I hope no one is getting tired of these double entendre blog post titles. When I chose the title for the book, I was thinking only of John 17:3 and the relevance of that verse to understanding the Christology of John's Gospel. It didn't even occur to me what potential entertainment value there was in it! :-)
Anyway, Jared Calaway has finished reading my book The Only True God and has posted his initial impressions - in particular highlighting the contrast with Richard Bauckham - on his blog Antiquitopia. Take a look!
Thursday, July 16, 2009
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5 comments:
Hi James,
One thing I noticed in Jared's review is that you say sacrifices are not offered to Jesus. In the NT, of course, the sacrifices would be spiritual, and, as far as I can see, they're all directed towards God. But I wonder if I Corinthians 10:21 could be an exception: "You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and also the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and of the table of demons" (NAB).
The table of the Lord is the Lord's supper, and the table of demons is sharing a sacrificial meal with other gods, called demons. Could the Lord's supper be a sort of sacrificial meal with a god, Jesus? Jesus is often called kurios in Paul's writings, especially I Corinthians.
Of course, a complication to what I'm saying is that Jesus is what's being eaten in the meal (symbolically or literally).
I'm so literal.
;)
Thanks for the interaction! On the one hand, there are texts that seem to reflect an ongoing participation of Christians in the worship of the Jerusalem temple (several references in Acts, and Matthew's reference to bringing one's gift to the altar). On the other hand, there is sacrifical interpretation of Jesus' death, and reference to us offering our bodies as living sacrifices, but in both cases it is God who is the recipient of the sacrifices in question.
There are a few ambiguous cases, which I discuss, but for the most part sacrificial worship seems to have been the make-or-break issue in allegiance to one God for both Jews and Christians, and I don't detect any clear attempt to situate Jesus as recipient of sacrifice (even spiritual ones) in the New Testament. Even once Christians are no longer offering their own sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple, the refusal to offer sacrifice to any other remains a decisive point, one that is used in subsequent centuries to single them out and persecute them.
James,
Thanks for this. My review is on it's way. I haven't forgot. :)
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