What does Scripture mean by “fulfillment”? (Use the citation from Hosea as an example in your answer.) Second, identify anything you can see in these opening chapters of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that addresses the elements of the Old Testament narrative that we discussed last class.

The words that Hosea the Prophet spoke were “that what the Lord said through the prophet might be fulfilled: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’” (Mt 2:15). The “fulfillment” that Hosea touches on here has in a way already has already been completed as touched on by the reading. God called his chosen “son” out of Egypt and fulfilled the covenant he kept with the people of Israel and Abraham by delivering them(eventually) to the promise land and making of them a great and holy (eventually) nation. However, there are levels to this prophecy and even though it does refer to the past, it also looks forward to the future, as the reading states: Already in Isaiah, however, we see the prophecy pressing on toward the future. Fulfillment isn’t just the promise then that God made to Israel, but the fulfillment rather of his goal for all man to be welcomed in to the kingdom of Heaven and restoring the bonds that was broken after the committing of the first sin and the subsequent depravity of man. The genealogy of Matthew and the symmetry thats represented there gives an almost linear path from the Old Testament to the birth of Jesus and lays out a clear map of the elect throughout all of the Old Testament. In the Gospel of Luke, the first thing that stands out is the similarities between the birth of John the Baptist and the birth of Isaac from Abraham and Sarah. Both are births from barren mothers that the Lord is able to allow to conceive.

1. Two things that happened in Numbers was that the Israelites constantly complained of their liberation and almost wished for them to be back in slavery with the Egyptians, against the plans of the Lord (in general acting very ungrateful). They continue to lament about how they would have been better off if they had died in the wilderness or in Egypt, being completely ungrateful to their freedom(and even considering going back to Egypt). The Lord even expresses his displeasure with the misgivings of the Israelites and considers striking them all down and leaving Moses to forge a better people. He then vows that no one who has treated him with contempt shall ever see the land that he has promised. At ever turn the Israelites defy the Lord, as is seen in the incident with the Moab people. Moses’s condemnation comes because he too slighted the Lord by striking the rock twice in anger with his staff when the Lord had said before that anyone he treated him with contempt shall not enter the land he promised.
2. The death of Moses is to serve as a turning point in the Pentateuch. The first 5 books of the Old Testament are in a way a story of how mankind(and now specifically the people of Israel) is constantly falling further away from the Lord. By the end of the Pentateuch, the people of Israel finally are numerous enough and witnesses to the power of the Lord and know what they have to do to stay in his good favor. Its in a way like the flood, a new generation willing to worship the Lord in a new land, but they are finally now numerous enough to carry out the Lord’s command to Noah(be fruitful and multiply).
3. Even though Joshua serves as a replacement for Moses, Deuteronomy 34 remarks that no prophet since Moses has known the Lord face to face or been as great as he. Though Joshua listens to the Lord, he does not know the Lord like Moses does and it seems that he acts more out of the results the Lord will give him than out of actual faith in the Lord(or at least not as much faith as Moses had). When the Lord approached Moses, the Lord’s powers were up to much more doubt than to the Israelites after they had left Egypt and witnessed the extent of the Lord’s powers firsthand. In a way, Moses was one of the first to truly believe in the Lord of his generation while the rest of the people were still enslaved in Egypt.

(1) What is purity / impurity? (2) Why does God require the maintenance of purity? (3) What is the logic of the laws we encounter related to purity, specifically the food laws?

1. Purity/impurity is a concept that tries to quantify material “closeness” to God. When faith can’t be measured by simply looking at someone (faith is in concept something that it is not “quantifiable” and only exist within someone’s own heart), others are able to witness ritual obedience and ritual towards God. The acts that purity laws and rituals forbid are often things connected to humanities previous mistakes (sex and death being references to the curse of Eden as talked about in Purity and Danger, death being the curse laid upon mankind and sexual promiscuity being an act that God seems to look down upon in the Old Testament). Therefore the concept of purity is one that is connected to bringing the favor of God upon oneself, while impurity is falling further away from God.
2. Like we spoke of how God directs the Israelites towards worship not for his own benefit, but rather for the benefit of the Israelites so that they may be closer to God and gain benefit from his gifts and benevolence. The same reasoning I’m guessing is behind the purity laws and why God requires the maintenance of them. When humanity was at its “worst”, when God was ashamed of his creation and moved to just start anew(with the flood), it was because of humanity slowly slipping into depravity. The purity laws act as protections against this happening again and additionally being beneficial to the followers to maintain a positive spirituality.
3. The logic between the food purity laws is pretty simply. In the ancient world, the danger of uncooked food, or even food coming from specific sources, was real. While the main concern of these laws were the spiritual purity, they served a second purpose of physically protecting those who follow them to prevent them from food related illnesses and such.

“Who is God”. Jumping out of the Joesph Ratzinger reading, I think that the best interpretation of who or what God is is the unity of all Being manifested in one. This interpretation is best informed by Gods role in the creation story, how he acts as the one who gives order to the swirling chaos of water. God doesn’t only bring forth creation, he brings it together as the creator, he gives names to the chaos and thus it is ordered, he creates life and gives it purpose. God is the glue that doesn’t necessarily hold the world together, but rather connects it together. When he makes a covenant with Abraham, he tells him that through his offspring, all nations will be blessed. Though this specific covenant is indeed consecrated with Abraham, God’s plan is one that encompasses the entire world, for he does not just pick one people above the other, for he is unifier of all peoples of the Earth. Some may wonder then if he is the provider of all people, why in the storyline of Moses he so plagues the Egyptians. Though the Israelites indeed do act as God’s “chosen” people throughout the Old Testament, his goodwill is never exclusive only to them. In only the previous chapters of Genesis, it is the land of Egypt which is taken by his blessing and informed of the coming famine through Joseph. When the Israelites get out of line, they too are punished as the Egyptians are punished with plagues in Exodus. God is still the provider of all people, but in the Old Testament special focus is given to the people of Israel, and they act as the catalysts for God’s grace that he wants to be spread throughout the world.

Why does Joseph plant the silver cup? What is the ultimate aim of such a move? How does this relate to his status as the beloved son? Appeal explicitly to the story as a whole (i.e. Gen 37-50) and to article from Anderson in your answer?

The reason Joseph plants the cup is to test his brothers to see if their actions would again mimic their previous actions with him. Previously they had thrown him into the pit and then sold him into slavery because of their jealously and envy(for he was the favored son of Jacob), and Joseph wished to know if this envy was still present. He knew that Benjamin was the favored son of their father, so he put the cup in his sack to see if the other sons would give him up in order to save themselves, and thus gage how they would react to the revelation of his identity. When he sees that Judah pleads for the life of Benjamin, he now knows that the envy has left his brothers hearts and he is finally able to reveal himself. Joseph’s status as beloved son relates to the whole cycle of suffering and rebirth that is associated with the patriarchs of the Bible. The suffering that he endures is obvious, at first he is the favored son of his father and enjoys all his blessings likewise, and then he is sold into slavery and constantly deals with hardships not brought by his own ill deeds(him being thrown into jail and the butler not remembering his promise until 2 years later). However, through all his suffering he is reborn in the way that now he is older, wiser, and an almost governor-like figure of Egypt. Through the suffering he endures, very similar to that of Christ, his brothers(and all of the Middle East) is saved by him and his management of the grains of Egypt.

In the encounter that Jacob has with his assailant, I would say that Jacob wins the encounter but does not “ultimately” win. His entire life he has been using his intelligence and cunning to try and advance his way up in the world, as with how he first grabs his brother coming out of the womb and takes his brother’s birthright for a pot of stew, and now after his match he is finally given the chance to face the divine one on one and prove his place in the family of God, instead of tricking his way into it like he has done with the rest of his accomplishments. Though he “wins” the encounter, I would not say that he dominated or bested his opponent, as God obviously cannot be bested. In his wrestling and refusing to yield, I would say that instead he proved his devotion to this force that he knew was at least divine(if not just outright God himself). So while Jacob wins the wrestling match in the way that the man he is facing decides to yield, ultimately it is Jacob who further pledges himself to will of God, so it is God that wins the encounter. As to who his opponent really is, I would cross out that he was wrestling against his own fears or against an image of his brother. Ultimately it is he who asks of the blessing from the man who he wrestles with, so it would definitely be something divine. Whether it is God himself or an aspect of the divine, such as an angel, I think is pretty inconciquential as it is God who is the ultimate force behind the entire encounter.

What is religion?

Much of how I view and define religion was been influenced by a book that I read recently by Jared Diamond, called Guns, Germs, and Steel. In it Diamond goes through much of human history, from the very earliest forms of humans to the modern day. In this he defines the very traditional institutes such as the Abrahamic religions and most Eastern religions as such, but he also widens the definition to include things such as Communism, Liberalism, and Nationalism as forms of religion. Many people will use religion as a “dirty” word sometimes in order to discredit someones belief in a system as based on illegitimate reasoning, but Diamond doesn’t cast judgment upon this fact. He lists 6 major functions of “religion”, each of which have grown or shrank in importance as time has gone on. The first three are the “traditional” aspects of religion: Supernatural explanations for the natural world, diffuse anxiety of dangers beyond human control, and presenting comfort in the face of pain, suffering, and mortality. The final three are new aspects of religion. “Those new functions of religion have been to teach obedience toward political leaders, to justify the moral codes of peaceful behavior toward strangers within one’s own society and to justify moral codes of killing enemies belonging to other societies with which one’s own society is at war”. Under this definition Patriotism like that which is described in the reading could be defined as a form of religion, as the ultimate good is that of state rather than a god. “In many of the earliest states, religion and patriotism were one and the same, since the religious leader of the state was also the government leader.” This is required almost to keep together large bodies of diverse citizens, to bring a common cause to keep us together, so in a way religion is still the glue that holds the world together.

According to Wilken and Augustine, faith is unavoidable because technically, all things are based on a type of “faith” (as Wilken puts it, on the “testimony of witness worthy of trust”. Augustine says “In practical life, I cannot see how anyone can refuse to believe altogether”. Everything that we accept as truth relies in trust of others to tell us that truth. How much of your own knowledge does one actually derive by themselves, rather than from teachers, books, or other sources of information? If one was truly skeptical to every book they read or every person they spoke to, they would truly never learn because they would spend the entirety of their time questioning. This form of learning, Augustine claims, is similar to the process that one must go through to have faith in God. If one forever questions the credibility of God and Christian teachings without first embracing them, they will never truly understand what they are denying(even if ultimately perhaps religious faith is not for them). Wilken speaks on how must first embrace something wholeheartedly before they can begin to criticize it, for they must first understand before they disprove. In order to learn, one must first have faith. “Learning” extends not only to physical skills that one could learn in books and other things, by also virtue. If you never listened to the lessons of your parents, how might one’s character be different and altered for the worse because you didn’t hold faith in their lessons. Submitting to a greater authority doesn’t only help us be more learned people, but generally better people sometimes, which is a benefit that cannot be gained on its own. The lessons that can be learned from God and Christ are comparable, Augustine claims, and thus should be embraced similarly to how one embraces the teachings of a loving parent.

There are multiple reasons to why Abraham may have listened to the request of God. Firstly, and most obvious, God promises Abraham that he “ will make you into a great nation,and I will bless you; I will make your name great,and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Though Abraham was married to a beautiful woman, he still did not have children by the age of 75 because his wife has barren. Now a voice from the heavens has called him by name, clearly and deliberately, and promises him one of the few things that he most dearly wants, to be made into a great nation aka to have a lineage of his own. In 22:5 I do not believe that Abraham is lying. He says that they will both come back, and I think he believes in the goodness of the lord and thus believes that if he follows Gods commands, he will not ask him to truly sacrifice his son. While I believe he was fully prepared to do it if the Lord commanded it, I believe he also thought that the Lord was either testing him or had other plans. Again, in 22:8, he may have been lying in that very moment, but ultimately it was not. The Lord did provide the sacrifice for Abraham. I believe that Gods intention with this act was in fact to test Abraham. At this point he had seen generation after generation of man disappoint him and turn their shoulder to him, so asking his follower to sacrifice the one thing that he wanted more than anything else, a son, was the ultimate test of faith for Abraham to see if he was worthy of the gifts of the Lord. I believe that while Abraham’s actions are commendable, the fact that he would potentially give his sons life if asked is morally concerning, so I would not label them “praiseworthy”. In this story, whether the Lord is praiseworthy is based on whether this was entirely a test of faith or a split second change of mind from God. Is it evil to ask of Abraham the very act of sacrificing his son? If they both knew that it was a test, then the act was more so just going through the motions, but if not, it is quite a morally deficient thing to ask of someone.

On account of the first sins of man (disobedience to the commands of God), humankind continues in a way to act in defiance of God and to act in sin. While originally it was only the line of Cain that acted with impunity and in a self-glorifying way, once the line of Seth experiences and witnesses death in a natural way(after almost a whole millennia of life), they seek out immortality through glory and things such as beauty(and thus are attracted to the beautiful daughters of Cain’s line, mixing the two). Humankind continues to become arrogant and self serving, continuing to make the mistakes which God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden for. While he originally attempts to amend this by shortening their lives to 120 years, thinking that making human less “God-like” will hopefully decrease their ambitions, this solution is fruitless. This theme of disobedience comes again to a head when God finally resolves to simply start over with his creation by destroying it all with a flood. However, he does find good in it through the virtue of Noah and his family, and instead of starting over, he spares Noah because of his virtue and 2 of ever animal (at this point even the animals had strayed from God’s vision, by eating the flesh of each other). It is interesting how before the flood, God refuses to enforce a body of “external laws”, as seen when Cain kills his brother and God stops anyone from taking revenge on him. However, after the flood he does take proactive measures now when he views that humanity is straying from their course, such as when he destroys the Tower of Babel and scatters the humans across the earth, to fulfill the command of being fruitful and multiplying that God had given to Noah.