Heresy Number 2 (this will take some time)

Do your duty to the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, to ^[a]keep His statutes, His commandments, His ordinances, and His testimonies, according to what is written in the Law of Moses, so that you may succeed in all that you do and wherever you turn,  1 Kings 2:3 NASB

What is written – Occasionally you read a scholarly piece that sets the entire religious world ajar.  Such is Daniel Boyarin’s Border Lines.  It’s not an easy read.  It’s very (very) academic; an erudite vocabulary, difficult sentence constructions, lots of historical citations.  Not something you pick up for comfortable enlightenment.  But in his work, he compellingly argues that between the second and fourth centuries both Talmudic rabbis and Church fathers created the religions we know today, not from historical records or faithful believing communities, but rather from defining the borders of orthodoxy according to their own pursuits of power and control.  In other words, they invented the great monotheistic religions of Judaism and Christianity by defining who was in and who was out, and they did this without regard (or with little regard) to the actual experiences of believers.  They did it because they needed to control the mixture of spiritual experiences of their communities—to rid themselves of detractors, questioners, and “others” who challenged their interpretations and directions.

Boyarin shows that the conversion of the Greek term haíresis from “different opinion” to “false belief” was but one step in this separation, foisted on the communities from both sides.  That means that the religious idea of orthodox “truth” isn’t necessarily a result of careful exegesis and historical fact.  It is more likely to be the result of a theological paradigm, accepting one view rather than another where both views are legitimately possible based only on the text.  That’s shocking enough to deal with—but it’s not all.

Boyarin goes on to show that rabbinic (Talmudic) Judaism, which happens to be the dominant form of Judaism today, also made a significant change in the understanding of religious authority.  Early followers of YHVH including Messianic followers were a part of the Hellenistic culture, and in that culture, truth was discovered through the process of rational dialogue, that is, the careful and logical evaluation of evidence subject to the debate of various opinions and arguments.  It’s the process we adopted for Western (Hellenistic) knowing.  But this leads to some very difficult religious situations, for there are many cases where the meaning of the text and the historical records are not clear.  In other words, where we don’t know for sure what the scriptures say.  This situation is uncomfortable for believers.  If anything, believers want to know what’s true.  They don’t want a faith based on “maybe.”

How did the early fathers and the rabbis respond?  They both sought to bring certainty to the community, but they did it in what appears to be dissimilar ways (although we may see that they really aren’t that far apart).  The Church fathers asserted the absolute truthfulness of the written Word, interpreted according to the doctrines and dogmas of the Church.  In other words, they asserted that the final word about faith was the teaching of the Church regarding the meaning of the text.  Catechism was the communal answer.  Teach every child to recite the appropriate religious doctrine instead of asking questions.  The rabbis took a different route to the same end.  They made the Talmud the final authority on the interpretation of Scripture.  And while they recorded a great many of the alternative opinions about any particular text, in the end majority ruled.  In other words, the true meaning of the text was determined by the majority ruling of the rabbis.  There may be debate—lots of debate—unlike the Catechism which essentially squelched debate, but that does not mean rabbinic Judaism is more “democratic.”  Boyarin writes: “I am not suggesting that rabbinic culture was therefore more pluralistic, democratic, or open than that of Nicene orthodoxy, because it must be seen that even though the dialecticians win here, they do so not by dialectic, by proving that they are right, but by the arbitrary device of a majority vote, and a ‘wild’ midrashic reading that supports the authority of such a vote.”[1]

What emerged is a “practical” authority, that is, an authority about how any particular verse affects living behavior.  The Christians provided an authority of cognition, the rabbis provided an authority of volition.  One expected believers to think the same way; the other expected them to act the same way.  Neither was amenable to open exploration.

“The halakha must be decided, the text seems to say, in order to preserve the community, but such decision is always arbitrary, for all of the contradictory opinions were indeed given by the same God.”[2]

Boyarin notes:

“ . . . the complete rabbinic takeover of religious life and practice via the Oral Torah.  Not even God, not even angels can compete with the Rabbis and their Torah.  The Torah is no longer in heaven.  It is on earth in the possession of the rabbinic institution.  As the fourth-century Rabbi Yirmiah glosses Rabbi Yehoshua’s statement: ‘Since the Torah has been given on Mt. Sinai, we no longer listen to heavenly voices, for you have already written in the Torah: “Incline after the majority” [Exod. 23:2].’”  Rabbinic Judaism thus represents a particular epistme of power/knowledge.  In the face of the perceived failure of dialectic to produce consensus, it seeks to effect a transfer of authority and of control over discourse from heaven, reasoned and compelling argument, to earth, the allegedly God-given authority of the majority of the Rabbis.”[3]

All of this leads to a very scary situation.  It is summarized well by William Graham:

Another historical shift is marked within the narrative of Rabbi Eli’ezer.   William A. Graham has written:

            ‘Nevertheless, it is especially in traditional cultures around the world that the fundamental link between the spoken word and truth is all but indissoluble—not because oral transmission and communication are practically or technically superior to written forms, but because most traditional cultures see the loci (but not necessarily the origins) of both truth and authority primarily in persons and their utterances, not in documents and records.  In such contexts, the teacher who knows the  sacred text by heart and has devoted his or her life to studying and explicating it is the one and only reliable guarantor of the sacred truth.  The power of the holy word is realized only through  the human word of the seer, prophet or spiritual master, not through a manuscript, even where the latter is also important.  However exalted its status in a particular tradition, the written text alone is typically worthless, or at least worth little, without a human teacher to transmit both it and the traditions of learning and interpretation associated with it.

            To be reckoned as scripture, whether in its written or oral form, any text must be perceived in some sense as a prime locus of verbal contact with transcendental truth, or ultimate reality.’[4]

What this means is that all the verses of the Bible, in Judaism or Christianity, are understood within the paradigm of the reigning authority.  There is no “plain meaning of the text,” as we so often hear in apologetic debate.  The vocabulary itself is a function of a holy tradition, a tradition of men handing down meaning from generation to generation in Athens and Jerusalem.  Religion is about control, especially control of the language, and since the invention of these two major religions, it has been in the hands of the bishops or the rabbis.  Both seek compliance.

Anything else is heresy.

Topical Index: heresy, authority, tradition, control, Scripture, Talmud, 1 Kings 2:3

[1] Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: the Partition of Judeo-Christianity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 170.

[2] Ibid., p. 171.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.