatened, it's very
14:25
Speaker 4: natural to move toward a more inward focused kind of
14:28
Speaker 4: way of seeing the world.
14:30
Speaker 3: Right.
14:31
Speaker 4: So you know, again this is to anticipate a little
14:36
Speaker 4: bit about where we're going to go. But the Rabbinic tradition,
14:39
Speaker 4: in a lot of ways, it would it would be
14:42
Speaker 4: would be wrong to say that the rabbis just like
14:45
Speaker 4: took the particularism of the Hebrew Bible and just like
14:48
Speaker 4: throughout the universalism. That's definitely not true at all. But
14:52
Speaker 4: there are ways in which the particularism of the Hebrew
14:54
Speaker 4: Bible really gets amplified in in in classical or Vinic literature.
14:58
Speaker 4: And it's I think it's it's totally natural that that
15:02
Speaker 4: would happen among a diasporic people are trying to figure
15:06
Speaker 4: out what their sort of national identity even means without
15:12
Speaker 4: you know, without sovereignty, without land, and so so I
15:18
Speaker 4: think if you look very broadly at the Hebrew Bible,
15:23
Speaker 4: you're going to see moments where particularism seems to be
15:28
Speaker 4: a response to crisis, to disempowerment. You're going to see
15:34
Speaker 4: universalism as being a view that can be situated naturally
15:42
Speaker 4: in the in the opposite context. But yeah, in terms
15:45
Speaker 4: of like speaking of broad general rules, I think going
15:48
Speaker 4: beyond that very big picture, it would it would be
15:51
Speaker 4: tricky to sort of kind of create a kind of
15:55
Speaker 4: you know, a rule about like, oh, in these sorts
15:57
Speaker 4: of moments we see more universalism, or in these sorts
16:01
Speaker 4: of moments we see more particularism.
16:04
Speaker 3: What I think is easier.
16:05
Speaker 4: And I know, forgive me if I'm jumping ahead a
16:07
Speaker 4: little bit of here, but I know that you wanted
16:09
Speaker 4: to ask about wisdom literature, you know in some case,
16:11
Speaker 4: so I think what is easier than to speak about
16:13
Speaker 4: particular historical circumstances is to ask whether certain kinds of writing,
16:18
Speaker 4: are certain genres, certain literary forms might lend themselves to
16:24
Speaker 4: one or the other.
16:25
Speaker 1: Right, So in which case is let's jump there right now,
16:27
Speaker 1: because that's another interesting word to I asked about it historical.
16:29
Speaker 1: But perhaps you're right, Perhaps it's not necessarily or not
16:33
Speaker 1: so saliently historical circumstances, but rather the kinds and the
16:36
Speaker 1: forms of genres of literature which lend themselves more in
16:40
Speaker 1: one direction or the other.
16:40
Speaker 2: So perhaps, you know, could you like us of that?
16:43
Speaker 1: And wisdom literature is often trotted out as an excellent
16:46
Speaker 1: example of writers within the Hebrew Bible essentially turning it
16:53
Speaker 1: towards a more universalistic vein and participating in something that
16:56
Speaker 1: is more international devil. Let's say, so, firstly, let me
17:00
Speaker 1: ask you plus is that true? Me is wisdom literature
17:03
Speaker 1: justly categorizes that. In the second thing, I is, you know,
17:06
Speaker 1: more broadly, to what degree and what ways does film
17:10
Speaker 1: a genre put it into this axis of universalism?
17:13
Speaker 2: In particularism?
17:13
Speaker 3: Yeah?
17:14
Speaker 4: So let me actually take those questions in the reverse order,
17:16
Speaker 4: if that's okay, Because again I think as in terms
17:19
Speaker 4: of you know, paralleling how I began with saying, well,
17:21
Speaker 4: we can't really define universalism without also defining particularism. I
17:24
Speaker 4: think that it can be helpful in this context just
17:27
Speaker 4: to give some concreteness. What we're talking about a lot
17:30
Speaker 4: of abstract words here genre literary form, and to give
17:33
Speaker 4: some concreteness, it will be helpful to talk about maybe
17:37
Speaker 4: an example of each in sort of contrast to each other.
17:40
Speaker 4: So an example of a literary form that is going
17:44
Speaker 4: to vary naturally, I mean, I would say more than
17:47
Speaker 4: naturally inevitably as a matter of definition, lend itself to
17:51
Speaker 4: its a kind of particularism is going to be covenant. Right,
17:54
Speaker 4: And this is I think a clearer example than wisdom literature.
17:58
Speaker 3: So it can be useful to start here.
17:59
Speaker 4: So we often we think about covenant as an idea,
18:02
Speaker 4: as an institution, that it's also important to recognize that
18:05
Speaker 4: within the ancient ner East, including the Hebrew Bible, like,
18:07
Speaker 4: it is appropriate to speak about covenant as a kind
18:10
Speaker 4: of literary form, to the extent that covenants as institutions
18:14
Speaker 4: as relationships between between states between in the case of
18:19
Speaker 4: the you know, the people of Israel, right, the people
18:21
Speaker 4: and God. Right, these are established and concretized in writing,
18:26
Speaker 4: right in the form of like basically treaty text. The
18:29
Speaker 4: famous example of this in the Bible. And we're going
18:32
Speaker 4: to spend more time with this text in a little bit.
18:34
Speaker 3: But is deuteronomy, right.
18:35
Speaker 4: Deuteronomy is basically patterned off of a Neo Assyrian vassal treaty, right,
18:41
Speaker 4: where you've got the more powerful party, in this case,
18:44
Speaker 4: God laying out terms about what he expects from the
18:49
Speaker 4: less powerful party, in this case the people of Israel,
18:52
Speaker 4: and what they will get in return if they accept
18:55
Speaker 4: his terms and display commitments and fidelity to them, and
18:59
Speaker 4: what they will suffer for if they do not do
19:01
Speaker 4: those things.
19:01
Speaker 3: Right.
19:02
Speaker 4: So covenant in that sense, or we could say treaty
19:04
Speaker 4: like you know, treaty documents right are our literary form,
19:07
Speaker 4: and they are inherently particularistic because they are about specific
19:13
Speaker 4: relationships between specific parties, right by by dint of just
19:17
Speaker 4: like what they are, right, they focus on specific groups.
19:22
Speaker 4: They establish inside or outsider relationships.
19:25
Speaker 2: Right.
19:26
Speaker 4: So that's an example of where, regardless of time period
19:30
Speaker 4: that is going to be literature that is just going
19:32
Speaker 4: to lend itself to a kind of particularistic bet. Wisdom
19:37
Speaker 4: literature is, you know, there's a few ways we can
19:41
Speaker 4: we can define it in terms of like what are
19:43
Speaker 4: the literary conventions, what are sort of the ideas or
19:45
Speaker 4: the values? Right, But if we think about just kind
19:49
Speaker 4: of like a general a general definition here, right, wisdom
19:52
Speaker 4: literature is it's the literary manifestation of a kind of
19:55
Speaker 4: worldview or or way of thinking that wants to investigate
20:02
Speaker 4: the world and understand how the world works, right with
20:06
Speaker 4: you know, not in a sort of secularized, disenchanted way
20:10
Speaker 4: like understanding it as a manifestation of God's creation, right,
20:14
Speaker 4: but to understand that the world can be understood by
20:18
Speaker 4: sort of direct examination, not only through revelatory speech by
20:22
Speaker 4: a deity.
20:23
Speaker 2: Right.
20:24
Speaker 4: And so the wisdom literature prioritizes looking at empirical evidence,
20:30
Speaker 4: you know, we might say, and drawing conclusions from it.
20:33
Speaker 3: You know.
20:33
Speaker 4: My favorite line to exemplify this from from Proverbs, from
20:38
Speaker 4: from the Book of Michlee is the line where where
20:40
Speaker 4: the speaker says, you know, to a lazy person, right,
20:43
Speaker 4: like look at the ant and then there's this like
20:45
Speaker 4: there's this idea of like you should be able to
20:47
Speaker 4: look at the world and learn from it, not just
20:50
Speaker 4: about what is happening, but also then like what your
20:53
Speaker 4: conduct should be.
20:54
Speaker 3: Right.
20:54
Speaker 4: That's also characteristic of wisdom literature is an interconnection of
20:57
Speaker 4: sort of the epistemic and the world, right, the sort
21:00
Speaker 4: of understanding what is happening and the understanding what it means.
21:04
Speaker 3: About what we should do.
21:06
Speaker 4: And what is the crucial thing here is that if
21:11
Speaker 4: if you think, as the wisdom authors typically did, that
21:15
Speaker 4: this is something that can be learned through observation, what
21:20
Speaker 4: that means is that it's a function of our sort
21:22
Speaker 4: of natural human faculties, right. And that's why wisdom literature
21:26
Speaker 4: tends to be kind of very very individualistic. Now you
21:29
Speaker 4: think about the wisdom books in the Bible, they tend
21:32
Speaker 4: to be spoken like I meant's take let's take Proverbs
21:36
Speaker 4: and Ecclesiastes will heel it? Right, Like, both spoken by individuals, right,
21:40
Speaker 4: reflecting on their personal experience. Obviously very different tones, but
21:44
Speaker 4: they share that in common, this idea that the individual
21:47
Speaker 4: as such can examine this, And so that leads to
21:50
Speaker 4: this really interesting sort of paradox where because it's focused
21:54
Speaker 4: on the potential of the individual based on his or
21:57
Speaker 4: her human faculties to examine the world, Wisdom literature ends
22:01
Speaker 4: up being universalist in a sense.
22:03
Speaker 3: Right.
22:04
Speaker 4: You might think individual and universalists are intentioned, but they're
22:07
Speaker 4: actually not.
22:08
Speaker 3: Because if any.
22:09
Speaker 4: Given human being, by dint of human being, of being
22:12
Speaker 4: a human being, can do this, right, then group identities, right, nations,
22:18
Speaker 4: people's covenants for instance, right, are not are you know?
22:21
Speaker 3: Those are not relevant in this case? Right?
22:24
Speaker 4: Like the speaker of Proverbs, right, call.
22:27
Speaker 3: Him King Solomon.
22:28
Speaker 4: Right, he can do this just by being a person.
22:32
Speaker 2: Right.
22:32
Speaker 4: He's not doing this in the context of a particular
22:36
Speaker 4: Israelite revelation. And indeed, the word Israel does not appear
22:41
Speaker 4: in the Book of Proverbs.
22:42
Speaker 3: Right. Very interesting in the.
22:43
Speaker 4: Septuagen in the ancient Greek translation they add in a
22:46
Speaker 4: heading that they add the word Israel into the heading.
22:49
Speaker 3: But in the Hebrew.
22:50
Speaker 4: Version, the one that's normative for Jews, the word Israel
22:53
Speaker 4: does not actually appear. There.
22:54
Speaker 3: There is almost no focus on a.
22:56
Speaker 4: Specific people, a specific context, right, a specific covenantal or
23:02
Speaker 4: national context. So wisdom literature to that in that sense
23:06
Speaker 4: because of its promotion of the idea that human beings
23:10
Speaker 4: as human beings can understand the world, but actually ends
23:13
Speaker 4: up saying that any human being, not just an Israelite,
23:15
Speaker 4: can do this. And it's very telling therefore, that in
23:18
Speaker 4: the Wisdom literature we have some of the most direct
23:22
Speaker 4: evidence of contact with other cultures. Right there are entire
23:27
Speaker 4: sections of the Book of Proverbs that look like they
23:30
Speaker 4: were copy and pasted from Egyptian Egyptian wisdom collections. I'm
23:35
Speaker 4: not saying that literal copy and paste is necessarily, like,
23:38
Speaker 4: you know, the exact best model of how to explain that,
23:40
Speaker 4: but the similarities are profound. I love this as a
23:44
Speaker 4: Bible scholar who's also an observant Jew, because it's one
23:47
Speaker 4: of these moments where like, actually, you can think about
23:49
Speaker 4: this both from a critical perspective and from a traditional
23:52
Speaker 4: perspective and kind of see the same thing going on,
23:55
Speaker 4: which is that, as I alluded to a moment ago, right,
23:57
Speaker 4: Proverbs is of course understood traditionally to be written by
24:00
Speaker 4: King Solomon, and the Bible gives us a picture of
24:04
Speaker 4: King Solomon as this incredibly international, cosmopolitan guy, right. That
24:10
Speaker 4: is one of the defining features of his reign. So
24:14
Speaker 4: the idea that he would have produced a book that
24:17
Speaker 4: has all of these parallels. And this evidence of contact
24:20
Speaker 4: with other cultures actually makes a lot of sense with
24:23
Speaker 4: the picture that the Bible gives of him. So that
24:26
Speaker 4: sort of cosmopolitanism, right, that idea that well, all human
24:31
Speaker 4: beings can can investigate the world, and therefore this sort
24:35
Speaker 4: of knowledge is not restricted to one particular revelation to
24:39
Speaker 4: one particular people.
24:40
Speaker 3: Right.
24:40
Speaker 4: That is characteristic of wisdom literature in the Bible. Right,
24:43
Speaker 4: It's going to get a little different in post biblical
24:45
Speaker 4: wisdom literature, where the particularism creeps in a little more.
24:48
Speaker 4: But it is characteristic of the Bible. I think that's
24:51
Speaker 4: a fair that's a minimum affair generalization, and it does
24:55
Speaker 4: mean that the wisdom literature represents a strikingly universe, solistic
25:00
Speaker 4: strain within within Tannah.
25:03
Speaker 1: Right, the fair enough good I'm doing. We touched upon
25:07
Speaker 1: that and covered that. There is another aspect, and perhaps
25:10
Speaker 1: I should have lound this in with the historical question,
25:13
Speaker 1: but but it's I think this is an important astwet
25:15
Speaker 1: as well, which is that a lot of the texts
25:18
Speaker 1: and a lot of the books of the Tenach were
25:21
Speaker 1: produced in in the certain I would say political and
25:26
Speaker 1: social circumstance, namely the clash with larger empires and much
25:30
Speaker 1: bigger political forces. Be the Egyptian Empire, be the Syrians,
25:34
Speaker 1: be the Babylonians, be it even the Persians, or even
25:37
Speaker 1: the Greeks, And then you know it's always being this
25:40
Speaker 1: far smaller cultural and political unit within, you know, a
25:44
Speaker 1: chessboard with much larger, much powerful pieces. And I wonder
25:48
Speaker 1: if you could speak to that a little bit, firstly
25:50
Speaker 1: in just in general the formation of the more specifically
25:54
Speaker 1: in the formation of the attitudes visa via the universalism particulars.
25:57
Speaker 1: In other words, if you are facing either in vain
26:00
Speaker 1: or moment invasion just to just contact, engagement and counter
26:04
Speaker 1: with a much larger, more dominant cultural force, how does
26:09
Speaker 1: that reflect itself in some of these texts visa v
26:11
Speaker 1: Does it turn the authors towards the universe's directional towards
26:16
Speaker 1: the particular direction level? Does it frompt people to to
26:18
Speaker 1: face inwards outwards?
26:20
Speaker 2: How how does that play into this?
26:22
Speaker 4: Yeah? So, uh, it's a great question. And this is
26:26
Speaker 4: where in contrast to my my hedging before about your
26:29
Speaker 4: your general historical question, this is where I think we
26:32
Speaker 4: can we can answer with much more clarity first of all,
26:34
Speaker 4: because we know quite confidently which texts we're dealing with
26:38
Speaker 4: in terms of which which texts, particularly from the prophetic literature, which.
26:42
Speaker 3: Is primarily what I work on.
26:44
Speaker 4: Right, we know which texts originate in those contexts of
26:47
Speaker 4: Israel's encounter with Empire. They are not subtle about it. Right,
26:51
Speaker 4: That is the main thing. Right, This is something I
26:52
Speaker 4: always do, uh In.
26:55
Speaker 3: I do a lot of.
26:55
Speaker 4: Teaching in the Jewish community about the importance of recognizing
26:59
Speaker 4: the the role that Empire played in the formation of
27:03
Speaker 4: the Hebrew Bible and of Judaism as a whole. I
27:05
Speaker 4: think if you asked a lot of Jews to just
27:06
Speaker 4: kind of say, oh, like, what are major themes in
27:09
Speaker 4: the Bible, like I think most Jews would, you know,
27:11
Speaker 4: they would list the top ten themes, and they probably
27:13
Speaker 4: wouldn't mention Empire. It's not necessarily front and center in
27:16
Speaker 4: people's minds, which is so funny because it was all
27:18
Speaker 4: the profits were ever thinking about. Right, it was the
27:21
Speaker 4: main thing, and and for precisely the reasons that you
27:24
Speaker 4: just said, Right, how could you not be thinking about
27:26
Speaker 4: this all the time when you are this tiny little
27:28
Speaker 4: nation that is getting tossed around by these massive, these
27:32
Speaker 4: massive political entities that were not just massive, they were
27:36
Speaker 4: unprecedentedly massive. Right, Assyria, but the Neo Assyrian Empire, in
27:40
Speaker 4: whose shadows a huge amount of the most famous stories
27:44
Speaker 4: in Tana actually take place, right, Like that was the
27:46
Speaker 4: first real world empire.
27:48
Speaker 2: Right.
27:48
Speaker 4: This was a completely new concept of political political reality
27:55
Speaker 4: in contrast to the world order that had rained for
27:59
Speaker 4: you know, a thousand years, which was these sort of
28:02
Speaker 4: still large but not entirely large, regional kingdoms.
28:06
Speaker 2: Right.
28:07
Speaker 4: So you had like, you know, Israel at the time
28:09
Speaker 4: when the Exodus supposedly took place, right, is sort of
28:13
Speaker 4: at the border of like Egypt and Hati, right, the
28:16
Speaker 4: Hittite kingdom that are kind of jockeying over over the
28:20
Speaker 4: land of what will what will become the land of Israel.
28:23
Speaker 3: Right.
28:23
Speaker 4: You know, you've got Assyria and Babylonia that are kind
28:27
Speaker 4: of like roughly the same thigh. Right, You've got you
28:30
Speaker 4: have these like they're they're large, but they're these kind
28:32
Speaker 4: of there's this equilibrium of regional kingdoms.
28:34
Speaker 1: Right.
28:34
Speaker 4: And suddenly with Assyria, the entire known world falls under
28:39
Speaker 4: either the direct conquest and rule of one kingdom or
28:43
Speaker 4: the threat of that and that's going to completely change everything.
28:46
Speaker 4: It's just a totally new it's it's a new world order.
28:49
Speaker 3: Right.
28:50
Speaker 4: So I think that the way that these techts respond
28:54
Speaker 4: to this in terms of universalism and particularism is it's
28:59
Speaker 4: really an encapsule of this complexity that I was trying
29:01
Speaker 4: to emphasize a bit ago, because again, broadly speaking, I
29:06
Speaker 4: think it's fair to say that the prophetic texts that
29:11
Speaker 4: respond to empires specifically, let's focus here on the Assyrian
29:17
Speaker 4: and Babylonian context because once we get to Persia and
29:21
Speaker 4: we can touch on Persia later, you know, but Persia's
29:24
Speaker 4: Persia is very different because Persia is seen as a
29:26
Speaker 4: positive force. But let's focus therefore on the negative, the
29:29
Speaker 4: initial negative forces, right, Neosyria and neo Babylonia.
29:34
Speaker 3: So the profits see.
29:37
Speaker 4: These empires in terms of their aspirations of world domination
29:43
Speaker 4: has actually kind of like the the the negative side
29:49
Speaker 4: of universalism, right, or a very corrosive and destructive form
29:54
Speaker 4: of universalism, right, where the what makes empires bad is
29:59
Speaker 4: that they are trying to bring the universal purview under
30:05
Speaker 4: their own, you know, into their into their own you know,
30:08
Speaker 4: they're like under their own rule, right, they're trying to
30:10
Speaker 4: make themselves universal. I think that a lot of readers
30:14
Speaker 4: of the Bible, particularly politically liberal readers, who are inclined
30:19
Speaker 4: to see, you know, uh, to be anti imperial and
30:22
Speaker 4: to see the Bible as anti imperial, which I mean
30:25
Speaker 4: to large extent much of it is anti imperial. Not
30:28
Speaker 4: all of it, but much of it. So that's not wrong.
30:30
Speaker 4: But I think what's often wrong in the way that
30:32
Speaker 4: political liberals, liberal Christians, liberal Jews who are invested in
30:36
Speaker 4: the Bible right will often understand the the threat of
30:39
Speaker 4: empire is they they and here's that Christian that Christian
30:42
Speaker 4: influence coming in again. They see empires somehow like like
30:45
Speaker 4: particularism on steroids, right, are the kind of the sort
30:49
Speaker 4: of the most the most negative, most extreme form uh
30:54
Speaker 4: metastasized form of particularism. And I think the prophets don't
30:58
Speaker 4: see it that way. I think they see particularism a
31:00
Speaker 4: focus on local individual nations as like actually like the
31:05
Speaker 4: form of resistance against this this false and for them,
31:08
Speaker 4: blasphemous form of universalism, right, because that because these these
31:11
Speaker 4: emperors are basically saying, you know, we, we are the
31:15
Speaker 4: most powerful.
31:15
Speaker 3: Forces in the in the universe.
31:17
Speaker 4: Right, because we we, not not God, not the God
31:20
Speaker 4: of Israel, are actually the highest king.
31:22
Speaker 3: Right.
31:22
Speaker 4: So, one quick example, at the end or near near
31:27
Speaker 4: the end of the Book of Jeremiah, right, so before
31:30
Speaker 4: the sort of historical narratives, the parallel some of the
31:32
Speaker 4: stuff that happens in the Book of Kings, right, we
31:34
Speaker 4: get one of the most remarkable oracles of condemnation against
31:39
Speaker 4: against Babylon. It's like it's like chapter fifty one or something.
31:43
Speaker 4: I don't remember exactly the chapter number off the top
31:45
Speaker 4: of my head, but somewhere near the end of Jeremiah,
31:47
Speaker 4: and he basically, in a in a brilliant series of illusions,
31:53
Speaker 4: he basically presents Babylon as the sort of latter day
31:58
Speaker 4: manifestation of the cosmic chaos, the you know, the toe
32:04
Speaker 4: of Oho that God is in battle with to keep
32:07
Speaker 4: to keep the world in order. Right, Babylon becomes almost
32:11
Speaker 4: rises the level of being like a like a false God. Right,
32:15
Speaker 4: that that the real God has to defeat, and that
32:18
Speaker 4: the destruction of the Babylonian conquest is the manifestation of
32:22
Speaker 4: primordial divine chaos, the the invasion of primordial divine chaos
32:27
Speaker 4: into God's God's order, right, and that is I think,
32:30
Speaker 4: in some ways like a really stunning rebuke of a
32:34
Speaker 4: kind of uncomplicated universalism, right, because it's basically about what's
32:38
Speaker 4: the problem with empire is it obliterates all particularisms, right,
32:42
Speaker 4: and that's actually inevitably destructive and problematic. So you can
32:47
Speaker 4: you can find tons of examples in the prophetic literature
32:51
Speaker 4: that is situated in that rough time period that I
32:53
Speaker 4: think has that critique of you know.
32:55
Speaker 3: And I wouldn't say it's just a critique.
32:57
Speaker 4: Of one negative form of universe. I would say it's
33:01
Speaker 4: more radical than that. It's actually saying that all universalism
33:03
Speaker 4: is actually contains within itself at least potentially the possibility
33:07
Speaker 4: of this sort of destructive element because it's all about obliterating, uh,
33:11
Speaker 4: you know, more local difference.
33:14
Speaker 1: Interesting and one element you touched on that which is
33:16
Speaker 1: always fascinated me. These these rather understudied I would say,
33:21
Speaker 1: elements of the prophets, namely the oracles to other nations.
33:24
Speaker 1: It's something that those who go through to Marc systematically
33:27
Speaker 1: are perhaps sometimes it will surprise to find because you know,
33:30
Speaker 1: one the selected chapters of your Shia and your the
33:34
Speaker 1: Jews generally study are usually the ones that are i
33:37
Speaker 1: would say, more more famous, more well known, the ones
33:39
Speaker 1: which have inspirational words about the ends of the exile
33:42
Speaker 1: and the return to design. And you know, there are
33:45
Speaker 1: many songs and many beautiful passages, and then the military
33:47
Speaker 1: into prayer, and there's very well known.
33:49
Speaker 2: But actually you go through the book quite.
33:51
Speaker 1: Large and and you know, distinct aspects of of these
33:57
Speaker 1: prophetic oracles, of these prophetic texts are the voter to
34:01
Speaker 1: turning towards specific nations and declaring upon them, often quite
34:05
Speaker 1: negative things, but in general messages to them. And this
34:09
Speaker 1: this striking as an interesting example of this of this tension,
34:14
Speaker 1: or of this difficulty of categorizing text. But on the
34:16
Speaker 1: one hand, these are texts that are aimed outwards. They
34:20
Speaker 1: are specifically not addressed to.
34:23
Speaker 2: The people of Israel, which is interesting that.
34:25
Speaker 1: Profits of of or would address them elsewhere, Wei address
34:30
Speaker 1: themselves elsewhere, and.
34:31
Speaker 2: They are again addressed outwards.
34:33
Speaker 1: But also you know, quite clearly for the eventual consumption
34:38
Speaker 1: or on behalf of for the sake of their own people,
34:40
Speaker 1: the Bene Israel. So I mean, I'm not surely selling
34:43
Speaker 1: whether the question would be in this, but you know,
34:45
Speaker 1: how exactly are such chapters such text to be categorized
34:49
Speaker 1: in this sense? I mean, is this a sense in
34:53
Speaker 1: which the profits have a kind of universalistic turn but
34:56
Speaker 1: not really?
34:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I.
34:57
Speaker 4: Think again it's a good example of the complexity. I mean,
35:00
Speaker 4: let's let's let's get something very basic out of the
35:03
Speaker 4: way first, though, Which is that part? And this is
35:05
Speaker 4: I'm picking up on something that you said. Part of
35:07
Speaker 4: why the prophets feel empowered to speak to these other
35:10
Speaker 4: people is because God is imagined to like like they're
35:14
Speaker 4: in God's realm too, right. And that's actually an important
35:17
Speaker 4: element of Biblical universalism that has often overlooked, which is
35:21
Speaker 4: that the for the most part, God's God's kind of
35:27
Speaker 4: province is understood to be the whole world and all like,
35:30
Speaker 4: all all nations, right, are therefore kind of like, you know,
35:33
Speaker 4: they answer to God in one way or another. They
35:35
Speaker 4: don't all obviously have the same relationship with God. Right,
35:38
Speaker 4: God has you know, a specific relationship with this one people, right,
35:44
Speaker 4: But God, everyone is.
35:45
Speaker 3: Under God's dominion.
35:46
Speaker 2: Right.
35:46
Speaker 3: The The idea that God is.
35:49
Speaker 4: A purely local deity is only present very marginally in
35:54
Speaker 4: the Bible in some of the you know, if speaking
35:56
Speaker 4: from a historical perspective, right, some of the very oldest texts, uh,
36:00
Speaker 4: but as the Bible came together, by far the emergent
36:04
Speaker 4: dominant view is that is that God's power and dominion
36:10
Speaker 4: is is at a minimum quite expansive, and if not universal,
36:15
Speaker 4: doesn't necessarily mean that he's the only divine being, right,
36:18
Speaker 4: but that you know, on some level, he has a
36:20
Speaker 4: stake in everything that's going on. So the prophets, and
36:24
Speaker 4: that's a form of universalism, right, because it's saying that,
36:27
Speaker 4: like you know, God has a universal relevance and a
36:30
Speaker 4: universal interest. So the prophets are empowered to speak to
36:34
Speaker 4: these other people because they're not you know, they're part
36:37
Speaker 4: of the picture here, whether they like it or not. Now,
36:40
Speaker 4: in terms of the other aspects of the of these
36:43
Speaker 4: oracles against the nations, so you mentioned that these maybe
36:48
Speaker 4: don't get as much airtime in Judaism. Certainly if you
36:52
Speaker 4: look at the hafta Rote, right, the prophetic the prophetic
36:55
Speaker 4: lectionary readings there there are there are a few of
36:58
Speaker 4: these that are that are famous.
36:59
Speaker 2: Right.
37:00
Speaker 4: In one of the I don't remember which which partia
37:03
Speaker 4: it is, but in one of the one of the
37:05
Speaker 4: partiote that is it bo right, And one of the
37:08
Speaker 4: partiote that is, you know, tells the story.
37:11
Speaker 3: Of the Exodus. Right.
37:12
Speaker 4: We read Ezekiel's famous description of Pharaoh as a great
37:16
Speaker 4: sea monster or as a crocodile, right, depending on how
37:19
Speaker 4: you translate. Teanine who is in the Nile and basically
37:22
Speaker 4: engaged in this self deification, right like this is my Nile.
37:26
Speaker 4: I made it for myself.
37:27
Speaker 3: Right.
37:27
Speaker 4: So that's a famous example that many Jews, especially Jews
37:31
Speaker 4: who go to school regularly, are familiar with, because we
37:34
Speaker 4: read it as a haftara. But there are tons of
37:36
Speaker 4: these that don't, that don't make it in. But I
37:38
Speaker 4: think one thing I would note is that you're right
37:41
Speaker 4: that many of the hafta wrote are drawn from the
37:43
Speaker 4: Israel focused oracles that have positive message but I positive messages.
37:48
Speaker 4: But I would also point out just as many of them,
37:51
Speaker 4: possibly statistically more, I don't know, I haven't counted it up,
37:54
Speaker 4: but certainly a lot of them.
37:56
Speaker 3: Are Israel focused or Judah focused, but in a quite
37:58
Speaker 3: negative way.
37:59
Speaker 2: Right.
37:59
Speaker 4: It's God criticizing the people, right, and oftentimes Fazzal the Rabbi,
38:05
Speaker 4: seem to have prioritized this sense that like part of
38:09
Speaker 4: the function of reading the prophets in.
38:12
Speaker 3: Shule is to hold us to account. Right.
38:17
Speaker 4: And so there is a great example of how like
38:21
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people assume. And again, this
38:24
Speaker 4: is something that in our Christian society, this is going
38:26
Speaker 4: to be in the water, whether we're noticing it or not,
38:30
Speaker 4: a lot of people assume that when we talk about particularism,
38:33
Speaker 4: we're talking about privilege, We're talking about self aggrandizement.
38:36
Speaker 2: Right.
38:37
Speaker 3: And what's so.
38:38
Speaker 4: Interesting about Tanah is that particularism often is not great
38:44
Speaker 4: for the people that are being focused on.
38:46
Speaker 2: Right.
38:47
Speaker 4: To tie this together with this general genre of oracles
38:51
Speaker 4: against the nations, right, we can.
38:53
Speaker 3: Look at the opening of the.
38:55
Speaker 4: Book of Amos, right, the short but very important, very
38:59
Speaker 4: famous fortic book of almost from from the twelve minor
39:02
Speaker 4: prophets the treas are right, opens with oracles against the nations.
39:07
Speaker 4: And as you're going through the list, you're reading this, right,
39:10
Speaker 4: you could imagine someone this is probably isn't how ancient
39:14
Speaker 4: Israelites engaged with this stuff, But for argument's sake, just
39:18
Speaker 4: imagine an Israelite reading reading these oracles, right, They're flipping
39:21
Speaker 4: through and they're like, oh, all the crimes of Moav
39:25
Speaker 4: and all the crimes of you know, all these other
39:27
Speaker 4: you know, kingdoms in the in the region. Right, and
39:30
Speaker 4: they're like, oh yeah, like you know, we're so great.
39:32
Speaker 4: And then who does the list culminate with, Right, It
39:35
Speaker 4: culminates with Israel and Judah. In some ways, the worst
39:38
Speaker 4: crimes that God accuses anyone of are his own people. Right,
39:44
Speaker 4: So you have these condemnations of these other groups. But
39:48
Speaker 4: then that kind of rebounds back onto the target, to
39:51
Speaker 4: the focus of this prophet, right, his own people. Right,
39:55
Speaker 4: And then it culminates in one of most famous and
40:00
Speaker 4: complex descriptions of chosenness.
40:03
Speaker 3: Right.
40:03
Speaker 4: We actually haven't used that word chosen this very much
40:06
Speaker 4: yet today, which is interesting, Right, But that of of
40:09
Speaker 4: Israel's privileged status, right as God's covenental people, right, aim
40:13
Speaker 4: almost chapter three, verse two, right, rocket femia dat.
40:22
Speaker 3: Right.
40:22
Speaker 4: I'll read from the JPS translation here, you alone have
40:25
Speaker 4: I singled out of all the families of the earth.
40:29
Speaker 4: That is why I will call you to account for
40:32
Speaker 4: all your iniquities. So you can imagine someone hearing that
40:36
Speaker 4: first part of the verse and thinking, yeah, that's right,
40:39
Speaker 4: Like we're God's we're God's special special people. And then
40:42
Speaker 4: it's like, uh oh, Actually, what this means is that
40:45
Speaker 4: we are held to a more exacting standard, that God
40:49
Speaker 4: punishes us more intensely than other people, right, has higher
40:54
Speaker 4: expectations and is therefore more disappointed and not when we
40:57
Speaker 4: fail chosen this takes. Yes, these are privileges, but they
41:02
Speaker 4: also they also have consequences. They also have they also
41:06
Speaker 4: have intense responsibilities. Right, And this is why, like you
41:08
Speaker 4: have this interesting motif that shows up in later Jewish
41:12
Speaker 4: literature where in view of all the suffering that the
41:15
Speaker 4: Jews have endured, there's some people that are kind of
41:18
Speaker 4: wonder like, you know, maybe I wish God would pay
41:20
Speaker 4: a little.
41:20
Speaker 3: Less attention to us, you know.
41:22
Speaker 4: So I think the oracles against the Nations really model
41:25
Speaker 4: the way in which particularism and universalism interact with each other,
41:30
Speaker 4: and that actually, like particularism, we can see in the
41:33
Speaker 4: way that Israel ends up being implicated in some of
41:36
Speaker 4: these oracles is not always great for the people that
41:38
Speaker 4: it ostensibly benefits.
41:39
Speaker 1: Interesting, and this is a question, so very broad question
41:43
Speaker 1: that I did want to ask at some points, which
41:45
Speaker 1: is that do you think there are hard limits to
41:48
Speaker 1: the universalism and to all particularism of the Hebrew Bible.
41:50
Speaker 1: In other words, of that places, I mean, I assume
41:54
Speaker 1: that not that these concepts cannot go without undermining the
41:59
Speaker 1: main thrust of the entire entire Endeva.
42:02
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely so, I think that.
42:04
Speaker 1: Uh.
42:05
Speaker 3: I think that the.
42:06
Speaker 4: One aspect of universalism that you can never you can
42:11
Speaker 4: never contravene and still be within the world of the
42:14
Speaker 4: Hebrew Bible is the idea that all human beings are
42:19
Speaker 4: fundamentally members of one human species. The opening creation narrative
42:24
Speaker 4: to go back to that is uh. Many commentators have
42:28
Speaker 4: pointed out that all the other creatures that are created
42:31
Speaker 4: are created liminahem, right, according to all their kinds. Right
42:37
Speaker 4: the word mean right, meaning species. And then once you
42:40
Speaker 4: get to the creation of humanity, they're created male and female.
42:44
Speaker 4: There is there is that, you know, specification, but it
42:47
Speaker 4: does not say anything about lminahem.
42:50
Speaker 3: There's no species of human beings.
42:53
Speaker 4: There is nothing in all of the subsequent ways that
42:57
Speaker 4: the Bible becomes particularistic and focused on the people of Israel. Right,
43:02
Speaker 4: there is nothing to suggest in the Bible the idea
43:05
Speaker 4: that there are different subspecies of human Essentially, right, we
43:09
Speaker 4: are all sort of on the level of essence, right,
43:12
Speaker 4: We are all fundamentally human beings, right and ones Israelite
43:16
Speaker 4: versus non Israelite identity for all the ways in which
43:19
Speaker 4: that really matters, right, it does not change that. So
43:23
Speaker 4: that I would say on the universal universalism end like
43:26
Speaker 4: that is that is the le or I guess you
43:28
Speaker 4: could say, like, that's where particularism. Let's let's flip that,
43:31
Speaker 4: that's where particularism reaches its limit in the Hebrew Bible.
43:34
Speaker 4: You cannot become so particularistic that you are denying the
43:38
Speaker 4: fundamental unity of the human race.
43:40
Speaker 3: Right.
43:41
Speaker 4: That is something that is established right from the get
43:44
Speaker 4: go in the Bible and is never is never really
43:46
Speaker 4: challenged in all the other you know, for all the
43:49
Speaker 4: diversity in the Bible, Right, it's not a complete mishmash,
43:52
Speaker 4: there are some emergent ideas and some consistent themes, right,
43:55
Speaker 4: and that would be one of them.
43:57
Speaker 3: Now.
43:57
Speaker 4: The place where in the other direction universalism hits its limit,
44:02
Speaker 4: in other words, the place where you need to have
44:04
Speaker 4: some particularism, is the idea that there is a special
44:08
Speaker 4: relationship between God and the people of Israel. This is
44:10
Speaker 4: absolutely axiomatic for the Bible, and God can test well.
44:15
Speaker 4: Actually both parties involved. God and the people can test
44:18
Speaker 4: that relationship, Israel can flout the commitments that attend to
44:23
Speaker 4: that relationship, and they often do. That's kind of the
44:26
Speaker 4: main theme of danaf. And God can severely severely punish
44:31
Speaker 4: his people to the point that it might look like
44:33
Speaker 4: he's kind of saying, all right, we're done. But in
44:36
Speaker 4: no case does that relationship ever really get abrogated. There's
44:42
Speaker 4: a couple there's a couple places where it's maybe a
44:45
Speaker 4: little iffy that we can talk about if we have time.
44:47
Speaker 4: But like for the most part, the special, qualitatively distinct relationship,
44:54
Speaker 4: in other words, chosenness of Israel with God is axiomatic
45:00
Speaker 4: in the Bible. So I don't think there is any
45:01
Speaker 4: honest reading of the Hebrew Bible that can dispense with
45:06
Speaker 4: chosenness and can dispense with that element of particularity. But
45:09
Speaker 4: these two elements are in uh, you know, I think
45:12
Speaker 4: the dynamic and generative tension, right, so that I think
45:16
Speaker 4: the universalism of the Bible, the emphasis on on the
45:19
Speaker 4: human species is a is a check against chauvinistic and
45:24
Speaker 4: and you know, for lack of a better word, racist
45:26
Speaker 4: construles of of of Jewish difference.
45:29
Speaker 2: Uh.
45:29
Speaker 4: And on the other end, Jewish Jewish difference is a
45:32
Speaker 4: check against the kinds of of universalism that end up
45:36
Speaker 4: basically making you know, making everybody the same in a
45:39
Speaker 4: in a in an insidious way, as we see with
45:42
Speaker 4: world Empire. O.
45:44
Speaker 1: Wait, fair enough, I'd like to in the time we
45:46
Speaker 1: have left turned two a couple of sets of interpreters
45:49
Speaker 1: of the Hebrew Bible. The first we'd like to touch
45:52
Speaker 1: upon a little. But are those text of probably in
45:55
Speaker 1: the Second Temple period, so for example, the the scrolls
45:58
Speaker 1: and the founds, among the Dead Sea scrolls and others,
46:00
Speaker 1: and you know, some of the a proper foss of
46:03
Speaker 1: depiographic literature as well. The theme of the idea of
46:06
Speaker 1: the notion of universitism runs and all particularism runs quite
46:10
Speaker 1: strongly in that. And it's a very broad question, but
46:12
Speaker 1: you know, many of these authors living in that time,
46:15
Speaker 1: who are writing books that did not make it into
46:16
Speaker 1: the Biblical canon, were nonetheless interested in the questions of
46:21
Speaker 1: the role of the relationship betunity as wrong God, the
46:23
Speaker 1: role of chosen, is the role of other nations as well.
46:27
Speaker 1: Do you have any general comments or overview about how
46:31
Speaker 1: some of these authors treated all the kinds of considerations
46:35
Speaker 1: they had, especially given the particular political and social backgrounds
46:39
Speaker 1: that they had, what was going on during those centuries
46:42
Speaker 1: with the books that didn't make it into the Biblical canon,
46:44
Speaker 1: and how are those authors considering these questions?
46:47
Speaker 2: Yeah?
46:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, as you know, of this is a huge,
46:50
Speaker 4: huge topics, let's sort of go into it by means of,
46:53
Speaker 4: you know, some specific specific examples or case studies.
46:57
Speaker 3: So I think one and this.
46:58
Speaker 4: Actually will this first one I want to mention, will
47:01
Speaker 4: tie together with the question of how history and historical
47:04
Speaker 4: circumstances influenced this, because I think it's interesting in this
47:07
Speaker 4: in this connection to look at Philo, the Roman era
47:10
Speaker 4: Hellenistic Jewish philosopher living in the sort of cultural metropolis
47:15
Speaker 4: of Alexandria, right, you know, one of the most culturally
47:20
Speaker 4: rich places in the in the Hellenistic Roman world. And
47:24
Speaker 4: Filo is fascinating to think about in terms of particularism
47:28
Speaker 4: versus universalism, because on the one hand, he's living in
47:31
Speaker 4: this minority diasporic Jewish community in Egypt. Things were I
47:37
Speaker 4: wouldn't say they weren't. They weren't terrible for the Jews
47:40
Speaker 4: in Alexandria most of the time, but they weren't always great, right,
47:42
Speaker 4: it was. There were challenges. Famously, there was a there
47:45
Speaker 4: was a massive anti Jewish riot at one point that's
47:48
Speaker 4: often described as as one of the first gromes. So
47:52
Speaker 4: you know, uh, it was. It was complicated. So that
47:55
Speaker 4: is going to encourage, as I was mentioning a little bit, Ago,
47:59
Speaker 4: is going to encourage a kind of particularism inevitably because
48:02
Speaker 4: it's going to lead one to focus on one's own group,
48:04
Speaker 4: and it's going to really highlight the distinctions. You know,
48:07
Speaker 4: there's going to be a very keen awareness of we
48:10
Speaker 4: are a minoritized group within a larger culture that we
48:13
Speaker 4: are different from. But at the same time, Alexandria was
48:17
Speaker 4: this incredibly like cosmopolitan you know, meeting place of diverse minds. Right,
48:24
Speaker 4: it was like you know what, Athens had a reputation
48:27
Speaker 4: of being at one point in history, or Paris had.
48:30
Speaker 3: A reputation of being at one point in history. Right.
48:32
Speaker 4: So people who are living in that context are also
48:35
Speaker 4: going to have and inevitably a sort of universalistic framework
48:40
Speaker 4: because they are so aware of what is outside of
48:45
Speaker 4: their own specific context and are likely if you're an
48:50
Speaker 4: intellectual like Filo, going to be attracted by that right,
48:53
Speaker 4: and Filo was you know, one of the you know,
48:56
Speaker 4: great synthesizers of classical flows and the Bible right and
49:02
Speaker 4: emergent you know, Judaism at the time in a way
49:06
Speaker 4: that would sort of prefigure my monody is project.
49:09
Speaker 3: It's not exactly the same.
49:11
Speaker 4: But you know, it's it's it's a similar dynamic of
49:15
Speaker 4: emphasizing the importance of one's own tradition and the truth
49:19
Speaker 4: more important than importance, right, the truth of one's own tradition,
49:22
Speaker 4: but also seeing non Jewish outside traditions as being a
49:28
Speaker 4: kind of indispensable part of that of that project. So
49:31
Speaker 4: with Filo we really get a very vivid picture of
49:35
Speaker 4: the interplay of these of these two Another important manifization
49:40
Speaker 4: this just to mention one more example from this time period,
49:42
Speaker 4: to switch from the diaspora in in Hellenistic Roman Egypt
49:48
Speaker 4: to on the land of Israel itself Roman Judea at
49:52
Speaker 4: this point is the Dead Sea Scrolls, right, Because in
49:55
Speaker 4: the Dead Sea Scrolls we and it's not the only
49:58
Speaker 4: place in this literature we find this fin but it's
50:00
Speaker 4: the most famous. We get a very interesting twist on particularism,
50:06
Speaker 4: which scholars usually refer to as sectarianism. Now, the word
50:09
Speaker 4: sectarian is not an uncommon word, right, It's thrown around
50:13
Speaker 4: a lot to refer to sort of like you know,
50:15
Speaker 4: you know, division and dispute. But the way that many,
50:19
Speaker 4: probably I would say most scholars of ancient Judaism would
50:22
Speaker 4: use this term in a more kind of technical sense.
50:24
Speaker 4: At a minimum, I can say this is the way
50:26
Speaker 4: that I think about it, which I think is helpful,
50:27
Speaker 4: is that sectarianism is not just any old division or
50:30
Speaker 4: any old difference. It's sectarianism is a worldview that sees
50:36
Speaker 4: one's subgroup within a larger group as being the true
50:43
Speaker 4: version of that larger group, and the rest.
50:46
Speaker 3: Of the larger group is deeply wrong.
50:48
Speaker 2: Right.
50:48
Speaker 4: So to put this, that's very abstract. So to put
50:51
Speaker 4: this more concretely, the community at Kumran, right, the community
50:55
Speaker 4: that possessed the dead sease rolls. Whether or not they
50:58
Speaker 4: wrote all of them is abject of a lot of debate,
51:00
Speaker 4: but at a minimum, the community that possessed them, you know,
51:03
Speaker 4: and in some cases seems to have lived by at
51:05
Speaker 4: least some of them. They saw themselves as effectively like
51:09
Speaker 4: the true Israel right, the true Jews, that they were
51:12
Speaker 4: doing authentic Judaism and the rest of the Jews, particularly
51:16
Speaker 4: those heretics, and the Temple establishment in Jerusalem. Right, they
51:20
Speaker 4: were all completely wrong. So with sectarianism, which runs rampant
51:27
Speaker 4: in Second Temple Judaism in the land of Israel. Right,
51:29
Speaker 4: this is like one of the defining characteristics. Right, Christianity,
51:33
Speaker 4: which hopefully we can get to in a second has
51:35
Speaker 4: to be understood in that context.
51:36
Speaker 2: Right.
51:36
Speaker 4: It's another sect right, featuring many of the same dynamics.
51:41
Speaker 4: Sectarianism is essentially a sort of form of particularism. It's
51:46
Speaker 4: not a synonym. It's not It can't be used interchangeably.
51:49
Speaker 3: Right.
51:49
Speaker 4: Particularism is like in group versus out group, and then
51:53
Speaker 4: sectarian is like an in in group within the in group.
51:57
Speaker 4: It's a process of outgrouping a certain part of the
51:59
Speaker 4: in group. There still is the broader out group.
52:02
Speaker 3: Right.
52:02
Speaker 4: Again, to make this concrete, you have the Kumran sectarians, right,
52:07
Speaker 4: the Dead Sea Scroll sectarians. They're the they're the in
52:10
Speaker 4: in group. Then there's the out in group, the other Jews,
52:13
Speaker 4: who they're very mad at, but that they haven't lost
52:15
Speaker 4: track of the out out group.
52:17
Speaker 2: Right.
52:17
Speaker 3: The Romans right.
52:18
Speaker 4: Who they're also really mad at, but what's so interesting
52:22
Speaker 4: is that, in contrast to sort of quote unquote old
52:25
Speaker 4: fashioned particularism in the Bible, where because you have like
52:30
Speaker 4: just the in group that you're mostly focused on, okay,
52:33
Speaker 4: like who if you know, if you're being oppressed or whatever,
52:35
Speaker 4: the bad guys are the outgroup. What's interesting is that insectarianism,
52:39
Speaker 4: even though you don't like the outgroup, it's the the
52:42
Speaker 4: out in group that really gets the most of your iron.
52:45
Speaker 3: Right.
52:45
Speaker 4: So the Kumran sectarians, they didn't like the Romans, but
52:49
Speaker 4: it was the bad Jews that they were the most
52:51
Speaker 4: focused on. And there's almost a sense in those texts
52:53
Speaker 4: in which like the Romans play like kind of a
52:55
Speaker 4: supporting role and the real enemies are actually the Jews
52:58
Speaker 4: who are doing Judaism wrong. That's where I think we
53:00
Speaker 4: see particular asm go in that Coart text.
53:03
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say that's a very common issue. I mean,
53:07
Speaker 2: you know, the.
53:07
Speaker 1: Whole, yes, the whole, the whole, the Judean People's front,
53:10
Speaker 1: you know, a joke like, yes, it is the people
53:13
Speaker 1: who are as similar as possible to us, but who
53:17
Speaker 1: we are actually convinced are doing entirely run. And then
53:20
Speaker 1: the major problem and Finally, just I suppose to come
53:23
Speaker 1: full circle almost allay discussing by the beginning of this podcast,
53:25
Speaker 1: which is to burds the Christianity question because of course,
53:28
Speaker 1: again as is generally understood, is generally conceived, a large
53:32
Speaker 1: portion of the project of Paul and the Apostles is
53:35
Speaker 1: essentially to attempt to universalize the messages of the Hebrew Bible.
53:39
Speaker 1: Will take a text and a set of ideas which
53:41
Speaker 1: they claim was overwhelmingly parochial and applied to very specific
53:45
Speaker 1: tribal or national grouping, and they know, actually the messages
53:48
Speaker 1: here are something that they can be applied, must be
53:51
Speaker 1: adopted and embraced by people all over the world. You know,
53:55
Speaker 1: one needs to be neither Greek nor jew et cetera,
53:57
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so the supposed to question I want
54:00
Speaker 1: to ask here is I mean, is that a fair
54:03
Speaker 1: understanding of what the early Christians we're trying to do
54:06
Speaker 1: and with their own understanding and and yeah, how do
54:09
Speaker 1: they map onto this this broader spectrum of interpreters of
54:14
Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible on the particularist and universalist axis.
54:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, so as is not going to be surprising based
54:21
Speaker 4: on the themes that we've seen. It's complicated, right.
54:26
Speaker 2: One question, Yeah, yeah, sure.
54:27
Speaker 4: And even though the New Testament is much shorter than
54:30
Speaker 4: the Hebrew Bible, I mean, I really think sometimes people
54:32
Speaker 4: don't quite realize, like there is no parody here in
54:35
Speaker 4: the size of these corpora. It still is an incredibly
54:38
Speaker 4: internally diverse set of literature. So I think, you know,
54:42
Speaker 4: as is the case with that with the Hebrew Bible,
54:46
Speaker 4: tax it. You know, we need to have coveyats and
54:48
Speaker 4: we need to think in terms of particulars. But I
54:50
Speaker 4: you know, what I do think is fair to say
54:52
Speaker 4: is that you mentioned Paul, right, So Paul the Apostle.
54:55
Speaker 4: Paul is definitely the most influential voice in early Christianity
54:59
Speaker 4: and then and in particular I think that an aspect
55:02
Speaker 4: of his of his thought that ends up becoming especially
55:06
Speaker 4: influential and certainly kind of looms large in the way
55:10
Speaker 4: that people Christians and Jews think about this comes from
55:15
Speaker 4: his letter to the Galatians, which well, we'll look we'll
55:19
Speaker 4: look at this in just a second. What I'll say
55:21
Speaker 4: is like Paul himself is incredibly internally diverse. He was
55:24
Speaker 4: a complicated guy. He was he was a brilliant order
55:27
Speaker 4: a brilliant rhetorician, and it sometimes seems like he was,
55:30
Speaker 4: because all of his texts wright are these kind of
55:32
Speaker 4: like open letters to these various early churches, and it
55:36
Speaker 4: sort of seems like he's he's speaking very situationally based
55:40
Speaker 4: on whatever is the issue that he's addressing there. So
55:43
Speaker 4: it's very hard to figure out like what all thinks
55:47
Speaker 4: like as a matter of like his essential views. Right,
55:50
Speaker 4: It's like there's almost like like no way to make
55:54
Speaker 4: like a pawline theology that's like totally consistent. You've got
55:57
Speaker 4: to kind of look at this based on individual example.
56:00
Speaker 3: But the one that's most.
56:01
Speaker 4: Important for this comes from this letter to the Galatians,
56:04
Speaker 4: specifically chapter three, where he's explaining this idea that because
56:11
Speaker 4: the whole context of Galatians very quickly, right is you've
56:13
Speaker 4: got these gentile Christians that have been convinced that they
56:17
Speaker 4: should be obeying the Torah. And Paul is very upset
56:22
Speaker 4: about this because he thinks that like the whole point
56:24
Speaker 4: of Jesus, like the whole point of Jesus Will Stop,
56:28
Speaker 4: was that at a minimum, gentiles should not have to
56:31
Speaker 4: obey can have a relationship with God without obeying the Torah.
56:35
Speaker 3: Right.
56:36
Speaker 4: It's not clear whether Paul thinks that that also applies
56:39
Speaker 4: to Jews. That's one of the stickiest questions, one of
56:42
Speaker 4: the thorniest questions in Paul. But so he's talking about
56:45
Speaker 4: why now that Christ has come, right, the law is
56:50
Speaker 4: not necessary at a minimum for these people that he's
56:53
Speaker 4: talking to, right, and that they can have a relationship with.
56:56
Speaker 3: God through faith. And the context of this right.
56:58
Speaker 4: I'm going to read from the Newer Standard Version translation
57:01
Speaker 4: the NRSV. This is Galatians chapter three. We'll start with
57:04
Speaker 4: verse twenty five. So Paul says, now that faith has come,
57:07
Speaker 4: we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, that is
57:10
Speaker 4: to say, the law right the Torah. For in Christ Jesus,
57:14
Speaker 4: you are all children of God through faith. As many
57:16
Speaker 4: of you as were baptized and to Christ, have clothed
57:19
Speaker 4: yourselves with Christ.
57:21
Speaker 3: This is the key part. There is no longer Jew
57:23
Speaker 3: or Greek.
57:24
Speaker 4: There is no longer slave or free, there is no
57:26
Speaker 4: longer male and female.
57:28
Speaker 3: For all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
57:31
Speaker 4: And if you belong to Christ, then this is really
57:34
Speaker 4: going to come full circle. Then you are Abraham's offspring,
57:37
Speaker 4: heirs to the promise right. So this is often regarded,
57:42
Speaker 4: not without any base, you know, with some basis, right
57:47
Speaker 4: as the kind of epitome of Christian universalism. Like there
57:51
Speaker 4: is no Jew or Greek, right, these ethnic differences have
57:55
Speaker 4: been completely erased. And what matters is whether you as
58:02
Speaker 4: an individual have faith in Christ. Right, And there is
58:05
Speaker 4: an extent to which that can fairly be characterized as universalism,
58:10
Speaker 4: because what Paul is saying here is that the thing
58:14
Speaker 4: that gets you access to a special relationship with God
58:19
Speaker 4: is no longer the accident of your birth right. It
58:22
Speaker 4: used to be in the Jewish model that like you
58:24
Speaker 4: had a special relationship with God if you were born
58:27
Speaker 4: in Israelite, if you were born a Jew, and that
58:30
Speaker 4: wasn't the whole story. You had to like do mits,
58:32
Speaker 4: vote and stuff like that. But like that was like
58:34
Speaker 4: there was a binary there to a certain extent, you
58:36
Speaker 4: were in or you were aut classic particularism. And what
58:40
Speaker 4: Paul is saying is the whole point of Christ is
58:43
Speaker 4: that now anybody, as long as they have a faithful
58:46
Speaker 4: relationship with Christ can partake of that chosenness.
58:51
Speaker 2: Right.
58:51
Speaker 3: It is as if they are.
58:52
Speaker 4: Descended literally from Abraham. Right, it is as if they
58:56
Speaker 4: are part of the chosen Ethnos to use the Greek word, right,
59:00
Speaker 4: the chosen ethnic group, the chosen people. Now here's where
59:05
Speaker 4: this gets tricky, though. It is because again this is
59:07
Speaker 4: something that you see thrown a lot around a lot
59:10
Speaker 4: in like kind of liberal Christian settings. People often stop
59:13
Speaker 4: the verse that there's no longer Jew or Greek, et cetera,
59:17
Speaker 4: and forget that part at the end where he says,
59:19
Speaker 4: for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. This
59:21
Speaker 4: is not an image of total like like, oh, no
59:26
Speaker 4: human differences matter anymore, Right, It's still an emphasis on
59:31
Speaker 4: a particular group. It's just that the terms of that
59:35
Speaker 4: group have been shifted. Now the in group is not
59:38
Speaker 4: defined ethnically Jew versus Greek, but it's defined, for lack
59:43
Speaker 4: of a better word, religiously or spiritually. It's defined by
59:46
Speaker 4: whether you have faith in Christ or not. But there
59:50
Speaker 4: still is a chosen people, right. The chosen people now
59:53
Speaker 4: consists of the faithful as opposed to those who were
59:56
Speaker 4: born Jews. But there is still that in group, and
59:59
Speaker 4: then by definition, there is an outgroup, right, And this
1:00:03
Speaker 4: is where you really see in probably like that. There's
1:00:07
Speaker 4: no clearer examples of the complexities here because This is
1:00:11
Speaker 4: much less open and much less inclusive and much less
1:00:16
Speaker 4: you know, happy, for lack of a better word, than
1:00:21
Speaker 4: a lot of liberal Christians would like you to believe.
1:00:24
Speaker 4: Because with Jewish chosenness, according to the Bible, not being
1:00:30
Speaker 4: born into the chosen people does not like that doesn't
1:00:35
Speaker 4: make you a bad person, right, And there is within
1:00:38
Speaker 4: the Hebrew Bible, and then certainly within Rabbinic Judaism, there
1:00:41
Speaker 4: is an idea that gentiles can be righteous, right, that
1:00:45
Speaker 4: gentiles can have access to the benefits of eternal life,
1:00:49
Speaker 4: you know, to at least some extent. The sheer fact
1:00:52
Speaker 4: of being a gentile does not make you a sinner.
1:00:56
Speaker 3: That's the general view.
1:00:58
Speaker 4: And even in some text that we unfortunately didn't get
1:01:00
Speaker 4: chance to look at today, Deuteronomy chapter four, this is
1:01:03
Speaker 4: my favorite text for talking about.
1:01:04
Speaker 3: Particularism and universalismisod it's a bumberw we didn't get to
1:01:07
Speaker 3: talk about it.
1:01:07
Speaker 4: But Deuteronomy four actually says that gentiles, it's totally fine
1:01:12
Speaker 4: for them to worship false gods. God actually arranged it
1:01:15
Speaker 4: that way. Right, It's idolatry is only bad for you, God,
1:01:19
Speaker 4: God tells the Jews.
1:01:20
Speaker 3: Right, it's only it's only a sin for you, the Gentiles, they.
1:01:23
Speaker 4: Can do whatever they want religiously, Like, that's not that's
1:01:25
Speaker 4: not the that's not a problem. Right. What Paul does
1:01:28
Speaker 4: in the way that he shifts the boundaries of who's
1:01:32
Speaker 4: in and who's out, that escape clause, that opt out
1:01:36
Speaker 4: goes away. Right, once anybody in principle has access to
1:01:42
Speaker 4: a covenantal relationship with God through faith, and it's no
1:01:45
Speaker 4: longer restricted to a particular ethnic group.
1:01:47
Speaker 3: You can't not not buying into.
1:01:51
Speaker 4: That makes you, makes you an idolator, makes you a sinner,
1:01:55
Speaker 4: makes you a bad person. And all of Christianity ends
1:01:58
Speaker 4: up being shaped by this. Christianity absolutely, and this blows
1:02:03
Speaker 4: Christians might conservative Christians, this is more familiar to them,
1:02:07
Speaker 4: the liberal Christians. It blows their minds and they're completely
1:02:09
Speaker 4: scandalized by it. And these are the settings that I
1:02:11
Speaker 4: teach in. So I love I love making them aware
1:02:14
Speaker 4: of this. But like Christianity is fundamentally still about chosenness, right,
1:02:20
Speaker 4: they've just shifted that, you know, PAULA and Christianity, right, Paul,
1:02:23
Speaker 4: which is that's where this all comes from. Right, All
1:02:26
Speaker 4: Paul has done all in quotes because it's actually a
1:02:29
Speaker 4: major move is he has shifted the terms of what
1:02:31
Speaker 4: like where we draw the lines. He shifted the lines.
1:02:34
Speaker 4: That's what I mean to say, who's in and who's out.
1:02:36
Speaker 4: But there is still an in group and an outgroup.
1:02:39
Speaker 4: So even in what seems like the epitome of universalism,
1:02:43
Speaker 4: there's no Jew or Greek, there's no slaver free, there's
1:02:46
Speaker 4: no male or female. Even there, there is still a
1:02:49
Speaker 4: deeply particularistic thrust. And I can't think of a better
1:02:52
Speaker 4: encapsulation of the way in which these ideas are always
1:02:56
Speaker 4: going to be messily intertwined, as much as we might
1:02:59
Speaker 4: prefer to emphasize one or the other.
1:03:02
Speaker 1: Right, And so that's a wonderful place having to stop,
1:03:06
Speaker 1: because this is a theme that we will see over
1:03:09
Speaker 1: and over again in this course on universalism, which is
1:03:11
Speaker 1: that the notion that universalism is always more inclusive and
1:03:15
Speaker 1: particularism is always more exclusive, it actually is much more
1:03:19
Speaker 1: messy and much more complicated, as this poor line example exemply.
1:03:22
Speaker 1: Five So well, absolutely, Professor, even Schwortz, this has been
1:03:25
Speaker 1: an absolute pleasure discussing universalism particularism in the Bible with you.
1:03:29
Speaker 1: Thank you so very much for joining us today on
1:03:31
Speaker 1: the podcast of Jewish ideas and we look forward to
1:03:34
Speaker 1: your future productions on this topic and many others.
1:03:37
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
1:03:40
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1:03:42
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1:04:00
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