[Still working on all the points raised by Christian Elder in
Discourse: Christian Elder to Sinaite – 10, Sinaite VAN counters more claims for the divinity of Jesus and the veracity of the New Testament Scriptures. As outsiders listening in a discussion between elders, there is much to gain. Will any side ever win the argument? That is not the point of the discourse, so what is? In the process of a former Christian explaining his views to his Christian colleague-friend-minister, hopefully the other learns to respect the ‘whys’ of his change in direction. Indeed, try to understand what makes one turn away from a religion in which he has served the God he thought he knew devotedly, sincerely, with all his heart, soul and substance for almost 7 decades of his life? —Admin1.]
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Hello again “HE” —
I hope you don’t feel that I am bombarding you with so many emails all at one time. I wanted to address all the points you raised in your long email and since I resorted to chopping up all the topics into separate ‘sends’, I feel I’m making more progress this way, by finishing each topic and sending it off.
This one is about the people of Nineveh to whom the prophet Jonah was sent with a mission: to call the people to repent and change their ways.
Here is that portion of your long email:
“You mentioned before on why only fasting and repentance was required by God of the people in the city Nineveh.
Can we not consider the simple fact that Nineveh was a pagan nation and does not have the Mosaic laws and regulations for sacrifices of atonement required by God from the Israelites?
What else could God possibly require of them that is within the range of their current understanding of appeasing God’s displeasure?”
Thank you for that well thought out answer; good application of hermeneutics, in fact it made me pause and rethink the point I was trying to make, so I am restating the same point with more clarifications.
First, it is not only on the city of Nineveh that simple repentance (outwardly demonstrated by fasting) was required for the forgiveness of sin. I agree with you that Nineveh was —
- not in a privileged position as Israel,
- not informed about the One True God,
- not educated in the requirements of Torah,
—and therefore, very possibly, the requirement of fasting/repentance might have been reduced to meet them at their level of spirituality and understanding.
But let us take a look at Torah-informed-educated-privileged-chosen Israel and YHWH’s requirements for them.
Just like you when I was a Christian, I made the same connections between the whole sacrificial system at the Sanctuary/Temple and the life and sacrificial death of Jesus. Only after closer reading of the Hebrew Scriptures did I realize that I failed to read one keyword: “UNintentional” which is connected with the word ‘sin’. Missing “unintentional sin” is understandable, what with so many detailed instructions regarding the temple “offerings” related to specifics about feasts to be observed/celebrated.
Understandable . . . but inexcusable and should not happen if one is seriously and carefully studying TORAH to check what was originally commanded by YHWH the LawGiver.
I never even thought about sin being unintentional, I always thought it was intentional; why else would it be considered ‘sin’?
When does a person sin unintentionally? Let us think up a few scenarios related to our times:
- Homicide—justifiable taking of life: killing someone in self-defense, running over someone while driving and killing him, soldiers slaying the enemy, and similar cases.
- False witness: Gentiles who covered up locations of Jews under the Nazi regime, lied about hiding them. Not revealing the truth to save lives is often justifiable intentional sin.
- Sex slavery: women caught in prostitution against their will, etc.
If I had more time I could think up more cases, but these suffice. Yes, there is unintentional sin.
How does YHWH the LawGiver who is just and merciful, react to unintentional sin? He provides a way to approach Him through offerings of all kinds (Leviticus lists them).
Now, what about intentional sin?
YHWH provides only one way: repentance.
We understand repentance to mean turning 180 degrees around from a sinning pattern or even one sin committed intentionally.
Yom Kippur is the second to the last feast in Leviticus 23; the day of atonement. We learn from the Jewish teachers that the 10 days between Yom Teruah (feast of trumpets) is observed this way:
- 9 days prior to Yom Kippur, we settle our horizontal relationships — ask forgiveness from those we have wronged, right the wrongs we have done, seek reconciliation with those we have been estranged from, etc.
- Then the 10th day is Yom Kippur, we deal with YHWH our God.
What sins against Him could we possibly set right? Perhaps if we’ve been idolatrous, uttered His Holy Name in vain, worship another God and not Him, then we repent (turn away) from such sins against Him. But what if we have behaved rightly according to Commandments 1-3 and keep the Sabbath?
Realistically, most of our sinning relate to people. The ratio of 9 for fellowmen and 1 for God is lopsided, don’t you think? The message to us, it seems, is how we relate to God ultimately depends on how we relate to the “other” in our midst.
In fact, once we have settled the first 3 commandments relating to God and we observe His Sabbath to obey the 4th, and we do honor our parents, commandment 6-10 address all horizontal relationships.
Our core group have discussed this crucial point: if you live all by yourself in some isolated island, God would not give you commandments 5-10; why? Who is there to murder, commit adultery with, bear false witness against and to whom, etc.
So back to Israel, the chosen. They bear the brunt of divine judgment because they know better but failed to comply. What was required of individual Israelites for intentional sin? Repentance. As a nation, however, there is the offering of two goats, one which is set free and one on whom the sins of the nation are symbolically placed, and therefore offered as a sacrifice but still, the ceremonial gesture means nothing without true repentance. This is why Isaiah the major prophet opens with words of frustration from an angry God about the uselessness of Temple sacrifices when offerers do not live righteously according to Torah.
Now back to Nineveh, the Torah-ignorant people. What was required of them? Same thing, repentance.
We could say that they should have been required to do sacrifices and offerings, since their evil was ‘unintentional’ ? That would have been more difficult for Jonah to accomplish, to get the Ninevites to offer sacrifices but come to think of it, as idolatrous pagans they probably were already doing that to their gods, that is why the One True God was angry with them. Yet our gracious God YHWH requires from them and all humanity the same thing: simple act of repentance.
More coming,
VAN@S6K
