← The BEMA Podcast
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- [00:00]
El Grover Fricks
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Brent Billings
This is the Bama podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co host, Brent Billings. Today we are joining L. Grover Fricks to lay the groundwork for another series of Talmudic conversations in Matthew.
- [00:16]
El Grover Fricks
Hi.
- [00:19]
Marty Solomon
That was my best L impression, everybody. That was. That's as good as it gets right there.
- [00:23]
El Grover Fricks
I couldn't be more delighted. I feel seen, I feel known, I feel left.
- [00:29]
Marty Solomon
Well, we're both here. El serious, so I'm just gonna let. Let you drive.
- [00:35]
El Grover Fricks
Taking the wheel starting now. So we're kicking off this new series and yet it's not new. It's the same series, Entalmatic Matthew. We're calling it that because last season we cruised right on through four whole chapters of Matthew. We were working together, poring through the text, examining what each. Each thing that came up, each thing Matthew is talking about, each thing Jesus is talking about in seeing what it might be referencing or how it might be contrasting a contemporary idea in the 1st century Jewish conversation as recorded often in Talmud, although sometimes we poke outside of Talmud, we go around, we do some other literature at times.
- [01:21]
Brent Billings
We're not afraid to bring in more sources.
- [01:23]
El Grover Fricks
We love sources, especially primary sources.
- [01:26]
Marty Solomon
We ain't scared.
- [01:29]
El Grover Fricks
So we want to do that again. Or at least I want to do that again. But last time, last season, last session, we jumped into the series without spending that much time talking background. I don't think we did a whole introductory episode. I just kind of threw out the idea of the lens that we're going to approach Matthew with, and we jumped right in. So this time we're going to do an intro episode. We're going to go back and relay some foundations. And the reason why is I want everyone to have a full picture of what we're doing, where I'm coming from, what's the fuller landscape of this academic conversation, and be more conscious of what we ourselves are bringing to the text and what other folks are also bringing to the text.
- [02:18]
Marty Solomon
Yeah, and I would just, I do think we. We did. We had. You're absolutely right. We had like these passing 10 minutes and yet they really weren't passing at all. Like, I wouldn't want you to sell yourself short on that. Like, we. The conversation we had was really direct and pointed at how important it is to keep in mind, like, what is Talmud? Where is it at historically located? Those things are important. And yeah, some of those questions still came up for others. And we heard from some folks about, you know, how does it. Where is this relevant and how is this tricky? Because some Talmud is Late and some Talmud is early and all those different kinds of things. And so we did give definitely some intentional comments to that at the beginning of your first series, but maybe worth circling back. Maybe every time we enter this conversation, it's important enough to remind ourselves, like, let's keep these things in front of us and spend some time. So I'm glad we're doing maybe a deeper dive on that.
- [03:13]
El Grover Fricks
Absolutely.
- [03:14]
Brent Billings
There's a company in the Moscow, Idaho area called Wass and Carry, and they do a number of things, but one of the things they do is they will go around to houses and jack the houses up and either put in a new foundation or put in a basement or whatever. So I imagine that's what we're doing right here. We've already built the house, this Talmudic Matthew house, and now we're jacking the whole thing up and we're putting in a whole new foundation, maybe a basement. We were a wine cellar. We were new wine.
- [03:45]
Marty Solomon
We were halfway into that metaphor, and I was like, I have no idea where Brent is going right now, but I see where he's landing that plane and I'm here for it. Absolutely.
- [03:54]
Brent Billings
If you've never seen somebody jack up a house and just, like, walk around underneath it, it is a wild thing to see.
- [03:59]
Marty Solomon
Absolutely.
- [04:00]
El Grover Fricks
I'm going to have the New Wine song stuck in my head this whole episode. So thank you for that blessing. Blessing me.
- [04:06]
Marty Solomon
Make new wine out of me.
- [04:11]
El Grover Fricks
Okay, now it's gone. You exercised it. Thank you.
- [04:14]
Marty Solomon
Boom. I'm here to serve.
- [04:17]
El Grover Fricks
Great. Okay. So as we take a peek into this foundation, we might find there's some camps, might find some controversies. We've talked about some of these gams and controversies before the royal. We mostly Marty on Behemoth. Right. Talking about the differing approaches of maximalism and minimalism. But in this particularly scholarly argument that comes into the fore as we dip back into Matthew, we're talking about a particular research question which goes, who was Jesus? Big important question, central question. And when we dial in even further beyond who was Jesus? We get to this idea. Was Jesus a marginal Jew or a mainstream Jew?
- [05:06]
Marty Solomon
Okay, hold on. That's worth sitting on for a moment.
- [05:08]
El Grover Fricks
Sure.
- [05:08]
Marty Solomon
So. So we. We. I'm just going to talk out loud so that I can process this as well.
- [05:13]
El Grover Fricks
Totally.
- [05:13]
Marty Solomon
We talk a lot about historical context, reading, especially in the Gospels. We study the Jewish world, wanting to understand the context of Jesus world and the world that he lived in. I think we take the who is Jesus? Thing for granted often. And if I'm Hearing you correctly in scholarship, there's a theory, I'm sure you're about ready to pull these apart. There's a theory that says Jesus is a mainstream. Like he's right in the thick of Judaism, Judaism as we know it, or as far as we can know it. Because that's the other thing is we only know so much and we've reconstructed what we can. And then there's some that say, no, he was outside. He's kind of outside the bounds. Is that where we're going?
- [05:52]
El Grover Fricks
Absolutely. Here's the general idea and then we'll do a bigger breakdown in a minute. But marginal Jesus camp says that Jesus was a historical figure who belonged to the fringes of his culture. So maybe he is still, of course, Jewish born into this group of people, and yet he wasn't primarily Jewish. He. His teachings therefore did not reflect the ongoing regular Jewish conversation. So the Marginal Jesus camp would say that the early church built a new unique tradition of Jesus after his death, and this new unique practice formed the religion of Christianity. The marginal thing doesn't mean like marginal as in he was marginalized and oppressed, but rather that he was at the edges of Jewishness rather than being right in the center of Jewishness. And that name comes from Dr. John Meyer, who came out of Catholic University. And he has a whole series of volumes on this camp. If you find it compelling, feel free to go read. Always want to have all sources available for people to do their own wrestling.
- [07:04]
Marty Solomon
He was marginally Jewish would be another way of saying that, like, he's not fully Jew. Jewish, Jewish in the center of Judaism, he's marginally Jewish. He's on the fringes.
- [07:14]
El Grover Fricks
Right. He's mostly doing something entirely new. The mainstream Jesus camp is going to say that Jesus was a historical figure who reflected his culture. He was not marginally Jewish, he's deeply Jewish, and therefore his teachings reflected the ongoing Jewish conversation. Therefore, the early church was primarily an outgrowth of and from Judaism. So the mainstream here means that Jesus was a historical figure who represented a common average chew. And I'm grabbing that title from my professor, Dr. Sergei Rootser, who's a wonderful man out of Hebrew University.
- [07:56]
Marty Solomon
This is actually super helpful. I'm learning a bunch of this right now. I definitely know where I land, but I think that's what El wants to talk about today. So, El, you need to tell us where you're coming from. And you just named like your professor.
- [08:10]
Brent Billings
Like, yeah, that was a very glowing review of a professor that he's a cutie pie.
- [08:16]
El Grover Fricks
You cannot tell me otherwise. Russian. Moved to Israel ages ago. He's just a sweetheart, so. Yes.
- [08:24]
Brent Billings
Oh, I'm not arguing against that. I'm just saying I think you've already tipped your hand a little bit.
- [08:29]
El Grover Fricks
I was not trying to not. But here I go. I'll talk about myself. Not something that I always love to do, but personal experience. I studied at the university in Yerushalayim. My professors, my advisors, anyone doing work on Jesus in that space was coming from the mainstream Jesus camp. So Dr. Roesser oversaw almost all of my research, and he was a student of Dr. David Flusser, one of the central pioneering figures, scholar and philologist in the movement which dug into Jesus's Jewish.
- [09:05]
Brent Billings
Identity and a familiar name for B listeners.
- [09:08]
El Grover Fricks
Yeah, absolutely. So I attended all these consortiums and conferences and they all spiraled around these ideas of the mainstream Jewish camp. These. This question is what my classes were aiming at scrutinizing. And every year, a boat full of, a proverbial boat, metaphorical boat, a plane, let's be more specific, of people from the marginal camp would show up. And they were a bunch of priests who were on loan from the Vatican who came over every spring to take classes at Hebrew U. So each spring, marginal Jesus theology got injected into my milieu. So this is the stuff that I swim in. I'm very used to this back and forth in conversation, and I'm super happy to talk about it. It's very familiar to me that some people don't feel like saying, oh, Jesus is Jewish, and teaching Jewish stuff is just a foundational thing that they know to be true. And so I feel like it's always good to pull back and acknowledge that and talk about why.
- [10:17]
Marty Solomon
I'm really glad you're bringing it up because I. I thought I knew this and what was going on and I didn't. And learning about it even more recently in lots of different circumstances, I thought everything. I was just kind of lumping everything in my mind into the historical Jesus camp, third wave historical Jesus study. And I just knew that there were differing opinions, but I thought that everybody was kind of sharing the same core assumptions or working from the same essential foundation. And I've definitely come to learn in my recent studies, like the last year or two at the most, that there really are these two camps you're describing. I didn't know that I was feeling it, but I couldn't figure out, like, wait, why don't. Why don't they respect. Why doesn't this professor respect that body of scholarship? Isn't this all the same peer reviewed stuff. And the answer is yes but no. Like there are different camps of where they start making assumptions and where they land on what they're going to respect and what they feel like has been debunked. And that's, that's a weird. So I'm. You've, you've helped give language to some of that even here today. It's very, very helpful.
- [11:24]
El Grover Fricks
Totally. I feel like on the front page of some research, everyone should have to list their tribe, you know?
- [11:30]
Marty Solomon
Right.
- [11:30]
El Grover Fricks
Like rabbis are known by their smicha. Right. Who were they a thought descendant of? And we don't do that in our literature. We just pop out and start saying our opinions. And it's up to doing some research, figuring it out to grapple with the undercurrents of what's going on. So before we get into the nitty gritty of the things in the marginal camp, which is more new to our listeners. Right. If you've been coming along with us in Bama for how many seasons and sessions you've been brought up in the mainstream idea. Right. Jesus is a mainstream guy. He's a Jewish guy and he's having Jewish conversations. We've been thinking about this for a long time. So I want to talk about the marginal camp and lend some more understanding to why people might approach these ideas with different backgrounds and different emotional reactions, a different posture than we might be used to. The first undercurrent that I want to talk about is the undercurrent of historic anti Semitism in the marginal camp. Absolutely. Hear me. I'm not about trying to throw absolutely everybody in the marginal camp under the bus. I'm not saying that they're all anti Semitic. Not at all. A bunch of those priests are my friends. They're people of integrity. And it's not that if you're going to hold this position, boom, you're automatically anti Semitic. That's not what I'm saying. However, to ignore the effect of historical biases of figures who built the marginal camp, I think would be a big error because we all like to imagine that we're blank slates and the theological conclusions that we come to are absolutely nothing but distilled pure truth. However, I think we actually talked about this in Hosea. Right. We're all built by our own zeitgeist, our own cultural biases, our own experiences. Immanuel Kant says that we can only understand our theology through the prism of us. You know, we're still brains. Kant says that we can only understand theology while also understand understanding ourselves. Right. And we're not trying to shame anybody. We're not trying to say all of those theologians who came before are all bad and terrible and because of the historic anti Semitic culture in which they were raised. And yet I think it would behoove us, especially in our era in which anti Semitic violence is on the rise, to be extra careful anytime we catch ourselves casually dismissing the Jewish community, especially when Paul says that Jesus followers are grafted into that community. Right. So we want to earmark that tendency. We never want to minimize the impact or reality of sin, which antisemitism is. But leaving that behind us, just keeping it on the back burner in mind, there's another undercurrent we want to talk about.
- [14:29]
Brent Billings
Well, and I want to make a distinction too, because there's also this, like, very, very modern and current usage of the term antisemitism to mean something about the modern nation of Israel and what your stance is on that.
- [14:43]
El Grover Fricks
Right.
- [14:43]
Brent Billings
And I just want to like refocus us on the question that we are talking about here is who was Jesus?
- [14:49]
El Grover Fricks
Right.
- [14:49]
Brent Billings
And so the anti Semitism that we're talking about involves like, his identity as a Jew or not.
- [14:55]
El Grover Fricks
Right.
- [14:56]
Brent Billings
Not any kind of like modern whatever.
- [14:58]
El Grover Fricks
In the 1800s, nobody was thinking about a state of Israel because it did not exist. Instead, they were just dealing with, well, I distrust all marginalized communities, including the Jewish one. And I think they're bad. And so Jesus is my Savior, Messiah, etc. And therefore he can't be Jewish because they're bad. And so that's the kind of logic. Nothing you're. Thanks for bringing that up, Brent. Nothing to do with the current discourse, one might say. Second undercurrent that I want to talk about has to do with divine revelation. Stay with me, everyone. This is relevant, I promise. But Protestants, we have two forms of revelation. If you came up in classical systematic theology, you can probably say them along with me wherever you are. But those things are general revelation, which we get through nature and we get through reason. And then we have special revelation, which is the Bible. Sometimes we fuss around with those categories. If you're charismatic, you might add personal revelation to that, but it never actually supersedes the special revelation of the text trait. And these personal revelations also never change the course of church doctrine. You know, if you're in an Assemblies of God church and somebody says, actually Jesus wasn't God, I am. Right. You're not like, oh, wow, personal revelation. That's not the response. Right. Because what The Bible says and what doctrine is supersedes what somebody feels like God's telling them. In the Catholic tradition, from which many but not all of the marginal side appearances, they have a different breakdown. They discuss revelation, but they have more categories. So they have Sacred Scripture, but they also have sacred tradition. And I have an excerpt from a primary source called Devermoom. And Brent, I would love if you could read this quote. It's from a papal document that explains the differences between these things.
- [17:03]
Marty Solomon
When I saw that El Grover Fricks was quoting a papal document in the notes, I was like, whoa, we are treading some new ground here.
- [17:11]
El Grover Fricks
New wine, we called it at the beginning.
- [17:13]
Marty Solomon
Yeah. As Brent gets ready to read this, this is also super important too. I'm doing the grad work I keep referencing is at Xavier at a more Catholic institution. And yeah, I don't. I'm never typically in spaces where I feel some of these divides, but I've been having to put my finger on why. Oh, it's because of my very Protestant, even worse, non denominational tradition. That puts me in a way different relationship to doctrine, scripture, theology, discussion than most of my classmates. And so this is. I usually take all this for granted, so. Also very helpful.
- [17:50]
Brent Billings
I can't say for sure that this is the first time I've ever read a papal document because I do have a little bit of Catholic background, but I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've ever read it out loud. So, you know, cool, we got something.
- [18:00]
El Grover Fricks
I have the Council of Trent at my house if you want to read that.
- [18:03]
Brent Billings
Oh, nice.
- [18:04]
El Grover Fricks
Sometime.
- [18:07]
Brent Billings
All right, here we go. Sacred Scripture is the word of God, inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the Divine Spirit, while Sacred Tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the apostles and hands it on to their successors in its full purity. So that led by the light of the Spirit of Truth, they may, in proclaiming it, preserve this Word of God, faithfully explain it and make it more widely known. Consequently, it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed.
- [18:47]
Marty Solomon
The difference between sola scriptura and not sola scriptura. And I don't mean that by throwing shade. I just mean the difference.
- [18:56]
El Grover Fricks
Right, yeah, totally. That is saying, if you kind of glazed over for a minute, relatable.
- [19:03]
Brent Billings
I was trying to, like, make it as exciting as possible.
- [19:06]
El Grover Fricks
Not about you.
- [19:07]
Brent Billings
I know, I know.
- [19:09]
El Grover Fricks
No shade intended. But it's saying that, okay, Sacred Scripture is given by the Spirit, but also tradition takes that scripture and hands it to humans, but they're led by the Spirit. And so when they come up with a tradition, it is also from that, from that tradition that we can be certain about the things of God and the things of the world. So alongside that, we have a related element which is called magisterium, which is just a great word that we should incorporate into our everyday English. But the magisterium is the last category of transmission from God. So we have Scripture and then we have tradition, and then we have magisterium. And this is where it's about to be super important for what we're talking about, because popes, bishops, and ecumenical councils have the ability to give a new teaching, which when called ex cathedra, it's marked as infallible. So Catholics are bound by obsequium religiosum, which means that this teaching demands their faith and submission. So the Bible says stuff? Sure, yeah. But also tradition says stuff, and sometimes popes or bishops or councils say stuff, and all of those are authoritative, completely eternally authoritative and demand that faith and submission.
- [20:30]
Marty Solomon
I was very much chewed out in my YouTube comments the other day from somebody claiming I had no respect for the Magisterium. Oh, no respect for the Magisterium. I didn't mean no respect, but I don't come from that place. And I was hurt my feelings.
- [20:47]
Brent Billings
I think we should reclaim the term. And whoever series that we're currently in, in the podcast will be, we'll give them the title of the Magisterium.
- [20:56]
El Grover Fricks
Oh boy, we just offend people here. I was being excited that we have some Catholic listeners, but no, just dig in our gills like our spiritual forefathers and say, haha.
- [21:08]
Marty Solomon
Yeah, and while you're there joking around, Ella, this is so important for me. Like, I've. It's part of the reason I went to a Catholic institution was to learn from this. Like, I come from a very sola scriptura worldview. Like, spoiler alert, in case anybody's curious. I'm going to be in the mainstream camp like that though. But. But there's so much I've gleaned from. There's a lot of beauty in what I see and what I hear and what I.
- [21:35]
El Grover Fricks
Absolutely.
- [21:36]
Marty Solomon
I know you're saying the same thing, El. So don't hear any of these either. Whether the jokes or the. Or the. It's just not the world that my feet are planted or rooted in. But I'm. I'm intentionally learning from it. I'm Loving some of the things I'm learning from. It doesn't even mean that's where I'm headed. It just means, like, there's some beautiful stuff here. So for all of our Catholic listeners, which are many, I love you and I love that you're here. It's great. I'm learning from it.
- [22:02]
El Grover Fricks
Yeah, we love learning that. And if we ever escape a posture of humility, we are by far the worst off for venturing from that posture of humility and openness and wanting to listen and learn.
- [22:14]
Brent Billings
I guess it's a good time for me to point out I've said this before in the podcast, but we are so far beyond where we were when I first talked about this. But I do have a little bit of a Catholic background, and I came out of that in a very much like, oh, this is totally wrong. This is the absolute. And I have, like, as I've learned more and grown and looked at these with fresh eyes, like, I see, you know, exactly like, Marty is like, there's a lot to learn here. Even if it ultimately isn't where I land or the tradition that I follow or the church that I go to, there's still a lot to learn. So I don't say that I joke about that as someone who has some of the experience with these statements, these doctrines, these ideas. But, yeah, I don't say that with disrespect.
- [23:00]
Marty Solomon
Elle, what in the world? What does this have to do with what we're talking about?
- [23:05]
El Grover Fricks
Thanks for the transition. What does it have to do with our topic? Let's just sit here and keep vibing. No, it's related. It's actually super relevant because there's this tendency, if you're armed with those things, that you have magisterium, you have tradition, and you have scripture, which, again, many in the marginal camp are going to hold on to these ideas. That means that sometimes truth arrives from on high ex nihilo. It's just downloaded. Poof. Sometimes it arrives via scripture, Poof. At other times, it shows up to early Christian mothers and followers. Poof. And now those teachings are also truth. So this tendency means that in the Catholic imagination or the marginal imagination, there's a possibility that Jesus, just like the popes, gets download sometimes, that they have fresh, new, innovative, unique things that show up on the horizon. And therefore Jesus isn't really influenced by the Zeitgeist. He just has special revelation of the Spirit. He just shows up and speaks truth. Which sometimes you run into in the evangelical camp, too, right? If folks, sometimes you Hear they get really excited about the stuff that they've been learning in Bama and other places, and then they try to share it in their church environments and they get super confused about why folks aren't embracing that with open arms. So again, it's not that every person in the marginal camp is Catholic, and it's not that every marginal camp person is anti Semitic either, certainly. And they might not even be thinking directly about the Magisterium when they question the Jewishness of Jesus. I'm talking from my experience, which is more extensive than most when talking about this particular topic. And so that was certainly my experience. But you can also run into marginal people just outside of thinking about any of that stuff, except for they have the sense that the Bible appeared out of nowhere, perfect, exactly how it is, and so they want Jesus to have done the same and not be rooted in his Jewishness.
- [25:11]
Marty Solomon
And I think this can show up as well in like in our. Yeah, not just the tendencies which are so much the same in our own evangelical spaces, but mainstream Protestantism. Evangelicalism. There's plenty of marginal scholarship perspective that is rooted in a different place that's over there as well. It's not even that the Protestant space is all mainstream. Like, there's plenty of Protestant space that's even marginal for a whole list of different reasons. And a lot of that is because it works well with our own new neo Protestant Neo Magisterium, which is this classical theological world we've built, and it just is far more convenient. And so that's true as well.
- [25:52]
El Grover Fricks
Totally. And then in academic spaces, right, they might not be coming at their marginality from a pious religious perspective at all. They might just be coming at it from the historical Jesus perspective to be like, look, Jesus, sure he existed, we know that from all these sources, but he was just a blip on the map. And he might have come up with some concepts, but really it was the church who came along and ran with them and built this huge thing that Jesus never intended. So you'll also run into the marginal camp in those spaces. And so the ultimate question as we are looking at Talmudic Matthew. Oh no. Is how therefore could anything Jesus said be influenced by Talmud if it's a text from a different religion, which was compiled over a long range of time, but beginning with Rav Yodhanasi, who wasn't born until 135 CE. Right, so here comes a rebuttal. You ready? You ready to feel that mainstream flow through our veins?
- [26:51]
Marty Solomon
Live for mainstream rebuttals. Here it Is woo.
- [26:56]
El Grover Fricks
Get amped. Okay, so the Talmud is compiled at later dates, right? We talked about this as you pointed out at the beginning. We talked about some of this at the introduction to the last time that we entered the series. But the Talmud started with Mishnah, and it's not a western nonfiction book. So Western nonfiction books are written when you have something new to add to the conversation. Right. Authors, by and large are seeking to add new and helpful thoughts to the public discourse of society. That's great. Talmud is not that. So when we approach Talmud, we have to take off our ethnocentric glasses, which aren't again, on purpose. We just come with our assumptions because that's what we know. So we have to take those glasses off every time we approach a history and a culture which is not our own. The Talmud is a record of very old conversations. The first tract date in Talmud is Mishnah, and that tractate is called Berakhot. Berachot means blessings. And a big chunk of berechot is taken up by discussions about how and when you say the Amidah prayer, which includes the Shema. It would be a mistake to imagine that therefore the Amidah and the Shema was invented in 200 CE or AD it wasn't. We have Dead Sea Scrolls with the amidah from the 2nd century BC or BCE so it probably pre existed that date because Qumranic society wasn't actually mainstream, Right? So Jewish society had already been praying the Amidah, which means that by the time of Jesus, folks had been discussing how and when to say this prayer for at least 200 years. So when we read Talmud, we can't just say, well else quoting Ad Yonatan and Talmud. And he's from the second century. So there's no way Jesus could have been referenced principing Arianna Thon. It's conversation recorded in Talmud. An example of this is one of my great friends wrote her PhD on Karl Barth's theology of imago dei, and she quotes him a ton. And she uses her idea, his ideas a lot in her teachings, as we would call them in rabbinic culture anyway. But Carl Barth was born in 1886, right? So we wouldn't read her PhD thesis and be like, oh, this idea of Imago D from this perspective was invented in the 21st century when she wrote it. We know that she's talking about an ongoing conversation which has been happening since the late 1800s, right? And it's the same kind of thought that we have to bring when we look at the Talmud and look at it next to the Gospels.
- [29:36]
Marty Solomon
But all those things are secondary sources, El. We don't know for fact they're primary sources. And that's so much of which is so true. We. We can't prove and close the gap. But we're not going to, because so much of this stuff comes from largely an oral culture. Not to say that nothing was written down, but by the time it finally is, it's reflecting on things that we're being. We just necessarily can't pin things down with the precision. Sometimes we would like to. Right. Is that correct?
- [30:02]
El Grover Fricks
Yeah, totally. I would also challenge the idea of, like, what is a primary source? Because if to you, the Bible isn't a primary source, then what? That goes to the maximalism, minimalism conversation. Where can we be sure that all this is happening? Like, right, okay, in theory, like, sure, some of these conversations are old, but how can we even know for sure that Jesus knew any of this stuff? Right. Blip on the map, coming up with his own stuff. Well, we have the conversations of Shammai and Hillel recorded in Talmud, and we have our guy Jesus weighing in on the differences between Shammai and Hillel on multiple occasions. Right. And he's siding with Hillel, and we've talked about that continually throughout Bama, but. Right. He talks about the donkey in the ditch on Shabbat. He talks about the Golden Rule. Those are both Hillel things. And you should go listen to those episodes if you don't remember them.
- [30:59]
Marty Solomon
And so people will often. Like, I literally found this retort. Heard this where. Okay, but we don't know. Those can just be constructs to frame an argument that wasn't actually. It was kind of created in the second century and they used the ancient figures to do those things. But the problem is you just named it with the maximalism. Minimalism is if there's any credit to the gospel record, and there has to be some credit to the gospel record, even if we're being as critical as possible, then that means that you would have to say that the Talmud's influenced by Jesus's teachings.
- [31:38]
El Grover Fricks
Right.
- [31:38]
Marty Solomon
And I would say most people that are. Are going to be lobbying this critique. Would they? That would feel even more uncomfortable to them. Like, Christianity is shaped because that puts Jesus squarely mainstream in so many ways.
- [31:53]
El Grover Fricks
Right, Right. Why would they care otherwise? Right. If it wasn't that one of their own was going haywire.
- [31:59]
Marty Solomon
Sure. Anyway, I'm digressing. I'm trying to level my own rebuttal. So back to your rebuttal. As you were.
- [32:06]
El Grover Fricks
It's like PSPs. No, no, back to PBS. So if we have these actual quotes from Hillel specifically, we also. That's just weird to me that one would imagine, like just pick a historical figure. Well, why is he famous? Why is he called Hillel the Great? Right. Like, why are you just describing things back to him? That's very convoluted for. And I'm still processing it apparently. Okay, so we have, we have these actual quotes from the Jewish conversation in the midst of Jesus's teachings. But then we have this through line that stretches throughout the Gospels and it talks about whether to accept the rabbinic teachings as recorded in Talmud as a theme shows up. So we've talked about this before with the Samaritans and they're not just random side characters. The Samaritans are important in the story because the Samaritans reject Talmud. That's their big beef with the rest of the Jewish community, the mainstream Jewish community. One might say in Matthew 15, verse 2, when the Pharisees throw at Jesus, why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat. The tradition of the elders mentioned there is not just like Jim and Beverly, the older folks in town, they're called the elders. Like Jim, Beverly always washed their hands. The tradition of the elders is the rabbinic conversation prior the Tanayim. Right. When we say rabbinic, that includes the earlier phases of the development of the rabbinic community. But today, if you've had the privilege of eating a meal with an observance conservative Jewish family on Shabbat, as I have, you know, you go wash your hands, you go back to the table and you wait in silence before you say the ritual words that are recorded in Talmud. That's what Talmud tells you that you should do. And so did Jesus know the word Talmud? Right. Might be another rebuttal. Yes, he did. Because. Because Talmud just means teaching. Right. The teaching of the elders is the Talmud of the elders. When Jesus heard the word Talmud, sure. He's not picturing a whole bookshelf packed with leather bound volumes compiled over a few hundred years, but the idea, the claim that first century Jesus is completely divorced from the rabbinic teachings of Talmud doesn't add up when you look at things from this perspective of cultural culture and history.
- [34:40]
Marty Solomon
Absolutely. Yeah. Yes. Such a. Well, this is worth the deeper dive. This is better than 10 minutes in passing. A very worthwhile episode and study today. And by saying this, we're not saying that like, well, there's no critical thinking about Talmud or all Talmud is relevant and like all the same things. And there's still so much that we don't know for sure. But just because we don't know for sure just doesn't mean we reject all of it. We're wondering like, hey, wait a minute, this actually looks like this is clearly relevant. Maybe some things have more of a question. Maybe there's like this gradient scale of certainty that we can place on relevancy to this conversation or that idea, but certainly should be used to consider getting insight into the Jewish world that surrounded Jesus.
- [35:28]
El Grover Fricks
Right.
- [35:29]
Marty Solomon
To which we're going to be big main. We're going to think he's squarely in the middle of. We're mainstream people around here, around these.
- [35:35]
El Grover Fricks
Parts, around these parts and our neck of the woods. Right. And if there's ever anything that I say or I'm building an argument out of the Talmud, I'm juxtaposing it to scripture in a way that someone or any person doesn't feel like has merit. That's totally fine. I am not bothered by that. Right. I'm interested in putting these two conversations together. What was Jesus saying that might have been different than what was going on in the Jewish conversation? That's intriguing to me. And whether you want to pick down into the nitty gritty of well, will Jesus have heard that very specific teaching isn't quite as interesting to me or as important to me of the work of, you know, winnowing away at our path and thinking about how do we walk, how are we walking at these things, what kind of tides are pulling us in different directions and how might we stay true to what Jesus was calling us to? Right. That's my big. That's my big hope for everybody. Not that we become incredible Talmuds scholars and everybody starts doing dafa day with me. Right. That's not, that's not the goal.
- [36:48]
Marty Solomon
Yeah. So you're suggesting that there could be like, there could be ideas or maybe even episodes that people would listen and be like, I'm not sure, I'm not sure about that. I don't know if I like that. And they would just like think to themselves, I don't like that. And they would just move on to the next episode.
- [37:04]
El Grover Fricks
Absolutely.
- [37:05]
Marty Solomon
That is a crazy concept. I love that though.
- [37:08]
El Grover Fricks
If we are ever listening to a teacher and agreeing with 120% of everything you're saying, might want to have some critical reflection about that. I hope that people disagree with me and choose to listen in anyway, especially.
- [37:21]
Marty Solomon
As we got into these deeper sessions. Like, that's part of what we wanted to do. Like we wanted to lean in and try some things on. We want to go a little bit deeper, we want to take a little bit more chances, we want to model that. We want to invite people to do that with us. But that comes with an awareness of like, oh, be. Be trying. Like, yeah, we grew along the Baymont journey. We had training wheels on and then we took the training wheels off. And now we're in a space where it's like, like we have some tools. What does this look like? And what does that look like? And let's go deeper over here. But that inherently means we're going to have some ideas that are better than others. And some ideas, it's like, well, that was just crazy.
- [37:56]
El Grover Fricks
Thanks. But we can be self reflective about where we're coming from and what biases we're bringing with us. 100 where other people might be moving from when they feel upset at us for the random stuff that we bring up a Bible study. And we're like, but did you know that Shan, I said this? And if they respond badly or, you know, less than Jenna generously, then it's good to have compassion for that and understand where they might be coming from.
- [38:20]
Marty Solomon
Yeah.
- [38:21]
El Grover Fricks
Boom. Mission accomplished.
- [38:23]
Marty Solomon
I'm looking at notes here. Do you have resources that you're recommending here at the end of this chat?
- [38:27]
El Grover Fricks
I mean, recommend might be strong language.
- [38:30]
Brent Billings
We don't say recommend. We have referenced resources.
- [38:33]
El Grover Fricks
I have sources cited. So I have that De Verbum, which you can read the whole thing. If you're super intrigued by the way that Catholics imagine the way that truth is transmitted, go read that. I have cited the book A Marginal Jew Rethinking the Historical Jesus, which boy, I wrote all over the margins of my copy so we could do it.
- [38:57]
Brent Billings
I'll show you marginal.
- [39:01]
El Grover Fricks
Do a book compare day sometime. And then I have a link to Brill, which has stuff by Rutzer, Saoirse Rutzer, who again does amazing work on the mainstream qualities of Jesus. And then also a little reference to who is Yuda Anasi. If you are interested in the technical details of when and how was Talmud compiled and what did that look like? That's a great Wikipedia article to start you off on your merry little journey.
- [39:30]
Marty Solomon
You don't have to get any grades and you still speak highly of your professor. Makes sense if you gotta get a grade still, but you know, still speak positively of Old Rootser.
- [39:40]
El Grover Fricks
It's impossible not to, in my opinion. But I'm looking forward to the rest of the series, getting the rest of the team in on the fun as we crank through some pages together and try to figure out what the heck Jesus might have been talking about. And maybe we'll be wrong. Maybe we're right. We'll leave it up to the listener, their judicious sense of discernment and the spirit indeed speak their own way.
- [40:05]
Marty Solomon
Indeed.
- [40:05]
Brent Billings
All right, well, check out the show notes in your podcast app or at bamadociption. No shortage of links on an L episode, as per usual, so plenty of things to dig into in the meantime. But we will be back next week, so thanks for joining us on the Bayone podcast. We'll talk to you soon.