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by Merrill

The technical difficulties (see below) turned out to be a problem with my word document and I had to retype it in a new document. Hope I got it right. Here it is.

I started a new book, The Cannon of Scripture, by F.F. Bruce several weeks ago and I was struck by one of the points that Bruce made while discussing the shared heritage of the Old Testament.

Yet the text of scripture had not changed: what had changed was the Christians’ understanding of it in the light of their Master’s teaching and achievement. It is easy to appreciate how Jews, who did not share the Christians’ estimate of the person and work of Jesus, found this playing fast and loose with the divine commandments an incomprehensible and totally deplorable proceeding.

Christians, on the other hand, who found such luminous testimony to Christ and the gospel in the same scriptures, wondered how Jews could read them with such lack of comprehension.*

It was while meditating on this quote that I passed the Chabad-Lubavitch center not far from my home. On Saturdays I often see Hasidic Jews walking to or from the center. This year I have also noticed signs in front of the center for various opportunities such as the FREE services this past week. Being curious, I decided check Chabad-Lubavitch out on the internet. Besides such things as the Wikipedia entry I found the Chabad-Lubavitch website. Very interesting it is. I signed up for daily emails on “Today In Judaism”. I found out that Last Tuesday, Tishrei 8, 5769 * October 7, 2008, was the anniversary of the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem on the 8th of Tishrei of the year 2935 from creation (826 BCE). That was the first temple of course. The Chabad-Lubavitch website, Chabad.org has an article in their library, A Temple Anthology, which has dates of 833 BCE to 423 BCE for the first temple and 349 BCE to 69 CE for the second temple. By those dates I would assume that: 1(the first – Solomon’s temple – was dedicated five years after it was started and 2(Chabad makes no differentiation between the second temple and Harod’s temple –or the third temple - which was a massive enlargement which completely rebuilt the second temple. The temple that Jesus knew was Harod’s temple which was started around 19 BCE. I believe the argument for not making a differentiation was that sacrifices continued to be held during the construction (maybe RE-construction would be a better choice of words). It is all in how you interpret things. By Chabad’s reckoning the second temple stood eight years longer (419 years) than the first temple (411 years). If you subtract the 70 years that Harod’s temple stood then the second temple was in existence for less time than the first temple.

The Wednesday email from Chabad.org was about Kaparot. Kaparot is appropriately enough performed on the morning of the day before Yom Kippur which starts at sundown. The next day there was an article, Dead Chickens, Amends and an Outcry, in the New York Times. Kaparot, for the more orthodox Jewish, involves swinging a chicken around the head while reciting a prayer

“This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement. This chicken will go to its death while I will enter and proceed to a good long life, and peace.”

The New York Times article was about the various interpretations of Kaparot. Predictably People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA, has one different from the more orthodox Jews. But even among Jews there are many interpretations. The form I liked best was replacing the chicken with money and the giving the money to charity afterwards. That is pretty cool.

I wonder how you interpret my words. Can any human ever know what another means?

* F.F. Bruce, The Cannon of Scripture, InterVarsity Press, 1988

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