Welcome to In Unitatem Fidei, where we discuss questions of the unity of the church. And today we are so grateful to be speaking with internationally renowned biblical scholar john Walton. John Walton is professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College and graduate school, and the author of many books, including this one from the Lost World Series, the Lost World of Torah law as covenant and wisdom in ancient context. Dr. Walton, we're really honored that you would join us today.
You know, I'm really delighted to be here with you and to talk about these important and exciting issues.
First of all, what you are a teacher and Dr. Walton, I think you have, are you around 40 years of teaching at the college level or graduate school level? Is that right?
Yep. 20 years of moody and 20 years at Wheaton.
Congratulations, that is really an amazing accomplishment. And God has given you so much fruit during that those years of teaching. We're in a really different season of teaching as of 2020. In this this COVID world, what are you learning as a classroom instructor from all of this chaos that we're together working through?
Well, lots of what I'm learning is, how not to do things you're teaching online, I've found that it's really easy to do it badly. And not easy at all to do it. Well. I've found that it's easy to be reductionistic, to reduce at all to trying to get across some basic information. And along the line, even education might not really be taking place, let alone relationships with students that add so much to the educational experience in our kind of setting. So I guess I'm finding how difficult it is to do it well. And I add my worst moments, I fear that it really can't be done as well as, as in person teaching, although I know that there are experts in online that would, would object to that.
So I should ask, do you see this COVID crisis as an existential threat to our way of doing education?
Well, I, I think that it, I think that it does pose a threat, because I just don't feel that the online environment can be as good. You know, in person teaching can be bad, there's no question about it, people can do it badly. And I know that online experts, I can do it well and make the best of that platform. I know that online has a lot of potential for reaching people who could never come and be in school, I get all of that. But when it comes down to the level of education, I am just not yet convinced that a virtual context can be as effective as in person instruction.
I super appreciate the insights. And when you say that online education cannot be or you're afraid that it cannot be as good. What exactly are you missing, when you transfer your practice of teaching to an online environment?
I find that there's a lot less energy, even if the students are very excited about it. There's it's just very difficult to generate energy. It's difficult to generate any kind of synergism about the materials you're covering, it's difficult to get the level of input and involvement that you could normally achieve. Just lots of things like that things that are difficult to measure.
Cool. We are super grateful to be speaking with you today. And if I can start out just by reading a paragraph from the introduction, this comes from page five of your text, but I think it'll kick us off in the right direction. So you write this at the core of this book is the understanding that the ancient world was more interested in order than in legislation per se, and authorities were not inclined to make what we call laws. Though decrees are commonplace to regulate everyday life in society, instead of relying on legislation. That is a formal body of written law enacted by an authority order was achieved through the wisdom of those who govern society. This understanding will dramatically affect our interpretation of the text consideration of the interrelationships of the various biblical biblical collections, and discernment of the significance of the Torah for today. We have to often looked to the Torah to construct legislation, as if Torah were intended to be legislation. If we continue if as we contend, it was never intended as legislation, then that is the wrong approach. If the focus of the tour is ordering wisdom, then it will provide for us an understanding Have order and wisdom, at least in an Israelite context, we will then have to determine the relevance that that has for us today. So this is an ambitious project what you're intending to do and helping us to understand the Torah in this new light. For you it from your study, would you be willing to explain to us what do you mean by Torah?
Sure, I'm trying to use it in a basically biblical way. That is, of course, today, when we talk about the canon, sometimes we talk about the Pentateuch, as the Torah. And, you know, the Torah, the law, that the prophets, the writings, things of that sort of, we talked about it as a canonical category. But that's not how it's used in the Old Testament. And I don't use it that way. I'm referring to it more to the kind of material that's labeled as Torah, in Scripture, either in the context of being given or in the context of looking back at it. Again, we've often translated that as the law. And that's one of the big things that I can test in the book. So Torah, is that material that is so labeled, both in the Pentateuch, and of course, other places in the prophets in the wisdom literature. And so that's how I'm thinking about Torah. Now, it's one thing to say, this is what I'm getting at. It's another thing to say, what's the English translation to render it? You see that I slid around that, and I just call it Torah. And then I work out the definition, I don't know that we really have a good English word that's going to equate to it. But that's what I'm referring to the material that is labeled torok, within the text of the Hebrew Bible.
If I may ask, what's the genesis of this theory for you? You've been doing Old Testament studies for a long time, when did you begin to peer into this and realize, aha, I think Torah does not mean legislation, even though as translated law, many English ears would assume that Torah meant legislation.
It's been a long, slow process. I mean, I started recognizing the value of the ancient Near Eastern texts that deal with similar information. Back in the 90s, the early 90s. So that was even coming out of my PhD work and doing it that way. But then to try to start to understand exactly how that literature functioned in the ancient world, and how the Bible was similar but different than that. And what all of that meant has been just a very, very long process.
Are there passages in the Old Testament where the translation of Torah, as legislation are obviously incorrect, and really helps separate those senses for us?
I don't know that many translations actually use the word legislation, they use law. And the problem is that in our minds, when we hear the word law, you know, if you think of the word as the backpack, and then what's in it. And so what do we think of when we hear the word law, and we think of legislation, we think of lawyers and judges in cases and verdicts and legislative bodies and written texts and all of these things. So it's, it's what stuffed in the backpack? that's problematic. And so the minute we call the backpack law, we've got a problem. So that's, those are the issues that I want to try to get at. This isn't just a matter of translation. This is a matter of understanding a concept, and what all is entailed in that concept for the people who use the word. So anytime that it's translated law. In the Old Testament, I would argue that to some extent, that is misleading. I'm not going to go so far as to say that is corruptive or distorting, although maybe sometimes it could be. But the idea of misleading I think catches it more, because it sets us up as modern readers to think in certain ways that they weren't thinking.
In this text in in alignment with the other last books in the last World Series, you use the structure for the book as a series of propositions. You've got 23 propositions that you give to us in this text. And if I can take us to proposition six, quote, the Israelite covenant effectively functions as an ancient Near Eastern suzerainty treaty. Would you be willing to help us understand what do you mean by a suzerainty treaty? Please?
Sure. As soon as we're in, of course, it's not a word that a lot of English readers or speakers use. But basically the scissor is the king and suzerainty treaties are treaties made between that King and other entities, they might be at entities are political entities, national entities. And so they make treaties, most of them fall into the category of what we call vassal treaties. And therefore you have the Susan who is in a superior status and position and the vassal, who is in a subordinate position. So these are suzerainty treaties, but most of them are also vassal treaties. And I believe that that what we find in the covenant in the Old Testament is the same. Of course, in the Old Testament, the suzerain is not a human King, but it's, it's your way. It's God, who is the Susan, and Israel is the vassal. And so this is setting up a relationship. It's not setting up, only a theological way of thinking. It's setting up a relationship that has its parallels in the international context of the ancient world. And the history of comparative studies. This, this analysis of ancient treaties, and the biblical covenant was one of the earliest big deals. Now it goes back into the 40s and 50s 1940s 1950s. And was recognized as a point of comparison, largely because it was noticed that the biblical covenants, particularly Deuteronomy, in a place like Joshua 24, followed the same basic layout as international treaties in the ancient world. So that became a basis of comparison against similarities and differences. We have a corpus of treaties in the middle of the second millennium that are Hittite, we have another corpus in the middle of the first millennium that are new with Syrian, and they have similarities between themselves, but also some differences. And so we have this whole discussion. So many people saw the significance of that, as not only routing the covenant in an ancient Near Eastern genre, but also potentially giving information for a dating. You know, how we could date Deuteronomy, or or the covenant idea. I'm not convinced that it's as helpful for that, as it is for helping us to understand really what how the covenant is meant to function, that it actually does set up your way, not just as their God, of course he is, but sets up your way as their king. And covenant faithfulness, works along pretty much the same lines as a vassals faithfulness to a king in the ancient world. And so it's not just the god ship. Right? I think I made that up. But it's the kingship of Yahweh. And so these ideas of Yahweh being a jealous God, well, that's very much like a Susan would be jealous with regard to the faithfulness of his vassal, the vassal couldn't go serving another king, and think that that would be okay. And so you pick up that it's not, it's not just an issue of monotheism, there's only one God, it's an issue of faithfulness and loyalty to a covenant relationship. Those are just a couple of the things that
it's so amazing, and really a beautiful insight, beautiful window into what's going on in the the Old Testament literature. I'm always amazed how many languages Old Testament scholars read a sometimes a dozen or more. So this material, these insights that you bring to the table helping us understand the Old Testament, those are hard won insights, in many cases, can take decades for scholars to uncover and discuss. If you were to assign folks interested in biblical studies who were church goers, not academics, you were going to assign them maybe one or two books where they could get the most bang for their buck in helping to understand the history and culture of the Old Testament. I'm thinking of primary sources, what might you assign to us?
Well, for primary sources, the best anthology is called context of Scripture. It's a four volume work, it's not cheap. But that's the best collection of ancient Near Eastern texts, translations and introductions and comments that have significance for Biblical interpretation. So that'd be the best anthology.
Dr. Walden if I can take us on to proposition 16. proposition 16. On page 133 of your text, proposition 16 reads the Torah should not be divided into categories to separate out what is relevant. So it's been traditional for Christians of many different denominations when they look at the old testament to sort out The the Civic laws that is say not to eat shellfish and the dietary laws from the moral laws say the 10 commandments. But I think you're telling us that that is an artificial separation of the law and shouldn't be done. So why in your view, if we separate out civic and dietary laws is that is that giving us a distorted view of the Torah?
Well, to me anything that imposes a structure or classification system on the text, that the text itself is not aware of risks distortion, that is, did the Israelites think of it in three categories? moral ritual, and civic or social? Did they divided that way? Did they see some of them as more important or less important than others? And look as hard as I can, I don't see that they made those distinctions. This is, this is unified. This is all one system. And it's not intended to focus on their society, or their rituals or their morals. It's intended to focus on order, living in the presence of God. And order ranges across the whole of our experience and living day to day. So they saw all of these as features of order. And so when we tried to categorize them and break them out, and of course, that was done, because people were saying, well, we're not responsible for their rituals, Jesus came, and oh, one other society like them, so we don't need to do those things. Yet, all morality is important. And so we're going to extract morality. Now, I don't want to suggest that the Torah doesn't have anything to offer us in terms of morality, but it is not a moral system. And if we only look at it to extract morality, we're missing what it what it's doing.
Dr. Walton, this, this theory that you're espousing in this book, that Torah shouldn't be understood as legislation, but should be understood as his wisdom, God's wisdom for the ordering of society. Is that is that a theory that applies to all historical layers of the Torah that we have? Some Old Testament scholars will tell us that that tour is written over a long period of time, some some one point, Israel is a very much an agricultural society, a nomadic culture, I'm sorry, nomadic culture at one point. And then at other times, the people are building houses, they're building cities. And there's you can see the change in culture there through the Old Testament. Is this understanding of Torah as God's wisdom for the order society, something that persists through the history of the giving of the law?
Yes, I would say that it is some scholars feel a lot of confidence in sorting out layers and sources and additions and redactions. And I don't, I don't have, I don't share that confidence. Rather, I'd like to see how the laws functioning. Sorry, did I just say, law, how the tour is functioning? Okay, so yes, no matter what kind of society it is, they're seeking order. It's the primary value in the ancient world. And they're seeking order. all societies are still today, all societies do. Order is one of those things that transcends culture, because it is inherent in humanity in our nature, and therefore, they're seeking order. And in the ancient world, wisdom is the pathway to order. That's what wisdom is. And of course, it pertains to every aspect of life. You can read that in Proverbs, all the different aspects. You need wisdom, so that you have order in your family order, in your relationships, orders with their order, with your spouse, or your kids order, with the government order with God, ordering what you speak and, and choices you make. Wisdom is a pathway to order. Well, what we find in the Torah and of course, sometimes even in Proverbs, they speak of that wisdom as Torah. It's a wisdom thing. But even in the Pentateuch, we find that these provisions that they give, again, not laws, not legislation, are there to help them understand wisdom, and how to proceed in those aspects of life.
So So Dr. Walker, this is great, really helpful as we tried to get a frame of reference for your study. Now, where things get super interesting from a Christian point of view is that the law is not just the or excuse me, I'll adopt your terminology to the Torah is not just a book for the Jewish people, but but the Christian tradition has received this as the Old Testament, right and so The question of the Christian reception of Torah is where all of this, the rubber meets the road. And and the Christian tradition has argued over this for a very, very long time. So let's begin with the words of Jesus if, if you may, because I think that's even maybe at the bedrock of the Christian reception of Torah. So Jesus tells us in as recorded in Matthew 517, he says, Do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets, I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. So in your text, your you argue this is on page 54, that Torah, quote, does not consist of rules to be obeyed. Therefore, its objective is not to be is not achieved by obeying rules. How do you understand with this theory in place, how do you understand the words of Jesus there for Matthew five,
I think the first thing to take note of is that Jesus is addressing the situation in his day. So he's not trying to go all the way back and say, you know, let me talk to you about Moses, you know, or, or the Torah within the covenant of Israel, he's talking about the situation of his day. And by which time the Pharisees and other Jewish scholars have made the Torah into a particular way of thinking. And so he's addressing that, first of all. And second of all, when you talk about Jesus as fulfilling Torah, if you're thinking about Torah, as legislation or law, you can understand that that would be problematic. What does it mean to fulfill AI laws or legislation? But since I don't believe that's what Torah means, I don't think that's what he's talking about. In other words, if we're going to understand what he's fulfilling, and how he's fulfilling it, we need to understand what Torah is. If Torah is wisdom, it's going to help us understand order. There's nobody more important than Jesus for helping us understand that. In the book, I talked about the provisions that we find in the Pentateuch, as under the category that I called s spective. That is, it gives us examples. But the examples can never give you the whole thing. Again, go back to the ancient international treaties. When you talk about faithfulness to the Susan. That's endless, little details. Well, in the treaty, though, they'll list a few of them, the more important ones. But you can't just say, Well, I did those five things. So now I've fulfilled the the expectations of this treaty. No, no, no, that's their spective. That's only the beginning. Likewise, then when we think about wisdom for ordered living, Proverbs is a spective. They're examples, they kind of take the provisions are a spective. And so we find out that there's always more to it. And so Jesus can say, he's going to fulfill it, because he's going to show us the pathway to wisdom and order in him in Christ. And that New Covenant that's launched, puts us in Christ, and to understand wisdom in order through who Jesus is and what he's doing. That is the fulfillment that I think he's speaking up.
Do you think this is part of what Jesus finds so annoying about the Pharisees interpretation of the Torah, that they see it as legislation? Does that play into the Gospel accounts?
Sure. Not only that, they see it somewhat as legislation, not the same as modern day, but still, they had moved that direction. And the fact that they then interpreted those provisions in such a way that they could exploit the loopholes, and actually do something that was contrary to what wisdom in order would have called for. And Jesus calls them on that. That's the whitewashed tombs kind of thing, their hypocrisy.
Well, so I'm also thinking then of Paul the apostle. So I'm working on this theory trying to get this into my mind. One of the passages that comes to mind is good Galatians four, I had to just look this up, but actually, I'm sorry, Galatians 324, where Paul tells us that the Torah translated I think, ESV their law was a tutor to bring us to Christ. What do you think the Apostle Paul is talking about there?
Yeah, we spent a couple of pages on that in the book. And again, it's looking into what did a tutor do? And a tutor was not just passing information in an education system. He was leading the child, the student through life, showing them wisdom. You know, I always tell my students proverbs is not a self help course. It's not something that you do on your own. You're supposed to have a mentor to teach Wisdom. And that's more like what the tutor was doing a way of life, not just instruction in the mathematics and arts and humanities or something.
Excellent. So what one last question before we transition and that is, in the early Christian reception of, of the Torah, there was a lot of controversy, a lot of debates in the first century. Paul is a window into those debates, the apostle Paul shows us some of the debates is going on. There's a lot of argumentation about what to do with the law in the church. If if the Torah is God's wisdom, why the controversy? Why was the Torah not wholeheartedly embraced, and simply seen as a wisdom to the I'm sorry, a window into the wisdom that that God presents in Jesus Christ?
Well, remember that the ancient Near Eastern world basically came to an end with the fall of Babylon, then you have two centuries of Persian rule, which changed how people thought. And then you have centuries of Hellenistic rule, which changes how people thought. And so in each of those, and there are books that trace this history, in each of those, there are there are shifts that take place, as they begin to think more toward legislation. And so by the time you get to the first century AD, you've got some people that are actually thinking of it as legislation, which is kind of a direction that the Pharisees are going, you have people that are interacting with Paul, who think of it as a means of salvation, perhaps depends on who you talk to in new perspectives. And so you have those kinds of ideas where, again, the what happened was, the Torah was being repurposed in different ways by different groups. And so lots of the controversy, in my assessment comes about because they're reacting or struggling with those repurposing, instead of being able to go back and say, Wait, what was the tour in the ancient world context, the first century AD, even that time period, they didn't really have access to the ancient Near East, Persia, Hellenism had all washed that stuff, pretty clean. And therefore they they couldn't, they had no way to get back to that. And that's true in the early church as well. They just didn't have access to that. And therefore, they had to work with how it had been repurposed and reappropriated. along the way.
Like a one, we understand that you are, at this point in your career, you've taught Old Testament for 40 years, congratulations. 20 years at Moody Bible Institute in 20 years at Wheaton College. I'm finishing up 11 years of teaching myself. So my hat is off to you, sir. What do you see as some of the most exciting, interesting fields opening up for Old Testament research today?
Well within within evangelicalism, I think there's still an awful lot of work that we have to do, as we think about authority, and how it's reflected authority is is bedrock for me. I mean, it's it's my grounding. But still, how does authority work? And how is it best expressed and how do we understand its its outworking, for instance, in this process of, of reappropriation and repurposing? How, how does authority go along with those things. And so I think there's a lot of work to be done there. When we think about composition, and other the last World of books was the Lost World of Scripture. And there I talked about how the Old Testament world was a hearing dominant world. And therefore writing was not the first impulse and writing was not the main way of communication. And therefore, for us to begin our study of a biblical book and say, who is the author, and when was the book written, are already stepping out of how things actually worked in the ancient world. So in that sense, we have to revise how we think about composition, and how that reflects on biblical authority. So I think that's a really key task. In general, of course, and anything we can do to get to know the ancient world better for its similarities and differences from from the biblical world, I think can be really important.
As you're walking, we're super thrilled to be speaking with you today. And one of the things that we do on this program in want to touch on fee day is explore with biblical scholars and theologians from around the world from different Christian traditions. What would what would a United Church look like? We think that maybe in the next 10 2030 years, there's going to be a lot of development in that in that area as people now have the accent the ability to speak with one another anywhere in the world or denominational structures and ways of relating to one another in different Christian traditions we think will change a bit. So if we can ask you, what would a United Church look like for you? And how is it that we can pursue what Jesus was praying for in john 17?
I think one of the most important and it's a basic thing, stop sniping at one another. Whether it's one local church against another, or one denomination against another, or this blogger against that scholar, whatever it might be, stop sniping at one another. Our pastor has been preaching through First Timothy, and you get to get into First Timothy, and boy, it can't be clearer. And yet we have whole groups of people that take it upon themselves to tear down fellow Christians. It's all over the blogosphere. It's kind of how we've adopted a way of speaking to tear one another down. You know, I have people I get targeted all the time by people who don't agree with what I'm saying. That's fine. I don't expect everybody to agree. But we're Christian brothers who are trying to do our best to be faithful interpreters stop tearing each other down. I think also we have to recognize that have various denominations and various theological schools of thought, all have their part to play in the kingdom of God. We all recognize that not all of us need to be doing the same thing. It's kind of like the gifting in an individual church. You know, we're not all I we're not all, all role mouth. No. We, we don't all do the same thing the same way. But the body of Christ is, is diverse, and has many different ways to work on behalf of the kingdom. And we have to stop criticizing how other people do it and expect them to do it the same way we do. And working out our mission as if that should be everybody's mission. I think churches like God's people, individual churches, like God's people have their ways to focus on certain aspects of the kingdom. And I think we could be more unified if we just recognize that we all have our role to play, and we should do it to
the best of our ability. And our huge honor today to be speaking with dr. john bolton, Professor of Old Testament studies at Wheaton College and graduate school and author of many books, including the text that we've been discussing today, the Lost World of the Torah, long as covenant and wisdom in the ancient context. Thank you so much, Dr. Walton, for joining us today. You're quite welcome. Thank you, Dr. Armstrong.