- October 7th Massacre Prompting.
- Main Reference Document.
- My Conjecture.
- Sequence of the Research.
- Author Support
Main Reference Document.
All my commentary in this blog post relies on this academic writing by Dr. Gregg E. Gardner, Ph.D. Dr. Gardner is an Associate Professor in Jewish Law and Ethics in the Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia. Please read this excellent presentation on charity and caring for the needy in the time of Jesus.
How Tzedakah Became Charity -Dr. Gregg E. Gardner
My Commentary to How Tzedakah Became Charity.
To me, nothing in the text resembles asceticism. All through my life I've had trouble accepting, or even respecting, a message of a lifestyle of self-denial and abstinence from worldly pleasures to achieve a higher spiritual state. The type like a Buddhist or Cathlolic monk.
Worse still is a simple reading of Jesus words without any context. Here is how one should behave employing the words (without Judaic context):
I know there are drug addict criminals around my home, I would at the very least empty out our food supply and my bank account for the them. That is at the least.
A serial killer would be given full access to anything I could provide. If the serial killer did evil, I would help them to the greatest extent I could.
That is dumb and suicidal. That is exactly the words of the Sermon on the Mount teaches us to do, if we read it in an nonacademic vacuum.
My Conjecture.
Grounding the words of Jesus within the Greco-Roman and Jewish norms of running a city starts to make sense of it all.
The Greco-Roman economy was one of many small business owners working their own olive grove, vineyard, flocks of sheep or other animals.The Mediterranean was the spot market in which these business owners sold their olive oil, wine and other goods into. These business owners were on a small plot, working from their homes. That is how the term cottage industry came about.
All these businesses are biologically bound - plants and animals. Besides drought, the life of a farmer is beset by waves of biological disasters. Viruses kill herds, fungus strains kill plants, insect infestations devastate crops. The life a cottage industry farmer is cycles of plenty then a year or more of total bankruptcy. Very real money bankruptcy. And yes very much so in the time of ancient Persia, Greece and Rome. Also, it is very much a dynamic in farmer to banker relations today. Contracts are often written in ways in which asset catastrophe falls on farmer.
These hard working, entrepreneurial, economics literate people are going to very dependably...have years of destitution in between good years, or the random farmer's goods get hit with disease the others don't get. It should be no surprise to us that the cultures participating in the greater Mediterranean economy would come up with norms for their survival.
Notice how I worded that last sentence. This is just intelligent management of the society's survival. It is pragmatics. Run an economy in a way in which each time a sheep disease or olive catastrophe occurs those people just die, and, well, eventually no more of that industry.
All the above would have been standard knowledge and practice in the wiser parts of Greco-Roman and Jewish life. I think by setting a baseline of context and behavior we have the juxtaposition to see what Jesus said as divergent and what is unique.
I do believe that, compared to the pragmatic baseline Greco-Roman charitable survival tactics, Jesus is asking his followers to go to greater lengths. Then we should ask why? or to serve what purpose?.
My conjecture is this: the standard Greco-Roman practice was for the survival of the polis. Jesus' Sermon taught modes of behavior for the survival of the ecclessia. Now I am going to change one word.
- Survival.
- Proselytize.
The resurrection of Jesus ushered in the welcoming of the Gentiles (nations) back into Yahweh's dominion. The book of Acts is the record of the beginning of this process. In that process, the purpose is more than just survival, it is promotion of a message. It should be an easy anticipation to understand they would be socially abused, sometimes jailed, or worse. It would not achieve the goal of the Gentiles being pulled back into Yahweh's people if the believers just hunkered down and tried to survive. They would need, during times of abuse, to still offer Yahweh's dominion to the Gentiles around them.
If what I just conjectured is correct, it has a few implications. Using our vantage point of hindsight, I think the Sermon on the Mount was mode of operation for the early years of the ecclessia amongst the Gentiles. Once it reached critical mass, especially the day Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, this strategy of selfless promotion by a minority sect to a wider population is functionally unneeded. To say it stronger, this mode of selfless promotion of a message is over, and staying in that mode would be dysfunctional.
If that is the case, then it is extremely noteworthy the asceticsm, the archetype of the saint, the archetype of the monk, in the Holy Roman empire might have been a way to create docile and irrelevent people, people that stay out of the economy and politics. I say this critique with some tempered caution. The Christians that went on Crusades to undo Islamic rulership and control of territories were often deeply sacrificial in their serving of their God, and should be considered in a good and useful mode that is somewhat like a monk. Though note, it is a vigorous and physically imposing mode on the world.
Which lends to my general theme that sacrificial, selfless pacifism to serve Yahweh was over a few centuries after Jesus' resurrection.
Sequence of the Research.
My goal was to unfold and understand the Sermon on the Mount from a second-tabernacle Judaism perspective, because all of the listening audience were listening to the speech by Jesus with that perspective. To say it another way, the Sermon on the Mount is message within second-tabernacle Judaism. Not within 8th century Holy Roman orthodoxy, or Catholicism, or Protestantism.
My inspiration was the general modus operandi of Hebrew Language scholar Michael Heiser.
Trying to find the take on the Sermon on the Mount that avoids the last two millennia theological conclusions was going to be near impossible. So I devised the following question for Google AI.
Question for AI: List the norms of charitible giving in Roman era Israel.
Answer from AI:
There is no universally agreed-upon definition of "charitable giving" in the context of Roman-era Israel. However, some possible norms of charitable giving that were present in Roman-era Israel include:
Tzedakah: This Hebrew word, often translated as "charity" or "righteousness," refers to the Jewish religious obligation to give to those in need. Tzedakah was seen as a way to fulfill God's commandments and to create a more just society. Ma'aser ani: This was a tithe (10% of one's income) that was given to the poor. It was seen as a way to ensure that everyone had enough to eat and to prevent poverty.
Leket, shikh'hah, and pe'ah: These were laws that required farmers to leave a portion of their crops in the field for the poor to glean. This was seen as a way to ensure that everyone had access to food, even if they could not afford to buy it. Hospitality: It was considered a religious duty to welcome strangers and travelers into one's home and to provide them with food and shelter. This was seen as a way to show compassion and to help those in need.
In addition to these specific norms, there was also a general expectation that people would help those in need, regardless of whether they were Jewish or not. This was based on the belief that all people are created in God's image and that we have a responsibility to care for one another.
Overall, the norms of charitable giving in Roman-era Israel were based on a combination of religious beliefs, social customs, and economic realities. They reflected a deep commitment to helping those in need and to creating a more just and compassionate society.
The above AI generated response gave a few terms to explore in a web search. I decided to focus on tzedakah first. There was a massive amount of contemporary Judaic webpages functioning as commentary or advocating the practice today. Nothing wrong with that but I was after an academic writing on tzedakah as practiced in the centuries immediately surrounding Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. I was after any doctoral authority on Second-Tabernacle Jewish Culture that addressed their practices of charity.
I found exactly that in the following:
How Tzedakah Became Charity -Dr. Gregg E. Gardner
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