Another side affect

Here’s one more side affect of living in a foreign country…I am craving all the foods that I ate every day in Israel.  I have been making hummus and pitas from scratch.  Earlier this week I hung out with two of my vegan friends.  Their culinary lifestyles inspired me, so two nights ago I made a vegan meal of vegetables, cous cous, and tofu.  So long meat, veggies are the way to go!

 

(at least until I get my next odd craving)

 

Backyard Thoughts

With my sunburned scalp hiding beneath the only hat I have with me (a pretty rad, bloodstained camouflage cap) I sit in the backyard and type away to the magical sounds of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irkova. Somewhere around a month ago I made my way up from the sporadically sunny southern California to the depressingly overcast Willamette Valley. It has been an amazing month of reconnections with friends and family. Friends from years ago have made their reappearance in my life and it has been beautiful. I had fallen so in love with studying in the Middle East that I had forgotten what home really feels like. They say home is where the heart is. Well if that is true, then my home is in dozens of places scattered around this globe. Just many of those places are found here in Albany. Whether it be the couches of my pastor friends, or the space behind the espresso bar in Starbucks, or the back porch of my sister’s house, or the familiar smells of the churches I grew up, or the delightful aromas of my mother’s kitchen…all have become part of me, and all of them are home to me.

During these past several weeks, I have taken full advantage of the opportunities to read. I have relived the imaginations of my childhood by reading through the Chronicles of Narnia once again. It truly is a delightful world that sets my mind ablaze and my heart to dreaming every time I bring back to life its memory. Another book that I have just finished is one that has triggered more self-reflection and pondering than nearly any other book that I have ever read. It is a compilation of articles by several different authors that address the state of the current and future destiny of this planet. More specifically, it analyzes current trends of thought and culture and lays out ideas for charting a course through the midst of the present storm that humanity is entering. It is Church of the Perfect Storm, edited by Leonard Sweet. One of my good buddies contributed some thoughts to it. I know there are all sorts of books and self-proclaimed church manuals that try to sort out the craziness of the this post-Christian, post-modern, post-(fill-in-the-blank) world, but this is one that I would recommend to all who are brave enough to face the facts of the present and the possibilities of the future. If anything, this book has deepened my thirst for adventure. Where the battle wages fiercest, that is where I will make my stand.

Here are some of my favorite thoughts from the book.

“We still have differing cultures and political systems, but at the economic level there is now only one big civilization, feeding on the whole planet’s natural capital. We’re logging everywhere, fishing everywhere, irrigating everywhere, building everywhere, and no corner of the biosphere escapes our haemorrhage of waste….Every Eldorado has been looted, every Shangri-La equipped with a Holiday Inn.” ~Ronal Wright

Too many churchgoers hide out in religious aquariums (churches!), where everything is neatly under control.

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. ~Psalms 107:23-24 KJV

…too many of us have simply abandoned ship and begun to live as functional atheists who happen to attend church from time to time. Alan Jamieson

When we are becalmed, the illusions of progress are demolished. The old ways of prayer, worship, and Bible reading become dry and stale. The church services and preaching that used to encourage us, teach us, and inspire us become barren ground. God seems to extinguish one means of feeding our faith in order to make us hungry, even starving for new ways. Alan Jamieson

If we don’t somehow see through Jesus’ eyes of love, if respect isn’t the innermost motive of our hearts, we’ll keep on doing structural things as an anesthetic to the messiness of real love. Dries Lombaard

Would anyone you know talk about the church’s relationship with popular culture the same way: dangerous for us and lifesaving for others? Michael Blewett

If God can speak through the mouth of Balaam’s donkey, why are we shocked that God might use some of the jackasses from popular culture? Michael Blewett

The joy is not in the journey; it’s in the relationships. Michael Blewett

Did you do anything you might not have normally done because there was safety, or stupidity, in numbers? Michael Blewett

I’m not aware of any place in the gospel where Jesus promises us safety or security. He does promise a cross. Michael Blewett

*This one is my favorite…Too many pastors are getting A’s in biblical exegesis and D’s in cultural exegesis. Mark Batterson

…the 60 percent of Americans who don’t attend church get their theology from movies and music. For better or worse, moviemakers and musicians are the chief theologians in our culture. Mark Batterson

I have a core conviction that drives me: there are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet. Mark Batterson

Instability was something that happened over there, and suddenly it is the norm everywhere. Thomas G. Bandy

Our absolute relativism reveals our conviction in absolutes beyond absolutes, a God above gods, to which everything including ego is relative. Thomas G. Bandy

 

What’s different about America?

It is now closing in on two weeks since I arrived back in the States. I was warned that I may experience a type of reverse culture shock when I got back home. As of yet, I haven’t been shocked by too many things. If anything, my reabsorption back into the normal life of Albany happened much easier and much more quickly than I had anticipated. It is a bit frightening. In returning home, though, I have gained a broader perspective on some things that I had never really considered before.

We are a society that is fueled more by our specialty drinks than we are by oil. People complain about spending $4 per gallon on gasoline, but they spend that same amount on a 20 ounce specialty coffee that is mostly milk and sugar with just a bit of caffeine added to it. At that rate, people are spending just under $24 per gallon for coffee, but I’m ok with that because it is giving me a paycheck.

It seems that people everywhere are adding energy supplements to their coffee addictions. Energy drinks used to be the sole domain of Red Bull and Sobe. Athletes and college students would drink them to gain some type of edge either physically or mentally. The market is now saturated with literally hundreds of different options. Parents buy them for their Middle and High School age kids. An educator recently told me that some schools are now sending letters home to parents requesting that they not send any energy drinks in the lunches of their kids. Can you imagine trying to teach a classroom full of 13 year olds high on 16 oz Rockstars? Besides how many teenagers have so little energy that they must fuel up on sugar, vitamins, minerals, and other additives just to make it through the day? What kind of society does this to their children? Even just recently Starbucks has created an +Energy option that we can add to any drink to give people an added mental alertness above and beyond their normal caffeine consumption.

Thank you post-karmic stream for the picture

Yesterday I went shopping for groceries. As I walked by the medicine aisle, I became distracted by how large it was. Curiosity turned me aside and I began looking at the type of meds and cures that we can now take in little pills, creams, syrups, and even sprays. In the vitamin section I found an “alertness spray.” It was full of caffeine, taurine, guarana, bee pollen, Vitamin B, and all other such things. You just sprayed it in your mouth five times and your tiredness would just roll away. The symptoms it treated were weariness and sleepiness. Since when has being sleepy become a symptom? Just as with most medicines, it only treated the symptom, but it really didn’t address the root of the problem. In this case, more sleep would probably be a better option, but in this country who has time for sleep?

I have been noticing it for the last two weeks, but yesterday in the medicine aisle that I realized America is not addicted to coffee or energy drinks. Rather, they are addicted to busy-ness. I have known this for some time, but I have never been able to look at it from the outside before. In Israel the only thing I have to worry about are my classes and exploring the Middle East. I am pulled in one direction, not twenty-seven like here. In the States we are taught to believe that success is defined by how many things I can squeeze into my day. Many times I have bought fully into this lie.

I used to brag about my sophomore year of college. I pulled off straight A’s in 17 credits, worked a combined 45 hours between working in a day-care and coaching a wrestling team, I taught a Sunday School class, volunteered in Kids Church, and preached and led Middle School youth groups for two months between pastors. At that time I added it all up and I came up with the magical number of 113. That is how many hours of my week were scheduled for three months straight. These were just the scheduled hours. It did not include time for sleep, homework, or studying. I would leave my house at 6:30 every morning and usually wouldn’t return before 10:00 at night. That used to be a source of pride. I now look at it as one of the most diseased points of my life. Even though I had filled my schedule with good things, the high I got off squeezing every minute of every day for all it was worth was poisoning the very life within me. That entire school year when people would ask how I was doing, I would always reply with “Good, but tired.” And now that is the answer I hear more than any other today. Whether it is family, friends, business men, high school students, or my sister’s wiener dogs, they always seem to be in a perpetual state of almost falling asleep.

Sleepy time for Zoe

That is the biggest difference I have noticed in returning home. At first I was going to comment solely on my country’s addiction to edible and drinkable energy, but then I realized that it is just a survival mechanism for navigating this busy existence that has addicted nearly everyone. We all crave a release, but few are willing to drop something in order to live a less busy life. Over five weeks ago I gave up coffee just for the heck of it. I have since broken my fast and had a cup of coffee, but only one. I have decided that if I cannot live my life without some type of alertness-altering substance, then I am too busy. Thus I am beginning to orient my life and body around things that I can naturally handle and achieve. We’ll see how far this gets me.

 

Back in California

Some 29 hours after I left Jerusalem University I landed at Los Angeles International Airport.  I slept maybe 2 hours on the plane, and by the time I fell asleep on Casey’s couch, I had been awake for almost 48 hours.  Combine that with the craziness and lack of sleep of my last days in Jerusalem, and I had only slept about 7 hours in the previous 72.  So the jet-lag is pretty much destroying me right now. :)  It is nice to be back on American soil once more, though it is strange that everyone speaks English as their primary language.  It definitely makes getting around a lot easier.  Since I’m back in the states, I’m sure my updates on this blog are going to become a bit more sporadic.  When you live in a city that is less than 150 years old, there just seems to be less to write about than when you study in a 4,000 year old city.

I’m going to be working at the North Albany Starbucks again through the summer until I return to JUC at the end of August.  It’ll be nice to be in the cafe again, though I’ll probably have to break my coffee fast now.  I have now made it four weeks without a cup of coffee.  It has been seven years since I’ve gone without coffee for this length of time.

This morning I went on a walk through Newport Beach to get some fresh air, and it rained on me.  What is up with California always greeting me with rain?  When I came down in January, it was cold and it rained also…sheesh.  At least I go back to Oregon where it is warm on Wednesday.  While I was walking around this morning, I noticed several store signs that made me chuckle a bit.  “Oh Scrap!” was the first one that caught my eye.  I’m assuming that it was a scrapbooking store, which is just an odd invention in my mind.  I guess there is a lot of money in memories.  “Don’t just jump into any bed” was the motto hanging up in front of a mattress store.  That sounded more like good advice for college freshmen than a quality sales slogan.  The topper, though, was “Jack’s Burgers: Authentic Mexican Cuisine.”  I’m still trying to figure out how either Jack or his burgers became authentically Mexican.  I’ll probably never know.

 

The East, Crusades, and some Walls

These past few weeks have been filled with more research and writing than I have ever done in my life. Thankfully, though, all those assignments are behind me. All that I have left ahead are four finals and then my spring semester shall be finished. The freedom the summer brings is just a few days away. That’s right, in less than two weeks I will be back home among friends and family once more. I can’t wait to see you all again.

One of the more interesting projects I’ve been working on this summer was for my Church in the East course. This class is taught by Dr. Petra Heldt, a brilliant little German lady. She came to Israel a couple decades ago, and has since dedicated her time and studies to the understanding of the church communities that have survived in the East. This is a subject that is very foreign to most of us who have grown up in a Western education. When we think of church history, we tend to focus on the strains of thought that brought us to our individual and group theologies of today. We usually look at the councils of early church history and define them by which groups got kicked out of orthodoxy. For example, at the Council of Ephesus a guy named Nestorius was branded as a heretic and kicked out of the church. He and his followers were mostly located in Syria, and so in order to escape the persecutions of the established church, they made their way east–into Iran, India, and even to China. Did you know that? We had Christian missionaries in China in the 5^th Century. Pretty crazy, eh? For good or bad, though, this group is mostly ignored by us because they don’t fit into theological family tree.

Twenty years later in 451 AD at the Council of Chalcedon, several more churches were branded as heretical and kicked out of Orthodoxy. These were the Armenians, Egyptian Copts, Jacobites, Maronites, and a few other church groups. It is my professor’s contention that these churches were actually booted out more for political reasons than for theological. In either case, she has spent many years studying their history and theology, but not just with the books. She is actually great friends with many of the Patriarchs and Bishops of these different church groups. I have learned a great many things about these church’s histories and beliefs, and really they aren’t all that much different from us. We have much more in common than many would think. One of the most fascinating aspects of their history, though, is how they survived under Muslim rule.

In my studies of history, I often assumed that when the Muslims conquered the Middle East and North Africa that all the Christians were either killed, converted, or expelled. However, I have found that is a completely wrong assumption. Some of these church communities actually thrived under Muslim rule…well, thrive may be too strong of a word. Both Jews and Christians who live in Muslim communities are given an official second-class status as a dhimmi. Many of their rights are impinged upon, but in regard to these Eastern Churches I mentioned above, their communities (with a few exceptions) did better under Muslim rule than under the Christian Byzantine rule that had been in place previously. It would be easy to judge the established church of 5th Century based on our modern perceptions, but that was a different time and place. It is a sad commentary, though, when one sees how minority Christian groups were treated better by different religions than those who supposedly shared a common faith.

Beyond all that, though, I mentioned it just to get to the project I had to do for this class. I chose to study the Crusades. Although, not from our typical western perspective, nor from the viewpoint of the Muslims, but from the perspective of the Eastern Christians. So how did Christians living in the Holy Land view these Latin (Catholic) Crusaders who came and liberated them? What was it like for a Christian living in a fortified city with a Muslim governor when the Crusaders attacked? Do you go fight for your ruler? Or do you join forces with the Christian Crusaders? I learned that Christians did both things. However, most did support the Christian Conquerors, but this support wasn’t always rewarded. In coming in as conquerors, the Crusaders established their own Latin clergy. In exchanging Muslim for Christian leaders, the Eastern sects’ position and well being was barely changed at all.

All this was very interesting to learn, but the most profound part about my study actually came when I got to the part where the Crusaders attacked Jerusalem. I read about the tactics and approaches the Crusaders used in attacking the walls. Well, as most of you know, my school is located on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Thus, as I read about the battle, I could go to the roof of the school, look at the walls of Jerusalem, and see exactly how the Crusader forces were lined up to attack. It was like reading about the Battle of Gettysburg while standing in the middle of the battlefield. When I walk through the Jaffa Gate into the Old City of Jerusalem, I am walking by the point in the walls where the battle was fiercest 909 years, 2 months, and 13 days ago. Pretty crazy, eh? You should come and check it out for yourself sometime.

My dorm room is on the third floor at Jerusalem University. It is not far-fetched to say that I sleep directly above a spot where Crusaders charged up the hill to attack the walls of Jerusalem.

See how close my campus is to the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem?

This is Professor Petra talking with a Coptic Orthodox priest on our Church History Field Study to Jerusalem.

On of our field studies, we visited some Syrian Orthodox fathers who were proofing a hand-written copy of the Syriac scriptures with some Maronite priests.

Here is a room inside a Crusader castle we explored just southeast of the Dead Sea in Jordan.

 

Petra

In all the things I have seen through my brief travels through the Middle East, none have been as impressive as the city of Petra. It was a city cut out of solid stone by the Nabateans. The origins of the Nabateans are lost in ancient history, but it is known that they were an Arabian tribe of nomads. They controlled the lucrative trade routes between the Arabian Peninsula and the Mediterranean. After the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. a power vacuum was felt in the lands of Judah. Many groups of Edomites (descendants of Esau) moved from their ancestral home in the east into southern Judah. In turn, Nabatean influence began to move into Edomite lands.

Here is a map showing the rough political boundaries of ancient Palestine. These boundaries were constantly shifting as the nations battled each other. In general though, these show these divisions are based on the heartland of each people group. The “Nabatu Tribes” are the same as the Nabateans.

Petra itself was the capitol of the Nabateans. The valleys that the city was built in have been inhabited by nomads for millennia. The city began to increase in size and wealth around 300 BC. At its zenith as many as 50,000 people may have lived there. Although many conservative estimates puts the population closer to 20,000. When Rome came to power in the Eastern Mediterranean, they desired the rich trade routes of the Nabateans. Eventually through battles and other means of forced coercion Roman influence became dominant. By the 3^rd Century C.E. they stopped using Aramaic and began speaking and writing in Greek. Eventually, as with all civilizations, they began to wane and they were eventually reassimilated into the nomadic desert cultures surrounding them. The site of Petra remained completely unknown in the West until a Swiss explorer stumbled upon it in 1812.

There are a few minor connections with the Nabateans in our scriptures. Herod the Great’s mother was Nabatean. It makes one wonder if he got his incessant desire to build from his mom’s side. This Herod is known for his massive building projects—extending the Temple Mount, Masada, Herodium, Caesarea Maritime, etc. He is also the Herod who tried to kill baby Jesus by executing all the male children of Bethlehem.

Another scripture reference to the Nabateans is in 2 Corintians 11:30-33. “In Damascus the governor under King Aretas had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me. But I was lowered in a basket from a window in the wall and slipped through his hands.” King Aretas was a Nabatean king who was given political control of Syria at this point in history. It makes one wonder why an Arabian king wanted to capture Paul. Some have proposed that while Paul was on his sojourn in Arabia that he may have preached and made enemies in the land of the Nabateans. Who knows…but why not?

This is the entrance to the Siq, the large crack in the earth

Walking through the siq

We came across a trader and his camel carved in the stone. Now really all this is left are the feet

Then we found some real camels

This building is the most famous site in Petra. Indiana Jones made it even more famous in the Last Crusade

This whole thing is carved straight into the rock, including these columns

This is the Siq that we walked through to get into Petra

There are dozens of large buildings all over the place

Notice the scaffolding in this picture

Can you see it again from this angle?

If you look very closely, you may be able to see a familiar face in the window on the left

We walked out a smaller, less traveled siq on our way back to the bus

 

The Decapolis

Over the past several weeks I have shown some random pictures of pretty rad ancient ruins, but I haven’t done all that well at explaining where they came from. This post is an attempt to rectify part of that.

In New Testament times there existed a political region that went by the name of the Decapolis. Many of these cities were established by the Greek influence after Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Middle East. Some were built on the sites of older cities, while others were built up in brand new locations. All of them, though, were built on strategic trade and transportation routes. They attracted many Greek-speaking immigrants and were centers of Hellenism. By the time of the Romans, many of these cities had become huge regional centers. They were used by the Romans as a guard of the Empire’s eastern frontier as well as a tool for Greco-Roman cultural dissemination. Somewhere between Pompey’s military visit in the 64 B.C. and the time of Christ, ten of these cities banded together into a loose confederation. Hence the name Decapolis—DECA = ten & POLIS = city.

An interesting thought regarding Jesus and the Decapolis. Jesus’ ministry was primarily to the Jews. However, he also traveled through and ministered in the Decapolis–a center of Greco-Roman Gentile influence. You can check this out for yourselves at the end of Mark 7 and the beginning of chapter 8. He healed a mute person and fed 4,000 people. I’m glad Jesus took care of Gentiles also.

Here is a map of the political regions right before Jesus came on the scene as a baby

During our travels through Israel and Jordan I have visited five of these sites—Hippos, Gadara, Scythopolis, Gerasa, and Philadelphia. Only Scythopolis is located west of the Jordan River. It is also the same location as the Old Testament Beth Shean. Similarly, Ammon, Jordan today surrounds the site of ancient Philadelphia. Each of the cities we visited had unique as well as similar features. For example, Gadara made use of the local black basalt to make many of their buildings.

The white columns are made of limestone, while the black are made of basalt. It reminds me of the song “Ebony and Ivory”

These are the remaining columns of an eight-sided Byzantine church. The octagon shape seemed to be popular for some reason. Oh, and yes, the church was built much later than the founding of the city.

Look at this basalt theater at Gadara.

It is much different than the one made of Cenomanian limestone in Gerasa

Gerasa or Gerash or Jerash…it is the same place, just some alternative spellings. Some people say that this is the most well-preserved Greco-Roman city in the world. Typically those in Rome or Greece don’t say that, but it seems that scholarly peoples in other parts of the world have no problem with that statement

Here is the entrance

This is a reconstruction of the main temple of Gerasa

Here are some of the remaining columns of the main building

This site has earned the nickname “The City of a Thousand Columns”

We ran into a gladiator reenactment at the hippodrome in Gerasa…they had the soundtrack to the movie playing the in background. It was pretty surreal…all except for the silly tourists taking pictures

Here are some of the columns of the temple at Philadelphia. They really are quite massive

-

Love the column

This is the Kardo at Scythopolis. All Roman cities had a Kardo. It is the main artery of any Roman city. It would be lined with shops along both sides and was the main route from the outside into the interior of the city. The hill in the background is actually the tel of Bet Shean. The Old Testament city was located on top of it.

This is the Decapolis. My next post will be focused on another ancient site–Petra.

 

Through Jordan

I just returned from spending four days in the country of Jordan. This is the country that runs along most of the eastern border of Israel. It gets its name from the Jordan River which runs north to south between the two countries. The Kingdom of Jordan is the location of many, many historical and biblical events, but for some reason it seems to be forgotten by many people of the west. It is just as much a part of the ancient Holy Land as the west side of the Jordan River is. One of the main priorities of this Field Study was to identify the things that separate or connect the two countries. We compared the topography and climate, the culture and agriculture, and the building structures and patterns. It would seem after this briefest of glances that there are more points of comparison than there are of contrast. It is no wonder that Naomi and her family went to the Plains of Moab when there was a famine in Judah. It was just across the valley and not completely unlike the area which they came from. Just read the book of Ruth to learn more.

As I have just returned, I still need to gather my thoughts before I can describe much more. But just for fun, here are some of my favorite pictures.

(ps. Ancient Moab is in present day Jordan…the same goes for Ammon and Edom as well)

This is Gerasa , Jerash, or Gerash depending on how you want to spell it. This is one of the cities of the Decapolis that is mentioned in the New Testament.

It has also earned the nickname of the “City of a Thousand Columns” for some pretty obvious reasons

This is the crack or ’siq’ in the rock one must walk through to get to Petra

A tree…growing out of a crack in the rock, thirty feet off the ground. Why is that? I have no idea

After walking for about twenty minutes, we saw this…

It is even more amazing than watching it in Indiana Jones

Petra is much larger than just one sight. We spend about 7 hours hiking through it, and we barely touched the surface

All of Petra is carved out of sandstone. Some of the colors that come out are absolutely brilliant

Let’s carve a cave out of colorful sandstone…and then let’s put our goats in it at night. That appears to be the thoughts of these Bedouins.

Inside that cave

I made mortal enemies with this lizard. He scared the snot out of me, and I took his picture. Neither one will ever be forgiven for these atrocities

During our travels, we also explored a crusader castle. This one is known as Kerak

 

Beards, Hedgehogs, and the Messiah

Reading week is now over and classes have begun once more. It was so nice to have time off from classes and deadlines. I was able to catch up on sleep, on rest, and on life in general. Though, I am now in a downhill spiral toward the end of the term. I have less than five weeks left before I get home. That’s pretty soon, isn’t it? I still have one more major Field Study (I’m going to Jordan!!!) and all my Finals before I get there, though.

I got complimented on my beard by a Rabbi today. It made me happy. I may be absorbing some of the Israeli look, for almost every time I walk into Jerusalem someone comes up and speaks to me in Hebrew. I always have to apologize, though, because I don’t really know any Hebrew yet. I decided I needed to Tourist-ize myself a bit, so I bought a hat of the cowboyish variety. To my chagrine, it almost seems to fit my bearded Oregon look. Oh well, it keeps the sun off at any rate.

Every once in a while I find a news article that deserves passing on… The Flying Hedgehog made me laugh

In my Jewish Thought and Practice class I am writing a paper on the concept of the messiah in regards to contemporary Judaism. It is provoking some interesting thoughts about my own beliefs and the development of Christian thought out of First Century Judaism. One of the most striking epiphanies I had was the fundamental divergence in the Jewish and the Christian messiahs. Christians see Jesus as the fulfillment of the Messianic role. Additionally, they believe he is the Son of God. He died, came back to life, and lives still.

Jews, on the other hand, do not see Jesus as anything other than a person who once lived, who was killed, and is still dead. He was born a Jew, lived as a Jew, and died a Jew. There is differing opinion on whether he was trying to start another religion. Some say that Judaism was the religion of Jesus, but Christianity is a religion about Jesus. Some go as far as to say that if Jesus was alive today, he would be much more comfortable in a synagogue than in a church. (Now that is an interesting concept) So if Jesus wasn’t the messiah, then what are they looking for?

The messiah, for Orthodox Jews, is a person descended from King David, who will restore God’s kingdom on earth, and bring all Jews back to a true worship of God. Most do not see this messiah as a divine figure at all. This is part of the epiphany I had. Their messiah is not the son of God. Rather, he will be God’s representative on Earth. As a Christian I have always read Jesus back into the Old Testament, but to understand the messiah from a Jewish perspective, I have to forget the entire New Testament. I have to read the Old Testament as standing alone, apart from a later revelation.

There is much debate on what this type of messiah would look like. (These are some of the same religious arguments that were going on in Jesus’ day) Is the messiah an earthly, personal figure? Will he be a priest? a king? Or is the messiah more of an idea, representative of the age when God’s will is fully implemented on earth? Some strains of Judaism separate the messiah from the messianic age. Indeed, if you read the Old Testament alone, you can almost see this division at times. Sometimes the idea of messiah was given to secular people. King Cyrus is given the title messiah. The term messiah literally means anointed one. This is part of the reason I have chosen not to capitalize messiah. In Judaism, there is no need to. In fact, in Reformed Judaism there may not even be a need for a messiah. Some view the Messianic Age as an eventual coming together of mankind toward world piece. This is completely independent of any one individual person that causes this age to come about.

This whole paper is quite an intriguing process. It is helping me to understand my own faith in different terms. I am beginning to see how revolutionary to Judaism the Messiah-ship of Jesus really was. Their concept of the Messiah was (and still is) completely different from the Jesus I have always known. It helps to explain the intense resistance that he faced back when he was still living, and the resistance that still goes on today.

 

the unasked question

The unasked question is most dangerous of all…at least that is how I planned on starting this blog, but a Google query for the “unasked question” gave me 58,700 results. It’s sad to have an original thought, and then realize a million other people have had the same thought. I hadn’t realized it was such a popular topic, but it seems that journalists around the world have been looking for the unasked questions ever since the dawn of the journalistic age. Oh well, so my title may not be original, but here’s the thought that triggered it.

 

“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary…?” Mark 6:3a

 

When you see that word carpenter, what comes to mind? From my own background, I imagine someone out working in their shop building furniture. Maybe putting together some cabinets or a fancy rocking chair. A carpenter is someone who works with wood, and this opinion seems to be shared by Indiana Jones as well. Do you remember the Last Crusade? When they are trying to figure out which cup is the Holy Grail?

 

This guy chose poorly.

 

Indiana, on the other hand, remembered Jesus was a carpenter. So he takes the wooden cup, heals his dad, and they ride off into a beautiful sunset together. It makes a good movie, but let’s disturb it with reality for a moment. Here’s where the unasked question comes back into play. Have you ever really wondered what a carpenter is? According to the 1st Century Roman Province of Galilee? I never thought about it before…that is, until last week while hanging out next to the Sea of Galilee.

 

Here in Israel everything is made out of stone. It is the cheapest and most plentiful of building materials. Very little is made out of wood, and the buildings definitely are not. When you can build a stone house that will last for 2,000 years, why build a more expensive wooden house that will only last for a hundred years? The same applied back in Jesus’ day.

 

Now don’t lose me here, but the Greek word for carpenter is tekton. (Once again, I may need to be corrected by my greeky friends and linguists) This is a term that implies much more than just building cabinets. In fact, it could be more closely related to our contemporary idea of an architect or construction engineer. A tekton would be able to build a house, construct a bridge, or some other complicated building project. Thus, Jesus could have known how to build a house, set door frames, make windows, repair buildings, and more. He was the local expert in local building supplies—stone, and occasionally wood.

 

The applications of this can be far and wide, but the simplest may be this—perhaps we should start calling him ‘Jesus the Stonemason.’ It’s not a very catchy term, but it seems to be a bit more accurate than our current idea of a carpenter.

 

On a parallel note, during the Second Temple Period (Jesus’ day), rabbis also had dayjobs. Rabbis were not necessarily part of the priesthood, so they had to support themselves by the work of their own hands. Even some of the most respected rabbis of history had everyday blue-collar jobs. It makes one wonder, as a rabbi, did Jesus do other things besides just teach, pray, and hike around Israel. Maybe he supported himself in Capernaum with the random handyman job? During those three years, someone may have needed help building a home, making an addition, or just finishing a remodeling project. This would definitely fit his trade of carpentering :). Wouldn’t it be sweet to have Jesus help you build your house? Wait! Maybe he’s already working on it…

“In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.” John 14:2

By exploring the unasked question of “What is a carpenter?” we can see that there is much more to the idea than one would ever expect. One of the greatest lessons I have learned in Israel is never eat a 2 shekel falafel, but the other lesson is…Always search for the unasked question.

Here are some ruins at Scythopolis. The entire city was built out of stone…just like all the other cities around here.