Russellonius

It is a generally accepted fact that a writer prior to about 200CE claimed that Paul paid for a vow that four men associated with Peter and James were undergoing in Jerusalem. We could debate the ad terminus quem but the fact that the claim was made is secure. We all have copies.

The nazirite vow involves shaving the head so it is generally assumed it was the type of vow alleged to have been paid for by Paul. (Acts 21:24)

The nazirite vow involves abstention from wine. Therefore it is a secure fact, if indeed it was is nazirite vow depicted, that the author of Acts claimed that the group associated in the literature with a certain Jesus practiced a ritual that required abstention from wine.

Is it not logical to deduce that the practice of the nazirite vow with its prohibition of wine depicted among the Jerusalem group, whether or not representing historical events, would preclude the possibility and render false the claims within the contextual environment of the gospels that allege that Jesus taught a wine drinking ritual to his disciples?

Or is it possible that the Jerusalem group presented in the story is imagined as practicing a communal wine drinking ritual from which members would be excluded when they entered a higher state of piety? This is the opposite of what we observe in nature!

It seems to me that having texts allows us to proceed with trying to work from facts regardless of whether what the texts say is historically true or verifiable. The received texts do in fact say what they say. That is secure.

Considering that Paul’s texts depict him as having received a mystical teaching from a supernaturally christened Jesus to drink wine commemoratively and three of the four canonical gospels depict the same activity taking place among Jesus and his disciples, and, assuming the author of Acts allows us to logically deduce that the group associated with Jesus is depicted as not practicing a pious ritual that included wine, what could have been the author's motivation to do so?

And why would the author depict Paul as paying for it? Those under the vow would not have been able to practice Paul’s wine drinking ritual. Why would the author want readers to believe that Paul was motivated to supply funds to enable four men to become ineligible to participate in a ritual that was central to his teaching?

andrewcriddle

Paul is depicted as providing funds for the vow to be completed, which would end the period of the men's separation and allow them to rejoin the community and drink wine again.

(Financial resources were not required to become a Nazirite but in order to carry out the ritual which ended ones period of Nazirire separation.)

Andrew Criddle

DCHindley

Russelonius,

I think what you need to do is research offerings, which are from Jews and reverant gentiles who live abroad. What is done with them? "Freewill" and "peace" offerings from Jews must be offered before the alter in Jerusalem. There must have been other gifts as well, from both Jews and Gentiles, that did not end up as sacrifices, as I have read that about half the temple revenue came from offerings. In the case of temple tax, there are cases where Roman officials tried to confiscate the sums collected in the provinces while in transport to Judea (the Romans had some pretty strict rules about moving about relatively large sums of money), and higher officials had to intervene to free them up again, as transport of such gifts had been a privelige granted to Jews by the emperors. In post temple times, the Jewish Patriarch in Jamnia dispatched "apostles" to collect these gifts and "taxes" from those in the Diaspora.

There is a section on this in the revised English edition of Emil Schürer's The Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (vol II, 1979, pages 309-313, go to the local library as the volumes of this book are currently out of print). Acceptable gifts from gentiles included sacrifices offered by reason of a vow or as voluntary offerings (except peace offerings), specifically burnt offerings, grain offerings and drink offerings. Besides sacrificial offerings, Gentiles could also bring votive offerings to the temple. I do not know whether folks were permitted to "freelance" the collection of offerings not brought to the temple (if they could sneak them past the Roman officials) but it is possible.

The wine & bread ritual may have originated after Jesus' time and then projected back to his own day. For Jews and gentiles away from Judea, who would be ineligible to take on a Nazirite vow on account of the general impossibility to maintain ritual purity in Roman and Hellenic environments, there would be no impact. However, it does raise an eyebrow that the author of Acts did not realize the inconsistency.

Conditions of Nazirite vow:
RSV Numbers 6:1 And the LORD said to Moses, 2 "Say to the people of Israel, When either a man or a woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the LORD,

• 3 he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink; he shall drink no vinegar made from wine or strong drink, and shall not drink any juice of grapes or eat grapes, fresh or dried. 4 All the days of his separation he shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds or the skins.
• 5 "All the days of his vow of separation no razor shall come upon his head; until the time is completed for which he separates himself to the LORD, he shall be holy; he shall let the locks of hair of his head grow long.
• 6 "All the days that he separates himself to the LORD he shall not go near a dead body. 7 Neither for his father nor for his mother, nor for brother or sister, if they die, shall he make himself unclean; because his separation to God is upon his head. 8 All the days of his separation he is holy to the LORD.

• 9 "And if any man dies very suddenly beside him, and he defiles his consecrated head, then he shall shave his head on the day of his cleansing; on the seventh day he shall shave it. 10 On the eighth day he shall bring two turtledoves or two young pigeons to the priest to the door of the tent of meeting, 11 and the priest shall offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering, and make atonement for him, because he sinned by reason of the dead body.
• And he shall consecrate his head that same day, 12 and separate himself to the LORD for the days of his separation, and bring a male lamb a year old for a guilt offering; but the former time shall be void, because his separation was defiled.

Discharging the Nazirite vow:
RSV Numbers 6:13 "And this is the law for the Nazirite, when the time of his separation has been completed:

• he shall be brought to the door of the tent of meeting, 14 and he shall offer his gift to the LORD,

• one male lamb a year old without blemish for a burnt offering,
• and one ewe lamb a year old without blemish as a sin offering,
• and one ram without blemish as a peace offering,
• 15 and a basket of unleavened bread, cakes of fine flour mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers spread with oil,
• and their cereal offering
• and their drink offerings
  
• 16 And the priest shall present them before the LORD and offer his sin offering and his burnt offering, 17 and he shall offer the ram as a sacrifice of peace offering to the LORD, with the basket of unleavened bread; the priest shall offer also its cereal offering and its drink offering.
• 18 And the Nazirite shall shave his consecrated head at the door of the tent of meeting, and shall take the hair from his consecrated head and put it on the fire which is under the sacrifice of the peace offering.
• 19 And the priest shall take the shoulder of the ram, when it is boiled, and one unleavened cake out of the basket, and one unleavened wafer, and shall put them upon the hands of the Nazirite, after he has shaven the hair of his consecration,
• 20 and the priest shall wave them for a wave offering before the LORD; they are a holy portion for the priest, together with the breast that is waved and the thigh that is offered;
• and after that the Nazirite may drink wine.

21 "This is the law for the Nazirite who takes a vow. His offering to the LORD shall be according to his vow as a Nazirite, apart from what else he can afford; in accordance with the vow which he takes, so shall he do according to the law for his separation as a Nazirite."

DCH

Russellonius

Touche. You are correct, Mr Criddle, and my question concerning Paul's motivation in paying for it was based on a faulty premise.

Nevertheless, the presence of the nazirite vow among the group at Jerusalem would indicate logically that the group at Jerusalem would not have been practicing a ritual that included drinking wine. It does not seem plausible that a religious group would have an established rule - excluding members from a community ritual when they entered a higher state of piety - that is opposite to what is actually observed in nature. Exclusion from communal rites is reserved for those who are at a lower state of piety than community standards, not higher, as we empirically observe in nature.

So the question (not based on a faulty premise) is, do the texts factually allow us to deduce that the group at Jerusalem did not practice a wine drinking ritual?

I say 'yes' unless it can be shown that a religious tradition exists in nature in which entering a higher state of piety would exclude the member from practicing a communal ritual that they would otherwise be eligible to engage in had they remained at the lower state.

In that case we would be able to use a claim that is in fact found in the text (that the nazirite vow was a practice among the group in Jerusalem) to exclude the possibility that other claims found in the texts (that a person named Jesus taught his followers to engage in a wine drinking ritual) could be historically factual.

Therefore, if the claim that the nazirite vow was practiced by the group at Jerusalem is true, then the claim that Jesus taught his followers to practice a wine drinking ritual would be proven factually false within the contextual environment.

Paul's paying for the end of the vow would make the four men again eligible to participate in a wine drinking ritual, but such a ritual does not seem to have been in practice among the group at Jerusalem if my analysis is correct.

Do the texts allow us to logically deduce that the group at Jerusalem did not practice a wine drinking ritual?

Russellonius

DCHindley, thank you for your thoughtful response and suggestion. It says I'm a newcomer to your left, but I am not a newcomer to studies on this topic.

If Paul wrote in the 50's and died in the early 60's, then the temininus ad quem for the origin of the wine/bread ritual he describes is not very late in the progression of Christian origins. Certainly the teaching of it would have been extant contemporary to his visit to Jerusalem which he describes as taking place after 17 years of his ministry.

I'm trying to establish that the wine ritual was Pauline and cannot be traced to 'the disciples of Jesus'/Pillars/Jerusalem group.

You claim that "the author of Acts did not realize the inconsistency." I think there is no good reason for that assertion and what the texts show is that the Pauline group was in opposition to the Jerusalem group, proven by differing standards about ritual use/non-use of wine. (Also, the ceremonial wine is not drank in the gospel of Luke, hence no inconsistency for the author of Luke/Acts.)

I would assert that our texts include deliberate misrepresentation of events that occurred within the group led by the (so-called, per Paul) Pillars. The texts and simple application of logic seem to allow us to prove that the wine drinking ritual was a Pauline teaching that was not held in common with the people who could have actually met the historical Jesus (assuming one existed) - the group centered at Jerusalem.

DCHindley

Always happy to see someone doing a little research on their own. That's how I like to do it.

I always have issues with contrasting Acts to the Pauline letters, especially when they are treated at face value. To take any particular Pauline letter at face value, one must assume it to be occasional (off the cuff and thus not intended for posterity or instruction of a unique point of view) and not seriously modified by an editor or editors in the course of publication. Acts is explaining the origins of the Christian faith to an audience, and thus cannot be taken on face value, but must be assumed to be communicating what the author wants to think was so.

When one comes across a passage that makes one stop & pause (the technical term in source criticism is "aporia"), one is either encountering a seam between sources (either written or oral) used by the author, or between a source and the comments or additions of the author or editor.

I'll have to get back later on the issue of evidence in the NT for the bread/wine ritual, and speculation about its origins.

DCH

andrewcriddle

There are a number of options. Have you considered the possibility that Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, when observing a Nazarite vow, celebrated the Eucharist using bread and water not bread and wine ? There is some evidence that later Jewish Christians (Ebionites) used water instead of mixed water and wine in the Eucharist.

Andrew Criddle

Russellonius

Thanks for the vocabulary. Another possibility would be that one is encountering a rift between groups that would give clues regarding the schism that resulted in Christianity becoming a stand-alone religion, exempting itself from the Torah requirements of Judaism.

That would be a very generous interpretation. To suppose that the group at Jerusalem practiced both a sacred ritual that featured wine as a central symbol, and a sacred vow that prohibited wine, you would have to allow that wine could be seen as both sacred and profane for ritual purposes within the same religious system. Which would be more holy, the abstainer or the imbiber? Sounds like either a confused system or two different systems.

A more logical conclusion would be that the group that considered wine a profane thing - to be avoided when in a higher state of piety - was not the same group that considered it to be sacred. This would account both for evidence that the Ebionites had a water drinking ritual and that Paul left the Jerusalem Council, at which he did not defend his teaching, in the protective custody of 470 Roman soldiers, 70 of them mounted as was Paul and his entourage. We may not be able to take this event in Acts as historical, but that’s what was claimed. There seems to have been a rift among the groups having to do with Paul’s teaching against the customs of Moses.

Revelations/Apocalypse of John represents a group devoted to Jesus Christ, “who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood,” (1:5) that gives a very negative evaluation of drinking wine. “Wine of fornication, wine of impure passion, wine of God's wrath.” There is no positive connection shown in that text between wine and devotion to Christ.

One of the more memorable images in that text involves wine turning to blood:

The wine/blood is not the blood of Jesus. It is not meant to be drank. It would seem to have the opposite of saving grace.

There is nothing in Revelations about wine or blood that corresponds to Paul, in his writing, claiming that wine turned to blood represents the blood of Jesus.

In Revelations, drinking of blood is likened to one of the plagues in Egypt:

Here we find that the ones who killed people like Jesus are the ones for whom blood drinking is appropriate – as punishment.

We find that a concern of the author of Rev is that in the churches are some “who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie.” (3:9) These people “hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice immorality.” (2:14)

In Romans 14 and 1 Cor 8 we find that Paul was like “the woman Jezebel, [of Rev 2:20] who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and beguiling my servants to practice immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols.”

Therefore, it seems that early Christian groups can be categorized pro/con regarding attitudes toward drinking wine and drinking blood.

The group at Jerusalem considered wine a profane thing to be avoided while in a higher state of piety and they prohibited Paul from teaching the drinking of blood. The author of Rev falls in the same camp depicting the drinking of blood as a curse or as an abomination (17:6) and the drinking of wine as associated with the ‘drunkenness’ of the “lying Jews” who teach the sons of Israel that they may eat food sacrificed to idols.

Paul and Jezebel/the Whore of Babylon would fall into the other, pro-drinking wine/blood camp in early Christianity (that advocated abandonment of the prohibition of eating what had been sacrificed to idols).

It would be irresponsible to claim that the people behind Revelations might have been practicing a ritual that involved drinking wine (or symbolic blood of a martyr). But the text gives sufficient cues that we should suspect that other Christian groups might have been. (Which we are able to verify.)

I think the reason the author of Acts tells us that the Pillars prohibited Paul from teaching the drinking of blood was because they did not teach or practice such a ritual themselves. And everybody knew it. The presence of the nazirite vow in their midst suggests as much. Also please refer to the condition of the knees of James the brother of the Lord. Who said we don't need a Temple anymore?

Paul did not learn what he claimed to have received supernaturally from "the Lord" - to drink wine calling it blood - from the group at Jerusalem, nor they from him.

Russellonius

From James Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty, p 202 (or via: amazon.co.uk)
Would anybody want to discuss this topic with me if it was James Tabor's idea, not mine? We both arrived at it independently. I might have hit on it earlier than him: 1999. His book was published in 2006.

We cannot accept Peter's vision of the sheet in Acts as being historical, or that a voice from heaven instructed Peter to violate the customs of Moses, but the text of Acts is historical. Somebody really did write that Peter had such a vision. Did the author want us to think that Peter forgot there was blood in the cup? Blood is unclean! According to Acts, Peter did know that blood was unclean because he was party to the Jerusalem Decree that prohibited, among other things, blood. There is something going on here.

This is my third attempt to get somebody here to discuss with me the idea that the elements of the Eucharist cannot be traced back to the group associated with Jesus. At another site I was shouted down for being an 'apologist' - for claiming that Jesus did not institute the Eucharist!!!

People here are willing to talk to lunatics. People who come here wanting to save your souls or to point out that you are going to hell get lots of attention (prior to being banned).

If nobody wants to discuss this topic with me it would be nice if somebody would explain to me, why?

Toto

I think you're correct, but I don't know what else to say to advance the discussion. The idea of drinking the blood and eating the flesh of the savior probably came from one of the mystery religions, but not a lot has survived about those mysteries, so it is hard to trace the lineage.

BTW I have been told that James Tabor is very smart, but I think Tabor has a reputation in his profession that is not much higher than that of Acharya S. I don't know of any academic who thinks much of his Jesus Dynasty theory, or of his association with James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici in the film the Lost Tomb of Jesus.