They did not see God

The people assent to the covenant. Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel ascend the mountain and see God. Moses goes on alone and spends forty days on the mountain. (Exodus 24:1-18)

Focal Point

Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel ascended; and they saw the God of Israel: Under God’s feet there was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity. Yet God did not raise God’s hand against the leaders of the Israelites; they beheld God, and they ate and drank." (Exodus 24:9-11)

Your Guide

Compare the verses "And they saw the God of Israel" (Exodus 24:10) with "God said, ‘You cannot see My face.’" (Exodus 33:20) What aspect of God do you think they saw?

Read the following verses as a compressed narrative: "For man may not see Me and live." (Exodus 33:20); "And they saw the God of Israel." (Exodus 24:10); "Yet God did not raise God’s hand against the leaders of the Israelites." (Exodus 24:11); and "They beheld God, and they ate and drank." (Exodus 24:11) Do you think that they actually did see God and live?

Today we continue to accept that anthropomorphic images of God are meant as metaphors. What are some of the opportunities we have today to see God and live? How do we reconcile these with the teaching that we cannot see God and live?

Although seventy-four people presumably could agree on seeing the pavement below God, they did not have a consensus on what it was like to behold God. Therefore, the pavement was included in the text, but what they saw of God was not. Consider a moment when you believe you "saw God" (literally or metaphorically). How was your vision unique? Did the experience leave you feeling grateful for life or awed that you had survived?

By the Way…

"They saw the God of Israel." They gazed and cast a glance [at God], and therefore they deserved death. However, God didn’t want to mar the rejoicing of the receiving of the Torah, so God waited to carry out the death penalty for Nadab and Abihu until the dedication of the Tabernacle (Leviticus 10:1-2). As for the elders, God waited until the incident mentioned in the verse "The people took to complaining bitterly before Adonai. Adonai heard and was incensed: A fire of Adonai broke out against them, ravaging the outskirts (bik’tzeh) of the camp" (Numbers 11:1), meaning the elders (bak’tzinim) that were in the camp. [The term bik’tzeh hamachaneh ("the outskirts of the camp") is interpreted as "among the officers who were in the camp," that is, the elders.] (Rashi on Exodus 24:10)

Abraham Ibn Ezra explained: They [the seventy-four] saw God in a prophetic vision, as did the prophets Amos in Amos 9:1 and Ezekiel in Ezekiel 1:26. (Nachmanides, quoting Ibn Ezra on Exodus 24:10)

They saw the Kavod of the God of Israel. [This Kavod is the seat of God’s glory or God’s throne.] (Saadiah Gaon)

All this refers to intellectual apprehension and in no way to the eye’s seeing. (Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, I:4)

Bless Thee, O Lord, for the living arc of the sky over me this morning./Bless Thee, O Lord, for the companionship of night mist far above the skyscraper peaks I saw when I woke once during the night./Bless Thee, O Lord, for the miracle of light to my eyes and the mystery of it ever changing./Bless Thee, O Lord, for the laws Thou hast ordained holding fast these tall oblongs of stone and steel, holding fast the planet Earth in its course and farther beyond the cycle of the sun. (Carl Sandburg, "Glass House Canticle" in Harvest Poems, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1960)

If you are in search of the place/of the soul, you are the soul./If you are in search of a morsel/of bread, you are the bread./If you know this secret,/ then you know/that whatever you seek, you are that. (Rumi, a thirteenth-century Persian mystic, quoted in The Power of Prayer around the World, edited by Glenn Mosley and Joanna Hill, Templeton Foundation Press, 2000)

Your Guide

Rashi agrees with the p’shat (most literal) reading of the text: They saw God and therefore died. What is the symbolic difference between seeing God’s Kavod (Saadiah Gaon) and the actual Godhead (Rashi)?

Carl Sandburg notes the ways in which God’s presence can be seen in unexpected places on earth. We strive to recognize the Divine in the world and see God’s glory around us but often overlook God’s presence in our cities and industrial centers. Where do you tend to overlook God’s presence?

If God is not corporeal or contained in a single being, how is seeing the manifestation of God’s work distinct from actually seeing God? Do you agree that human beings "may not see [God] and live"? What aspects of your own life do you think about in connection with this warning?

The poem by Rumi suggests that we can only find that which is already a part of us. Can one who professes to be an agnostic witness the God of Judaism? Must one already believe in God in order to see the Divine?

How can recognizing each manifestation of God in the world change a person’s life?

D’var Torah

There is an inconsistency in our texts and in our general understanding of what it means to see God. On the one hand, we cannot see God and live. On the other hand, we live to see God and recognize the Divine in our loved ones, in strangers, and in the world. How can we reconcile this juxtaposition of contrary ideas?

We must make a distinction between seeing the Divine beauty of the world, a symbol of God’s glory, and the possibility of being stricken down by our audacity to look God in the face as equals.

Seeing God, looking into the eyes and soul of the Creator, understanding and knowing God as we want to know another and be known–these are not possible with God, to whom we are not equal. The seventy-four do not look directly at God but see God from below; they look up at God. The focus of their gaze is on the pavement under God’s throne. They are aware of seeing God, but the center of their attention is on the path that leads to the Eternal. By following that path, we, too, can catch a glimpse of the Eternal God

Jesus’ (Young?) Mother and (Half?) Brothers? The Proto-Gospel of James

Written by Dr. Bart D Erhman

A few days ago lot of readers made comments on the question (thanks to the Roy Moore newsflashes) of whether Mary was a young girl when she got married; and now I have mentioned Jesus’ mother and brothers in Mark’s Gospels.  So let me say a few more things about them.

The earliest non-canonical source that talks about Jesus’ mother (indicating she was a teenager — not something found in the NT) and his brothers (were they really is brothers?) is in the non-canonical Proto-Gospel of James, from some time in the second century.  I thought it might be useful for me to re-post a discussion of the matter from a number of years ago, here:

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The Proto-Gospel of James was very popular in Eastern, Greek-speaking Christianity throughout the Ages, down to modern times; and a version of it was produced – with serious additions and changes – in Latin, that was even more influential in Western Christianity (a book now known as the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew).   In some times and places, these books were the main source of “information” that people had for knowing about Jesus’ birth and family – more so than the NT Gospels.

The idea that Joseph was an old man and Mary was a young girl?  Comes from the Proto-Gospel (not the NT!).   The view that Jesus was born in a cave?   Proto-Gospel.    The notion that at the nativity there was an ox and a donkey?  Pseudo-Matthew.   And there were lots of other stories familiar to Christians in the Middle Ages not so familiar to people today, all from these books – for example, a spectacular account (in Pseudo-Matthew) of Jesus as an infant, en route to Egypt, helping out his very-hungry mother Mary who was eyeing with longing some fruit at the top of a palm tree, by ordering the tree to bend down and yield its produce to her.  It does, and Jesus blesses the tree and guarantees that one of its branches will be taken to Paradise.

The Proto-Gospel was also responsible for the popularity of one particular view of Jesus’ brothers.

So, when I taught at Rutgers, probably ¾ or so of my students were Roman Catholic.  It ain’t that way here in the South.  Here in the South, with my Baptist, non-denominational, Bible-church, and so on evangelical students (the vast majority of them), the historical approach to the NT can be shocking and dismaying.   Students here often get upset when they hear about contradictions in the NT and historical errors, and so on.   At Rutgers, that wasn’t a problem.  (These students were not, as a rule, committed to the infallibility of the Bible.)  The ONE problem that arose, virtually every class I taught, was one I had never expected before getting into this business.  It was when I mentioned something about Jesus’ “brothers.”   Students got really upset when I told them that Jesus probably really did have brothers.   This was a big issue for them.

Why?  Because in the Roman Catholic tradition, Jesus’ mother not only *conceived* him and remained a virgin.   And she not only gave birth to him and yet still was a virgin (hymen intact).   She was *always* a virgin, to her dying day.   The “perpetual virginity of Mary” is a major teaching of the church, and my Rutgers students all knew it.

But what about the people in the NT who are called Jesus’ “brothers”?  If Jesus’ mother never had children, well, who are they?

In the Catholic tradition (usually) they are not simply people close to Jesus (brothers in a spiritual sense, as in “brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today….”).   There are in fact two leading options for who these “brothers” were (James, Joses, Simon, and Jude; sisters are mentioned as well; this is in Mark 6; they are mentioned but not named  as well in John 7).  And the first finds its first support in the Proto-Gospel.

Some of you noticed in the passages that I have quoted that Joseph refers to his “sons.”   In other passages of the book Joseph is explicitly said to be a (very) old widower who is given guardianship over the young virgin girl (12 year old!) Mary.   These sons, then, are obviously Joseph’s children from his previous marriage.  They are, in effect, half-step-brothers of Jesus.  (“Step” because Joseph is not actually Jesus’ father) (which means Jesus isn’t related to these brothers by blood, but that’s just a further oddity).

This view is still held by some Catholics today, but it was roundly and robustly condemned by no less an authority than Jerome in the early fifth century.   And for a very solid reason.   Jerome was a major advocate of an ascetic lifestyle.  A Christian should not, should DECIDEDLY NOT, indulge in the pleasures of the flesh.  No rich foods, no good wine, and no sex.  Preferably, no sex at all.

For this way of life, the Virgin Mary of course came to play an important role.   The mother of the Son of God never had sex, and she was especially blessed of God.  So if you too want to be especially blessed of God….     But for Jerome it was not enough that Mary never had sex.  It was important that Jesus’ adoptive father, Joseph, ALSO never had sex.  And that meant that the so-called brothers of Jesus could not be sons of Joseph from his previous marriage.

Who were they then?

Jerome was a highly learned man, one of the great scholars of Christian antiquity.  And among other things, he was one of the few people in the Latin (Western) church who could actually read Greek.   Jerome insisted that the Greek word for “brother” actually could and often did mean “cousin.”   Jesus’ brothers then were not Joseph’s sons.  They Jesus’ cousins.  Why?  Because Joseph like Mary was a virgin his entire life.  And you should be too!!!

It was precisely because Jerome condemned the Proto-Gospel of James for advancing the view that Joseph had children from a previous marriage that it was virtually dis-used in Western Christianity.  We don’t have any complete manuscripts of it in Latin.  The manuscripts are all in Eastern languages (esp. Greek).  It was only when someone – about 500 years after the Proto-Gospel was first written – in the early 7th century created his own version, in Latin (Pseudo-Matthew) that the great legends of this great book came again to be disseminated in the West.